OUR SECOND VOLUME.

We cannot resist the opportunity which the commencement of our Second
Volume affords us, of addressing a few words of acknowledgment to our
friends, both contributors and readers. In the short space of seven months,
we have been enabled by their support to win for "NOTES AND QUERIES" no
unimportant position among the literary journals of this country. We came
forward for the purpose of affording the literary brotherhood of this great
nation an organ through which they might announce their difficulties and
requirements, through which such difficulties might find solution, and such
requirements be supplied. The little band of kind friends who first rallied
round us has been reinforced by a host of earnest men, who, at once
recognising the utility of our purpose, and seeing in our growing
prosperity how much love of letters existed among us, have joined us heart
and hand in the great object we proposed to ourselves in our Prospectus;
namely, that of making "NOTES AND QUERIES" by mutual intercommunication, "a
most useful supplement to works already in existence--a treasury for
enriching future editions of them--and an important contribution towards a
more perfect history than we yet possess of our language, our literature,
and those to whom we owe them."

Thanks, again and again, to the friends and correspondents, who, by their
labours, are enabling us to accomplish this great end. To them be the
honour of the work. We are content to say with the Arabian poet:

"With conscious pride we view the band
Of faithful friends that round us stand;
With pride exult, that we alone
Can join these scattered gems in one;
Rejoiced to be the silken line