The astute reader of these annals, if he but truly analyze their philosophy, may obtain a revelation more or less intelligible of what is acting on the stage to-day, and even arrive at some data by which he may cast a horoscope of the time to come. History is constantly reproducing itself. Events have different dates, and run in different names; but motives, human action and passion, are the same, and bring to light the same categories of thought and opinion. That which has been, is, and will be again, through an infinite series of repetitions. Thus we read the present and the future in the past. And in this light I affirm the annals to be a fair and veritable history of this time. Change a few secondary particulars, and the reader will find 1840 a type of 1860. Would that in these grotesque absurdities of the busy world of twenty years ago the men who shape and control the political issues of this day may see some reflected images of themselves, and thus find a motive to make interest with posterity for a better report twenty years hence! INTRODUCTION. FRIENDLY READER:-- Of a truth, we are a great people!--and most happy am I, Solomon Secondthoughts, Schoolmaster of the Borough of Quodlibet, that it hath fallen to my lot, even in my small way, to make known to you how in our Borough that greatness hath grown toward its perfect maturity--feeling persuaded that Quodlibet therein is but an abstract or miniature portrait of this nation. Happy am I, although sorely oppressed with an inward perception of my defective craft in this most worthy task, that I have been thought by our Central Committee a fit expounder of that history wherein is _enchrysalized_ (if I may be allowed to draw a word, _parce detortum_, from the Greek mint) the most veritable essence of that recently discovered Democratic theory, for distinction called the Quodlibetarian, which is destined to supplant all other principles in our government, and to render us the most formidable and the most imposing people upon the terraqueous globe. How it came to pass that this duty has been committed to my hands, you shall learn. In the days of the late Judge Flam, now thirty years gone by, and long before Quodlibet was, that very considerate and astute gentleman honored me, a poor and youthful scholar, with a promotion to the office of private tutor in his family, then residing at their ancient seat in this neighborhood. It was my especial duty, in this station, to prepare Master Middleton, the eldest born, for college; which in three years of assiduous labor was achieved, much to my content, and, I need not scruple to affirm, no less to my honor, seeing how notably my pupil has since figured in high places among the salt of the nation. Far be it from me to take an undue share of desert for this consummation; it would be disingenuous not to say that my pupil's liberal endowments at the hand of Nature herself rendered my task easy of success.