than an old one, and it would be worse than wasted time to try to
recast the juvenile language: nor is it to be thought that I am
ashamed even of what I cancel; for great part of my earlier work was
rapidly written for temporary purposes, and is now unnecessary,
though true, even to truism. What I wrote about religion, was, on
the contrary, painstaking, and, I think, forcible, as compared with
most religious writing; especially in its frankness and
fearlessness: but it was wholly mistaken: for I had been educated
in the doctrines of a narrow sect, and had read history as obliquely
as sectarians necessarily must.

Mingled among these either unnecessary or erroneous statements, I
find, indeed, some that might be still of value; but these, in my
earlier books, disfigured by affected language, partly through the
desire to be thought a fine writer, and partly, as in the second
volume of 'Modern Painters,' in the notion of returning as far as I
could to what I thought the better style of old English literature,
especially to that of my then favourite, in prose, Richard Hooker.

For these reasons,--though, as respects either art, policy, or
morality, as distinct from religion, I not only still hold, but
would even wish strongly to re-affirm the substance of what I said
in my earliest books,--I shall reprint scarcely anything in this
series out of the first and second volumes of 'Modern Painters'; and
shall omit much of the 'Seven Lamps' and 'Stones of Venice'; but all
my books written within the last fifteen years will be republished
without change, as new editions of them are called for, with here
and there perhaps an additional note, and having their text divided,
for convenient reference, into paragraphs, consecutive through each
volume. I shall also throw together the shorter fragments that bear