"I have not the knowledge requisite for producing a learned work, nor am I ever likely to acquire it. A work of fancy or invention is, perhaps, yet further out of my line. I never had any talent for compositions in which imagination is required. I hardly ever wrote a line of poetry except when obliged to it at school or college. But it requires neither learning nor imagination to give a simple statement of facts, and there is a charm in truth which will give to a composition, which bears its stamp, an interest more lively, perhaps, than what the beauties of poetry and fiction are employed to adorn. "I believe the history of the human mind must always be interesting. If the most insignificant of men could but be taught to write a correct account of what has passed within his soul, in any period of his existence, the history would be full of wonders and instruction; and if, with God's help, I am able to fulfil my present undertaking, and to give a picture of my own mind and heart, and recount, with truth and {xvii} perspicuity, the revolutions which have taken place within me, I have no doubt the narrative will be interesting. The minds and hearts of men are wonderfully alike one to another. They are also wonderfully various. Read the history of my mind and you will find it interesting, as you know a book of travels is, through countries which you have visited. You will see your own heart represented to you, and be, perhaps, pleasingly reminded of the feelings, the projects, the disappointments, the weaknesses of days gone by. But I have a greater object before me than your amusement. I desire your instruction. I may, perchance, throw on some passage of your history, on some points of the great picture which a retrospect of your past life presents to you, a more correct light. I may show you where your views of things might have often been more true than they were at the time, when your steps might have been more prudently, more happily taken, and by the consideration of mistakes and errors which I have afterwards acknowledged, though once blind to them, and from which I have recovered through the goodness of God, you may be assisted to take some steps forwards in the path of truth and happiness.