ARCHÆOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY, VOL. 17

Society s Proceedings, 1871I would here give one caution. I do not in the least recommend that he who undertakes the illustration of some particular local subject should of necessity preface it with an introduction going back to the creation of the world, or even to the landing of Caesar. This is the kind of thing which antiquaries of the elder school were in the constant habit of doing. Nothing was ever more hopeless than the result. Sketches of general history, attempted by men who had never learned to take a general View of anything, are far less to the purpose than the pettiest local detail. A man had better stick to measurements and pedigrees than tell over again, at every place he comes to, the same dull ceaseless repetition about Britons and Romans and Danes and Saxons and Normans, the whole series of the revolutions of our island being gone through on each occasion, and gone through with very much less of life than some of our friends know how to put into the dry.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.