LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1881.



LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.





PREFACE.


It seems to be generally admitted that in rendering the title of a book
from one language into another, the form of the original should be
retained, even at the cost of some deviation from ordinary usage.
Cicero's work _De Officiis_ is never spoken of as a treatise on Moral
Duties, but as Cicero's Offices. Upon the same principle we have not
entitled the following collection of tales, Instructive or Moral; though
it is in this sense that the author applied to them the epithet
_exemplares_, as he states distinctly in his preface. The Spanish word
_exemplo_, from the time of the archpriest of Hita and Don Juan Manuel,
has had the meaning of _instruction_, or _instructive story_.