PREFACE. WITH more than usual self-distrust, I give this book to the world, and under circumstances of a new and trying nature. The voice of affectionate encouragement, which used to animate me to my task, I can hear no more; and when, from the force of habit, I have sometimes turned round, while writing, to ask as in former times for counsel and advice, I have been painfully reminded, that the judicious critic, as well as tender parent, was removed from me forever. But I have the consolation of knowing, that should this work excite severe animadversion, he will not share in this expected pain;-I say "expected," because detraction is as common as the air we breathe, and to some, from long indulgence in it, it is now almost as necessary; and an endeavor to substitute profitable discourse for talking-over and laughing at one's friends and neighbors, will be thought nearly as cruel as to exclude the air necessary for respiration. Nor have I been encouraged to my labors by any sanguine expectation of doing good for so rare is self-knowledge, that though I am often told that Detraction abounds, that my work is necessary, and will, no doubt, benefit others, scarcely any one says, "I hope it will be of benefit to me;" yet, general improvement can only be the result of individual reformation. Besides, even those persons, who complain that the sin is universal, speak in a careless, indifferent tone, as if they thought it had acquired a prescriptive right to remain so, and that the endeavor to make it less common must be Utopian Reverie. I have, however, been cheered in my labors by one conviction,-namely, that though what I have written may offend many of my readers, and benefit but few, it will at least, as I humbly trust, warn and amend MYSELF. |