3-357 70043 ΤΟ EARL SPENCER, K. G. &c. THE MY LORD, good sense of two centuries has confirmed Bacon's opinion of dedications; "that books, such as are worthy the name of books, ought to have "no patrons but truth and reason." Your Lordship's name therefore is prefixed to these Essays, not as a propitiatory offering to the public, but as a tribute due to a great statesman, who is an illustrious example of the effects which may be expected from good education. Sir William Jones thirty years ago pronounced of his pupil, "This man will serve his country." 3-13-50LIB I have the honour to be, With much respect and esteem, Edgeworthstown, RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. FROM the great increase of publications, not only reviewers, but common readers, are obliged to skim over prefaces, that they may be enabled to write and talk about books, which they have not time to read. It is therefore prudent in the preface to a new edition of a book to say what it does not contain, to prevent that common mode of depreciation, the imputing to an author opinions contrary to his own, and then triumphantly combating those opinions. The author of "Professional Education" disclaims the opinion, that all men are born with equal talents. He disclaims the idea, that artifice should be used in the education of children, or that petty contrivances should bias their early minds. The author disclaims the opinion, that boys should be bred up from their infancy by conversation, instruction, and books exclusively adapted to peculiar professions. He utterly disclaims the doctrine, that the children of the same family should be taught different morality and religion. In one word, he disclaims every thing that does not tend in education to general knowledge, and to the acquirement of that good sense, which he has perhaps too often said is "of every art the soul." The hypothetical fear that young men, bred at home, with a view to particular professions, must be continually in a state of jealousy and mean competition, has not been realized in the author's experience; he has seen a family of twenty-one children, where the sons bred to different professions have lived in childhood, and when men, in cordial amity. At sixteen or seventeen they were sent from home to different universities, free to choose their respective professions. They however have returned, determined to pursue those for which they had been originally designed. |