Redwood Author:Catharine Maria Sedgwick Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. The multiplication of books is the cause of much complaint, and it must be conceded that the inconvenience is not trivial to those who are, or suppos... more »e themselves, under an obligation to pay some attention to the current literature of the day. When however the matter is duly considered, if will be found that this inconvenience, like most others, is not an unmixed evil, but 'productive of many advantages. It is not a conclusive objection to a new book, that there are better ones already in existence that remain urn.eat]. The elements of human nature and human society remain the same, but their forms and combinations are changing at every moment, and nothing can be more different than the appearances and effects produced by the same original principles of human nature as exhibited in different countries, or at different periods of time in the same country. " Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis." As times and manners change, it must be evident that attempts to describe them must be as constantly renewed and diversified. We are aware that apprehensions are entertained by many intelligent persons, that the stores of wisdom and knowledge which have been collected by our predecessors, will be neglected and forgotten through an insatiable appetite for novelty : but we think that such apprehensions are often carried too far. The acquisitions of knowledge, wisdom, or even wit, once made, are rarely lost except by some of ihose great changes which, for the time, subvert the foundations of society. The original fountains may be remote and unknown ; but the river laves our fields, and passes by to diffuse its treasures among other regions; and even if its waters are lost to our sight by evaporation, they descend again in showers to embellish and fructify the earth in a ...« less