Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were either matched or removed.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

The captions of the illustrations contain the names of the painter, the engraver, and the subject, in that order. With the exception of the Frontispiece, the subjects’ names appear to be signatures.

For clarity and consistency, the word “APPENDIX” was added to the headings of Appendices II and III.

This book contains footnotes to footnotes. The references to primary footnotes have been placed into a single numeric sequence beginning at “1”. The references to secondary footnotes have been placed into a single alphabetic sequence beginning at “A”. The secondary footnotes immediately follow the primary footnotes that refer to them.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Original text uses both “carcases” and “carcasses”; both retained.

Original text uses “downfal” consistently.

Footnote 53, originally on page 79: “havresacks” was printed that way.

Page 275: “Fuente le Pena” probably should be “Fuente la Pena”.

Footnote 263, originally on page 377: “be well-received” was printed as “be we received” across two pages; changed here.

Page 504: “disposed to speak him” was printed that way.

Page 526: “besieges San Sebastian, 351.” The page number was missing in the original text; Transcriber added it using the page number on which the topic begins.