She has lodgings in
the village, and of course is often at the Hospital, and often at the
Hall; she makes busts and little statues, and is free, wild, tender,
proud, domestic, strange, natural, artistic; and has at bottom the
characteristics of the American woman, with the principles of the
strong-minded sect; and Middleton shall be continually puzzled at meeting
such a phenomenon in England. By and by, the internal influence
[evidence?] of her sentiments (though there shall be nothing to confirm
it in her manner) shall lead him to charge her with being an American.
Now, as to the arrangement of the Romance;--it begins as an integral and
essential part, with my introduction, giving a pleasant and familiar
summary of my life in the Consulate at Liverpool; the strange species of
Americans, with strange purposes, in England, whom I used to meet there;
and, especially, how my countrymen used to be put out of their senses by
the idea of inheritances of English property. Then I shall particularly
instance one gentleman who called on me on first coming over; a
description of him must be given, with touches that shall puzzle the
reader to decide whether it is not an actual portrait. And then this
Romance shall be offered, half seriously, as the account of the fortunes
that he met with in his search for his hereditary home. Enough of his
ancestral story may be given to explain what is to follow in the Romance;
or perhaps this may be left to the scenes of his intercourse with the old
Hospitaller.
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