LETTER XI. 



105 



will onve us all the more confidence in the accuracy of 

 our own survey. If they differ, it will be necessary 

 to consider wherein the discrepancy lies. The result 

 may be a virtual agreement, — or, perchance, a demon- 

 stration that all the while I have been fancying 

 in my favourites — the Trees — much more than I 

 really saw, — seeing in them relations that existed 

 only in my own imagination. Be it so. I hope that 

 love of truth is stronger with me than fondness for a 

 long-cherished theory, and that once convinced that 

 this theory is not what I have hitherto deemed it — an 

 expression of the truth — I shall no longer have any 

 regard or consideration for it. When one has dis- 

 covered that a coin which he valued is counterfeit, 

 the best use he can make of it is, to bury it out of 

 sight. 



4. To proceed : At the head of every one of this 

 series of Letters, I have placed one or more short 

 extracts from the writings of various authors, as more 

 or less illustrative of the views unfolded in the letters, 

 and to serve as a sort of text. I shall now request 

 you to give your best attention to such of these 

 extracts as bear on our present subject, and also to 

 some others which, from their great length, I could 

 not make that use of, but which I will now embody 

 here, along with such observations of my own in the 

 way of criticism or application as may seem naturally 

 to arise out of them. 



