there's that
which is better than a title. We're mushrooms to the Newtons, you
know. We only came into Berkshire in the reign of Henry VIII." As the
Wigghams had only come into Buckinghamshire in the reign of George
IV., Lady Wiggham, had she known the facts, would probably have
reminded her dear friend that the Eardhams had in truth first been
heard of in those parts in the time of Queen Anne,--the original
Eardham having made his money in following Marlborough's army. But
Lady Wiggham had not studied the history of the county gentry. The
wedding went off very well, and the bride and bridegroom were bowled
away to the nearest station with four grey post-horses from Reading
in a manner that was truly delightful to Lady Eardham's motherly
feelings.

And with the same grey horses shall the happy bride and bridegroom
be bowled out of our sight also. The writer of this story feels
that some apology is due to his readers for having endeavoured
to entertain them so long with the adventures of one of whom it
certainly cannot be said that he was fit to be delineated as a hero.
It is thought by many critics that in the pictures of imaginary life
which novelists produce for the amusement, and possibly for the
instruction of their readers, none should be put upon the canvas but
the very good, who by their noble thoughts and deeds may lead others
to nobility, or the very bad, who by their declared wickedness will
make iniquity hideous. How can it be worth one's while, such critics
will say,--the writer here speaks of all critical readers, and not
of professional critics,--how can it be worth our while to waste our
imaginations, our sympathies, and our time upon such a one as Ralph,
the heir of the Newton property? The writer, acknowledging the force
of these objections, and confessing that his young heroes of romance
are but seldom heroic, makes his apology as follows.

The reader of a novel,--who has doubtless taken the volume up simply
for amusement, and who would probably lay it down did he suspect
that instruction, like a snake in the grass, like physic beneath the
sugar, was to be imposed upon him,--requires from his author chiefly
this, that he shall be amused by a narrative in which elevated
sentiment prevails, and gratified by being made to feel that the
elevated sentiments described are exactly his own. When the heroine
is nobly true to her lover, to her friend, or to her duty, through
all persecution, the girl who rea