AND EXPENSIVE WORKS;

POETRY, ORIGINAL AND SELECTED;

Spirit of the Public Journals ;

RIES IN THE ARTS AND SCIENCES;
USEFUL DOMESTIC HINTS;

TBYBA

OLY

PREFACE.

WITH the return of this period of the year, we have once more the happiness of announcing to our friends the completion of a new volume of the MIRROR. On such an occasion, the Editor, inspired by the recollection of the encouragement given by the public to his former labours and exertions, now presents his Ninth Volume to his readers with respectful confidence. It is by the test of experience that periodical publications must be tried: and as a series of volumes of the MIRROR have been long before the public, the Editor, in lieu of bepraising his latest performance, is content to refer to the entire work, and, by contrasting the ninth with the first, or the eighth with the second volume of the MIRROR, leave the reader to determine how far he has been mindful of his duty, and to what extent he has been successful in adapting his work to the improved and progressing spirit of the literary taste and character of modern days. In such particulars the Editor thinks it better to leave the work to speak for itself.

In reference to the contents of the present volume, it may be observed, that particular attention has been given to that portion of the work which contains selections from the public journals and new works of authority and of an amusing or instructive character. In order also to preserve in the MIRROR One of the prominent literary features of the times, we have introduced a mass of anecdotical reading under the head of Anecdotes and Recollections. Allusion, we presume, we may be allowed to make to our series of papers on the Fine Arts, the Arts and Sciences, and The Months, the graphic embellishments to which we are enabled to refer with pleasure. With these humble pretensions to novelty and variety, the Editor hopes to maintain his claims on public support, he trasts, that, in accordance with the origina. plan of the MIRROR, "freely extracting every sweet he found," he has not ranged through the blossomed groves in vain.

In offering a general tribute of thanks to those Correspondents who have assisted the Editor in his labours, he assures them, that on deciding on the merits of their claims to publication he has been guided in his judgments by the strictest impartiality; and in many instances omission of their communications has been unavoidable, from the length of their lucubrations, and the confined limits of that part of the work devoted to the original correspondence. No efforts have been spared to render the embellishments equal in number, variety of subject, and spirit of execution to those given in the former volumes, and the typographical beauty of the MIRROR has been at the same time admirably sustained.

Again we return our grateful thanks to our friends and subscribers, readers and correspondents, for their great encouragement. Backed by their approbation, and sanctioned by their patronage, we are determined to maintain the character of the MIRROR, and render it the most instructive, as it is the cheapest, literary journal of the day. Of the value of such a periodical we are duly impressed; and we cannot better conclude than by preserving the warm eulogium and truthful evidence of the first statesman and literary genius of the day-we allude to the following sentence, which was delivered in the House of Commons on the 31st of last May, by the Right Hon. George Canning:-" Never was there a period in which useful information upon all subjects was in the habit of being so extensively diffused amongst the public, and at so cheap a rate. It penetrated deeply into the lowest classes of society, and effected a great moral and intellectual improvement."

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

PORTRAIT OF his MAJESTY, ENGRAVED on steel.

1. Top of the Great Pyramid of Geeza. 28. St. George's Church, Camberwell. 2. Valentia Harbour, Ireland.

TO THE BINDER.

The Binder in collating this Volume will observe, that No. 247, sheet F*, is to follow the original sheet of that signature.