es of your voracious Majesty, and humbly laying this
little book at your dried-up feet. My predecessors have always been
accustomed, as if on purpose to annoy you, to transport their goods and
chattels to the archives of eternity, directly under your nose,
forgetting that, by so doing, they only made your mouth water the more,
for the proverb--Stolen bread tastes sweetest--is applicable even to you.
No! I prefer to dedicate this work to you, feeling assured that you will
throw it aside.

But, joking apart! methinks we two know each other better than by mere
hearsay. Enrolled in the order of Aesculapius, the first-born of
Pandora's box, as old as the fall of man, I have stood at your altar,--
have sworn undying hatred to your hereditary foe, Nature, as the son of
Hamilcar to the seven hills of Rome,--have sworn to besiege her with a
whole army of medicines,--to throw up barricades round the obstinate
soul,--to drive from the field the insolents who cut down your fees and
cripple your finances,--and on the Archaean battle-plain to plant your
midnight standard. In return (for one good turn deserves another), you
must prepare for me the precious TALISMAN, which can save me from the
gallows and the wheel uninjured, and with a whole skin--

Jusque datum sceleri.

Come then! act the generous Maecenas; for observe, I should be sorry to
fare like my foolhardy colleagues and cousins, who, armed with stiletto
and pocket-pistol, hold their court in gloomy ravines, or mix in the
subterranean laboratory the wondrous polychrest, which, when taken with
proper zeal, tickles our political noses, either too little or too much,
with throne vacancies or state-fevers. D'Amiens and Ravaillac!--Ho, ho,
ho!--'Tis a good thing for straight limbs!

Perhaps you have been whetting your teeth at Easter and Michaelmas?--the
great book-epidemic times at Leipzig and Frankfort! Hurrah for the
waste-paper!--'twill make a royal feast. Your nimble brokers, Gluttony
and Lust, bring you whole cargoes from the fair of life. Even Ambition,
your grandpapa--War, Famine, Fire, and Plague, your mighty huntsmen, have
provided you with many a jovial man-chase. Avarice and Covetousness,
your sturdy butlers, drink to your health whole towns floating in the
bubbling cup of the world-ocean. I know a kitchen in Europe where the
rarest dishes have been served up in your honor with festive pomp. And
yet--who has ever known you to be satisfied, or to complain of
in