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INTRODUCTION.

for the construction of his more stately fabric. Notwith-standing the great abundance of biographic materials, his-tory may still be defined, as it has been of old, “ the studyof contradictions.” The circumstances under which his-torical facts are usually recorded are so various in respect tothe feelings and prejudices of the narrators, as to render itvery difficult to obtain a similar account from any twowriters : albeit, they both were eye-witnesses to the occur-rence narrated.

If we go back to the remoter periods of the history ofour species, we find the erratic and predatory tribes, calledJews , misrepresenting in their chronicles the most civilizedinhabitants of the earth, the Egyptians, Tyrians, Sidonians ,and Babylonians . The Tyrians, under the name of Philis-tines, are charged with every species of moral and politicalturpitude. The Greeks, in their histories, describe theMedes, and other “ barbarians,” in any colours but, per-haps, the true. Herodotus, with respect to Egypt , is anexception. The Romans treat their adversaries, especiallythe Carthaginians, with evident injustice; and the adage of“punica jides" has been allowed to descend to posterity,only because their ruthless conquerors took good care thatno trace of Carthaginian history should remain to givetheir calumnies the lie. Upon the advent of those “ goodold times,” the “ dark ages,” which succeeded to the reignof the wholesale murderer Constantine, misnamed “ theGreat,” what statements and counter-statements; what his-tories and counter-histories; what confusion and destructionof books by way of confuting them, as Origen ’s refutationof ^qlsus, &c. Volumes might be composed of historicalcontradictions, in matters of the greatest interest.

But with respect to our own times, and the most recentbiographies of importance, by which the future historianmust be guided to his facts and to his judgments, it is neces-