prizes in 1837, and was published in the following year. But as this was
upon a subject of local interest, chiefly, and would have taken up a good
deal of room, I thought it best to leave it out, trusting that the stray
copies to be met with in musty book-shops would sufficiently supply the
not very extensive or urgent demand for a paper almost half a century
old.

Some of these papers created a little stir when they first fell from the
press into the pool of public consciousness. They will slide in very
quietly now in this new edition, and find out for themselves whether the
waters are those of Lethe, or whether they are to live for a time as not
wholly unvalued reminiscences.

March 21, 1883.




PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

These Essays are old enough now to go alone without staff or crutch in
the shape of Prefaces. A very few words may be a convenience to the
reader who takes up the book and wishes to know what he is likely to find
in it.

HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS.

Homoeopathy has proved lucrative, and so long as it continues to be so
will surely exist,--as surely as astrology, palmistry, and other methods
of getting a living out of the weakness and credulity of mankind and