Chelsea, June 1st, 1825.
PREFACE
TO THE
FIRST EDITION.
Some of the following Letters have been printed in the New Monthly Magazine.
The Author would, indeed, be inclined to commit the whole collection to the candour of his readers without a prefatory address, were it not that the plan of his Work absolutely requires some explanation.
The slight mixture of fiction which these Letters contain, might raise a doubt whether the sketches of Spanish manners, customs, and opinions, by means of which the Author has endeavoured to pourtray the moral state of his country at a period immediately preceding, and in part coincident with the French invasion, may not be exaggerated by fancy, and coloured with a view to mere effect.
It is chiefly on this account that the Author deems it necessary to assure the Public of the reality of every circumstance mentioned in his book, except the name of Leucadio Doblado. These Letters are in effect the faithful memoirs of a real Spanish clergyman, as far as his character and the events of his life can illustrate the state of the country which gave him birth.
Doblado’s Letters are dated from Spain, and, to preserve consistency, the Author is supposed to have returned thither after a residence of some years in England. This is another fictitious circumstance. Since the moment when the person disguised under the above name left that beloved country, whose religious intolerance has embittered his life—that country which, boasting, at this moment, of a free constitution, still continues to deprive her children of the right to worship God according to their own conscience—he has not for a day quitted England, the land of his ancestors, and now the country of his choice and adoption.