text:  If the fashionable world be truly represented as it is not in the swarms of so-called fashionable novels gleaned from the sloppy conversation of footmen's ordinaries or the retail tittle-tattle of lady's-maids in waiting at the registry-offices how little is it to the credit of the mass of the reading public that they peruse such stuff; or would it be perused at all but for that vulgar love so prevalent about town of imitation of the Lady Fannys and Lady Mary Dollymops their _nonchalance_ their insipidity their studied ease and their affectation of being unaffected? We therefore desire before we begin that our young lady readers our jury of maidens will do us the favour to dismiss from their recollection all that they may have heard and read of the fashionable world; that they will not believe the exclusives to be as dull as so many bottles of stale small-beer or as lively as Seltzer water from the spring with a dash of brandy in it; that they will forget that there is in fashionable life any thing worthy their imitation or adoption unless it should otherwise appear by the evidence; and that they will not once take up a professedly fashionable novel till they have carefully studied and slept upon what we are going to say