Memoirs and Letters OF RICHARD AND ELIZABETH SHACKLETON, LATE OF BALLITORE, IRELAND; COMPILED BY THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY LEADBEATER. INCLUDING A CONCISE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, AND SOME LETTERS, OF HER "My boast is not that I deduce my birth COWPER. LONDON: PRINTED FOR HARVEY AND DARTON, GRACECHURCH-STREET. PREFACE. THAT feeling inherent in our nature, which loves to remember and to be remembered, having, in many instances, tended to the improvement as well as entertainment of those who prefer the narrative dictated by truth to works of imagination; and the taste of the present day, more than of some of former ages, seeming to favour this judicious choice; the compiler has been encouraged in a persuasion, that, instead of confining to their own descendants, these memoirs and sentiments of an exemplary couple, they may be usefully introduced into more public view, and the memory thus preserved, of those virtues which graced the sphere allotted to them. A considerable number of letters, or extracts from letters, addressed by the late Richard Shackleton to some of his numerous friends, have already been submitted to the public eye, principally collected by his worthy, much-valued contemporary, John Kendall; by which his talents for epistolary converse have been evinced, in a way that it is hoped will favourably dispose many readers to receive the resent volume. The few letters of Elizabeth Shackleton here |