Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/13

Rh composition of no less than five novels, of which two, namely, "Arthur Mervyn," and "Edgar Huntly" were finished and published in the year 1799. The main subject of the former tale was derived from the tragical circumstances consequent on the advent of the plague in the author's native city of Philadelphia, in the year 1793; and as he had been himself a witness of many of the calamities of that trying time, he gave, in "Arthur Mervyn," sketches of them, which have, by universal opinion, been considered worthy of being ranked with Thucydides's account of the plague of Athens, Boccaccio's narrative of the plague of Florence, and Defoe's History of the Plague of London. In the novel now before the reader, and which, in order of publication, is Brown's fourth work of fiction, he has "chosen for a cause by which to produce effects at once stupendous and mysterious, that disease called Somnambulism. 'Edgar Huntly' unites to events founded on this, 'incidents of Indian hostility, and the perils of the western wilderness. This romance is one of the very finest of the creations of the great American novelist; and, independently of the fixing interest of the plot, and the novelty to English readers of the subject, we know not where could be found such striking and grand descriptions of American forests, wildernesses, and caverns, and such fearful pictures of savage life and desperate adventure, as occur in the pages before us. But we will not forestall the anxiety of the reader, by threading beforehand the mazes of the story, nor weaken the effect of some of its electrical touches. Brown's spell is irresistible: