Biographical Sketches: (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces")Hawthorne, Nathaniel
History
Biographical Sketches: (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces")
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
New England -- Biography
Perhaps here she found the repose hitherto so vainly sought. Secluded
from all whose faith she could not govern, surrounded by the dependants
over whom she held an unlimited influence, agitated by none of the
tumultuous billows which were left swelling behind her, we may suppose
that, in the stillness of Nature, her heart was stilled. But her
impressive story was to have an awful close. Her last scene is as
difficult to be described as a shipwreck, where the shrieks of the
victims die unheard, along a desolate sea, and a shapeless mass of agony
is all that can be brought home to the imagination. The savage foe was
on the watch for blood. Sixteen persons assembled at the evening
prayer: in the deep midnight their cry rang through the forest; and
daylight dawned upon the lifeless clay of all but one. It was a
circumstance not to be unnoticed by our stern ancestors, in considering
the fate of her who had so troubled their religion, that an infant
daughter, the sole survivor amid the terrible destruction of her
mother's household, was bred in a barbarous faith, and never learned the
way to the Christian's heaven. Yet we will hope that there the mother
and child have met.
SIR WILLIAM PHIPS.
Few of the personages of past times (except such as have gained renown
in fireside legends as well as in written history) are anything more
than mere names to their successors. They seldom stand up in our
imaginations like men. The knowledge communicated by the historian and
biographer is analogous to that which we acquire of a country by the
map,--minute, perhaps, and accurate, and available for all necessary
purposes, but cold and naked, and wholly destitute of the mimic charm
produced by landscape-painting. These defects are partly remediable,
and even without an absolute violation of literal truth, although by
methods rightfully interdicted to professors of biographical exactness.
A license must be assumed in brightening the materials which time has
rusted, and in tracing out half-obliterated inscriptions on the columns
of antiquity: Fancy must throw her reviving light on the faded incidents
that indicate character, whence a ray will be reflected, more or less
vividly, on the person to be described. The portrait of the ancient
governor whose name stands at the head of this article will owe any
interest it may possess, not to his internal self, but to certain
peculiarities of his fortune. These must be briefly noticed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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