PREFACE.

In presenting to our Readers the Third Volume of the Second Series of the IMPERIAL MAGAZINE, we feel that we should be chargeable with an important omission, were we to neglect to notice the loss it has sustained in the course of the past year, by the death of Mr. DREW, who had conducted it with such general acceptance and usefulness from its commencement. The decease of one so highly gifted, both with intellectual endowments and moral worth, has created a chasm which will not easily be filled, in every department of literature and of society with which he stood connected.

His successor in the Editorship of the IMPERIAL MAGAZINE is especially sensible of the magnitude of the loss which it has sustained by this event, and of the consequent necessity for his best exertions, to sustain the high character which it has formerly borne. To meet this necessity, he has obtained for the ensuing year the most efficient literary assistance in all those departments which the IMPERIAL MAGAZINE has hitherto embraced ; and he is consequently encouraged to hope that it will continue to deserve the distinguished patronage with which it has previously been favoured.

To their numerous and highly respected Subscribers, the Proprietors of the IMPERIAL MAGAZINE beg to express their best acknowledgments, and to assure them that nothing shall be wanting on their part to make it increasingly worthy of their support, and to secure for it a still more extended patronage.