MEMOIRS OF AN AMERICAN LADY DEAR SIR, O Introduction Το THERS as well as you have expressed a wish to see a memoir of my earliest and most valuable friend. To gratify you and them I feel many inducements, and see many objections. To comply with any wish of yours is one strong inducement. To please myself with the recollection of past happiness and departed worth is another; and to benefit those into whose hands this imperfect sketch may fall, is a third. For the authentic record of an exemplary life, though delivered in the most unadorned manner, or even degraded by poverty of style, or uncouthness of narration, has an attraction for the uncorrupted mind. It is the rare lot of some exalted characters, by the united power of virtue and of talents, to soar above their fellow-mortals, and leave a luminous track behind, on which successive ages gaze with wonder and delight. But the sweet influence of these benign stars, that now and then enlighten the page of history, is partial and unfrequent. They to whom the most important parts on the stage of life are allotted, if possessed of abilities undirected by virtue, are too often "Wise to no purpose, artful to no end," that is really good and desirable. They, again, where virtue is not supported by wisdom, are often, with the best intentions, made subservient to the short-sighted craft of the artful and designing. Hence, though we may be at times dazzled with the blaze of heroic achievement, or contemplate with a purer satisfaction those "awful fathers of mankind," by whom nations were civilized, equitable dominion established, or liberty restored yet, after all, the crimes and miseries of mankind form such prominent features of the history of every country, that humanity sickens at the retrospect, and misanthropy finds an excuse amidst the laurels of the hero, and the deep-laid schemes of the politician : "And yet this partial view of things Is surely not the best." - Burns. Where shall we seek the antidote to this chilling gloom left on the mind by these bustling intricate scenes, where the best characters, goaded on by furious factions or dire necessity, become involved in crimes that their souls abhor? It is the contemplation of the peaceful virtues in the genial atmosphere of private life, that can best reconcile us to our nature, and quiet the turbulent emotions excited by "The madness of the crowd." But vice, folly, and vanity are so noisy, so restless, so ready to rush into public view, and so adapted to afford food for malevolent curiosity, that the small still voice of virtue, active in its own sphere, but unwilling to quit it, is drowned in their tumult. This is a remedy, however, "Not obvious, not obtrusive." If we would counteract the baleful influence of public vice by the contemplation of private worth, we must penetrate into its retreats, and not be deterred from attending to its simple details by the want of that glare and bustle with which a fictitious or artificial character is generally surrounded. But in this wide field of speculation one might wander out of sight of the original subject. Let me then resume it, and return to my objections. Of these the first and greatest is the dread of being inaccurate. Embellished facts, a mixture of truth and fiction, or what we sometimes meet with, a fictitious superstructure built on a foundation of reality, would be detestable on the score of bad taste, though no moral sense were concerned or consulted. 'Tis |