e mortal, and the phenomena that seemed
aberrations from Nature were explained.

I could not resist the temptation of reducing to a tale the materials
which had so engrossed my interest and tasked my inquiries. And in
this attempt, various incidental opportunities have occurred, if not of
completely carrying out, still of incidentally illustrating, my earlier
design,--of showing the influence of Mammon upon our most secret selves,
of reproving the impatience which is engendered by a civilization that,
with much of the good, brings all the evils of competition, and of
tracing throughout, all the influences of early household life upon our
subsequent conduct and career. In such incidental bearings the moral
may doubtless be more obvious than in the delineation of the darker and
rarer crime which forms the staple of my narrative. For in extraordinary
guilt we are slow to recognize ordinary warnings,--we say to the
peaceful conscience, "This concerns thee not!" whereas at each instance
of familiar fault and commonplace error we own a direct and sensible
admonition. Yet in the portraiture of gigantic crime, poets have rightly
found their sphere and fulfilled their destiny of teachers. Those
terrible truths which appall us in the guilt of Macbeth or the villany
of Iago, have their moral uses not less than the popular infirmities of
Tom Jones, or the every-day hypocrisy of Blifil. Incredible as it may
seem, the crimes herein related took place within the last seventeen
years. There has been no exaggeration as to their extent, no great
departure from their details; the means employed, even that which seems
most far-fetched,--the instrument of the poisoned ring,--have their
foundation in literal facts. Nor have I much altered the social position
of the criminals, nor in the least overrated their attainments and
intelligence. In those more salient essentials which will most, perhaps,
provoke the Reader's incredulous wonder, I narrate a history, not invent
a fiction [These criminals were not, however, in actual life, as in
the novel, intimates and accomplices. Their crimes were of similar
character, effected by similar agencies, and committed at dates which
embrace their several careers of guilt within the same period; but I
have no authority to suppose that the one was known to the other.]. All
that Romance which our own time affords is not more the romance than the
philosophy of the time. Tragedy never quits the world,--it surrou