The distribution of these letters conforms to the method of
the memoir, which could not be a chronological one without
greatly confusing the subjects covered by his life. To do justice
to each subject, and develope his thought thereon, and to pre-
serve distinctness of effect, the memoir remands into groups, as
far as possible, the elements of his manifold career. The order
of time is preserved in the narrative of his material and mental
growth to full manhood and consciousness of the work he had in
hand, and wherever else it can be done without running together
too many themes.

The Journal is a collection of a dozen manuscript volumes,
some of them bulky ledgers, which are thickly sown with
extracts, analyses of books, notifications of thinking. They
would be called commonplace-books were it not for the vein of
his private life which occasionally appears at the surface, and for
the fact that his book-reading and note-making are really
personal; for they grow with his growth in a most simple and
organic way. The diaristic matter makes a small portion of the
whole contents of these volumes. I have given all of it that
contributes to a knowledge of his life.

Besides the collection which I have called "The Journal,"
there are several little pocket note-books, out of which something
has been gleaned, principally from those which he used during his
last journeyings. But the few passages that are found in a con-
dition to print appear as from "The Journal."

Wherever a citation occurs from his printed works, it is made
from the only uniform American edition that has appeared. Many
of the foot-notes would be trivial or superfluous except for the
English and foreign reader, for whose benefit they were inserted.
It is difficult to anticipate where a foreign reader might need a
note or explanation; sometimes I may have exceeded, sometimes
fallen short of, the natural requisition.

His brother, Isaac Parker, his nephew, Columbus Greene, and
other persons, have most kindly furnished recollections of different
portions of his life, chiefly of his boyhood. And his friends have
freely rendered up the precious letters which they had in keep-

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