2 Charles William JJ'allace 



ports, &c, are on heavy hand-made paper. All, except the mis- 

 cellaneous books, have long been well and cleanly preserved in 

 great canvas-covered bundles nearly three feet square. When 

 they were prepared for my examination, the fine old bundles, 

 because of the difficulty experienced by the office in handling 

 their great bulk and weight, were broken up into two or three 

 parts each. Some of the documents are mouldered, rotted away 

 in places, or matted together from damp and parasitic diseases 

 peculiar to archives, while others are not only as perfect as the 

 day they were written, but have acquired that additional beauty 

 which comes only from the tone of time. The condition of the 

 present collection is sufficiently indicated below. 



It is often thought that the finding of valuable materials in such 

 masses is a mere matter of chance or " luck." The preposterous- 

 ness of such a notion would be demonstrated at once to any one 

 who should attempt research upon such a basis of mere hap- 

 hazard. Out of the hundreds of archives, you must, upon sure 

 information, determine whether you will search in the one or the 

 other, and in following out a system, you will find yourself led, 

 as I have been, first into one, then another, and another. Once 

 in, you must know what class of documents to search. For 

 example, at the Public Record Office alone, there are some 

 thousand classes and sub-classes of documents. The same con- 

 ditions, on a smaller scale, exist in the other archives. Out of all 

 these you must, by some definite information or clue, determine in 

 what class the records lie that will give the information you 

 desire. A chance result may, of course, come to any one, just as 

 has been the case in this very field. But chance cannot be de- 

 pended upon. A continued series of results is achieved, not 

 reached by a hand thrust at random into the dark. 



In my own researches, neither the present discoveries nor any 

 others have been the result of accident, or chance, or " luck." 

 They have come from severer, surer methods. I was led into 

 this particular class of records, just as I have been led into all 

 others, in following out definite clues in a rigorously scientific 

 and systematic course of research. It is comparatively easy to 

 examine any class of records after you know where and what 



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