Thaddeus of Warsaw | Page 7

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."
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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 for that which is to come."
JANE PORTER.
BRISTOL, November, 1844.

CONTENTS.
I. II. The Mill of Mariemont. III. The Opening of the Campaign. IV. The Pass of Volunna. V. The Banks of the Vistula. VI. Society in Poland. VII. The Diet of Poland. VIII. Battle of Brzesc--The Tenth of October. IX. The Last Days of Villanow. X. Sobieski's Departure from Warsaw. XI. The Baltic. XII. Thaddeus's First Day in England. XIII. The Exile's Lodgings. XIV. A Robbery and