Our Old Home A Series of English Sketches

Excerpt

I have not asked your consent, my dear General, to the foregoing
inscription, because it would have been no inconsiderable disappointment
to me had you withheld it; for I have long desired to connect your name
with some book of mine, in commemoration of an early friendship that has
grown old between two individuals of widely dissimilar pursuits and
fortunes.  I only wish that the offering were a worthier one than this
volume of sketches, which certainly are not of a kind likely to prove
interesting to a statesman in retirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no
matters of policy or government, and have very little to say about the
deeper traits of national character.  In their humble way, they belong
entirely to aesthetic literature, and can achieve no higher success than
to represent to the American reader a few of the external aspects of
English scenery and life, especially those that are touched with the
antique charm to which our countrymen are more susceptible than are the
people among whom it is of native growth.