and distinctiveness.

Many of the other characters in this tale were drawn from the life, with
such changes added and omitted features as might rescue them from any
charge of personality. With all my care on this score, one or two have
been believed to be recognizable; and if so I have only to hope that
I have touched on peculiarities of disposition inoffensively, and
only depicted such traits as may "point a moral," without wounding the
possessor.

The last portion of the story includes some scenes from the Italian
campaign, which had just come to a close while I was writing. If a
better experience of Italy than I then possessed might modify some of
the opinions I entertained at that time, and induce me to form some
conclusions at least at variance with those I then expressed, I still
prefer to leave the whole unaltered, lest in changing I might injure the
impression under which the fulness of my once conviction had impelled me
to pronounce.

Writing these lines now, while men's hearts are throbbing anxiously for
the tidings any day may produce, and when the earth is already tremulous
under the march of distant squadrons, I own that even the faint, weak
picture of that struggle in this story appeals to myself with a
more than common interest. I have no more to add than my grateful
acknowledgments to such as still hold me in their favor, and to write
myself their devoted servant,

CHARLES LEVER.

THE DALTONS, OR THREE ROADS IN LIFE.

CHAPTER I. BADEN OUT OF SEASON.

A THEATRE by daylight, a great historical picture in the process of
cleaning, a ballet-dancer of a wet day hastening to rehearsal, the
favorite for the Oaks dead-lame in a straw-yard, are scarcely
more stripped of their legitimate illusions than is a fashionable
watering-place on the approach of winter. The gay shops and stalls of
flaunting wares are closed; the promenades, lately kept in trimmest
order, are weed-grown and neglected; the "sear and yellow leaves" are
fluttering and rustling along the alleys where "Beauty's step was
wont to tread." Both music and fountains have ceased to play; the very
statues are putting on great overcoats of snow, while the orange-trees
file off like a sad funeral procession to hide themselves in dusky sheds
till the coming spring.

You see as you look around you that nature has been as unreal as art
itself, and that all the bright hues of foliage and flower, all the
odors that floated from bed and