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27 "The Religious Souvenir."

This Annual, as well as its predecessor, from their tone of literature and style of embellishment, found favor with the public. Contributions had been widely solicited both in Europe and the United States, though I was sometimes disappointed where I had reason to place reliance. I had the gratification of receiving articles from over the water from Mrs. Opie, Bernard Barton, R. Shelton Mackenzie, and Dr. Stamatiades, of Constantinople—as well as from our own distinguished writers, Bishop Burgess, Bishop Chase, Bishop Williams, Rev. Dr. Tyng, Rev. C. W. Everest, and Colonel John Trumbull; also from Miss Sedgwick, Miss Gould, Mrs. Stephens, Mrs. Embury, and Mrs. Stowe, whose pen has since made itself known in both hemispheres. I was ambitious that these volumes should exhibit as great a variety of talent as possible; and therefore, although I had at first added more than one hundred pages myself, deemed it courteous as an editor rather to withdraw, and bring forward my friends, or, to borrow the expression of my Lord Bacon, "ring a bell for other wits." But the toil of exchanging hundreds of letters, not only with the literati, but with artists, all the sixteen illustrations requiring to be original, absorbed too much time, and was too slavish in its character; so, discovering that the department of editorship