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As the first few pages of this little volume will sufficiently explain its purport, the reader would not have been troubled with any prefatory remarks, but that, since its commencement, two existing works have been pointed out to me, the plans of which are, in one respect, similar to mine: I allude to the Natural History of the Year, by the late Dr. Aikin and his Son; and The Months, by Mr. Leigh Hunt.

I will not affect any obligations to these agreeable little works, (I mean as a writer); because I feel none; and I mention them here, only to add, that if, on perusing them, either, or both united, had seemed to supersede what I proposed to myself in mine, I should immediately have abandoned my intention of writing it. But the above-named works, in the first place, relate to country matters exclusively. In the next place, the first of them details those matters in the form of a dry calendar, professedly made up from other calendars which previously existed, and not from actual observation; and the second merely throws gleams of its writer’s agreeable genius over such of those matters as are most susceptible of that treatment: while both occupy no little portion of their space by quotations, sufficiently appropriate no doubt, but from poets whose works are in everybody’s hands.

The Mirror of the Months, therefore, does not interfere with the abovenamed works, nor do they with it. It is in substance, though certainly not in form, a Calendar of the various events and appearances connected with a Country and a London life, during each successive Month of the Year. And it endeavours to impress upon the memory such of its information as seems best worth retaining, by either placing it in a picturesque point of view, or by connecting it with some association, often purely accidental, and not seldom extravagant perhaps, but not the less likely to answer its end, if it succeed in changing mere dry information into amusement.

I may perhaps be allowed to add, in extenuation of the errors and deficiencies of this little volume, that it has been written entirely from the personal observations of one who uses no note-book but that which Nature writes for him in the tablets of his memory; and that when printed books have been turned to at all, it has only been with a view to solve any doubt that he might feel, as to the exact period of any particular event or appearance.

It is also proper to mention, that the four first Months have appeared in a periodical work. In fact, it was the favourable reception they met with there which induced the careful re-writing of them, and the appearance of the whole under their present form.

MIRROR OF THE MONTHS.