AND PASTORAL CONVERSATIONS. SECOND SERIES. BY THE LATE JOHN WARTON, D.D. EDITED BY HIS SONS. "Every Scribe, which is instructed unto the kingdom of Heaven, is like unto a "That the man of God may be perfect, throughly unto all good PREFACE BY THE EDITORS. Six years and more having now elapsed since the first appearance of "Death-bed Scenes," and the work having been greatly encouraged, not only at home, but even in foreign countries; it may reasonably, perhaps, be inferred, that a second series will be received with equal favour. The new pieces are precisely of the same character with the old ones;—they are in the same dramatic form; and the subjects are of similar importance and interest. Nor was the rule of selection any imagined superior merit in the pieces themselves first published, but the circumstances of the chief actors in the several dramas being such as made it impossible to apply the facts to their injury, or discomfort, even in the place where they were once known. The same rule is strictly adhered to now; death has swept many of the actors off the stage; and time has obliterated the remembrance of the facts. Opinions and actions are here recorded which are no longer of any consequence but to ourselves, for examples to imitate, or to shun. If the reader should require any other information upon the work, we refer him to the ample prefaces, by the author and ourselves, which are prefixed to the former volumes. |