Excerpt from The Cavalier: An Historical Novel I remember quite well the time when long and minute descriptions of scenery, costume, armor, per sonal appearance - ay, and even character - were highly palatable to the reader. The exquisite pic tures afi'orded by the poems and romances of Sir Walter Scott were the delight of intelligent minds. Men felt in reading them as if they were gazing at the glorious handiwork of a Claude or Poussin; but we have changed all that; we hear from the lips of every little critic deep condemnations of long and wearisome descriptions; and every sort of stimulant, from blood and thunder to philosophical infidelity, is required to excite the public taste. Fifty thousand throats cut in one chapter, five or six thousand young ladies seduced by one villain, with a reasonable ad mixture of gambling, swindling, drinking, and lying, form the best sauce to any story that can be told, and although every now and then a work appears. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.