MY life has been one of frequent adventure and constant excitement. Ithas been passed, to this present day, in a stirring age, and not withoutacquaintance of the most eminent and active spirits of the time. Men ofall grades and of every character have been familiar to me. War, love,ambition, the scroll of sages, the festivals of wit, the intrigues ofstates,--all that agitate mankind, the hope and the fear, the labour andthe pleasure, the great drama of vanities, with the little interludesof wisdom; these have been the occupations of my manhood; these willfurnish forth the materials of that history which is now open to yoursurvey. Whatever be the faults of the historian, he has no motive topalliate what he has committed nor to conceal what he has felt.
Children of an after century, the very time in which these pages willgreet you destroys enough of the connection between you and myself torender me indifferent alike to your censure and your applause. Exactlyone hundred years from the day this record is completed will the seal Ishall 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 owncoevals. _Their_ thoughts, their feelings, their views, have nothingkindred 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 havemore in common; to a future age my thoughts may be less unfamiliar, andmy sentiments less strange. I trust these confessions to the trial!
Children of an after century, between you and the being who has tracedthe pages ye behold--that busy, versatile, restless being--there is butone step,--but that step is a century! His _now_ is separated from yournow by an interval of three generations! While he writes, he is exultingin the vigour of health and manhood; while ye read, the very worms arestarving 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,--annihilatesfalsehood, and chills even self-delusion into awe. Come, then, and lookupon the picture of a past day and of a gone being, without apprehensionof deceit; and as the shadows and lights of a checkered and wildexistence flit before you, watch if in your own hearts there be aughtwhich mirrors the reflection.