out such passages as were rather descriptive of outside events than of Mr. Knight's own life, or of subjects intimately connected with his career. Summaries of political affairs in Europe, descriptions of journeys and places visited, and Mr. Knight's quotations (if of great length) from the published writings of other authors, have often been omitted; and opinions expressed upon matters foreign to the general topics of the book have sometimes shared the same fate. The account in the English edition, of Knight's experiences with the company of amateur actors, among whom Dickens was the leading spirit, could be spared from this volume better than many other passages, since the subject is treated of in Mr. Forster's widelyread biography of the great novelist.

Mr. Knight's words have in no case been changed. A sentence has here and there been inserted to restore the connection, where this has been interrupted by the omission of a passage; but the language, with these exceptions, remains precisely that of the author. It has been thought better that this should be preserved, even at the cost of a possible abruptness of transition in a few exceptional cases. While the editor is prepared for the inevitable differences of opinion. that must exist with regard to what should be retained. and what omitted in the abridgment of a book, he ventures to hope that in the plan he has pursued he has avoided any actual injustice to the author's clear and vivid presentation of his life's history.

NEW YORK, March, 1874.

INTRODUCTORY.

HE book, for the new issue of which I have undertaken to write an Introductory Note, is strictly what its title indicates-the

record of Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century.' The Worker has ceased from his labours and entered upon his rest. But it is too soon yet to add the final chapter to his

Passages.' All that will be attempted here will be to carry on the record till the goal was reached. I have called the note Introductory, but its more fitting place would, perhaps, be at the end rather than at the beginning of the book, and the reader may, if he please, defer the reading of it till he has read the 'Passages.'

In the Preface Mr. Knight tells us that it was in the August of 1812 his "working life really com menced;" but nowhere, I think, has he mentione the year when life itself began, though, from various incidental references, it may readily be inferred.

But in considering the closing years of his working life it is well to keep in mind his actual age.

He was born at Windsor on the 15th of March, 1791. The Dedication, which terminates the 'Passages' (vol. iii. p. 328), is dated January 16, 1865. He had thus, as we see, nearly completed his seventyfourth year when he wrote the last pages of his book: he had quite completed it when the book was published. To pass in review half a century of such varied and active occupation, and to produce his 'Memorials of Men and Books, of Social Progress, and Changing Manners,' was a toilsome and arduous undertaking at such an age; and it might have been thought that its author would feel that, having accomplished it, he had at length fairly earned repose. But old habits could not be so easily cast off. Work had long been necessary to his enjoyment of life. The love of literature had coloured his business transactions when he was most active as a publisher: when he withdrew from direct participation in trade, the pursuit of literature became his chief occupation. As he wrote in the Preface to the volume now in the reader's hand, he "had still to look for happiness in work." Before he had completed the present book, he had, in fact, been laying down the lines of a new one.

The subject of this lay close to his hand, and the research it involved was a congenial and pleasant labour. Various references in the 'Passages' had