He drew them as, in his judgment, they existed--and as, according to all observation, they still exist wherever not softened by cultivation,--ignorant, violent, debased, brutal; he drew them, too, as they appeared, and still appear, in war--or the scalp-hunt--when all the worst deformities of the savage temperament receive their strongest and fiercest development.
Having, therefore, no other, and certainly no worse, desire than to make his delineations in this regard as correct and true to nature as he could, it was with no little surprise he found himself taken to account by some of the critical gentry, on the charge of entertaining the humane design of influencing the passions of his countrymen against the remnant of an unfortunate race, with a view of excusing the wrongs done to it by the whites, if not of actually hastening the period of that "final destruction" which it pleases so many men, against all probability, if not against all possibility, to predict as a certain future event.

Had the accusation been confined to the reviewers, he might not, perhaps, have thought it safe to complain; but currency was given to it in a quarter which renders a disclaimer the more reasonable or the less presumptuous.

One may contend with a brother author who dares not resist the verdict of the critics.

In the English edition of the novel, published at the same time as the American, in a preface furnished by Mr.
Ainsworth, the distinguished author of "Rookwood," "Crichton," &c.

&c., to whom he is indebted for many polite and obliging expressions respecting it, it is hinted, hypothetically, that the writer's views were "coloured by national antipathy, and by a desire to justify the encroachments of his countrymen upon the persecuted natives, rather than by a reasonable estimate of the subject." The accused notices this fancy, however injurious he first felt it to be, less to refute than to smile at it.