Remember, all such speeches as these will lose above half their effect, if you cannot accompany them with the vacant stare, the insipid smile, the passive aspect of the humbly perverse. Whilst I write, new precepts rush upon my recollection; but the subject is inexhaustible. I quit it with regret, though fully sensible of my presumption in having attempted to instruct those who, whilst they read, will smile in the consciousness of superior powers. Adieu! then, my fair readers: long may you prosper in the practice of an art peculiar to your sex! Long may you maintain unrivalled dominion at home and abroad; and long may your husbands rue the hour when first they made you promise _“to obey!”_ [_Written in 1787--published in 1795._] FOOTNOTES: [70] Marmontel. [71] Emilius and Sophia. [72] Vide Duchess of Marlborough’s Apology. TALES OF FASHIONABLE LIFE. Tutta la gente in lieta fronte udiva Le graziose e finte istorielle, Ed Ì difetti altrui tosto scopriva Ciascuno, e non i proprj espressi in quelle; O se de’ proprj sospettava, ignoti Credeali a ciascun altro, e a se sol noti. PREFACE My daughter asks me for a Preface to the following volumes; from a pardonable weakness she calls upon me for parental protection: but, in fact, the public judges of every work, not from the sex, but from the merit of the author. What we feel, and see, and hear, and read, affects our conduct from the moment when we begin, till the moment when we cease to think. It has therefore been my daughter’s aim to promote, by all her writings, the progress of education from the cradle to the grave. Miss Edgeworth’s former works consist of tales for children--of stories for young men and women--and of tales suited to that great mass which does not move in the circles of fashion. The present volumes are intended to point out some of those errors to which the higher classes of society are disposed. All the parts of this series of moral fictions bear upon the faults and excellencies of different ages and classes; and they have all arisen from that view of society which we have laid before the public in more didactic works on education. In the PARENT’S ASSISTANT, in MORAL and in POPULAR TALES, it was my daughter’s aim to exemplify the principles contained in PRACTICAL EDUCATION. In these volumes, and in others which are to follow, she endeavours to disseminate, in a familiar form, some of the ideas that are unfolded in ESSAYS ON PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION. The first of these stories is called ENNUI.--The causes, curses, and cure of this disease are exemplified, I hope, in such a manner, as not to make the remedy worse than the disease. Thiebauld tells us, that a prize-essay on Ennui was read to the Academy of Berlin, which put all the judges to sleep.