THE most obvious facts are usually the most sturdily disputed.
If this were not so the world would be freed from all
abuses at sight. It has always been a principle amongst mankind
to resist every attempt, by any one of their species, to
better the condition of humanity, and hence every fact in
science, religion and morals, as soon as it has been discovered
has been fought against until the strength of the opposers has
been exhausted and they have been compelled from necessity
and not choice, to let the fact stand and shed its blessings upon
them in spite of their gnashing their teeth against it. But it is
impossible to fight long against so hard headed a monster as a
Fact. Once in the world there it stands, and every one that
has made its appearance remains as immoveable as the fixed
stars. Your Fact rarely makes war, although his air of serene
confidence generally provokes attack from the bully Falsehood
who, with a strange fatality, always runs his soft head
against a foe which he never conquered, and leaves his own
kind, whom he might demolish, to swagger at will. What
fact is more obvious than that which, with us, it has become
a proverb of absurdity to question: namely that every man

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has a right to his own soul. And yet what fact has ever been
so sturdily disputed. The whole world, from the day of the
first transgression, has fought against it; Turk and Christian,
Jew and Pagan have alike disputed it, even we, American
democrats, do not fully acknowledge it. And yet we wonder
at the English who acknowledge it less than ourselves; the
English wonder at the French; the French wonder at the
Germans; the Germans wonder at the Russians; the Russians
wonder at the Turks; and the Turks wonder at the
Chinese, who can wonder at nobody, unless they wonder at
the absurdity of allowing man a soul at all. We are at this
moment making a precious exhibition to the world of our unwillingness
to acknowledge the existence of this simple fact.
Last year, in a fit of foolhardiness, or in a moment of drunken
generosity, we made a slight concession in regard to this thing,
for we cannot admit the whole truth at once, but must do it
by piece meal, as a miser would dole out a dollar in pennies;
we enacted a law which guaranteed to our citizens the privilege
of calling their souls their own, even though they should
be indebted to one or more of their neighbors, but hardly was
the deed done when the greatness of it terrified us beyond
measure, and although we took oath at the time, that we believed
the thing to be just and proper, in conformity with the
law of God and the rights of humanity, we now own with
fear and trembling that we did falsely and we hasten to undo
all that we then did in confessing that a man had a right to his
own soul even though he chanced to be in debt. And now the
man who owes his neighbor can no more say that his soul is his
own than the Russian serf, or the Virginia slave whose soul
belongs to his master. The law, which was entirely passive
while the man was getting into debt, no sooner finds him in
that unhappy condition than in seizes upon him and winds its
terrible folds around him, like the horrible serpent around the
limbs of the son of Hecuba and his offspring, until he is crushed
and mangled and disabled forever from standing erect

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among his companions upon the earth. The law justly forbids
that a man should steal, and justly punishes the transgressor;
but the law nowhere, nor no how, forbids that a
man should become indebted to his neighbour, and when, with
his neighbours free consent, he has done so, it may well leave
him and his neighbour to arrange the matter between them as
they may be able. But that would be allowing the man too
great a privilege; it would be too near an approach to giving
him the freedom of his soul.

But these are not the facts of which we intended to make
mention, in the beginning of our chapter; yet we will let
them stand since they have obtruded themselves upon our
notice. A Fact more to our present purpose, but scarcely less obvious,
although as sturdily disputed, is the superiority of Fiction
to History. In regard to this matter, we have seen the whole
world from all time in their professions continually giving
the lie to their actions. It is a resolved point with all manner
of grave men to speak lightly of fiction; even lawyers who
deal in hardly anything else affect to decry it; and theologians
and metaphysicians make a trade of abusing it even
while they are fattening upon it. Asses prefer thistles to
clover, and there are certain philosophers of assinine sympathies
who would prefer reading a last year's almanac to Paradise
Lost or Tom Jones. But such persons are exceedingly
few, although there is a melancholy multitude who prefer as
much. The majority of grave people read the most outrageous
romances, but compromise with their prejudices by calling
them histories; and historians knowing very well that
they can hope for no readers, unless they make their histories
to resemble fiction, conform to the will of the world; while
novelists, to gain the same result adopt an opposite course,
and with mock solemnity which savors not a little of irony,
call their productions histories. Many a poor soul has no
doubt been beguiled into a perusal of the “history of a foundling,”
who would have shrunk with pious horror from the

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book if it had been called a romance, just as back gammon
boards are smuggled into pious families with “Brown's Concordence”
labelled upon their backs. It is reported that a
grave doctor, after having dallied with Gulliver's Travels,
boldly confessed that the thing appeared to him too strange to be
true; but Saint Augustine, after having read with infinite
satisfaction, as he could not fail to do, the golden Ass of
Apuleius, to satisfy his conscience for having perused the most
monstrous fiction that was ever penned, declared with great
solemnity that he believed it to be a veritable history. But
with due veneration for so great a saint we are compelled to
think that he conceded to a bad prejudice more than his conscience
should have required. Fictions are generally called
light reading, as they well may be since they are almost the
only works that keep afloat on the stream of time; the weighty
truths contained in other writings it is charitable to believe
cause them to sink to the bottom from whence they never
rise again. Long winded divers may occasionally bring up to
the surface a relic from them, but like old hulks at the bottom
of the ocean they lie undisturbed until they mingle, in the
course of time, with their original elements. An astronomical
essay or a treatise upon crocodiles written in the time of
Cheops would have but little more interest at this day than an
extract from doctor Lardner's Encyclopedia, but a love story
or a ballad written by a magazine author of that remote period
would set the whole world agape if discovered now.

No man ever understood better the whims of the world
than the great master of modern fiction, who gained a vast
multitude of readers amongst the grown portion of mankind
by calling his fiction “historical novels,” thus making a combination
which satisfied the two great classes of readers, the
lovers of fiction and the lovers of fact; and by making a
liberal use of historical names in his romances he satisfied the
sentiment and the scruple of his reader at the same time.
And so well did he know how to adapt himself to the way of

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the world that it would be an extremely nice point to determine
whether his fictions most resembled history, or his histories
fiction.

The purest minds and the keenest intellects have delighted
in fictitious narrative, and have given their testimony in its
favour not only in direct terms, but by implication in studying
it themselves and furnishing it for the study of others. Lord
Bacon, whom it is the fashion to rely upon in questions of
morals, was himself a sturdy advocate for Fiction, and he has
very pointedly set forth her superiority to History.

“As the active mind is inferior to the rational soul,” says
this great philosopher, “so fiction gives to mankind what history
denies, and, in some manner, satisfies the mind with shadows
when it cannot enjoy the substance: upon a close
inspection Fiction plainly shows that a greater variety of
things, a more perfect order, a more beautiful variety, than can
anywhere be found in nature is pleasing to the mind. As
real history disgusts us with a familiar and constant similitude
of things, fiction relieves us by unexampled turns and changes
and thus not only delights, but inculcates morality and nobleness
of soul. It raises the mind by accomodating the images
of things to our desires, and not like history and reason subjecting
the mind to things.”

And Sir Walter Raleigh advises the writer of history
even, not to follow too close after Truth, lest he should get a
kick from her heels.

Perhaps our readers will think that we take an infinite deal
of pains to prove what no one is disposed to deny, and least of
all themselves. But we do not string words together without
an aim, and as our reader was advised in the beginning that
he might skip this entire chapter, if he had any misgivings as
to its contents, without prejudice to our story, we do not feel
called upon to explain our motives in writing it.

In regard to the work which we are now about to begin
we are at a loss whether to call it a history or a fiction, since

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we might, by calling it either, thereby lose a reader, which we
cannot well afford to do, and we cannot call it a historical fiction
because the names introduced in the narrative are as yet
unknown to fame. But as truth must be supposed to have a
certain weight even with the lovers of romance, perhaps our
better course will be to make a free confession that the stories
contain some facts and some fictions, and leave to the discrimination
of the reader to pick out such parts as may best please
him, and to exclaim on his own instinct “that is a fact” or “that
is fiction” as he runs along. And perhaps after all it may fall
to another age to discern the true character of the work as it
took two or three centuries to find out the real meaning of the
golden legend Apuleius.

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