HOWEVER numerous the works of fiction with which, my dear Reader, I have trespassed on your attention, I leave published but three, of any account, in which the plot has been cast amidst the events, and coloured by the manner, of our own times.

The first of these, _Pelham_, composed when I was little more than a boy, has the faults, and perhaps the merits, natural to a very early age,--when the novelty itself of life quickens the observation,--when we see distinctly, and represent vividly, what lies upon the surface of the world,--and when, half sympathising with the follies we satirise, there is a gusto in our paintings which atones for their exaggeration.

As we grow older we observe less, we reflect more; and, like Frankenstein, we dissect in order to create.
The second novel of the present day,* which, after an interval of some years, I submitted to the world, was one I now, for the first time, acknowledge, and which (revised and corrected) will be included in this series, viz., _Godolphin_;--a work devoted to a particular portion of society, and the development of a peculiar class of character.

The third, which I now reprint, is _Ernest Maltravers_,** the most mature, and, on the whole, the most comprehensive of all that I have hitherto written.
* For _The Disowned_ is cast in the time of our grandfathers, and _The Pilgrims of the Rhine_ had nothing to do with actual life, and is not, therefore, to be called a novel.
** At the date of this preface _Night and Morning_ had not appeared.
For the original idea, which, with humility, I will venture to call the philosophical design of a moral education or apprenticeship, I have left it easy to be seen that I am indebted to Goethe's _Wilhelm Meister_.
But, in _Wilhelm Meister_, the apprenticeship is rather that of theoretical art.

In the more homely plan that I set before myself, the apprenticeship is rather that of practical life.