scene which it depicted. She greatly desired the novel to be turned into
a play, and so it was. The adaptation, however, was lacking in much, and
though Miss Marie Burroughs and Maurice Barrymore played in it, success
did not attend its dramatic life.

'The Battle of the Strong' was called an historical novel by many
critics, but the disclaimer which I made in the first edition I make
again. 'The Seats of the Mighty' came nearer to what might properly be
called an historical novel than any other book which I have written save,
perhaps, 'A Ladder of Swords'. 'The Battle of the Strong' is not without
faithful historical elements, but the book is essentially a romance, in
which character was not meant to be submerged by incident; and I do not
think that in this particular the book falls short of the design of its
author. There was this enormous difference between life in the Island of
Jersey and life in French Canada, that in Jersey, tradition is heaped
upon tradition, custom upon custom, precept upon precept, until every
citizen of the place is bound by innumerable cords of a code from which
he cannot free himself. It is a little island, and that it is an island
is evidence of a contracted life, though, in this case, a life which has
real power and force. The life in French Canada was also traditional,
and custom was also somewhat tyrannous, but it was part of a great
continent in which the expansion of the man and of a people was
inevitable. Tradition gets somewhat battered in a new land, and
even where, as in French Canada, the priest and the Church have such
supervision, and can bring such pressure to bear that every man must
feel its influence; yet there is a happiness, a blitheness, and an
exhilaration even in the most obscure quarter of French Canada which
cannot be observed in the Island of Jersey. In Jersey the custom of five
hundred years ago still reaches out and binds; and so small is the place
that every square foot of it almost--even where the potato sprouts, and