330 HENKY KIRKE WUITE's REJIAINS. 



to recommend them, and may possibly, in some measure, 

 be instrumental in the melioration of the human heart oi 

 the correction of false prepossessions. This is the height 

 of my ambition : this once attained, and my end will be 

 fully accomplished. One thing I can safely promise, 

 though far from being the coinages of a heart at ease, they 

 will contain neither the querulous captiousness of misfor- 

 tune nor the bitter taunts of misanthropy. Society is a 

 chain of which I am merely a link ; all men are my asso- 

 ciates in error, and though some may have gone farther 

 in the ways of guilt than myself, yet it is not in me to sit 

 in judgment upon them : it is mine to treat them rather 

 in pity than in anger, to lament their crimes, and to weep 

 over their sufferings. As these papers will be the amuse- 

 ment of those hours of relaxation when the mind recedes 

 from the vexations of business, and sinks into itself for a 

 moment of solitary ease, rather than the efforts of literary 

 leisure, the reader will not expect to find in them un- 

 usual elegance of language or studied propriety of style. 

 In the short and necessary intervals of cessation from 

 the anxieties of an irksome employment, one finds little 

 time to be solicitous about expression. If, therefore, 

 the fervour of a glowing mind expresses itself in too 

 warm and luxuriant a manner for the cold ear of dull 

 propriety, let the fastidious critic find a selfish pleasure 

 in descrying it. To criticism melancholy is indifferent. 

 If learning cannot be better empioved than in declaim- 

 ing against the defects while it is insensible to the beau- 

 ties of a performance, well may we exclaim with the 

 poet : — 



fi ivyAung ayvoiet oig otf^auo; rig el 

 OT»y 01 av ov sx,ois ouras aovK ocyuon. 



w. 



