By this time, we hope, our readers are prepared to admit that our title (always one of the most difficult points of a book to settle), has not been imprudently or unwisely adopted. We wish to bring together the ideas and the wants, not merely of men engaged in the same lines of action or inquiry, but also (and very particularly) of those who are going different ways, and only meet at the crossings, where a helping hand is oftenest needed, and they would be happy to give one if they knew it was wanted. In this way we desire that our little book should take "NOTES," and be a medley of all that men are doing--that the Notes of the writer and the reader, whatever be the subject-matter of his studies, of the antiquary, and the artist, the man of science, the historian, the herald, and the genealogist, in short, Notes relating to all subjects but such as are, in popular discourse, termed either political or polemical, should meet in our columns in such juxta-position, as to give fair play to any natural attraction or repulsion between them, and so that if there are any hooks and eyes among them, they may catch each other. Now, with all modesty, we submit, that for the title of such a work as we have in view, and have endeavoured to describe, no word could be so proper as "NOTES." Can any man, in his wildest dream of imagination, conceive of any thing that may not be--nay, that has not been--treated of in a _note?_ Thousands of things there are, no doubt, which cannot be sublimed into poetry, or elevated into history, or treated of with dignity, in a stilted text of any kind, and which are, as it is called, "thrown" into notes; but, after all, they are much like children sent out of the stiff drawing-room into the nursery, snubbed to be sure by the act, but joyful in the freedom of banishment. We were going to say (but it might sound vainglorious), where do things read so well as in notes? but we will put the question in another form:--Where do you so well test an author's learning and knowledge of his subject?--where do you find the pith of his most elaborate researches?--where do his most original suggestions escape?--where do you meet with the details that fix your attention at the time and cling to your memory for ever?--where do both writer and reader luxuriate so much at their case, and feel that they are wisely discursive?--But if we pursue this idea, it will be scarcely possible to avoid something which might look like self-praise; and we content ourselves for the present with expressing our humble conviction that we are doing a service to writers and readers, by calling forth materials which they have themselves thought worth notice, but which, for want of elaboration, and the "little leisure" that has not yet come, are lying, and may lie for ever, unnoticed by others, and presenting them in an unadorned _multum-in-parvo_ form. To our readers therefore who are seeking for Truth, we repeat "When found make a NOTE