1. OF KINGS TREASURIES. REVISED EDITION. NEW YORK: JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER. 1885. PREFACE. BEING now fifty-one years old, and little likely to change my mind hereafter on any important subject of thought (unless through weakness of age), I wish to publish a connected series of such parts of my works as now seem to me right, and likely to be of permanent use. In doing so I shall omit much, but not attempt to mend what I think worth reprinting. A young man necessarily writes otherwise than an old one, and it would be worse than wasted time to try to recast the juvenile language: nor is it to be thought that I am ashamed even of what I cancel; for great part of my earlier work was rapidly written for temporary purposes, and is now unnecessary, though true, even to truism. What I wrote about religion, was, on the contrary, painstaking, and, I think, forcible, as compared with most religious writing; especially in its frankness and fearlessness: but it was wholly mistaken; for I had been educated in the doctrines of a narrow sect, and had read history as oblely as sectarians necessarily must. rone Mingled among these either unnecessary or ous statements, I find, indeed, some that mig..t be still of value; but these, in my earlier books, disfigured by affected language, partly through the desire to be thought a fine writer, and partly, as in the second volume of "Modern Painters," in the notion of returning as far as I could to what I thought the better style of old English literature, especially to that of my then favorite, in prose, Richard Hooker. For these reasons, though, as respects either art, policy, or morality as distinct from religion, I not only |