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INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

THE young lady who is the subject of this memoir was, as its title indicates, a Jewess by birth. The majestic beauty of the religion of Jesus has, in all ages, obtained its finest representatives from the house of Israel and among the many lovely examples of sublime attainment in the divine life made by Hebrew Christians, Leila Ada is not one of the least conspicuous. What she appears in the record of her now presented, that she was in real life, a pure, holy, humble Christian-a Christian hallowed, sublimed, etherealized by the influences of the Holy Spirit.

Leila is a character of undoubted loveliness: but she is not in the very least degree an ideal. We have been scrupulously exact in our descriptions and comments throughout. We have written from knowledge obtained through personal acquaintance of the dearest kind.

Leila was one of those fair and flower-like natures, which at intervals rise to cheer us along the dusty highways of life; but she was a plant which flourished in

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INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

the shade, and her real worth was known to very few. Her natural abilities were of the highest order, and she had cultivated them with the strictest care; so that had God seen it fitting to spare her life and call her to a more public situation, she would have occupied no humble position among those nobled-souled and intellectual women who are an honour to our country. She was one of the loveliest flowers that ever gleamed in the cold atmosphere of a world of sin; a flower fragile in its pensile form, delicate in its tender purity, spiritual in its beauty; too frail to live amidst these tempestuous clouds of earth, and only at home in the kindlier soil and among the stormless skies of "the better land.”

All Leila's papers are given verbatim et literatim. Write incorrectly she could not. A thoughtful, reflective mind she always had. Although her language is in some places diffuse and inartificial, we could not feel at liberty to alter it. We felt (and perhaps our feeling may be smiled at-let it be even so,) that Leila would never have consented to any similar mode of procedure while she lived; to be truthfully exact was always the rule of her conduct; and that if she was cognisant of our occupations now that she was in the skies, she would regard such disguise with even less allowance still. It is almost unnecessary for us to say that she never expected anything she wrote would be given to the world.

We have written, we trust, with a single heart-with a pure intention that God may be glorified. To him Leila was indebted for whatever she was. That in every respect she fully realized the picture of her which we have drawn, we are assured. We say this from a calm, unprejudiced, deliberate judgment. Were we to speak as we feel, we should be at once inclined to say, that her sweet Christianity could be estimated at its proper value only in the hearts of those who knew her while she was upon the earth-that any attempt to give in writing an adequate idea of her character must of necessity fall short.

Finally, we again repeat that we have nowhere written one word, look, or expression which is not most exact to the truth. Our dear relative, Miss H. (the Miss H. whose friendship with Leila is noticed in the Memoir itself,) once said to us-" Such a life, and such a death! You cannot possibly give it a beauty which it did not really possess."

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LONDON, July, 1853.

OSBORN W. TRENERY HEIGHWAY.

LEILA ADA,

THE JEWISH CONVERT.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION-LEILA'S CHARACTER AND PURSUITS-THE MISHNATHE TALMUD.

THE West of England abounds in scenes of quiet and picturesque beauty. Its shores are girded by tall gray cliffs, bold headlands, numerous islets, and large caves hollowed out and draped with sea-weeds by the musical waves of the Atlantic; while the inland scenery is rich in hills and valleys, dells and dingles, woods and meadows, combined in forms of surpassing loveliness. Crystal streamlets wind amongst quivering aspens; and glide, breaking into fall and rapid, and murmuring with a sweet complaining eloquence as though they were of life.

Amidst one of the sweetest of these scenes, and near the southern coast of Cornwall, there is an ancientlooking mansion, soft and tranquil in its elegant simplicity, and removed far away from the smoke and stir of earth. It stands in a deep but most lovely valley, between a line of picturesque eminences. Embosomed amid lofty and luxuriant trees, and surrounded by a

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