have unwittingly drawn upon me the censure, or have really incurred the blame, of that public to whom I now present this first volume, the reproach must, in justice, be attached to my head, and not to my heart, which beats most fervently in the general cause of human nature; and it is my most earnest prayer, that the sufferings of my fellow-beings may be ameliorated and removed by the blessings of virtue and religion. But if, amongst those who may peruse the following relations, any shall be found who waste their days and consume their nights in hanging over and greedily devouring the vile trash that has so profusely teemed from the press, and is now so widely circulated under the various titles of romances, novels, adventures, &c. &c. in pursuit of (what is to them) pleasurable stimulus; I must observe to these, that notwithstanding fiction may be clothed in the magic garb of enchantment, and her many-coloured robes, be decorated by the choicest ornaments of taste, yet it cannot steal upon the affections of the finely-organised heart like the plain unvarnished. tale of injured innocence, insulted worth, or unmerited cruelty. The power of fiction, when well wrought up, is indeed great over the generality of minds for a short time, and the fairy forms of delusion seem to charm the senses of the infatuated votary, and beckon him on to new scenes of delight: but the gay visions are soon fled, and the realities of life appear doubly loathsome to the vitiated mind, and it is then that the picture which it has been contemplating appears in its true colours; while the influence of truth increases in proportion to the cultivation of the mind, which it interests as much as it improves, at the same time that it increases the sources of happiness. If it is wonderful events, hair-breadth escapes, or the perpetration of shocking crimes, they are in search of, surely each revolving day furnishes too many sad proofs of these, and many more misfortunes to which man subjects his lot by the abuse of his powers, without ransacking every dusty shelf of a circulating library for idle stories of improbable events. The mind must necessarily be debased and contracted by this species of vulgar amusement; and I wish to call the attention of those who are the most initiated in the maze of romance, to a higher and more dignified employment of that time which ought to be so precious to every individual. Let them never forget that cach day which is lost, is another opportunity of advancement in wisdom and happiness, irremediably gone by, and that it reflects an indelible disgrace on the loser; and I think I am not mistaken' when I say that thousands at this very moment are destroying their time, their morals, and their best opportunities of improvement, by a perusal of the vilest and most heterogeneous mass of falsehood that has been heaped together by the prostituted talents of rascally half-starved authors, or the iniquitous and high-flown scrawls of others who, being situated in a state of coinparative ease and affluence, imagine themselves entitled to sully the fair face of virtue as much by their writings as by their actions. "Who dares think one thing, and another tell, : But let it not be understood that I include all the compositions that have appeared under the title of romance or novel in one general censure. No indeed it is very far from my intention to offer the least insult to the names of a distinguished few, who have chosen this fascinating mode of introducing their thoughts and opinions to the world. It is from a painful knowledge of the incalculable injury that has been sustained by thousands from the perusal of the generality of fictious productions, that has induced me to make these remarks: but of the inimitable writings of "the mighty magician of THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO*, bred and nourished by the Florentine muses in their sacred solitary caverns, amid the paler shrines of Gothic superstition, and in all the dreariness of inchantment-a poetess whom Ariosto would have acknowledged, as La nudrita Damigella Trivulzia AL SACRO SPECO;" and of some others whom I could name; I would willingly speak in the language of the highest commendation, did I conceive it necessary in this place. But it is the poor deluded votaries, and what I may term the promiscuous worshippers of absurd fiction, that I now call upon to forsake the flimsy decorations and outward glare of a fabric that contains nought but pollution of every kind, and endeavour to gain the temple of Virtue, on whose high altar the pure and everlasting flame of knowledge and truth burns with ethereal splendour and never-fading lustre. I call upon those to raise up unto themselves a strong hold, even in the recesses of their own hearts, which no human power can give or deprive them of. Mrs. Ann Radcliffe. 幕 Let them foster the finer feelings; and contemplate the mind of man as a vast and fruitful plain, which may (according to the degree of cultivation bestowed upon it) either be rendered a perfect paradise, yielding every joy and every blessing that the highest degree of human perfectibility can bestow, or a desolated wilderness, across whose dreary waste no refreshing stream ever glides, nor any summer's sun cheers by his enlivening rays, but where the dreadful storms of an eternal winter for ever howl, and where the whole horizon is darkened by the gloom of a perpetual night. "The mind is its own place, and in itself If we plant resources in our own minds, we have then no occasion to leap into the giddy vortex of dissipation, or hunt after imaginary pleasure through all her wanton mazes; for we have a fountain of living waters, a stream of ever-flowing delight, within the hallowed sanctuary of our own bosoms, to which we can always have recourse when an accumulated weight of outward circumstances may have united to depress us, and which is the only refuge to which we can fly in the hour of danger, that is above the reach of man's power. The means, then, by which this source of happi |