In this book, Susan Cornwall aims to illustrate the beauty and value of practical piety, by an attractive exhibition of its salutary influence amid the daily duties and cares and common incidents of life. For this reason, Cornwall selected an interesting phase of mental habits, which, though combining some of the most striking points of strongly-marked characters in every class and station, is very frequently overlooked. The intelligent reader, therefore, will find in the sketches presented, such a combination of pure examples and crude specimens of life and manners, as to the unreflecting may seem almost inconsistent with the time and place to which it is ascribed. It is unquestionable, that even now, as well in the most refined as in the least cultivated circles, a careful observer, conversant with the modes of thought current among different classes, may daily detect, in the vain reliance of many persons upon cherished omens of good fortune, and their vain resistance to superstitious fears of imaginary ills, a base counterfeit of the first principle of practical piety, faith in Divine providence. And -it is one of the remarkable features of the present time, that some theories, which lay claim to a place among principles of science, have an obvious tendency to carry back the minds of many to confidence, not only in hurtful superstitions, but also in some of the blasphemous deceits of ancient heathenism; which, in the various forms of necromancy and witchcraft, were the source of all superstitious signs or omens that still prevail, in some degree, in Christian lands. Scientific speculation, assuming the name of philosophy, has impiously pretended even to invade the recesses of the invisible world, and to give a tangible reality to the fancies of heathen fiction, with its fabled "shades" of the departed.