PUBLISHER'S NOTE. THE first edition of the "Christian Year" was published in the summer of 1827 in two small thin volumes, in what would now be considered an oldfashioned form it is these two quaint-looking volumes which are here presented in facsimile, giving the exact form, text, and appearance which characterized the first issue. The publisher believes that there are very many who would be glad to possess an exact replica of this now classical book, which is so well known and highly valued by English-speaking people throughout the world. Some of the pieces, in this their first form, present notable variations from the subsequent editions; as it will be interesting to those who know the "Christian Year" to see what changes Keble made in it as it went onward, a list of these alterations is given in the present reprint, with the page and line in which they occur. OF KEBLE'S CHRISTIAN YEAR, BEING A FACSIMILE OF The Editio Princeps published in 1827. WITH A PREFACE BY THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER, AND A LIST OF ALTERATIONS MADE BY THE EDITIONS. LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, EC. 1897. PREFACE. THE fancy to reproduce the exact form in which a favourite book first appeared cannot, perhaps, make any very weighty pleas in its defence. Yet in the case of such a book as the "Christian Year" it may be thought to have some justifying cause. It is not an altogether trivial pleasure and interest to the men of a later generation to hold in their hands, and look upon with their eyes, the very thing in the very shape which in their fathers' days wrought so deeply upon the life of many souls and of the Church at large. But there is also in this particular case a special consideration. There was a character not to be mistaken about the movement in the Church of England to which, as we now know, the Author of the "Christian Year" contributed more than any other single man. It was a character of sim |