PREFACE ix 



mediaeval fresco has been hidden by the whitewash 

 of Georgian churchwardens. And as the aesthetic 

 rector too often scrapes away the defacement, only 

 to find blurred, parti-coloured patches, in which the 

 original design is no longer to be traced ; so, when 

 the successive layers of Jewish and Christian tra- 

 ditional pigment, laid on, at intervals, for near 

 three thousand years, had been removed, by even 

 the tenderest critical operations, there was not 

 much to be discerned of the leader of the Exodus. 

 Only one point became perfectly clear to me, 

 namely, that Moses is not responsible for nine- 

 tenths of the Pentateuch ; certainly not for the 

 legends which had been made the bugbears of 

 science. In fact, the fence turned out to be a mere 

 heap of dry sticks and brushwood, and one might 

 walk through it with impunity : the which I did. 

 But I was still young, when I thus ventured to 

 assert my liberty ; and young people are apt to be 

 filled with a kind of sceva indignatio, when they 

 discover the wide discrepancies between things as 

 they seem and things as they are. It hurts their 

 vanity to feel that they have prepared themselves 

 for a mighty struggle to climb over, or break their 

 way through, a rampart, which turns out, on close 

 approach, to be a mere heap of ruins ; venerable, 

 indeed, and archaeological ly interesting, but of no 

 other moment. And some fragment of the super- 

 fluous energy accumulated is apt to find vent in 

 strong language. 



