or consciously any reason, expressly to disown any one thing that I
have ever published; but some things have sufficiently accomplished
their purpose when they have met the call of that particular transient
occasion in which they arose; and others, it may be thought on review,
might as well have been suppressed from the very first. Things immoral
would of course fall within that category; of these, however, I cannot
reproach myself with ever having published so much as one. But even
pure levities, simply _as_ such, and without liability to any worse
objection, may happen to have no justifying principle of life within
them; and if, any where, I find such a reproach to lie against a paper
of mine, that paper I should wish to cancel. So that, upon the whole,
my new and revised edition is likely to differ by very considerable
changes from the original papers; and, consequently, to that extent
is likely to differ from your existing Boston reprint.

These changes, as sure to be more or less advantageous to the collection,
it is my wish to place at your disposal as soon as possible, in order
that you may make what use of them you see fit, be it little or much. It
may so happen that the public demand will give you no opportunity for
using them at all. I go on therefore to mention, that over and above
these changes, which may possibly strike you as sometimes mere caprices,
pulling down in order to rebuild, or turning squares into rotundas,
(_diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis_,) it is my purpose to
enlarge this edition by as many new papers as I find available for such a
station. These I am anxious to put into the hands of your house, and, so
far as regards the U.S., of _your_ house exclusively; not with any view
to further emolument, but as an acknowledgment of the services which you
have already rendered me; viz., first, in having brought together so
widely scattered a collection--a difficulty which in my own hands by too
painful an experience I had found from nervous depression to be