The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Flower Basket, by Unknown

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Title: The Flower Basket
A Fairy Tale

Author: Unknown

Release Date: January 9, 2009 [EBook #27754]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: FRONTISPIECE. _Page 23._]

_Published by Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, London, April, 6,
1816._

THE FLOWER BASKET.

A FAIRY TALE.

--------------I never may believe
These antick fables, nor these fairy toys.

London:

PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN,
_PATERNOSTER ROW_.

1816.

BARNARD AND FARLEY,
_Skinner-Street, London_.

PREFACE.

Whoever honours the following little Tale with a perusal, will probably
anticipate in the Preface, the so-often-framed apology, that it was not
written with an intention of being published. Yet stale as the assurance
may be, it is in this instance strictly true.

It was composed solely at the request, and for the amusement of, the
children of a friend; nor would it ever have entered my head to offer
any thing in the shape of a Fairy Tale to this enlightened age, when
such productions have long been banished from all juvenile libraries.
Among the innumerable works which do so much credit to the talents and
invention of the writers, that have been substituted for them, it may
admit of a question, whether beings, not professedly ideal, are not
sometimes pourtrayed nearly as imaginary as any that ever "wielded wand,
or worked a spell." I believe (for I have never happened to meet with
the book, since it was first published) I have the sanction of one of
the most celebrated female writers of the age, in her "Thoughts on the
Education of a Young Princess," for supposing that the mind of a child
is less likely to be misled by what is avowedly fictitious, than by
those high wrought characters of perfection, which they would have
little bet