THE studies in this book are chosen from a number written at irregular
intervals, and from sheer interest in their subjects, long ago.
Portions of them, or rough drafts of what has since been wholly
remodelled from fresher and fuller material at first hand, have
appeared within five years in _The Atlantic Monthly_, _Macmillan’s_,
_The Catholic World_, and _Poet-Lore_; and thanks are due the
magazines for permission to reprint them. Yet more cordial thanks,
for kind assistance on biographical points, belong to the Earl of
Powis; the Rev. R. H. Davies, Vicar of old St. Luke’s, Chelsea; the
Rev. T. Vere Bayne, of Christchurch, and H. E. D. Blakiston, Esq.,
of Trinity College, Oxford; T. W. Lyster, Esq., of the National
Library of Ireland; Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, Esq.; Miss Langton,
of Langton-by-Spilsby; the Vicars of Dauntsey, Enfield Highway, and
Montgomery, and especially those of High Ercall and Speke; and the
many others in England through whose courtesy and patience the tracer
of these unimportant sketches has been able to make them approximately
life-like.