of the popular good-will for him, nor any extraordinary means of making up the deficits of a season in which what the world owes him has been withheld.
It seemed appropriate, in the case of Mr. Louis Gaylord Clark, to disregard precedents of neglect, and to offer him a testimonial of the esteem in which he is held by his collaborators that should be both pleasing as a compliment and valuable as a contribution to his means of happiness. It was proposed that the surviving writers for the Knickerbocker should each furnish, gratuitously, an article, and that the collection should be issued in a volume of tasteful elegance, of which the entire avails should be appropriated in building, on the margin of the Hudson, a cottage, suitable for the home of a man of letters, who, like Mr. Clark, is also a lover of nature and of rural life.
The editorial preparation of this volume was undertaken by John W. Francis, George P. Morris, Rufus W. Griswold, Richard B. Kimball, and Frederick W. Shelton; their circular to the old contributors of the Magazine was met, in all cases, by a ready and generous response; and they submit the result in. confidence that a literary miscellany of its kind has rarely, if ever, been published of which the contents are more various or uniformly excellent.
New-York, November 7, 1854.
