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or the Traditional History of Cromarty by Hugh Miller (1869)
The present edition contains about one-third more matter than the first. The added Chapters, however, like those which previously composed the work, were almost all written about twenty years ago, in leisure hours snatched from a laborious employment, or during the storms of winter, when the worker in the open air has to seek shelter at home. But it is always less disadvantageous to a traditionary work, that it should have been written early than late. Of the materials wrought up into the present volume, the greater part was gathered about from fifteen to twenty years earlier still; and though some thirty-five or forty years may not seem a very lengthened period, such has been the change that has taken place during the lapse of the generation which has in that time disappeared from the earth, that perhaps scarce a tithe of the same matter could be collected now. We live in an age unfavourable to tradition, in which the written has superseded the oral. As the sun rose in his strength, the manna wasted away like hoarfrost from off* the ground.
In preparing my volume a second time for the press, I have felt rather gratified than otherwise, that, at least, much of what it contains should have been preserved. The reader will here and there find snatches of dissertation, which would perhaps not be missed if away—which, at all events, had they not been written before, would have remained unwritten now; but which I have spared, partly for the sake of the associations connected with them, and partly under the impression that the other portions of the work would have less of character if they were wanting. Some of these dissertative fragments I have, however, considerably abridged, and there were others of a similar kind in the first edition which have been wholly suppressed. In my longer stories I have, I find, exercised the same sort of liberty in filling up the outlines as that taken by the ancient historians in their earlier Chapters. Livy in the the times of the Empire could write speeches for Romulus and Junius Brutus, and introduce them into his narrative as authentic; and Tacitus details as minutely, in his Life of Agricola, the deliberations of the warlike Caledonians as if he had formed one of their councils. Even the sober Hume puts arguments for and against toleration into the mouths of Cardinal Pole and his opponents which belonged to neither the men nor the age. But though I have, in some cases, given shade and colour to the original lines, in no case have I altered the character of the drawing. I have only to state further, that the reader, when he finds reference made, in the indefinite style of the traditionary historian, to the years which have elapsed since the events related took place, must add in every instance twenty additional twelvemonths to the number; the some thirty bygone years of my narratives have stretched out into half a century, and the half century into the threescore years and ten.
Also added a couple of videos to the index page of this book which you can find at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...arty/index.htm
Alastair
The present edition contains about one-third more matter than the first. The added Chapters, however, like those which previously composed the work, were almost all written about twenty years ago, in leisure hours snatched from a laborious employment, or during the storms of winter, when the worker in the open air has to seek shelter at home. But it is always less disadvantageous to a traditionary work, that it should have been written early than late. Of the materials wrought up into the present volume, the greater part was gathered about from fifteen to twenty years earlier still; and though some thirty-five or forty years may not seem a very lengthened period, such has been the change that has taken place during the lapse of the generation which has in that time disappeared from the earth, that perhaps scarce a tithe of the same matter could be collected now. We live in an age unfavourable to tradition, in which the written has superseded the oral. As the sun rose in his strength, the manna wasted away like hoarfrost from off* the ground.
In preparing my volume a second time for the press, I have felt rather gratified than otherwise, that, at least, much of what it contains should have been preserved. The reader will here and there find snatches of dissertation, which would perhaps not be missed if away—which, at all events, had they not been written before, would have remained unwritten now; but which I have spared, partly for the sake of the associations connected with them, and partly under the impression that the other portions of the work would have less of character if they were wanting. Some of these dissertative fragments I have, however, considerably abridged, and there were others of a similar kind in the first edition which have been wholly suppressed. In my longer stories I have, I find, exercised the same sort of liberty in filling up the outlines as that taken by the ancient historians in their earlier Chapters. Livy in the the times of the Empire could write speeches for Romulus and Junius Brutus, and introduce them into his narrative as authentic; and Tacitus details as minutely, in his Life of Agricola, the deliberations of the warlike Caledonians as if he had formed one of their councils. Even the sober Hume puts arguments for and against toleration into the mouths of Cardinal Pole and his opponents which belonged to neither the men nor the age. But though I have, in some cases, given shade and colour to the original lines, in no case have I altered the character of the drawing. I have only to state further, that the reader, when he finds reference made, in the indefinite style of the traditionary historian, to the years which have elapsed since the events related took place, must add in every instance twenty additional twelvemonths to the number; the some thirty bygone years of my narratives have stretched out into half a century, and the half century into the threescore years and ten.
Also added a couple of videos to the index page of this book which you can find at http://www.electricscotland.com/hist...arty/index.htm
Alastair