f such descriptions. Each description is introduced, not for its
own sake, but to serve as a calendar marking the gradual changes of the
seasons as they bear on to his doom the guilty worshipper of Nature. And
in this conception, and in the care with which it has been followed
out, I recognize one of my earliest but most successful attempts at the
subtler principles of narrative art.

In this edition I have made one alteration somewhat more important than
mere verbal correction. On going, with maturer judgment, over all the
evidences on which Aram was condemned, I have convinced myself that
though an accomplice in the robbery of Clarke, he was free both from the
premeditated design and the actual deed of murder. The crime, indeed,
would still rest on his conscience and insure his punishment, as
necessarily incidental to the robbery in which he was an accomplice,
with Houseman; but finding my convictions, that in the murder itself he
had no share, borne out by the opinion of many eminent lawyers by whom
I have heard the subject discussed, I have accordingly so shaped his
confession to Walter.

Perhaps it will not be without interest to the reader if I append to
this preface an authentic specimen of Eugene Aram's composition, for
which I am indebted to the courtesy of a gentleman by whose grandfather
it was received, with other papers (especially a remarkable "Outline of
a New Lexicon"), during Aram's confinement in York prison. The essay
I select is, indeed, not without value in itself as a very curious and
learned illustration of Popular Antiquities, and it serves also to show
not only the comprehensive nature of Aram's studies and the inquisitive
eagerness of his mind, but also the fact that he was completely
self-taught; for in contrast to much philological erudition, and to
passages that evince considerable mastery in the higher resources of
language, we may occasionally notice those lesser inaccuracies from
which the writings of men solely self-educated are rarely free,--indeed
Aram himself, in sending to a gentleman an elegy on Sir John Armitage,
which shows much, but undisciplined, power of versification, says, "I
send this elegy, which, indeed, if you had not had the curiosity to
desire, I could not have had the assurance to offer, scarce believing I,
who was hardly taught to read, have any abilities to write."

THE MELSUPPER AND SHOUTING THE CHURN.

These rural entertainments and usages were formerly