HARVARD COOLGE LIBRARY

ARTHUR STUART WALCOTT

JUNE 1, 1923

ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by

D. APPLETON & COMPANY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New-York.

ΤΟ

MY BROTHER DAVENPORT,

NOW IN CALIFORNIA,

This Book

IS

AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

PREFACE.

A PREFACE is a happy medium between the author and the public. It is usually apologetic too, and therefore modest-like a veil ; I will

I do not pretend to exhibit truth, clear and pellucid, but rather, as the title indicates, tinctured with imperfections.

The purest are not immaculate; the impure, though doubledyed with guilt, have some tinge of humanity-some obscured indication of divine origin; we are all more or less prismatic.

If there be one earnest, honest purpose beneath the strata of