on each other, and fill in with such unprinted lectures or studies
as seem to me worth preserving, so as to keep the volumes, on an
average, composed of about a hundred leaves each.

The first book of which a new edition is required chances to be
'Sesame and Lilies,' from which I now detach the whole preface,
about the Alps, for use elsewhere; and to I which I add a lecture
given in Ireland on a subject closely connected with that of the
book itself. I am glad that it should be the first of the complete
series, for many reasons; though in now looking over these two
lectures, I am painfully struck by the waste of good work in them.
They cost me much thought, and much strong emotion; but it was
foolish to suppose that I could rouse my audiences in a little while
to any sympathy with the temper into which I had brought myself by
years of thinking over subjects full of pain; while, if I missed my
purpose at the time, it was little to be hoped I could attain it
afterwards; since phrases written for oral delivery become
ineffective when quietly read. Yet I should only take away what
good is in them if I tried to translate them into the language of
books; nor, indeed, could I at all have done so at the time of their
delivery, my thoughts then habitually and impatiently putting
themselves into forms fit only for emphatic speech; and thus I am
startled, in my review of them, to find that, though there is much,
(forgive me the impertinence) which seems to me accurately and
energetically said, there is scarcely anything put in a form to be
generally convincing, or even easily intelligible: and I can well
imagine a reader laying down the book without being at all moved by
it, still less guided, to any definite course of action.

I think, however, if I now say briefly and clearly what I meant my