I have thought it good, for the sake of those who have somehow missed Patrick Traherne's published work, which he produced under a variety of pseudonyms and initials (G. K., J. B., A. C. B., and K. R., being his favourites), to append a fragment here of a book which he never finished.

It was to be called "The Future of the Boy," but I have been unable to find more than the Prologue and Epilogue: he wrote to me on several occasions asking advice on technical points, and I had gathered from these letters that he was well under way with the book (which was obviously to be his "magnum opus") when all writing had to cease. I fear that he must have destroyed the manuscript in a moment of depression, probably on the day when he received his dismissal from Marlton. I guess, however, that he could not bring himself to burn his Prologue and Epilogue even though he became too inert to try to publish them. I am the more pleased, therefore, to be allowed the privilege of giving publicity for the first time to two of the most remarkable papers on education I have ever read. That they are immature and in many respects false is at once obvious; they only touch, too, on the intellectual side of school life, the importance of which he always overemphasized; but they are stimulating, controversial, and interesting.

I shall be amply repaid if the result of my labours is to send such readers back to his earlier work, where they may discover for themselves some of the myriad problems that vex the practical educationalist, and at the same time learn more of his theories for reforming the abuses which block up the path to progress.