Family Romance; Or, Episodes in the Domestic Annals of the Aristocracy Volume 2 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853 edition. Excerpt: ...be unresistingly borne along the torrent of its own credulity, overleaping the bounds of prudence and common-sense, until, gathering swiftness by the momentum of its own fate, it finally poured itself away on the quicksands of superstition. Yet was it a gentle and a tender credence --one to be spoken of always kindly; and now, after the lapse of so many years, to be written about, making due allowance for the individual and the age. When we stand by the dusty grave of one who came out from the body of his fellows, not claiming an ambitious pre-eminence of authority, but a singularity in the possession of a power to do good, and when we follow him, mentally, from that day forward, seeking out the repulsiveness of disease that he might remove it--resigning the comforts of home, that he might gratuitously benefit those afar off as well as those who were near--making the long journey and boisterous sea voyage--enduring the threats of legal prosecution for pity's sake to the sick Poor, --we know that the sleeper beneath was no common man. Our admiration is excited; our love is kindled. His mental constitution might have differed from ours; but on which side is the disparity? The reply may not, after all, be so flattering to self. In our Anecdotes of the Aristocracy, Vol. I. pp. 351, 354, we have given an outline of the history of the once celebrated Valentine Greatrak's, the claimant to " gifts of healing" in the seventeenth century. We return to the subject because of the new and exceedingly interesting information about him, which has recently reached our hands, through the kindness of one of his lineal descendants. Little of what we subjoin has hitherto been published; and our present paper will, wo doubt not, exhibit this remarkable...