pen on the paper, or as nearly so as possible, did not occur to me until several months after my return, when with a feeble and half-unwilling hand I opened these letters to a beloved sister who was now no longer on earth. I confess that the life which they contained reanimated me, caused my heart to throb as it had done when they were written, and I could not but say to myself, “These, the offspring of the moment, and warm feeling, are, spite of all their failings, a more pure expression of the truth which my friends desire from me, and which I wish to express, than any which I could write with calm reflection and cool hand.” And I resolved to publish the letters as they had been inspired by the impression of the moment, and have on their transcription merely made some omissions and occasional additions. The additions have reference principally to historical and statistical facts which I found passingly touched upon in the letters or in my notes, and which are now amplified. The omissions are of such passages as refer to my own affairs or those of others, and which I considered as of too private or too delicate a nature to bear publicity. I have endeavoured in my communications from private life not to overstep the bounds which a sense of honour and delicacy prescribed; nor to introduce anything which it would be undesirable to publish, either as regarded confidential communication or the names of individuals. I am deeply sensible of the requirements of delicacy in this respect; and nothing would be more painful to me than to feel that from want of due circumspection I had failed herein.
