It is difficult to estimate our unpaid obligations to the students and scholars who have sacrificed their life to furnish us with the common-places of our knowledge. The elaborate and prolonged effort, the perseverance, ingenuity, and scientific skill often concealed in the foundations of a great building or in the underways of a great city, are no inapt illustration of the lifelong labours of those students and votaries of literature who have placed in our hands authentic and accurate copies of the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of ancient thinkers. The learned, patient, and devout men to whom we are indebted for our present careful approximations to the text of the New Testament, have undergone a species of toil which it is very difficult for those scholars even to appreciate, who have never made the attempt to decipher a single MS. or to gather around them the abundant and often conflicting evidence on which the judgment of the critic really turns. Whatever be the ultimate currency or acceptance of the text which Dr. Tregelles has offered to the world as the result of his life-long effort, and granting that some of the disadvantages under which he has suffered have left ineffaceable marks on the greater part of the work, and that his main principles may still be under judicature, yet we readily endorse the strong language of Bishop Ellicott: 'The edition of Tregelles will last to the very end of time as a noble monument of faithful, enduring, and accurate labour in the cause of truth; it will always be referred to as an uniquely trustworthy collection of assorted critical materials of the greatest value, and as such it will probably never be superseded.'[170] The Bishop does not regard Dr. Tregelles' text as the final one, but does not hesitate to speak of it as far better than Tischendorf's, and as furnishing material which no subsequent editor can afford to ignore. With the exception of the text of the Apocalypse and of the appendices rendered necessary by the progress of textual criticism since the earlier portions of the work were published, this long-expected work is now placed in our hands. The exception to which we have referred is, we profoundly regret to say, occasioned by the serious indisposition of the learned, laborious, and devout editor. The regret is to some extent alleviated from a literary point of view by the circumstance that one of the first contributions to Biblical science made by this conscientious and accurate scholar was published in 1844, and entitled 'The Book of Revelation in Greek, edited from Ancient Authorities, with a new English Version and various Readings, by Samuel P. Tregelles.' There is this difference, however, between the evidence alleged by Dr. Tregelles for the text of the Revelation and that which he has pursued throughout the elaborate work now before us, that in the former he was either content or only able at that time to give the evidence of the few Uncial MSS.