My former volume of Essays has been so kindly received that I am
emboldened to make another and more miscellaneous collection. The papers
here gathered have been written at intervals during the last fifteen
years, and I knew no way so effectual to rid my mind of them and make
ready for a new departure, as this of shutting them between two covers
where they can haunt me, at least, no more. I should have preferred a
simpler title, but publishers nowadays are inexorable on this point, and
I was too much occupied for happiness of choice. That which I have
desperately snatched is meant to imply both the books within and the
world without, and perhaps may pass muster in the case of one who has
always found his most fruitful study in the open air.