Thaddeus of Warsaw | Page 7

truth and honor were
massacred; but such narratives, though they never can be forgotten, are
too direful for the hearer to contemplate in memory.
Therefore, when I sought to represent the mental and moral contest of
man with himself, or with his fellow-men, I did not look for their field
amongst human monsters, but with natural and civilized man; inasmuch
as he is seen to be influenced by the impulses of his selfish
passions--ambition, covetousness, and the vanities of life, or, on the
opposite side, by the generous amenities of true disinterestedness, in all
its trying situations; and, as I have said, the recent struggle in Poland, to
maintain her laws and loyal independence, against the combined
aggressions of the three most powerful states in Europe, seemed to
afford me the most suitable objects for my moral aim, to interest by
sympathy, while it taught the responsible commission of human life.

I have now described the plan of my story, its aim and origin.
If it be disapproved, let it be at once laid aside; but should it excite any
interest, I pray its perusal may be accompanied with an indulgent
candor, its subjects being of so new, and therefore uncustomary, a
character in a work of the kind. But if the reader be one of my own sex,
I would especially solicit her patience while going through the first
portion of the tale, its author being aware that war and politics are not
the most promising themes for an agreeable amusement; but the battles
are not frequent, nor do the cabinet councils last long. I beg the favor, if
the story is to be read at all, that no scene may be passed over as
extraneous, for though it begin like a state-paper, or a sermon, it always
terminates by casting some new light on the portrait of the hero.
Beyond those events of peril and of patriotic devotedness, the
remainder of the pages dwell generally with domestic interests; but if
the reader do not approach them regularly through the development of
character opened in the preceding troubled field, what they exhibit will
seem a mere wilderness of incidents, without interest or end; indeed I
have designed nothing in the personages of this narrative out of the way
of living experience. I have sketched no virtue that I have not seen, nor
painted any folly from imagination. I have endeavored to be as faithful
to reality in my pictures of domestic morals, and of heroic duties, as a
just painter would seek to be to the existing objects of nature,
"wonderful and wild, or of gentlest beauty!" and on these grounds I
have steadily attempted to inculcate "that virtue is the highest proof of
understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness; that vice is the
natural consequence of grovelling thoughts, which begin in mistake and
end in ignominy."
* * * * * * *

POSTCRIPT TO A SUBSEQUENT EDITION.
After so many intervening years have passed since the author of
Thaddeus of Warsaw wrote the foregoing preface, to introduce a work
so novel in its character to the notice and candid judgment of the

British public, it was her intention to take the present occasion of its
now perfectly new republication, at the distance of above forty years
from its earliest appearance and so continued editions, to express her
grateful sense of that public's gratifying sympathies and honoring
testimonies of approbation, from its author's youth to age; but even in
the hour she sits down to perform the gracious task, she feels a present
incapability to undertake it. The very attempt has too sensibly recalled
to her heart events that have befallen her since she lived amongst the
models of her tale; and she has also more recently been in many of the
places it describes; and circumstances, both of joys and sorrows, having
occurred to her there to influence the whole future current of her mortal
life, she finds it impossible to yet touch on those times and scenes
connected with the subjects of her happy youth, which would now only
reverberate notes of sadness it is her duty to repress. Hence, though
while revising the work itself she experiences a calm delight in the
occupation, being a kind of parting duty, also, to the descendants of her
earliest, readers, she would rather defer any little elucidations she may
have met with regarding the objects of her pen to a few pages in the
form of an Appendix at the end of the work; all, indeed, bringing her
observations, whether by weal or woe, to the one great and guiding
conclusion. "Man is formed for two states of existence--a mortal and an
immortal being;" in the Holy Scriptures authoritatively declared, "For
the life that now is, and