The Project Gutenberg EBook of Arthur Mervyn, by Charles Brockden Brown

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Title: Arthur Mervyn
Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793

Author: Charles Brockden Brown

Release Date: June 5, 2006 [EBook #18508]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ARTHUR MERVYN;

OR,

MEMOIRS OF THE YEAR 1793.

BY

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN.

"Fielding, Richardson, and Scott occupied pedestals. In a niche was
deposited the bust of our countryman, the author of 'Arthur Mervyn.'"

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

PHILADELPHIA: DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER,

23 SOUTH NINTH STREET. 1889.

PREFACE.

The evils of pestilence by which this city has lately been afflicted
will probably form an era in its history. The schemes of reformation and
improvement to which they will give birth, or, if no efforts of human
wisdom can avail to avert the periodical visitations of this calamity,
the change in manners and population which they will produce, will be,
in the highest degree, memorable. They have already supplied new and
copious materials for reflection to the physician and the political
economist. They have not been less fertile of instruction to the moral
observer, to whom they have furnished new displays of the influence of
human passions and motives.

Amidst the medical and political discussions which are now afloat in the
community relative to this topic, the author of these remarks has
ventured to methodize his own reflections, and to weave into an humble
narrative such incidents as appeared to him most instructive and
remarkable among those which came within the sphere of his own
observation. It is every one's duty to profit by all opportunities of
inculcating on mankind the lessons of justice and humanity. The
influences of hope and fear, the trials of fortitude and constancy,
which took place in this city in the autumn of 1793, have, perhaps,
never been exceeded in any age. It is but just to snatch some of these
from oblivion, and to deliver to posterity a brief but faithful sketch
of the conditio