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Show iv EPISTLE DEDICATORY. labor, to weave her legend into nn :~.ppropriato, and I trust not unworthy history. For the present, inscribing these pages to you, as a memorial of a long and grateful intimacy, and of inquiries and conjectures, musings nnd meditations, enjoyed together, which, it is my hope, have resulted no less profitably to you than to myself, I propose briefly to give you the plan of the volume in your hands. l 'ho design of the narrative 'vhich follows, contemplates, in nearly cqunl dcgrC<l, tho picturc~quo and tllC historical It belongs to a class of writings with wl1ich tho world bas been long !Iince made familiar, through a collection of the grc:t.tcst interest, the body of wlJich continues to expand, and which has been entit.lcd the" Romance of llistory." This name will justly apply to the present sketches, J'Ct most not be construed to signify any large or important departure, in the narrative, from the absolute records of tho Past. The romance here is not suffered to supersede tho history. On the contrary, the design of the writer bas been simply to supply the deficiencies of the record. Where tho author, in this species of writing, hns employed history, usually, as a mere loop, upon which to hnng his lively fancies and audacious inventions, embodying in his narrative ns small n portion of tho chronicle as possible, I btn-c been content to reverse tho process, making the fiction simply tributary, and nlwnys subo;dinnte to the fact. I have been studious to preserve all the ,-ital details of tho event, ns embodied in the record, nnd have only ventured my own "graffi.ngs" upon it in those portions of the history which exhibited n certain baldness in their details, and BOCmcd to demand the helping agency of art. In thus interweaving the history with tho fiction, I have been solicitous always of those proprieties and of tlmt 1'raisemb/ttt,ce, in tho introduction of £Pl8TLE DEDICATORY. new details, which nrc csaential to tho chief characteristics of tho history; seeking equally to preserve tho general integrity of tho record from which I draw my materials, and of that art which aims to present them in a costume the most picturesque. My labor has been not to make, but to perfect, n history; not to invent facts, but to trace them out to seemingly inevitablo results ;-to take tho prcmiso and work out the problem ;-recognize tho meagre record which affords simply a general outline; and endeavor, by a severo induction, to supply i~ details and processes. I have been at no such pains to disguise tho chronicle, as will proyent the reader from scpnrating,-should ho desire to do so,-the certain from tho conjectural; and yet, I trust, that I have succC<lded in so linking the two together, as to prevent tho lines of junction from obtruding themselves offensively upon his consciousness. Upon tho successful prosecution of this object, apart fl"()m tho native interest which tho subject itself possesses, depends all the merit of tho performance. I t is by raising tho tone of the history, warming it with tho hues of fancy, and making it dramatic by tho continued exercise of art, rather than by any actual \'iolation of its recorded facts, that I have endeavored to awaken interest. To bring out such portions of the event as demand elo\'ation-to suppress those which aro only cumbrous, and neither raise the imposing, nor relieve tho unavoidable; and to supply, from tho probable, the apparent deficiencies of the actual, have been the chief processes in tho nrt which I have e~ployed. What is wholly fictitious will appear rather as episodical matter, than as a part of the narrative; and a brief historical summary, oven in reg:trd to the episode, shall occasionally be ~mployed to determine, for tho reader, upon. how much, or how little, he may properly rely na history. |