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

Punctuation has been standardized.

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 may show quotations within quotations, all set off by double quote marks. The inner quotations have been changed to single quote marks for improved readability.

This book has drop-caps at the start of each chapter. These 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.

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.