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INTRODUCTION.

THE pen (says Cicero) is the best mistress of eloquence; but he supposes this pen animated, and excited by the prospect of action. By vitiated tastes, the following gems, re-set from the rich treasury of instruction and amusement, will not be appreciated: we have seized only the salient points of every subject containing principles of imperishable vitality. Colossal Johnson, in his usual tone of decision, observes-"Nothing that is not very short, is transmitted from one generation to another." The same mental giant has likewise predicted that in the fulness of time, instead of having exuberant minuteness of detail, men will begin to write in the aphoristic style. These sage hints from so lofty a source, have not been lost upon the author. Jewels of knowledge, comprehending great truths in little room, will not meet with the approval of your romantic, sickly, lackadaisical novel dreamers; neither will they like to be conducted into regions of thought that are rarely explored. Our object is to make men wiser, without obliging them to turn over folios and quartos,―to furnish matter for thinking, as well as reading. Occasionally roving over seas, across which no bark has ever ventured, evinces anything but a craven spirit. We do not attempt to solve insoluble enigmas. A Rhetoritician of times past, said—to make

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little things appear great was his profession. We prefer making wonders plain, rather than plain things wonders. We have ventured to paint the painters. While the Daguerrotype professor with camera obscura and silver plates begins now to traverse the land, we have dared to set up our camera also, and let the sun paint the people. The purifying beams are apt to take too discursive a range, exercising less discretion or discrimination than by some might be thought desirable. Our chief aim is the multiplying of human enjoyments, and the mitigating of human suffering. Two words form the key of the Baconian doctrines,-utility and progress. An author belonging to the last century, has said of alchemy that its beginning was deceit, its progress labour, and its end beggary. It may be said of physiology, that its beginning is pleasure, its progress knowledge, and its objects truth and utility.

No man, however, should expect to profit in purse or reputation by superfluous pains-taking: that polish that delights, selection and considerate collocation of words, that tight-lacing of symmetry, that exquisite propriety of each part and particle of the whole which make the way of the world so perfect a model of satire,-detract more from scenic illusion, than they add to scenic effect. We are wearied with the everlasting treadmill; much exertion and no progress being hostile to our plans, and inimical to bullion truths. Passing with rapidity from one object to another, selecting from the group whatever suits our purpose, to some will appear disorderly.

We never said our writings were prophetic of a Millennium ; true, our aims are not less high. We reverence highly Hoche's maxim-"things, and not words;"-Truth, the pillar of fire which leads on man to the promised land. The exotic of a barbarous age, we dislike a plethora of complaisance. We have followed in the wake of the late Rev. Sidney Smith, one of our model reformers, who could breathe the breath of life into a dead truism; have

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