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221Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Add
 Title:  Count Julian, or, The last days of the Goth  
 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: “It is in the mouths of many that Julian left his daughter, Cava, at the court of king Roderick, as he well knew the surpassing beauty of her charms, and as well the fierce passion of the king for such loveliness as hers. That he hath not erred in his expectations, is no less the rumor of the court. Cava, it is said, hath been distinguished by the king's eye; and the bruit is, that, though she hath lost in virtue, yet will the gain of Julian in high station be proportionate to her loss and great beyond his desire. Yet, though this be the speech of many who have integrity and speak not often idly, there are some who remember of the noble blood and proper pride of the Julian family, who, though they cannot gainsay the tidings of king Roderick's favor and of the frailty of the lady Cava, are yet unwilling to yield faith so readily to that which reports the willing pliance of Julian to his own dishonor. One of these, in his sorrow and his doubt, hath written these presents. He asks not for reply, since the deeds of the father, hereafter to be shown, will testify how far he hath been a party to the ruin of his child.” “Egiza—my lord, that should have been, had our hopes been blessed—farewell, farewell for ever. Hold me as one dead to thee, even if I be not dead to life. There is an impassable gulf between us. I cannot love thee, last I should debase thee by affections which can never more be hallowed. I cannot keep thy love, since such cannot belong or be given to those who are degraded. I cannot look upon thee, even if I live, since I feel my shame, and should dread to meet with favor in thy eyes. Yet, for the love which thou didst bear me, give me thy pity now; let thy prayers go up for one who has not so much sinned as suffered sin—whose weakness of body, not whose willingness of mind, has given her up—a most unhappy woman—to the brutal rage of a tyrant. I can speak no more. My cheeks, which have been cold and pale, like the unfeeling marble, now burn me as I write thee. I dare not say what I have suffered—thou wilt scarce dare to conceive it. Yet, think only that I I am lost to thee, to hope, to life, to myself, for ever, for ever, and thou wilt know cannot tell thee. Once more, my lord—my noble lord—once more I implore thy pity and thy prayers for the wretched
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222Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Add
 Title:  Helen Halsey, or, The Swamp state of Conelachita  
 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 unwise license and injurious freedoms accorded to youth in our day and country, will render it unnecessary to explain how it was that, with father and mother, a good homestead, and excellent resources, I was yet suffered at the early age of eighteen, to set out on a desultory and almost purposeless expedition, among some of the wildest regions of the South-West. It would be as unnecessary and, perhaps, much more difficult, to show what were my own motives in undertaking such a journey. A truant disposition, a love of adventure, or, possibly, the stray glances of some forest maiden, may all be assumed as good and sufficient reasons, to set a warm heart wandering, and provoke wild impulses in the blood of one, by nature impetuous enough, and, by education, very much the master of his own will. With a proud heart, hopeful of all things if thoughtless of any, as noble a steed as ever shook a sable mane over a sunny prairie, and enough money, liberally calculated, to permit an occasional extravagance, whether in excess or charity, I set out one sunny winter's morning from Leaside, our family place, carrying with me the tearful blessings of my mother, and as kind a farewell from my father, as could decently comport with the undisguised displeasure with which he had encountered the first expression of my wish to go abroad. Well might he disapprove of a determination which was so utterly without an object. But our discussion on this point need not be resumed. Enough, that, if “my path was all before me,” I was utterly without a guide. It was, besides, my purpose to go where there were few if any paths; regions as wild as they were pathless; among strange tribes and races; about whose erring and impulsive natures we now and then heard such tales of terror, and of wonder, as carried us back to the most venerable periods of feudal history, and seemed to promise us a full return and realization of their strangest and saddest legends. Of stories such as these, the boy sees only the wild and picturesque as pects,—such as are beautiful with a startling beauty—such as impress his imagination rather than his thoughts, and presenting the truth to his eyes through the medium of his fancies, divest it of whatever is coarse, or cold, or cruel, in its composition. It was thus that I had heard of these things, and thus that, instead of repelling, as they would have done, robbed of that charm of distance which equally beautifies in the moral as in the natural world, they invited my footsteps, and seduced me from the more appropriate domestic world in which my lot had been cast.
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223Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Add
 Title:  Father Abbot, or, The home tourist  
 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 members of the Monastery—our merry Monks of the Moon—had accomplished a third rubber of whist, when it was perceptible that a general cloud of gravity—it would be irreverent to call it dulness—had fallen upon the assembly. Our excellent Father Abbot himself was detected in a most expansive yawn, showing an extremity of condition such as had never befallen him before. We had our Jester, but he failed, in a laboured effort, to provoke the merriment of the order at the expense of our venerable head; and we were fast sinking into that state of collapse, which betokens dissolution and departure in social as in human bodies, when our excellent Father Abbot startled the brotherhood into sudden vitality, by an exclamation as unnatural in his case as it was uncongenial with the faith professed by the fraternity.
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224Author:  Simms William Gilmore 1806-1870Add
 Title:  The lily and the totem, or, The Huguenots in Florida  
 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 Huguenots, in plain terms, were the Protestants of France. They were a sect which rose very soon after the preaching of the Reformation had passed from Germany into the neighboring countries. In France, they first excited the apprehensions and provoked the hostility of the Roman Catholic priesthood, during the reign of Francis the First. This prince, unstable as water, and governed rather by his humors and caprices than by any fixed principles of conduct—wanting, perhaps, equally in head and heart—showed himself, in the outset of his career, rather friendly to the reformers. But they were soon destined to suffer, with more decided favorites, from the caprices of his despotism. He subsequently became one of their most cruel persecutors. The Huguenots were not originally known by this name. It does not appear to have been one of their own choosing. It was the name which distinguished them in the days of their persecution. Though frequently the subject of conjecture, its origin is very doubtful. Montlue, the Marshal, whose position at the time, and whose interests in the subject of religion were such as might have enabled him to know quite as well as any other person, confesses that the source and meaning of the appellation were unknown. It is suggested that the name was taken from the tower of one Hugon, or Hugo, at Tours, where the Protestants were in the habit of assembling secretly for worship. This, by many, is assumed to be the true origin of the word. But there are numerous etymologies besides, from which the reader may make his selection,—all more or less plausibly contended for by the commentators. The commencement of a petition to the Cardinal Lorraine—“Huc nos venimus, serenissime princeps, &c.,” furnishes a suggestion to one set of writers. Another finds in the words “Heus quenaus,” which, in the Swiss patois, signify “seditious fellows,” conclusive evidence of the thing for which he seeks. Heghenen or Huguenen, a Flemish word, which means Puritans, or Cathari, is reasonably urged by Caseneuve, as the true authority; while Verdier tells us that they were so called from their being the apes or followers of John Hus—“les guenons de Hus;”—guenon being a young ape. This is ingenious enough without being complimentary. The etymology most generally received, according to Mr. Browning, (History of the Huguenots,) is that which ascribes the origin of the name to “the word Eignot, derived from the German Eidegenossen, q. e. federati. A party thus designated existed at Geneva; and it is highly probable that the French Protestants would adopt a term so applicable to themselves.” There are, however, sundry other etymologies, all of which seem equally plausible; but these will suffice, at least, to increase the difficulties of conjecture. Either will answer, since the name by which the child is christened is never expected to foreshadow his future character, or determine his career. The name of the Huguenots was probably bestowed by the enemies of the sect. It is in all likelihood a term of opprobrium or contempt. It will not materially concern us, in the scheme of the present performance, that we should reach any definite conclusion on this point. Their European history must be read in other volumes. Ours is but the American episode in their sad and protracted struggle with their foes and fortune. Unhappily, for present inquiry, this portion of their history attracted but too little the attention of the parent country. We are told of colonies in America, and of their disastrous termination, but the details are meagre, touched by the chronicler with a slight and careless hand; and, but for the striking outline of the narrative,—the leading and prominent events which compelled record,—it is one that we should pass without comment, and with no awakening curiosity. But the few terrible particulars which remain to us in the ancient summary, are of a kind to reward inquiry, and command the most active sympathies; and the melancholy outline of the Huguenots' progress, in the New World, exhibits features of trial, strength and suffering, which render their career equally unique in both countries;—a dark and bloody history, involving details of strife, of enterprise, and sorrow, which denied them the securities of home in the parent land, and even the most miserable refuge from persecution in the wildernesses of a savage empire. Their European fortunes are amply developed in all the European chronicles. Our narrative relates wholly to those portions of their history which belong to America.
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225Author:  Smith Richard Penn 1799-1854Add
 Title:  The forsaken  
 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 American prisoners were confined in the Walnut street jail, and, as if in mockery, even the very building in which the declaration of independence was proclaimed, was also converted into a prison house. Joy was again in the camp of the invader, and `grim-visaged war had smoothed his wrinkled front, and capered nimbly in a lady's chamber.'
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226Author:  Smith Richard Penn 1799-1854Add
 Title:  The actress of Padua, and other tales  
 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 
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227Author:  Smith Richard Penn 1799-1854Add
 Title:  The actress of Padua, and other tales  
 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 year 1812, shortly after the declaration of war with Great Britain, I made an excursion, partly on business, partly of pleasure, into that beautiful and romantic section of Pennsylvania, which lies along its north-eastern boundary. One morning, while pursuing my journey, I heard at a distance the sound of martial music, which gradually became more distinct as I ascended the Blue Ridge, and seemed to proceed from a humble village, situated in the deep valley beneath, on the bank of the Delaware. Nothing could exceed the splendour of the scene that lay below. The sun was just rising; his first beams were gradually stealing through the break or gap in the distant mountains, which seems to have been burst open by the force of the torrent; and as they gilded the dark green foliage of the wilderness, presented a view which might well awaken the genius of art, and the speculations of science, but was far too pure to be estimated by those, whose taste had been corrupted by admiration of the feeble skill of man. Circumstances that it is impossible for me to explain to-day, compel me to postpone our union for the present, and perhaps forever. If I have any influence over you, pray suspend your visits at Singleton Hall, until such time as I may deem it prudent to recall you.
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228Author:  Smith Seba 1792-1868Add
 Title:  The life and writings of Major Jack Downing of Downingville  
 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: When we read about great men, we always want to know something about the place where they live; therefore I shall begin my history with a short account of Downingville, the place where I was born and brought up.
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229Author:  Smith Seba 1792-1868Add
 Title:  The select letters of Major Jack Downing  
 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 
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230Author:  Smith Seba 1792-1868Add
 Title:  May-day in New York, or, House-hunting and moving  
 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: Dear Aunt:—I s'pose you begin to think by this time it's a good while since I writ to you; but the truth is, any body might as well try to write a letter in a hornet's nest as to try to write one in New York any time for a month before the first of May, especially if they live in a hired house and expect to have to move when May-day comes round; and that I take it is the case with jest about one half the New Yorkers about every year. It's an awful custom, and where it come from I can't find out; but it has used me up worse than building forty rods of stone wall, or chopping down ten acres of trees. I haint had my clothes off for a week, and I haint had a quiet night's rest for a month; and the way my bones have ached would be enough to make a horse cry his eyes out.
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231Author:  Snelling William Joseph 1804-1848Add
 Title:  Tales of the Northwest, or, Sketches of Indian life and character  
 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: We read with admiration how Curtius rode into the gulf in the Forum, to save his country, amidst the shouts and applauses of surrounding thousands; but when a poor, ignorant savage, rather than do violence to his own rude notions of honor, awaits a fate that he believes inevitable, in sadness and silence, without the sympathy of an individual, or any of the circumstances that spurred the Roman to a glorious death, we think no more of it, and the story is soon forgotten.
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232Author:  Stowe Harriet Beecher 1811-1896Add
 Title:  The Mayflower, or, Sketches of scenes and characters among the descendants of the Pilgrims  
 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: How many kinds of beauty there are! How many even in the human form! There is the bloom and motion of childhood, the freshness and ripe perfection of youth, the dignity of manhood, the softness of woman—all different, yet each in its kind perfect.
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233Author:  Thomas Frederick William 1806-1866Add
 Title:  Clinton Bradshaw, or, The adventures of a lawyer  
 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: Near the court house, in one of our principal cities, (the especial whereabout and name, for certain reasons, we must leave to the sagacity of our readers,) in an autumnal evening, about eight o'clock, or after, not many years since, a young gentleman might have been seen walking in rather a quick step, like one who felt himself in somewhat of a hurry. On reaching the door of what appeared to be a lawyer's office, he rapped quickly against it with a leaden-headed rattan, such as were then, and are now, much the fashion. “Come in,” said a voice, from the upper story of the building, from the window of which a light shone forth into the street.
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234Author:  Thomas Frederick William 1806-1866Add
 Title:  Clinton Bradshaw, or, The adventures of a lawyer  
 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 
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235Author:  Thomas Frederick William 1806-1866Add
 Title:  East and west  
 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: “Jerry! Jeremiah, I say!” exclaimed an old man, standing at the head of his cellar door, and stooping down so as to command the view of as much of his subterranean premises as his situation would permit, and his spectacles would allow him to take by peering over them, for they qualified him to read better, but not to see farther. “Jeremiah!” he continued at the top of his voice, and then in a lower tone he added to himself, impatiently, “The black dolt is as deaf as—” when he was interrupted by Jerry, who stuttered whenever he attempted to speak quickly.
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236Author:  Thomas Frederick William 1806-1866Add
 Title:  East and west  
 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: We must shift the scene of our story like those of the drama, to the whereabout of our different characters. Not long after the Lormans had settled in their new home, Mr. Bennington, senior, left Perryville, to attend the sitting of Congress. Mr. Taylor Davidson, a south-western planter, who had land claims that required his presence in Washington city, and who was a friend of Mr. Bennington, had been spending some weeks with him at Perryville, on his way up the Ohio, awaiting Mr. Bennington's departure, that they might proceed together. During Mr. Davidson's stay in Perryville, he had made the acquaintance of the Lormans, and had heard Ruth talk a great deal about Helen Murray, from whom she had received several letters, portions of which she had read to him. Mr. Davidson was a single man, and would be pronounced by a very young lady, one for instance just “coming out,” as most decidedly on the list of old bachelors; a lady of Miss Judson's age might not think so. Mr. Davidson was a high-minded, chivalrous southerner, who in his youth had been in the army, and had served with honour in our late war with Great Britain. On the death of his brother, who had left him a handsome fortune, he had travelled extensively in Europe, and on his return, purchased a plantation and slaves on the banks of the Mississippi, where he had resided since, and accumulated an immense fortune. He wore his age well, and was a fine-looking man, with a gentlemanly and distinguished bearing. He was forcibly impressed with the wit, vivacity, friendliness, and worldly knowledge of those portions of Helen's letters, which Ruth read to him, and he laughing said to her:
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237Author:  Thomas Frederick William 1806-1866Add
 Title:  Howard Pinckney  
 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: “Ah, whither away, Fitzhurst?” said Colonel Bentley to his friend as they met in a fashionable street of a certain gay metropolis; “you step as if you were carrying your skirts from a rascally bailiff, and that's more in character with me than with you.”
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238Author:  Thomas Frederick William 1806-1866Add
 Title:  Howard Pinckney  
 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: Punctual to her promise, Nurse Agnes, or as she was commonly called, Aunt Agnes, visited Granny Gammon on the ensuing day. Agnes thought the old crone very ill; so much so that she determined to remain with her. It was the first day of the fall races; and Bobby, with the assistance of Pompey, who had laid up the odd change which his master and others had given him, had established a booth on the ground for the double purpose of seeing the sport of which he was passionately fond, notwithstanding the injury he had received in indulging in it, and at the same time of making a little money.
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239Author:  Thomas Frederick William 1806-1866Add
 Title:  Sketches of character, and tales founded on fact  
 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 
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240Author:  Thompson Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce) 1795-1868Add
 Title:  May Martin, or, The money diggers  
 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 one of those rough and secluded towns, situated in the heart of the Green Mountains, is a picturesque little valley, containing, perhaps, something over two thousand acres of improvable land, formerly known in that section of the country by the appallation of The Harwood Settlement, so called from the name of the original proprietor of the valley. As if formed by some giant hand, literally scooping out the solid mountain and moulding it into shape and proportion, the whole valley presents the exact resemblance of an oval basin whose sides are composed of a continuous ridge of lofty hills bordering it around, and broken only by two narrow outlets at its northerly and southerly extremities. The eastern part of this valley is covered by one of those transparent ponds, which are so beautifully characteristic of Vermontane scenery, laying in the form of a crescent, and extending along beneath the closely encircling mountains on the east nearly the whole length of the interior landscape, forever mirroring up from its darkly bright surface, faintly or vividly, as cloud or sunshine may prevail, the motley groups of the sombre forest, where the more slender and softer tinted beech and maple seem struggling for a place among the rough and shaggy forms of the sturdy hemlock, peering head over head, up the steeply ascending cliffs of the woody precipice. While here and there, at distant intervals, towering high over all, stands the princely pine, waving its majestic head in solitary grandeur, a striking but melancholy type of the aboriginal A* Indian still occasionally found lingering among us, the only remaining representative of a once powerful race, which have receded before the march of civilized men, now destined no more to flourish the lords of the plain and the mountain. This pond discharges its surplus waters at its southern extremity in a pure stream of considerable size, which here, as if in wild glee at its escape from the embrace of its parent waters, leaps at once, from a state of the most unruffled tranquility, over a ledgy barrier, and, with noisy reverberations, goes bounding along from cliff to cliff, in a series of romantic cascades, down a deep ravine, till the lessening echoes are lost in the sinuosities of the outlet of the valley. From the western shore of this sheet of water the land rises in gentle undulations, and with a gradual ascent, back to the foot of the mountains, which here, as on every other side, rear their ever-green summits to the clouds, standing around this vast fortress of nature as huge centinels posted along the lofty outworks to battle with the careering hurricanes that burst in fury on their immovable sides, and arrest and receive on their own unscathed heads the shafts of the lightning descending for its victims to the valley below, while they cheerily bandy from side to side the voicy echoes of the thunderpeal with their mighty brethren of the opposite rampart.
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