paintings which atones for their exaggeration. As we grow older we
observe less, we reflect more; and, like Frankenstein, we dissect in
order to create.

The second novel of the present day,* which, after an interval of some
years, I submitted to the world, was one I now, for the first time,
acknowledge, and which (revised and corrected) will be included in this
series, viz., /Godolphin/;--a work devoted to a particular portion of
society, and the development of a peculiar class of character. The
third, which I now reprint, is /Ernest Maltravers/,** the most mature,
and, on the whole, the most comprehensive of all that I have hitherto
written.

* For /The Disowned/ is cast in the time of our grandfathers, and /The
Pilgrims of the Rhine/ had nothing to do with actual life, and is not,
therefore, to be called a novel.

** At the date of this preface /Night and Morning/ had not appeared.

For the original idea, which, with humility, I will venture to call the
philosophical design of a moral education or apprenticeship, I have left
it easy to be seen that I am indebted to Goethe's /Wilhelm Meister/.
But, in /Wilhelm Meister/, the apprenticeship is rather that of
theoretical art. In the more homely plan that I set before myself, the
apprenticeship is rather that of practical life. And, with this view,
it has been especially my study to avoid all those attractions lawful in
romance, or tales of pure humour or unbridled fancy, attractions that,
in the language of reviewers, are styled under the head of "most
striking descriptions," "scenes of extraordinary power," etc.; and are
derived from violent contrasts and exaggerations pushed into caricature.