What Mr. Kemble lately said so well with reference to archæology, our experience justifies us in applying to other literary inquiries:--
"On every side there is evidence of a generous and earnest co-operation among those who have devoted themselves to special pursuits; and not only does this tend of itself to widen the general basis, but it supplies the individual thinker with an ever widening foundation for his own special study."
And whence arises this "earnest co-operation?" Is it too much to hope that it springs from an increased reverence for the Truth, from an intenser craving after a knowledge of it--whether such Truth regards an event on which a throne depended, or the etymology of some household word now familiar only to
"Hard-handed men who work in Athens here?"
We feel that the kind and earnest men who honour our "NOTES AND QUERIES" with their correspondence, hold with Bacon, that
"Truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the inquiry of Truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it--the knowledge of Truth, which is the presence of it--and the belief of Truth, which is the enjoying of it--is the sovereign good of human nature."
We believe that it is under the impulse of such feelings that they have flocked to our columns--that the sentiment has found its echo in the breast of the public, and hence that success which has attended our humble efforts. The cause is so great, that we may well be pardoned if we boast that we have had both hand and heart in it. { 130}
And so, with all the earnestness and heartiness which befit this happy season, when
"No spirit stirs abroad; The nights are wholesome; when no planet strikes, No fairy takes, no witch hath power to charm, So hallow'd and so gracious is the time,"
do we greet all our friends, whether contributors or readers, with the good old English wish,
The muniment chests of our old established families are seldom without their quota of "household books." Goodly collections of these often turn up, with records of the expenditure and the "doings" of the household, through a period of two or more centuries. These documents are of incalculable value in giving us a complete insight into the domestic habits of our ancestors. Many a note is _there_, well calculated to illustrate the pages of the dramatist or the biographer, and even the accuracy of the historian's statements may often be tested by some of the details which find their way into these accounts; as for the more peculiar province of the antiquary, there is always a rich store of materials. Every change of costume is _there_; the introduction of new commodities, new luxuries, and new fashions, the varying prices of the passing age. Dress in all its minute details, modes of travelling, entertainments, public and private amusements, all, with their cost, are there: and last, though not least, touches of individual character ever and anon present themselves with the force of undisguised and undeniable truth. Follow the man through his pecuniary transactions with his wife and children, his household, his tenantry, nay, with himself, and you have more of his real character than the biographer is usually able to furnish. In this view, a man's "household book" becomes an impartial autobiography.