ESSAYS IN HISTORY AND ART BY R. H. PATTERSON AUTHOR OF THE "NEW REVOLUTION; OR, THE NAFOLEONIC POLICY IN EUROPE" WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS MDCCCLXII PREFACE IN offering these Essays to the public, I have removed from them any passages and allusions that were of an ephemeral nature; and also, when I had written several articles on different parts of the same subject, I have recast and fused them into one. In this way three separate articles have been recast and conjoined in the essay on the "National Life of China;" two, in "Our Indian Empire ;" and two, in "India: its Castes and Creeds." I have also recast the middle portion of the essay on "Real and Ideal Beauty," incorporating passages from minor papers on the same subject ; and have inserted two woodcuts, illustrating the principle of harmonic proportion as exemplified in the peerless edifice of the Parthenon of Athens. Since the essay on "Our Indian Empire" was printed off, the Governor-General has issued an edict conceding |