delight. They have done their duty as ornamental wits and lively educators, and now make way for others more suited to the age. There will be found very few theological teachers of our day who would, like Sebastian Stockhamer,[3] not only advise a patron to have the Emblems of Alciati always at hand at home and abroad, but suggest that he should do as Alexander did with the works of Homer, sleep with them under his pillow.

[xi]

He, therefore, who ventures to put forth his own conceits, clothed in this old-fashioned dress, before the present world of critical thinkers and impatient novel readers, must apologise for his intrusion and crave indulgence. Some, perhaps, who may look into these pages, will sympathise with the Author in the pleasure he has enjoyed in following the footsteps of the ingenious Emblematists of old, and will accept the subjoined Emblem as an illustration of their common feeling upon the subject:—

Though the new be gold, some love the old.

[xii]

[xii]

They

And white flashing gables—my childhood's delight,

Shuns the blue-slated upstart that glares from its site;"

Rose the voice of a stranger arresting the tide:

Which purges and pares the old world to its quick;

With its plaster and laths to a mansion of brick."

And felt my poor sentiment almost a sin.

The Author thinks it necessary to say, that circumstances over which he had no control prevented him from carrying out his original idea, which was that every set of verses should be accompanied by an illustration; and it is only by the assistance of many friends, to whom his best acknowledgments are due, that he has been able to provide the comparatively few accompanying woodcuts.

FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See p. 8 of Preface to "Andrea Alciati and his Book of 

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