CEMENT.

BY THE EDITOR.

The writer of this strange book (a particular friend of mine) came to me
a few mornings ago with a very happy face and a very blotty manuscript.
"Congratulate me," he began, "on having dispersed an armada of
head-aches hitherto invincible, on having exorcised my brain of its
legionary spectres, and brushed away the swarming thoughts that used to
persecute my solitude; I can now lie down as calmly as the lamb, and
rise as gayly as the lark; instead of a writhing Laocoon, my just-found
Harlequin's wand has changed me into infant Hercules brandishing his
strangled snakes; I have mowed, for the nonce, the docks, mallows,
hogweed, and wild-parsley of my rank field, and its smooth green carpet
looks like a rich meadow; I am free, happy, well at ease: argal, an thou
lovest me, congratulate."

Wider and wider still stared out my wonder, to hear my usually sober
friend so voluble in words and so profuse of images: I saw at once it
was a set speech, prepared for an impromptu occasion; nevertheless, as
he was clearly in an enviable state of disenthraldom from
thoughtfulness, I graciously accorded him a sympathetic smile. And then
this more than Gregorian cure for the head-ache! here was an anodyne
infinitely precious to one so brain-feverish as I: had all this pleasure
and comfort arisen from such common-place remedials as a dear young
lover's courtesy or a deceased old miser's codicil, I should long ago
have heard all about it; for, between ourselves, my friend was never
known to keep a secret. There was evidently more than this in the
discovery; and when my curiosity, provoked by his laughing silence, was
naturally enough exhibiting itself in a "What on earth----?" he broke
out with the abruptness of an Abernethy, "Read my book."

Well, I did read it; and, in candid disparagement, as amicably bound,
can readily believe what I was told afterwards, that, to except a very
small portion of older material, it had been at chance intervals rapidly
thrown off in a couple of months, (the old current-quill style,) chiefly
with the view of relieving a too prolific brain: it appeared to me a
mere idle overflowing of the brimful mind; an honest, indeed, but often
useless exposure of multifarious fancies--some good, some bad, and not a
few indifferent; an incautious uncalled-for confession of a thousand
thoughts, little worth the printing, if the very writing were not indeed
superfluous. Nevertheless, with all i