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May it Please Your Majesty,

The permission to bring out The Royal Lady's Magazine under Your Majesty's especial patronage, is an honour as unexpected as it is gratifying.

This honour has a twofold value. It carries with it an approval of the past and a pledge for the future.

We should derogate from Your Majesty's taste and discernment, could we permit ourselves to question, with affected humility, the nature of those claims which have obtained for us this proud distinction. Nor should we less derogate from our pretensions to deserve it, were we to forget that its best vindication must hereafter be found, in conferring upon our labours that character which is necessarily implied in whatever has the sanction of Your Majesty's illustrious name.

Our ambition is, to raise the female mind of England to its true level. It would be the language of unmeaning adulation, equally offensive to Your Majesty, and unworthy of ourselves, to say this object is beyond our grasp unaided by Your Majesty's patronage. But it is surely no flattery to affirm, the natural protector of such an object can alone be sought in the exalted personage who is, herself, the conspicuous possessor of all those qualities which most adorn the female mind and character.

The page of history teaches us what are the moral benefits which a nation derives from the example of a throne; and in the short period that