WITH the younger class of my readers this work has had the good fortune to find especial favour; perhaps because it is in itself a collection of the thoughts and sentiments that constitute the Romance of youth.

It has little to do with the positive truths of our actual life, and does not pretend to deal with the larger passions and more stirring interests of our kind.

It is but an episode out of the graver epic of human destinies.

It requires no explanation of its purpose, and no analysis of its story; the one is evident, the other simple,--the first seeks but to illustrate visible nature through the poetry of the affections; the other is but the narrative of the most real of mortal sorrows, which the Author attempts to take out of the region of pain by various accessories from the Ideal.

The connecting tale itself is but the string that binds into a garland the wild-flowers cast upon a grave.
The descriptions of the Rhine have been considered by Germans sufficiently faithful to render this tribute to their land and their legends one of the popular guide-books along the course it illustrates,--especially to such tourists as wish not only to take in with the eye the inventory of the river, but to seize the peculiar spirit which invests the wave and the bank with a beauty that can only be made visible by reflection.