No eye to watch, and no tongue to wound us, All earth forgot, and all heaven around us.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling?

Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.

We encourage one another in mediocrity.

I cannot sit and think; books think for me.

Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that being nothing art everything? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity - then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calledst it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in this retroversion? or what half Januses are we, that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we for ever revert! The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! the past is everything, being nothing!

A presentation copy, reader,-if haply you are yet innocent of such favours-is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.