epistolary communications as a trust not to be betrayed, I have
invariably refused to deliver to the biographers of my departed friends
any letters of theirs that I might possess: the first application for
them has always been the signal for committing the whole budget to the
flames.

This you know; and you say that the very precautions I have used will
leave my memory more completely at the mercy of ill-judging or ill-
informed survivors, who, in the absence of more authentic information,
may draw on their own invention, and do me injustice. This is the plea
that has prevailed with me now: the uncertainty of mortal life, with the
apprehension that if suddenly removed I shall become the heroine of some
strange romance, founded probably on the facts of a life by no means
deficient in remarkable incidents, but mixed up with a great deal of
fiction; and the consciousness that others may be thereby wounded, whom
I would not wish to wound--have decided me to act upon your suggestion,
and to draw out a little sketch of such matters as can alone concern the
public in any way. Into private domestic History no person possessed of
a particle of delicacy can wish to intrude. It is melancholy to witness
the prying spirit that some are but too ready to cater to, for filthy
lucre's sake: and grievous to reflect that the boasted immunity which
makes the cottage of the English peasant, no less than the palace of the
English noble, a castle--which so fences his domestic hearth that no man
may set foot within his door without his consent, or proclaim an untruth
concerning him without being legally compelled to render compensation,
should be withdrawn from his grave. I cannot tell you how I have blushed
for the living, and kindled with resentment on behalf of the dead, when
contemplating the merciless desecration of what may truly be called the
sacredness of home, in some biographical notices.