University of Virginia Library

ADVERTISEMENT.

The following sketches are now, for the first time,
collected in form. Several of them have, at various
periods in a short life, found their way into print—in
one magazine or another. They were written at long
intervals—upon occasional suggestions—and will be
found to indicate some of the warmth of a mind and
habit, sometimes careless of restraint, and not always
to be controlled by rule. In some of them, the fancy
has been permitted free play, and a taste purely oriental
has originated a form of expression and combination in
the characters, which the reader, of Spitzbergen-like
temperament, may hold as a madness beyond even that
of Hamlet's, and wanting utterly in its mood and method.
For these I have not written. It is only with
the gentle and the glad—with those, who, while the
winter fire blazes brightly, and the heart is contracted
to the circle which surrounds it, are sufficiently rational
to exclaim with the cheerful Grecian—

that I am willing to leave the little volume which I now
place before them.

THE AUTHOR.