University of Virginia Library

In the publication of this work, I cannot plead
in extenuation, a single one of the excuses usual
for modest or polite authors on such occasions.
Neither the request of a select circle of admiring
friends, the wish to afford amusement merely for
an idle hour, the aprobation of any board of all-sufficient
critics, or the simple desire to gratify
a childish whim for notoriety, which all men have
felt and men will feel to the end of time, can
be offered by me in melioration of the sin of publicity.

What I have written, I have written, and once
written I am determined to give to the public,
unaccompanied by the familiar softenings of criticism,
which most authors see fit to bestow on
their readers.

I cannot say that my work was written merely
to while away or amuse an idle hour. I cannot
say that it was thrown off in a hurry, while I
sipped my coffee, in the moments of scanty leisure;
nor can I soften the blow of the critic, by assuring
him that it is the first production of one unaccustomed
to literary effort. Much have I written;
though this work is the first I ever gave to the
public.

I do not let this work pass from my hands
without some emotion. It has been my companion
for three long years. In sickness and in
pain—in worse than either sickness or pain—it
has linked me to life, and cheered the gloomiest
hours that ever darkened my experience of the
world's goodness and faith, its honor to the orphan,
its friendship to the friendless.

I might picture to you the circumstances under
which each chapter of the book was written, the
scene which surrounded the author, and it is probable
you would think an interesting romance of
real life, or modern life, might be interwoven with
the story, were I to describe such circumstances,
or picture such scenes, immediately after each
successive chapter of this work of the olden time.

But it is needless. My case is the case, and
will be the case of thousands, and tens of thousands
whom orphanage and wrong, have forced
to try the world—its pulses of feeling for the
friendless, its perfect honor, and its unspotted faith.

Suffice it then to say that this story has been
carefully and slowly written. Suffice it to say
that the author entered into the broad field of olden
time romance with no unpractised pen, that
the scenes he pictures, the feelings he delineates,
the passions he portrays, tho' perhaps in some dedegree
colored by his own experience, are in the
broadest and most general sense, the scenes, the
feelings, the passions of the Gothic Age, as well
as attempted delineations of the heart of MAN in
every age, however modified by country, circumstance
or time.

The Fanatic of the nineteenth century, whom

a particular construction of the best of all books,
leads to the stern belief that the end of all things
is at hand, while the revelation of this belief to
the mass, produces insanity, suicide and death,
makes many a happy home desolate, and plants
one wan and ghastly fear in the heart, which
hitherto nourished thoughts of God's mercy, and
beneficence alone—this fanatic may find his ante-type
in the Scholar of the Gothic Age, whom
a fixed belief in a wild phantom of the brain, lured
on, over the bodies of the dead, his own beloved,
and best loved, toward the final accomplishment
of his dream of immortallife on earth.

The Spirit of a Revenge that never slacks
nor falters, that overleaps all obstacles, makes a
mock of all horrors, laughs at the customs of men
and the laws of society; that revenge which aroused
by the violation of female honor, has within
the memory of all who read these lines, laid its
victim down in the ghastliness of a sudden and
bloody death, low as the earth he had trodden
but a few moments before, is here shadowed in the
life of Albertine the Monk.

The true woman, whose heart is the wellspring
of vivid hopes, and dream-like joys, whose
soul calm and peaceful in the sunshine, becomes
possessed of stern resolution and fearful determination
in the hour of storm and difficulty, may find
some reflection of her heart and soul in the character
of the Ladye Annabel.

Who will say that the POLITICIAN OF OUR OWN
TIME, most truckling when in search of power,
most arrogant when his ambition is gratified, a
thing made up of little vanities and smaller hatreds,
most powerless at the time when he dreams
he is gifted with omnipotence, who will say that
this creature is not in some measure portrayed in
the Tyrant Duke of Florence? Petty tyrants
are the same `to-day, yesterday and forever.'

The characters of Adrian, Guiseppo, Sir
Geoffrey O' Th' Longsword, may all serve to
picture the strange mysteries of the human heart,
when influenced by circumstances, most fearful,
most appaling in their very nature, while the
Yeoman Soldier of our own Revolution, may
find his comrade in Robin the Rough, at once
the soldier, the man of common sense, and the
rugged friend of the Lord and Ladye of the romance.

The Mason, or the antagonist of his order,
will discover the original purpose, the end and the
power of Secret Institutions, delineated in the
history of the “Order of the Monks of the Holy
Steel,” ever the first to strike for the people, ever
the first to avenge wrong and misrule, invisible
yet possessed of more than human might in all
the works of vengeance.

You will observe, my dear friend, that in the
attempt to delineate the manners and the customs
of the past age, I have chosen for illustration
subjects whose very nature is fraught with the
terrible, the mysterious, and the sublime. I have
endeavored to illustrate the punishments of the
Gothic Age—the slow and lingering death of the
Wheel, the Death by Famine, by Fire, and by the
sudden descent from the tall precipice, or beetling
cliff. The doom awarded only to the most fearful
and inhuman crimes, the Death by Wild Horses,
never to my knowledge described in a Romance
before, I have introduced into the pages of my work.
The friends of sanguinary Capital Punishment can
have their taste for slaughter gratified to the full,
in the very idea of the terrible doom, apart from
any merit which my description may possess.

With regard to the historical fact contained in
this work, let me sum up all I have to say in a
few brief words. In the year 1840, an aged friend
who had travelled much on the Continent of Europe,
placed in my hands a curious work, or perhaps
collection of works, which he gathered from
the archives of a convent near Florence. Now
written in bold and rugged old English, now in a
barbarous and corrupt Italian, the MSS. professed
to be a true and correct Chronicle of the crimes-glory
and grandeur of an Ancient noble House
whose castle in ruins still remains near the city
of Florence. It professed to be written by one
Eric the Norman, or as it was rendered into
Italian Ericci Il Normani, who flourished in the
days of the Chronicle. The MSS. were not combined
in one general story, but divided into separate
narratives, such as “The wondrous historie
of Adrian of Albarone,”—“The True and Veracious
account of the Life of Aldarin the Alchemist;”
“The Beauty and Truth of Woman, being a
historie of the famed Ladye Annabel,” “The
strange Chronicle of Albertine the Monk,” &c. &c
The MSS. bore the general title—

With the aid of my aged friend, I rendered the

entire MSS. into English, and selected the thread
of my story from its mass of incident, all contained
in one-fourth the space of the present work.

I will conclude this branch of my letter with
one remark—The probability of the facts of my
work, the authenticity of the names, the veracity
of the incidents, as well as the responsibility of
some of the sentiments insinuated in the Novel,
rest not with me, but with the “Chronicler of the
Ancient MSS.”

And now, my friend, tried, tested and valued,
allow me to repeat the Dedication of this Work,
which I inscribe with your name, as a mark of
the esteem for your heart and intellect, your sincerity
of purpose and manliness of soul, entertained
by one who ever desires to remain as at
present, your freind, the