ENGLISH PAST AND PRESENT BY RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, B.D. AUTHOR OF "THE STUDY OF WORDS, ""THE LESSONS ON PROVERBS," ETC., ETC. REDFIELD 110 AND 112 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK 1855. PREFACE. A SERIES of four lectures which I delivered last spring to the pupils of King's College School, London, supplied the foundation to this present volume. These lectures, which I was obliged to prepare in haste, on a brief invitation, and under the pressure of other engagements, were subsequently enlarged and recast; and delivered in the autumn somewhat more nearly in their present shape to the pupils of the Training School, Winchester; although of course with those alterations, omissions and additions, which the difference in my hearers suggested as necessary or desirable. I have found it convenient to keep the lectures, as regards the persons presumed to be addressed, in that earlier form which I had sketched out at the first; and as it helps much to keep lectures vivid and real that one should have some well defined audience, if not |