That the subsequent Letters were written by a tender father, in a
declining state of health, for the instruction of his daughters, and
not intended for the Public, is a circumstance which will recommend
them to every one who considers them in the light of admonition
and advice. In such domestic intercourse, no sacrifices are made
to prejudices, to customs, to fashionable opinions. Paternal love,
paternal care, speak their genuine sentiments, undisguised and
unrestrained. A father’s zeal for his daughter’s improvement in
whatever can make a woman amiable, with a father’s quick apprehension
of the dangers that too often arise, even from the attainment of
that very point, suggest his admonitions, and render him attentive
to a thousand little graces and little decorums, which would escape
the nicest moralist who should undertake the subject on uninterested
speculation. Every faculty is on the alarm, when the objects of such
tender affection are concerned.
In the writer of these Letters, paternal tenderness and vigilance
were doubled, as he was at that time sole parent; death having before
deprived the young ladies of their excellent mother. His own precarious
state of health inspired him with the most tender solicitude for their
future welfare; and though he might have concluded, that the impression
made by his instruction and uniform example could never be effaced from
the memory of his children, yet his anxiety for their orphan condition
suggested to him this method of continuing to them those advantages.
The Editor is encouraged to offer this Treatise to the Public, by
the very favourable reception which the rest of his father’s works
have met with. The Comparative View of the State of Man and other
Animals, and the Essay on the Office and Duties of a Physician, have
been very generally read; and if he is not deceived by the partiality
of his friends, he has reason to believe they have met with general
approbation.
In some of those tracts the Author’s object was to improve the taste
and understanding of his reader; in others, to mend his heart; in
others, to point out to him the proper use of philosophy, by showing
its application to the duties of common life. In all his writings his
chief view was the good of his fellow-creatures; and those among his
friends, in whose taste and judgement he most confided, think the
publication of this small work will contribute to that general design,
and at the same time do honour to his memory, the Editor can no longer
hesitate to comply with their advice in communicating it to the Public.