TO HENRY RICHARD EYRE, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR,

I have great pleasure in availing myself of your permission to dedicate to you, my dissertation on "THE TWO BATTLES OF NEWBURY," both fought within the immediate vicinity, and the latter within the precincts of your ancestral home. Of Shaw House, and its Avenues, we may truly say "If the one was our Haye-Sainte or Hougomont, the other was our Berkshire Balaclava."

More than two hundred years have passed away, since the best blood in Britain was poured forth like water, for their Crown and Laws, by Englishmen. The grand result has been, our free, well-defined, and venerated constitution ;-Esto perpetua! "Other men have laboured, and we have entered into their inheritance."

I will not here discuss or even enter upon, the characters of the leaders in that sad civil war

""Tis the prerogative of Time, to make

Whate'er he touches precious. Deep reverse

Is a religion too, whose martyrs wake

An awe, which good men nurse."