ENTERED, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1832,

by A. B. CLEVELAND, M. D. in the Clerk's office of the District Court of Maryland.

J. D. Toy, printer.

PREFACE.

IN collecting the materials for the present volume, it was the design of the editor to cull the choicest pieces from the highest walks of American literature; where the gifted Poet, touched with the love of nature and of song, breathes his purest strains in celebrating the goodness of the great Author of our existence, and in the description of the grand and beautiful manifestations of his love and power, as they are spread abroad in his handy work; where Piety speaks, as one having authority, to kindle in the soul a quickening love of virtue and religion, and to awaken and make strong the kindlier affections of our nature; and where Patriotism teaches the lessons of wisdom, offers sage counsel, and swells, with deep solicitude, the note of warning,-in a word, to make a selec

tion, calculated to imbue the minds of youth with those great truths and elevated sentiments, which form the basis of individual happiness, of civilization and the prosperity and glory of the republic.

Not calculated with a distinct reference to the purposes of elocution, it is not intended, as intimated in the title, merely for a reading book,according to the technical acceptation of the phrase-but as a text book, to be analytically studied. There are many passages which the intelligent instructer will gladly embrace for commentary and remark, and there are others, which will require at his hands, amplification and familiar illustration. It is not intended to supercede any of the class books with which the editor is acquainted, but, in the course of reading and study, it is to succeed them, and invite the student to the joys of higher attainments. Those compiled by Mr. Pierpont, to whom we are indebted for the modern improvement of school books in this department, are here more particularly alluded to. Accordingly it was the aim of the editor, that no article found in these books, should be inserted in the present volume.

It is proper, apologetically, to state, that the usual liberties, some of which indeed are unavoidable in a work of this kind, have been taken with the writings of many of the authors, the beautiful and deeply instructive emanations of whose minds, appear in these pages.

Without 'seeking any farther its merits to disclose,' it is dismissed with the hope that it may subserve the purposes for which it is designed. It is cheerfully submitted to the public, and to the judgment of an enlightened profession. BALTIMORE, August, 1832,