XXIV INTRODUCTION.

assumes. We might also have given additional interest to our

narrative by introducing more plates than we have been able to

insert ; but our number has been (we believe necessarily) limited, and we may add that the selection of those which appear might have been better if we had known, before the drawings went to the

engraver, that we should have been obhged to leave out so many of them.

Something should be said to account for the delay which has taken place in publication since the work was first announced. We

may state that, so far as we are ourselves concerned, more tlsan

three parts of the MS. was finished at least two years ago ; and that the remainder was only kept back because it could not be completed till the first portion was printed.