PREFACE. THE Board of Education of Massachusetts are engaged in procuring the publication of a suitable Library, to be deposited in every public school, in the State; the books to be taken home by the pupils, to be read by them, and by such others, as may feel inclined, of the families to which they belong. Among other subjects, selected, as necessary for such a School Library, was a 'Life of Washington.' Messrs. Marsh, Capen, Lyon, and Webb, who have undertaken its publication, called upon the author of the following work, and solicited him to prepare it. He declined, for several reasons, one of the principal of which was, that, as Professor Sparks,— the Author of the Life, and Editor of the Writings, of Washington, was himself one of the Board of Education, and was understood to have taken a leading part in getting up the Library, it was proper, on all accounts, that the Life of Washington' should be provided by him. The publishers of the Library assured the writer, that they had more than once importuned Mr. Sparks, to supply the Life,' but that he had positively and decidly declined; and that, by so doing, he had rendered it necessary for them to look elsewhere. In consequence of these representations, of repeated applications, and of a conviction that a Life of Washington' ought, by all means, to constitute a part of an American School Li 1* |
