not conquered, perhaps predominated over the less interested feelings
which were all that she acknowledged to herself.

In this work it has been my object to portray the progress of the
passions; to chronicle a history rather by thoughts and feelings than by
incidents and events; and to lay open those minuter and more subtle mazes
and secrets of the human heart, which in modern writings have been so
sparingly exposed. It is with this view that I have from time to time
broken the thread of narration, in order to bring forward more vividly
the characters it contains; and in laying no claim to the ordinary
ambition of tale-writers, I have deemed myself at liberty to deviate from
the ordinary courses they pursue. Hence the motive and the excuse for
the insertion of the following extracts, and of occasional letters. They
portray the interior struggle when Narration would look only to the
external event, and trace the lightning "home to its cloud," when History
would only mark the spot where it scorched or destroyed.



EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF LADY EMILY MANDEVILLE.

Tuesday.--More than seven years have passed since I began this journal!
I have just been looking over it from the commencement. Many and various
are the feelings which it attempts to describe--anger, pique, joy,
sorrow, hope, pleasure, weariness, ennui; but never, never once,
humiliation or remorse!--these were not doomed to be my portion in the
bright years of my earliest youth. How shall I describe them now? I
have received--I have read, as well as my tears would let me, a long
letter from Julia. It is true that I have not dared to write to her:
when shall I answer this? She has showed me the state of my heart;