PREFACE. XI 



ground, will be sufficient to convince them that their ignorance and 

 carelessness on these scores is most invulnerable and sublime. 



But here comes a knot claiming Deus inter sit. Nor can the 

 difficulties of man be without a response from the mercy-seat : new 

 thoughts and new persons will come speeding to make new things 

 possible. Already we see that the whole of the sciences may reap- 

 pear on the popular side. The waning moon of the schools gives 

 place to the full-orbed Dian of a more generous light. All the 

 common truths that have been neglected since the foundation of 

 philosophy; the stones that the builders have rejected; that great 

 orthodoxy that has bided its time while ages of conceit were cuffing 

 against its serene face, will rise out of land and sea, and out of 

 the graves of the hearts of many generations, and come in hosts 

 such as no man can number to the people in their hour of need. 

 The doctrine of final causes, which is G-od in the sciences, and 

 which atheism hates, will ramble over the pleasant fields, and teach 

 them to childhood as a book ; and out of its mouth will come 

 lessons of order and fitness, which will make the world as familiar 

 as a father's and a mother's house. 



We find it to be a law, when a branch of knowledge has been 

 cultivated for ages, and still remains inaccessible to the world at 

 large, that its principles are not high or broad enough, and that some- 

 thing radically deeper is demanded. If it does not interest uni- 

 versal man, that is sufficient to prove the point. This law is illus- 

 trated by many things, and particularly by the history of the arts. 



Once upon a time all books were perpetuated by copying with 

 the hand; whoever would possess a volume, must undergo the toil 

 of transcribing it, or pay the price of that to another. This was 

 the narrowness of the circle of the learned. The perfection of the 

 copyist's art was soon attained, but the utmost rapidity and cheap- 

 ness in this mode of multiplying books, could not render them to 

 the mass of the public. How was the seeming impossibility to be 

 surmounted? By some meaner process, which should deteriorate 

 the appearance of books to a degree commensurate with the humble 

 fortunes of the poor; so that if the rich man's Bible cost him £30, 

 a copy of but one sixtieth the excellence should be produced for one 

 sixtieth the sum ? Far from it indeed ! The means of making the 



