PREFACE

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THE SECOND EDITION.

MISS JANE C. divided her in-door hours into three parts: the housekeeping and dinner-ordering cares of life claimed one part; hearing two younger sisters say their lessons a second part; and during the third and most delightful remainder she would lock her chamber door, and move on the marker of Russell's "Modern Europe" at the rate of never less than fifteen pages an hour, and sometimes more.

Being so vexatious as to ask wherein her satisfaction consisted, I was told—in the thought that she did her duty; that she kept her resolution; that she read as much as her friends; that continually fewer histories remained to read; and that she hoped one day to excel in literature.

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A few torturing questions elicited that neither the labour nor the resolution aforesaid had produced any sensible increase, or more than a vague but anxious expectation, of available information or mental improvement. A painful suspicion arose that there was some truth in the annoying remark of a certain idle companion, that she was "stupefying her brains for no good."

The exposure of an innocent delusion is mere cruelty, unless you replace the shadow by the substance; so a list of books and plan of operations was promised by the next post. Adam Smith attempted in a pamphlet what resulted in his "Wealth of Nations" after the labour of thirty years. My letter grew into a volume, now offered for the guidance of youth in each and every department of literature.

A large edition has been circulated, and a demand for a second enables me to notice many recent publications, and to profit by the suggestions of "gentle readers" and severer critics. In reply to repeated inquiries how the Author could

have forgotten such and such works of undoubted authority, he replies, that no student would thank him for transcribing the Catalogue of the Bodleian, however much it might add to his reputation for extensive reading. Without aspiring to direct the future studies of Mr. Macaulay in History, of Dr. Buckland in Geology, or of the Duke of Wellington in Military Tactics, he is happy to say, that very learned men have expressed their regret that in their early studies they had not the benefit of such simple guidance as this volume affords.

J. P.

Barnstaple, Jan 1. 1850.