IN acknowledging the support and patronage which have enabled us to conclude and publish the XXXVth Volume of the Naval Chronicle, we feel increased pleasure from the sense of augmented obligation; and if the long continuance of a periodical work be any criterion of its character, the progress of it under the eye of an intelligent public, during the course of eighteen years, must confer upon it no small degree of respectability, especially when it is considered as totally unsupported by that forced, factitious fame, to which so many of the candidates for public favor have owed their temporary buoyancy, and whose pretensions have in some instances seemed to require that not only the trumpet, but the terrene trumpeter, be brazen, to publish and uphold them. But this is by-the-bye—we do not mention it with any comparative views—the very nature of our own publication forbids the bloated puff!—“Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta docere.”

In taking our usual review of the Volume, we are duly sensible how much it owes to our kind auxiliaries, as the vehicle of various information, and correspondent interest.

The Biography, as the very face and front of the Volume, should bear in its character an especial commendation; and if it do not, it is more our misfortune than our fault.