Lorna Doone | Page 2

intelligent interest that has been so freely shown by the noble band of workers, artists, printers, engravers, etc., who have assisted us upon this work. To Mr. Henry Sandham, Mr. George Wharton Edwards, Mr. Harry Fenn, Mr. William Hamilton Gibson, Mr. W. H. Drake, Mr. Irving R. Wiles, Mr. George E. Graves, Mr. Charles Copeland, Mr. Harper Pennington, Mrs. Margaret MacDonald Pullman, Miss Harriet Thayer Durgin, Mr. A. V. S. Anthony, Mr. George T. Andrew, Goupil & Co. of Paris, Mr. Kurtz, The Wright Gravure Co., Mr. Fillebrown, Mr. William J. Dana, and our very able printers, Messrs. Fleming, Brewster & Alley-to them all we therefore extend our cordial acknowledgment of our indebtedness for their services. The fine map is the work of Messrs. Matthews, Northrup & Co.
Very respectfully,
The Burrows Brothers Co.
[Illustration: xii.jpg Tailpiece]

PREFACE BY MISS KATHARINE HILLARD
Author Of "The Doones Of Exmoor," In "Harper's Magazine," Vol. LXV. Page 835.
A novel that has stood the test of time so well as Mr. Blackmore's charming story of "Lorna Doone" scarcely needs a preface. Certainly no word of introduction is necessary to testify to its exquisite humor, its dramatic force, its under-current of poetic feeling, its fine touches of landscape-painting, and the novelty and interest of its subject. Since it first appeared in 1869 all these have become as household words, only, perhaps, all the admirers of "Lorna Doone" have not had the good fortune to wander through the romantic and picturesque region where the scene of the story is laid. To travel in North Devon, and over its border into Somerset ("the Summerland," as the old Northmen call it), is to be confronted with the scenes of the novel at every turn; for Mr. Blackmore has so successfully woven the legends of the whole countryside into his story that one grows to believe it a veritable history, and is as disappointed to find traces of the romancer's own hand here and there as to find the hills and valleys laid bare of the forests which adorned them in the time of the Doones.
It is a singular country, this Devonshire coast, made up as it is of a series of rocky headlands jutting far out into the sea, and holding between their stretching arms deep fertile wooded valleys called combes (pronounced _coomes_), watered by trout and salmon streams, and filled with an Italian profusion of vegetation, myrtles and fuchsias, growing in the open air, and the walls hidden with a luxuriant tapestry of ferns and ivies and blossoming vines. Even the roofs are covered with flowers; every cranny bears a blossom or a tuft of green. Then above, long stretches of barren heath (with a few twisted and wind-tortured trees), where the sheep pasture and the sky-lark sings, and in and out of the red-fronted cliffs the querulous sea-gulls flash in the sunshine, and make their plaintive moan. Near Lynton there is the famous Valley of Rocks, where the wise woman, Mother Melldrum, had her winter quarters under the Devil's Cheese-wring.
[Illustration: xiv.jpg Cheese-wring]
The irregular pile of rocks that goes by this name is wrongly called Cheese-ring (or _scoop_) in some editions of "Lorna Doone," instead of Cheese-wring or (_press_), which it somewhat resembles in shape. Southey began the fortune of Lynton as a watering-place, and wrote a glowing description of the village and the Valley of Rocks. Of the latter he says: "A palace of the pre-Adamite kings, a city of the Anakim must have appeared so shapeless and yet so like the ruins of what had been shaped after the waters of the flood subsided." Great bowlders, half hidden by the bracken, lie about in wildest confusion; the remains of what seem to be Druidic circles can be traced here and there, and it is hard to persuade one's self that the ragged towers and picturesque piles of rock are not the work of Cyclopean architects.
"Our home-folk always call it the 'Danes,' or the 'Denes,' which is no more, they tell me, than a hollow place, even as the word 'den' is," says John Ridd. "It is a pretty place," he adds, "though nothing to frighten any body, unless he hath lived in a gallipot." The valley is well protected from the wind, and "there is shelter and dry fern-bedding and folk to be seen in the distance from a bank whereon the sun shines." Here John Ridd came to consult the wise woman toward the end of March, while the weather was still cold and piercing. In the warm days of summer she lived "in a pleasant cave facing the cool side of the hill, far inland, near Hawkridge, and close over Tarr-steps--a wonderful crossing of Barle River, made (as every body knows) by Satan for a wager." But the antiquarians of to-day assert that the curious steps were made