Various plans of historical prelections-Chronological method-Method of treating history as subservient only to the science of politics-Plan of the present work-Division by epochs rejected, and why-a predominant nation always the principal object-Ancient history-Greece-Collateral objects, Egypt, Phoenicia, &c.-Views of government, science, arts, &c.-Rome, its collateral and incidental objects of history-Decline of the empire-Gothic nations-Modern history-Saracens-Charlemagne-Laws, &c. of that age -Britain-Continental European kingdoms-Crusades-Russia, Switzerland -Fall of Eastern empire-Moors-Portuguese discoveries-The Reformation-Asia-India-Revolt of the Netherlands-Age of Henry IV. and Elizabeth-Revolution and close of British history-Spain-France-Sweden— Age of Louis XIV.-Charles XII.-Peter the Great-Conclusion-Progress of Science and Literature in Europe.
INGENIOUS men, whose department in the course of education, both in the foreign universities and in our own, was the science of universal history, have followed different methods or plans of historical prelections. In some of the universities of the Continent, the Epitome of Turselline has been used as a text-book, on which the lectures of the professor were an extended commentary, giving considerable amplitude, and consequently illustration, to what is little more than a dry, though a very perspicuous chronicle of events, from the creation of the world to the end of the seventeenth century. Such were the lectures of Peter Burman, who for many years sustained a high reputation as Professor of History at Utrecht; and such were likewise the prelections of Professor Mackie, in the University of Edinburgh. They were composed in the Latin language, which, down to the middle of the 18th century, was the universal vehicle of academical instruction; an institution which, although attended with one important benefit, namely, the support and diffusion of classical learning, has perhaps been wisely laid aside as unfavorable to the ample and copious illustration of a