much that were otherwise obscure, and to solve the disputes and
difficulties of contradictory evidence by the philosophy of the human
heart.

My own impression of the greatness of the labour to which you invited
me made me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of
English historical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by
the most brilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later
writers of high and merited reputation. But however the annals of our
History have been exhausted by the industry of romance, the subject
you finally pressed on my choice is unquestionably one which, whether
in the delineation of character, the expression of passion, or the
suggestion of historical truths, can hardly fail to direct the
Novelist to paths wholly untrodden by his predecessors in the Land of
Fiction.

Encouraged by you, I commenced my task; encouraged by you, I venture,
on concluding it, to believe that, despite the partial adoption of
that established compromise between the modern and the elder diction,
which Sir Walter Scott so artistically improved from the more rugged
phraseology employed by Strutt, and which later writers have perhaps
somewhat overhackneyed, I may yet have avoided all material trespass
upon ground which others have already redeemed from the waste.
Whatever the produce of the soil I have selected, I claim, at least,
to have cleared it with my own labour, and ploughed it with my own
heifer.

The reign of Edward IV. is in itself suggestive of new considerations
and unexhausted interest to those who accurately regard it. Then
commenced the policy consummated by Henry VII.; then were broken up