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Preface.

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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, thofe 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 circumstances 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 result

has been this tithe-barn of gleanings, this Spicilegium of golden thoughts of wife Spirits, who though dead, yet speak, and whofe voices are still heard among us.

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