is understood to hold (perhaps in its very title it makes proclamation of
holding) certain fixed principles in politics, or possibly religion.
These distinguishing features, which become badges of enmity and
intolerance, all the more intense as they descend upon narrower and
narrower grounds of separation, must, at the very threshold, by warning
off those who dissent from them, so far operate to limit your audience.
To take my own case as an illustration: these present sketches were
published in a journal dedicated to purposes of political change such as
many people thought revolutionary. I thought so myself, and did not go
along with its politics. Inevitably that accident shut them out from the
knowledge of a very large reading class. Undoubtedly this journal, being
ably and conscientiously conducted, had some circulation amongst a
neutral class of readers; and amongst its own class it was popular. But
its own class did not ordinarily occupy that position in regard to social
influence which could enable them rapidly to diffuse the knowledge of a
writer. A reader whose social standing is moderate may communicate his
views upon a book or a writer to his own circle; but his own circle is a
narrow one. Whereas, in aristocratic classes, having more leisure and
wealth, the intercourse is inconceivably more rapid; so that the
publication of any book which interests _them_ is secured at once; and
this publishing influence passes downwards; but rare, indeed, is the
inverse process of publication through an influence spreading upwards.

According to the way here described, the papers now presented to the
public, like many another set of papers nominally published, were _not_
so in any substantial sense. Here, at home, they may be regarded as
still unpublished. [2] But, in such a case, why were not the papers at
once detached from the journal, and reprinted? In the neglect to do this,
some there are who will read a blamable carelessness in the author; but,
in that carelessness, others will read a secret consciousness that the