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PREFACE.

but there are some sweet touches of nature. Though these extracts have proved of greater length than was intended, I trust the reader will forgive them, and join with me in commending the total absence of all frigid, unmeaning epithets, and mere ambitious verbal delineation. "There is none of that adulterated phraseology," as the philosophic Wordsworth says, "none of that unusual language vulgarly called 'poetic diction,' which thrusts out of sight the plain humanities of nature," but the story runs on to its fulfilment, with the same unity of feeling as if it had been thrown off at a sitting. I cannot tell how tempered may be the heart of the reader, but for mine own part, I confess, that even now while perusing this tale of true love for the twentieth time, my throat swells, and my eyes gush out with tears.—Perhaps, however, there is something in the congenial season,—the gray and watery sky above, the dank grass below, and flagging Auster blowing heavily against the trees, shattering the tawney leaves,—but I forget myself. The remarks that are purposed on the