Much is on my mind of the desperate evils consequent on the Romish rule of idol-worship: and why not lay my scene on the wild banks of the Swale, among the bleak, rough moors that stand round Richmond, and the gullies that run between the Yorkshire hills?
Why not talk about those names of gentle blood, familiar to the ear as household words, Uvedale and Scrope, Vavasour and Ratcliffe?
Why not press into the service of instructive novelism truths stranger than fiction, among characters more marked, and names of higher note, than the whole hot-pressed family of the Fitzes?
All this might be accomplished, were it worth the worry, in THE PRIOR OF MARRICK.
And now for a story of idolatry.

It seems an absurdity, an insanity; it is one--both.

But think it out.

Is it quite impossible, quite incredible?
Let me sketch the outline of so strange infatuation.

Our prior was once a good man--an easy, kind, and amiable: he takes the cowl in early youth, partly because he is the younger son of an unfighting family, and must, partly because he is melancholy, and will.