University of Virginia Library

ADVERTISEMENT.

In producing this volume of “Legends of Love and Chivalry,”
I neither desire to palm off an old work on the public
as a new, nor yet to have what is really, in some considerable
part new, regarded as a mere reproduction.

For nearly twenty years, I have been engaged in the preparation
of articles for various magazines, some yet alive and
flourishing, many long since defunct. Many of these magazines
had but a small circulation at any time, many are utterly
forgotten, all are considered more or less as ephemeral, to be
read once and laid aside for ever. A new generation, moreover,
has arisen since I first assumed the pen as a profession;
and it is the consideration of all these things, united with the
hope that some of my more recent readers may care to learn
something of the man who is, in the boy who has ceased to
be, and the pardonable desire of placing in a permanent shape,
what has only heretofore appeared in a fugitive form, that I
now lay before a public — which has always been indulgent to
me — a revised, rewritten, and augmented edition of some writings,

which, perhaps, with the natural partiality of the old for
the things they did when young, I do not consider the worst
of my humble efforts.

The papers which compose this series, in part original and
new, are herein published, not in chronological order as they
were written, but in chronological order as the events occurred
to which they relate — they are in close connection as to time,
place, and I believe, historic verisimilitude — they are intended
to illustrate the habits of society, life, and manners, the usages
and feelings, both military and domestic, of various countries,
at various epochs, from the commencement of chivalry in the
crusades, to its conclusion in the epoch of Louis XIV., of
France.

I have no more to say in explanation, either of my work, or
of my motives in producing it, but only to submit it to the candor
and kindness of my readers, be they few or many.