REALMAH.

REALMAH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.”

Boston: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1869.

LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL.

TO

JOHN ROBINSON M‘CLEAN, ESQ.,

PAST PRESIDENT OF THE INSTITUTION OF CIVIL ENGINEERS,

F.G.S., F.S.S., F.A.S.

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED,

WITH THE GREATEST AFFECTION AND ESTEEM,

BY HIS SINCERE FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

NOVEMBER, 1868.

“_No, Master Scholasticus, I am not one of those academick eremites who think that they can apprehend great matters, by taking refuge in their book-rooms, and perpending their own thoughts only. But I do mightily affect and desiderate the converse of learned and worthy persons who will obtest against my chaunting foolish litanies before the idols of my own conceit, who will chastise the fondness of my imaginations, and chase away the bewildering humours and fancies which beset me when I hearken only to my poor and most unworthy self. For who, indeed, at one trait, and from his own small treasury of observance, shall veritably depict even the loveliness of these dumb and thoughtless glades, bosques, and rivulets which surround us? This man seeth them when Phœbus is smiling, and that man, when the God of day is obnubilated--not to speak of the various moods of men, which moods, whether they are gladsome or melancholy, fanciful or dull, do enchant or disenchant, for the men themselves, the outward forms and shows of nature. Therefore, always am I desireful to hear what my friends will say upon any matter that doth admit high and various discourse. And though the cautelous tregetour, or, as the men of France do call him, the jongleur, doth make a very pretty play with two or three balls which seem to live in the air, and which do not depart from him, yet I would rather, after our old English fashion, have the ball tossed from hand to hand, or that one should propulse the ball against the little guichet, while another should repel it with the batting-staff. This I hold to be the fuller exercise and the more pleasant pastime._”--An unpublished fragment from the MS. of “ANE AUNCIENTE CLERKE.”