tion of that purpose
contained in the succeeding pages, lies the broad line of separation
which distinguishes between the will and the deed. How far I may fall
short of another man's standard, remains to be discovered. How far I
have fallen short of my own, I know painfully well.

One word more on the manner in which the purpose of the following pages
is worked out--and I have done.

Nobody who admits that the business of fiction is to exhibit human life,
can deny that scenes of misery and crime must of necessity, while human
nature remains what it is, form part of that exhibition. Nobody can
assert that such scenes are unproductive of useful results, when they
are turned to a plainly and purely moral purpose. If I am asked why I
have written certain scenes in this book, my answer is to be found in
the universally-accepted truth which the preceding words express. I have
a right to appeal to that truth; for I guided myself by it throughout.
In deriving the lesson which the following pages contain, from those
examples of error and crime which would most strikingly and naturally
teach it, I determined to do justice to the honesty of my object by
speaking out. In drawing the two characters, whose actions bring about
the darker scenes of my story, I did not forget that it was my duty,
while striving to portray them naturally, to put them to a good moral
use; and at some sacrifice, in certain places, of dramatic effect
(though I trust with no sacrifice of truth to Nature), I have shown the
conduct of the vile, as always, in a greater or less degree, associated
with something that is selfish, contemptible, or cruel in motive.
Whether any of my better characters may succeed in endearing themselves
to the reader, I know not: but this I do certainly know:--that I shall
in no instance cheat him out of his sympathies in favour of the bad.

To those persons who dissent from the broad principles here adverted to;
who deny that it is the novelist's vocation to do more than merely amuse
them; who shrink from all honest and serious reference, in books,
to subjects which they think of in private and talk of in public
everywhere; who see covert implications where nothing is implied, and
improper allusions where nothing improper is alluded to; whose innocence
is in the word, and not in the thought; whose morality stops at the
tongue, and never gets on to the heart--to those persons, I should
consider it loss of time, and worse, to offer