CHAPTER XXX

.

VISIT TO TWO ENGLISH COMMON SCHOOLS.

In compliance with our desire to visit an English common school, we were driven from the castle to a village in the vicinity, in which was a school for boys under the guidance of the British Foreign Society, and one for girls under the control of the National, or State Church, Society. The school-house of the former was a simple but tasteful stone building, standing a little one side, but not fenced off, from the principal street, with a few large trees and a playground about it. The interior was all in one room, except a small vestibule. It was well lighted, the walls were plastered and whitewashed, and had mottoes, texts of Scripture, tables, charts, &c., hung upon them; there was no ceiling, but the rafters of the roof, which was high-peaked, were exposed; the floor was of stone. There were long desks and benches all around against the wall, and others, the form of which I do not remember, filling up the most of the body. The house and furniture was much too small and scanty for the number of scholars present, and the labour of the teacher must have been very arduous.

[Sidenote: _COMMON SCHOOLS._]

The boys all rose as we entered, and remained standing during our visit, a request from us that they might be seated not being regarded. Classes in arithmetic, geography, and spelling were examined before us. The absence of all embarrassment, and the promptness and confidence of the scholars in replying to our questions was remarkable. In mental arithmetic great proficiency was shown in complicate reductions of sterling money. In geography their knowledge of America was limited to the more important points of information, but so far as it went was very accurate and ready. With regard to Great Britain, their information was very minute. The boys were particularly bright, ready-witted, and well-behaved, and surprisingly free from all excitement or embarrassment before strangers.

The schoolmaster was also parish-clerk, and his pay from the two offices was about $500 a year.[24] I judged that he had intended to make teaching his business for life, and had thoroughly prepared and accomplished himself for it. His manner to us, and two or three incidents which it would be impossible to relate, gave me the impression that his position in society was far from being a pleasant, or what we should deem a proper one for a teacher.

[24] Advertisements for common-school teachers, “capable to instruct in reading, writing, arithmetic, and the principles of the Christian religion,” appear in the Times, offering salaries of from $150 to $800, with lodging and board.

The “National School” for girls was a building of more highly finished architectural character, and had a dwelling for the schoolmistress attached to it. The whole school was engaged in sewing when we entered, the mistress, assisted by some of the older scholars, going from one to another, giving instructions and examining the work. It was not interrupted by our entrance, though the girls all rose, curtseyed, and continued standing. There were one hundred and thirty present in a room about twelve yards by six in area. The girls were neatly, though exceedingly plainly, dressed, and were generally very pleasing in their appearance. They seemed well instructed, and without the least want of desirable modesty, showed much more presence of mind, and answered our questions with more promptness and distinctness than any school of girls I ever visited before.

Both schools are conducted on the Lancasterian plan.[25]

[25] I propose, in some future letter, to give a general account of the English common schools.

APPENDIX A.

We were leaning over the gunwale, where I had been watching the curious, nebulous-like life that was revealed in the sea-fire splashing from the ship’s sides, and our conversation turning upon this, we talked of a number of marine mysteries. He believed that there was a large class of animated nature fitted to exist only in dense waters at the depths of the ocean, and which only appeared on the surface when in a diseased state. He had great confidence that such must be the case, and he cited several cases, known to naturalists, where nature has very peculiarly fitted animals and vegetables to enjoy life under circumstances in which nothing could exist of the more ordinary organisms. I remarked that there was a wonderful connection and fitting together of one thing to another, through the whole of nature, as if it were all designed together, and every part contrived with reference to all the rest; to which he assented.

“And does not that irresistibly impress you with the idea of a reasoning mind having constructed it for certain purposes of his own, to which purposes all this working together must have reference?”

“Humph! Suppose it does. Say every thing must have a cause, and call the cause of the world, God, if you like. What do they stop there for? I want to know what’s the cause of God; what is God’s God. You see, you must back up farther for that cause.”

“But we can take one step. Suppose we do take that, and see what we can make of it first. There must be, or there seems likely to have been, a constructing mind—a will—above us—”

“An imaginary something that put the world together. Well, suppose there is.”

“That put our minds and bodies together, that made us with our own peculiar characters and wills, distinct apparently from each other’s and from His.”

“Well, well!—that created us. Suppose he did; what’s the good of saying that, if you don’t know any thing more. What did he create us for?—what is he going to make of us?—what’s the will he put into my body going to do for him?—what did he want to make me so for, and you a different way, and a hog in another way for? My will _is_ independent of his; I know nothing about his will, and I have nothing to do with him. I can talk to you, and you talk back, and I can see you, and I know you; but him, supposing there is such a being, I know nothing about, and what’s the use, like a fool, of talking of him by name as if I did?”

“My dear fellow, how do I know there’s such a place as Liverpool? I never have seen it any more than I have God. From the evidence of my senses I know nothing of it; and yet I am fool enough (if you please to call me so) to come aboard this ship with provisions for sixty days, calculating that in that time I shall be carried to an imaginary something which I talk about by the name of Liverpool.”

“I reckon you will in twenty if this wind holds.”

“I think it likely, but what do I know about it?—actually nothing, except that you and others tell me you have been there, and that the ship will go there, and I have faith enough in your word, and the promises of the captain, to put but here where I have never been before, and don’t know from any thing I can see, any more than a fool, where or what it is I am being taken to. Now, though I never saw this being with the creating will, which we will call God, I can tell you something more about him, not that I actually know, only I have heard—”

“Heard! heard! how?”

“Why, people tell me and I’ve read, just as I have read travellers’ accounts of Liverpool, that there was a man once that professed to know all about it,—in fact, that he made it all himself—”

“Made it himself, a man! I thought we agreed to call the maker of it, God.”

“Very well; out of this form of a man, for so it is described, there expressed itself—a mind, declaring itself to be the same mind that made the world; and that it had entered that form that it might tell us in the language, not only of the lips and tongue and breath, but in all the language of all the members in all the actions of a man, what he thought it desirable for us to know about him,—the God; about his purposes in creating the world and us, and what now he wanted of us. Something of this he said in words, Hebrew words, which some of the people translated into Greek, and they have been again turned into English, and in this way I have read considerable of it; but more he told in the actions of the life of that man. If a stranger comes to me, and says that he loves me, I don’t well know what he means, for there’s all sorts of love, and some of it not worth many thanks. I should be still more uncertain if he spake in the Chinese tongue, and it had to be carried through Portuguese into English; but if I had been detected in some disgraceful crime, and every body scorned and hissed at me, and a man should come, alone of all a crowd, and lift me out of the dust where I lay in expectation of death, and cheer me with hopeful and encouraging words, I should not need to be told that he loved me, to be grateful to him; and if you were an Indian, and it was told to you in Choctaw, you’d understand it exactly as I would, and have no mistake and no doubt about what he meant. Now supposing the great power and wisdom that contrived and executed this world, and all we know of material things, was showing itself in that man that so pretended, and we have a reliable account of the way he lived, we can infer what at least is the general character and tendency of his motives and purposes, and judge pretty well what he wants of us.”

“But is it not altogether more likely a man making such pretensions, was an impostor?”

“We must judge of that too by his character as displayed otherwise than in professions. Now what do we find? An earnest, serious man, seemingly living only to do and be good; subduing extraordinary temptations of passion and ambition; helping and healing the sick, and the crippled, and the outcast, in season and out of season; speaking his mind truly and freely, no matter who he hits; persevering in what he thinks is right, and just, and merciful, though it is disreputable and directly in the teeth of the prevailing standard of morals; sticking to it, though he is misunderstood, reproached, and forsaken for it, as a wilful, stubborn fanatic, by his friends, and it destroys his influence over all the respectable part of the community.”

“Good for him, by jingo! They didn’t _excommunicate_ him, did they? If it had been in the United States or in England, they would have said he was damned, body and soul, past recovery, and utterly unworthy of the means of grace!”

“They said the devil was in him and turned him out of the synagogue, which is much the same, I take it.”

“Right—I never thought of that; he must have been a true honest man.”

“Just such a man as you would like to be yourself Mr. C., only a great deal more so—a thorough-going brave man of the people, an out-and-out democrat, fraternizing with the very lowest classes, and seeing and trying all sorts of life. More than that, sir, he could endure misrepresentation and the ingratitude and unfaithfulness of friends without impatience; and finally, to realize his purpose more effectually, he could suffer without wavering the severest mental and bodily agony, and at length could die, without the least stain of inconsistency on his noble, manly character, not as you might be willing to on the barricades, but alone, and by slow process of law.”

“All right, sir, and a true man, call him what you will.”

“A true man, sir, and no time-server, and now, what taught he? That goodness, truth, and love, and happiness are one and inseparable. Further, that all the good in the universe is a commonwealth (kingdom of God), and that one’s enjoyment of it cannot be separate from another’s. He always seemed to think every body else’s good just as much his business as his own, and taught his followers to find their happiness in that of others; always to do that for others which they would have done for themselves.”

“And that’s just what they don’t do.”

“They don’t pretend they do, but they believe it’s the right plan, and they wish to and try to, and they say he never did any other way. His whole life, as it is described to us, does seem to be in accordance with the idea, and if no other man’s ever was, so much the better for him. Perfect love always guiding him, entire annihilation of self, selfish purpose all merged in desire for the general good of mankind.”

“A very nice model of a man, no doubt, _if_——one must believe the story; but you see I don’t.” Here he went off into a long and laboured attack upon the Bible as being called an infallible guide, and upon the theory of plenary inspiration. If it teaches one thousand men one doctrine, and one thousand other men, of an average equal capacity, directly the opposite doctrine, he would like to know what it infallibly guided to—and so on: some few of his points being fair and reasonable, some of them utterly absurd, and the greater part of his argument mere narrow-minded cavilling and play upon words. I attempted very little reply, as it was evident he was perfectly at home on the subject, and would sail tack for tack with me all night, if he lost confidence in his opinions on one gaining more on another. At length he fell into a fierce tirade upon the character of the Apostles. He thought them cunning, selfish plotters, “the same as their descendants, our reverend aristocrats, that cannot find any better way of living than by pulling wool over the poor workies’ eyes, while they draw fat salaries from their pockets.”

“A nice, lazy, comfortable sort of life they seem to have had of it, don’t they?” I answered. “A jolly life, to be sure, loafing about with their fat salaries. You remember what Dr. Paul’s was: ‘Of the Jews five times forty stripes save one, thrice beaten with rods, once stoned, shipwrecked, &c., weariness, painfulness, &c., &c.’—So runs his receipt! very _fat_, all that, isn’t it? Now, are you not ashamed of yourself? Talk about ‘aristocratic parsons!’ Every one of them started a working man—not one even of the _bourgeoisie_ among them, unless it was that same Paul, and he had his trade, and worked honestly at it to pay his travelling expenses. You call them aristocratic. What do you mean! Why, sir, they were democratic socialists, and the worst sort, ‘having all things in common,’ the record of their acts says. And they seem to have had a sufficiently generous spirit to make the idea _work_, while all your modern communists only make themselves ridiculous whenever they attempt it.”

He laughed aloud, and said that he wouldn’t say another word against the Apostles, if I would admit that they were socialists. They certainly were not aristocrats. “But,” he complained, “that does not make them infallible guides, by a long shot. I want you to answer my arguments against the infallibility of the Bible, if you can.”

“I don’t wish to,” I said; “it is not at all necessary. Suppose you can detect a few inconsistencies, misquotations, and puzzling expressions in the New Testament. The books have come a long journey between them and us, and have passed through various hands. Wouldn’t it be strange if there were not some things knocked out of them and a few tacked on? You know there are three biographies of Christ, written by different persons, among whom you cannot find any evidence of conspiracy or collusion, while there is much to the contrary. Yet are they not consistent in every essential particular? I think they are; and I am convinced the writers meant to give an honest, fair, and correct account of what _He_ said and did within their personal knowledge. Now, when they report, as each of them frequently do, that he took upon himself the authority and omniscience proper only to God, in instructing and governing them; when they make him declare that in that life of his flesh was the Spirit of God manifest, they must have so understood him. He probably meant them to, and as he was a wise, good, and true man, we can have reasonable faith that, in some fair and honest understanding of the words, it was so. What if there is room for some difference of opinion, as to the _precise_ meaning of language, so written in a narrative, two or three times translated, and that through heathen tongues, and God only knows how many times copied by humanly imperfect hands. I am willing you should understand it as seems, on the whole and in sincerity, most natural to you. I say that I do not believe it will make any very essential difference in your idea of God, but that you will still see him, through Christ, a God of eternal Truth, Justice, Love—a Father worthy of your deepest reverence and affection.”

“Suppose I did; and when you’ve done and said all, what good is it? But I tell you, you don’t convince me of the inspiration of the Bible.”

“I don’t now undertake to convince you of it. If it does not appear evident to you on the face of it that it is an inspired production, I don’t think I can bring you to it by argument. All I ask of you now is to look upon those three men, Matthew, Luke, and John, simply as honest biographers. Suppose Hume, Gibbon, or Jared Sparks had described such a character, made such a character to appear in the life of some historical personage with regard to whom they had had facilities to be

## particularly well informed, would you not respect, honor, love—yes, and

worship—”

“No, no! I’d worship nothing human.”

“But you would worship divine qualities, and, so far as these go to make up the character of a man, you would worship them in him—”

“Yes, the divine qualities, not the human.”

“Not the human—purely human; nobody asks you to. But here is a man who, in all his actions for thirty years, you cannot suppose to have been governed by any motives inconsistent with justice, magnanimity, and benevolence. His life is described with a good deal of minute detail, but you cannot find that he ever said, or thought, or did a single mean, unmanly, ungentlemanly thing. A man who avoided kingly honors; who did not labor for riches; who neither sought nor avoided the luxuries of life; who endured to be forsaken of his friends; who put up with contempt, reproach, and ridicule; who was always going about doing good, without either ostentation or secrecy—a man so great and true, as he appears among the pettifogging saints of the day, in the case of the adulterous woman, or at the picking of corn on the Sabbath, or in his ideas of morality as brought out in his sermon on the mount, so simple, so grand, so truly divine—do you think, can you think—that such a man would be mean enough and wicked enough to declare a most monstrous falsehood, and stick to it all his life, suffer all sorts of shame, and finally die ignominiously rather than give it up? No, sir; that man was no impostor!... Nor is there any thing that looks like the fanatic or crazy man about him either. Yet he plainly thought, and had some good reason for thinking, that in all his peculiar character he was exhibiting the peculiar qualities of God. And were not those qualities such as are consistent with the highest wisdom that we can conceive of? And what _good_, you were asking, does it do us to believe in them? If you had never seen your father, but your elder brother should say: ‘Father is like me in all that you like in me, in all that you love me for’—you would not need to see your father face to face, but would love him, and would lovingly respond to his will, and when he sent for you to come home, you would look forward to meeting him, not with dread, but with a joyful trust. If you can have as much faith in the word of that noble man as I have in yours and the captain’s about this ship’s going towards Liverpool, you will love and worship him, and strive to be like him.”

“Christ said he _was_ God, which is nonsense, and I don’t swallow it.”

“Look here! When I tell you that I am a man, what do I mean? A man has two legs, two arms, and two eyes; suppose I had but one leg, one arm, and one eye, would it be nonsense to call me a man? Or suppose that I had twelve fingers instead of ten, or my body all covered with hair, would it be nonsense to call me a man because I had more than the ordinary qualities of a man? I might call myself a hirsute, but I should still be a man.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Why, I mean that because Jesus Christ asserted himself to be God it does not follow that he asserted himself nothing but God, or even that he exhibited the whole of God, but that he spoke in the name of God, with the authority of God, that the word of God was spoken in him. It is absurd for us, and evidently was never intended that we should, take the exact weight and measure of the words of his familiar conversation, and reduce it to the English standard, from the simple narratives of Hebrews writing in the Greek tongue. You can understand it so as to make it nonsense if you are determined to, but that’s your nonsense and not Christ’s. There is plenty of room to fight over it if you like, but was that what it was intended for? You may understand it somewhat differently from me, but _practically_, if you believe it at all, will the difference in our understanding of it make an essential difference in our lives? I believe that Channing and Calvin, standing at two opposite theoretical extremes with regard to this, both showed in their characters the influence of a common faith in the divinity of Christ.”

“You do? You don’t suppose Channing believed in the divinity of Christ? You ought to know better than that.”

“He might not express his belief in that way, because that mind had got to be employed technically to denote a different view from his, but plainly it was the God revealed in Christ to whose service he gave his life. You must remember that language is a human and exceedingly imperfect and inefficient means of conveying thought. Neither Calvin nor Channing believed that in Christ was the whole of God concentrated and made manifest to us, or that God was and could be revealed to us in no other way; but both believed that in Christ God was speaking, that in Christ’s life, far more truly and distinctly than in any other, was uttered the true and eternal and soul-saving word of God. ‘In truth, in love, in all that deserves your love, your gratitude, your adoration, and whole-hearted devotion, I AM.’”

We were both silent for a few moments, and then he laughed.

“What’s the matter?” said I.

“I am afraid you are getting into the bond of iniquity; don’t you know that’s very dangerous the way you talk. ’Tisn’t orthodox by a long shot.”

“I’ve no particular passion for being called orthodox,” I replied.

“You haven’t, eh? What is your religion then?”

“That of Christ, I wish it to be.”

“No, but what do you believe in?”

“The God revealed in Christ.”

“Pshaw! What sect—what church do you run with?”

“None of your business—that is, the question’s not in order.”

“But, good heavens, man! I want to know what you pretend to believe. What do you want to have me believe? Was he very God of very God, all God and all man, or only half God and half man, or a whole man and no God, only an extra-inspired prophet, or what? There’s no use talking with you till I know where you stand.”

“What do you want to bother with such nonsense for? Christians themselves don’t agree about those matters. I won’t answer you. You admitted that you had seen enough in the ordinary works of God to impress you with the belief of a designing wisdom above us, and you asked me how any one could know any more than that. Now I tell you: Look to Christ, his most perfect work. Believe, if you like, that in him—his life—God is manifest only in the same way that he is in all the works of his hand, as you would be in yours, as Powers is in the Greek Slave, and Bell and Brown are in this ship, only he must be peculiarly manifest in man (created in his image), and most distinctly and obviously manifest in the man most perfect and altogether lovely, the express image of his person. Mustn’t he? Take him as a sheer man, if you will, not even a prophet, simply a wise man—the wisest and best man. Must not his pure heart, his self-forgetful spirit, his wisdom who spake as never man else spake, have attained to the best and truest idea of God? Must not that be, in the first place, the most reasonable relation for us to assume towards God—that in which he placed himself—a son to a loving, personally-interested father—a Father whose almighty power moves only in love? If that’s the utmost you can make out of the life of Christ, why, take that; don’t lose so much good of it because others can take more. But if you can take more than that, and it’s better for you to call him—what is it you say? ‘very God of very God?’—not merely seen as manifested in the man Christ, but peculiarly, indescribably, incomprehensibly, and contradictorily both God and man and neither man or God—have it so, and welcome. Describe him in Latin, or Hebrew-Greek, if you like it better than plain English. It may seem one thing in the dim, religious light of worship, and another in the flickering lamplight of study, but you will find both the same in the clear daylight of life. After all, it is the Word that is wanted, and not the image through which it is spoken. Look at Christ in whatever way you can read that Word with the most faith. I care not in what language you receive it, so you can translate it into love, joy, faith, long-suffering, goodness, peace, meekness, and temperance (the fruits of the Spirit).” He was laughing again and I asked, “What is there ridiculous about this, Mr. C.?”

“Why, I don’t know as there’s any thing—don’t know as I can object to it, only—eh, ha! ha!”

“Only what?”

“Don’t you think if your minister heard you talking so, he’d be—rather—hauling you over the coals, eh?”

“My minister! What under the sun has my minister got to do with it? I am not a Roman Catholic.”

“What the devil are you, any how?”

“I’ve told you.”

“Well, you arn’t what I call a Christian. What do you call me an infidel for?”

“I never called you an infidel; infidel means unfaithful. God only knows whether you are unfaithful to your light or not. That’s none of _my_ business.”

“Well, but now do you believe in fore-ordination and total depravity? Do you hold to salvation by grace?”

“I believe, certainly, that if a man is not saved it is because, as Christ said, he ‘_would not_.’ I believe that every man shall be judged according to his works, and so did Christ—”

“Ah, then you don’t go those doctrines. Now—”

“I don’t want to discuss them with you.”

“Why, you can’t believe them—it’s inconsistent.”

“I don’t much think it is, but if it was—”

“What’s that striking—eight bells? I declare it’s twelve o’clock.”

“Wait a bit, let me tell you a story, and then we will turn in. I once fell in with an old Quaker. He was the first one I ever met to converse with: a simple-hearted, honest man, and I was glad of a chance to talk with him about his society. He finally spoke of some of their doctrines, and defended them in a sensible, manly way that I liked. He took up a Bible and showed me how some idea of his that I doubted about was sustained in it. I turned over a leaf or two further, and showed him another passage that I thought pretty flatly opposed his understanding of the verse he had brought as proof, and said, ‘What do you make of that?’ He looked at it a moment, read each side of it, didn’t say any thing, shook his head, and sighed, and I began to feel ashamed of myself for troubling him with it. At length his face lighted up, and he turned to me with a beautiful smile and said softly, ‘I can see the truth the Lord testified to in the verse I showed thee, but for this I have not yet sight enough. If thee cannot yet see the truth that cometh to me from the verse I showed thee, wilt thee not be content to also wait for thy light?’ Now, Mr. C., I advise you to take what truth you can find; and if other people profess to believe what seems to you absurdities, don’t be so sorry for them as not to let them enjoy the benefit of what light they have got; don’t yourself be so foolish as to shut your eyes to what of God’s word is plainly enough set before you in Christ, because you have not turned over the next page and can’t see through the whole book at once. I don’t want you to try to force upon yourself any belief that is unnatural, and which honestly appears illogical to you. No kind of heresy is so bad as hypocrisy. I think those Christians were exceedingly wrong that felt that the sacredness and chief power of their religion consisted so much in the doctrines which they had agreed together to stand by, that they must summarily exclude you from their fellowship when you began to question the soundness of them. On the other hand, I must tell you that I think you are equally wrong to hold them and their opinions in contempt, and to have such entire confidence, as you seem to, that you are yourself right. The fact that so many men differ with you, whom you cannot help respecting as having equal powers of mind and equally good spirit with yourself, should at least make you hold your opinions with humility.”

“Well! Now let’s go and see them heave the log. She’s going a bit faster; the fog isn’t so thick as ’twas either. Hallo! there’s that old Irishwoman again. She always gets in behind the harness cask to say her prayers. You will hear her muttering there for two or three hours every night.”

“She must have strong faith.”

“Faith in the devil! Fear and ignorance, I call it. She’s a good old thing though, I must say. She takes care of that sick woman’s child as if it were her own; and last night she asked the doctor to let her darn his stockings, and he did, the conceited old dandy.”

“She has a good deal of true religion, then, for all her ignorance and fear.”

“Then it’s true religion to believe in the Pope and the Virgin Mary!”

“Oh no! oh no! ‘True religion before God is this: to visit the widows and fatherless in their affliction, and to keep oneself unspotted in the world.’ Yet it may be worth your while, Mr. C., to consider whether she would have been as likely to pity that sick mother, and take care of her child, if she hadn’t been in the habit of praying in this way every night, although in her ignorance she addresses the mother of Christ instead of the Father. Good-night.”

APPENDIX B.

The chapter on the disposition of the people of England towards the United States was written before, and not in anticipation of the coming of Kossuth to this country. The general discussion of the subject which that event has occasioned makes it proper for me to mention this. Opinions opposing the views I have presented having been expressed by several persons in honorable positions, for one at least of whom I entertain the highest respect, I wish to repeat that, during five months that I travelled in Great Britain, in almost every day of which time I heard the United States talked about with every appearance of candor and honesty, I do not recollect ever to have heard any expression of hostile feeling (except from a few physical-force Chartists, with regard to slavery) towards our government or our people, and only from a few stanch church-and-state men against our principles of government. Perhaps the highest eulogy on Washington ever put in words was written by Lord Brougham. The Duke of Wellington lately took part in a banquet in honour of American independence. I myself attended a Fourth-of-July dinner in an old palace of George III., and saw there a member of Parliament, and other distinguished Englishmen, drink to the memory of Washington, and in honour of the day. Having observed that Mr. Howard was threatened with a mob, for keeping an English ensign flying from a corner of the Irving House, I will add that I more than once saw the American ensign so displayed in England, without exciting remark; and I know one gentleman living in the country who regularly sets it over his house on the Fourth of July, and salutes it with gun-firing and festivities, so that the day is well known, and kindly regarded by all his neighbours, as “the American holiday.”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Cuts lead to the corresponding illustrations.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources.

Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added, when a predominant preference was found in the original book.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text, and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 23: “villanous” replaced with “villainous” 44: “pilots to” replaced with “pilots do” 116: “bombasti” replaced with “bombastic” 206: “SMUTHY” replaced with “SMUTTY” 210: “tileery” replaced with “tilery” 223: “gods” replaced with “goods” 244: “begun” replaced with “began”.