It is not usual, perhaps, that the narrative of a spiritual struggle should mingle merriment and humour with a discussion of the most solemn subjects. Nevertheless, it has been thought well, in order to avoid any appearance of offence, to alter the majority of the proper names of the private persons spoken of. It is believed that, with the exception of the Son, there is but one person mentioned in this book who is still alive. The writer of these recollections has thought that if the examination of his earliest years was to be undertaken at all, it should be attempted while his memory is still perfectly vivid and while he is still unbiased by the forgetfulness or the sensibility of advancing years.Īt one point only has there been any tampering with precise fact. Perhaps an even more common fault in such autobiographies is that they are sentimental, and are falsified by self-admiration and self-pity. The author has observed that those who have written about the facts of their own childhood have usually delayed to note them down until age has dimmed their recollections. These have been closely and conscientiously noted, and may have some value in consequence of the unusual conditions in which they were produced. It offers, too, in a subsidiary sense, a study of the development of moral and intellectual ideas during the progress of infancy. In this respect, as the diagnosis of a dying Puritanism, it is hoped that the narrative will not be altogether without significance. It is offered to them as a document, as a record of educational and religious conditions which, having passed away, will never return. If it were not true, in this strict sense, to publish it would be to trifle with all those who may be induced to read it.

AT the present hour, when fiction takes forms so ingenious and so specious, it is perhaps necessary to say that the following narrative, in all its parts, and so far as the punctilious attention of the writer has been able to keep it so, is scrupulously true.

Father and son gosse