Dorothy,
and are reduced to form our opinion of the terms on which she and her
husband were from very slight indications which may easily mislead us."

When an editor is in the pleasant position of being able to retain an
historian of the eminence of Macaulay to write a large portion of his
introduction, it would ill become him to alter and correct his
statements wherever there was a petty inaccuracy; still it is necessary
to say, once for all, that there are occasional errors in the
passage,--as where Macaulay mentions that Chicksands is no longer the
property of the Osbornes,--though happily not one of these errors is in
itself important. To our thinking, too, in the character that he draws
of our heroine, Macaulay hardly appears to be sufficiently aware of the
sympathetic womanly nature of Dorothy, and the dignity of her
disposition; so that he is persuaded to speak of her too constantly from
the position of a man of the world praising with patronizing emphasis
the pretty qualities of a school-girl. But we must remember, that in
forming our estimate of her character, we have an extended series of
letters before us; and from these the reader can draw his own
conclusions as to the accuracy of Macaulay's description, and the
importance of Dorothy's character.

It was this passage from Macaulay that led the Editor to Courtenay's
Appendix, and it was the literary and human charm of the letters
themselves that suggested the idea of stringing them together into a
connected story or sketch of the love affairs of Dorothy Osborne. This
was published in April 1886 in the _English Illustrated Magazine_, and
happened, by good luck, to fall into the hands of an admirer of Dorothy,
who, having had access to the original letters, had made faithful and
loving copies of each one,--accurate even to the old-world spelling.
These labours had been followed up by much patient research, the fruits
of which were now to be generously offered to the present Editor on
condition that he would prepare the letters for the press. The owner of
the letters having courteously expressed his acquiescence, nothing
remained but to give to the task that patient care that it is easy to
give to a labour of love.

A few words of explanation as to the arrangement of the letters.
Although few of them were dated, it was found possible, by minute
analysis of their contents, to place them in approximately correct
order; and if one could not date each letter, on