catastrophe. In this edition I have endeavoured to do so; and the victim
whose fate in the former cast of the work most revolted the reader, as a
violation of the trite but amiable law of Poetical Justice, is saved from
the hands of the Children of Night. Perhaps, whatever the faults of this
work, it equals most of its companions in the sustainment of interest,
and in that coincidence between the gradual development of motive or
passion, and the sequences of external events constituting plot, which
mainly distinguish the physical awe of tragedy from the coarse horrors of
melodrama. I trust at least that I shall now find few readers who will
not readily acknowledge that the delineation of crime has only been
employed for the grave and impressive purpose which brings it within the
due province of the poet,--as an element of terror and a warning to the
heart.

LONDON, December 7.


PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

It is somewhere about four years since I appeared before the public as
the writer of a fiction, which I then intimated would probably be my
last; but bad habits are stronger than good intentions. When Fabricio,
in his hospital, resolved upon abjuring the vocation of the Poet, he was,
in truth, recommencing his desperate career by a Farewell to the Muses,--
I need not apply the allusion.

I must own, however, that there had long been a desire in my mind to
trace, in some work or other, the strange and secret ways through which
that Arch-ruler of Civilization, familiarly called "Money," insinuates
itself into our thoughts and motives, our hearts and actions; affecting