Being again in the habit of spending many leisure hours in this favourite spot, endeared to her for bringing to remembrance the enlivening scenes of youth, and, having opportunities to pursue her sedentary amusements, she determined to accomplish her design, seeing no reason why Bungay Castle should not be as good a foundation for the structure of a novel as any other edifice within or without the kingdom. But, as so many ages are elapsed since this Castle was reared, and since time and death have swept away with ruthless hand almost every vestige of what it once was, she has to lament, and so perhaps may her readers, that she was furnished for this employment with no other materials than the scanty portion her own imagination afforded. She has borrowed some real names, and she hopes the characters she has introduced will be found neither disgusting nor unnatural. But, as Solomon so many centuries ago declared, there was nothing _new_ under the sun, she cannot surely be condemned for not producing new characters, nor blamed if any contained in this work resemble those of the present day; and, though in the reigns of our first sovereigns, and many of their successors, the customs and manners of the people were somewhat different, she is convinced the world was in many instances just the same. The same virtues, vices, and passions, degraded or ennobled human nature; and, though delicacy, sensibility, and refinement might be less known, and not so frequently mentioned, they no doubt retained as proper and powerful an influence over the mind. Love too, that invincible and all-subduing passion, implanted in the heart of man from the beginning of the world, was as generally known and acknowledged by the king and the peasant, the hero and the coward.