The Fortunes of Nigel | Page 2

and
self-denial, instead of that of precipitate passion. I could not, indeed,
hope or expect to represent my prudent and benevolent citizen in a
point of view so interesting as that of the peasant girl, who nobly
sacrificed her family affections to the integrity of her moral character.
Still however, something I hoped might be done not altogether
unworthy the fame which George Heriot has secured by the lasting
benefits he has bestowed on his country.
It appeared likely, that out of this simple plot I might weave something
attractive; because the reign of James I., in which George Heriot
flourished, gave unbounded scope to invention in the fable, while at the
same time it afforded greater variety and discrimination of character

than could, with historical consistency, have been introduced, if the
scene had been laid a century earlier. Lady Mary Wortley Montague
has said, with equal truth and taste, that the most romantic region of
every country is that where the mountains unite themselves with the
plains or lowlands. For similiar reasons, it may be in like manner said,
that the most picturesque period of history is that when the ancient
rough and wild manners of a barbarous age are just becoming
innovated upon, and contrasted, by the illumination of increased or
revived learning, and the instructions of renewed or reformed religion.
The strong contrast produced by the opposition of ancient manners to
those which are gradually subduing them, affords the lights and
shadows necessary to give effect to a fictitious narrative; and while
such a period entitles the author to introduce incidents of a marvellous
and improbable character, as arising out of the turbulent independence
and ferocity, belonging to old habits of violence, still influencing the
manners of a people who had been so lately in a barbarous state; yet, on
the other hand, the characters and sentiments of many of the actors may,
with the utmost probability, be described with great variety of shading
and delineation, which belongs to the newer and more improved period,
of which the world has but lately received the light.
The reign of James I. of England possessed this advantage in a peculiar
degree. Some beams of chivalry, although its planet had been for some
time set, continued to animate and gild the horizon, and although
probably no one acted precisely on its Quixotic dictates, men and
women still talked the chivalrous language of Sir Philip Sydney's
Arcadia; and the ceremonial of the tilt-yard was yet exhibited, though it
now only flourished as a Place de Carrousel. Here and there a high-
spirited Knight of the Bath, witness the too scrupulous Lord Herbert of
Cherbury, was found devoted enough to the vows he had taken, to
imagine himself obliged to compel, by the sword's-point, a fellow-
knight or squire to restore the top-knot of ribbon which he had stolen
from a fair damsel;[Footnote: See Lord Herbert of Cherbury's Memoirs.]
but yet, while men were taking each other's lives on such punctilios of
honour, the hour was already arrived when Bacon was about to teach
the world that they were no longer to reason from authority to fact, but
to establish truth by advancing from fact to fact, till they fixed an
indisputable authority, not from hypothesis, but from experiment.

The state of society in the reign of James I. was also strangely disturbed,
and the license of a part of the community was perpetually giving rise
to acts of blood and violence. The bravo of the Queen's day, of whom
Shakspeare has given us so many varieties, as Bardolph, Nym, Pistol,
Peto, and the other companions of Falstaff, men who had their humours,
or their particular turn of extravaganza, had, since the commencement
of the Low Country wars, given way to a race of sworders, who used
the rapier and dagger, instead of the far less dangerous sword and
buckler; so that a historian says on this subject, "that private quarrels
were nourished, but especially between the Scots and English; and
duels in every street maintained; divers sects and peculiar titles passed
unpunished and unregarded, as the sect of the Roaring Boys,
Bonaventors, Bravadors, Quarterors, and such like, being persons
prodigal, and of great expense, who, having run themselves into debt,
were constrained to run next into factions, to defend themselves from
danger of the law. These received countenance from divers of the
nobility; and the citizens, through lasciviousness consuming their
estates, it was like that the number [of these desperadoes] would rather
increase than diminish; and under these pretences they entered into
many desperate enterprizes, and scarce any durst walk in the street after
nine at night."[Footnote: history of the First Fourteen Years of King
James's Reign. See Somers's Tracts, edited by Scott, vol. ii. p.266.]
The same authority assures us farther, that