explanation on ushering a volume into the world of letters; but, lest
the question arise as regards the direct intention or motive of an
author, it is always safer that he make a plain statement of his object,
in the preface page of his work, thus making sure that he will be
rightly interpreted by his readers.

In the unpretending volume entitled "Honor Edgeworth," or "Ottawa's
Present Tense," the writer has not proposed to make any display of the
learning she has acquired by a few years' study, and she would therefore
seek to remove, in anticipation, any impression the reader may be
inclined to harbor, of her motives having been either selfish or
uncharitable.

The world of art and science is already aglow with the dazzling beauty
of the genius of her many patrons,--the world of letters has in our day
a population as thick as the stars in the heavens, or the grains of sand
on the beach--and hence it is that rivalry is almost a _passe_ stimulant
in this sphere; the heroes and heroines of the pen aim at individual,
independent and not comparative, merit. In nine cases out of ten, the
author of a work, apart from the gratification it gives himself to
indulge his faculties, and whatever influence for better or worse his
opinions may have, in the political social or religious world, knows no
other aim.

In "Honor Edgeworth" the sole and sincere motive of the authoress has
been to hold up to the mass the little picture of society, in one of its
most marked phases, that she has sketched, as she watched its freaks and
caprices from behind the scenes.

Ottawa, in this work, is taken merely as a representative of all other