and love of Englishmen,-the name of Coleridge. You and he came forward together in a shallow, hard, worldly age, an age alien and almost averse from the higher and more strenuous exercises of imagination and thought, as the purifiers and regenerators of poetry and philosophy. It was a great aim; and greatly have you both wrought for its accomplishment. Many, among those who are now England's best hope and stay, will respond to my thankful acknowledgement of the benefits my heart and mind have received from you both. Many will echo my wish, for the benefit of my country, that your influence and his may be more and more widely diffused. Many will join in my prayer, that health and strength of body and mind may be granted to you, to complete the noble works which you have still in store, so that men may learn more worthily to understand and appreciate what a glorious gift God bestows on a nation when He gives them a poet.

Had this work been dedicated to you then, it might have pleased you more to see your great friend's name beside your own. The proof of my brother's regard too would have endeared the offering. Then,— if you will allow me to quote a poem, which, from its faithful expression of fraternal love, has always sounded to me like the voice of my own heart,— "There were two springs which bubbled side by side, As if they had been made that they might be

Companions for each other." But now for a while that blessed companionship has been interrupted: "One has disappeared: The other, left behind, is flowing still." Yet, small as the tribute is, and although it must come before you without these recommendations, may you still accept it in consideration of the reverence which brings it; and may you continue to think with your wonted kindness

HERSTMONCEUX,

Of your affectionate Servant,

January, 1838.

JULIUS CHARLES HARE.

TO THE READER.

I HERE present you with a few suggestions, the fruits, alas! of much idleness. Such of them as are distinguisht by some capital letter, I have borrowed from my acuter friends. My own are little more than glimmerings, I had almost said dreams, of thought: not a word in them is to be taken on trust.

If then I am addressing one of that numerous class, who read to be told what to think, let me advise you to meddle with the book no further. You wish to buy a house ready furnisht: do not come to look for it in a stonequarry. But if you are building up your opinions for yourself, and only want to be provided with materials, you may meet with many things in these pages to suit you. Do not despise them for their want of name and show. Remember what the old author says, that “ even to such a one as I am, an idiota or common person, no great things, melancholizing in woods and quiet places by rivers, the Goddesse herself Truth has oftentimes appeared."

Reader, if you weigh me at all, weigh me patiently; judge me candidly; and may you find half the satisfaction in examining my Guesses, that I have myself had in making them.

Authors usually do not think about writing a preface, until they have reacht the conclusion; and with reason. For few have such stedfastness of purpose, and such definiteness and clear foresight of understanding, as to know, when they take up their pen, how soon they shall lay it down again. The foregoing paragraphs were written some months ago: since that time this little book has increast to more than four times the bulk then contemplated, and withal has acquired two fathers instead of one. The temptations held out by the freedom and pliant aptness of the plan,—the thoughtful excitement of lonely rambles, of gardening, and of other like occupations, in which the mind has leisure to muse during the healthful activity of the body, with the fresh, wakeful breezes blowing round it,-above all, intercourse and converse with those, every hour in whose society is rich in the blossoms of present enjoyment, and in the seeds of future meditation, in whom too the Imagination delightedly recognises living realities goodlier and fairer than her fairest and goodliest visions, so that pleasure kindles a desire in her of portraying what she cannot hope to surpass, these causes, happening to meet together, have occasioned my becoming a principal in a work, wherein I had only lookt forward to being a subordinate auxiliary. The letter U, with which my earlier contributions were markt, has for distinction's sake continued to be affixt to them. As our minds have grown up together, have been nourisht in great measure by the same food, have sympathized in their affections and