"I certainly think that if a good cure has an exceptional
genius for sanctity." 'sanctity' amended from 'sancitity'.

Page 558 (index): "Dullness of general conversation." 'Dullness'
amended from 'Dulness'.

THE

INTELLECTUAL LIFE,

BY

PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON,

AUTHOR OF "A PAINTER'S CAMP," "THOUGHTS ABOUT ART," "THE UNKNOWN
RIVER," ETC.

NEW YORK

HURST & COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

TO EUGENIE H.

We have shared together many hours of study, and you have been willing,
at the cost of much patient labor, to cheer the difficult paths of
intellectual toil by the unfailing sweetness of your beloved
companionship. It seems to me that all those things which we have
learned together are doubly my own; whilst those other studies which I
have pursued in solitude have never yielded me more than a maimed and
imperfect satisfaction. The dream of my life would be to associate you
with all I do if that were possible; but since the ideal can never be
wholly realized, let me at least rejoice that we have been so little
separated, and that the subtle influence of your finer taste and more
delicate perception is ever, like some penetrating perfume, in the whole
atmosphere around me.

PREFACE.

I propose, in the following pages, to consider the possibilities of a
satisfactory intellectual life under various conditions of ordinary
human existence. It will form a part of my plan to take into account
favorable and unfavorable influences of many kinds; and my chief
purpose, so far as any effect upon others may be hoped for, will be to
guard some who may read the book alike against the loss of time caused
by unnecessary discouragement, and the waste of effort which is the
consequence of misdirected energies.

I have adopted the form of letters addressed to persons of very
different position in order that every reader may have a chance of
finding what concerns him. The letters, it is unnecessary to observe,
are in one sense as fictitious as those we find in novels, for they have
never been sent to anybody by the post, yet the persons to whom they are
addressed are not imaginary. I made it a rule, from the beginning, to
think of a real person when writing, from an apprehension that by
dwelling in a world too exclusively ideal I might lose sight of many
impediments which beset all actual lives, even the most exceptional and
fortunate.

The essence of the book ma