ADVERTISEMENT,
BY THE EDITOR.
The following pages will, I believe, be judged by every reader of taſte to have been worth preſerving, among the other teſtimonies the author left behind her, of her genius and the ſoundneſs of her underſtanding. To ſuch readers I leave the taſk of comparing theſe leſſons, with other works of the ſame nature previouſly publiſhed. It is obvious that the author has ſtruck out a path of her own, and by no means intrenched upon the plans of her predeceſſors.
It may however excite ſurpriſe in ſome perſons to find theſe papers annexed to the concluſion of a novel. All I have to offer on this ſubject, conſiſts in the following conſiderations:
Firſt, ſomething is to be allowed for the difficulty of arranging the miſcellaneous papers upon very different ſubjects, which will frequently conſtitute an author's poſthumous works.
Secondly, the ſmall portion they occupy in the preſent volume, will perhaps be accepted as an apology, by ſuch good-natured readers (if any ſuch there are), to whom the peruſal of them ſhall be a matter of perfect indifference.
Thirdly, the circumſtance which determined me in annexing them to the preſent work, was the ſlight aſſociation (in default of a ſtrong one) between the affectionate and pathetic manner in which Maria Venables addreſſes her infant, in the Wrongs of Woman; and the agoniſing and painful ſentiment with which the author originally bequeathed theſe papers, as a legacy for the benefit of her child.
