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HURST, CHANCE AND CO.
ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD;

R. ACKERMANN, REPOSITORY OF ARTS, STRAND;
R. ACKERMANN, JUN. 191, REGENT STREET;

CONSTABLE AND CO., EDINBURGH; AND W. CURRY, JUN., DUBLIN.

LONDON:

F. SHOBERL, JUN. LONG-ACRE.

PREFACE.

In announcing the plan of The Family Magazine, its projectors took occasion to remark how considerable a portion of most of the monthly miscellanies previously existing is occupied with extracts or abridgments from newspapers, or matters extremely dry to the general reader, however useful for future reference or interesting to the professed scholar and the man of science. They declared it to be their aim to produce an original work free from this objection-a work which, as well at the moment of publication as at any future period, may be read with pleasure and profit from beginning to end—a work peculiarly adapted to the FAMILY CIRCLE, composed as it is of members of various ages and both sexes-a work, in short, neither so grave as to deter those who read for amusement only, nor so frivolous as to disgust those who sometimes look for instruction. They solemnly pledged themselves that their miscellany should contain nothing which a parent or guardian need be afraid to put into the hands of youth, and that whatever is offensive to good taste and to the most scrupulous delicacy should be carefully excluded from its pages.

Such were the conditions upon which they ventured to aspire to the favour of the Public. The first volume is now before it, and to that they confidently appeal as an evidence that they have most scrupulously fulfilled their contract: but whether the work possesses sufficient of the peculiar kind of merit which is requisite for obtaining a permanent place in its esteem, they must leave it to that tribunal to decide.

On this subject, however, they may be allowed to refer with some degree of exultation to the commendations unanimously bestowed on the successive numbers by the Conductors of the

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