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VOLUME I.

ROYS

MECHANICS

STITU

INSTITU

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring;
for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business: for expert men
can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling
of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them
too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar:
they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning
by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by
experience.-Bacon.

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CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN, LA BELLE SAUVAGE YARD,

LUDGATE HILL, E. C.

TO OUR READERS

A GLANCE at the opposite Index will snow to the purchasers of this volume what we have done, and are now doing, for the Education of the People. Our exertions have met with wide-spread and heart-felt encouragement, and we gratefully express our acknowledgments for the same. We shall make it our endeavour still more to deserve the encouragement of our subscribers, by increased efforts for their advancement in knowledge and learning. We intend to finish in the next volume, if possible, all the subjects which have been begun in this volume. Of course, it cannct de expected, under such circumstances, that we can commence a great variety of new subjects; as we wish to do justice to those which we undertake. Some of these, however, may be mentioned, as Penmanship, Short-hand, Mechanics, Chemistry, Astronomy, and Natural Philosophy. We have still much to do in Arithmetic, Geometry, and Geography, subjects of the greatest importance to the community at large, and subjects well calculated to expand, improve, and strengthen the reasoning powers; but as the bow must not be always bent, we shall endeavour, from time to time, to relieve these with lighter studies, as we have done in the present volume.

15 FEB 14

LESSONS IN

ANCIENT HISTORY.-No. I.

HISTORY, in its narrowest sense, is the recital of past events. In its wider and higher meaning, it not merely relates bygone occurrences, but inquires into their causes and consequences. These descriptions will hold good at whatever branch of it we look. There is Natural History, which has for its subjects the various natural occurrences which have taken place in the world and the different orders of animal and vegetable life which inhabit it; there is Life History, or biography, which records the sayings and doings of individual men; and lastly, there is the History of Nations, which tells of the various changes and revolutions which have occurred in human society, with the causes which led to them and the results by which they have been followed. It is to this last

mitters of great crimes, unless we have a thorough acquaint-
ance with all the details of the act, whatever it may have
been, to which those motives have led. By it, as by their fruit,
we judge of them; and thus form our opinions of the cha-
racters of those men who have acted a great part in the
history of individual nations, or of the world at large. As
man's actions are the truest clue to his character, so it is
only from the actions of Alexander, Julius Cæsar, Cromwell,
Washington, and Napoleon, that, bearing in mind the out-
ward circumstances which pressed upon each of them, we can
Nor is the making us acquainted with great
form an intelligent and just opinion of the characters of
these men.
actions, and thus with their authors, the only or chief advantage

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PILLARED HALL OF THE PALACE OF CARNAC.

class of subjects that the general term History is usually
applied.
Now as all the changes which have taken place in the in-
ternal or external circumstances of nations, from the earliest
ages up to the present time, have appeared only the visible
results of the workings of individual minds, it follows that
history, in its most exalted province, becomes a record of
the human mind in the successive developments which it has
undergone, and of the progress which it has made from
age to age. But this is, as we have said, the highest de-
partment of historical science; and before attempting the study
of it, an intimate familiarity with the facts of history is ne-
cessary. We cannot properly put a value upon the motives
which have influenced the achievers of great actions or the com-
VOL. I.

Presenting human nature as it does, in so many different lights, it which a knowledge of history brings with it. spreads out, as in a map, the varied experience of ages, for the instruction and self-guidance of him who reflects while he reads. And from this he learns that the chief elements of human character are the same in all; that the same mental system, however undeveloped in some, and highly culti vated in others, belongs to the whole human family; and thus ages of the world, and under every variety of circumstances, the wholesome and warning lesson is taught him, that, in all as nations, the maxim holds good, that "vice is its own whether it refer to men as individuals, or men collectively is the advantage of the man who is well versed in history, ove punisher, and virtue its own rewarder." How great, then,

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