Of the Essays in this volume "Adventures among Books," and "Rab's Friend," appeared in Scribner's Magazine; and "Recollections of Robert Louis Stevenson" (to the best of the author's memory) in The North American Review. The Essay on "Smollett" was in the Anglo- Saxon, which has ceased to appear; and the shorter papers, such as "The Confessions of Saint Augustine," in a periodical styled Wit and Wisdom. For "The Poems of William Morris" the author has to thank the Editor of Longman's Magazine; for "The Boy," and "Mrs. Radcliffe's Novels," the Proprietors of The Cornhill Magazine; for "Enchanted Cigarettes," and possibly for "The Supernatural in Fiction," the Proprietors of The Idler. The portrait, after Sir William Richmond, R.A., was done about the time when most of the Essays were written--and that was not yesterday.