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 PREFACE.

FIND it hard to believe that full thirty-three years have passed since my dear father died. He was an old man, he had been in failing health for years, and he had suffered much. But his mental activity hardly ever flagged. He carried to the grave his chivalrous patriotism, his many interests, his warm appreciation of the work of others, his unbounded love of nature, his fresh sympathy with youth. All the tastes and interests which I have, I owe to his inspiration and his gentle training: and through babyhood, childhood, and boyhood, his patience and unfailing sympathy and his wonderful power of throwing himself into the fancies of a child, bridged the wide span of the fifty-nine years which separated him from me.

No detailed history of Charles von Hügels's life, so unusually varied and full of stirring incident, has been written, and the time for doing so in any complete form has now passed, as many facts and personal data have been lost with his contemporaries. All that I have now attempted to do, is to bring together the brief sketches of