greater or less density, and that God is nothing; but he thought these incontestable truths very trivial and very hackneyed, and he could scarcely add a drop to the deluge of reasonable morality, atheistic religion, maxims, doctrines, and principles with which we have been flooded for our good for thirty years, in so monstrous a fashion that we might, if it be not irreverent, apply Regnier’s verses on a shower,-- “From out the clouds the rains in such vast torrents pour, That thirsty dogs can drink and not their foreheads lower.” Moreover, these lofty themes had no very visible connection with the subject of his story, and he might have been puzzled to find any bond of union leading up to it, although the art of transitions has been singularly simplified, since so many great men have discovered the secret of passing from a stable to a palace direct, and of exchanging without incongruity the policeman’s cap for the civic crown. Recognizing, therefore, that neither his talent nor his learning, “neither his wings nor his beak,” as the ingenious Arab poet has it, could furnish him with a preface which would interest his readers, the author resolved merely to offer them a serious and frank account of the improvements introduced in this second edition. He must first inform them that the words “second edition” are incorrect, and that the term “first edition” should really be applied to this reprint, inasmuch as the four variously sized bundles of grayish paper blotted with black and white, which the indulgent public has hitherto kindly consented to consider as the four volumes of “Hans of Iceland,” were so disfigured with typographic errors by a barbarous printer that the wretched author, on looking over his own production, altered as it was beyond all recognition, was perpetually subjected to the torments of a father whose child returns to him mutilated and tattooed by the hand of an Iroquois from Lake Ontario. For instance, the type turned a “lion’s” voice into a “line,” robbed the Dovrefield Mountains of their “peaks” and bestowed upon them “feet,” and when the Norse fishers hoped to moor their boat in various “creeks,” the printer drove them upon “bricks.” Not to weary the reader, the author will pass by in silence all the outrages of this kind which his wounded memory recalls,-- “Manet alto in pectore vulnus.” Suffice it to say that there is no grotesque image, no strange meaning, no absurd idea, no confused figure, no burlesque hieroglyph, which the sedulously stupid ignorance of this enigmatical proof-reader did not make him utter. Alas! every one who ever printed a dozen lines, were it only an invitation to a wedding or a funeral, will feel the deep bitterness of such a sorrow!