Page VI. Use of sabbatical institutions X. Religious establishments and toleration XI. Population and provision; and agriculture ADVERTISEMENT. MUCH as we owe to the invention of printing, its good is not entirely without alloy. From the facilities it presents to the rapid march of mind, books are multiplied as if by magic; but at the same time the sterling works of each successive age are thus, from the want of leisure to read them, rapidly displaced by literature of a lighter cast, whose aim it is to play round the heart, but never reach the head.' To divert in part the interest felt for such productions, it is intended to publish, in a concentrated form, a Series of STANDARD ENGLISH AUTHORS; of whose works the present generation know little, and the rising youth must know less; although the names, at least, of such writers are familiar in our mouths as household words,' and the information they convey, suited to all times, places, and conditions of men, is clothed in language, which has of necessity remained stationary, whilst modes of thinking and writing have insensibly changed. But though powerful in mind and rich in matter are the writers of England's proudest period, still they are Paley Phil. b all deficient in the one thing needful-brevity; and thus the very points, on which they plumed themselves in their own days, have led to their present partial neglect. Ever more afraid of saying too little than too much, they have imposed on posterity the task of pruning luxuriances and removing blemishes, by the rejection of what is superfluous in matter and quaint in style; but not without the double advantage on our part of retaining all that is useful, and of imparting a new interest to it by the system of CON CENTRATION. Of the value of such a principle the best proof is given by the unimitated and inimitable authors of Greece and Rome. Varied as their works are in subject and style, they all unite in the leading point, to give the maximum of information in the minimum of space, and have thus been able, independent of their intrinsic value, to outlive not only the darker ages, but to throw a lustre even on more enlightened times. The Series will be confined to the popular productions of writers in Prose, and the following Authors will be first selected: |