Monthly Magazine," she wrote thus: "These, I believe, are all the facts I can give you at present. Feelings are but poor substitutes in a memoir—else what a life would mine be! . . . But these are for a later biography, which I shall also entrust to you."
The suddenness of her death prevented her from making the necessary preparations for that later biography. Her design, however, has been accomplished, as far as possible. Much of what was essential to its accomplishment, has been supplied by the anxious care of her family, and the grateful zeal of some of her personal friends. To them, the writer's thanks are here given for enabling him, at least partially, to fulfil his obligations to the object of their common regard.
What is now submitted to the public, could not well have been written earlier. The interval between her death, and the publication of these volumes, has not been idly spent by those whose duty it was to investigate the circumstances under which she died. The hope of entirely elucidating all that was mysterious in her fate, forbade an earlier effort to relieve that public anxiety, which
