Hide and Seek; or, the Mystery of Mary Grice. New edition

Front matter

a list of for gratis ætS *** Now ready, price Gd. post free, a Specimen Catalogue of Present Books, with Thirty-two Illustrations, crown 8vo, gilt edges. ilSucJi icorks are a glorious beatification for a poet. Such works as these educate townsmen, who, surrounded by dead and artificial things, as country people are by U/e and nature, scarcely learn to look at Nature till taught by these concentrated specimens ofher beauty."— Athenæum. ILLUSTRATED BY EMINENT ARTISTS. Poems of the Last Hundred Years. C- _,(£&/ Tuomson tu Tennyson. 200 Illustrations. Nearly ready. >?ifes^ The Book of Psalms. On Toned Paper, Border Illus; MWeP trations, and Coloured Initial Letters. Small 4to. Nearly The Poetry of Nature. Selected and Illustrated by Harrison Weir. Small 4to. 12s.; morocco, 21s. Elizabethan Poetry.

Songs and Ballads. Twenty-four Illustrations. Bevelled boards. Nearly ready. Shakespeare's Songs and Sonnets. With Ten Coloured Plates by Gilbert, and Xnirty-t wo Woodcuts. Super-royal 4to. Nearly ready. The May Queen, By Alfred Tennvson, Poet Laureate. Forty Engravings. Cloth, 5s. ; large paper, bevelled boards, 7s. (id. Jarves's Art Studies. Uniform with Kugler's Works. Forty-five Illustrations on Copper. 2 vols. Svo. 32s. The Vicar of "Wakefield. By Oliver Goldsmith. Illustrated by George Thomas. 5s. ; morocco, 10s. (id. The Pleasures of Hope. By Thomas Campbell. Twenty-five Illustrations. Cloth, 5s.; morocco, 10s. Gd. Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard. Thirty-eight Illustrations. Crown Svo. 5s.; morocco, 10s. Gd. The I'armer's Boy. By Robert Bloomfield. With Thirty Illustrations. Crown Svo, 5s. ; morocco, 10s. Cd.

The Hamlet: au Ode. By Thom/ Warton. With Fourteen Etchings by Birket Foster. Crown Svo. 5s. ; morocco, 10s. Gd. The Deserted Village. By Oliver Goldsmith. With Thirty-five Illustrations. Crown Svo. 5s. ; morocco, 10s. Gd. 1/ Allegro. By John Milton. With Twenty Illustrations. Crown Svo. 5s.; morocco, 10s. Gd. The Ancient Mariner. By S. T. Colehidge. With Twenty-six Illustrations. Crown Svo. 5s. ;, morocco, 10s. Gd. The Eve of St. Agnes. By John Keats. With Twenty Illustrations. Crown Svo. 5s. ; morocco, 10s. 6d. Pastoral and Rural Poems. By William Word.. worth. Twenty-one Illustrations. ■ 5s.; morocco, 10s. 6d. Souvenir of Modern Minstrelsy. With Specimens of the Poetry of Living Poets. 3s. Gd. Rough Diamonds. A Story Book, by John Hollingshkad. Illustrated by Sanderson. Square 16mo., 3s. Gd.

Preface

TO THF PRESENT EDITION. This novel ranks the third, in order of succession, of the works of fiction which I have produced. The history of its reception, on its first appearance, is soon told. Unfortunately for me, " Hide And Seek " was originallypub lished in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-four, at the out break of the Crimean War. All England felt the absorbing interest of watching that serious national event ; and new books — some of them books of far higher pretensions than mine — found the minds of readers in general pre-occupied or indifferent. My own little venture in fiction necessarily felt the adverse influence of the time. The demand among the booksellers was just large enough to exhaust the first edition, and there the sale of this novel, in its original form, terminated. Since that period, the book has been, in the technical phrase, " out of print."

Proposals have reached me, at various times, for its republication ; but I have resolutely abstained from availing myself of them for two reasons. Tn the first place, I was anxious to wait until " Hide And Seek " could make its re-appearance on a footing of perfect equality with my other works. In the second place, I was resolved to keep it back until it might obtain the advantage of a careful revisal, guided by the light of the author's later ex perience. The period for the accomplishment of both these objects has now presented itself. "Hide And Seek," in this edition, forms one among the uniform series of my novels, which has bessun with " Antonina," " The Dead Secret," and " The Woman In White ;" and which will be continued with " Basil," and " The Queen Of Hearts." My project of revisal has, at the same time, been carefully and rigidly executed. I

PREFACE.

. VI have abridged, and in many cases omitted, several passages in the first edition, which made larger demands upon the reader's patience than I should now think it desirable to venture on if I were writing a new book; and I have, in one important respect, so altered the termination of the story as to make it, I hope, more satisfactory and more complete than it was in its original form. With sueh advantages, therefore, as my diligent revision can give it, " Hide And Seek " now appeals, after an interval of seven years, for another hearing. I cannot think it becoming — especially in this age of universal self-assertion — to state the grounds on which I believe my book to be worthy of gaining more attention than it obtained, through accidental circumstances, when it was first published. Neither can I consent to shelter myself under the favourable opinions which many of my brotherwriters — and notably, the great writer to whom " Hide And Seek " is dedicated — expressed of these pages when I originally wrote them.

I leave it to the reader to compare this novel — especially in reference to the conception and delineation of character — with the two novels ("Antonina" and "Basil") which preceded it ; and then to decide whether my third attempt in fiction, with all its faults, was, or was not, an advance in Art on my earlier efforts. This is all the favour I ask for a work which I once wrote with anxious care — which I have since corrected with no sparing hand — which I have now finally dismissed to take its second journey through the world of let ters as usefully and prosperously as it can. Habley Street, London, Septembeb, 1861. CONTENTS. OPENING CHAPTEE. A CHILD'S SUNDAY ...... 1

Book I. The Hiding

CHAPTER page I. A NEW NEIGHBOURHOOD, AND A STEANGE CHA- RACTER 15 II. ME. BLYTH IN HIS STTJDTO 27 III. MADONNA'S CHILDHOOD 37 IT. MADONNA'S MOTHER 5_ V. MADONNA'S MISFORTUNE 67 TI. MADONNA GOES TO LONDON .... 78 VII. MADONNA IN HER NEW HOME .... 91 TTII. MENTOR AND TELEMACHUS 97 IX. THE TRIBULATIONS OE ZACK .... IOS X. ME. BLYTH'S DRAWING ACADEMY . . Ill XI. THE BREWING OE THE STORM .... 126