PORTIONS of this book were written several years ago, when I had more leisure than has of late been at my command.  Some of the articles have already appeared in the Monthly Magazine and other periodicals, and I may be thought to have undertaken a superfluous task in collecting them.  Though it is the fashion to ape humility, there are few persons without a due share of vanity, and SELF is always at home.  Were its instrumentality in calling into existence the present publication to be acknowledged, such an admission would, perhaps, as readily obtain credence as the common assertion of being influenced by the urgent solicitation of partial friends.  There are some things in the book that it is scarcely necessary to inform the reader were written in the days of adolescence, but they have been retained as reminiscences of those periods of existence in which we are apt to pourtray feelings which exist only in the imagination.