THE AGE AND ITS ARCHITECTS: TEN CHAPTERS ON THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, IN RELATION TO THE TIMES. BY EDWIN PAXTON HOOD; AUTHOR OF "OLD ENGLAND," PREFACE. aid an To aid the great cause of Truth in its struggles through the age, so far as an infant may angel, is the purpose of this volume. The power which any book, the worthiest book—any man, the worthiest man-can possess, now-a-days, is very small. With men who think at all, individualism is a stern creed. Books like this, then, which you hold in your hand, possess a very inconsiderable share of power indeed. But there is a strange pleasure in communicating their thinkings and readings to their immediate fellow-thinkers and readers, and to this pleasure I plead guilty. I have jotted down the things in this book, not with the idea that any words of mine can be weighty enough to give a faith or a form to the intellect or the affections, but with the idea that they may, perhaps, awaken some minds to inquiry |