of mythology and religion."

As to his advice to struggling scholars, the self-depreciation,
which, as Professor Jowett said, is one of the greatest dangers of an
autobiography, makes my father rather conceal the real causes of his
success in life. He even goes so far as to say, "everything in my
career came about most naturally, not by my own effort, but owing to
those circumstances or to that environment, of which we have heard so
much of late": or again, "it was really my friends who did everything
for me and helped me over many a stile and many a ditch." No doubt in
one sense this is true, but not in the sense in which it would have
been true had he, when at the University, accepted the offer which he
tells us a wealthy cousin made him, to adopt him and send him into the
Austrian diplomatic service, and even to procure him a wife and a
title into the bargain. The friends who helped him, men such as
Humboldt, Burnouf, Bunsen, Stanley, Kingsley, Liddell, to mention only
a few, were men whose very friendship was the surest proof of my
father's merits. The real secret of his success lay not in his
friends, but in himself;--in the knowledge that his success or failure
in life depended entirely on his own efforts; in the fixity of purpose
which made him refuse all offers that would lead him from the pathway
that he had laid down for himself; and in the unflagging industry with
which he strove to reach the goal of his ambition. "My very
struggles," he writes, "were certainly a help to me."

When I came to examine the manuscript with a view to sending it to
press, I found that there was a good deal of work necessary before it
could be published in book form. The fragments were in many cases
incomplete; there was no division into chapters, no connexion between
the various periods and episodes of his life; important incidents were
omitted; while, owing to the intermittent way in which he had been
writing, there were frequent repetitions. My father was always most
critical of his own style, and would often, when correcting his
proof-sheets, alter a whole page, because a word or a phrase
displeased him, or because some new idea, some happier mode of
expression, occurred to him; but in the case of his Autobiography, the
only revision that he was able to give, was on his deathbed, while I
read the manuscript aloud to him.

My father points out how rarely the sons of great musicians or great
painters become distinguished in th