heh, true. also: Noble Savages!

In theory, I like reading old stuff like this because it's cool to see how our forebears did things, and also I enjoy Victorian prose. In practice, it's often frustrating as I find the style of writing from those times tends to be hopelessly baroque and elliptical, with references to things that made sense at the time, but mean roughly as much to me now as Nyan Cat would to Mark Twain, assuming we could retroactively shoot him a link, that is.

not the author's fault. I entirely blame this grar o' mine on the modern condition, to wit: my job kinda sucks these days. My boss got canned, so in addition to all the contracts crap, I've now got an entire quality and regulatory group that I'm working for. I spend my days having to read, revise and publish the most terrifyingly obscure mess of technical jargon, contractural mumbo-jumbo and obscura legalis, and it's making me ever so cross :P