Persuasion
Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818) Chapter 1 Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:
eight hundred and forty-nine, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.
PREFACE.
It is the object of this series of histories to present a clear,
distinct, and connected narrative of the lives of those great
personages who have in various ages of the world made themselves
celebrated as leaders among mankind, and, by the part they have taken
in the public affairs of great nations, have exerted the widest
influence on the history of the human race. The end which the author
has had in view is twofold: first, to communicate such information
in respect to the subjects of his narratives as is important for the
general reader to possess; and, secondly, to draw such moral lessons
from the events described and the characters delineated as they may
legitimately teach to the people of the present age. Though written in
Persuasion by Jane Austen (1818) Chapter 1 Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened: