PREFACE.

I TRUST that I shall not be considered to despise, when I disclaim for this publication, the title of a Novel. I feel, on the contrary, that to most readers it will be less, and can scarcely flatter myself that to a few it will be more. For one class, my work will be too frivolous; for another too dull. The cold will be displeased, and the sanguine disappointed; the former with descriptions of feelings they cannot recognise as true; the latter with reflections upon life inimical to the philosophy they adopt. Whatever has been my motive for publishing, it was not the anticipation of success; and probably no one, in making a similar experiment, has ever claimed more sincerely the merit of diffidence as to the result.

Perhaps, however altered for publication, the first idea of this history had its foundation in fact; perhaps, among the letters now given to the world in the hope that they may "point a moral," there are some not originally written to "adorn a tale ;" but this would be matter of idle affirmation in me, and unavailing inquiry in others. Nor would it be any answer to those who may find the characters unnatural, and the sentiments exaggerated, could I assert that the characters had existed, and the sentiments had been felt: in a state of society, where all things are artificial, nothing seems so false as that which is really true.

I have some apprehensions lest, by those readers who judge of the whole only by a part, the end of this

work should be censured, because misunderstood. I have some apprehensions lest occasional descriptions be considered too vividly coloured, or sketches of feeling too faithfully portrayed; but let it be remembered, before I am condemned, that no mistake has been so great (though so common) in morals, as to lay down a penalty without particularizing the offence: and if I have copied truth in showing the punishment, it was necessary also to study the same model in recording the annals of the passions. But though I confess I have aimed at a resemblance, I have carefully avoided an embellishment: never once in the picture of guilt have I attempted to varnish its misery, or to gloss over its shame. If my story has been founded on the errors of the heart, it is because the most useful of morals may be gathered from the consequences they bring.

In the character of Falkland I have wished to show that all virtue is weak, and that all wisdom is unavailing, where there is no pervading and fixed principle to become at once our criterion for every new variation of conduct, and our pledge for pursuing, if we have once resolved to adopt it. Nor is it only in the general plot, but in the scattered reflections it embraces, that I have attempted to realize what ought to be the grand object of all human compositions.

If it be the good fortune of this volume to meet with some to whom the passions have been the tutors of reflection, who deem that observations on our nature, even if erroneous in themselves, are always beneficial to truth, and who think that more knowledge of the secret heart may often be condensed into a single thought than scattered over a thousand events; if it be the good fortune of this volume to meet with such, it is to them that I fearlessly intrust it-not, indeed, to be approved in its execution, but, at least, to be acquitted in its design.

It now only remains to be added, that in entering a

career with no motive and ambition in common with those of his competitors, the Author earnestly trusts that he shall be exonerated from the charge of presumption, if he cannot adopt the language of hope or apprehension which is customary with others: men who pretend to experience, not to genius, are less likely to miscalculate the bounds of their merits, or be susceptible to general opinion as to their extent. If the Author has reflected erroneously, it is because events have led him rather to imbody his own than to borrow the conclusions of another: if he has offended in his delineation of the feelings, it is because he has wrought from no model but remembrance; and if he cannot now feel much eagerness of interest in the success of his attempt, it is because, from his acquaintance with mankind, he has shaped out an empire for himself which their praise cannot widen, and which their censure is unable to destroy.

FALKLAND.

BOOK I.

FROM ERASMUS FALKLAND, ESQ., TO THE HON. FREDERICK MONKTON.

You are mistaken, my dear Monkton! Your description of the gayety of "the season" gives me no emotion. You speak of pleasure; I remember no labour so wearisome: you enlarge upon its changes; no sameness appears to me so monotonous. Keep, then, your pity for those who require it. From the height of my philosophy I compassionate you. No one is so vain as a recluse; and your jests at my hermitship and hermitage cannot penetrate the folds of a self-conceit, which does not envy you in your suppers at D-- House, nor even in your waltzes with Eleanor

It is a ruin rather than a house which I inhabit. I have not been at L since my return from abroad, and during those years the place has gone rapidly to decay; perhaps, for that reason, it suits me better, tel maître telle maison.

Of all my possessions this is the least valuable in itself, and derives the least interest from the associations of childhood, for it was not at L- that any part of that period was spent. I have, however, chosen it for my present retreat, because here only I am personally unknown, and therefore little likely to be disturbed. I do not, indeed, wish for the interruptions designed as civilities; I rather gather around myself, link after link, the chains that connected me with the world; I find among my own thoughts that variety and occupation which you only experience in your intercourse with others; and I make, like the Chinese, my map of the universe consist of a circle in a square-the eircle is my