UXORI MEÆ,

NULLIUS NON LABORIS PARTICIPI,

HUJUSCE PRÆSERTIM OPUSCULI INSTIGATRICI ET ADMINISTRÆ,

STUDIORUM COMMUNITATIS

HAS, QUALESCUNQUE SUNT, PRIMITIAS

DEDICO.

PREFACE

ΤΟ

THE SECOND

EDITION.

WHILE preparing a Second Edition of these Lectures for the press, I have had the advantage of reading many notices of the First, the great majority of them incisive yet kind, just yet scrupulously appreciative. This has been a great advantage, but it involves a corresponding responsibility. Next to the responsibility and pleasure of writing what it is hoped may serve, in however humble a measure, the cause of truth, charity, and justice, there is no greater pleasure or responsibility than that of reading a keen yet sympathetic criticism on it by one who is evidently a master of his subject, and who is aiming at the same goal, even though his stand

point be different, or he be travelling by a different road. The knowledge of the critic, as in more than one instance has been notably the case, may be deeper, his experience wider, his judgment more profound; he may find out with unerring certainty all the weak points in one's armour, but none the less is he eager to discover 'generosity in the motives,' and conscientiousness in the work done, to recognise the identity of the end in view, and such advance as may have been made towards it. Preface to a new edition I may, indeed I must, refer to such criticisms, because on the one hand I am bound to express my gratitude for the service they have done me, and to indicate how far they have modified my views; and, on the other, because I am quite conscious that I owe them far more to the intrinsic interest and importance of the subject than to any merits of my own.

In a

It is unnecessary to reply here to objections in detail, but there is one general criticism which perhaps had better be noticed fully now rather than referred to repeatedly by way of controversy in the book itself. It has been said by more than one critic, who is entitled at once