OF GENERAL KNOWLEDGE, INTRODUCTORY TO USEFUL BOOKS IN THE PRINCIPAL BRANCHES OF LITERATURE AND SCIENCE. DESIGNED CHIEFLY FOR THE JUNIOR STUDENTS IN THE UNIVERSITIES, AND THE HIGHER CLASSES IN SCHOOLS. BY HENRY KETT, B. D. FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, OXFORD. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. PHILADELPHIA: PRINTED AT THE PRESS OF H. MAXWELL, FOR F. NICHOLS, PHILADELPHIA, AND J. A. CUMMINGS, BOSTON. PREFACE. THE following work contains the substance of a Course of Lectures, which I have occasionally read to my pupils during the last twelve years. The satis faction which they expressed on hearing them has encouraged me to hope, that they will not prove unacceptable to those, for whose use they are now made public. To assert a claim to originality in such a work as this would perhaps only be equivalent to a confession of its demerit. My pretensions to public regard must depend in no small degree upon the manner in which I have clothed old ideas in a new dress, and upon my skill in compressing within a moderate compass the substance of large and voluminous works. Upon all my subjects I have endeavoured to reflect light from every quarter which my reading would afford. My references will show the sources from which I have derived my principal information; but it would be almost an endless, and perhaps a very ostentatious task, to enumarate all my literary obligations. There are a few topics indeed, with respect to which I think I may be allowed to assert some claims to novelty. For many of my remarks on the Greek Language I am indebted principally to my own observations upon its nature and comparative merits; the History of Chivalry, important as the influence of that |