PREFACE.
The most improbable features of the following
story, viz., the leading incident and the career of
Clairmont, are founded on fact. The author has
availed himself of the license allotted to writers of
fiction, and transformed character at pleasure, particularly
that of the young lady on whose most
mysterious fate the story is founded. He has not
bound himself to a delineation of society as it existed
at the period of the real occurrence, which
took place many years since in New-York; nor
does he profess to have grasped the more noble
materials which the higher circles of his country at
this moment offer to the novelist; but he has rather
sketched, perhaps with a somewhat mischievous
hand, certain peculiarities adapted to his purpose.
He frankly bespeaks the indulgence of all the sapient
and solemn critics.
The art of novel-writing, however long associated
with heart-broken boarding-school girls and sentimental
chambermaids, is now as dignified as that
of Canova, Mozart, or Raphael. In learning to
arrange a succession of heavenly sounds, to imbody
sweet shapes in marble, to breathe fervid beauty on
the easel, how many an inspired genius has devoted
all his hours. Is it not as exalted a study to
copy from the great world those “infinite doings”
of the mind and heart which make up the material
of human existence?
That the writer has succeeded in accomplishing
this, he dares not hope. As an humble student,
and peradventure with a feeble hand, he has thrown
his groupings upon the canvass, and now, like the
boy painter in the “Disowned,” stands concealed
behind the curtain, to hear, perhaps, some erudite
Sir Joshua say—“He had better burn it!”
