New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1854-06-08
rIditoriaI Correspondence.

few, therefore, regarding it as bore, skip it ;
or if they read it all, read, as it is usually writ
ten, last of all, Yet prefaees are but apologies
and what book but has need Of one, in sign o.
the authors modesty A man should not rush |
upon his readers, without some attempt to make
fair weather with them and cajole them AZ inc
outset. Nothing has greater need than o oooh
to ask indulgence +; and all subjects require |
either for themselves OF for him who is 10 treat
Of them, some preliminary explanations. Inc
| least one can do is to make aself-lntroductory
reverence to his auditory. bow is the neces-
i sary preface to entering q ball room shake OF
the hands is the preface to a boxing match;
j sword salute that to duel; an oath to the
giving of ones testimony, proclamation Tex
sept among flibusters) to the going to war. We
court and we kiss--very pleasant prefaces--be-
fore we marry; We quarrel--a scurvy preface
before we fight. A noble edifce has its preface,
o portico; an opera, its overture; play, its
prologue; an orchestra, its tuning up; which,
even at the Orleans, in spite of the accomplished
Boudousquie and Davis and maugre all Prevosts
skill, is as disagreeable preface as any that
ever was written Nay, Governments them
selves have, where meaning to be good, their
prefaces for what else is Constitution It's
but the prologue, not the play. We're both ever
SO good, bad actors might murder them. The
: present paltry Administration had its appro-
pirate preface of high sounding pretences, the
Baltimore Platform; which is very like grand
portico, to conduct you into howell.
Thus you see that prefaces are in the very
nature of things. And, accordingly, the An
clients themselyes--thos models of taste to whom
I lust now Indirectly referred-Were no stran
gers to the practice they often used the pre-
face; taking care only to keep it within due
proportion to the dignity of the work Homer
opens the Iliad by announcing that he is about
to sing, with the MUSES. heavenly assistance, the
wrath of Pelides and the woes which it brought
upon Greece Virgil begins the Eneid by a Ike
intimation Of what he is to relate" arms and
: the man.: both declare their subject and in
woke the tuneful Nine SO that the great bards
of yore did just as we do nowadays, except that
they bespoke, by their prefaces, the favor o
. the Gods, where we, rather less piously, try t.
propitiate the reader, as far more likely to buy
our books The father of prose narrative, He
rodotus, sets out with what is real preface, il
] which he succinctly tells who he is and what h
! is going to write about His yet greater follow
. er, Thueyddes, does the same; letting US know
: by way of Advertisement, what pains he ha
:; taken to arrive at the truth of the events whic
- he relates. Such are the great antique authori
- ties in behalf of prefaces They render needles
any resort to modern instances, unless it be tina
), of the least degenerate of moderns, Milton
10 whose brief proem to the Paradise Lost is moth
!, ing but a very solemn preface
nj Having thus cleared the way of all dificultie
" we WILL if if it SO please you, proceed upon on
sh voyage, or (as it may prove to bel our vagar.
be Like Cimon of old, who, in one day, triumphe
s. both as an admiral and general, am about
nd try my fortune both by water and on land; {
rs as the great Blake, who after much bulletin
with the Irish and others on shore, suddenl
became one of the chefest of naval heroes
:. Smile not at the thought of my talking as
- had launched forth upon the great deep.
!; have high authority for doing So When NJ
! Calhoun wanted to shift about for Western popr
: larity and to get over his own doctrines of stri
construction, he pronounced the Mississippi
'. be a true sea- You yourselves speak always
= it's shores, far above and below you, as &c tt
/ C0ubl. IL III Jul IhOu4tSi NV
- and though not just that briny affair which Q
- tars and the sea songs have been raying abor
from the Earl of Dorset's time down to Dibdin
- it is, in my conception, none the worse for tina
- For though have made not q few voyages,
:, confess that fresh water still seems to me
much better than salt to sail as it is to drin
- Yet have read, while still boy, what has Sc
many an honest lad to sea not Marryat al
nd his compeers of piracy made romantic, b
:, Drake and Damper and Cook and Byron a.
:. LaPeyrouse and Vancouver, and many mo
a that tell how brave tars have wrestled with t
70. storm or fought the foe. Such simple, sturd
No stirring old authors are, you know, dear reade
- to the men of the waves, what the great po
are to us landsmen: if one has in him drop
aa the mariners blood, they kindle it up, as
no4 trumpet does all the spirit that is in ste
~, Tuneless enough may such stories seem to
tho that read verse and get soft sounds ashore:
to the rough ears of the sailor, nothing is
sweet.
mp I had early read Homer, too; and certain
ant with no very great opinion of the naval tact
'ns of his hero Achilles who, in his attack on Tr
Gus had SO nearly foundered and been swamped
hor the river Scamander, when he might have
d len on in good barges, stoutly manned and es
nch mounted with swivel, after the manner of
anne ornaments of that great captain, Thon
The Jefferson, my countryman, the inventor of l
zeal straetions, of Freedom without sense or NOR
our or religion, of colleges without discipline
ST credit without honesty, of wars without bio
ON shed and of nayies without ship.
oee Nor had much more admired the voyage
Homer's other hero, or those of that pous m
ipa. sop, Virgirs IEneas. could not read the !
late log books in rhyme of either, without a Y
hearty contempt for such spoony seamans
of n Remember, for instance. how that notable nj
gator, Commodore Ulysses, got stranded
swamped, for want of being cockswain enoug
anks steer through the straits of Messina, thong
cen good deal broader than the Mississippi: or
Virgil's psalm-singng skipper, the Oar
4Eneas, although by the mothers side spr
thls from the sea, kept up such sorry discipline
ma. his deck that one night the man at the whet
'nts certain Jack or Bill PalinurusJ actually
ents fast asleep, tumbled over the gunwale, and
wing Gas he deserved to beg drowned-there b
lged not boat in the davits, nor watch on
arm, forecastle to sing out, "man overheard
J., q