tle work the reader will scarcely find anything
to "elevate and surprise;" and, if it has any merit, it must consist in
the liveliness with which it brings things home to the imagination, and
the reality it gives to the scenes it pourtrays.

[Footnote A: I confess, however, the inability I found to weave a
catastrophe, such as I desired, out of these ordinary incidents. What I
have here said, therefore, must not be interpreted as applicable to the
concluding sheets of my work.]

Yes, even in the present narrative, I have aimed at a certain kind of
novelty--a novelty which may be aptly expressed by a parody on a
well-known line of Pope; it relates:

"Things often done, but never yet described."

In selecting among common and ordinary adventures, I have endeavoured to
avoid such as a thousand novels before mine have undertaken to develop.
Multitudes of readers have themselves passed through the very incidents
I relate; but, for the most part, no work has hitherto recorded them. If
I have hold them truly, I have added somewhat to the stock of books
which should enable a recluse, shut up in his closet, to form an idea of
what is passing in the world. It is inconceivable, meanwhile, how much,
by this choice of a subject, I increased the arduousness of my task. It
is so easy to do, a little better, or a little worse, what twenty
authors have done before! If I had foreseen from the first all the
difficulty of my project, my courage would have failed me to undertake
the execution of it.

Certain persons, who condescend to make my supposed inconsistencies the
favourite object of their research, will perhaps remark with exultation
on the respect expressed in this work for marriage, and exclaim, "It was
not always thus!" referring to the pages in which this subject is
treated in the "Enquiry concerning Political Justice" for the proof of
their assertion. The answer to this remark is exceedingly simple. The
production referred to in it, the first foundation of its author's claim
to public distinction and favour, was a treatise, aiming to ascertain
what new institutions in political society might be found more
conducive to general happiness than those which at present prevail. In
the course of this disquisition it was enquired whether marriage, as it
stands described and supported in the laws of England, might not with
advantage admit of certain modifications. Can anything be more distinct
than such a proposition on the one h