Lorna Doone | Page 2

as an innovation in a romance, but we hope
that it will be found such a manifest convenience as to be its own
sufficient excuse.
In this place it seems to be a duty, also, to call attention to the
sympathizing and 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