A special word about PIECES IN EARLY YOUTH at the end. On jaunts over Long Island, as boy and young fellow, nearly half a century ago, I heard of, or came across in my own experience, characters, true occurrences, incidents, which I tried my 'prentice hand at recording--(I was then quite an "abolitionist" and advocate of the "temperance" and "anti-capital-punishment" causes)--and publish'd during occasional visits to New York city. A majority of the sketches appear'd first in the "Democratic Review," others in the "Columbian Magazine," or the "American Review," of that period. My serious wish were to have all those crude and boyish pieces quietly dropp'd in oblivion--but to avoid the annoyance of their surreptitious issue, (as lately announced, from outsiders,) I have, with some qualms, tack'd them on here. _A Dough-Face Song_ came out first in the "Evening Post"--_Blood-Money_, and _Wounded in the House of Friends_, in the "Tribune." _Poetry To-day in America_, &c., first appear'd (under the name of "_The Poetry of the Future_,") in "The North American Review" for February, 1881. _A Memorandum at a Venture_, in same periodical, some time afterward. Several of the convalescent out-door scenes and literary items, preceding, originally appear'd in the fortnightly "Critic," of New York. DEMOCRATIC VISTAS As the greatest lessons of Nature through the universe are perhaps the lessons of variety and freedom, the same present the greatest lessons also in New World politics and progress. If a man were ask'd, for instance, the distinctive points contrasting modern European and American political and other life with the old Asiatic cultus, as lingering-bequeath'd yet in China and Turkey, he might find the amount of them in John Stuart Mill's profound essay on Liberty in the future, where he demands two main constituents, or sub-strata, for a truly grand nationality--1st, a large variety of character--and 2d, full play for human nature to expand itself in numberless and even conflicting directions--(seems to be for general humanity much like the influences that make up, in their limitless field, that perennial health-action of the air we call the weather--an infinite number of currents and forces, and contributions, and temperatures, and cross-purposes, whose ceaseless play of counterpart upon counterpart brings constant restoration and vitality.) With this thought--and not for itself alone, but all it necessitates, and draws after it--let me begin my speculations.