Old World from Trondhjem to Cairo and from St. Petersburg to
Palermo-- they have often obliged me to write under circumstances
not very favorable: sometimes on an Atlantic steamer, sometimes
on a Nile boat, and not only in my own library at Cornell, but in
those of Berlin, Helsingfors, Munich, Florence, and the British
Museum. This fact will explain to the benevolent reader not only
the citation of different editions of the same authority in
different chapters, but some iterations which in the steady quiet
of my own library would not have been made.

It has been my constant endeavour to write for the general
reader, avoiding scholastic and technical terms as much as
possible and stating the truth simply as it presents itself to
me.

That errors of omission and commission will be found here and
there is probable--nay, certain; but the substance of the book
will, I believe, be found fully true. I am encouraged in this
belief by the fact that, of the three bitter attacks which this
work in its earlier form has already encountered, one was purely
declamatory, objurgatory, and hortatory, and the others based
upon ignorance of facts easily pointed out.

And here I must express my thanks to those who have aided me.
First and above all to my former student and dear friend, Prof.
George Lincoln Burr, of Cornell University, to whose
contributions, suggestions, criticisms, and cautions I am most
deeply indebted; also to my friends U. G. Weatherly, formerly
Travelling Fellow of Cornell, and now Assistant Professor in the
University of Indiana,--Prof. and Mrs. Earl Barnes and Prof.