councils last long. I beg the favor, if the story is to be read at all, that no scene may be passed over as extraneous, for though it begin like a state-paper, or a sermon, it always terminates by casting some new light on the portrait of the hero. Beyond those events of peril and of patriotic devotedness, the remainder of the pages dwell generally with domestic interests; but if the reader do not approach them regularly through the development of character opened in the preceding troubled field, what they exhibit will seem a mere wilderness of incidents, without interest or end; indeed I have designed nothing in the personages of this narrative out of the way of living experience. I have sketched no virtue that I have not seen, nor painted any folly from imagination. I have endeavored to be as faithful to reality in my pictures of domestic morals, and of heroic duties, as a just painter would seek to be to the existing objects of nature, "wonderful and wild, or of gentlest beauty!" and on these grounds I have steadily attempted to inculcate "that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness; that vice is the natural consequence of grovelling thoughts, which begin in mistake and end in ignominy."
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POSTCRIPT TO A SUBSEQUENT EDITION.
After so many intervening years have passed since the author of Thaddeus of Warsaw wrote the foregoing preface, to introduce a work so novel in its character to the notice and candid judgment of the British public, it was her intention to take the present occasion of its now perfectly new republication, at the distance of above forty years from its earliest appearance and so continued editions, to express her grateful sense of that public's gratifying sympathies and honoring testimonies of approbation, from its author's youth to age; but even in the hour she sits down to perform the gracious task, she feels a present incapability to undertake it. The very attempt has too sensibly recalled to her heart events that have befallen her since she lived amongst the models of her tale; and she has also more recently been in many of the places it describes; and circumstances, both of joys and sorrows, having occurred to her there to influence the whole future current of her mortal life, she finds it impossible to yet touch on those times and scenes connected with the subjects of her happy youth, which would now only reverberate notes of sadness it is her duty to repress. Hence, though while revising the work itself she experiences a calm delight in the occupation, being a kind of parting duty, also, to the descendants of her earliest, readers, she would rather defer any little elucidations she may have met with regarding the objects of her pen to a few pages in the form of an Appendix at the end of the work; all, indeed, bringing her observations, whether by weal or woe, to the one great and guiding conclusion. "Man is formed for two states of existence—a mortal and an immortal being;" in the Holy Scriptures authoritatively declared, "For the life that now is, and for that which is to come."
JANE PORTER.
BRISTOL, November, 1844.
CHAPTER I.
The large and magnificent palace of Villanow, whose vast domains stretch along the northern bank of the Vistula, was the favorite residence of John Sobieski, King of Poland. That monarch, after having delivered his country from innumerable enemies, rescued Vienna and subdued the Turks, retired to this place at certain seasons, and thence dispensed those acts of his luminous and benevolent mind which rendered his name great and his people happy.
When Charles the Twelfth of Sweden visited the tomb of Sobieski, at Cracow, he exclaimed, "What a pity that so great a man should ever die!" [Footnote: In the year 1683, this hero raised the siege of Vienna, then beleagured by the Turks; and driving them out of Europe, saved Christendom from a Mohammedan usurpation.] Another generation saw the spirit of this lamented hero revive in the person of his descendant, Constantine, Count Sobieski, who, in a comparatively private station, as Palatine of Masovia, and the friend rather than the lord of his vassals, evinced by his actions that he was the inheritor of his forefather's virtue as well as of his blood.
He was the first Polish nobleman who granted freedom to his peasants. He threw down their mud hovels and built comfortable villages; he furnished them with seed, cattle, and implements of husbandry, and calling their families together, laid before them the deed of their enfranchisement; but before he signed it, he expressed a fear that they would abuse this liberty of which they had not had experience, and become licentious.
"No," returned a venerable peasant; "when we were ignorant men, and possessed no property of our own except these staffs in our hands, we were destitute of all manly motives for propriety of conduct; but you have taught us to read out of the Holy Book, how to serve God and honor the king. And shall we not respect laws which thus bestow on us, and ensure to us, the fruits of our labors and the favor of Heaven!"
The good sense and truth of this answer were manifested in the event. On the emancipation of these people, they became so prosperous in business and correct in behavior, that the example of the palatine was speedily followed by the Chancellor Zamoiski [Footnote: This family had ever been one of the noblest and most virtuous in Poland. And had its wisdom been listened to in former years by certain powerful and wildly ambitious lords that once great kingdom would never have exchanged its long line of hereditary native-princes for an elective monarchy—that arena of all political mischiefs.] and several of the principal nobility. The royal Stanislaus's beneficent spirit moved in unison with that of Sobieski, and a constitution was given to Poland to place her in the first rank of free nations.
Encircled by his happy tenantry, and within the bosom of his family, this illustrious man educated Thaddeus, the only male heir of his name, to the exercise of all the virtues which ennoble and endear the possessor.
But this reign of public and domestic peace was not to continue. Three formidable and apparently friendly states envied the effects of a patriotism they would not imitate; and in the beginning of the year 1792, regardless of existing treaties, broke in upon the unguarded frontiers of Poland, threatening with all the horrors of a merciless war the properties, lives, and liberties of the people.
The family of Sobieski had ever been foremost in the ranks of their country; and at the present crisis its venerable head did not hang behind the youngest warrior in preparations for the field.
On the evening of an anniversary of the birthday of his grandson, the palatine rode abroad with a party of friends, who had been celebrating the festival with their presence. The countess (his daughter) and Thaddeus were left alone in the saloon. She sighed as she gazed on her son, who stood at some distance, fitting to his youthful thigh a variety of sabres, which his servant a little time before had laid upon the table. She observed with anxiety the eagerness of his motion, and the ardor that was flashing from his eyes.
"Thaddeus," said she, "lay down that sword; I wish to speak with you." Thaddeus looked gayly up. "My dear Thaddeus!" cried his mother, and tears started to her eyes. The blush of enthusiasm faded from his face; he threw the sabre from him, and drew near the countess.
"Why, my dear mother, do you distress yourself? When I am in battle, shall I not have my grandfather near me, and be as much under the protection of God as at this moment?"
"Yes, my child," answered she, "God will protect you. He is the protector of the orphan, and you are fatherless." The countess paused—"Here, my son," said she, giving him a sealed packet, "take this; it will reveal to you the history of your birth and the name of your father. It is necessary that you should know a painful fact, which has hitherto been concealed from you by the wish and noble judgment of your grandfather." Thaddeus
