Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by

THE LOWELL INSTITUTE,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co.,

CAMBRIDGE.

PREFACE.

THE Lectures now given to the public were delivered in the years 1852, 1853, 1859, and 1854, the Course designated as the third having been the latest in the order of delivery. It has been thought best thus to transpose the third and fourth, rather than to insert the course on Modern Greece between two courses on Ancient Greece.

These Lectures, though written very rapidly, almost always in the intervals between their delivery, — embody the results of lifelong study, and of a conscientiously careful and accurate scholarship. The labor of revision and editorship has devolved upon a friend, who has performed it — however inadequately-with loving diligence, and with the earnest desire to render these volumes a not unworthy memorial of their ever-lamented author. References have been, so far as was possible, verified, authorities consulted, and translations compared with their originals; and the utmost attention has been paid to the passage of the sheets through the press. It is believed that the work fills in our literature a place not before occupied, and that it will render essential service to that cause of liberal culture to which

the author's whole life was consecrated.