TYTLER'S ELEMENTS OF GENERAL HISTORY, ANCIENT AND MODERN. WITH A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY. THIRD EDITION, REVISED, AND BROUGHT DOWN TO THE PRESENT TIME. BOD LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. 223. k. 130 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE following work contains the outlines of a course of lectures on General History, delivered for many years in the University of Edinburgh, and received. with a portion of the public approbation amply sufficient to compensate the labour of the author. He began to compose these elements principally with the view of furnishing an aid to the students attending those lectures; but he soon conceived, that by giving a little more amplitude to their composition, he might render the work of more general utility. As now given to the public, he would willingly flatter himself it may be not only serviceable to youth, in furnishing a regular plan for the prosecution of this most important study, but useful even to those who have acquired a competent knowledge of general history from the perusal of the works of detached historians, and who wish to methodise that knowledge, or even to refresh their memory on material facts and the order of events. In the composition of these elements the author has endeavoured to unite with the detail of facts so much of reflection, as to aid the mind in the formation of rational views of the causes and consequences of events, as well as of the policy of the actors; but he has anxiously guarded against that speculative refinement which has sometimes entered into works of this nature, which, professing to exhibit the philosophy or the spirit of history, are more fitted to display the writer's ingenuity as a theorist, or his talents as a rhetorician, than to instruct the reader in the more useful knowledge of historical facts. As the progress of the human mind forms a capital object in the study of history, the state of the arts and sciences, the religion, laws, government, and manners of nations, are material parts, even in an elementary work of this nature. The history of literature is a most important article in this study. The author has therefore endeavoured to give to each of these topics its due share of attention; and in that view, they are separately treated, in distinct sections, at particular periods. Of the defects of this work the author is more sensible than perhaps any other person can be. Of any merits it may possess beyond those of simplicity and perspicuity, those are the best judges who have an extensive knowledge of the subject, and who know the difficulty of giving general views, and of analysing a science so comprehensive and complicated as Universal History. ALEX. FRASER TYTLER. Edinburgh. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE admitted superiority of Tytler's Elements of General History over all other works of a similar class, renders it a matter of great regret that its learned author, who died in 1813, did not carry it down to a later period than the close of the seventeenth century, especially as the events of the eighteenth century were of so important and varied a character. I have, however, in the present edition, added a continuation, carrying the work down to the present time; and by revising and comparing the whole work with the writings of the most eminent ancient and modern historians, and where it appeared necessary, either adding corrective and illustrative notes, or amplifying the original text by additions (which are inserted in brackets,) endeavoured to render the work the best historical class-book extant. How far I have succeeded I leave others to judge; suffice it to say that my purpose is simply that of rendering the mass of my fellow countrymen better b |