The Project Gutenberg EBook of Jack Hinton, by Charles James Lever

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Jack Hinton
The Guardsman

Author: Charles James Lever

Illustrator: Phiz.

Release Date: July 5, 2010 [EBook #33082]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACK HINTON ***

Produced by David Widger

JACK HINTON,

THE GUARDSMAN.

By Charles James Lever

With Illustrations by Browne

LONDON:

CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.

1857.

PREFACE.

Very few words of preface will suffice to the volume now presented to my
readers. My intention was to depict, in the early experiences of a young
Englishman in Ireland, some of the almost inevitable mistakes incidental
to such a character. I had so often myself listened to so many absurd
and exaggerated opinions on Irish character, formed on the very
slightest acquaintance with the country, and by persons, too, who, with
all the advantages long intimacy might confer, would still have been
totally inadequate to the task of a rightful appreciation, that I deemed
the subject one where a little "reprisal" might be justifiable.

Scarcely, however, had I entered upon my story, than I strayed from the
path I had determined on, and, with very little reference to my
original intention, suffered Jack Hinton to "take his chance amongst the
natives," and with far too much occupation on his hands to give time for
reflecting over their peculiarities, or recording their singular traits,
I threw him into the society of the capital, under the vice-royalty of a
celebrated Duke, all whose wayward eccentricities were less marked than
the manly generosity and genuine honesty of his character. I introduced
him into a set where, whatever purely English readers may opine, I have
wonderfully little exaggerated; and I led him down to the West to meet
adventures which every newspaper, some twenty-five years ago, would show
were by no means extravagant or strange.

As for the characters of the story, there is not one for which I did not
take a "real sitter;" at the same time, I have never heard one single
correct guess as to the types that afforded them. To Mrs. Paul Rooney,
Fath