on that interesting occasion. veritas." "Causa viæ As this will be the last time that I shall appear before the public as an author (if indeed I merit that appellation), I close my short preface by taking a respectful leave of my readers, and by wishing them from my heart, the inestimable blessing from above of everlasting peace and plenty. CHARLES WATERTON. Walton Hall, Feb. 29. 1844. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WRITER OF THE FOLLOWING ESSAYS, BY HIMSELF. (Continued from Vol. I. p. lxxxiii.) "Barbiton hic paries habebit." THIS beautiful line from Horace is the last in the last page of the former Essays. When I laid down the pen on the 30th of December, 1837, I thought that I should never take it up again. But it has only slumbered for a few short years; and the reader will see in the preface to this second little volume, what "has called it from the bed of rest." My adventurous bark is once more rash enough to try its fortune on the high sea of public opinion, where many a stouter vessel, better rigged and better manned, has met an awful and untimely fate. The first volume of Essays had not been much more than a year on the "world's wide stage," when I began to sigh for the comforts of a warmer sun; and I should have left these realms of "Boreas, blustering railer," to those who are fonder of his sway than I am, and have gone to the South, had not a letter from my friend Mr. Ord, the accomplished biographer of poor Wilson, informed me that he was on his way from Philadelphia, to pass the summer with us. Upon the receipt of it, I gave up all thoughts of Italy and her lovely sky; and set about putting a finishing hand to my out-buildings, the repairs of which had been begun in 1834, and carried on at intervals. They are an immense pile, composing an oblong square of forty-five yards in length, and thirty-six in breadth, independent of the dogkennel, fowl-house, sheds, and potato-vaults. They had been erected by my forefathers at different periods, when taxation was comparatively in its infancy, and good old English hospitality better understood than it is at the present day. These buildings were gradually going to ruin, through length of time and inat |