JAMES JACKSON JARVES,
AUTHOR OF "ART-HINTS," "ITALIAN SIGHTS," "KIANA," ETC.

BOSTON:

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON AND COMPANY.

LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, SON & CO.

M DCCC LVII.

1861, Vet: 14.

Gift-of

Borneline Conway Pelion, Pres. of Barward. Collive. (Slave of 1827.)

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO.,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

Stereotyped by
HOBART & ROBBINS,

ENGLAND TYPE AND STEREOTYPE FOUNDERT,

BOSTON.

A PREFACE,

IN WHICH IS INCLUDED THE DEDICATION.

WHY write a Preface? Any one who cares for your thought will seek to unravel it in your pages.

That is true; but the critics, to whom I dedicate all my Confessions that they will engage to criticize, seldom are able to look beyond the title-page and contents; so I must do something for them, to avoid being altogether thrown overboard. Criticism, as commonly conducted, is rarely aught else than a literary guide-board. It tells you where to go, but not much of your destination. I would fain wish it might do more for me; but my literary illusions have long since sunk to their final rest, and long ago I bade good-by to expectation and disappointment. Still, as it may gain for me some readers, and for you, general reader, some pages of eccentric reading, I bow to its usefulness, and tell you all, in the words of Pilate,

"What I have written, I have written."