Excerpt from The Invasion, Vol. 1 of 4 It would be dealing unjustly both by reader and author to suffer the former to take up these volumes under the idea that he is about to peruse a historical novel. That branch of literature has, within our own day, attained a rank in which, we are sensible, the present performance could not, for an instant, maintain its ground. To the absorbing interest excited by deep passion, dramatic dialogue, and highly wrought narrative, these volumes have not a pretension. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.