zard the attempt,
and to adopt that mode of treatment which, if making larger demand on the
attention of the reader, seemed the more complimentary to his judgment.

The age itself, once duly examined, is full of those elements which
should awaken interest, and appeal to the imagination. Not untruly has
Sismondi said, that the "Eleventh Century has a right to be considered a
great age. It was a period of life and of creation; all that there was
of noble, heroic, and vigorous in the Middle Ages commenced at that
epoch." [1] But to us Englishmen in especial, besides the more animated
interest in that spirit of adventure, enterprise, and improvement, of
which the Norman chivalry was the noblest type, there is an interest more
touching and deep in those last glimpses of the old Saxon monarchy, which
open upon us in the mournful pages of our chroniclers.

I have sought in this work, less to portray mere manners, which modern
researches have rendered familiar to ordinary students in our history,
than to bring forward the great characters, so carelessly dismissed in
the long and loose record of centuries; to show more clearly the motives
and policy of the agents in an event the most memorable in Europe; and to
convey a definite, if general, notion of the human beings, whose brains
schemed, and whose hearts beat, in that realm of shadows which lies
behind the Norman Conquest;

"Spes hominum caecos, morbos, votumque, labores,
Et passim toto volitantes aethere curas." [2]

I have thus been faithful to the leading historical incidents in the
grand tragedy of Harold, and as careful as contradictory evidences will
permit, both as to accuracy in the delineation of character, and
correctness in that chronological chain of dates without which there can
be no historical philosophy; that is, no tangible link between the cause
and the effect. The fictitious part of my narrative is, as in "Rienzi,"
and the "Last of the Barons," confined chiefly to the private life, with
its domain of incident and passion, which is the legitimate appanage of
novelist or poet. The love story of Harold and Edith is told differently
from the well-known legend, which implies a less pure connection. But
the whole legend respecting the Edeva faira (Edith the fair) whose name
meets us in the "Domesday" roll, rests upon very slight authority
considering its popular acceptance [3]; and the reasons for my
alterations will be sufficiently obvious in a