Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Arts in Early England The Introductory Chapter (p. 1 to 55) is intended to explain the scheme followed in the treatment of the various subjects in the present and the following Volume, and the reader is there informed of the headings under which the letterpress is divided, as well as of the intention and character of the illustrations. The present Note is necessary in order to afford explanations of the arrangement of the volumes on the mechanical side, and to give the opportunity for personal references of grateful kind. As is noticed in the Introductory Chapter (p. 3), the number of things referred to is embarrassingly large. On the plates there are figured more than eight hundred objects or groups of objects, each one of which is described in the text, while a large number of them are mentioned more than once. An endeavor has accordingly been made to render it as easy as possible for the reader to refer from illustration to text or vice versa, and an elucidation of the system of reference should come in the forefront of these explanations. In the first place, there is a continuous pagination through the two volumes so that all references to 'Vol. III' and 'Vol. IV' are eliminated. References to the pages are always included within brackets as (p. 100), and this will save the confusion due to uncertainty whether in a particular case a citation refers to the pages of the book itself or to those of some other work that may have just been referred to, and will also abolish the 'antea' and 'postea' which are inelegant and tiresome. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.