Introduction. It may not be improper to advertise the reader, that Miss Caroline Stretton, the young lady, who forms the principle character in these volumes, having been detected by her uncle, Sir Ralph Stretton, in carrying on a love affair with an unworthy object, is by him, hurried down to his country sea, in order to put a stop to all future intercourse between them; and, as much as in him lay, to bury, in retirement, the indiscretion of his niece. And it is from thence, and under these circumstances, that the gay, the volatile, the mortified Miss Stretton, writes to her amiable friend, the Lady Louisa Stroud; between whom, and herself, from this period, a correspondence is carried on by letter, through the whole work, with little interruption. The editor.