EDUCATIONAL ESSAYS. BY E. THOMSON, D. D., LL. D. A NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITED BY REV. D. W. CLARK, D. D. Cincinnati: PUBLISHED BY L. SWORMSTEDT & A. POE, FOR THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, AT THE WESTERN BOOK CONCERN, R. P. THOMPSON, PRINTER. 1856. G. BROWN-GOODE COLLECTION BY SWORMSTEDT & POE, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. Preface. D URING the half century just past, no writers, as a class, have occupied a higher position in our English literature, or exerted a wider influence upon the literary mind than the essayist and reviewer. Theirs has become a distinct vocation, occupying the profoundest thinkers, the keenest logicians, and the most gifted writers. Among these, the names of Coleridge, Jeffrey, Wilson, Macintosh, De Quincey, Carlyle, Macaulay, Brougham, Lamb, D'Isreali, Campbell, Hazlitt, Sydney Smith, Talfourd, Rogers, Everett, Giles, Sumner, and Whipple-successors of "the old British essayists"-shine as a brilliant galaxy. Wherever the English language goes forth in its progress over the earth, there will their influence be felt; and, indeed, we can hardly conceive of a period in the coming future when they will cease to charm by the beauty of their imagery and the brilliancy of their wit, or to instruct by the calm dignity of their diction and the lucid expositions of literature and philosophy which gleam along their pages. With unhesitating confidence, we claim for the author of these "Educational Essays" a place in the brotherhood of the essayists of the age. The naturalness of his method, the transparent clearness and 3 |