The cover image was provided by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

Punctuation has been standardized.

Most abbreviations have been expanded in tool-tips for screen-readers and may be seen by hovering the mouse over the abbreviation.

The concluding Table of Contents, has been moved to the front of the book to make it more useable.

The author has used an asterisk (*) to indicate passages he considers most worthy of attention.

The text occasionally shows quotations within quotations, all set off by double quotes. The inner quotations have been changed to single quotes for improved readability.

This book has drop-caps at the start of each chapter. These drop-caps may adversely affect the pronunciation of the word with screen-readers or not display properly in some handheld devices.

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless indicated with a Transcriber’s Note.

Footnotes are identified in the text with a superscript number and have been accumulated in a table at the end of the text. All footnote anchors have been moved to the end of the reference passage for consistency.

Transcriber’s Notes are used when making corrections to the text or to provide additional information for the modern reader. These notes have been accumulated in a table at the end of the book and are identified in the text by a dotted underline and may be seen in a tool-tip by hovering the mouse over the underline.