In his preface, the writer of this book repels the charge of being like Thackeray and Dickens. We can assure him, that, with an American public, he may spare himself that trouble. He is not in the smallest danger of being mistaken for either of those eminent writers. He is so entirely unlike them that we do not for a moment suspect him of having attempted to imitate them. We do not even reckon him their disciple, nor Bacon's, nor Montaigne's, nor Steele's, nor any other's whose plan he professes himself to have adopted; for a disciple is a learner, which the Gentle Man seems never capable of becoming. Good and bad alike, he is a feeble and confused echo of all men's notions, but the steadfast adherent of none. The snob's soul within him bows down to the authority of great men, yet he produces their great thoughts in disjointed and distorted shape. He does not scruple to sneer where sneers are safe, blind to the glaring fact that sneers are never safe for him. Bold behind his Tory bulwarks, he warns boys against adopting Mr. Bright's opinions, and so becoming "selfish, calculating, cold; as careless of true nobility of purpose and of soul and as worshipful of material success as Mr. Bright himself;" and he has his little fling at Tupper, in common with many another literary drummer-boy who would earn a cheap reputation for valor by attacking what his superiors have already demolished. We should scorn to parry the puny thrust of this Liliputian at the noble name which America delights to honor, or to repel the charge of coldness against that great heart whose burst of anguish over the grave of his friend, and our friend, and humanity's, awoke an answering sob in a thousand homes of this Western World; but we beg to assure this fine old English Gentle Man and scholar, that, reading these essays, we are ready to pronounce Mr. Tupper a master of style and his philosophy a striking and valuable treatise.