CAPTAIN COLES’S NEW IRON TURRET-SHIP-OF-WAR.
KNOWLEDGE
FOR THE TIME:
A Manual
OF
READING, REFERENCE, AND CONVERSATION ON SUBJECTS OF LIVINGINTEREST, USEFUL CURIOSITY, AND AMUSING RESEARCH:
HISTORICO-POLITICAL INFORMATION.
PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION.
DIGNITIES AND DISTINCTIONS.
CHANGES IN LAWS.
MEASURE AND VALUE.
PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.
LIFE AND HEALTH.
RELIGIOUS THOUGHT.
Illustrated from the best and latest Authorities.
By JOHN TIMBS, F.S.A.
AUTHOR OF CURIOSITIES OF LONDON, THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN,ETC.
LONDON:
Lockwood and Co., 7 Stationers’-hall Court.
MDCCCLXIV.
TO THE READER.
The great value of contemporary History—that is, history writtenby actual witnesses of the events which they narrate,—is nowbeginning to be appreciated by general readers. The improvedcharacter of the journalism of the present day is the best evidenceof this advancement, which has been a work of no ordinary labour.Truth is not of such easy acquisition as is generally supposed;and the chances of obtaining unprejudiced accounts of events arerarely improved by distance from the time at which they happen.In proportion as freedom of thought is enlarged, and liberty ofconscience, and liberty of will, are increased, will be the amountof trustworthiness in the written records of contemporaries. It isthe rarity of these high privileges in chroniclers of past eventswhich has led to so many obscurities in the world’s history, andwarpings in the judgment of its writers; to trust some of whom hasbeen compared to reading with “coloured spectacles.” And, one ofthe features of our times is to be ever taking stock of the amountof truth in past history; to set readers on the tenters of doubt,and to make them suspicious of perversions; and to encourage awhitewashing of black reputations which sometimes strays into anextreme equally as unserviceable to truth as that from which thewriter started.
It is, however, with the view of correcting the Past by the lightof the Present, and directing attention to many salient pointsof Knowledge for the Time, that the present volume is offered tothe public. Its aim may be considered great in proportion to thelimited means employed; but, to extend what is, in homely phrase,termed a right understanding, the contents of the volume are of amixed character, the Author having due respect for the[v] emphaticwords of Dr. Arnold: “Preserve proportion in your reading, keepyour views of Men and Things extensive, and depend upon it a mixedknowledge is not a superficial one: as far as it goes, the viewsthat it gives are true; but he who reads deeply in one class ofwriters only, gets views which are almost sure to be perverted, andwhich are not only narrow but false.”
Throughout the Work, the Author has endeavoured to avail himself ofthe most reliable views of leading writers on Events of the Day;and by seizing new points of Knowledge and sources of Information,to