translation; but of this chapter I have not translated the text. In like manner, I have not included M. Lacombe's last chapter in the contents of my own volume; but, instead of his conclusion, I have added a few "concluding" passages to my eleventh chapter. My tenth chapter is altogether freshan addition to the work for which I alone am responsible. In this additional chapter I have endeavoured in some degree to supply what M. Lacombe had not provided for English (or, indeed, for French) readers-a sketch, that is, of ENGLISH ARMS AND ARMOUR. In conformity with M. Lacombe's plan, which ought to determine the character of the entire volume, I have not attempted more than a sketch, while I felt that without some such attempt the present volume would be unpardonably imperfect. It has been my good fortune to be enabled to introduce into this new chapter a few English wood-cuts, which, however they may differ in their style from their French companions, in their own style are singularly excellent. They have been engraved from drawings on the wood by R. T. Pritchett, F.S.A. In addition to Chapter X., I have collected together and placed at the end of the volume, in the form of Notes, such comments as various passages in the original appeared imperatively to require; and also, as far as possible, I have caused these Notes (which I should gladly have extended very considerably, had space been allowed for that purpose) to take a decided part, both in commending the Text to English readers, and in associating English arms and armour with statements and descriptions that, either exclusively or in some special acceptation, are French.

The remarks that appear in the Text upon the Bayeux Tapestry, in its capacity of an historical monument of unquestionable authenticity and authority, proceeding, as they do, from the pen of a French writer, will be regarded with much interest in England. And so, also, in like manner, no slight interest attaches itself to the brief but graphic sketch of the French medieval military system-suggestive as it is of the feudal ages from a point of view that is not English-with which M. Lacombe commences his seventh chapter. again, the same may be said of his statements and observations in the eighth chapter, concerning the great English victories of Crécy and Poictiers, and of the conduct there both of our Black Prince and of our countrymen the yeomen archers of England. All these passages have been rendered with especial care, so that in the translation they might convey the exact sense which they bear in the original.

And,

If any part of M. Lacombe's volume be in a special sense applicable to his own country, and to France alone, and in no way capable of being applied to England, it is that part which treats of the arms and armour of the three successive half centuries which extend from about A.D. 1300 to about A.D. 1450. We are glad to know what a French writer on the subject before us had to say concerning the period in question; and his remarks become the more valuable to us when we observe how completely they differ from what we ourselves, writing about our own country at the same period, should have written.

There now remains for me only the pleasing duty to

record my grateful sense of the truly valuable aid that I have received from two dear fellow-workers in the preparation of this volume in its English costume.

From

WEAPONS.

WHATEVER the motive which led to the invention and the earliest use of weapons, whether the object of the inventor was to strengthen his hand in self-defence or that he might be enabled with greater force to strike aggressive blows, it appears to be certain that almost from the time of his first appearance upon the earth, man has felt the necessity of arming himself. Possibly, weapons were originally constructed for the purposes of defence, and perhaps the first assailants of primeval man were fierce animals; but it is also equally probable that at a very early period mankind found in their fellow-creatures enemies to be attacked as well as resisted.1

Within the last thirty or forty years fresh opinions have

grown up amongst men of science with reference to the probable antiquity of the human race. The researches in France of M. Boucher de Perthes, and of many other antiquaries who have followed his example, led to the discovery of primitive weapons, which have been confidently assigned not only to the antediluvian era, but also to a period very far more remote than that which has generally been accepted as the age of the creation of man. At the first it was supposed that these relics would be found only in certain localities; but after a while, when the search for them had become more general (and in England it has been carried on with equal zeal and success), it was ascertained that relics of this class were in existence and awaiting discovery in countries widely separated from one another. If the high antiquity that has been assigned to these weapons be admitted, man, the maker of them, must necessarily have been contemporary with the colossal animals, the bos primigenius, the elephas giganteus, and that great bear of the caverns which was as large as an ox. The hunters of those far away days would certainly have pursued the monstrous animals with which they were familiar; and they would have encountered and destroyed them.

In treating of the ARMS and ARMOUR that have been in use at successive periods throughout the world, we commence with the Stone Period; still, it is altogether beyond our power to determine the commencement of this period. The knife, the axe, the arrow-either discharged from the bow or thrown as a javelin from the hand-these were the weapons of the first men; and of these weapons, all of them invariably made of stone, numerous specimens have been discovered in all parts of the habitable globe. Stone, the material thus always employed in the production of these earliest weapons, has very consistently given a distinctive name to the ages during which they were exclusively in use.