ng in common with these, but he
appears also to have a good deal about him of what we call the humorist;
that is, an individual with a somewhat heterogeneous personality, in
which various distinctly human elements are mixed together, so as to
form a kind of coherent and sometimes pleasing whole, which is to a
symmetrical character as a breccia is to a mosaic.

As for the Young Astronomer, his rhythmical discourse may be taken
as expressing the reaction of what some would call "the natural man"
against the unnatural beliefs which he found in that lower world to
which he descended by day from his midnight home in the firmament.

I have endeavored to give fair play to the protest of gentle and
reverential conservatism in the letter of the Lady, which was not
copied from, but suggested by, one which I received long ago from a lady
bearing an honored name, and which I read thoughtfully and with profound
respect.

December, 1882.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

It is now nearly twenty years since this book was published. Being the
third of the Breakfast-Table series, it could hardly be expected to
attract so much attention as the earlier volumes. Still, I had no
reason to be disappointed with its reception. It took its place with
the others, and was in some points a clearer exposition of my views and
feelings than either of the other books, its predecessors. The poems
"Homesick in Heaven" and the longer group of passages coming from the
midnight reveries of the Young Astronomer have thoughts in them not so
fully expressed elsewhere in my writings.

The first of these two poems is at war with our common modes of thought.
In looking forward to rejoining in a future state those whom we have
loved on earth,--as most of us hope and many of us believe we shall,--we
are apt to forget that the same individuality is remembered by one
relative as a babe, by another as an adult in the strength of maturity,
and by a third as a wreck with little left except its infirmities and
its affections. The main thought of this poem is a painful one to some
persons. They have so closely associated life with its accidents that
they expect to see their departed friends in the costume of the time
in which they best remember them, and feel as if they should meet the
spirit of their grandfather with his wig and cane, as they habitually
recall him to memory.

The process of scientific specialization referred to and illustrated in
this record