Above a century has passed away, since the last heroines of that family, to whose annals I am preparing to add, quitted the scene of human action. I say, the _last_, because no accounts exist of their successors; but during that long and vacant period, who knows, but that many excellent persons may have acted in a manner which did credit to their ancestors, though no written or traditional memorial remains to communicate to posterity their virtues and their woes, their trials and their victories? My heart delights in the tale, which records examples of heroic excellence; and I have frequently censured the indolence of cotemporary writers, for suffering this period to remain a blank. Lest I should deserve that censure myself, which I have not scrupled to inflict upon others, I now take up my pen, and proceed to execute a task, which (should I live to finish it) will, I trust, rescue from oblivion some circumstances well-deserving to be remembered. What I shall set down will be truth, pure unadorned truth. A just cause demands not the aid of ornament; and should these leaves ever meet the eye of persons, who may think themselves more nearly interested in their contents than others, let them not for an instant suspect, that one syllable is either inserted or retrenched upon _their_ account, or with a view to produce any other sentiment in their bosoms, than a conviction of the truth. It is not before _their_ tribunal, that I plead the cause of two unfortunates, but before that of the whole world: I write not for them, whose prejudices may perhaps make them refuse to peruse more than a few pages of this narrative, and who may close their eyes obstinately against the light, which shews them that, which they are unwilling to see. No; I write for impartial judges, and will state my case with as pure and rigid fidelity, as were I stating it to the ear of Heaven. In the tranquil vales, which border the lakes of Thun and of the Four Cantons, those lakes where Helvetian Liberty first threw her fetters away, still do the families exist of those best friends of their native country, the Melthals, the Forests, the Bernsdorfs, and the Tells. Their different branches have spread themselves on all sides, and almost form a little nation of their own; whose sons and daughters, even in a land where honour, bravery, and truth are so universal, still distinguish themselves from their compatriots by the superiority of their virtues. It were an easy task for me to point out many Williams, Walters, and Henrics, many Gertrudes and Amabels in this amiable community, so perfectly have the good qualities of their fore-fathers been inherited by their children: but at present I shall only mention the inhabitants of one particular house, which sheltered the infancy of the heroines of my tale.