"I speak Of what I know, and what I feel within." WORDSWORTH. "Quare tunc formandi mores (inquit Erasmus) cum mollis adhuc artas; tunc optimis assuescendum cum ad quidvis cerum est ingenium." "Le marriage est une chose tres serieuse; On ne peut pas trop penaer-heureux ceux qui en pense toute leurs vie !" ΤΟ NO ONE NOBODY, Esq., OF NO HALL, NOWHERE. DEAR SIR,-In dedicating these volumes to you, I acquit myself of a debt of gratitude to the only man whose integrity I have found unimpeachable, and whose friendship I have proved unvarying. Among the most deserving of my own sex I have, in many instances, found sincere and unchanging affection, united with those highest and rarest virtues, which, from adorning, reconcile us to human nature, though truth compels me to acknowledge that I have known others whose deep-rooted selfishness, puerile vanity, and vacillating weakness of character proved them to be "nature's worst anomalies"-masculine women! In enumerating the catalogue of your virtues, you cannot tax me with that servility of flattery which you are the only man in the world who would disdain. Since every one is aware it has even passed into a proverb, that Nobody is perfection. In your literary career you have neither evinced nor experienced envy ; but then it is acknowledged on all sides that your gains excel that of Shakspeare, Milton, Byron, Bacon, Locke, Scott, and Moore; your learning exceeds that of Bayle, and your science that of Newton. In patriotism you go beyond the heroes of ancient Rome, and you are the only person whose politics would bear to be analyzed by the most chymical scrutiny. Yet here you have shared the lot of humanity and have been the victim of calumny; as it is only a short time ago that your friends, the Whigs, accused you of anticipating Lord Durham's speech, and sending it to the Times. The world, however, did not attach the slightest credence to the accusation; yet, with unceasing fidelity, you, and you only, continue to believe the Whigs honest! Your domestic virtues, if possible, exceed your public ones; you are an exemplary husband, and such a father! and with a generosity truly unparalleled, take upon yourself all the blame of all the mischief done in my house. Generally speaking, Folly's cap and bells are to be found as often, if not oftener, on the hoary head of age, as on the Hyperian curls of youth; but you are an exception, for you are the only man whom "flattery fools not" or interest does not warp; ay, even the small paltry interest of a dinner, a speech, a paragraph in a newspaper, or a tabouret in a demoralized and demoralizing coterie. "Such divinity doth hedge" the vices of men, that no man cares to expose or interfere with those of another; the protecting laws for infamy which them |