For I had never attained to any great knowledge of these matters; and, if I had ever gleaned anything from the study of them, I had lost it all by long disuse. Spare me, however, the necessity for these painful excuses by letting the book be published, if you are agreeable, with the name suppressed. To make this possible, please erase it from the tide-page, so that the silenced page an- nounces (and what more is wanted ?) the book's subject and does not announce the author.