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University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875[X]
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1Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Add
 Title:  Vasconselos  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: It is the province of romance, even more decidedly than history, to recall the deeds and adventures of the past. It is to fiction that we must chiefly look for those living and breathing creations which history quite too unfrequently deigns to summon to her service. The warm atmosphere of present emotions, and present purposes, belongs to the dramatis personœ of art; and she is never so well satisfied in showing us human performances, as when she betrays the passions and affections by which they were dictated and endured. It is in spells and possessions of this character, that she so commonly supersedes the sterner muse whose province she so frequently invades; and her offices are not the less legitimate, as regards the truthfulness of things in general, than are those of history, because she supplies those details which the latter, unwisely as we think, but too commonly, holds beneath her regard. In the work before us, however, it is our purpose to slight neither agency. We shall defer to each of them, in turn, as they may be made to serve a common purpose. They both appeal to our assistance, and equally spread their possessions beneath our eyes. We shall employ, without violating, the material resources of the Historian, while seeking to endow them with a vitality which fiction only can confer. It is in pursuit of this object that we entreat the reader to suppose the backward curtain withdrawn, unveiling, if only for a moment, the aspects of a period not so remote as to lie wholly beyond our sympathies. We propose to look back to that dawn of the sixteenth century; at all events, to such a portion of the historical landscape of that period, as to show us some of the first sunny gleams of European light upon the savage dominions of the Western Continent. To review this epoch is, in fact, to survey the small but impressive beginnings of a wondrous drama in which we, ourselves, are still living actors. The scene is almost within our grasp. The names of the persons of our narrative have not yet ceased from sounding in our ears; and the theatre of performance is one, the boards of which, even at this moment, are echoing beneath their mighty footsteps. Our curiosity and interest may well be awakened for awhile, to an action, the fruits of which, in some degree, are inuring to our present benefit.
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