University of Virginia Library

PREFACE.

The design of this book will plainly appear from the
most cursory perusal. The writer can only trust that
the curiosity to discover its true intent and meaning
may be universal.

That strange Virginia of 1765, with its passions,
humors, and anomalies of every description, afforded a
broad field for dramatic narrative, and the author has
endeavored to embody some of its peculiarities in this
rapid and shifting panorama. The period was one
of transition. England was attacking—the Colonies
were resisting. The Stamp Act hung over America
like a gathering cloud, and men's minds were agitated
by the breath of a coming storm—that storm which
was to swell into the hurricane of the Revolution.

But the aim of this book is scarcely to follow the
course of public events, or reflect the political spirit of
the period. True, many pages are dedicated to that
great agitator of ideas, who more than any other single
man, aroused the tornado; and those intellectual
giants who stood shoulder to shoulder in the after-struggle
once or twice appear. But these men of
whom history has spoken so clearly, are not the real
personages of the narrative—and the writer has indeed
scarcely named them. The historic muse was far too
noble to be invoked on such an occasion; and the simple
design he proposed to himself was a rapid delineation
of some social peculiarities in their passionate and
humorous development. The merely passionate, however,
yields to the bright and hopeful—and if the Chorus
sings of far-away events, when the real narrative
is ended the song is not a bitter song, as the tears of
the singers are not bitter tears—rather of hope and
joy. Every where the writer has endeavored to preserve
the traits of the period, and above all to make
his characters flesh and blood. A herculean labor!
For surely it is no slight task to accurately delineate
that wonderful machine called man, made up of such
innumerable wheels and levers—some of them too ponderous
for a giant to move, others so minute that the
little finger of a child may shatter them. The summits

of Art rise to view often as the poor writer passes
onward; but only the Titans—Shakspeare and the
rest—can scale them.

But to descend from these generalities. The author's
wish was simply to depict some Virginia scenes
and personages ten years before the Revolution. He
trusts his picture is at least truthful, as far as it extends.
If some pages are painful and bitter, more, he
trusts, are bright and hopeful, as life is, with all its sufferings
and trials. If the dissection of that impulsive
and fiery nature, the incidents of whose wild career
absorb the greater portion of the first part, is unpleasant;
the author indulges the hope, that in the jovial
utterances of the worthy soldier, and in the songs and
laughter of another personage—a child—the reader
may find something more agreeable. That child is
scarcely a figment of the imagination. Every man
must have been thrown in contact at some time with
one of these pure and tender creatures, who, like stars,
hover long above the rosy fields of youth, and seem to
fill the air with the gay music of their laughter and
the radiance of their eyes.

One word more. In the sketch of the parson of
the Established Church first introduced, the writer
has endeavored to preserve the fidelity of history with
the most sedulous care. Here, as on all important occasions,

imagination has yielded to history: fancy, to
recorded fact. That hundreds of such men were sent
to Virginia to act as spiritual guides to our ancestors,
there can, unhappily, be no reason to doubt. So far
from the sketch in this history being a mere caricature,
the writer could bring, were he disposed to clog
the narrative with notes, the most irrefragable records,
to support the assertion that the picture is much less
harsh than he had the right to make it. He has no
desire to cast odium on that former church, by depicting
one of her unworthy followers—God forbid. Did
he not feel perfectly well convinced that the sketch
was truthful—if any thing, too favorable—he would
erase every line. Unhappily, the church was cursed
with just such men, and she suffered. The blot was
ere long removed, however, and with it those other excrescences
which lowered her standing and diminished
her usefulness. It was a source of real regret, that the
length to which the narrative had extended, rendered
it impossible for the writer to give that prominence to
the true follower, which he has accorded to the false.
But it is difficult to introduce a new thread into the
tangled web of a narrative dealing with so many personages,
and this must be his excuse.

Every book should be judged, first for its purity
and healthfulness: afterwards for what it contains of

novel character, incident, or idea. The writer trusts
that in the first particular these pages are irreproachable:
he is too well aware of his deficiencies on the remaining
point.

But the subject does not suffer:—the field remains.
Some day that strange past will attract the eye of the
man who will possess the intellect to master its ideas
—the heart to comprehend its spirit and interpret its
mystery. When that day comes, the world will have
a volume which will live for ever—a book in which the
Revolution will speak in its grand, eloquent voice of
thunder, lightning, and tempest. When that day
comes, as it will, the master-mind may possibly find in
these poor pages of the obscure writer of to-day, some
hint to arouse his genius—some word may set his
thoughts in motion.

If this hope should be fulfilled, the book now offered
to the world will not have been written wholly
in vain.