Page:Edgar Huntly, or The Sleep Walker.djvu/7

Rh has pried with bold and insatiable curiosity into the morbidities of human life, moral and physical; and the result of his investigations are a series of incidents and characters which at once startle and arrest our faculties, and extend our knowledge of ourselves and of our fellow creatures. The state of his native country at the time he lived—its imperfectly formed society—its mixture of savage and social life—and its infant settlements in the remote and solitary wildernesses, were favourable to the genius of the remarkable author of "Edgar Huntly."

Brown was born in the city of Philadelphia, on the 17th of January, 1771. He evinced, even in childhood, a fondness for intellectual enquiry; and being of a sickly constitution, he did not addict himself to the sports and recreations common to the young. His tendency to bad health was thus unhappily fostered, though it may be supposed, that the mind which was afterwards to shine so brightly in the world's eye, was enriched in proportion to the injury sustained by the body. On his leaving school, which took place before he had attained his sixteenth year, the young and eager student wrote several essays in verse and prose, and sketched plans for three Epics, one having for its subject, "The Discovery of America;" another, "Pizarro's Conquest of Peru;" and a third, "The Expedition to Mexico by Cortez."' These were lofty themes for the literary ambition of a boy; but it is the province and the privilege of genius to be daring; and, "for a time," says his biographer, Mr. Dunlap, "he thought life only desirable as a mean for the accomplishment of these high designs."

Amidst this mental labour, it was, however, necessary