Preface. HE following collection of thoughts that breathe and words that burn " have been gathered from the literary treasures of all ages and all countries: they have been selected with a certain regard to uniformity of fentiment on moral, philofophical and religious Truth; and particularly as tending to prove the conformity of Reason with Revelation. The Editor, having fuffered from deprivation of fight for more than four years, was compelled to turn his thoughts inward, to regale himself with the mental ftores of his earlier years, to hear, from beloved lips, those truths which he had formerly read for himself; and like Milton, (would that the comparison were more apt as to himself) to employ the pen of an affectionate daughter to write his dictations. In this manner, whilft totally blind, was his brief " Hiftory of Architecture in Great Britain," which appeared monthly in Laxton's Journal for 1847, dictated, written, revised and transcribed for the press. Lately, a flight return of vifion in one eye, enabled him, with the aid of magnifying glaffes, to read at short intervals the strongly marked characters of the Hebrew and German languages, which he had formerly flightly cultivated in hours of leisure, and our beautiful English Black-letter, and, occafionally, the large well defined Roman type of our early folios; and by habit, to make extracts, that he sometimes could not read. These circumftances opened new fources of occupation to him, and a release, in fome degree, of his able and amiable reader and amanuenfis from a portion of her daily task. The refult |