Chapter XI: Preface

In writing the ensuing pages, I have been guided by no motives
other than those which lead the mind, in its leisure hours, to
scatter the germs of the beautiful. It may be urged that the
character of my hero is unnatural; but I am sure there are many of
my sex who will discover in Mr. Higgins a counter-part of the ideal
of days when life still knew the odors of its first spring, and the
soul of man seemed to the eye of innocence an elysium of virtue
into which no gangrene of mere worldliness intruded. I have done.