house of Messrs TICKNOR, REED, & FIELDS, Boston, U. S. To them I owe
my acknowledgments, first of all, for that service: they have brought
together a great majority of my fugitive papers in a series of volumes
now amounting to twelve. And, secondly, I am bound to mention that
they have made me a sharer in the profits of the publication, called
upon to do so by no law whatever, and assuredly by no expectation of
that sort upon my part.

Taking as the basis of my remarks this collective American edition,
I will here attempt a rude general classification of all the articles
which compose it. I distribute them grossly into three classes: _First_,
into that class which proposes primarily to amuse the reader; but
which, in doing so, may or may not happen occasionally to reach a
higher station, at which the amusement passes into an impassioned
interest. Some papers are merely playful; but others have a mixed
character. These present _Autobiographic Sketches_ illustrate what
I mean. Generally, they pretend to little beyond that sort of amusement
which attaches to any real story, thoughtfully and faithfully related,
moving through a succession of scenes sufficiently varied, that are
not suffered to remain too long upon the eye, and that connect
themselves at every stage with intellectual objects. But, even here,
I do not scruple to claim from the reader, occasionally, a higher
consideration. At times, the narrative rises into a far higher key.
Most of all it does so at a period of the writer's life where, of
necessity, a severe abstraction takes place from all that could invest
him with any alien interest; no display that might dazzle the reader,
nor ambition that could carry his eye forward with curiosity to the
future, nor successes, fixing his eye on the present; nothing on the
stage but a solitary infant, and its solitary combat with grief--a
mighty darkness, and a sorrow without a voice. But something of the