Excerpt from Studies and Appreciations The era of modern life, in England as in France, dates from 17 89. The nineteenth century began in the year in which the shock of the F__r_ench Revolution went crisping over the nerves of the nations of Europe, stirred all men to novel thoughts and new moods, and startled them into fresh ways of envisaging life. If, however, the student of English literature wants a specifically literary and a national date for the beginning of the new era, the year 1800 offers itself as curiously apt; in that year appeared Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, which as truly though not so con sciously as Hugo's Preface to Cromwell nearly thirty years later, was the manifesto of a revo. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.