I trust that I was able to bear your very considerable abridgment of my lucubrations with a spirit becoming a Christian.

Utterly unsuited to form a book without immense abridgment, they contain materials adapted equally for immediate political service and for permanence as a work of wisdom and of genius.

It is true, the exuberance of Kossuth is often too Asiatic for English taste, and that excision of words, which needful abridgment suggests, will often seem to us a gain.

The numberless abridgments that are to be found of all kinds of writings, afford sufficient evidence that they were always thought legal, for they are printed with the names of the abbreviators and publishers, and without the least appearance of a clandestine transaction.

Montesquieu said that Tacitus abridged all because he knew all; and no reader can peruse a number of this Encyclopaedia without being convinced that the success in preparing the perspicuous abridgments it contains is due to thorough knowledge.

Sometimes it may contain a useful abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism; but the chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead you....