This indeed it ought to do, since the study of external nature is made a peculiar attribute of the principal character, whose fate colors the narrative.

I do not know whether it has been observed that the time occupied by the events of the story is conveyed through the medium of such descriptions.

Each description is introduced, not for its own sake, but to serve as a calendar marking the gradual changes of the seasons as they bear on to his doom the guilty worshipper of Nature.

And in this conception, and in the care with which it has been followed out, I recognize one of my earliest but most successful attempts at the subtler principles of narrative art.
In this edition I have made one alteration somewhat more important than mere verbal correction.

On going, with maturer judgment, over all the evidences on which Aram was condemned, I have convinced myself that though an accomplice in the robbery of Clarke, he was free both from the premeditated design and the actual deed of murder.