DEDICATION. Vil

my lasting gratitude, could I forget how fre-
quently I have been driven by hound and horn
from those treacherous coverts. Although, from
the above reasons, there cannot be friendship
between us, there may, I trust there does, exist
some feeling of mutual respect: you and your
brethren are not insensible to those merits in our
species which you affect to depreciate. Fabulists
and other writers, in all languages, have quoted
the sayings and doings of my ancestors, as lessons
of instruction for youth ; while the craft and cun-
ning of your ablest statesmen’ have been, in many
instances, entirely derived from our acknowledged
principles and practice. Our heroism in the en-
durance of a violent and cruel death is equalled
only by our dexterity in avoiding it. It was only
last winter, that a cousin of mine led a gallant
field of two hundred horsemen over thirty miles
of the finest country in England: and when»at
length overtaken by twenty couple of his enemies,
each one larger and stronger than himself, he died
amid their murderous fangs, without suffering a

yell or cry to escape him! Yet do the poets of