THE MONTHLY REVIEW. FROM MAY TO AUGUST INCLUSIVE, 1827. VOL. V. NEW AND IMPROVED SERIES. LONDON: THOMAS HURST, EDWARD CHANCE & CO. AND W. CURRY, JUN. AND CO., SACKVILLE STREET, DUBLIN. PREFACE. IN In consequence of representations which have been received from time to time, from several of the most respectable subscribers to this journal, it has been determined that the Appendix to THE MONTHLY REVIEW shall be discontinued. As it was published only three times in the course of the year, many unavoidable irregularities occurred with respect to its transmission to the country, which caused much inconvenience to those who preserved their sets for the purpose of being bound in successive volumes. This inconvenience was the more material, as the Index, on which great care is bestowed, and which forms an essential ingredient in a work so miscellaneous in its character, was uniformly inserted in the Appendix alone, as well as the Title-page and Table of Contents, which are equally indispensible to the completeness of the series. Another disadvantage arising out of the distant intervals at which the Appendix was published, and which the modern fertility of the Foreign presses rendered too conspicuous to be neglected, was this that as the best French, Italian, and German works were necessarily reserved for that part of the journal, six, and often twelve months elapsed, before those productions could possibly be introduced to the notice of our readers. To obviate these and other inconveniences, which need not be enumerated, the Appendix will be altogether dispensed with. But, in order that its useful and very valuable object, the Review of |