"If thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge."--IZAAK WALTON. "I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry, ''Tis all barren.'"--STERNE. "Chacun a son stile; le mien, comme vous voyez, n'est pas laconique."--ME. DE SEVIGNE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW-YORK: PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS NO. 82 CLIFF-STREET. 1838. [Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.] TO ONE-- AT WHOSE SOLICITATION THESE VOLUMES WERE COMMENCED, AND WITH WHOSE ENCOURAGEMENT THEY HAVE BEEN COMPLETED-- TO MY SISTER LUCY ARE THEY AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. TO THE READER "He that writes Or makes a feast, more certainly invites His judges than his friends; there's not a guest But will find something wanting or ill dress'd." In laying before the majesty of the public a couple of volumes like the present, it has become customary for the author to disclaim in his preface all original design of _perpetrating a book_, as if there were even more than the admitted _quantum_ of sinfulness in the act. Whether or not such disavowals now-a-day receive all the credence they merit, is not for the writer to say; and whether, were the prefatory asseveration, as in the present case, diametrically opposed to what it often is, the reception would be different, is even more difficult to predict. The articles imbodied in the following volumes were, a portion of them, in their original, hasty production, _designed_ for the press; yet the author unites in the disavowal of his predecessors of all intention at that time of perpetrating _a book_.