TO HIS GRACE

THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,

PRIMATE AND METROPOLITAN OF ALL ENGLAND,

&c. &c. &c.

THIS VOLUME

OF

UNIVERSAL HISTORY,

IS

MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED,

BY

HIS GRACE'S

MOST DUTIFUL, AND VERY HUMBLE SERVANT;

THE EDITOR,

PREFACE.

PLACED

ACED in an amphitheatre of boundless. extent, and surrounded by an immensity of objects, man is naturally inquisitive, and delighted with every new accession of knowledge. He who never felt a wish to investigate the qualities and productions of the globe which he inhabits; he who has no ambition to become acquainted with the powers, the habits, the instincts, of the different tribes of being which people the earth, the air, and the waters; must possess a singular apathy of intellect, and want that ardent curiosity which is the most striking characteristic of man.

But Natural History, to which the first enquiries of our species might reasonably be supposed to tend, presents too much general uniformity to satisfy the excursive and contemplative mind. What earths, fossils, minerals, vegetables, and irrational animals, are now, they always have been, with little variation. The annals of every thing that lives, except man, are precisely the same at this instant as they were a thousand years ago. Human nature is the only object on which all our curiosity ought to centre; the well of knowledge from

which

which we may draw for ever, without exhausting the living spring that supplies it.

Single out an individual: through how many revolutions of sentiment and action does he pass from infancy to maturity! How vigilant he is! how many facts does he store up in his memory! how do his passions develope themselves and how different do the maxims that actuate him appear in their ultimate composition, from what they were in their simple elements! If it were possible to record with fidelity all the fancies that have passed through the brain, and all the feelings that have agitated the heart, sparkled in the eye, or flowed from the tongue, of any tolerably cultivated person, from infancy to age, what an extensive field would it present for meditation and use!

On the other hand, let us scan mankind as joined in social order or civil confederacymark their political manoeuvres, their subtle contrivances to depress, circumvent, or subjugate each other; and what a busy picture will be displayed to our view! We shall often find them, through the means of error and prejudice, attempting to accomplish the most important ends of humanity; and, through the horrors of war, toiling to arrive at the enjoyment of a secure and cordial peace. We shall find the purest philanthropy blended with the most insidious arts of destruction; stratagem hid under the veil of public spirit; and the interests of communities and even nations fre

quently

quently sacrificed, to gratify the sordid pas sions or the fantastic vanity of individuals.

To lay open these springs of human action, and to trace them to their source, is the province of HISTORY :-that study which, beyond all others, is eminently and emphatically the proper object of our attention.-History, indeed, is "the storehouse of expe rience, the mirror of duties, the source of morality, and the foundation of conduct and virtue." It carries us back to primeval ages, triumphs over time, and presents to our eyes all the various revolutions that have happened to men and states. It opens to us the experience of antiquity, and introduces us to the acquaintance of the illustrious dead, by exhibiting their living actions, their virtues, and their faults. Confined, without it, to the limits of our own observations, and shut up within the narrow circle of our own prejudices, we must ever continue in a state of infancy and ignorance. What is the short period that makes up the longest life but an imperceptible point, in comparison with the vast series of ages which have elapsed since the Creation? And yet all we are capable of knowing must be restricted to this point, unless we call to our aid the study of History! while the prudent reflections which this master science either affords us or gives us an opportunity of making, teach us to be wise before our time, and in a manner far more effectual than all the moral lessons of the greatest