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"The Ancients boasted of their Seven Wonders of the World;
but this Work will prove that the Moderns may boast of their Hun-
dred Wonders.
PREFACE.

• FIRST AMERICAN,

FROM THE TENTH LONDON EDITION.

NEW-HAVEN:

PRINTED FOR JOHN BABCOCK AND SON,
AND S. AND W. R. BABCOCK,

CHARLESTON, S. c.

SIDNEY'S PRESS-1821.

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PREFACE.

THE Ancients boasted of their SEVEN WONDERS of the WORLD, but this work will prove that the Moderns may boast of their HUNDRED WONDERS.

To embody these wonders, whether of nature, or of art, and to bring them into a comprehensive form, from the different stores in which they may be said to have been hitherto locked up, has been the aim of the editor of these pages. They are here drawn into light, and exhibited at a single view, presenting whatever is most striking in the creation, and whatever the genius and in

dustry of man have been able to effect, in order to excite admiration at the sublimity of his conceptions, the depth of his scientific researches, and the grandeur of those structures, many of which have subsisted, almost unimpaired, for a long succession of ages, in testimony of his consummate skill, which could thus achieve monuments, at once so splendid, and of so imperishable a nature!

Those marvellous relations which the mischievous fancy of travellers has too often imposed on the credulity of the weak, as well as the fables founded in bigotry, which were received as truths in the dark ages, have been sedulously shunned where the subjects treated have incidentally led to them, they have, on the other hand, been as carefully ex

posed. But whatever has been confirmed by the concurrent testimony of enlightened writers, has been faithfully digested from their works.

Whether

on the subjects in which nature, in the different departments of her empire, and in the bestowal of her sublime gifts and attributes, displays herself in her most magnificent attire; or on those in which art has overstepped the ordinary bounds assigned to the faculties of man; the best authorities have been throughout consulted. The editor, therefore, flatters himself that, in compiling and assembling so many objects of wonder and delight, he has conferred a real benefit on the rising generation, and that his labours will not be disdained by those even, whose researches into THE SUB

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