Excerpt from The Priors of Prague, Vol. 1 of 2 Believe me it is not amon the least of the many kind nesses you have shown me, t at you now allow these tri ing pages to be graced with your name. In days like the present, when by far the greater portion of the read ing public, prefer'works of prose fiction, to those of other styles, an author is in some degree forced to strive for the honours of a novelist, whether he wills it or not. Such being the case, the scope of a writer's ambition must be, to blend as much as possible, the useful with the amusin That such has been my aim - however imperfectfy achieved - as well in this work as in every thing else that I have ever written, ' I believe an impartial judge will admit. In the following pages, on will perceive that an at tempt has been made to de ineate a melancholy spectacle with which we too frequently meet in the cirpenence of life. That, of men of a noble genius, and the most extra ordinary acquirements, who, from a perverseness of dis position and a want of the most common prudence, ren der their lives miserable to themselves and useless to others. Having witnessed the daily dying of more than one mind so formed, I ma erhaps, have been over im pressed with the sad mora I ave conceived it to convey. Otherwise what can be more touching, more interesting to the observer of nature, than the wanton self-destruo tion of ener 'es and capacity, that under happier auspices would have enefited mankind? Like a beautiful piece of mechanism, that from the error of some trivial balance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."