Page:The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon.djvu/25

 other history), the order of time is duly preserved. The movements of Stephen, who was m incessant action throughout his stormy reign, are described with a minuteness which shows tlmt the author was present at the scenes he depicts. Many of them lay in the west of England, and in South Wales, where the Earl of Gloucester, the chief supporter of the cause of the empress, had great possessions, and much influence in right of his wife, and of his mother, who was daughter of a prince of that country. But the enterprises of other individual actors in those turbulent times fill a large portion of the authors pages, and these episodes fonn a very interesting part of the narrative. They enable us to realize the state of society, when every defensible position was occupied by a strong castle, there being no safety outside the walls, and when every man's hand was against his neighbour. In these scenes, the high-born baron, and the ruffianly freebooter, alike living by fraud and violence, are prominent figures, while licentious men-at-arms, and Flemish and Norman mercenaries, whose wages were rapine, follow in their train; and groups of affrighted and plundered citizens, and impoverished ecclesiastics, lend it horrors. Indeed, as Dr. Sewell remarks, the whole narrative "is one stirring series of events of personal and individual interest, and, in this respect, it partakes much more of the character of a romance than of a history. We are transported at once into the camp of Stephen and his barons; we are present at his councils; we are hurried forward in the night march; we lurk in the ambuscade; we take part in the storming of castles and cities. Now we stand in the wild morasses of the isle of Ely; at another time we reconnoitre the fortifications of Bristol; from the hard-fought field of Lincoln we are carried to the walls of Oxford; from the dungeon of the captive king we hasten to witness the escape of the empress, during all the severities of a December night."

History presented in this attractive garb, leaves on the mind a far more durable impression than is made by the generalizations of modem writers, too many of whom appear to have been very superficially acquainted with the authorities whence they profess to derive their infor-