It is the common practice of innovators to set up a loud cry against long-received opinions which favour them not, and the word prejudice is the denunciation of “mad-dog.” But prejudices, like human beings who hold them, are not always “_so bad as they seem_.” They are often the action of good, natural instincts, and often the results of ratiocinations whose processes are forgotten. Let us have no “Apology” for a long-established prejudice; ten to one but it can stand upon its own legs, and needs no officious supporter, who simply apologises for it. We have had philosophers who have told us there is really no such thing as beauty, consequently there can be no such thing as taste; that it is a mere idea, an unaccountable prejudice somehow or other engendered in the brain. And though there exists not a head in the universe without a portion of this disorder-breeding brain, the philosopher persists that the product is a worthless nonentity, and altogether out of the nature of things. We maintain, however, in favour of prejudices and tastes—that there are real grounds for both; and, presuming not to be so wise as to deny the evidences of our senses, and conclusions of our minds, think it scarcely worth while to unravel the threads of our convictions. In matters of science we marvel and can believe almost anything; but in our tastes and feelings we naturally, and by an undoubting instinct, shrink from the touch of an innovator, as we would shun the heel of a donkey. Whenever an innovator of this kind sets up “An Apology” for his intended folly, we invariably feel that he means a very audacious insult upon our best perceptions. The worst of it is, he is not one easily put aside—he will labour to get a commission into your house, ransack it to its sewers, and turn it out of windows. He is the man that must ever be doing. He will think himself entitled to perambulate the world with his pot of polychrome in his hand, and bedaub every man’s door-post; and if multitudes—the whole offended neighbourhood—rush out to upset his pot and brush, he will laugh in their faces, defend his plastering instruments, and throw to them with an air his circular, “An Apology;” and perhaps afterwards knock the doors down for an authorised payment. Such a one shall get no “Apology”-pence out of us.