grad 32763736 gisen 7/11100 PFEFACE. A N ample account of the nature of this work will be found in the Introduction ; but to give a brief and more general idea of the entertainment which it is proposed to set before the purchaser, it may be as well to state in this place, that the book, for the most part, is a collection of passages from such authors as retain, if not the highest, yet the most friendly and as it were domestic hold upon us during life, and sympathize with us through all portions of it. Hence the first extract is a Letter addressed to an Infant, the last the Elegy in the Churchyard,* and the intermediate ones have something of an analogous reference to the successive stages of existence. It is therefore intended to be read by intelligent persons of all times of life, the youthful associa tions in it being such as the oldest readers love to call to mind, and the oldest such as all would gladly meet with in their decline. It has no politics in it, no polemics, nothing to offend the delicatest mind. The innocentest' boy and the most cautious of his seniors might alike be glad to look over the other's shoulder, and find him in his corner perusing it. * The last article of the Second Series. This may be speaking in a boastful manner; but an Editor has a right to boast of his originals, especially when they are such as have comforted and delighted him throughout his own life, and are for that reason recommended by him to others. CONTENTS OF FIRST SERIES. PAGK ERS . . . NATURE OF THE PRESENT WORK, AND A FEW REMARKS ON ITS READ- GROWN SCHOOLBOYS. A Letter to Geo. Montagu Horace Walpole. 42 ODE ON SOLITUDE. Written at twelve years of age ROBINSON CRUSOE. The Five Points in his History . De Foe. 53 Crusoe's Meditations and Mode of Life He finds the Print of a Man's Foot on the Shore Sees Savages in the Island, and obtains a Servant . 63 PETER WILKINS'S DISCOVERY OF THE FLYING WOMAN. Rob't Pultock. 73 LUDOVICO IN THE HAUNTED CHAMBER. From the “Mysteries of THE WARNING. From the Novel of "Nature and Art” Mrs. Inchbald. 128 Wandering Tartars and their Chief Zagatai, in the Thir- Kubla Khan's Palace at Xanadu. Kubla Khan's Person and State . . . 171 Of the Old Man of the Mountain 60 |