these to accept the artist's assurance, 'The curtain is the picture.'

It will be seen that I only profess to give an abstract, not a full
translation of the letters. There is so much repetition and such a
lavish expenditure of words in the writings of Cassiodorus, that they
lend themselves very readily to the work of the abbreviator. Of course
the longer letters generally admit of greater relative reduction in
quantity than the shorter ones, but I think it may be said that on an
average the letters have lost at least half their bulk in my hands. On
any important point the real student will of course refuse to accept
my condensed rendering, and will go straight to the fountain-head. I
hope, however, that even students may occasionally derive the same
kind of assistance from my labours which an astronomer derives from
the humble instrument called the 'finder' in a great observatory.

A few important letters have been translated, to the best of my
ability, verbatim. In the not infrequent instances where I have been
unable to extract any intelligible meaning, on grammatical principles,
from the words of my author, I have put in the text the nearest
approximation that I could discover to his meaning, and placed the
unintelligible words in a note, hoping that my readers may be more
fortunate in their interpretation than I have been.

With the usual ill-fortune of authors, just as my last sheet was
passing through the press I received from Italy a number of the 'Atti
e Memorie della R. Deputazione di Storia Patria per le Provincie di
Romagna' (to which I am a subscriber), containing an elaborate and
scholarlike article by S. Augusto Gaudenzi, entitled 'L'Opera di
Cassiodorio a Ravenna.' It is a satisfaction to me to see that in
several instances S. Gaudenzi and I have reached practically the same