Before dismissing the subject of the Household Edition, I would offer a few words of explanation on the part of the Editress.  While touching-up and trimming the somewhat hurried work of our friend, Mr. McCarthy, she was compelled to accompany me abroad, and to nurse me through a dangerous illness, which left but little time for the heavy claims of business.  Unable to superintend, with the care required, the issue of her six volumes she entrusted the task to two agents in whose good will and experience she had and still has the fullest confidence; but the results were sundry letters of appeal and indignation from subscribers touching matters wholly unknown and unintelligible to her.  If any mistakes have been made in matters of detail she begs to express her sincerest regret, and to assure those aggrieved that nothing was further from her intention than to show discourtesy where she felt cordial gratitude was due.

* * * * * Nothing now remains for me but the pleasant task of naming the many friends and assistants to whom this sixteenth and last volume has been inscribed.  The late Reverend G. Percy Badger strongly objected to the literal translation of “The Nights” (The Academy, December 8, ’81); not the less, however, he assisted me in its philology with all readiness.  Dr. F. Grenfell Baker lent me ready and valuable aid in the mechanical part of my hard labour.  Mr. James F. Blumhardt, a practical Orientalist and reacher of the Prakrit dialects at Cambridge, englished for me the eight Gallandian tales (Foreword, Supp. vol. iii.) from the various Hindostan versions.  To Mr. William H. Chandler, of Pembroke College, Oxford, I have expressed (Supp. vol. iii.) the obligations due to a kind and generous friend:  his experiments with photography will serve to reconcile the churlishness and retrograde legislation of the great Oxford Library with the manners and customs of more civilised peoples.  Mr. W. A. Clouston, whose degree is high in “Storiology,” supplied my second and third Supplemental volumes with valuable analogues and variants.  Mr. Alexander J. Cotheal, Consul-General for Nicaragua at New York, sent a valuable Ms. to me across the water, and was persuaded to translate, for my sixth Supplemental volume, a novel version of the “Tale of Attaf.”  Mr. A. G. Ellis, of the British Museum, amongst other favours, kindly revised the Foreword of my sixth volume.  Mr. E. J. W. Gibb, an Orientalist of the modern and realistic school, who is not deterred by literal translation, permitted me to print his version of the Turkish Zayn al-Asnam (Supp. vol. iii.) and translations of three tales which he judged inexpedient to publish (Supp. vol. iv.).  M. O. Houdas, Professeur d’ Arabe Vulgaire a l’ecole des langues Orientales vicantes, Paris, copied for me the Arabic text of Zayn al-Asnam and the whole Ms. used by mm.  Chavis and Cazotte:  he also obligingly assisted me in overcoming the various difficulties of a crabbed