and also by a short residence in your lovely island, where I received that generous and elegant hospitality, which can never be forgotten by me.

The result of the whole is a solid conviction, that the sterling character of the British nation affords the brightest exemplar the world has yet known of genuine civilization.

The Greeks and the Romans of Pagan times, and many modern nations of Christendom, were and are, also, doubtless civilized-and so are the Chinese, and the Turks: but the truest, and most infallible of all criterions of genuine civilization is, when all things, in every ramification of life, are in perfect keeping; for, it is with nations as with a family;-that family, however humble its means may be, is the most civilized, in which every thing is designedly in perfect order, and in admirable keeping.

In England alone, of all ancient and modern nations, do we find this rigid keeping in every relation of life, in every order of society, in every manifestation of their means, from the monarch and wealthiest nobleman, to the poorest of the subjects. Every man's cottage, or mansion, or palace, or farm, or manor, seems as a mirror of his actual condition-each and all in admirable keeping. The peasant's cottage is never garish with the furniture

of a mansion-nor that with the gorgeous display of a palace; but each seems to know exactly, and to respect with care, its own defined periphery, and those of others—and yet, with a perfect liberty and ability in its proprietor, to transcend it, whenever possessed of the requisite intelligence, morals, manners, and means, for a more exalted station. But this is a theme I must not now dwell upon, as it may be the topic, in part, of a future volume.

I am, my dear sir,

With high regard,

Your most obedient servant,

DAVID HOFFMAN

BALTIMORE, September, 1839.

ADDRESS TO MY READERS.

I CRAVE thy pardon, if I have counted without mine host, in thus confidently anticipating thou wilt read my book. Upon thy generosity I lately cast my 'MISCELLANEOUS THOUGHTS ON MEN, MANNERS AND THINGS,' and now venture to offer thee another small volume, giving but a 'PEEP INTO MY NOTE BOOK!" Methinks, I hear many of you say, 'thanks to Apollo, it is but a peep! for why should we be troubled with thy cogitations, when the world is overrun with "THOUGHTS' from heads much wiser than thine? witness those of Solomon and of Bacon, or of Joe Miller and of Lacon! And, as for thy 'NOTES,' they are but ruminations belonging to the same genus, and we hoped to have seen it made highly penal in the critic's court, for thee and others,

Unblest with sense above their peers refin'd,

Who thus stand up dictators to mankind.'

and so egregiously molest the public with a dull mélange of notions!'

Softly, my exterminating, but truly small critics! take thy pen, and essay to do better; and I promise thee thou wilt find any book, after it is written, seemeth to be a much lighter matter, than when it is yet to be created-for well hath the poet said,

'None but an author knows an author's cares ;'

and I have seen simpletons when gazing even on the Vatican Apollo, and the Venus of the Tribune, who could think of nothing but of the extreme labour of paring off, from the rude and massive block, so much hard marble! Is it easier, think ye, to write much, than little-on various topics, concisely, than on one, fully? Are not the distilled essences of more value, than the crude and bulky simples from which, by 'chymic art,' they have been extracted? Why then, are "THOUGHTS' and 'NOTES' to be dealt with so ungenerously? The quality, good Mr. Critic!—the quality, alone, should be the question; and if my duodecimos, (though they be royal,) give thee but terse thoughts, and brief notes, wilt thou blame me for not spreading these out into wordy octavos, or into the still more pretending quartos? By my modesty and consideration, thou hast been spared the toil of much reading, and likewise the dispensing from thy purse so lavishly as thou wouldst have done. Well hath Master Thomas Nash, of 'Lenten Stuff' memory, said, 'every man can say bee to a battledore-write in praise of virtue and the seven liberal sciences-thrash corn out of the full sheavesand fetch water out of the Thames: but, out of dry stubble, to make an after harvest, and a plenti

ful crop without sowing; and to wring juice out of a flint, is no every day work, and belongeth not to one of a demure and mediocre genus.'

And hence I say, commend me to tiny volumes, which treat de omnibus, in the way of distillations, rather than to the mis-shapen and garru⚫ lous offspring of an unbridled pen. These last may be, and often are in the form of many portly volumes, but are equally often filled with the crude vagaries, and mawkish fancies of inexhaustible, never-ending tale-tellers; or, of the still more exciting collectors of the marvels of an overgrown metropolis! From very many of these tales you may extract a single moral, or a single deep, and eloquently expressed thought, for, perhaps, every hundred pages; the residue being, perhaps, a congeries of namby-pamby common places; of jejune dialogues, and of ill-collocated words and sentences!

And here again doth Master Nash express himself to my mind, when he saith, 'I had as lief have no sun, as have it shine faintly-no fire, as a smothering one of small coals-no clothes, rather than wear linsey-woolsey.' And so, (taking this figuratively,) do I say that, as to the sunshine, fire and clothes, which our daily literature doth furnish, I would dispense with them all, rather than, as many are accustomed to do, keep pace in my reading with the productions of the modern teemful press! and in my writing with the taste of the day! But I do vehemently suspect there be a goodly number who read and understand with