PREFACE.

THE following tale is designed to set forth," in their true colours, the dangers to which our illcemented social system exposes the most numerous and important class in society;-dangers to which they become victims, not so much from natural causes, as from defective education, want of access to sound religious instruction, popular fallacies and prejudices, never more abundant than at present; all which are fostered by a corrupt and venal press, by the harangues of the infidel lecturer and the false liberal, and the numerous other destructive tendencies which are rife in the nineteenth century.

It is not meant that inducements to good are not also abundant. On the contrary, the Word of

God is spread through the land; the Church is putting forth her powers; education is assuming a sounder and deeper character; the press is extensively employed by the agents of good as well as by those of evil. We have much cause for hope as well as fear.

The scene will be laid in various departments of life, with a view to shew the mutual bearing of different classes on each other; how ambition and laxity of principle in the rich lead to the demoralization of the poor; how the demoralization of the poor reacts most certainly and perniciously on those above them; nay, how even good men, if unfortunately biassed in their judgment by prevailing errors, may most unconsciously promote the general evil; and lastly, how, in God's revealed religion, and in His Catholic Church, the only remedy or palliative of these evils is to be found.

Notwithstanding the objections of some muchesteemed critics to "love-scenes,” I must crave permission once more to introduce what may seem to them, perhaps, to approach too much