ABSTRACT
FINALLY, after drawing all these many facts from the North and bringing them out into the light, things which are clearly less common in other parts of the world, I must at some stage bring the complicated scheme of this work to its desired end, and so stop it from wandering tediously on and on. Yet I fear that, having found an opportunity for writing, I may seem, in throwing abroad these laborious studies, rather to be acting irresponsibly than performing a useful service. I have to admit that what I have adopted from my own researches is meagre and bare, whereas the loans I have obtained from others’ treasuries are far richer, like the more handsome tableware we acknowledge we have borrowed to please distinguished guests or observers. 1 This I have done, as others do, trusting to my own self-confidence, and with less reserve inasmuch as the writings and sayings of our ancestors prove safer to imitate, like old coins which are thought to be of purer metal. Nothing can be regarded as our own inheritance unless it has been tested a thousand times by the most scrupulous men of the past before bequeathing it to their posterity. 2 That principle has been observed here, whatever the merits of this volume may be, but if it achieves nothing else, at least its variety and the diversity of its illustrations can be relied on to mitigate the boredom of its readers.
