English mind; the mind that spoke before in the cultured few, and that
speaks to-day in the cultured many. And it is now at last, after so
long a time--after all, as it should be--the English press that prints
it. It is the scientific English press, with those old gags (wherewith
our kings and queens sought to stop it, ere they knew what it was)
champed asunder, ground to powder, and with its last Elizabethan
shackle shaken off, that restores, "in a better hour," the torn and
garbled science committed to it, and gives back "the bread cast on its
sure waters."'

There remains little more for me to say. I am not the editor of this
work; nor can I consider myself fairly entitled to the honor (which,
if I deserved it, I should feel to be a very high as well as a
perilous one) of seeing my name associated with the author's on the
title-page. My object has been merely to speak a few words, which
might, perhaps, serve the purpose of placing my countrywoman upon a
ground of amicable understanding with the public. She has a vast
preliminary difficulty to encounter. The first feeling of every reader
must be one of absolute repugnance towards a person who seeks to tear
out of the Anglo-Saxon heart the name which for ages it has held
dearest, and to substitute another name, or names, to which the
settled belief of the world has long assigned a very different
position. What I claim for this work is, that the ability employed in
its composition has been worthy of its great subject, and well
employed for our intellectual interests, whatever judgment the public
may pass upon the questions discussed. And, after listening to the
author's interpretation of the Plays, and seeing how wide a scope she
assigns to them, how high a purpose, and what richness of inner
meaning, the thoughtful reader will hardly return again--not wholly,
at all events--to the common view of them and of their author. It is