attention, I beg leave to offer him a little account of the
principles that actuated its composition, and in regard to which one
of the most honored heads in the author's family urged her "not to
withhold it from the press;" observing, in his persuasions, that the
mistakes which many of my young contemporaries of both sexes
continually make in their estimates of human character, and of the
purposes of human life, require to have a line of difference between
certain splendid vices and some of the brilliant order of virtues to
be distinctly drawn before them. "And," he remarked, "it appeared to
be so done in the pages of my Polish manuscript. Therefore," added
he, "let Thaddeus of Warsaw speak openly for himself!"

This opinion decided me. Though with fear and trembling, yet I felt
an encouraging consciousness that in writing the manuscript narrative
for my own private enjoyment only, and the occasional amusement of
those friends dearest around me, I had wished to portray characters
whose high endowments could not be misled into proud ambitions, nor
the gift of dazzling social graces betray into the selfish triumphs
of worldly vanity,--characters that prosperity could not inflate, nor
disappointments depress, from pious trust and honorable action. The
pure fires of such a spirit declare their sacred origin; and such is
the talisman of those achievements which amaze everybody but their
accomplisher. The eye fixed on it is what divine truth declares it to
be "single!" There is no double purpose in it; no glancing to a man's
own personal aggrandizement on one side and on professing services to
his fellow-creatures on the other; such a spirit has only one aim--
Heaven! and the eternal records of that wide firmament include within
it "all good to man."

What flattered Alexander of Macedon into a madman, and perverted the