THE HALL AND THE HAMLET; 66 OR, SCENES AND CHARACTERS OF COUNTRY LIFE. BY WILLIAM HOWITT, AUTHOR OF 66 IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER, IN these volumes I have endeavoured to give, principally in a narrative form, as faithful a portraiture of Life and Manners in the country, at the present day, as I have done in "The Rural Life of England" in a more purely descriptive style. All the narratives are founded on facts and characters that have been familiar to me. Some of the stories have appeared in popular periodicals; the greater portion of them, however, now issue from the press for the first time, and depict a state which people are every day more and more terming a transition state, and which, therefore, it is most desirable should be tending towards a better order of things. There is no greater source of original character than the country in England presents; to preserve this, while we advance the labouring classes by education, is a work worthy of the possessors of the soil of this great Empire. The HALL may, and must, do much to elevate the HAMLET, and the Hamlet, in a more enlightened and prosperous condition, can add much to the interest of living at the Hall. Every lover of his country must be anxious to see Rural Life so well and healthily balanced, that the old English character may wholly survive in the new English progress of Society. Clapton, Nov. 20, 1847. THE AUTHOR. |