This Library is based on a belief in worth, and on a knowledge of the
wide desire among men now to read books that are books, which "do," as
Milton says, "contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that
soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the
purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them."
When, therefore, as now happens for the second time, a man of genius who
has written with a hope to lift the hearts and minds of men by adding one
more true book to the treasures of the land, honours us by such
recognition of our aim, and fellow-feeling with it, that he gives up a
part of his exclusive right to his own work, and offers to make it freely
current with the other volumes of our series,--we take the gift, if we
may dare to say so, in the spirit of the giver, and are the happier for
such evidence that we are not working in vain.

Such evidence comes in other forms: as in letters from remote readers in
lonely settlements, from the far West, from sheep-farms in Australia,
from farthest India, from places to which these little volumes make their
way as pioneers; being almost the first real books that have there been
seen. To send a true voice over, for delight and support of earnest
workers who open their hearts wide to a good book in a way that we can
hardly understand,--we who live wastefully in the midst of plenty, and
are apt sometimes to leave to feed on the fair mountain and batten on the
moor,--is worth the while of any man of genius who puts his soul into his
work, as Mr. Woolner does.

Books in the "National Library" that come like those of Mr. Patmore and
Mr. Woolner are here as friends and companions. If they were not
esteemed highly they would not be here. Beyond that implied opinion
there is nothing to be said. He would be an ill-bred host who criticised
his guest, or spoke loud praise of him before his face. Nor does a well-