civilities of life, and the thousand amusements and calls on their
attention that are daily occurring, have almost necessarily a tendency to
soften or turn away the edge of malice and hatred, to divert the mind from
the dark workings of revenge, and prevent it from settling into any of
those fatal purposes which result in the wilful destruction of life, or
some other gross outrage on humanity. But in the country, where, it will be
remembered, the first blood ever spilled by the hand of a murderer cried up
to Heaven from the ground, and where the meliorating circumstances we have
named as incident to congregated life are almost wholly wanting, man is
left to brood in solitude over his real or fancied wrongs, till all the
fierce and stormy passions of his nature become aroused, and hurry him
unchecked along to the fatal outbreak. In the city, the strong and bad
passions of hate, envy, jealousy, and revenge, softened in action, as we
have said, on finding a readier vent in some of the conditions of urban
society, generally prove comparatively harmless. In the country, finding no
such softening influences, and no such vent, and left to their own
workings, they often become dangerously concentrated, and, growing more and
more intensified as their self-fed fires are permitted to burn on, at
length burst through every barrier of restraint, and set all law and reason
alike at defiance.

And if this view, as we believe, is correct in regard to the operation of
this class of passions, why not in regard to the operation of those of an
opposite character? Why should not the same principle apply to the
operation of love as well as hate? It should, and does, though not in an
equal degree, perhaps, apply to them both. It has been shown to be so in
the experience of the past. It is illustrated in many a sad drama of real
life, but never more strikingly than in the true and darkly romantic
incidents which form the groundwork of the tale upon which we are about to
enter.