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THE HEROINE TO THE READER. 4 Attend, gentle and intelligent reader; for I am not the fictitious personage whose memoirs you will peruse in " The Heroine;" but I am a corporeal being, and an inhabitant of another world. Know, that the moment a mortal manuscript is written in a legible hand, and the word End or Finis annexed thereto, whatever characters happen to be sketched in it (whether imaginary, biographical, or historical), acquire the quality of creating and effusing a sentient soul . or spirit, which ' instantly takes flight, and ascends through the regions of air, till it arrives at the Moon ; where it is then embodied,, and becomes a living creature: the precise counterpart, in mind and person, of its literary prototype. Know farther, that all the towns, vil. lages, rivers, hills, and vallies of the moon, owe their origin, in a similar manner, to the descriptions which writers give of those on earth; and that all the lunar trades and manufactures, fleets and coins, stays for men, and boots for ladies, receive form and substance here, from terrestrial books on war and commerce, pamphlets on bullion, and fashionable magazines. Works consisting of abstract argument, ethics, metaphysics, polemics,
