hat there is nothing
essentially different between vulgar vice and fashionable vice, and that
the slang of the one circle is but an easy paraphrase of the cant of the
other.

The Supplementary Essays, entitled "Tomlinsoniana," which contain
the corollaries to various problems suggested in the Novel, have been
restored to the present edition.

CLIFTON, July 25, 1840.

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1848.

Most men who with some earnestness of mind examine into the mysteries of
our social state will perhaps pass through that stage of self-education
in which this Novel was composed. The contrast between conventional
frauds, received as component parts of the great system of civilization,
and the less deceptive invasions of the laws which discriminate the meum
from the tuum, is tempting to a satire that is not without its justice.
The tragic truths which lie hid in what I may call the Philosophy of
Circumstance strike through our philanthropy upon our imagination. We
see masses of our fellow-creatures the victims of circumstances over
which they had no control,--contaminated in infancy by the example of
parents, their intelligence either extinguished or turned against them,
according as the conscience is stifled in ignorance or perverted
to apologies for vice. A child who is cradled in ignominy,
whose schoolmaster is the felon, whose academy is the House of
Correction,--who breathes an atmosphere in which virtue is poisoned,
to which religion does not pierce,--becomes less a responsible and
reasoning human being than a wild beast which we suffer to range in
the wilderness, till it prowls near our homes, and we kill it in
self-defence.

In this respect the Novel of "Paul Clifford" is a loud cry to society
to amend the circumstance,--to redeem the victim. It is an appeal from
Humanity to Law. And in this, if it could not pretend to influence or
guide the temper of the times, it was at least a foresign of a coming
change. Between the literature of imagination, and the practical
interests of a people, there is a harmony as complete as it is
mysterious. The heart of an author is the mirror of his age. The shadow
of the sun is cast on the still surface of literature long before the
light penetrates to law; but it is ever from the sun that the shadow
falls, and the moment we see the shadow we may be certain of the light.

Since this work was written, society has been busy with the evils in
which it was then silently acqui