Our object has been to supply exact and positive information and to confirm it by proofs so accurate and so certain as to compel belief and render any effective criticism an impossibility. It may however not be without advantage to those who are becoming convinced against their will, if we place before them a few of the utterances of men of the greatest distinction who, without being furnished with the information which we have been able to afford to our readers, were possessed of sufficient intelligence and common sense to perceive the truth respecting the real authorship of the Plays. LORD PALMERSTON, b. 1784, d. 1865. Viscount Palmerston, the great British statesman, used to say that he rejoiced to have lived to see three things--the re-integration of Italy, the unveiling of the mystery of China and Japan, and the explosion of the Shakespearian illusions.--_From the Diary of the Right Hon. Mount-Stewart E. Grant_. LORD HOUGHTON, b. 1809, d. 1885. Lord Houghton (better known as a statesman under the name of Richard Monckton Milnes) reported the words of Lord Palmerston, and he also told Dr. Appleton Morgan that he himself no longer considered Shakespeare, the actor, as the author of the Plays. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, b. 1772, d. 1834. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the eminent British critic and poet, although he assumed that Shakespeare was the author of the Plays, rejected the facts of his life and character, and says: "Ask your own hearts, ask your own common sense, to conceive the possibility of the author of the Plays being the anomalous, the wild, the irregular genius of our daily criticism. What! are we to have miracles in sport? Does God choose idiots by whom to convey divine truths to man?" JOHN BRIGHT, b. 1811, d. 1889. John Bright, the eminent British statesman, declared: "Any man that believes that William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet or Lear is a fool." In its issue of March 27th 1889, the _Rochdale Observer_ reported John Bright as scornfully angry with deluded people who believe that Shakespeare wrote Othello. RALPH WALDO EMERSON, b. 1803, d. 1882. Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great American philosopher and poet, says: "As long as the question is of talent and mental power, the world of men has not his equal to show.... The Egyptian verdict of the Shakespeare Societies comes to mind that he was a jovial actor and manager. I cannot marry this fact to his verse."--_Emerson's Works. London, 1883. Vol. 4, p. 420_. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER, b. 1807, d. 1892. John Greenleaf Whittier, the American poet, declared: "Whether Bacon wrote the wonderful plays or not, I am quite sure the man Shakspere neither did nor could." DR. W. H. FURNESS, b. 1802, d. 1891.