[Illustration: Eliza Wharton]


THE
COQUETTE;
OR,
THE HISTORY OF
ELIZA WHARTON.


A NOVEL:
FOUNDED ON FACT.


BY
A LADY OF MASSACHUSETTS.



HISTORICAL PREFACE,
INCLUDING
A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.


He who waits beside the folded gates of mystery, over which forever
float the impurpled vapors of the PAST, should stand with girded loins,
and white, unshodden feet. So he who attempts to lift the veil that
separates the REAL from the IDEAL, or to remove the heavy curtain that
for a century may have concealed from view the actual personages of a
well-drawn popular fiction, or what may have been received as such,