Chapter I: Preface

I have long entertained a suspicion, all that has been said by the novel-writers and dramatists and poets of our age to the contrary notwithstanding, that personal beauty and intellectual beauty, or personal beauty and moral beauty, are not inseparably connected with, nor apportioned to each other. In ERRATA, a work of which _as_ a work, I am heartily ashamed now, I labored long and earnestly to prove this. I made _my_ dwarf a creature of great moral beauty and strength.

Godwin, the powerful energetic and philosophizing Godwin, saw a shadow of this truth; but he saw nothing more--the substance escaped him. He taught, and he has been followed by others, among whom are Brown, Scott and Byron, (I observe the chronological order) that a towering intellect may inhabit a miserable body; that heroes are not of necessity six feet high, nor of a godlike shape, and that we may be deceived, if we venture to judge of the inward by the outward man. But they stopped here. They did not perceive, or perceiving, would not acknowledge the whole truth; for if we consider a moment, we find that all their _great_ men are scoundrels. Without one exception I believe, their heroes are hypocrites or misanthropes, banditti or worse; while their good men are altogether subordinate and pitiable destitute of energy and wholly without character.

Now believing as I do, in spite of such overwhelming authority, that a man may have a club-foot, or a hump-back, or even red hair and yet be a good man--peradventure a great man; that a dwarf with a distorted shape may be a giant in goodness of heart and greatness of temper; and that moral beauty _may_ exist where it appears not to have been suspected by the chief critics of our age, and of past ages--namely, in a deformed body (like that of Æsop,) I have written this book.

Let me add however that although such was my principal, it was not my only object. I would call the attention of our novel-writers and our novel-readers to what is undoubtedly native and peculiar, in the early history of our Fathers; I would urge them to believe that though there is much to lament in that history, there is nothing to conceal; that if they went astray, as they most assuredly did in their judgments, they went astray conscientiously, with what they understood to be the law of God in their right hands. The “_Salem Tragedie_” is in proof--that is the ground-work of my story; and I pray the reader to have patience with the author, if he should find this tale rather more serious in parts, and rather more argumentative in parts, than stories, novels and romances generally are.

I do not pretend to say that the book I now offer to my countrymen, is altogether such a book as I would write now, if I had more leisure, nor altogether such a book as I hope to write before I die; but as I cannot afford to throw it entirely away, and as I believe it to be much better, because more evidently prepared for a healthy good purpose, than any other I have written, I have concluded to publish it--hoping it may be regarded by the wise and virtuous of our country as some sort of atonement for the folly and extravagance of my earlier writing.

The skeleton of this tale was originally prepared for Blackwood, as the first of a series of North-American Stories: He accepted it, paid for it, printed it, and sent me the proofs. A misunderstanding however occurred between us, about other matters, and I withdrew the story and repaid him for it. It was never published therefore; but was put aside by me, as the frame-work for a novel--which novel is now before the reader.

JOHN NEAL.

Portland, October 1, 1828.

P.S. After some consideration, I have concluded to publish a preface, originally intended for the NORTH AMERICAN STORIES alluded to above. It was never published, nor has it ever been read by any body but myself. Among those who are interested for the encouragement of our native literature, there may be some who will not be sorry to see what my ideas _were_ on the subject of novel-writing, as well as what they _are_. Changes have been foretold in my views--and I owe it to our people to acknowledge, that in a good degree, the prediction has been accomplished I do not feel now as I did, when I wrote Seventy-Six, Randolph, and the rest of the works published in America; nor even as I did, when I wrote those that were published over seas. The mere novel-reader had better skip the following pages and go directly to the story. The introductory chapter in all human probability will be too much for him.

J. N.

UNPUBLISHED PREFACE

TO THE NORTH-AMERICAN STORIES, ALLUDED TO IN PAGE V.

The author of this work is now under the necessity of bidding the novel-readers of the day, on both sides of the water, farewell, and in all probability, forever. By them it may be considered a trivial affair--a time for pleasantry, or peradventure for a formal expression of what are called good wishes. But by him, who does not feel like other men--or does not understand their language, when they talk in this way, it will ever be regarded as a very serious thing. He would neither conceal nor deny the truth--he would not so affront the feeling within him--and he says therefore without affectation or ceremony, that it goes to his heart even to bid the novel-readers of the age, the few that have read his novels, it were better to say--farewell.

These volumes are the last of a series which even from his youth up, he had been accustomed to meditate upon as a worthy and affectionate offering to his family and to those who have made many a long winter day in a dreary climate, very cheerful and pleasant to him--the daughters of a dear friend--of one who, if his eye should ever fall upon this page, will understand immediately more than a chapter could tell, of the deep wayward strange motives that have influenced the author to say thus much and no more, while recurring for the last time to the bright vision of his youth. And the little that he does say now, is not said for the world;--for what care they about the humble and innocent creatures, whose gentleness and sincerity about their own fire-side, were for a long time all that kept a man, who was weary and sick of the great world, from leaving it in despair? No, it is not said for them; but for any one of that large family who may happen to be alive now, and in the way of remembering “the stranger that was within their gates”--when to the world he may be as if he never had been. Let them not be amazed when they discover the truth; nor afraid nor ashamed to see that the man whom they knew only as the stranger from a far country, was also an author.

In other days, angels were entertained in the shape of travellers and way-faring men; but ye--had ye known every stranger that knocked at your door to be an angel, or a messenger of the Most High, could not have treated him more like an immortal creature than ye did that unknown man, who now bears witness to your simplicity and great goodness of heart. With you it was enough that a fellow-creature was unhappy--you strove to make him happy; and having done this, you sent him away, ignorant alike of his people, his country and his name.

* * * * *

This work is the last of the sort I believe--the very last I shall ever write. Reader--stop!--lay down the book for a moment and answer me. Do you feel no emotion at the sight of that word? You are surprised at the question. Why should you feel any, you ask. Why should you?--let us reason together for a moment. Can it be that you are able to bear of the final consummation of a hope which had been the chief stay of a fellow-creature for many--many years?--Can it be that you feel no sort of emotion at hearing him say, Lo! I have finished the work--it is the last--no sensation of inquietude? Perhaps you now begin to see differently; perhaps you would now try to exculpate yourself. You are willing to admit now that the affair is one of a graver aspect than you first imagined. You are half ready to deny now that you ever considered it otherwise. But mark me--out of your own mouth you are condemned. Twice have I said already--three times have I said already, that this was the last work of the sort I should ever write, and you have read the declaration as you would, the passing motto of a title-page. You neither cared for it, nor thought of it; and had I not alarmed you by my abruptness, compelled you to stop and think, and awed you by steadfastly rebuking your inhumanity, you would not have known by to-morrow whether I had spoken of it as my last work or not. Consider what I say--is it not the truth?--can you deny it? And yet you--_you_ are one of the multitude who dare to sit in judgment upon the doings of your fellow men. It is on what you and such as you say, that authors are to depend for that which is of more value to them than the breath of life--character. How dare you!--You read without reflection, and you hear without understanding. Yet upon the judgment of such as you--so made up, it is that the patient and the profound, the thoughtful and the gifted, are to rely for immortality.

To return to what I was about saying--the work now before you, reader, is the last of a series, meditated as I have already told you, from my youth. It was but a dream at first--a dream of my boyhood, indefinite, vague and shadowy; but as I grew up, it grew stronger and braver and more substantial. For years it did not deserve the name of a plan--it was merely a breathing after I hardly knew what, a hope that I should live to do something in a literary way worthy of my people--accompanied however with an inappeasable yearning for the time and opportunity to arrive. But so it was, that, notwithstanding all my anxiety and resolution, I could not bring myself to make the attempt--even the attempt--until it appeared no longer possible for me to do what for years I had been very anxious to do. The engagement was of too sacred a nature to be trifled with--perhaps the more sacred in my view for being made only with myself, and without a witness; for engagements having no other authority than our moral sense of duty to ourselves, would never be performed, after they grew irksome or heavy, unless we were scrupulous in proportion to the facility with which we might escape if we would.

This indeterminate, haunting desire to do what I had so engaged to do, at last however began to give way before the serious and necessary business of life, and the continually augmenting pressure of duties too solemn to be slighted for any--I had almost said for any earthly consideration. Yea more, to confess the whole truth, I had begun to regard the enterprise itself--so prone are we to self-deception, so ready at finding excuses where we have a duty to perform--as hardly worthy of much power, and as altogether beneath an exalted ambition. But here I was greatly mistaken; for I have an idea now, that a great novel--such a novel as might be made--if all the powers that could be employed upon it were found in one man, would be the greatest production of human genius. It is a law and a history of itself--to every people--and throughout all time--in literature and morals--in character and passion--yea--in what may be called the fire-side biography of nations. It would be, if rightly managed, a picture of the present for futurity--a picture of human nature, not only here but every where--a portrait of man--a history of the human heart--a book therefore, written not only in a universal, but in what may be considered as an everlasting language--the language of immortal, indistructable spirits. Such are the parables of Him who spoke that language best.

Again however, the subject was revived. Sleeping and waking, by night and by day, it was before me; and at last I began to perceive that if the attempt were ever to be made, it must be made by one desperate, convulsive, instantaneous effort. I determined to deliberate no longer--or rather to stand no longer, shivering like a coward, upon the brink of adventure, under pretence of deliberation; and therefore, having first carefully stopped my ears and shut my eyes, I threw myself headlong over the precipice. Behold the result! If I have not brought up the pearls, I can say at least that I have been to the bottom--and I might have added--of the human heart sometimes--but for the perverse and foolish insincerity of the world, which if I had so finished the sentence, would have set their faces forever against my book; although that same world, had I been wise enough--no, not wise enough but cunning enough, to hold my peace, might have been ready to acknowledge that I had been sometimes, even where I say--to the very bottom of the human heart.

I plunged. But when I did, it was rather to relieve my own soul from the intolerable weight of her own reproach, than with any hope of living to complete the design, except at a sacrifice next in degree to that of self-immolation. Would you know what more than any other thing--more than all other things determined me at last? I was an American. I had heard the insolent question of a Scotch Reviewer, repeated on every side of me by native Americans--“_Who reads an American Book?_” I could not bear this--I could neither eat nor sleep till my mind was made up. I reasoned with myself--I strove hard--but the spirit within me would not be rebuked. Shall I go forth said I, in the solitude of my own thought, and make war alone against the foe--for alone it must be made, or there will be no hope of success. There must be but one head, one heart in the plan--the secret must not even be guessed at by another--it must be single and simple, one that like the wedge in mechanics, or in the ancient military art, must have but one point, and that point must be of adamant. Being so it may be turned aside: A thousand more like itself, may be blunted or shivered; but if at last, any one of the whole should make any impression whatever upon the foe, or effect any entrance whatever into the sanctity and strength of his tremendous phalanx, then, from that moment, the day is our own. Our literature will begin to wake up, and our pride of country will wake up with it. Those who follow will have nothing to do but _keep_ what the forlorn hope, who goes to irretrievable martyrdom if he fail, has _gained_.

Moreover--who was there to stand by the native American that should go out, haply with a sling and a stone, against a tower of strength and the everlasting entrenchments of prejudice? Could he hope to find so much as one of his countrymen, to go with him or even to bear his shield? Would the Reviewers of America befriend him? No--they have not courage enough to fight their own battles manfully.[1] No--they would rather flatter than strike. They negociate altogether too much--where blows are wanted, they give words. And the best of our literary champions, would they? No; they would only bewail his temerity, if he were the bold headlong creature he should be to accomplish the work; and pity his folly and presumption, if he were any thing else.

[1] Or had not before this was written. Look to the North-American Review before 1825, for proof.

After all however, why should they be reproached for this? They have gained their little reputation hardly. “It were too much to spend that little”--so grudgingly acquiesced in by their beloved countrymen--“rashly.” No wonder they fight shy. It is their duty--considering what they have at stake--their little all. There is Washington Irving now; he has obtained the reputation of being--what?--why at the best, of being only the American Addison, in the view of Englishmen. And is this a title to care much for? Would such a name, though Addison stood far higher in the opinion of the English themselves, than he now does, or ever again will, be enough to satisfy the ambition of a lofty minded, original thinker? Would such a man falter and reef his plumage midway up the altitude of his blinding and brave ascent, to be called the American Addison, or even what in my view were ten thousand times better, the American Goldsmith.[2] No--up to the very key stone of the broad blue firmament! he would say, or back to the vile earth again: ay, lower than the earth first! Understand me however. I do not say this lightly nor disparagingly. I love and admire Washington Irving. I wish him all the reputation he covets, and of the very kind he covets. Our paths never did, never will cross each other. And so with Mr. Cooper; and a multitude more, of whom we may rightfully be proud. They have gained just enough popular favor to make them afraid of hazarding one jot or tittle of it, by stepping aside into a new path. No one of these could avail me in my design. They would have everything to lose, and nothing to gain by embarking in it. While I--what had I to lose--nay what _have_ I to lose? I am not now, I never have been, I never shall be an author by trade. The opinion of the public is not the breath of life to me; for if the truth must be told, I have to this hour very little respect for it--so long as it is indeed the opinion of the public--of the mere multitude, the careless, unthinking judgment of the mob, unregulated by the wise and thoughtful.

[2] I speak here of Goldsmith’s prose, not of his poetry. Heaven forbid!

To succeed as I hoped, I must put everything at hazard. It would not do for me to imitate anybody. Nor would it do for my country. Who would care for the _American_ Addison where he could have the English by asking for it? Who would languish, a twelvemonth after they appeared, for Mr. Cooper’s imitations of Sir Walter Scott, or Charles Brockden Brown’s imitations of Godwin? Those, and those only, who after having seen the transfiguration of Raphael, (or that of Talma,) or Dominichino’s St. Jerome, would walk away to a village painting room, or a provincial theatre, to pick their teeth and play the critic over an imitation of the one or a copy of the other. At the best, all such things are but _imitations_. And what are imitations? Sheer mimicry--more or less exalted to be sure; but still mimicry--wherever the _copies_ of life are copied and not life itself: a sort of high-handed, noon-day plagiarism--nothing more. People are never amazed, nor carried away, nor uplifted by imitations. They are pleased with the ingenuity of the artist--they are delighted with the closeness of the imitation--but that is all. The better the work is done, the worse they think of the workman. He who can paint a great picture, cannot copy--David Teniers to the contrary notwithstanding; for David never painted a great picture in his life, though he has painted small ones, not more than three feet square, which would sell for twenty-five thousand dollars to day.

Yes--to succeed, I must imitate nobody--I must _resemble_ nobody; for with your critic, resemblance in the unknown to the known, is never anything but adroit imitation. To succeed therefore, I must be unlike all that have gone before me. That were no easy matter; nor would be it so difficult as men are apt to believe. Nor is it necessary that I should do _better_ than all who have gone before me. I should be more likely to prosper, in the long run, by worse original productions--with a poor story told in poor language, (if it were original in spirit and character) than by a much better story told in much better language, if after the transports of the public were over, they should be able to trace a resemblance between it and Walter Scott, or Oliver Goldsmith, or Mr. Addison.

So far so good. There was, beyond a doubt, a fair chance in the great commonwealth of literature, even though I should not achieve a miracle, nor prove myself both wiser and better than all the authors who had gone before me. And moreover, might it not be possible--_possible_ I say--for the mob are a jealous guardian of sepulchres and ashes, and high-sounding names, particularly where a name will save them the trouble of judging for themselves, or do their arguments for them in the shape of a perpetual demonstration, whatever may be the nature of the controversy in which they are involved--might it not be possible then, I say, that, as the whole body of mankind have been growing wiser and wiser, and better and better, since the day when these great writers flourished, who are now ruling “our spirits from their urns,” that authors may have improved with them?--that they alone of the whole human race, by some possibility, may not have remained altogether stationary age after age--while the least enquiring and the most indolent of human beings--the very multitude--have been steadily advancing both in knowledge and power? And if so, might it not be _possible_ for some improvements to be made, some discoveries, even yet in style and composition, by lanching forth into space. True, we might not be certain of finding a new world, like Columbus, nor a new heaven, like Tycho Brahe; but we should probably encounter some phenomena in the great unvisited moral sky and ocean; we should at least find out, after a while--which would of itself be the next greatest consolation for our trouble and anxiety, after that of discovering a new world or a new system,--that there remained no new world nor system to be discovered; that they who should adventure after us, would have so much the less to do for all that we had done; that they must follow in our steps; that if our health and strength had been wasted in a prodigious dream, it would have the good effect of preventing any future waste of health and strength on the part of others in any similar enterprize.

Islands and planets may still be found, we should say, and they that find them, are welcome to them; but continents and systems cannot be beyond where we have been; and if there be any within it, why--they are neither continents nor systems.

But then, after all, there was one plain question to be asked, which no honest man would like to evade, however much a mere dreamer might wish to do so. It was this. After all my fine theory--what are my chances of success? And if successful, what have I to gain? I chose to answer the last question first. Gain!--of a truth, it were no easy matter to say. Nothing _here_, nothing _now_--certainly nothing in America, till my bones have been canonized; for my countrymen are a thrifty, calculating people--they give nothing for the reputation of a man, till they are sure of selling it for more than they give. Were they visited by saints and prophets instead of gifted men, they would never believe that they were either saints or prophets, till they had been starved to death--or lived by a miracle--by no visible means; or until their cast-off clothes, bones, hair and teeth, or the furniture of the houses wherein they were starved, or the trees under which they had been chilled to death, carved into snuff-boxes or walking-sticks, would sell for as much as that sympathy had cost them, or as much as it would come to, to build a monument over--I do not say over their unsheltered remains, for by that time there would be but little or no remains of them to be found, unmingled with the sky and water, earth and air about them, save perhaps in here and there a museum or college where they might always be bought up, however, immortality and all--for something more than compound interest added to the original cost--but to build a monument or a shed over the unappropriated stock, with certain privileges to the manufacturer of the walking-sticks and snuff-boxes aforesaid, so long as any of the material remained; taking care to provide with all due solemnity, perhaps by an act of the legislature, for securing the monopoly to the sovereign state itself.

Thus much perhaps I might hope for from my own people. But what from the British? They were magnanimous, or at least they would bear to be told so; and telling them so in a simple, off-hand, ingenuous way, with a great appearance of sincerity, and as if one had been carried away by a sudden impulse, to speak a forbidden truth, or surprised into a prohibited expression of feeling by some spectacle of generosity, in spite of his constitutional reserve and timidity and caution, would be likely to _pay well_. But I would do no such thing. I would flatter nobody--no people--no nation. I would be to nobody--neither to my own countrymen, nor to the British--unless I were better paid for it, than any of my countrymen were ever yet paid either at home or abroad.

No--I choose to see for myself, by putting the proof touch like a hot iron to their foreheads, whether the British are indeed a magnanimous people. But then, if I do all this, what are my chances of reward, even with the British themselves? That was a fearful question to be sure. The British are a nation of writers. Their novel-writers are as a cloud. True--true--but they still want something which they have not. They want a real American writer--one with courage enough to write in his native tongue. _That_ they have not, even at this day. _That_ they never had. Our best writers are English writers, not American writers. They are English in every thing they do, and in every thing they say, as authors--in the structure and moral of their stories, in their dialogue, speech and pronunciation, yea in the very characters they draw. Not so much as one true Yankee is to be found in any of our native books: hardly so much as one true Yankee phrase. Not so much as one true Indian, though you hardly take up a story on either side of the water now, without finding a red-man stowed away in it; and what sort of a red-man? Why one that uniformly talks the best English the author is capable of--more than half the time perhaps out-Ossianing Ossian.

I have the modesty to believe that in some things I am unlike all the other writers of my country--both living and dead; although there are not a few, I dare say who would be glad to hear of my bearing a great resemblance to the latter. For my own part I do not pretend to write English--that is, I do not pretend to write what the English themselves call English--I do not, and I hope to God--I say this reverently, although one of their Reviewers may be again puzzled to determine “whether I am swearing or praying” when I say so--that I never shall write what is now worshipped under the name of _classical_ English. It is no natural language--it never was--it never will be spoken alive on this earth: and therefore, ought never to be written. We have dead languages enough now; but the deadest language I ever met with or heard of, was that in use among the writers of Queen Anne’s day.

At last I came to the conclusion--that the chances were at least a thousand to one against me. A thousand to one said I, to myself, that I perish outright in my headlong enterprise. But then, if I do not perish--if I triumph, what a triumph it will be! If I succeed, I shall be rewarded well--if the British _are_ what they are believed to be--in fair proportion to the toil and peril I have encountered. At any rate, whether I fail or not, I shall be, and am willing to be, one of the first hundred to carry the war into the very camp, yea among the very household gods of the enemy. And if I die, I will die with my right arm consuming in the blaze of their altars--like Mutius Scævola.

But enough on this head. The plan took shape, and you have the commencement now before you, reader. I have had several objects in view at the same time, all subordinate however to that which I first mentioned, in the prosecution of my wayward enterprise. One was to show to my countrymen that there are abundant and hidden sources of fertility in their own beautiful brave earth, waiting only to be broken up; and barren places to all outward appearance, in the northern, as well as the southern Americas--yet teeming below with bright sail--where the plough-share that is driven through them with a strong arm, will come out laden with rich mineral and followed by running water: places where--if you but lay your ear to the scented ground, you may hear the perpetual gush of innumerable fountains pouring their subterranean melody night and day among the minerals and rocks, the iron and the gold: places where the way-faring man, the pilgrim or the wanderer through what he may deem the very deserts of literature, the barren-places of knowledge, will find the very roots of the withered and blasted shrubbery, which like the traveller in Peru, he may have accidentally uptorn in his weary and discouraging ascent, and the very bowels of the earth into which he has torn his way, heavy with a brightness that may be coined, like the soil about the favorite hiding places of the sunny-haired Apollo.

Another, was to teach my countrymen, that these very Englishmen, to whom as the barbarians of ancient story did by their gods when they would conciliate them, we are accustomed to offer up our own offspring, with our own hands, whenever we see the sky darkening over the water--the sky inhabited of them; ay, that these very Englishmen, to whom we are so in the habit of immolating all that is beautiful and grand among us--the first born of our youth--our creatures of immortality--our men of genius, while in the fever and flush of their vanity, innocence and passion--ere they have had time to put out their first plumage to the sky and the wind, all above and about them--that they, these very Englishmen, would not love us the less, nor revere us the less, if we loved and revered ourselves, and the issue of our blood and breath, and vitality and power, a little more. No--the men of England _are_ men. They love manhood. They may smile at our national vanity, but their smile would be one of compassionate benevolence and encouragement, if we were wise enough to keep our young at home, till their first molting season were well over--and then, offer to pair them, even though there would be a little presumption in it, high up in the skies, and the strong wind--with their bravest and best: not, as we do now, upon the altars of the earth--upon the tables of our money-changers--half fledged and untrained--with their legs tied, and wings clipped; or, peradventure, with necks turned, and heads all skewered under their tails--a heap of carrion and garbage that the braver birds, even among their enemies, would disdain to stoop at. Such would be their behavior, if we dealt as we ought with our own; there would be no pity nor disdain with them. They would cheer us to the conflict--pour their red wine down our throats if we were beaten; and if their birds were beaten, they would bear it with temper--knowing that their reputation could well afford an occasional trumph, to the young of their favorite brood. The men of England are waiting to do us justice: but there is a certain formality to be gone through with, before they will do it. We must claim it. And why should we not? I do not mean that we should claim it upon our knees as the condemned of their courts of justice are compelled to claim that _mercy_, which the very law itself, has predetermined to grant to him--but will not, unless that idle and unworthy formality has been submitted to; no--I mean no such thing. We do not want mercy: and I would have my countrymen, when they are arraigned before any mere _English_ tribunal--not acting under the _law of nations_ in the world of literature, to go at once, with a calm front and untroubled eye, and plead to their jurisdiction, with a loud clear voice, and with their right hand upon the great book of English law, and set them at defiance. This, they have the right, and the power to do; and why should they not, when some of the inferior courts, of mere _English_ criticism, have the audacity at every little interval, to call upon a sovereign people, to plead before them--without counsel--and be tried for some infringement of some paltry municipal provision of their statute book--some provincialism of language--or some heresy in politics--or some plagiarism of manner or style; and abide the penalty of forgery--or of ecclesiastical censure--or the reward of petit-larceny; re-transportation--or re-banishment to America.

It is high time now, that we should begin to do each other justice. Let us profit by their good qualities; and let them, by ours. And in time, we shall assuredly come to feel like brothers of the same parentage--an elder and a younger--different in temper--but alike in family resemblance--and alike proud of our great ancestry, the English giants of olden time. We shall revere _our_ brother; and he will love his. But when shall this be?--not, I am sorely afraid--till we have called home all our children, from the four corners of the earth; from the east and from the west; from the north and from the south--and held a congress of the dead--of their fathers, and of our fathers--and published to the world, and to posterity--appealing again to Jehovah for the rectitude of our intentions--another DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, in the great REPUBLIC OF LETTERS. And, yet this may soon be. The time is even now at hand. Our representatives are assembling: the dead Greek, and the Roman; the ancient English, and the fathers of literature, from all the buried nations of all the earth, and holding counsel together, and choosing their delegates. And the generation is already born, that shall yet hear the heavens ringing with acclamations to their decree--that another state has been added to the everlasting confederacy of literature!

And now the author repeats to the people of America, one and all, farewell; assuring them that there is very little probability of his ever appearing before them again as a novel-writer. His object has been, if not wholly, at least in a great degree accomplished. He has demonstrated that a bold and direct appeal to the manhood of any people will never be made in vain. Others may have been already, or may hereafter be incited to a more intrepid movement; and to a more confident reliance upon themselves and their resources, by what he has now accomplished--where it is most difficult to accomplish any thing--among his own countrymen: and most devoutly does he pray, that if they should, they may be more fortunate, and far more generously rewarded, than he has ever been; and if they should not, he advises them to go where he has been already--and trust to another people for that, which his own have not the heart to give him, however well he may deserve it. Abroad--if he do not get a chaplet of fire and greenness--he will, at least, get a cup of cold water,--and it may be, a tear or two of compassion, if nothing of encouragement--whatever he may do. At home--he may wear himself out--like one ashamed of what he is doing, in secrecy and darkness--exhaust his own heart of all its power and vitality, by pouring himself into the hearts of others--with a certainty that he will be called a madman, a beggar and a fool, for his pains--unless he persevere, in spite of a broken heart, and a broken constitution, till he shall have made his own countrymen ashamed of themselves, and afraid of him.

It is a sad thing to say good by’e, even for an author. If you mean what you say--it is a prayer as well as a blessing, an audible breathing of the heart. And if you do not--it is a wicked profanation. So far, reader, you have been the familiar companion of the author; and you may be one of those, who have journied with him before, for many a weary day, through much of his wandering and meditation:--that is, you may be one of those who, having been admitted before, to touch his heart with a naked hand--have felt in one pulsation--in one single hour’s fellowship with it, all that he had felt and thought for many a weary year. You have been _with_ him to a more holy place than the fire-side; _to_ him, more like the invisible creatures--for he hath never seen your face, and peradventure never may, though you have been looking into his very soul--that hover about the chamber of prayer--the solitude of the poet--or the haunted place under the shadow of great trees, where the wearied man throws himself down, to muse upon the face of his Creator, which he sees in the sky over him, or beneath the vast blue water before him. Is it wonderful therefore that there should be a little seriousness about his brow--although ye _are_ invisible to him--when he is about to say farewell to you--farewell forever--without having once heard the tone of your voice--nor one of the many tears, that you may have dropped over him, when you thought yourself altogether alone:--

Nor can he look back, without some emotion, upon the labour that he has undergone, even within that flowery wilderness, where he hath been journeying with you, or lying and ruminating all alone, for so long a time; and out of which, he is now about to emerge--forever--with a strong tread, to the broad blue sky and the solid earth; nor without lamenting that he cannot go barefooted--and half-naked among men;--and that the colour and perfume--the dim enchantment, and the sweet, breathing, solemn loneliness of the wild-wood path, that he is about to abandon, for the broad dusty highway of the world, are so unpropitious to the substantial reputation of a man: nor, without grieving that the blossom-leaves, and the golden flower-dust, which now cover him, from head to foot, _must_ be speedily brushed away;--and that the scent of the wilderness may not go with him--wherever he may go--wandering through the habitation of princes--the courts of the living God--or, the dwelling places of ambition--yea, even into the grave.

* * * * *

I have but one other request to make. Let these words be engraven hereafter on my tomb-stone: “WHO READS AN AMERICAN BOOK?”

RACHEL DYER.

The early history of New-England, or of Massachusetts Bay, rather; now one of the six New-England States of North America, and that on which the Plymouth settlers, or “Fathers” went ashore--the shipwrecked men of mighty age, abounds with proof that witchcraft was a familiar study, and that witches and wizards were believed in for a great while, among the most enlightened part of a large and well-educated religious population. The multitude of course had a like faith; for such authority governs the multitude every where, and at all times.

The belief was very general about a hundred years ago in every part of British America, was very common fifty years ago, when the revolutionary war broke out, and prevails now, even to this day in the wilder parts of the New-England territory, as well as in the new States which are springing up every where in the retreating shadow of the great western wilderness--a wood where half the men of Europe might easily hide from each other--and every where along the shores of the solitude, as if the new earth were full of the seed of empire, as if dominion were like fresh flowers or magnificent herbage, the spontaneous growth of a new soil wherever it is reached by the warm light or the cheerful rain of a new sky.

It is not confined however, nor was it a hundred and thirty five years ago, the particular period of our story, to the uneducated and barbarous, or to a portion of the white people of North-America, nor to the native Indians, a part of whose awful faith, a part of whose inherited religion it is to believe in a bad power, in witchcraft spells and sorcery. It may be met with wherever the Bible is much read in the spirit of the New-England Fathers. It was rooted in the very nature of those who were quite remarkable in the history of their age, for learning, for wisdom, for courage and for piety; of men who fled away from their fire-sides in Europe to the rocks of another world--where they buried themselves alive in search of truth.

We may smile now to hear witchcraft spoken seriously of; but we forget perhaps that a belief in it is like a belief in the after appearance of the dead among the blue waters, the green graves, the still starry atmosphere and the great shadowy woods of our earth; or like the beautiful deep instinct of our nature for worship,--older than the skies, it may be, universal as thought, and sure as the steadfast hope of immortality.

We may turn away with a sneer now from the devout believer in witches, wondering at the folly of them that have such faith, and quite persuading ourselves in our great wisdom, that all who have had it heretofore, however they may have been regarded by ages that have gone by, were not of a truth wise and great men; but we forget perhaps that we are told in the Book of Books, the Scriptures of Truth, about witches with power to raise the dead, about wizards and sorcerers that were able to strive with Jehovah’s anointed high priest before the misbelieving majesty of Egypt, with all his court and people gathered about his throne for proof, and of others who could look into futurity with power, interpret the vision of sleep, read the stars, bewitch and afflict whom they would, cast out devils and prophesy--false prophets were they called, not because that which they said was untrue, but because that which they said, whether true or untrue, was not from above--because the origin of their preternatural power was bad or untrue. And we forget moreover that laws were made about conjuration, spells and witchcraft by a body of British lawgivers, renowned for their sagacity, deep research, and grave thoughtful regard for truth, but a few years ago--the other day as it were--and that a multitude of superior men have recorded their belief in witchcraft--men of prodigious power--such men as the great and good Sir Matthew Hale, who gave judgment of death upon several witches and wizards, at a period when, if we may believe a tithe of what we hear every day of our lives, from the mouth of many a great lawyer, there was no lack of wit or wisdom, nor of knowledge or faithful enquiry; and such men too as the celebrated author of the Commentaries on the Laws of England, which are, “as every body knows, or should know, and a man must be exceedingly ignorant not to know” the pride of the British empire and a pillar of light for the sages of hereafter; and that within the last one hundred and fifty or two hundred years, a multitude of men and women have been tried and executed by authority of British law, in the heart of England, for having dealt in sorcery and witchcraft.

We may smile--we may sneer--but would such things have occurred in the British Parliament, or in the British courts of law, without some proof--whatever, it was--proof to the understandings of people, who in other matters are looked up to by the chief men of this age with absolute awe--that creatures endowed with strange, if not with preternatural power, did inhabit our earth and were able to work mischief according to the popular ideas of witchcraft and sorcery?

We know little or nothing of the facts upon which their belief was founded. All that we know is but hearsay, tradition or conjecture. They who believed were eye-witnesses and ear witnesses of what they believed; we who disbelieve are neither. They who believed knew all that we know of the matter and much more; we who disbelieve are not only ignorant of the facts, but we are living afar off, in a remote age. Nevertheless, they believed in witchcraft, and we regard all who speak of it seriously, with contempt. How dare we! What right have we to say that witches and witchcraft are no more, that sorcery is done with forever, that miracles are never to be wrought again, or that Prophecy shall never be heard again by the people of God, uplifting her voice like a thousand echoes from the everlasting solitudes of the sea, or like uninterrupted heavy thunder breaking over the terrible and haughty nations of our earth?

Why should we not think as well of him who believes too much, as of him who believes too little? Of him whose faith, whatever it may be, is too large, as of him whose faith, whatever it may be, is too small? Of the good with a credulous temper, as of the great with a suspicious temper? Of the pure in heart, of the youthful, of the untried in the ways of the world, who put much faith in whatever they are told, too much it may be, as of them who being thoroughly tried in the ways of the world put no faith in what they hear, and little in what they see? Of the humble in spirit who believe, _though_ they do not perfectly understand, as of the haughty who will not believe _because_ they do not perfectly understand? Of the poor child who thinks a juggler eats fire when he does not, as of the grown-up sage who thinks a juggler does _not_ swallow a sword when he _does_? Of the believer in Crusoe, who sits poring over the story under a hedge, as of the unbeliever in Bruce who would not believe, so long as it was new, in the Tale of Abyssinia? Of those in short who are led astray by self-distrust, or innocence, or humility, as of them who are led astray by self-conceit, or corruption, or pride?

In other days, the Lion of the desert would not believe the horse when he came up out of the bleak north, and told a story of waters and seas that grew solid, quiet and smooth in the dead of winter. His majesty had never heard of such a thing before, and what his majesty had never heard of before could not be possible. The mighty lord of the Numedian desert could not believe--how could he?--in a cock-and-a-bull-story, about ice and snow; for to him they were both as a multitude of such things are to the philosophy of our age, out of the course of nature.

A solid sea and a fluid earth are alike to such as have no belief in what is new or contrary to that course of nature with which they are acquainted--whatever that may be. There is no such thing as proof to the over-wise or over mighty, save where by reason of what they already know, there is not much need of other proof.--They would not believe, though one should rise from the dead--they are too cautious by half; they are not satisfied with any sort of testimony; they dare not believe their own eyes--they do not indeed; for spectres when they appear to the eye of the philosopher now, are attributed altogether to a diseased organ.[3] They care not for the cloud of witnesses--they withdraw from the Bible, they scoff at history, and while they themselves reject every kind of proof, whatever it may be, such proof as they would be satisfied with in a case of murder, were they to hear it as a jury--such proof as they would give judgment of death upon, without fear, proof under oath by men of high character and severe probity, eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses of what they swear to--they ridicule those who undertake to weigh it with care, and pursue with scorn or pity those who shiver through all their arteries at a story of the preternatural.

[3] As by the printer of Berlin. See also Beasley’s Search after Truth.

As if it were a mark of deplorable fatuity for a babe to believe now as a multitude of wise and great and gifted men have heretofore believed in every age of the world! As if to think it possible for such to have been right in their belief, were too absurd for excuse now--such men as the holy Greek, the upright immovable Socrates, who persuaded himself that he was watched over by a sort of household spirit; such men too as the “bald” Cæsar, and the rock-hearted Brutus, both of whom spite of their imperial nature and high place among the warlike and mighty of their age, believed in that, and shook before that which whether deceitful or not, substance or shadow, the very cowards of our day are too brave to be scared with, too full of courage to put their trust in--afraid as they are of that, which the Roman pair would have met with a stern smile and a free step; such men too of a later age, as the profound, wise and pure Sir Matthew Hale, who put many to death for witchcraft--so clear was the proof, and so clear the nature of the crime--while the nature of larceny, the nature of common theft was forever a mystery to him, if we may believe what we hear out of his own mouth; such men too as the celebrated Judge Blackstone, who after a thorough sifting of the law, says--“It seems to be most eligible to conclude that in general there has been such a thing as witchcraft, though we cannot give credit to any particular modern instance of it;” such men too as Doctor Samuel Johnson, L. L. D. who saw through all the hypocricy and subterfuge of our day, when he said, speaking of a superstitious belief, that men who deny it by their words, confess it by their fears--nothing was ever so true! we who are most afraid, want courage to own it; such men too as the Lord Protector of England, while she was a commonwealth; and such as he, the Desolator--

“........... From whose reluctant hand,
The thunder-bolt was wrung”--

for they were both believers in what the very rabble of our earth deride now; such men, too, as the chief among poets--Byron--for he believed in the words of a poor old gypsey, and shook with fear, and faltered on the way to his bridal-chamber, when he thought of the prophecy she had uttered years and years before, in the morning of his haughty youth; such men too as the head lawgiver of our day, the High-Priest of Legislation, the great and good, the benevolent, the courageous Bentham, who to this hour is half afraid in the dark, and only able to satisfy himself about the folly of such fear, when his night-cap is off, by resorting with suitable gravity to his old refuge, the exhaustive mode of reasoning. If a ghost appear at all, argues he, it must appear either clothed or not clothed. But a ghost never appears not clothed, or naked; and if it appear clothed, we shall have not only the ghost of a human creature--which is bad enough; but the ghost of a particular kind of cloth of a particular fashion, the ghost of a pocket-handkerchief, or a night-cap--which is too bad.

Thus much for authority: and here, but for one little circumstance we should take up our narrative, and pursue it without turning to the right or the left, until we came to the sorrowful issue; but as we may have here and there a reader, in this unbelieving age, who has no regard for authority, nor much respect for the wisdom of our ancestors, what if we try to put the whole argument into a more conclusive shape? It may require but a few pages, and a few pages may go far to allay the wrath of modern philosophy. If we throw aside the privilege of authorship, and speak, not as a multitude but as one of the true faith, our argument would stand thus:

In a word, whatever the philosophy of our age may say, I cannot look upon witchcraft and sorcery as the unbeliever does. I know enough what the fashion is now; but I cannot believe, I do not believe that we know much more of the matter than our great progenitors did; or that we are much wiser than a multitude who have been for ages, and are now, renowned for their wisdom; or that we are much more pious than our noble fathers were, who died in their belief--died _for_ their belief, I should say, and are a proverb to this hour on account of their piety. Nor can I persuade myself that such facts would be met with in grave undoubted history, if they were untrue, as are to be met with in every page of that which concerns the period of our story; facts which go to prove not only that a fixed belief in witchcraft prevailed throughout Europe as well as America, and among those with whom there was no lack of probity or good sense, or knowledge, it would appear; but that hundreds of poor creatures were tried for witchcraft under the authority of British law, and put to death, under the authority of British law, (and several after confession) for the practice of witchcraft and sorcery.

May it not be worth our while therefore, to speak seriously and reverently of our mighty forefathers? to bear in mind that the proof which they offer is affirmative and positive, while that which we rely upon, is negative--a matter of theory? to keep in view, moreover, that if a body of witnesses of equal worth were equally divided, one half saying that on such a day and hour, at such a place, when they were all together, such or such a thing, preternatural or not, mysterious or not, occurred; while the other half say positively, man for man, that so far as they heard or saw, or know or believe, no such thing did occur, at such a time or place, or at any other time or place, whatsoever--still, even here, though you may believe both parties, though you may give entire credit to the words of each, you may be justified, in a variety of cases, in acting upon the testimony of the former in preference to that of the latter. And why? Because the contradictory words of both may not be so contradictory as they appear--not so contradictory as to neutralize each other on every hypothesis; but may be reconcilable to the supposition that such or such a fact, however positively denied by one party, and however mysterious it may seem, really did occur: and this while they are not reconcilable to the supposition that such or such a fact really did _not_ occur.--It being much more easy to overlook that which is, than to see that which is not; much more easy to _not_ see a shadow that falls upon our pathway, than to see a shadow where indeed there is no shadow; much more easy to _not_ hear a real voice, than to hear _no_ voice.

If the multitude of trustworthy and superior men, therefore, who testify to the facts which are embodied in the following narrative, and which may appear incredible to the wise of our day, or out of the course of nature to the philosophy of our day, like ice or snow to the Lord of the Desert; if they were positively contradicted step by step, throughout, by another like multitude of trustworthy and superior men--still, though the two parties were alike numerous and alike worthy of credit, and although you might believe the story of each, and every word of it, and give no preference to either:--Still I say, you might be justified in supposing that after all, the facts which the former testify to really did occur. And why? Because _though_ both speak true, that hypothesis may still be supported; while _if_ both speak true, the contrary hypothesis cannot be supported. Facts may occur without being heard or seen by the whole of a party who are together at the time they occur: but how are they to be seen or heard, if they do not occur at all?

I have put a much stronger case than that on which the truth of the following story is made to depend; for no such contradiction occurs here, no such positive testimony, no such array of multitude against multitude of the same worth, or the same age, or the same people. On the affirmative side are a host here--a host of respectable witnesses, not a few of whom sealed their testimony with their blood; on the negative, hardly one either of a good or a bad character. What appears on the negative side is not by facts, but by theory. It is not positive but conjectural. The negative witnesses are of our age and of our people; the affirmative were of another age and of another people. The former too, it should be remarked were not only not present, but they were not born--they were not alive, when the matters which they deny the truth of, took place--if they ever took place at all. Now, if oaths are to be answered by conjecture, bloodshed by a sneer, absolute martyrdom by hypothesis, much grave testimony of the great and the pious, by a speculative argument, a brief syllogism, or a joke--of what use are the rules by which our trust in what we hear is regulated? our faith whatever it may be, and whether it concern this world or the next, and whether it be of the past, the present or the future? Are we to believe only so far as we may touch and see for ourselves? What is the groundwork of true knowledge? where the spirit of true philosophy? Whither should we go for proof; and of what avail is the truth which we are hoarding up, the truth which we are extracting year after year by laborious investigation, or fearful experiment? If we do not believe those who go up to the altar and make oath before the Everlasting God, not as men do now, one after another, but nation by nation, to that which is very new to us, or wonderful, why should posterity believe us when we testify to that which hereafter may be very new to them or very wonderful? Is every day to be like every other day, every age like every other age in the Diary of the Universe? Earthquake, war and revolution--the overthrow of States and of empires, are they to be repeated forever, lest men should not believe the stories that are told of them?