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<h1>University Subjects, Discussed in Occasional Lectures and Essays.</h1> <h2>Introductory Letter.</h2> To The Right Honourable WILLIAM MONSELL, M.P., ETC., ETC.31 My Dear Monsell, I seem to have some claim for asking leave of you to prefix your name to the following small Volume, since it is a memorial of work done in a country which you so dearly love, and in behalf of an undertaking in which you feel so deep an interest. Nor do I venture on the step without some hope that it is worthy of your acceptance, at least on account of those portions of it which have already received the approbation of the learned men to whom they were addressed, and which have been printed at their desire. But, even though there were nothing to recommend it except that it came from me, I know well that you would kindly welcome it as a token of the truth and constancy with which I am, My dear Monsell, Yours very affectionately, [November 1858.] JOHN H. NEWMAN. <h2>Advertisement.</h2> It has been the fortune of the author through life, that the Volumes which he has published have grown for the most part out of the duties which lay upon him, or out of the circumstances of the moment. Rarely has he been master of his own studies. The present collection of Lectures and Essays, written by him while Rector of the Catholic University of Ireland, is certainly not an exception to this remark. Rather, it requires the above consideration to be kept in view, as an apology for the want of keeping which is apparent between its separate portions, some of them being written for public delivery, others with the privileged freedom of anonymous compositions. However, whatever be the inconvenience which such varieties in tone and character may involve, the author cannot affect any compunction for having pursued the illustration of one and the same important subject-matter, with which he had been put in charge, by such methods, graver or lighter, so that they were lawful, as successively came to his hand. November, 1858. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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