"Swallow Barn was written twenty years ago, and was published in a small edition, which was soon exhausted. From that date it has disappeared from the bookstores, being carelessly consigned by the author to that oblivion which is common to books and men—out of sight, out of mind. Upon a recent reviewal of it, after an interval sufficiently long to obliterate the partialities with which one is apt to regard his own productions, I have thought it was worthy of more attention than I had bestowed upon it, and was, at least, entitled to the benefit of a second edition. In truth, its republication has been so often advised by friends, and its original reception was so prosperous, that I have almost felt it to be a duty once more to set it afloat upon the waters, for the behoof of that good-natured company of idle readers who are always ready to embark on a pleasure excursion in any light craft that offers. I have, therefore, taken these volumes in hand, and given them a somewhat critical revisal. Twenty years work sufficient change upon the mind of an author to render him, perhaps more than others, a fastidious critic of his own book. If the physiologists are right, he is not the same person after that lapse of time; and all that his present and former self may claim in common, are those properties which belong to his mental consciousness, of which his aspiration after fame is one. The present self may, therefore, be expected to examine more rigorously the work of that former and younger person, for whom he is held responsible. This weighty consideration will be sufficient to account for the few differences which may be found between this and the first edition. Some quaintness of the vocabulary has been got rid of—some dialogue has been stript of its redundancy—some few thoughts have been added—and others retrenched. I shall be happy to think that the reader will agree with me that these are improvements:—I mean the reader who may happen to belong to that small and choice corps who read these volumes long ago—a little troop of friends of both sexes, to whom I have reason to be grateful for that modicum of good opinion which cheered my first authorship. Health and joy to them all—as many as are now alive! I owe them a thanksgiving for their early benevolence.

"Swallow Barn exhibits a picture of country life in Virginia, as it existed in the first quarter of the present century. Between that period and the present day, time and what is called "the progress," have made many innovations there, as they have done every where else. The Old Dominion is losing somewhat of the raciness of her once peculiar, and—speaking in reference to the locality described in these volumes—insulated cast of manners. The mellow, bland, and sunny luxuriance of her home society—its good fellowship, its hearty and constitutional companionableness, the thriftless gayety of the people, their dogged but amiable invincibility of opinion, and that overflowing hospitality which knew no ebb—these traits, though far from being impaired, are modified at the present day by circumstances which have been gradually attaining a marked influence over social life as well as political relation. An observer cannot fail to note that the manners of our country have been tending towards a uniformity which is visibly effacing all local differences. The old states, especially, are losing their original distinctive habits and modes of life, and in the same degree, I fear, are losing their exclusive American character. A traveller may detect but few sectional or provincial varieties in the general observances and customs of society, in comparison with what were observable in the past generations, and the pride, or rather the vanity, of the present day is leading us into a very notable assimilation with foreign usages. The country now apes the city in what is supposed to be the elegancies of life, and the city is inclined to value and adopt the fashions it is able to import across the Atlantic, and thus the whole surface of society is exhibiting the traces of a process by which it is likely to be rubbed down, in time, to one level, and varnished with the same gloss. It may thus finally arrive at a comfortable insipidity of character which may not be willingly reckoned as altogether a due compensation for the loss of that rough but pleasant flavor which belonged to it in its earlier era. There is much good sense in that opinion which ascribes a wholesome influence to those homebred customs, which are said to strengthen local attachments and expand them into love of country. What belonged to us as characteristically American, seems already to be dissolving into a mixture which affects us unpleasantly as a plain and cosmopolitan substitute for the old warmth and salient vivacity of our ancestors. We no longer present in our pictures of domestic life so much as an earnest lover of our nationality might desire of what abroad is called the "red bird's wing"—something which belongs to us and to no one else. The fruitfulness of modern invention in the arts of life, the general fusion of thought through the medium of an extra-territorial literature, which from its easy domestication among us is scarcely regarded as foreign, the convenience and comfort of European customs which have been incorporated into our scheme of living,—all these, aided and diffused by our extraordinary facilities of travel and circulation, have made sad work, even in the present generation, with