They will still be obtainable singly, however, until the Easter fair, and authors who make early application can have the entire fascicle of preludes forwarded to them, so that they can pick out for themselves whichever preface seems to them the most laudatory of a book. After the Easter fair however, when the Book of Prefaces above mentioned comes out (and it will be interleaved with the fair catalogue), the literary world will only be beglorified in _corpore_, in _coro_, and I shall be (so to speak) making a present of a patent of nobility to the republic of letters in the lump,--as the Empress Queen did in 1775 to the whole mercantile community of Vienna; although I have before my eyes (in the shape of the poor reviewers who work themselves well nigh to death, hammering and building away at the temple of fame, and at triumphal arches) the melancholy proof that though a man were to extol the republic of letters even in six volumes folio, he would get less for it than Sannazaro did for belauding the republic of Venice in as many lines--for each line in the latter case brought the poet in a matter of a hundred five-dollar pieces. I propose to interstratify one of the prefaces in question in this place by way of a specimen and experiment, making as if its celebrated author had written it to order for this book (which is the actual truth, moreover). There is no difficulty in my splitting myself up into two characters, the flower painter and the preface maker. But,--as one cannot _quite_ lose sight of feelings of becoming modesty--I carefully pick out the most miserable specimen of the lot, one in which laudation occurs but to a very moderate extent, one which places the author of the book attached to it upon a funeral car, rather than upon a triumphal one, with nothing whatever to draw it along moreover; whereas the other prefaces harness posterity to them, and the reading public are, by _them_, yoked on to the heavenly chariot, the Elijah's chariot, of Immortality, in which they draw the author along. In conclusion, then, I have only to observe that the celebrated author of 'HESPERUS' has been kind enough to look through my Flower-pieces, and contribute to them the following preface, which will be found well worthy of perusal. PREFACE, BY THE AUTHOR OF 'HESPERUS.' The following remarks may be thrown into the form of a series of postulates, which are, at the same time, so many similes. Many authors (Young is an instance) set fire to their nerve-spirit, which, like burning spirit of another kind (brandy), tinges every person who stands round the inkbottle where it is flaring with a sham DEADLY pallor. But, unfortunately, each looks only at the others, none looks into the mirror. The effect of the proximity of this universal mortality all about, upon people and authors, is that each is impressed with a livelier sense of the exceptional nature of his own _im_mortality; and this is remarkably comforting to us all.