PREFACE.

THESE Papers, which first of ali took their station in the periodic journals of this country, which were secondly transplanted into the literature of the American United States, and are now, for the third time, published at home in a new form with many emendations, may be supposed to have suffered by errors of hurry and inadvertence, from their original adaptation to a service very nearly extemporaneous. It was natural that they should do so. But my own experience, in common with that of many other writers, has taught me that the disadvantages of hurry are not without their compensations. Performers on the organ, so far from finding their own impromptu displays to fall below their more careful and premeditated efforts, on the contrary, have oftentimes deep reason to mourn over the escape of inspirations born from the momentary fervours of improvisation, but fugitive and irrevocable as the pulses in their own flying fingers. Something analogous there is in the effects of that inexorable summons which forces a man to write against time, when racing along to intercept the final closing of a weekly or monthly journal. It is certain, howsoever it may be explained psychologically, that the fierce compression of mental activities which takes place in such a struggle, though painful and exhausting, has the effect of suddenly unlocking cells in the brain, and revealing evanescent gleams of original feeling, or startling suggestions of novel truth, that would not have obeyed a less fervent magnetism. Pain, and conflicts with suffering, are ministrations

of development to the human intellect even in the youngest infants, much more frequent than is commonly observed.*

I believe that there is no great call for preliminary explanations as to any difficulties in the following papers, except, perhaps, as to these six cases:

I. The suggesting-ground of the paper entitled "Protestantism" was really a pamphlet, or rather book, judging by its careful and erudite composition; and this work, if now forgotten naturally after a lapse of a dozen years, was really ascribed to two separate bishops of distinguished literary pretension. I know not who it really was that I commented upon, but certainly he was no ghostly creation of mine: he was incarnate at that time, and I hope still continues to be so.

II. In speaking of the equation between the expenditure of a family in two remote times, or two remote places (as France and England), on the suggestion of the "Chronicon Preciosum," I omitted to fix the reader's attention (as properly I should have done) upon a common oversight affecting such equations-viz., that very often a large share of the difference forms no exponent of the mere price scale ruling in the two countries compared; since much of the difference should be often charged upon varying usages of life. For instance, about twentyfive years ago I saw a letter from a poor baronet, who had fixed his residence in Southern France, vaunting the prodigious cheapness of his own neighbourhood by comparison with any part of Great Britain. He had a large family of daughters, and an income of very little more than £500 per annum; and yet he described himself as keeping (and ordinarily using for the benefit of his five daughters) a coach-and-four. But, on further explanation, it came out, that the usage of that province allowed him a large social intercourse without the cost of dinner-parties. Otherwise, in several points, Eng

I have elsewhere mentioned, as a fact which ought to have a powerful interest for psychologists, that on the morning next after a severe paroxysm of "griping" pains, every infant manifests a striking advance, a bound forwards per saltum, in its apprehensiveness, and generally in its intellectual development.

land was the cheaper land. To A, therefore, on e review of all the circumstances--personal as well as local-France might be much the cheaper. To B, with very different habits, or a household very differently composed, England.

III. and IV. In the paper on "Oracles," and in the closing paper on "Greece under the Romans," there occur two suggestions that will be pronounced by many possibly in a high degree paradoxical. But in any bad sense (however erroneous a sense) neither of these suggestions is paradoxical. To the Delphic Oracle, as amongst Greeks-to the Byzantine Empire, as a great barrier standing through eight centuries, breaking and sustaining the assaults of Mahometanism, else too strong on that quarter for infant Christendom in the West-I have assigned majestic functions. So far as the ordinary current of history is not confluent with my view, so far the reader will see cause, perhaps, to remodel his opinion, and to amend his appreciation of two mighty organs working through ages on behalf of human progress, and only not historically acknowledged, because not truly understood.

V. "Schlosser on Literature" was not written with the slight or careless purpose to which the reader will probably attach it. The indirect object was, to lodge, in such a broad exemplification of German ignorance, a protest against the habit (prevalent through the last fifty years) of yielding an extravagant precedency to German critics (on Shakspere especially), as if better and more philosophic (because more cloudy) than our own. Here is a man, Schlosser by name, bookmaker by trade, who (though now perhaps forgotten) was accepted by all Germany, one brief decennium back, as a classical surveyor and reporter on the spacious fields of British literature through a retrospect of a hundred and fifty years. But the Schlegels were surely not so poorly furnished for criticism as Mr Schlosser? Why, no: in special walks of literature, if they had not arrogantly pretended to all, they were able to support the character of well-read scholars. What they were as philosophers, or at least what Frederick Schlegel was, the reader may learn from Schelling, who, in one summary foot

note, demolished his pretensions as by a pistol-shot. For real serviceable exposition of Shakspere's meaning and hidden philosophy, I contend that our own domestic critics have contributed very much more than Germany, whether North or South, whether Protestant or Catholic. And, in particular, I myself find, in Morgan's brief essay on the character of Falstaff, more true subtlety of thought, than in all the smoky comments of Rhenish or Danubian transcendentalists. Then, as to those innumerable passages which demand a familiarity with English manners, usages, and antiquities, provincial dialects, &c., naturally the very gates of entrance must be generally closed against all but native critics.

VI. In the little paper on "Miracles," the reader, who is new to the subject, must understand that no question is raised (as too probably he will be supposing) on the possibility of a miracle. That question is left entirely untouched. The discussion commences at a point lower down-viz., after assuming the possibility of a miracle, then next as to its communicability; meaning, whether a miracle, if it should actually take place, could have any power to propagate its own existence amongst mankind; that is, whether it could translate itself upon the wings of testimony from the little theatre of spectators or auditors, before whom it had been exhibited, to the great theatre of the world, and the still greater theatre of posterity.