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Part III. continues the memoirs of the Sword, which, after long declining, revives once more in our day. This portion embraces descriptions of the modern blade, notices of collections, public and private, notes on manufactures; and, lastly, the bibliography and the literature connected with the Heroic Weapon.

Part I., contained in this volume, numbers thirteen chapters, of which a bird’s-eye view is given by the List of Contents. The first seven are formally and chronologically arranged. Thus we have the Origin of Weapons (Chapter I.) showing that while the arm is common to man and beast, the weapon, as a rule, belongs to our kind. Chapter II. treats of the first weapon proper, the Stone, which gave rise to ballistics as well as to implements of percussion. Follows (Chapter III.) the blade of base materials, wood, stone and bone, materials still used by races which can procure nothing better. From this point a step leads to the metal blade, in its origin evidently a copy of preceding types. The first, (Chapter IV.) is of pure copper, in our translations generally rendered by ‘brass’ or ‘bronze.’ The intermediate substances (Chapter V.) are represented by alloys, a variety of mixed metals; and they naturally end with the so-called ‘age’ of early iron, which prevailed throughout Europe at a time when the valleys of the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates wrought blades of the finest steel. This division concludes with a formal and technical Chapter (VII.) on the shape of the Sword and a description of its several parts. Here the subject does not readily lend itself to lively description; but, if I have been compelled to be dull, I have done my best to avoid being tedious.