Long did men persuade themselves, that their little globe was the centre of every movement, and vainly did they endeavour by the most intricate suppositions to reconcile with such a prepossession the phenomena of the surrounding objects; at length however it was discovered that for the true centre they should look from the earth to the heavens, and it is now concluded that the sun himself, the immediate centre of our planetary system, performs his revolutions round some prodigiously distant and common centre of the whole creation. In politics also men have hitherto referred every thing to the causes, which act immediately among themselves, to the resources, the interests, and the passions of nations, to the sagacity or the folly of statesmen, to the virtues and the vices of powerful individuals: but perhaps it may be now felt that, though these causes do immediately determine political events, they yet act in subordination to a directive providence, which emanates from the common centre of the moral uni verse, and causes all the various and apparently intricate revolutions of human society to cooperate in one systematic arrangement, which manifests the perfection of the divine attributes. Armagh, November, 11, 1819. VOL. III. OF THE THIRD VOLUME. Lecture XXV. Of the history of Commerce from the suppression of the western empire Lecture XXVI. Of the history of Learning, from the suppression of the western empire Lecture XXVII. Of the history of France, from the first meeting of the States Gene- 99 Lecture XXVIII. Of the history of Eng- land, from the beginning of the reign of Edward II. in the year 1307, to that of the reign of Henry IV. in the year 1999. 368 Lecture XXIX. Of the history of England, from the beginning of the reign of Henry Lecture XXX. Of the history of Italy and Sicily from the year 1308, to the com- |