In the present complete edition, the Letters objected to by the Quarterly, are, like the rest, re-published _as originally written_. The offending portions must be at any rate, harmless, after being circulated extensively in this country in the Mirror, and prominently quoted from the Mirror in the Quarterly--and this being true, I have felt that I could gratify the wish to be put _fairly on trial_ for these alleged offences--to have a comparison instituted between my sins, in this respect, and Hamilton's, Muskau's, Von Raumer's, Marryat's and Lockhart's--and so, to put a definite value and meaning upon the constant and vague allusions to these iniquities, with which the critiques of my contemporaries abound. I may state as a fact, that the only instance in which a quotation by me from the conversation of distinguished men gave the least offence in England, was the one remark made by Moore the poet at a dinner party, on the subject of O'Connell. It would have been harmless, as it was designed to be, but for the unexpected celebrity of my Pencillings; yet with all my heart I wished it unwritten. I wish to put on record in this edition (and you need not be at the trouble of perusing them unless you please, dear reader!) an extract or two from the London prefaces to "Pencillings," and parts of two articles written apropos of the book's offences. The following is from the Preface to the first London edition:-- "The extracts from these Letters which have appeared in the public prints, have drawn upon me much severe censure. Admitting its justice in part, perhaps I may shield myself from its remaining excess by a slight explanation. During several years' residence in Continental and Eastern countries, I have had opportunities (as _attaché_ to a foreign Legation), of seeing phases of society and manners not usually described in books of travel. Having been the Editor, before leaving the United States, of a monthly Review, I found it both profitable and agreeable, to continue my interest in the periodical in which that Review was merged at my departure, by a miscellaneous correspondence. Foreign courts, distinguished men, royal entertainments, &c. &c.,--matters which were likely to interest American readers more particularly--have been in turn my themes. The distance of America from these countries, and the ephemeral nature and usual obscurity of periodical correspondence, were a sufficient warrant to my mind, that the descriptions would die where they first saw the light, and fulfil only the trifling destiny for which they were intended. I indulged myself, therefore, in a freedom of detail and topic which is usual only in posthumous memoirs--expecting as soon that they would be read in the countries and by the persons described, as the biographer of Byron and Sheridan, that these fruitful and unconscious themes would rise from the dead to read their own interesting memoirs! And such a