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. 
