Copyright, 1888, BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. All rights reserved. 38625 The Riverside Press, Cambridge: E459 PREFATORY NOTE. I HAVE been often urged to reprint the articles which form the bulk of this volume, by persons who had found them interesting at the time of their first publication, as well as by others who had read them more recently and thought them of some interest even now. I have steadily refused to do what was asked of me, because the greater part of what is here gathered together seemed to me to have mainly a polemic value contemporaneous with the date at which it was written. I have (I know not how wisely) allowed myself to be persuaded that there was also in these papers a certain historical interest as recalling aspects of our politics which perhaps it may be useful not wholly to forget. In looking at them again, after so long an interval (for the latest of them is more than twenty years old), it gratifies me to find so little to regret in their tone, and that I was able to keep my head fairly clear of passion when my heart was at boiling-point. |