ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

N presenting our first volume, we desire to return our thankful acknowledgments to all the authors and publishers who have so kindly permitted the use of selections from their works and publications. In no case has our request been met with refusal. We are indebted to the following authors and publishers for kind permission to use selections from their works:

From Messrs. Putnam & Co. of New York we received kind permission to insert "Stratford-on-Avon," from the SketchBook of Washington Irving.

We are indebted to George Bancroft, Esq., and Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., for "Lexington and Concord," from Bancroft's History of the United States.

To Messrs. G. W. Carleton & Co. for the translation of "The Convict and the Good Bishop" in their English version of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.

To Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for the following pieces: "How the Old Horse Won the Bet," by Dr. O. W. Holmes; "The Day is Done" and "Hiawatha's Wooing," by H. W. Longfellow; 'An Order for a Picture," by Alice Carey; "Her Letter" and "His Answer to Her Letter "The Society upon the Stanislaus," by Bret Harte.

and

To the Hon. George H. Boker for selections from his poetical works. To the executors of the late John Lathrop Motley and Messrs. Harper & Brothers for "The Fire-Ships," from The History of the United Netherlands.

To Will Carleton, Esq., for "Betsey and I Are Out" and "How Betsey and I Made Up," from Farm Ballads, published by Messrs. Harper & Bros.

The same firm have also permitted the use of "What Was It?" from Harper's Magazine.

To Father Ryan, through his publishers, Messrs. John B. Piet & Co. of Baltimore, for general permission to use his poems. Of these we have selected "Out of the Depths" and "The Song of the Mystic."

Mrs. Henry Armitt Brown has kindly allowed us to make extracts from the orations of her late distinguished husband. We have availed ourselves of her courtesy by publishing in this volume "The Congress of 1774," from an oration pronounced by him in Carpenters' Hall, Philadelphia, on the one hundredth anniversary of the first meeting of the First Continental Congress. We will make similar acknowledgments in the succeeding volumes.

INTRODUCTION.

N offering to the large and intelligent reading public of the United States an "American Library" of the best productions of which the matchless English tongue is the vehicle, it seems almost unnecessary to give the reasons for such an enterprise. So fertile and varied are the fields of English and American literature that such products cannot be said to have been fully reaped and entirely garnered, even in our large and well-arranged public libraries. In the recesses of the past are held, as in an iron grasp, many beautiful and valuable works of the olden time, heretofore little known and never read, but which in this age of mental activity and investigation are from time to time being disclosed to the ardent and diligent search of scholars, and which are, when presented to an enlightened and receptive world, new in spite of their years; while, on the other hand, brilliant authors are actually appearing on the horizon from day to day whose works demand time and study to be duly appreciated and digested. Like Byron's hero-the want of the age-"every day or two brings forth a new one;" and among the new arrivals not a few, like the poet himself, really "wake up some morning and find themselves famous." Thus, to the enthusiastic reader, English literature, past and present, like the householder in the Bible, is constantly bringing forth from its treasures "things new and old."

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It is upon this double fact of discovery in the past and quick reception of the present gifts that such a collection as this bases its reason and its claims. Its design is to display, by numerous and varied selections, the development of English literature and the thoughts of renowned authors, from the days of Dan Chaucer the firste findere of our faire language "-through the garlanded array of famous men who have wielded the pen or struck the lyre, down to the very day in which we write. The scope is indeed large; its field is that of what the schoolmen called litera humaniores, and the Scotch the humanities, that polite learning which the French have so happily called beautiful letters-les belles

lettres. In this extensive domain we find POETRY, the aesthetic crown of the arts, in its divisions of Epic, Lyric, Pastoral and Satire, whose mission is, in the words of Longfellow, "to charm, to strengthen and to teach;" HISTORY, in the attractive simplicity of Chronicle and the more serious and instructive garb of Philosophy; ORATORY, Forensic and Academic, designed to subsidize the graces of voice, form and gesture; the DRAMA, Tragic, Comic and Melodramatic; and FICTION, that beneficent genius which teaches while it entertains and reforms by example and precept.

With this view of the scope of our material, the question has presented itself how to ensure the greatest variety and interest in our work. A chronological arrangement of authors would give to the earlier pages all the quaintness and stiffness of the first period, while all the freshness and modern graces of expression would fall to the later volumes. It has been therefore determined to make each portion of the work a microcosm-a little literary world in itself-containing selections in prose and poetry from many periods, grave and gay, heroic and pathetic, simple and sublime, in agreeable contrast and charming variety. Nor are we limited to the treasures of English thought. thought. The ancient classics will be presented in the best English translations. Thus, Homer will appear in the archaic diction of Chapman, the rolling blank verse of Cowper, the tuneful numbers of Pope, the more exact rendering of Lord Derby and the sounding march of Bryant's stately lines; Virgil will be read in the various versions, from the first effort of Lord Surrey, in blank verse-borrowed from the versi sciolti of Italy-down to Conington's melodious and accurate rendering; and Juvenal will lash the follies and vices of the world again in the rhymed · pentameter couplet of Dryden, Pope and Samuel Johnson. And thus, too, the famous writers of other countries and of modern literature will be rendered into English. While including many of those immortal pieces found in so many collections, and yet without which no such collection would be complete, it is the purpose of the Editor to present a large number of the newest selections which have appeared and are appearing in our own time, with especial reference to the claims of our own American literature. For our literature has an individuality and distinctiveness demanding special and respectful recognition, apart from the great body of thought which finds expression in the English language. Many of its most striking works could have been produced only in America and by Americans, and are at once exponents and interpreters of our brief but most interesting history. Such are the Indian novels of James Fenimore Cooper, drawn from life before