Firft Portion of the Seventeenth Century; its Effects on England, Scotland, Holland, France, and Portugal; with a Sketch of the СНАР. Х. AN ACCOUNT OF JEWS, TURKS, AND ROMAN EMPIRE, FOR FORTY-SEVEN YEARS. IT FROM 1455 TO 1492. T is said, that those land journies are most pleasant, which oftenest treat us with a fight of fea; and that fea voyages are leaft fatiguing when broken by a frequent view of different, but not far diftant countries. Those facts are, in like manner, most agreeable, which seem to border on Truth's utmost limits, and give a glimpfe, or fomething like a glimpse, of Fancy's boundless reign: whilst all agree, that Fiction never knows to charm us fo, as when the feeks refemblance with reality. The events we have recorded in our last volume, gleaned from hisstoric annals, all are true; at worft, accounted fo for eighteen centuries. Although fuch is their character,and fuch their fhape, that clustered closely as our book prefents them, they certainly do feem almoft incredible; and, what is worse, they now and then appear thick and impervious to a common eye. This is not quite the look I wish they had; but things will not look well when fo much crowded, and I cannot enlarge the room they ftand in without manifeft inconvenience. If Milton, then, was forced to make his devils shrink, that they might VOL. II. B be be contained in that great Pandemonium he provided them, I may, nay, must be pardoned for compreffing all these gigantic fhadows of long-paft occurrences into my glafs of general Retrospection. Nor will my readers require to be oftentimes reminded, through the courfe of a work fo truly fuperficial, that they are not reading history at all, but only looking back, as from an eminence, upon the leading features of thofe hiftories which they have read full many a year ago. That few obfervations or reflections have been interspersed, will, I much fear, be no lefs eafily forgiven, though nothing is more flattering to an author than that his own opinions fhould be called for. The scientific gardener thus is feen to recommend his hot-houfe bouquet, by feparating carefully each rare exotic, and keeping them diligently disjoined from one another, with a profufion of leaves, for the most part, foreign to them all. My wilder nofegay blooms a mere rose campion, cafily found, or in the field or shrubbery,-whofe genuine blush alone attracts the eye to where each independent flower fprings up, fole on its single stalk, and, unadorned with intermingling foliage, rears the head too near its equally alluring neighbour. Among the nations which have been reviewed, not quite enough has yet, perhaps, been told of that furprizing, that felected people, who, on the firft grand muster of mankind, ftood foremoft in the ranks of Humanity. Although their history is earliest, and best authenticated, their limited geography was first ascertained, though law had not a name in other countries when their code, yet extant, was compiled; and although commerce amongst them mentioned trafficking and paying, in times when they had not existed, we should have heard but little, I believe, concerning fhekels of filver, current money with the merchant. they Voltaire was strangely overfeen, to fay, that Jewish annals must of neceffity be falfe, because fo little in their records may be read concerning monarchies of more importance: as for example, the old Affyrian, Chinese, and other oriental ftates, of dignity fo far beyond poor Pa leftine. |