PREFACE
This story was partly written nearly thirty years ago,[1] before railroads were established, and travelling carriages-and-four superseded; before postage-stamps had extinguished the privilege of franking, and before the Reform Bill had limited the duration of the polling at borough elections to a single day. In re-writing it I might easily have introduced these and other modern innovations; but as I believe the manners of England to be as much changed as her customs, there would have been discrepancies between my scenes and characters: the background would not have harmonized with the figures.
When I wrote it, I thought it a tolerably faithful representation of modern society; but some young friends who are still living in the world, from which I have long retired, and who have read it with the indulgence of happy youth, condescendingly assure me that it is amusing, inasmuch as it is a curious picture of old-fashioned society. Therefore, in giving it to the world, I trust that to my own contemporaries it may have the charm of reminding them of their youth, and that to the young it may have the recommendation of being a strange Chronicle of the Olden Time.
- ↑ The book was first published, it must be remembered, in 1860.
