In Course of Publication. 



4 



TEIPLE AIECDOT.ES. 



F 



RALPH & JCHANDOS TEMPLE. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMINENT ARTISTS, 

 ENGRAVED BY THE BROTHERS DALZIEL 



" Keep nnshak'd 

 That temple, thy fair mind." 



Shakgpergf 



Mankind, it has been observed, love anecdotes. The conversation, 

 hether of lettered men or of men of the world, is made up of them ; the 

 Doks which most delight are the books which abound in them. In long 

 irratives of history and biography the portions best remembered are 

 ways those which illustrate some point of character, develop in action 

 >m0 new truth, or record some discovery or invention in a brief passage, 

 liese are strictly Anecdotes ; and thus by a sort of winnowing process 

 ae minds and memories of readers, where the labour is not already 

 erformed for them, may be said to reduce all narratives to anecdotal form. 



Eorty years ago " The Percy Anecdotes " delighted our fathers ; form- 

 g one of the earliest and most successful attempts to supply good 

 opular literature, at a price which till then had been rarely associated 

 dth any but publications of an exceptionable character. 



Readers have not only multiplied enormously since 1820, but every 

 eader ia now critical to an extent which the writers of that day little 

 resaw. Forty years, indeed, yield but a faint idea of the world's progress 

 nee that time. Another England has been added to our numbers, and 

 le moral and material prosperity of all is considerably higher. But it is, 

 erhaps, only by taking a few of the more striking points of comparison 

 lat an adequate idea of this progress can be attained. 



We require to be reminded that in 1820 the streets even of the metro- 

 olis were unlighted with gas, and practically unguarded by night ; that 

 ur gigantic railway system, on which more than a thousand millions 

 ^rling have been sunk, had not then turned its first sod, or built its 

 irliest arch ; that photography was unknown, and electric telegraphs 

 nimagined ; that only fifty millions of letters then passed in one year 

 irough our post-offices, which now conveys at least five hundred millions 

 i the same space of time ; and that no daily paper was then published in 

 ngland at a lowor price than eightpence, while even an almanack of any 

 nd could not bo purchased for less than a shilling ; and innumerable 

 >pliances and arts, less striking to the imagination than some we have 

 entioned, though now no less important in their effects upon human 

 elfare, were still unknown. . 



THE TEMPLE ANECDOTES will be a sTirine in which Happy Thoughts, 



ood Words, and Noble Deeds, shall have a 'place. The aim of it* 



ditors will be not only to be worthy of these later and better times, but 



Jao in some measure to reflect thczn. Though not always Biographical, 



