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x drawn to the German or second edition of the present work. I had not turned over many of its pages before I felt that the combined knowledge and common sense of the writer had enabled him to produce a more satisfactory book upon a subject involved in very considerable obscurity than it had ever before been my good fortune to meet with. In the belief that it was a book likely to facilitate the enquiries, and to reduce into somewhat of a method the researches, of our English archæologists, in the imperfectly developed field of primeval antiquities, I ventured to recommend it to their attention in a short review which was inserted in the Archæological Journal.

The appearance of that notice having led to the expression of an opinion on the part of many friends, to whose judgment in such matters I could not but defer, that the publication of an English version of Mr. Worsaae's book would be rendering good service to the cause of archæological research, and Mr. Parker having consented to undertake the charge of it, such a publication was determined upon.

Other and more important occupations had occurred to delay the progress of the work, when Mr. Worsaae's visit to this country—a visit which will long be remembered with satisfaction by those who had the opportunity of meeting him—secured me the pleasure of his personal acquaintance, and obtained for the work the benefit of such a thorough revisal by himself, together with such copious additions, as to make it almost a new book instead of a new edition. Its value has not, I trust, been diminished by my endeavour, in the notes for which I hold myself responsible, to make the early national antiquities of Denmark and of this country mutually illustrative of each other. And here it may be very