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 surrounds us everywhere. We
have but to look, wakeful and vigilant, abroad, and from the age of