_Lucretia; or, The Children of Night,_ was begun simultaneously with _The Caxtons: a Family Picture._ The two fictions were intended as pendants; both serving, amongst other collateral aims and objects, to show the influence of home education, of early circumstance and example, upon after character and conduct. _Lucretia_ was completed and published before _The Caxtons._ The moral design of the first was misunderstood and assailed; that of the last was generally acknowledged and approved: the moral design in both was nevertheless precisely the same. But in one it was sought through the darker side of human nature; in the other through the more sunny and cheerful: one shows the evil, the other the salutary influences, of early circumstance and training. Necessarily, therefore, the first resorts to the tragic elements of awe and distress, -- the second to the comic elements of humor and agreeable emotion. -- EDWARD GEORGE BULWER-LYTTON