Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... GLAMORGANSHIRE. HE task of writing a county history is so stupendous, and the qualifications requisite in a writer are so varied, that it is a matter of no little wonder that we possess so many excellent works; and if there are counties that cannot boast of a historian, when we consider the life-long labour which it involves, we cease to be surprised. The work requires untiring zeal and devotion, a more than superficial knowledge of archaeology, geology, genealogy, heraldry, ecclesiology, and other matters, so that it may fairly be said life is too short and the capacities of man too circumscribed for the production of a really great work. The stately tomes which bear the names of Ormerod, Whitaker, Hoare, Brittan, and others, stand forth like giants in our libraries. But their age seems gone. The end of the last century and the beginning of this present was the era of county histories. In these fast days, when "the steamship and the railway and the thoughts that shake mankind" have effected a complete revolu B tion, when the struggle for greed is uppermost, and men have neither the time nor the inclination to pursue nonpaying undertakings, the publication of a county history on the model of such a work as Ormerod's "History of Cheshire" would be looked upon as a folly which would certainly entail loss, and perhaps cause heart-burnings to the unfortunate author. Not so much, perhaps, because the interest in antiquarian lore is at all less now than it was seventy years ago, as it is that in this age folios have given place to octavos, and men content themselves with the perusal of works of moderate pretensions, and have no leisure for such works as, to quote Lord Macaulay, "might before the Deluge have been considered light reading by..."
