A few observations are necessary to inform the reader of the circumstances under which the following work has been prepared, and of the objects aimed at by the author.

In 1832 Dr Spurzheim proceeded to the United States of America, with the view of diffusing a knowledge of Phrenology by public lectures. He had not completed his first course in Boston, when he was taken ill; and he died on the 10th November in the same year. Brief as was the space during which he was permitted to labour,his expositions of this science had excited great and extensive interest, not in Boston only, but very generally over the Union. After his death, numerous invitations were sent to me by the friends of Phrenology to repair to the United States, and follow up the work which he had so successfully begun. For several years this was not in my power; but at last, in 1838, circumstances permitted me to obey the call, and I sailed for New York in September, and commenced a course of lectures in Boston in October, of that year. I continued in the United States till 1st June 1840; and during the whole period was incessantly engaged,–in the winter and spring, in lecturing on Phrenology in the cities; and in summer,–in preparing a work on Moral Philosophy for the American press, and in making excursions into the interior of the country for necessary recreation.