Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/21



great assistance, which those who engage in archæological and genealogical pursuits may derive from heraldry, is well known to such as are at all conversant with the art as formerly practised. By means of it, not only may families be traced, and their alliances ascertained, but the dates of architecture, painted glass, effigies, and other sepulchral monuments, mural paintings, decorative sculpture and carving, seals, and thereby undated charters, may often be determined within a very few years; and the families, or sometimes the individuals, under whose patronage, or to whose memory, or for whom they were erected or executed, may not unfrequently be discovered. Even when the coat armour itself cannot be identified with that of any particular family, the mere form of the shield, or design of some of the charges on it, will generally, to the practised eye, be a pretty certain indication of the period to which it belongs. Those who have made themselves acquainted with heraldry only in its modern use and application, may have expected to find some of the results above mentioned, and been disappointed in consequence of not being aware of the great dissimilarity in many respects between the heraldry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and that of more recent times; especially as regards the arrangement or marshalling of arms, the methods of differencing coats borne by members of the same family, and the disregard of minutiæ to which great importance has been since attached.

A good History of Heraldry would be a great acquisition, and might be made as interesting as useful. It is curious to observe its rise, progress, and decline, contemporaneously with pointed architecture, though it is difficult to trace any connection between them that should have occasioned or will account for the coincidence. There is not much to be found in any publication on the early usages. Dallaway's Inquiry is far from satisfactory. Some particulars have been recently