Thaddeus of Warsaw | Page 2

language that the authoress
was honored with being made a lady of the
Chapter of
St. Joachim, and received the gold cross of the order from
Wirtemburg.]
"Thaddeus of Warsaw" being the first essay, in the form of such an
association between fact and fancy, was published by its author with a
natural apprehension of its reception by the critical part of the public.
She had not, indeed, written it with any view to publication, but from
an almost resistless impulse to embody the ideas and impressions with
which her heart and mind were then full. It was written in her earliest
youth; dictated by a fervent sympathy with calamities which had
scarcely ceased to exist, and which her eager pen sought to portray; and
it was given to the world, or rather to those who might feel with her,
with all the simple-hearted enthusiasm which saw no impediment when
a tale of virtue or of pity was to be told.
In looking back through the avenue of life to that time, what events
have occurred, public and private, to the countries and to the
individuals named in that tale! to persons of even as lofty names and
excellences, of our own and other lands, who were mutually affected
with me in admiration and regret for the virtues and the sorrows

described! In sitting down now to my retrospective task, I find myself
writing this, my second preface to the story of "Thaddeus of Warsaw,"
just thirty years from the date of its first publication. Then, I wrote
when the struggle for the birthright independence of Poland was no
more; when she lay in her ashes, and her heroes in their wounds; when
the pall of death spread over the whole country, and her widows and
orphans travelled afar.
In the days of my almost childhood,--that is, eight years before I dipped
my pen in their tears,--I remember seeing many of those hapless
refugees wandering about St. James's Park. They had sad companions
in the like miseries, though from different enemies, in the emigrants
from France; and memory can never forget the variety of wretched yet
noble-looking visages I then contemplated in the daily walks which my
mother's own little family group were accustomed to take there. One
person, a gaunt figure, with melancholy and bravery stamped on his
emaciated features, is often present to the recollection of us all. He was
clad in a threadbare blue uniform great coat, with a black stock, a rusty
old hat, pulled rather over his eyes; his hands without gloves; but his
aspect was that of a perfect gentleman, and his step that of a military
man. We saw him constantly at one hour, in the middle walk of the
Mall, and always alone; never looking to the right nor to the left, but
straight on; with an unmoving countenance, and a pace which told that
his thoughts were those of a homeless and hopeless man--hopeless, at
least, of all that life might bring him. On, on he went to the end of the
Mall; turned again, and on again; and so he continued to do always, as
long as we remained spectators of his solitary walk: once, indeed, we
saw him crossing into St. Martin's Lane. Nobody seemed to know him,
for he spoke to none; and no person ever addressed him, though many,
like ourselves, looked at him, and stopped in the path to gaze after him.
We often longed to be rich, to follow him wherever his wretched abode
might have been, and then silently to send comforts to him from hands
he knew not of. We used to call him, when speaking of him to
ourselves, _Il Penseroso;_ and by that name we yet not unfrequently
talk of him to each other, and never without recurrence to the very
painful, because unavailing, sympathy we then felt for that apparently
friendless man. Such sympathy is, indeed, right; for it is one of the

secondary means by which Providence conducts the stream of his
mercies to those who need the succor of their fellow-creatures; and we
cannot doubt that, though the agency of such Providence was not to be
in our hands, there were those who had both the will and the power
given, and did not, like ourselves, turn and pity that interesting
emigrant in vain.
Some time after this, General Kosciusko, the justly celebrated hero of
Poland, came to England, on his way to the United States; having been
released from his close imprisonment in Russia, and in the noblest
manner, too, by the Emperor Paul, immediately on his accession to the
throne. His arrival caused a great sensation in London, and many of the
first characters of the times pressed forward to pay their respects to
such real patriotic virtue