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G338

V.113.

pt.l

LONDON: J. B. NICHOLS AND SON, PRINTERS, 25, PARLIAMENT STREET.

PREFACE.

As we have no new observations to make on the general plan and system on which our Magazine is conducted, and which we have so long followed with success, it only remains to us to express our hope that since we last addressed our correspondents the materials we have collected, and the information we have been the means of conveying, have not been inferior to their expectations, nor unworthy of the established character of our work. It is true that, as the subject matter is various, the different portions of information are circumscribed and brief; and it is also not to be denied that the communications which follow each other are not always connected by community of subject, being the collected contributions of correspondents, whose pursuits are different, and whose estimate of the relative importance of their favourite studies is formed on principles distinct and remote. But it must be observed that what appears fragmentary and unconnected in the work itself, assumes another character as soon as it is received into the mind of the reader, and is compared and associated with the knowledge which he has previously acquired; as each person selects from a general storehouse or repository that which supplies his particular wants, and is connected with his previous collections; and thus the variety of facts and reasonings which lie scattered and apparently insulated in the pages of a Magazine may be compared to the letters of the printer's type, which, as soon as they are touched by the hand of the compositor, arrange themselves in order, and assume a meaning they did not possess before. For it must not be forgotten that not only does every book convey information to the mind of the reader, but that he also GENERAL LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

ATHENS, GEORGIA

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