Bracebridge Hall

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Bracebridge Hall, by Washington Irving, Illustrated by Randolph Caldecott
BY
ILLUSTRATED BY
The chivalry of the Hall prepared to take the Field. — Frontispiece.
DESIGNED BY RANDOLPH CALDECOTT,
AND
ARRANGED AND ENGRAVED BY J.D. COOPER.
The success of OLD CHRISTMAS has suggested the re-publication of its sequel BRACEBRIDGE HALL, illustrated by the same able pencil, but condensed so as to bring it within reasonable size and price.
The ancientest house, and the best for housekeeping in this county or the next, and though the master of it write but squire, I know no lord like him.
MERRY BEGGARS.
The reader, if he has perused the volumes of the Sketch Book, will probably recollect something of the Bracebridge family, with which I once passed a Christmas. I am now on another visit at the Hall, having been invited to a wedding which is shortly to take place. The squire's second son, Guy, a fine, spirited young captain in the army, is about to be married to his father's ward, the fair Julia Templeton. A gathering of relations and friends has already commenced, to celebrate the joyful occasion; for the old gentleman is an enemy to quiet, private weddings. There is nothing, he says, like launching a young couple gaily, and cheering them from the shore; a good outset is half the voyage.
Before proceeding any farther, I would beg that the squire might not be confounded with that class of hard-riding, fox-hunting gentlemen so often described, and, in fact, so nearly extinct in England. I use this rural title, partly because it is his universal appellation throughout the neighbourhood, and partly because it saves me the frequent repetition of his name, which is one of those rough old English names at which Frenchmen exclaim in despair.