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promises and the perils of the years in which we live. In the uncertainty of daily events, of contests and revolutions and changing destinies, it is natural to look forward with solemn earnestness to the period when the designs of Providence shall be more truly comprehended and obeyed than they can be in the first moments of their revelation. There are many, however, whose earnestness might be called, with better reason, fear; there are some who, though doubting rather than afraid, stand resolved to chant a funeral service over every rising hope of humanity. Amongst other grounds of greater confidence, as well as of greater humility, history is given us by God; but that it be made of any efficacy, it must not only inform us in regard to the past, but console us with regard to the future. "Without history," says Thomas Fuller, "a man's soul is purblind, seeing only the things which almost touch his eyes"; yet even with history our vision is not always much farther extended.

Of the two ways that are most common in writing or reading history, neither has seemed to me so broad or right as unfailingly to lead its followers to the truth. One of these two is that of the romantic or entertaining, the other, of the ab

* The Holy State, XXII.

stract or instructive school; the latter being intent on stripping the past of every thing like life or feeling, and the former endeavouring, and in many recent instances successfully, to restore to bygone days their animation and their rightful interest. But however great the literary merit of these various productions may have been, however fresh the art and the picturesqueness of some, however profound the philosophy and the lore of others, there has been in many, perhaps in most of them, a blank that neither intellect nor taste alone can supply. It is so, simply because it has been too often forgotten that none can fathom the truths of history except with the plummet of the Christian, and that it is only through the sympathy for all humanity which Christianity commands and the faith in every work of God which Christianity sanctions, that we can comprehend the particular events or the general character of history.

It is even more, then, than at first it seems, and I am arguing against myself in admitting it,to ask from history, or rather from its writers, the preparation of coming as well as the description of bygone generations; for it is easier to be what the world calls a great historian than what one's own heart recognizes as a devout Christian. He whose words stand upon my title-page wrote them thus

more fully:-"Seeing that the history of the world is one of God's own great poems, how can any man aspire to recite more than a few brief passages from it?"* One would not dare, it seems to me, to recite a single passage, except that he might offer his word of interpretation upon some portion, remote or recent, of the Great Poem we are still hearing or witnessing or acting through our lives.

"Of all the creatures both in sea and land,

Only to man hast Thou made known Thy ways,
And put the pen alone into his hand,

And made him secretary of Thy praise!"†

I have endeavoured, therefore, to represent the history of antiquity as that of a period over which Providence was as continually watchful as over our own, and yet without venturing to introduce any religious meditations or aspirations. The teachings of history, indeed, do not admit the ethical or the exhortatory development belonging to works of another class; but if they be accepted with open minds, they can never be regarded as indirect or vague. The universality of Divine government, the spring of all human responsibilities, is the groundwork of every history that deserves the name. It

* Guesses at Truth, 2d edit., p. 354.

† George Herbert.

is this, I trust, which, recognized in the midst of heathen times,* may reassure the readers of these volumes concerning the course prepared for their race towards a liberty, not of Rome nor of America, but that into which Christianity shall so profoundly penetrate as to be one with it in the sight of Heaven.

The present work is intended as one of a series, which I hope, with God's blessing, to complete in my lifetime. Its successors, relating to the Liberty of the Early Christian Ages and the Liberty of the Middle Ages, will, if they be ever written, bring down the history of Liberty to the Reformation. I propose to make the Liberty of England the subject of a work by itself, in which the constitutional and progressive freedom of the nation shall be traced from its origin to its maturity. Further volumes may follow upon the Liberty of Europe since the Reformation, and, lastly, upon the Liberty of America. In mentioning these, I am perfectly aware of the uncertainty of life, and, even

Old Montaigne has a passage which describes these and their lessons in themselves: "Ce temps est propre à nous amender à reculons; par disconvenance plus que par convenance; par différence que par accord." Essais, Liv. III. ch. 8. It is more Christian to recognize the similarities between one generation and another of mankind.

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should that be granted, of capacity to complete so large an enterprise. But I have wished to state that it has been begun, and that the present volumes form the first of the histories proposed. JANUARY, 1849.

NOTE.

THE illustrations to these volumes are all the designs and the generous gift of my more than friend, Charles C. Perkins, to whose affection and taste a large share of any interest that may possibly attach itself to my pages will be readily and deservedly ascribed.

S. E.

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