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D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

1, 8, AND 5 BOND STREET.

PS1400
.E73

v.23

81/3,24

Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by

W. A. TOWNSEND & COMPANY,

Ir the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York

PREFACE.

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Ir was a bold attempt to lay the scene of a work like this on the coast of America. We have had our Buccaneers on the water, and our Witches on the land, but we believe this is the first occasion on which the rule has been reversed. After an experience that has now lasted more than twenty years, the result has shown that the public prefer the original order of things. In other words, the book has proved a comparative failure.

The facts of this country are all so recent, and so familiar, that every innovation on them, by means of the imagination, is coldly received, if it be not absolutely frowned upon. Perhaps it would have been safer to have written a work of this character without a reference to any particular locality. The few local allusions that are introduced, are not essential to the plot, and might have been dispensed with without lessening the interest of the tale.

Nevertheless, this is probably the most imaginative book ever written by the author. Its fault is in blending too much of the real with the purely ideal. Halfway measures will not do in matters of this sort; and it is always safer to preserve the identity of a book by a fixed and determinate character, than to make the effort to steer between the true and the false.

Several liberties have been taken with the usages of the colony, with a view to give zest to the descriptions. If the Dutch of this country ever resorted to the common practice of Holland, in giving such names as the "Lust in Rust" to their villas, it has not only passed out of sight, but out of mind. In the other country, as one moves along the canals, he sees names of this character, painted on different objects, every mile he advances, and admires the contentment which is satisfied with a summer-house, a pipe, a canal, a meadow that is almost under water, and, indeed, with a country that is what seamen term awash." But nothing of this sort was ever seen here. The fine natural scenery forbade it; and a villa on the banks of the Hudson was a residence that possessed in itself advantages to set at naught such small contrivances of luxury.

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Some persons may object to the manner in which we have sketched the conduct and character of Cornbury. We believe, however, that the truth is not exceeded in any thing said of this individual, who would seem to have had neither dignity, self-respect, nor principles. The fact that he remained in this country a prisoner for debt, is historical, his creditors most probably

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