MY life has been one of frequent adventure and constant excitement. It
has been passed, to this present day, in a stirring age, and not without
acquaintance of the most eminent and active spirits of the time. Men of
all grades and of every character have been familiar to me. War, love,
ambition, the scroll of sages, the festivals of wit, the intrigues of
states,--all that agitate mankind, the hope and the fear, the labour and
the pleasure, the great drama of vanities, with the little interludes
of wisdom; these have been the occupations of my manhood; these will
furnish forth the materials of that history which is now open to your
survey. Whatever be the faults of the historian, he has no motive to
palliate what he has committed nor to conceal what he has felt.

Children of an after century, the very time in which these pages will
greet you destroys enough of the connection between you and myself to
render me indifferent alike to your censure and your applause. Exactly
one hundred years from the day this record is completed will the seal I
shall place on it be broken and the secrets it contains be disclosed.
I claim that congeniality with you which I have found not among my own
coevals. _Their_ thoughts, their feelings, their views, have nothing
kindred to my own. I speak their language, but it is not as a native:
_they_ know not a syllable of mine! With a future age my heart may have
more in common; to a future age my thoughts may be less unfamiliar, and
my sentiments less strange. I trust these confessions to the trial!

Children of an after century, between you and the being who has traced
the pages ye behold--that busy, versatile, restless being--there is but
one step,--but that step is a century! His _now_ is separated from your
now by an interval of three generations! While he writes, he is exulting
in the vigour of health and manhood; while ye read, the very worms are
starving upon his dust. This commune between the living and the dead;
this intercourse between that which breathes and moves and _is_,
and that which life animates not nor mortality knows,--annihilates
falsehood, and chills even self-delusion into awe. Come, then, and look
upon the picture of a past day and of a gone being, without apprehension
of deceit; and as the shadows and lights of a checkered and wild
existence flit before you, watch if in your own hearts there be aught
which mirrors the reflection.

MORTON DEVEREUX.

NOTE TO TH