WITH THE BEST LETTER-WRITERS AND AUTOBIOGRAPHERS. FORMING A COLLECTION OF MEMOIRS AND ANECDOTES OF EMINENT PERSONS. BY CHARLES KNIGHT, EDITOR OF HALF-HOURS WITH THE BEST AUTHORS.' SECOND SERIES. LONDON: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, 1868. 11443.47 HARVARD COLLEGE FEB 5 1921 fund LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET PREFACE TO THE SECOND SERIES. Our First Series explains in its Preface the general object of the work :-"The purpose of this book is to supply brief memoirs, or characteristic traits, of many distinguished persons, in connexion with the records of their own thoughts and feelings, as preserved in Autobiographies, in Diaries, and in familiar Letters." In the present Series the same object has been steadily pursued, but with the following modifications of the original plan. 1. The former Series was "divided by numerals into 'Half-hours." " Such division was found practically inconvenient, interfering sometimes with the natural sequence of the matter of each chapter. This plan has therefore been abandoned, and the reader is left to make pauses at his own discretion. 2. More fully to carry out the principle of developing the characters or leading thoughts of the Letter-Writers, some of the Chapters in this Series have run to greater length than most of those in the former one. 3. It was no part of the original plan to include unpublished Letters; but the Editor, having been fortunate in obtaining permission to print, for the first time, some interesting Letters |