'Out of monuments, names, wordes, proverbs, traditions, private recordes and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of bookes, and the like, we doe save and recover somewhat from the deluge of Time.'--LORD BACON, Advance of Learning.' 'They who make researches into Antiquity, may be said to passe often through many dark lobbies and dusky places, before they come to the Aula lucis, the great hall of light; they must repair to old archives, and peruse many moulded and moth-eaten records, and so bring light as it were out of darkness, to inform the present world what the former did, and make us see truth through our ancestors' eyes.'-J. HOWEL, 'Londinopolis.' 'I'll see these things!-They're rare and passing curious But thus 'tis ever; what's within our ken, Whilst here, at home, upon our very thresholds, |