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minor details, are they not what render Livy sodelightful ? But his subject allowed of a latitudewhich mine does not. I had to endeavour to be briefas well as circumstantial. So my study invariablyhas been to say what I had to say in the fewestwords I could. To which everything else wassacrificed ; full of my subject I acted with my eyesopen. The ruggedness of my eliptic style will Itrust be forgiven, if I have preserved things ofmore importance. Nor do I believe this manner ofwriting is natural to me, nor plead ignorance in theleast; but own my faults of style were voluntary.I throw myself on my reader’s forgiveness ; beggingof him also to recollect that, like my theme, my booktoo should be cosmopolitan, and that I was writingnot for England alone, but for the whole world.

I return you the tweezers; for such were thedocuments to me during almost my whole long coursein testing whatever was related, and plucking outas false, or at least doubtful, whatever did notagree with them. If the effect has been to showclearly, that before this history it was not possible(nor even for our own knights in any language)to learn the facts without carefully examining anddigesting several heavy tomes—that the order becamein part what may hesitatingly be called naval, notearlier than at Rhodes, and had been above two

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