ABSTRACT
In the dedication of this book to his Italian friend and translator, Signor Alberto Caccia, Mr. Collins takes occasion to remark that he respects his art far too sincerely to permit limits to be wantonly assigned to it which are imposed in no other civilised country on the face of the earth; that he has never asserted a truer claim to the best and noblest sympathies of Christian readers than in presenting to them the character of the innocent victims of infamy; and that he knows that the wholesome audience of the nation at large has done liberal justice to his books. He then goes on to allude to the ‘interesting moral problem’ which he has worked out in the present volumes, and affirms that the events in which the two chief personages play their parts have been combined with all possible care, and have been derived to the best of his ability, from natural and simple causes.
