Chapter 2

Rejected Suitors--Conclusion

GRYLL GRANGE

Opinion governs all mankind, Like the blind leading of the blind:-- And like the world, men's jobbemoles Turn round upon their ears the poles, And what they're confidently told By no sense else can be controll'd.

In the following pages the New Forest is always mentioned as if it were still unenclosed. This is the only state in which the Author has been acquainted with it. Since its enclosure, he has never seen it, and purposes never to do so.

The mottoes are sometimes specially apposite to the chapters to which they are prefixed; but more frequently to the general scope, or, to borrow a musical term, the _motivo_ of the _operetta_.