Excerpt from Poems, Essays and Opinions, Vol. 1 of 2: Being Selections From Writings in the "Mirror of the Time," From August 7th, 1850, to the End of February, 1851 I must own myself rather a follower of the impulse of truth than the satisfied owner of a suppressed or stagnant conviction. I have spoken as I have thought, and have therefore made enemies amongst the bigoted and worth less. But with this do I console myself, that to make no public enemies would be but a conviction of the imbecility of a writer. In conclusion, I would merely observe, that the con tents of these pages are very slightly altered in any respect, since their original appearance in the Mirror of the Time. Of the hurry in which they were necessarily written, the dates, which include all the contributions, af ford a sufficient evidence. The corrections are chiefly verbal and typographical, and such as I was compelled to make, owing to the journalistic form in which the Essays were first printed. I may add, I trust without the imputation of arrogance, that these writings have undoubtedly suggested much to many writers of the hour, who have, however. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.