I should like to write a Preface, if I could.—Such an ample field is afforded, for appealing to the sympathy and generosity of the “Liberal Public.” Such emphatic words as “youthful diffidence,” “consciousness of errors,” “request of friends,” “leisure hours,” “relief in solitude,”—all these once attracted my delighted attention, and I resolved, if _I_ ever should write a book, to present therewith a very sentimental Preface. But upon this subject my opinions are changed. Negatively speaking of my volume—“youthful diffidence” I cannot plead; “consciousness of errors,” I might, which I own I have had time to correct. I do not publish at the “request of friends,” for no friends, to my knowledge, were ever particularly anxious for such an event. Nor for the amusement of my “leisure hours,” for, since my remembrance, I never had any. Nor as a “relief in solitude,” for I am never alone. And permit me to add, not for gold, for my muse will never become a Crœsus. Lastly, not for Fame, for light is my regard for her vain breath. A Preface is an article which I am by no means prepared to attempt, being apprehensive that my labors might terminate like those of a certain venerable individual, of spelling-book celebrity, who, in companionship with his son, and a long-eared fellow-traveller, by his anxiety to please everybody, found, to his mortification, that he could please nobody. Now, with the very moderate desire of pleasing somebody, I have determined to write no preface to my book, because I am not prepared to make a single fashionable apology for its publication. At the present era of book-making, all prefatory introductions seem to be disregarded as superfluous by the reading community, except to works of deep erudition, or on subjects which may require preliminary elucidations from the author. All others are merely glanced over like the “programme of an entertainment,” or a “bill of the play,” and obtain no further notice. Scarcely one reader out of ten has the least interest or curiosity to learn what motive induced the author to write the volume, which he has either bought or borrowed for his entertainment. He certainly has a right to expect it will contain some matter either to improve, inform, or amuse the mind. If disappointed, no apology, however gracefully made, will effect a change in his opinion; and the author may expect to receive the same compliment which a certain learned doctor (more famed for candor than politeness) once paid to his delinquent pupil, who made an elaborate apology for his errors, that he who was good at making “a handsome apology, was generally good for nothing else.” Thine respectfully, K. A. W.