urred to me as a leading
motive that a century or two hence the true inner life of _any_ man who
had actually lived from the time when railroads, steamboats, telegraphs,
gas, percussion-caps, fulminating matches, the opera and omnibuses,
evolution and socialism were quite unknown to his world, into the modern
age, would be of some value. So I described my childhood or youth
exactly as I recalled, or as I felt it. Such a book requires very
merciful allowance from humane reviewers.

It seemed to me, also, that though I have not lived familiarly among the
princes, potentates, and powers of the earth, yet as I have met or _seen_
or corresponded with about five hundred of the three thousand set down in
"Men of the Time," and been kindly classed among them, it was worth while
to mention my meetings with many of them. Had the humblest scribbler of
the age of Elizabeth so much as mentioned that he had ever exchanged a
word with, or even looked at, any of the great writers of his time, his
record would now be read with avidity. I have really never in my life
run after such men, or sought to make their acquaintance with a view of
extending my list; all that I can tell of them, as my book will show, has
been the result of chance. But what I have written will be of some
interest, I think--at least "in the dim and remote future."

I had laid the manuscript by, till I had time to quite forget what I had
written, when I unexpectedly received a proposal to write my memoirs. I
then read over my work, and determined "to let it go," as it was. It
seemed to me that, with all its faults, it fulfilled the requisition of
Montaigne in being _ung livre de bonne foye_. So it has gone forth into
print. _Jacta est alea_.

The story of what is to me by far the most interesting period of my life
remains to be written. This embraces an account of my labour for many
years in introducing Industrial Art as a branch of education in schools,
my life in England and on the Continent for more than twenty years, my
travels in Russia and Egypt, my researches among Gypsies and Algonkin
Indians, my part in Oriental and Folklore and other Congresses, my
discovery of the Shelta or Ogham tongue in Great Britain, and the long
and very strangely adventurous discoveries, continued for five years,
among _witches_ in Italy, which resulted in the discovery that all the
names of the old Etruscan gods are still remembered by the peasantry of
the Toscana Romagna