PREFACE. In the original plan for publishing a selection from my essays in different kinds which have appeared in periodicals, I had aimed at more completeness of arrangement than has been attained in these two volumes. Selections had been made from essays on English literature, on Continental and American literature, and on Art. I had wished, beside, for a department in which to insert sketches of a miscellaneous character, in prose and verse. It was proposed, in the critical pieces, to retain the extracts with which they were originally adorned, as this would give them far more harmony and interest for the general reader. The translation, however, of the matter from a more crowded page to its present form has made such a difference, that I have been obliged to drop most of the extracts from several of the pieces. Moreover, in approaching the end of the first number, I found myself obliged to omit more than half the essays I had proposed on the subject of English literature, the greater part of those on Art, and those on Continental literature and of a miscellaneous kind entirely. I find, indeed, that the matter which I had supposed could be comprised in two of these numbers would fill six or eight. Had I been earlier aware of this, I should have made a different selection, and one which would do more justice to the range and variety of subjects which have been before. my mind during the ten years that, in the intervals allowed me by other engagements, I have written for the public. To those of my friends, who have often expressed a wish that I could find time to write," it will be a satisfaction to know that, though the last twenty months is the first period in my life when it has been permitted me to make my pen my chief means of expressing my thoughts, yet I have written enough, if what is afloat, and what lies hid in manuscript, were put together, to make a little library, quite large enough to exhaust the patience of the collector, if not of the reader. Should I do no more, I have at least sent my share of paper missives through the world. The present selection contains some of my earliest and some of my latest expressions. I have not put dates to any of the pieces, though, in the earlier, I see much crudity, which I seem to have outgrown now, just as I hope I shall think ten years hence of what I write to-day. But I find an identity in the main views and ideas, a substantial harmony among these pieces, and I think those who have been interested in my mind at all, will take some pleasure in reading the youngest and crudest of these pieces, and will readily disown for me what I would myself disown. Should these volumes meet with a kind reception, a more |