old Humanitas. Some years ago, while preparing a book on Matthew Arnold, I found in his letters a passage which I read with pleasure and envy. It was written when he was putting together the first volume of his Essays in Criticism: "I think the moment is, on the whole, favorable for the Essays; and in going through them I am struck with the admirable riches of human nature that are brought to light in the group of persons whom they treat, and the sort of unity that as a book to stimulate the better humanity in us the volume has." The "admirable riches of human nature" are, I am sure, also present in my group of Americans, and something I hope of this unity, may also be found here.
For permission to reprint these revised essays acknowledgments are due as follows: to the New York Times Book Review for the Mr. Mencken and the New Spirit in Letters; to the Bookman for Tradition; to G. P. Putnam's Sons for the essay on Franklin from The Cambridge History of American Literature; to Harcourt, Brace, and Co. for the essay on Emerson from my edition of Essays and Poems of Emerson; to Charles Scribner's Sons for the Hawthorne and the Walt Whitman from my editions of The Scarlet Letter and Leaves of Grass in the Modern Student's Library; to G. P. Putnam's Sons for the biographical essay on Joaquin Miller from a forth-
