PREFACE.

In an age when Fiction and Romance are dissipating the minds of our youth, corrupting their taste, and familiarizing them to scenes of gaiety and crime-when infidelity is insidiously undermining their principles, and Popery spreading her snares to seduce them to desert the Protestant faith-in an age, too, when the wildest notions are held under the name of religion, I have made an effort to present TRUTH to the world in her own native dress, without the embellishments of Fiction-and genuine RELIGION without the mask of hypocrisy and disguise.

I have endeavoured also to exemplify the high character and dignity of the female sex, by depicting the moral influence of their intelligence and piety over the mind and conduct of young men, who prize their society and listen to their counsel; and all that is related, I can attest as fact and experience.

What is the ardent wish breathed by the fond parent, as she says, "Farewell" to her beloved

child, as he is crossing his paternal threshold to launch forth into the wide world? When she thinks that he has to go alone to dangerous London, to become an apprentice, or an articled clerk —or to walk the hospitals—or that he is springing off to the UNIVERSITY amid universal temptations. Ah! she sighs, and says to herself, "I wish my young TELEMACHUS had some MENTOR to accompany him-some friend always at his elbow to admonish him. Poor young creature! he knows nothing of this ensnaring world! I fear he will be deceived and beguiled! Oh if he should forget all my counsels, and become "a companion of fools and be destroyed;" it would break my heart-it would

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bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave!" Oh that he might meet with some one capable and willing to advise him, to dissuade him from "going into the way of the wicked. and sitting down in the seat of the scornful." Oh that he may meet with some one who shall persuade him that "the ways of religion are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths paths of peace," and induce him, by his conversation and example, to walk therein! Then, fond mother-then, anxious father, to give such a MENTOR to your son-to supply your beloved child with such a friend-such a fellow-traveller-to whisper caution when temptation spreads her allurements--to admonish him when lingering near evil--to guard him when the foe assaults him, and to bring him out in safety from the net in which his

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feet may get entangled-and to animate him with the love of the beautiful in the scenes of nature-of the virtuous, the intellectual, and the heavenly amongst the different beings he may meet with— and to lead him to be a companion of the wise, and to become all that a prudent father and an affectionate mother can desire--is the design of "TRUTH WITHOUT FICTION." The Author, who has passed through every scene himself, either as a witness or an agent, and brought up a family of sons and daughters, who have been trained by such precepts, and are now all "walking in the way they should go," sends forth this to the world, with the design of promoting the same benefit in the large family of human kind; and he hopes what was said by Dr. Johnson of Dr. Watts's" Improvement of the Mind," may be said of "TRUTH WITHOUT FICTION." "No tutor will do justice to his pupil, or parent to his child, who does not put into their hands" "TRUTH WITHOUT FICTION, AND RELIGION WITH OUT DISGUISE.'

24th May, 1837.