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JOHN J. REED, Printer,

16 Spruce-street.

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PREFACE.

!

Is issuing a THIRD GALLERY OF PORTRAITS, the Author has a few preliminary statements and explanations to make.

1st. He is aware that some of his friends have of late begrudged the time he has been devoting to periodical writing—a time which they think might be better employed in independent works. To them he would reply, that he is employed, slowly, but regularly, in constructing a work on our present religious aspects, besides preparing the materials of others of an entirely different kind from any of his preceding, and which aim, at least, at paullo majora than many of his writings in the Magazines and Reviews; and, that so many are the demands made upon his pen, by the editors and proprietors of journals, that without a

greater faculty of saying "No" than he possesses, he could not altogether avoid compliance with their importunities. The day of a dignified withdrawal from that arena, and of an entire devotion to weightier and more congenial matters, may arrive.

2d, He is induced to send forth the following volume for various reasons. His materials have gradually increased upon his hands, to an amount which renders. a selection from them proper and easy. As he contributes to various periodicals, and as many of his friends have only the opportunity of meeting with him in one or two of the five or six periodicals where he writes, it has occurred to him, and the idea has been confirm→ ed by others, that a book containing the cream-if he may so call it-of his diversified lucubrations, might not be unacceptable to them.

3d, His aim in this volume has been to secure the two elements of variety, and of patness to the moment. The sketches here collected are many of them short-they include notices of the most diverse varieties of mind;-from an Eschylus to a Neale-from a Chalmers to a Marat; they invite special attention to some of those rising poets, whom the Author is proud

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