Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
All my amusements, both by inclination and necessity, were centered in myself
and at home. Ludloe appeared to have no visitants, and though frequently abroad,
or at least secluded from me, had never proposed my introduction to any of his
friends, except Mrs. Benington. My obligations to him were already too great
to allow me to lay claim to new favours and indulgences, nor, indeed, was my
disposition such as to make society needful to my happiness. My character had
been, in some degree, modelled by the faculty which I possessed. This deriving all
its supposed value from impenetrable secrecy, and Ludloe’s admonitions tending
powerfully to impress me with the necessity of wariness and circumspection in
my general intercourse with mankind, I had gradually fallen into sedate, reserved,
mysterious, and unsociable habits. My heart wanted not a friend.
In this temper of mind, I set myself to examine the novelties which Ludloe’s
private book-cases contained. ‘Twill be strange, thought I, if his favourite volume
do not show some marks of my friend’s character. To know a man’s favourite or
most constant studies cannot fail of letting in some little light upon his secret
thoughts, and though he would not have given me the reading of these books, if he
had thought them capable of unveiling more of his concerns than he wished, yet
possibly my ingenuity may go one step farther than he dreams of. You shall judge
whether I was right in my conjectures.
Chapter IX
The books which composed this little library were chiey the voyages and travels
of the missionaries of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Added to these
were some works upon political economy and legislation. Those writers who have
amused themselves with reducing their ideas to practice, and drawing imaginary
pictures of nations or republics, whose manners or government came up to their
standard of excellence, were, all of whom I had ever heard, and some I had never
heard of before, to be found in this collection. A translation of Aristotle’s republic,
the political romances of sir Thomas Moore, Harrington, and Hume, appeared to
have been much read, and Ludlow had not been sparing of his marginal comments.
In these writers he appeared to nd nothing but error and absurdity; and his notes
were introduced for no other end than to point out groundless principles and false
conclusions . . . . . The style of these remarks was already familiar to me. I saw
nothing new in them, or dierent from the strain of those speculations with which
Ludlow was accustomed to indulge himself in conversation with me.
After having turned over the leaves of the printed volumes, I at length lighted
on a small book of maps, from which, of course, I could reasonably expect no
information, on that point about which I was most curious. It was an atlas, in
which the maps had been drawn by the pen. None of them contained any thing
remarkable, so far as I, who was indeed a smatterer in geography, was able to
perceive, till I came to the end, when I noticed a map, whose prototype I was wholly
unacquainted with. It was drawn on a pretty large scale, representing two islands,
which bore some faint resemblance, in their relative proportions, at least, to Great
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