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 bookseller of great eminence and liberality, offering very considerable terms, if he would undertake a work of magnitude, on a subject which the bookseller specified. Our hero being a man of real genius, erudition, and science, would write upon no subject which he did not understand, and was not ''an undertaker-general in the trade of book-making''. The subject in question, he was conscious he knew, and equally conscious, that whatever he did know, he could communicate clearly, forcibly, and impressively, to the public. He therefore resolved to accept the offer, and having imparted the proposal to his mother and his friend John, he answered in the affirmative. Having concluded this important treaty, he perused his other letters, two of which were from fair correspondents; the first in the well known hand of Mrs. Blossom, containing an in