PREFACE. Ar just this time, when prose is apt to be either over refined and euphuistic on the one hand, or lawless and even barbarous on the other, there seems special reason for trying to make more accessible and popular the writ. ings of Cardinal Newman. No style is more fit than Cardinal Newman's to be a model for those who are anxious to avoid all extravagance and yet to escape mediocrity. And it is with the hope of offering to the lovers of literature who are convinced of this fact a convenient means of making Newman's style better known, that the editor has put together this volume of Selections. But there is another object which the volume has in view; the Selections are chosen for matter as well as for style. They are meant, after a few introductory passages of general interest, to give something like a connected account in Newman's own words of his theory of life and of his justification of it. There are special reasons why that theory should be known connectedly and completely to American readers. In the new world we are for the most part radical, Protestant, iii |