A dedication has oftentimes cost the unhappy author a greater consumption of thumb and finger-nail than the whole book besides, and all varieties of matter and manner have been resorted to. Mine must be so far in character with the delectable history which it introduces that it shall be unlike all which have ever gone before it. I knew a man, (one he was who would have been an ornament to his country if methodism and madness had not combined to overthrow a bright and creative intellect) who, in one of his insaner moods, printed a sheet and a half of muddy rhapsodies with the title of the “Standard of God Displayed:” and he prefaced it by saying that the price of a perfect book, upon a perfect subject, ought to be a perfect sum in a perfect coin; that is to say one guinea. Now as Dr. Daniel Dove was a perfect Doctor, and his horse Nobs was a perfect horse, and as I humbly hope their history will be a perfect history, so ought the Dedication thereunto to be perfect in its kind. Perfect therefore it shall be, as far as kalotypography can make it. For though it would be hopeless to exceed all former Dedications in the turn of a compliment or of a sentence, in the turn of the letters it is possible to exceed them all. It was once my fortune to employ a printer who had a love for his art; and having a taste that way myself, we discussed the merits of a new font one day when I happened to call in upon him. I objected to the angular inclination of a capital italic _A_ which stood upon its pins as if it were starting aghast from the next letter on the left, and was about to tumble upon that to the right; in which case down would go the rest of the word, like a row of soldiers which children make with cards. My printer was too deeply enamoured with the beauties of his font, to have either ear or eye for its defects; and hastily waiving that point he called my attention to a capital _R_ in the same line, which cocked up its tail just as if it had been nicked; that cock of the tail had fascinated him. “Look Sir,” said he, while his eyes glistened with all the ardour of an amateur; “look at that turn!—that's sweet, Sir!” and drawing off the hand with the forefinger of which he had indicated it, he described in the air the turn that had delighted him, in a sort of heroic flourish, his head with a diminished axis, like the inner stile of a Pentegraph, following the movement. I have never seen that _R_ since without remembering him. ** *** ** **** ** *** ******** ** *** ***** ******* ** *******, *** ********* *****, ***, *** ** *** ******* ***** ** **********, *** *** *******. He who can read the stars, may read in them the secret which he seeketh.