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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

To the Honorable NOAH H. SWAYNE, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

MORE than forty years ago, my dear sir, you and I were youthful fellow-students of the legal science in the bosom of our loved native state, and in the sweet village of Warrenton, so memorable in its connection with the ever-shifting current of the recent most deplorable civil war. We were examined for license by the same judges, and at the same time, in the year 1823; after which, in a few months, you migrated to the State of Ohio, where you have since attained such eminence ast a jurist and forensic advocate as few of your fellowcountrymen have been able to reach; while the graces which distinguish you in social and in domestic life have been such as to surround you with almost innumerable friends, and apparently, too, without the customary drawback of those enmities which are unfortunately sometimes awakened in ungenerous bosoms even by the exhibition of superior merit. The friendly relations which existed between us in the days of opening manhood have been maintained up to the present moment, undisturbed even by the occurrences of a deplorable civil war, the territorial character of which necessarily located us, during its sanguinary continuance,

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on opposite sides; a circumstance which, though it would have been necessarily fatal to ordinary friendship, has, in our case, only served to draw more tightly the cords of sympathy, and to afford you an opportunity of proving in a thousand ways, as you have done, how possible it is for a truly magnanimous spirit to do justice, and to exercise the most generous kindness, too, toward those around whose character and motives of action untoward circumstances may have for a time cast clouds of unmerited suspicion, and which the undimmed eye of a true and resolute friendship could alone have been able to penetrate.

Allow me the honor of giving you some additional assurance of my esteem, as well as of my gratitude for past kindnesses, by dedicating to you the following volume; which, though the imperfect product of a few weeks' labor, and written under circumstances not very propitious to the display of mere literary ability, yet will, as I hope, serve to yield you more or less of entertainment in such moments of relaxation as may be occasionally allowed you when temporarily withdrawn from the arduous duties of the very responsible official position which you now so deservedly occupy and so signally adorn. II. S. FOOTE.

NEW YORK, December, 1865.

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