Page:British costume (IA britishcostumeco00planuoft).djvu/14



true spirit of the times is in nothing more perceptible than in the tone given to our most trifling amusements. Information of some description must be blended with every recreation to render it truly acceptable to the public. The most beautiful fictions are disregarded unless in some measure founded upon fact. Pure invention has been declared by Byron to be but the talent of a liar and the novels of Sir Walter Scott owe their popularity as much to the learning as to the genius displayed in their pages or the mystery which so long surrounded the writer. The days have gone by when archaeological pursuits were little more than the harmless but valueless recreations of the aged and the idle. The research, intelligence, and industry of modern authors and artists have opened a treasure-chamber to the rising generation. The spirit of critical inquiry has separated the gold from the dross, and antiquities are now considered valuable only in proportion to their illustration of history or their importance to art.

The taste for a correct conception of the arms and habits of our ancestors has of late years rapidly diffused itself throughout Europe. The historian, the poet, the novelist, the painter, and the actor, have discovered in attention to costume a new spring of information, and a fresh source of effect. Its study, embellished by picture and enlivened by anecdote, soon becomes interesting even to the young and careless reader; and at the same time that it sheds light upon manners and rectifies dates, stamps