This book—an attempt to disseminate in a wider circle the fruits of many years' experience and observation—was commenced with the pen at a time when Europe, with a few individual exceptions, did not seem to perceive in the Oriental question anything more than a vexatious misunderstanding, or, at most, the outburst of a fire which might, it was thought, be easily and with certainty kept within a circumscribed locality. The work has been concluded, however, under the thunders of cannon, which roll, like the deep voice of prophecy, from Sebastopol even to the extreme verges of Europe.

But what have these prognostics of mighty revolutions to do with a little book on the cultivation of the most timid of all arts?

Even though, in the midst of these mighty events, of which we have as yet seen only the beginning, the art of sound be but as the thoughtless lark that once fluttered timidly in the ashy rain of Vesuvius, which covered the doomed cities with a soil productive of new germs of life; and even though this book be of no greater weight than a stalk of grass or a feather in the nest of the lark; still, reader, whatever be our position and whatever our vocation, we must comprehend that in our persons and with our labours we do not exist for ourselves, but in connexion and living intercourse with the world to which we belong. Nothing exists by and for itself; everything exercises a certain amount of influence upon all things around, and is affected by them in return.