ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH BY THE RIGHT HON. LORD LYTTON "Ordine gentis "Mores, et studia, et populos, et prælia dicam."—VIRGIL. [I will describe to you, in order, all the nation's customs, humours, tribes, and conflicts.] MANFORD LIBRARY LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE NEW YORK: 416 BROOME STREET 1876 ADVERTISEMENT TO THE KNEBWORTH EDITION. UPWARDS of forty years have passed away since the original publication of "England and the English." Immediately upon its first appearance it ran into a Second Edition. More than the lifetime of a whole generation has since elapsed, and during that long interval the work in this country has never been re-issued. Reprinted in its present form, it will doubtless come for the first time, and therefore virtually as a new work, into the hands of the vast majority of Lord Lytton's readers. It is thus placed within their reach as the earliest portion of the collective re-issue of the whole of his Miscellaneous Writings. Those writings have been hitherto widely scattered, and many of them even have never before been acknowledged. They will now, by supplementing the Novels and Romances, in a series of some fourteen volumes, render the "Knebworth Edition," as originally intended by its projectors, complete in its comprehensiveness. The picture presented to view in the following pages is that of a vanished generation. It is a portraiture of England and the English as they were, and not as they are. The contrast, between the past and the present, thus thrust upon the reader's recognition, will certainly be found, to say the least of it, eminently instructive. The customs, habits, and fashions of the people herein described have, since these chapters were written, been either wonderfully modified or entirely transformed. When the book was originally penned William IV. was still reigning. Nearly a whole lustrum, indeed, elapsed after its completion |