I am afraid I have undertaken a work which my limited abilities will leave but imperfectly executed. The natural question, then, will arise in the mind of the reader, "Why attempt a voluntary performance to which you confess yourself unequal?" I reply, "Scribblers like to see themselves in print, and men of mediocre attainments [fancy too often that they ought to be teachers where they should be but students." It is in vain that the rough handling of the critic exposes their weakness; their rhinoceros-like hide renders them impervious to his attacks. It is not sufficient that their fame should be eclipsed ere their assumed light had fairly been kindled. It is not sufficient that dearly-bought experience should be gratuitously placed before them; for, like the moth, they must again and again have their wings singed with the flame ere their literary fame finally perishes in their own mad wilfulness.

There are a few honest writers whose powers are unequal to their desires, one of whose objects of life seems to be to benefit in some way their fellow-creatures, but whose mental capacities do not enable them to write with the terseness of a Macaulay, with the varied knowledge of an Alison, with the natural touches of a Shakespeare, with the predictive power of a Cumming, or the convincing eloquence of a Chalmers, - whose limited education prevents their writing with the smoothness of a Demosthenes, or in the heroic style of a Virgil, or with the satire of a Juvenal, or the sonorous sweetness of a Horace, and yet who desire to say something in a homely practical way for the benefit of their fellows - who desire to speak from the mining-depth of their own experience in language which shall at least be intelligible to their readers, if not poetically affecting or literary-inspiring. Such a one the author of the present papers professes to be.