“_Con tal que las costumbres de un autor_,” says Don Tomas De Las Torres, in the Preface to his Amatory Poems, “_sean puras y castas, importo muy poco que no sean igualmente severas sus obras_”—meaning, in plain English, that, provided the morals of an author are pure, personally, it signifies nothing what are the morals of his books. We presume that Don Torres is now in Purgatory for so heterodox an assertion. It would be a clever thing, too, in the way of poetical justice, to keep him there until his “Amatory Poems” get out of print, or are laid definitively upon the shelf through lack of readers. Every fiction _should have_ its moral; and, what is more to the purpose, our modern critics have discovered that every fiction _has_. These ingenious fellows demonstrate a hidden meaning in the “Antediluvians,” a parable in “Powhatan,” new views in “Cock Robin,” and transcendentalism in “Hop O’ My Thumb.” It has been proved that no man can sit down to write without a very profound design. Thus to authors in general much trouble is spared. A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there—that is to say it is somewhere—and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves. When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended, and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the “Dial,” or the “Down-Easter,” together with all that he ought to have intended, and the rest that he clearly meant to intend:—so that it will all come very straight in the end. There is no just ground, therefore, for the charge brought against me by certain ignoramuses—that I have never written a moral tale, or, in more precise words, a tale with a moral. They are not the critics predestined to bring me out, and _develop_ my morals:—that is the secret. By and bye the “North American Quarterly Humdrum” will make them ashamed of their stupidity. In the meantime, by way of staying execution, by way of mitigating the accusations against me, I offer the sad history appended—a history about whose obvious moral there can be no question whatever, since he who runs may read it in the large capitals which form the title of the tale. I should have credit for this arrangement—a far wiser one than that of La Fontaine and others, who reserve the impression to be conveyed until the last moment, and thus sneak it in at the fag end of their fables.