the work has grown under the pen; and I have been led to make additions, omissions, and re-arrangements, which have rendered it a distinct book, and one to which the name it now bears is much more applicable than the title of its predecessor would have been.
Except in the earlier part of the volume, I have entirely avoided ecclesiastical topics. I have found it impossible to deal with them, without mingling in some of the hottest controversies of the present day.
My obligations to Guizot, Palgrave, Kemble, Latham, Worsaae, Bowyer, Warren, Macculloch, Forsyth, Pashley, and, above all, to Hallam, are self-apparent in these pages. Wherever I have found truths well stated by others, I have preferred useful compilation to worthless novelty.
University College, London,
October 13, 1853.