It is long since I have been returned and settled in the bosom of competence and peace: my translation frequently engaged my thoughts, but I had lost the ardour and the confidence of youth, and was seriously doubtful of my abilities to do it justice. I have wished a thousand times that I could decline it altogether; but the ever-recurring idea that there were people of the description I have already mentioned, who had just and forcible claims on me for the due performance of my engagement, forbade the thought; and I slowly proceeded towards the completion of a work in which I should never have engaged, had my friend's inexperience, or my own, suffered us to suspect for a moment the labour and the talents of more than one kind, absolutely necessary to its success in any tolerable degree. Such as I could make it, it is now before the public. ----majora canamus. FOOTNOTES: [F] I began this unadorned narrative on the 15th of January, 1801: twenty years have therefore elapsed since I lost my benefactor and my friend. In the interval I have wept a thousand times at the recollection of his goodness: I yet cherish his memory with filial respect: and at this distant period, my heart sinks within me at every repetition of his name. [G] Many of these papers were distributed; the terms, which I extract from one of them, were these. "The work shall be printed in quarto (without notes) and be delivered to the subscribers in the month of December next." "The price will be sixteen shillings in boards, half to be paid at the time of subscribing, the remainder on delivery of the book." FOR THE MIRROR. SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF THE LATE MR. HODGKINSON. (_Continued from page 380._)