Book excerpt: Excerpt from Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, and Episodes in Ancestral Story, Vol. 1 of 2 Spirit Of adventure, which must make some of them, at least, heroes of marvellous transactions at every time, whether their course of life confines them to their stately mansions, and their unrivalled Senate at home, or whe ther it leads them to foreign travel, or to fields of war. And we submit that such is the case upon the attesta tion of these volumes. Let the reader seek romance, in whatever book and at whatever period he will, from Cervantes to Bulwer, yet naught will he find to surpass the uncommon and unexaggerated reality unfolded here - naught to convince him that the poetry of the brain can rival in interest the pages of British family history. 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.