time, to complete my design by writing the second part of "The Fallen
Leaves."

Why?

Your knowledge of English Literature--to which I am indebted for the
first faithful and intelligent translation of my novels into the Italian
language--has long since informed you, that there are certain important
social topics which are held to be forbidden to the English novelist (no
matter how seriously and how delicately he may treat them), by a
narrow-minded minority of readers, and by the critics who flatter their
prejudices. You also know, having done me the honor to read my books,
that I respect my art far too sincerely to permit limits to be wantonly
assigned to it, which are imposed in no other civilized country on the
face of the earth. When my work is undertaken with a pure purpose, I
claim the same liberty which is accorded to a writer in a newspaper, or
to a clergyman in a pulpit; knowing, by previous experience, that the
increase of readers and the lapse of time will assuredly do me justice,
if I have only written well enough to deserve it.

In the prejudiced quarters to which I have alluded, one of the characters
in "The Fallen Leaves" offended susceptibilities of the sort felt by
Tartuffe, when he took out his handkerchief, and requested Dorine to
cover her bosom. I not only decline to defend myself, under such
circumstances as these--I say plainly, that I have never asserted a truer
claim to the best and noblest sympathies of Christian readers than in
presenting to them, in my last novel, the character of the innocent
victim of infamy, rescued and purified from the contamination of the
streets. I remember what the nasty posterity of Tartuffe, in this
country, said of "Basil," of "Armadale," of "The New Magdalen," and I