| | 44 | Author: | Paulding
James Kirke
1778-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Westward ho!  | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | “O rare Ben Jonson!” said some one, and
O rare Beaumont and Fletcher say we; for in
honest sincerity we prefer this gentle pair to all
the old English dramatic writers except Shakspeare.
For playful wit, richness of fancy, exuberance
of invention, and, above all, for the
sweet magic of their language, where shall we
find their superiors among the British bards?
It is not for us obscure wights to put on the
critical nightcap, and, being notorious criminals
ourselves, set up as judges of others; but we
should hold ourselves base and ungrateful if
we did not seize this chance opportunity to
raise our voices in these remote regions of
the West, where, peradventure, they never
dreamed of one day possessing millions of
readers, in humble acknowledgment of the
many hours they have whiled away by the creations
of their sprightly fancy, arrayed in the
matchless melody of their tuneful verse. But
mankind must have an idol, one who monopolizes
their admiration and devotion. The name
of Shakspeare has swallowed up that of his
predecessors, contemporaries, and successors;
thousands, tens of thousands echo his name that
never heard of Marlow,—Marlow, to whom
Shakspeare himself condescended to be indebted,
and whose conception of the character of
Faust is precisely that of Goëthe;—of Webster,
Marston, Randolph, Cartwright, May, and all
that singular knot of dramatists, who unite the
greatest beauties with the greatest deformities,
and whose genius has sunk under the licentiousness
of the age in which it was their misfortune
to live. The names of Massinger, Ben
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher are, it is true,
more familiar; but it is only their names and
one or two of their pieces that are generally
known. These last have been preserved, not
on the score of their superior beauties, but because
they afforded an opportunity for Garrick
and other great performers to reap laurels which
belonged to the poet, by the exhibition of some
striking character. Far be it from us to attempt
to detract from the fame of Shakspeare. Superior
he is, beyond doubt, to all his countrymen
who went before or came after him, in the peculiar
walk of his genius; but he is not so immeasurably
superior as to cast all others into
oblivion; and to us it seems almost a disgrace
to England that a large portion of her own
readers, and a still larger of foreigners, seem
ignorant that she ever produced more than one
dramatist. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 45 | Author: | Paulding
James Kirke
1778-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The book of Saint Nicholas | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Everybody has heard of St. Nicholas, that
honest Dutch saint, whom I look upon as having
been one of the most liberal, good-natured little
fat fellows in the world. But, strange as it may
seem, though everybody has heard, nobody seems
to know anything about him. The place of his
birth, the history of his life, and the manner in
which he came to be the dispenser of Newyear
cakes, and the patron of good boys, are matters
that have hitherto not been investigated, as they
ought to have been long and long ago. I am about
to supply this deficiency, and pay a debt of honour
which is due to this illustrious and obscure tutelary
genius of the jolly Newyear. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 46 | Author: | Paulding
James Kirke
1778-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The old Continental, or, The price of liberty | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | During the most gloomy and disastrous period of
our revolutionary war, there resided in the county of
Westchester a family of plain country people, who
had, in time long past, seen better days; but who
now had nothing to boast of, but a small farm, a good
name, and a good conscience. Though bred in the
city, they had lived so long in a retired part of the
country, that their habits, tastes, and manners, had become
altogether rural, and they had almost outlived
every vestige of former refinements, except in certain
modes of thinking, and acting, which had survived
in all changes of time and circumstances. Their residence
was an old stone-house, bearing the date of
1688, the figures of which were formed by Holland
bricks, incorporated with the walls. The roof
was green with mossy honours, and the entire edifice
bore testimony, not only to the lapse of time, but to
the downhill progress of its inmates. Though not in
ruins, it was much decayed; and, though with a good
rousing fire in the broad capacious chimney, it was
comfortable enough in winter, it afforded nothing
without to indicate anything but the possession of
those simple necessaries of life, which fall to the lot
of those who derive their means of happiness from
the labours of their hands, the bounties of the earth,
and the blessing of a quiet soul. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 47 | Author: | Paulding
James Kirke
1778-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The old Continental, or, The price of liberty | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | The old sugar-house to which our hero and his companion
in misfortune were consigned, is still standing[1]
[1]It has since been pulled down.
to remind us of the sufferings of our fathers, and the
price they paid for liberty. To those who have never
seen the building, it may not be amiss to state that it
is a large, massive, gloomy pile of red-stone, with narrow
grated windows, which gives it the air of a prison;
standing at the northeast corner of the yard of the
Dutch church fronting on Liberty street, which, during
the occupation of the city by the British, was used as
a riding-school. The aspect of the structure is forbidding,
corresponding with the recollections which will
long accompany its contemplation, by the descendants
and countrymen of many nameless and humble patriots
that here became the martyrs to the oppression of
a haughty parent, and a petty tyrant whose infamous
name is forever associated with the recollection of
their fate. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 48 | Author: | Paulding
James Kirke
1778-1860 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The Puritan and his daughter | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | In the reign of King Charles—courteously styled
the Martyr—there resided in an obscure corner of the
renowned kingdom of England, a certain obscure
country gentleman, claiming descent from a family
that flourished in great splendor under a Saxon monarch
whose name is forgotten. This ancient family,
like most others of great pretensions to antiquity, had
gone by as many names as certain persons who live in
the fear of the law, but finally settled down on that of
Habingdon, or Habingden, by which they were now
known. They were somewhat poor, but very proud,
and looked down with contempt on the posterity of the
upstart Normans who usurped the domains of their
ancestors. They had resided on the same spot for
more than eight hundred years, during which time,
not one of them had ever performed an act worthy of
being transmitted to posterity, with the single exception
of one Thurkill Habingdonne who flourished in
the reign of King John—of unblessed memory—and
who is recorded to have given one-third of a caracut of
land, and a wind-mill, to the priory of Monks Kirby,
“to the end,” as he expresses it, “that his obit should
be perpetually there observed, and his name written
in the Martyrologe.” It hath been a mooted point with that class of philosophical
inquirers, which so usefully occupies itself
with discussions that can never be brought to a conclusion,
whether the age gives the tone to literature,
or literature to the age. It is a knotty question, and
not being of the least consequence to any practical
purpose, it will be passed over with the single remark,
that it is quite useless for an author to write in good
taste if the public won't read, and equally idle for the
public to cherish a keen relish for polite literature, if
there are no authors to administer food to its appetite. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 49 | Author: | Pike
Albert
1809-1891 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Prose sketches and poems | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | The world of prairie which lies at a distance of more
than three hundred miles west of the inhabited portions of
the United States, and south of the river Arkansas and its
branches, has been rarely, and parts of it never, trodden
by the foot or beheld by the eye of an Anglo-American.
Rivers rise there in the broad level waste, of which, mighty
though they become in their course, the source is unexplored.
Deserts are there, too barren of grass to support
even the hardy buffalo; and in which water, except in
here and there a hole, is never found. Ranged over by
the Comanches, the Pawnees, the Caiwas, and other
equally wandering, savage and hostile tribes, its very
name is a mystery and a terror. The Pawnees have their
villages entirely north of this part of the country; and
their war parties—always on foot—are seldom to be met
with to the south of the Canadian, except close in upon
the edges of the white and civilized Indian settlements.
Extending on the south to the Rio del Norte, on the north
to a distance unknown, eastwardly to within three or four
hundred miles of the edge of Arkansas Territory, and
westwardly to the Rocky Mountains, is the range of the
Comanches. Abundantly supplied with good horses from
the immense herds of the prairie, they range, at different
times of the year, over the whole of this vast country.
Their war and hunting parties follow the buffalo continually.
In the winter they may be found in the south,
encamped along the Rio del Norte, and under the mountains;
and in the summer on the Canadian, and to the
north of it, and on the Pecos. Sometimes they haunt the
Canadian in the winter, but not so commonly as in the
summer. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 50 | Author: | Poe
Edgar Allan
1809-1849 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Of Nantucket | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | My name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable
trader in sea-stores at Nantucket, where I was
born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in good
practice. He was fortunate in everything, and had speculated
very successfully in stocks of the Edgarton New-Bank,
as it was formerly called. By these and other
means he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of money.
He was more attached to myself, I believe, than
to any other person in the world, and I expected to inherit
the most of his property at his death. He sent me,
at six years of age, to the school of old Mr. Ricketts, a
gentleman with only one arm, and of eccentric manners
—he is well known to almost every person who has
visited New Bedford. I stayed at his school until I was
sixteen, when I left him for Mr. E. Ronald's academy
on the hill. Here I became intimate with the son of
Mr. Barnard, a sea captain, who generally sailed in the
employ of Lloyd and Vredenburgh—Mr. Barnard is also
very well known in New Bedford, and has many relations,
I am certain, in Edgarton. His son was named
Augustus, and he was nearly two years older than myself.
He had been on a whaling voyage with his father
in the John Donaldson, and was always talking to me of
his adventures in the South Pacific Ocean. I used frequently
to go home with him, and remain all day, and
sometimes all night. We occupied the same bed, and
he would be sure to keep me awake until almost light,
telling me stories of the natives of the Island of Tinian,
and other places he had visited in his travels. At last I
could not help being interested in what he said, and by
degrees I felt the greatest desire to go to sea. I owned
a sail-boat called the Ariel, and worth about seventy-five
dollars. She had a half-deck or cuddy, and was rigged
sloop-fashion—I forget her tonnage, but she would hold
ten persons without much crowding. In this boat we
were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks
in the world; and, when I now think of them, it appears
to me a thousand wonders that I am alive to-day. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 51 | Author: | Read
Thomas Buchanan
1822-1872 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Paul Redding | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | The Brandywine river may be observed, at one
time, winding slowly, in its silvery silence, through
richly-pastured farms; or running broad and rippling
over its beautiful bed of pearly shells and
golden pebbles, (with which it toys and sings as
merrily as an innocent-hearted child,) until its
waters contract and roll heavily and darkly beneath
the grove of giant oaks, elms and sycamores; but
soon, like the sullen flow of a dark heart, it breaks
angrily over the first obstruction. Thus you may
see the Brandywine, at one point, boiling savagely
over a broken bed of rocks, until its thick sheets of
foam slide, like an avalanche of snow, into a deep
pool, where it sends up a whispering voice, like
that which pervades a rustling audience when the
drop-curtain has shed its folds upon a scene that,
like the “Ancient Mariner,” has held each ear and
eye as with a magic spell. “You have been a wanderer in the world; so have
I. Wherever you have been, there have I been,
also. I have been near you a thousand times
when you little guessed it. But all that is passed.
The time has arrived. Enclosed among these
papers you will find that which will make you
independent of the world. The property is mostly
yours; but you are not alone; there are those who
will be dependent upon you; fail not to do your
duty by them — love them as you should love those
nearest and dearest to you. This letter is only to
prepare you for the perusal of others of deeper
importance; you will find them all at your command,
and as you read them, O, curse me not!
but weep that humanity should fall so far; then
pray that God may cleanse the blood-stained soul,
and forgive, (yes, Paul, it is true!) your dying
father! | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 52 | Author: | Rowson
Mrs.
1762-1824 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The inquisitor, or, Invisible rambler | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | I Should like to know the certainty of it, said I,
putting the petition into my pocket.—It contained
an account of an unfortunate tradesman reduced to
want, with a wife and three small children.—He asked
not charity for himself, but them.—I should like
to know the certainty of it, said I—there are so many
feigned tales of distress, and the world is so full
of duplicity, that in following the dictates of humanity
we often encourage idleness.—Could I but be
satisfied of the authenticity of this man's story, I
would do something for him. Poor fellow! said I, looking at him with an
eye of compassion as he went out of the apartment
—Poor fellow! thou hast been hardly used by one
man who called himself a Christian, and it makes
thee suspect the whole race—But, surely, said I, it is
not a man's barely prosessing Christianity that makes
him worthy that character; a man must behave
with humanity, not only to his fellow-creatures, but
to the animal creation, before he can be ranked with
propriety among that exalted class of mortals. It was on a fine evening, the latter end of May,
when tired with the fatigues of the day, for she was
a milliner's apprentice, Annie obtained leave of her
mistress to walk out for a little air.—Her mistress
had a shop which she occupied, and frequently visited
during the summer season, situated on the banks
of the Thames. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 59 | Author: | Simms
William Gilmore
1806-1870 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The damsel of Darien | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | “Nothing,” remarks a distinguished modern writer of
our own country, “could be more chivalrous, urbane and
charitable; nothing more pregnant with noble sacrifices of
passion and interest, with magnanimous instances of forgiveness
of injuries, and noble contests of generosity, than
the transactions of the Spanish discoverers of America with
each other:—” he adds—“it was with the Indians alone
that they were vindictive, blood-thirsty, and implacable.”
In other words, when dealing with their equals—with those
who could strike hard and avenge,—they forbore offence
and injury; to the feeble and unoffending, alone, they
were cruel and unforgiving. Such being the case, according
to the writer's own showing, the eulogium upon
their chivalry, charity, and urbanity, is in very doubtful
propriety, coming from the lips of a Christian historian;
and our charity would be as singularly misplaced as his,
were we to suffer its utterance unquestioned. But the
alleged characteristics of these Spanish adventurers in regard
to their dealings with each other, are any thing but
true, according to our readings of history; and with all
deference to the urbane and usually excellent authority referred
to, we must be permitted, in this place, to record
our dissent from his conclusions. It will not diminish,
perhaps, but rather elevate the character of these discoverers,
to show that their transactions with each other were, with
a few generous exceptions, distinguished by a baseness and
vindictiveness quite as shameless and unequivocal as marked
their treatment of the Indians:—that nearly every departure
from their usual faithlessness of conduct, was induced by
fear, by favour, or the hope of ultimate reward;—that, devouring
the Indians for their treasure, they scrupled not to
exhibit a like rapacity towards their own comrades, in its
attainment, or upon its division; and that, in short, a more
inhuman, faithless, blood-thirsty and unmitigated gang of
savages never yet dishonoured the name of man or debased
his nature. The very volume which contains the eulogy
upon which we comment—Irving's “Companions of Columbus,”—a
misnomer, by the way, since none of them
were, or could be, properly speaking, his companions—
abounds in testimonies which refute and falsify it. The
history of these “companions” is a history of crime and
perfidy from the beginning; of professions made without
sincerity, and pledges violated without scruple; of crimes
committed without hesitation, and, seemingly, without remorse;
of frauds perpetrated upon the confiding, and injuries
inflicted without number upon the defenceless; and
these, too, not in their dealings merely with the natives,
for these they only destroyed, but in their intercourse with
their own comrades; with those countrymen to whom
nature and a common interest should have bound them, to
the fullest extent of their best abilities and strongest sympathies;
but whom they did not scruple to plunder and
abuse, at the instance of motives the most mercenary and
dishonourable. With but a few, and those not very remarkable
exceptions, all the doings of this “ocean chivalry”
are obnoxious to these reproaches. It is enough, in
proof, to instance the fortunes of Cortes, Ojeda, Ponce de
Leon, Balboa, Nienesa, Pizarro, Almagro, and the “great
admiral” himself; most of them hostile to each other, and
all of them victims to the slavish, selfish hates and festering
jealousies, the base avarice, and scarcely less base ambition
of the followers whom they led to wealth, and victory,
and fame. Like most fanatics, who are generally the
creatures of vexing and variable moods, rather than of principle
and a just desire for renown, none of them, with the
single exception of Columbus, seem to have been above
the force of circumstances, which moved them hourly, as
easily to a disregard of right, as to a fearlessness of danger.
At such periods they invariably proved themselves indifferent
to all the ties of country, to all the sentiments of
affection, to all the laws of God: a mere blood-thirsty soldiery,
drunk with the frequent indulgence of a morbid appetite,
and as utterly indifferent, in their frenzy, to their
sworn fellowships as to the common cause. Of the whole
chivalry of this period and nation, but little that is favourable
can be said. That they were brave and fearless, daring
and elastic, cannot be denied. But here eulogium must
cease. From the bigot monarch upon the throne, to the
lowest soldier serving under his banner, they seem all to
have been without faith. The sovereign had no scruple,
when interest moved him and occasion served, to break the
pledges which he might not so easily evade; and the morals
of his people furnished no reproachful commentary upon
the laxity of his own. Let us but once close our eyes
upon the bold deeds and uncalculating courage of these
warriors, and the picture of their performances becomes
one loaded with infamy and shame. The mind revolts
from the loathsome spectacle of perfidy and brute-baseness
which every where remains; and it is even a relief, though
but a momentary one, once more to look upon the scene of
strife, and forget, as we are but too apt to do, in the gallant
passage of arms, the meanness and the malice of him who
delights us with his froward valour, and astounds us with
admiration of his skill and strength. The relief is but
transient, however, and the next moment reveals to us a reenactment
of the sin and the shame, from which the bravest
and the boldest among them could not long maintain the
“whiteness of their souls.” | | | Similar Items: | Find |
| 60 | Author: | Simms
William Gilmore
1806-1870 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | The damsel of Darien | | | | Published: | 1997 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | With the first beams of the morning sun, the Indian
warriors of Zemaco, a wild and motly armament, prepared
to descend from the mountains into the plain, or
rather valley, in which lay the Spanish settlement of Darien.
More than five thousand men, detachments from a
hundred tribes, which acknowledged the sovereignty of
Zemaco, were assembled under the lead of this vindictive
chief. They gathered at his summons from the province
of Zobayda, where the golden temple of their worship
stood, and which they esteemed to be the visible dwelling
of their God; Abibeyba, Zenu, and many other provinces,
the several cassiques of which, though not present with
the quotas which they provided, were yet required by
Zemaco to hold themselves in readiness to defend their
territories from the incursions of the Spaniards. The
hills that rose on three sides of the Spanish settlement
were darkened with savage warriors. Exulting in the
certainty of victory, they brandished their macanas of
palm wood, and shot their arrows upward in defiance,
while they sounded their war conchs for the general gathering.
Never, in his whole career of sway and conquest,
had the proud mountain chief at one time, assembled
so vast a host. Their numbers, their known valour,
the great strength of their bodies, and the admirable skill
with which they swung aloft the club or sent the arrow
to its mark, filled his bosom with a vain confidence in his
own superiority, which the better taught Caonabo earnestly
endeavoured to qualify and caution. But his counsels
fell upon unwilling ears, and it was soon apparent to
the latter that the prudence which he commended had the
effect of diminishing his own courage in the estimation of
his hearers. Once assured of this, the mortified Caonabo
sank back to his little command, patiently resolved to
await events, and remove any doubts on this head, of the
Cassique of Darien, by the actual proofs of his prowess,
which he was determined to display upon the field. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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