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The following essays, selected from among those contributed by the author to the “Ave Maria” during the last few years, include some subjects which, though important, are seldom brought to the attention of any but the lovers of the recondite. For the presentation of these no explanation need be tendered; but others are introduced, the themes of which have become trite, even to persons of no extraordinary erudition. Perhaps, therefore, indulgence should be asked for an apparently reckless augmentation of the mass of polemics already superfluous and tiresome. Nevertheless, such an apology shall not be made. The fact that the indicated errors are constantly being advanced, despite the multifarious refutations which are at the command of the sincere investigator; the fact that these errors too often meet with silence on the part of those whose highest interests demand their exposition; these strange and saddening considerations justify our action, and preclude any fear of its being ascribed to a cacoethes scribendi. Again, while in some instances the reader may find nothing new presented for his reflections, the subject-matter may stand forth in a new light, owing to the method of its treatment; and thus the author may gain his object—the elucidation of a knotty question, or the manifestation of a hideous lie, in a mind which other writers have not influenced.

In choosing his subjects, the author has suffered from an embarrassment of riches, and he has fancied that he was about to imitate the child who tried to clear away the ocean with a spoon. Several volumes would be required for an exposition of merely the most prominent of the Lies and Errors of History. We do not threaten the libraries with any polemical avalanche, but we do propose soon to put forth another effort in the good cause. An endeavor to dislodge the spirit of falsehood from the position to which it has been elevated by those writers whom De Maistre, with but little exaggeration, charges with having entered into a deliberate conspiracy against truth, may be an attempt to emulate the labors of Sisyphus. But some measure of success is attainable. “That error which precedes truth is only an ignorance of it; that which follows is a hatred of truth.” They who form the first class of the two into which Valery would thus properly divide the victims of historical heterodoxy, are amenable to conviction, and to their assistance this volume is dedicated.

R. P.

New York, Jan. 18, 1892.