FAMOUS PERSONS
AND
PLACES.
BY
N. PARKER WILLIS.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 145 NASSAU STREET.
1854
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1854, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER,
in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
TOBITT’S COMBINATION-TYPE,
185 William St.
PRINTED BY R. CRAIGHEAD
63 VESEY STREET, N. Y.
PREFACE.
For some remarks that should properly introduce much of the contentsof the present volume, the reader is referred to the Preface publishedwith a previous number of the Series, entitled “Pencillings bythe Way.” A portion of the original “Pencillings” is here given, thesize of the work having compelled an unequal division of it, and theremaining and smaller part serving to complete another volume, withsome additional sketches of the same character.
The personal portrayings of distinguished contemporaries, of whichthis volume is mainly composed, will, (as has been abundantly provedin their previous shapes of publication,) ensure its readableness. Itwill have a value, from the same quality, that will increase with time,and be, also, independent, to a certain degree, of its literary merits.Sketches of the men of mark of any period are eagerly devoured—moreeagerly as the subjects pass away, and are beyond farther seeingand describing—the public requiring less that they should be ablydone than that they should be true to the life. Correctness, in suchpencilling, is more important than grace in the art. And this I claimto have been proved for these sketches. In the years that they havebeen before the public, not a single incorrectness has ever been provedor even charged upon them. I sketched what I saw at the time, and,to the best of my ability, sketched truly. With the acrid and perseveringwarfare that has been waged upon them by the critics, theirtruth would have been invalidated long ago, if flaw or blemish in thisshield of their chief merit could have been found. Expecting vaguecharges of incorrectness from the malice of criticism, howe