The following is the preface, with a few letters selected from the MS. of a work, which will appear under the above title.

PREFACE. It is well known to most of our readers--or perhaps not so--that the Postmaster-General of the United States, by act of. Congress, (1825, chapter 275, sec. 26,) opens all dead or unclaimed letters, after a list of them has been published at the respective Post Offices, for a fixed time; that he has them inspected, and all the valuable contents returned to the writer of the ill-starred letters or deposited, if the latter cannot be found out. To these dead letters belong a number of such, as are intended for Europe, or other distant parts of the world, but not directed via a certain port of the United States, or not post-paid to that place, if the letter is sent from the interior. The empty ones, that is to say, such as contain words only, are destroyed. I have often thought, that if the United States would trust me with the inspection of these dead letters, and the editorship of those, which I might deem worthy to be transferred from the transitory epistolographic record to the lasting typographic, I should make a handsome living for myself, open a new source of considerable revenue to the United States, and contribute greatly to the knowledge of mankind. I should call my work, if such permission were granted, Encyclopaedia Epistolographica; or, perhaps, Periodical and Documentary Record of Mankind's and Womankind's Doings and Undoings, or Scrap Book of the Western Hemisphere; or, The World as She is, in Letters by Herself; or, A Peep behind the Curtain at Humankind; or, Man and Nature displayed in Autographs; or, The Mail Unlocked; or, Index to the Human Soul; or Pangs and Pleasures of our Race, digested in Pleasing Letters, or Lessons of Philosophy; or any thing, never mind the title. And yet, Sir Walter Scott says, a title must convey nothing to the reader. Why, then I should publish my darling book without any title at all, as the first printed works were given to the public, with a few explanatory words at the Finis, so that books of those times are much like magpies, known by the tail. Thus we should have returned, in one more respect, to the example of the old printers,--and, to say the truth, no art, perhaps, has so little advanced since its invention as the art of printing. But to what purpose is all this, here?

Besides the valuable information, which the world would derive from such a publication respecting the secret springs and hidden wheels of the intricate machine of human society, how fine an opportunity would it not offer to develop, to the greatest perfection, the interesting science, which teaches "to know the character of men by their handwriting," that important branch of physiognomics! Indeed, my Isography would be the proof and document for that invaluable publication L'Art de juger les Hommes par leur Ecriture. (Heaven be blessed that the art of printing is invented, because if I had to give my works in my own handwriting to the public, they would at once set me down as the most inveterate criminal, and the most crooked-minded sinner.) It requires but very little consideration to find what incalculable advantages, for the whole human society, would result from such a science, which at last would enable us to see the secret, of our neighbors' hearts. A jury would require nothing more than the writing-book of the prisoner at the bar, to justify a verdict of guilty, as that simple book proves that he has been a bad character from early childhood. A lady would write in answer to a gentleman's offer:--"Sir, ever since I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with you, I conceived the most favorable opinion respecting your character, but I never would unite myself for life with a gentleman, who does not attend to the dots of the letter i, which you place very often on a letter, where it does not belong. I am too much afraid that you would misplace, in a similar way, dots to which I should have an undeniable claim; and, therefore, you will permit me," &c. Or the historian, whose earnest investigations have led him to believe that Napoleon was a great man, has, at length, an opportunity to see an autograph of this general, written in a perfectly unguarded state of his vast mind. Lord! he cannot make out one single word, and is, at once, convinced of the crude, disordered, unprincipled mind of the great dictator. Away with caucus, away with speeches at the polls! Let us have the handwriting of the candidate in lithography, circulate it, and we shall know immediately whether we have to vote for or against him. Put a fac-simile of the author's handwriting before his book, and the reader at once--no, better not; authors make an exception.

In spite of all these evident advantages, I never was able to get permission for so salutary, so promising, so useful an undertaking. Having failed in several attempts to obtain free access to the bags, continuing the dead letters, these rich mines of important knowledge, I resolved--with reluctance do I confess it so publicly; but then, Rousseau confessed worse things*--to get at them clandestinely. I had become acquainted with several officers of the General Post-Office, at Washington, during my stay in that city in the summer of eighteen hundred and,--but nomina sunt odiosa; and, one day I contrived to be locked up in the room, where my jewel bags stood in several files; because it ought to be known, that the number of unclaimed letters in the United States is enormous, owing to the vast territory of the Union, the numerous places of the same name, the constant intercourse with all parts of the world, and the large number of poor and uneducated emigrants to the United States, whose relations often do not know how to direct letters correctly, or who themselves are ignorant of the port regulations, so that their letters do not proceed beyond the frontiers of the republic. It was pretty early in the afternoon when I was locked up, and thus I had time to copy several letters. What feelings agitated my heart, when I beheld these variegated collections of slips for a book of humanity, as it were. I had begun my thief-like expedition as a joke, but I could not help growing more and more serious. What love and hatred, advice and entreaties, prayers, deceit and cunning; what malice, pride, avarice and hypocrisy; what charity and friendship; what grief, and pangs, and humiliation, annoyance and trouble; what parental anxiety, and alluring persuasion; what fraud and folly, fears and hopes, ambition and corruption; slander and meanness; soundness and insipidity, speculations and castles in the air; what disappointments, vanity, lies and flattery; arrogance and foppery; what kindness, true religion, and rank zeal and persecution; what villainy and virtue, knowledge and nonsense, was concentrated here, within a few bags from all the quarters of the globe--all to be cancelled within a short time!

But there was little time to be spent in idle contemplation; I took my pencil and paper, and began to play my part, a self-appointed postmaster-general. Before night broke in, I had copied (being expert in stenography) a considerable series of letters, of which I offer the following to the public, merely as a sample, because, if they should be liked, I can give many more. Besides, if the stock of letters, already in my possession should be exhausted, and the public still be ready to receive more, who knows whether what has been done once, may not be done a second time; whether I may not slip into the centralization room of man's feeling and thought once more? As for the rest, I think it proper to conclude this preface with a couplet, which I found on my journey through Tyrol, carved over the door of a peasant's house, built on the high-way, and which might be given in translation thus:--

Or what amounts to the same, only from a higher authority, with the words of the noble Dante:--

*Since the above was written, my conscience has been somewhat appeased, considering that intense thirst for knowledge has prompted more than one savant to steal rare specimens of fossils; and to be a resurrectioner of dead letters is not so very much worse, than being a resurrection-man of dead bodies.