ARTHUR MERVYN;

OR,

MEMOIRS OF THE YEAR 1793.

BY

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN.

"Fielding, Richardson, and Scott occupied pedestals. In a niche was deposited the bust of our countryman, the author of 'Arthur Mervyn.'"

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

PHILADELPHIA:

 DAVID McKAY, PUBLISHER,

23 South Ninth Street.

South Ninth Street

 1889.

PREFACE.

The evils of pestilence by which this city has lately been afflicted will probably form an era in its history. The schemes of reformation and improvement to which they will give birth, or, if no efforts of human wisdom can avail to avert the periodical visitations of this calamity, the change in manners and population which they will produce, will be, in the highest degree, memorable. They have already supplied new and copious materials for reflection to the physician and the political economist. They have not been less fertile of instruction to the moral observer, to whom they have furnished new displays of the influence of human passions and motives.

Amidst the medical and political discussions which are now afloat in the community relative to this topic, the author of these remarks has ventured to methodize his own reflections, and to weave into an humble narrative such incidents as appeared to him most instructive and remarkable among those which came within the sphere of his own observation. It is every one's duty to profit by all opportunities of inculcating on mankind the 

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