Thirty Years Ago

PREFACE.

I PROFESS to give my readers a novel. That is, something new. And I will give them something new; notwithstanding we are truly told that "there is nothing new under the sun"-and it might be added, neither is the sun new.

These seeming contradictions are perhaps thus to be reconciled: that although all is old-in nature a mere repetition of a rising sun in the east and a setting sun in the west-a spring, a summer, an autumn, and a winter, going their rounds yearly, in most habitable countries; and that, in literature, it is "a pouring out of one vessel into another :"-yet, as the successive generation of individuals, or nations, come into existence, that, which is of itself old, is to them new.

Nay, to the same individual, that sun, so often seen, is daily varied by situation in the firmament, and presents every hour a new face, as the mist or the cloud changes the medium through which we behold him: so the landscape, although seen every day, is never the same, either in appearance or reality. The truths or falsehoods of literature, although the same materials may be apparently poured from "one vessel into another," produce novelty by the mixture; for each operator has a different mode of mingling the ingredients

of the chalice, and the materials themselves are sometimes chemically changed, as it were, into something unknown before. Thus although all is old; all is new, in some degree, to every one; and to the uninstructed in the full extent.

So much to prove that a novel may be new-now to show that although it is a fiction, it may be true.

A novel is in its very nature a falsehood; yet if its author has the welfare of his fellow-creatures at heart, its substance and essence will be truth.

A Fable has been defined, "a feigned story intended to enforce some precept;" and a parable is said to be 66 a relation under which something else is feigned.” But they are the same. They are both feigned stories, which ought to enforce truth: they are both "relations under which something else is feigned." And such is a novel.

The author of the best code of moral law presented to man, taught many of his precepts by parables. He knew that he must attract and hold the attention, before he could instruct.

A learned Divine once said, "When I see my congregation inclined to sleep, which sometimes happens of an afternoon, I could wish to read a novel to them instead of a sermon. Or, almost, to see a stage erected in my church, and a 'Morality' enacted, to awaken them to the truths I am in vain presenting from the pulpit." We learn from this, that the exertion of intellect necessary for receiving instruction is easier made when fasting than full-or, at least, that temperance facilitates thought.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

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