Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they
have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard knocks and hard
work in plenty--which was on the whole what they looked for, and the
best thing for them--and little praise or pudding, which indeed they,
and most of us, are better without. Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs,
and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but
those noble families would be somewhat astounded--if the accounts ever
came to be fairly taken--to find how small their work for England has
been by the side of that of the Browns.

These latter, indeed, have, until the present generation, rarely been
sung by poet, or chronicled by sage. They have wanted their sacer vates,
having been too solid to rise to the top by themselves, and not having
been largely gifted with the talent of catching hold of, and holding on
tight to, whatever good things happened to be going--the foundation of
the fortunes of so many noble families. But the world goes on its way,
and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs,
seem in a fair way to get righted. And this present writer, having for
many years of his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and, moreover,
having the honour of being nearly connected with an eminently
respectable branch of the great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in
him lies, to help the wheel over, and throw his stone on to the pile.

However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whichever you may be, lest you
should be led to waste your precious time upon these pages, I make so
bold as at once to tell you the sort of folk you'll have to meet and put
up with, if you and I are to jog on comfortably together. You shall hear
at once what sort of folk the Browns are--at least my branch of them;
and then, if you don't like the sort, why, cut the concern at once, and
let you and I cry quits before either of us can grumble at the other.