OF HOLLAND. A HISTORICAL TALE. BY THOMAS COLLEY GRATTAN, AUTHOR OF "THE HEIRESS OF BRUGES," &c. Nought is there under Heaven's wide hollownesse Which I do owe unto all womankynde, Feele my hart perst with so greate agonie Faerie Queene. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. ΤΟ SIR ARTHUR BROOKE FAULKNER, KNT. &c. &c. &c. MY DEAR FRIEND, WERE not the reading world so intolerant of mere undisguised prefaces, I should not have been induced to cheat it into attention and bespeak its favour, by pressing your name into such light service as this; nor have carried into public a correspondence which is so much the pleasure of my private life. But there are several reasons for my choosing you as a literary sponsor on the present occasion, independent of the motives of regard and respect implied in every Dedication. It is perhaps sufficient to mention the sympathy which I know you to feel in my subject. a We have cut through the fogs of a Dutch winter together. While I sought inspiration in the chronicles of the olden time, and you drew from the still deeper and purer wells of practical philosophy, we were now and then encouraged by glimpses of fair forms, shewing through the mist enough of grace and beauty to add truth to fancy and embellishment to fact. You have traced with me nearly every locality of my Heroine's adventurous life. You can, therefore, better than any one else, admit the probability of my imaginings, and vouch for the veracity of my descriptions. Yet I have been, if not actually disheartened at least much discouraged, in venturing on ground so unexplored as the countries I have chosen for the scene of this and my last novel. By readers who will believe in my pages, the redundant wealth of Netherland annals may be guessed at. To understand it thoroughly, many a folio must be waded through, teeming with such lore. If I can, even with moderate success, bring some of those abounding subjects to light, I shall be satisfied. To paint Holland as it was four centuries back-torn by factions and the prey of a repacious usurper-may convince some sceptic as to the influences of civilization, who sees the same country to-day, in an aspect of union and energy, which extracts our admiration, in spite of the many revolting anomalies in a people so selfish and unsocial: while, on the other hand, we may marvel at, and draw a moral from, the spectacle of a nation so changed by commerce, from its once generous and chivalric character, as to hate in the abstract, and grudge to others, the liberty so bravely won and so amply enjoyed by itself. While universal Europe throbs with painful exultation at each new detail of Polish heroism, and glories in the well regulated triumph of popular right in England, Holland is the exception which proves the general rule. For there is to be found a whole people imbued with those prejudices |