AUTHOR OF "NOTES FROM LIFE," "PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE,' SECOND EDITION. ETC. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. PR 5548 78. N6 PREFACE. MORTLAKE, May 1, 1848. ALTHOUGH I have always intended to reprint those few writings of mine in periodical works, which are not necessarily and by the nature of the subjects ephemeral, I should not have chosen for the republication this time of political excitement, were it not that there is to be found in one of these Essays— the second of the series-an exposition of the views taken by our greatest Poets of the nature of liberty; which exposition, if it justly represent those views, will not be unaptly put forward for present consideration. Our great Poets have been, perhaps, our best political philosophers; and if the reading and study of poetry be put aside by political commotions, it is because men lack time to be studious, or because the temper of their minds is rendered averse from contemplation, not because our poetry is wanting in applicability to such seasons; for unless I err greatly through partiality and partial knowledge, the poetry of this country (a country pre-eminently poetical), is its chief storehouse of civil wisdom; whilst it is in that other country whose poetry has ever been of an inferior order and beyond its own territories in the least estimation, that political wisdom has been most at fault, supplanted from time to time by the crudest theories and the most barbarous practice-in so much that despite the scientific attainments, the many dexterities and the colloquial cleverness of that people, any instructed man who should adventure to visit them at this time, might |