[1] Having thus faintly premised the leading features of the work in hand, it may be proper to add a few words respecting the origin of the design, and the humble qualifications of the writer for the task he has undertaken. Familiar in early life with the feudal and monastic ruins which invest Border history with so many stirring tales and traditions, a taste for the deeds and days of old, fostered both at school and college, was much strengthened by subsequent travelling in France and Italy; where, besides the classical monuments of antiquity, an unlimited field was thrown open for the study and investigation of those which more forcibly illustrate the middle ages. To the facilities acquired on the shores of the Mediterranean, others were presented to him in Germany, where much of the feudal character is still preserved in the living habits of the people. Honoured with the commands of a late illustrious Personage{*}, on three successive occasions, to attend him professionally at some of the minor courts of that country, he had various opportunities of visiting those religious and baronial edifices which, in the old German principalities, are both numerous and splendid. He next spent a considerable time in Switzerland, among the High Alps and in the valleys of Piedmont, where many vestiges of feudal customs and government were found to illustrate the history of the middle ages in Great Britain.--But although the writer had published works descriptive of the countries mentioned, the plan of the work now in hand was partly the result of a conversation with a late distinguished and highly accomplished lady{**}, whose family honours had descended to her through a long succession of ancestors. Being at that time engaged in an illustrated work on Scotland, her Grace favoured the author with an original drawing of her ancestral castle; and on a subsequent occasion suggested an illustrated history of our castellated mansions, with their legends and traditions, as a popular subject. He was honoured at the same time with a family memoir, and some MSS. respecting the ancient Sutherland estates, such as might have been useful in a work like the present. Circumstances, however, which occurred shortly after, precluded all further attention to the subject; and it was not till the beginning of last autumn that leisure was found to make arrangements for publishing the work in a cheap, popular form: a plan which it is hoped will bring an originally voluminous and expensive field of illustration within the reach of every admirer of English monuments. {*} His late Majesty William IV., while Duke of Clarence. {**} The late Duchess-Countess of Sutherland. [2] Asser de Ælfred. rebus. gestis, fol. 23.; Athelmo vero fratris mei filio, &c.--Appendix to this vol. p. 331. [3] Ibid.--Camden, 308. 230. See the original in Append. to this volume, p. 331. [4] Ingulph. folio 510.--Hardyng, p. 229.--Simeon Dunelmensis, 184.--Hovedon, fol. 254.