The Duke of Monmouth, by the Author of 'the Munster Festivals'

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The reader has been already slightly introduced to the family of Captain Kingsly, of whom it will be necessary to furnish a somewhat more minute account. Of the earlier life of Mr. Kingsly an incident was related far and wide, which, without vouching for its authenticity, we shall faithfully and fearlessly record, regarding with indignation commensurate with his own blindness the contempt of the incredulous. The young yeomanry captain had, said the gossips of Taunton, iu his younger days been distinguished by other and less laudable characteristics of the cavaliers than their indomitableloyalty. In order to evince his dislike of their puritanical manners, he endeavoured, by the irregularity of his own life and conversation, to set the stamp of his individual condemnation as deeply as it was possible on theirs; and by his demeanour it almost appeared as if he thought the very virtues should be avoided which could be practised in common with a Roundhead. His marriage, for a time, occasioned something like a change in the extravagant habits to which this overwrought loyalty led. It was (of course) at an assembly, but not (of course) in Taunton, that Mr. Kingsly and his lady became first acquainted. Sarah Milman, as the latter was then called, was of good family, and not without fortune; but it was the opinion of many, as regarded both parties, that if the gold were put into one scale and the common sense in another, the former would far outweigh any stock of the latter which had fallen to the lot either of the one or the other. Those whopretend to be very wise, and to know a great deal about the matter, would have their young- ers be very circumspect about the motives on which they enter on the duties of that condition which Mr. and Mrs. Kingsly contemplated at ...