"Concerning the intensely interesting portions of the world of which the following pages treat, no work has ever been issued from the American press. This, then, may lay claim to novelty.

As the Crimea - her oddly picturesque Tartar towns and gorgeous tumuli; Circassia-the fastnesses of her invincible heroes, the homes of her world-wide famed beauties, have been visited by no other American traveller, it may be a sufficient apology for putting my Journal into print. Now, however, that the work is before me, I find in it innumerable errors, which should have been avoided; but my plea is, that the whole has been written from pencillings, by the midnight lamp, after the fatigue of the daily ungenial labors of a counting-room. For the style, sentiment, &c., I have nothing to offer in palliation; though I am well aware that he who impugns es-tablished laws however absurd, conventional forms, social rules which society holds dearer even than morality itself, he who does not follow in the strait-laced sectarian notions of the times, exposes himself to the harshest criticism."