[figure description] Dedication.[end figure description]

TO
JOHN HOPPER.

These pages are so deeply tinged with romance
and mysticism, that they might seem an unfit offering
to one who has the crowning merit of the 19th
century—that of being a cautious and energetic “business
man.” But in a city of strangers you have been
to me as a brother; most of the scenes mentioned
in these Letters we have visited together; and I
know that the young lawyer, busily making his way
in a crowded world, has not driven from his mind
a love for nature and poetry, or closed his heart
against a most genial sympathy for the whole family
of man. Therefore, this volume is inscribed to you,
with grateful friendship, by