a History of Costume of more importance than the little handbook which has met with so much favour as an elementary work, I was not only made aware of my own deficiencies, but surprised to find how much more vague are the explanations, and contradictory the statements, of our best authorities, than they appeared to me, when, in the plenitude of my ignorance, I rushed upon almost untrodden ground, and felt bewildered by the mass of unsifted evidence and unhesitating assertion which met my eyes at every turn.
During the forty years which have elapsed since the publication of the first edition of my “History of British Costume” in the “Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” archæological investigation has received such an impetus by the establishment of metropolitan and provincial peripatetic antiquarian societies, that a flood of light has been poured upon us, by which we are enabled to re-examine our opinions and discover reasons to doubt, if we cannot find facts to authenticate.
That the former greatly preponderate is a grievous acknowledgment to make after assiduously devoting the leisure of half my life to the pursuit of information on this, to me, most fascinating subject. It is some consolation, however, to feel that where I cannot instruct, I