It has ever been your generous and pious practice to aid with your purse and valuable counsel unfriended and deserving Youth; and there are many in the various walks of life, who are indebted to you not only for their worldly prosperity, but even for their virtue.

In a work professing, as this does, to touch upon every topic of civil and ecclesiastical history, no name can more appropriately stand at its head than that of him, whose patriotic labours to restore to her pristine independence and utility the truly apostolic Episcopal Church of Scotland were unceasing, and have ultimately been crowned with full success.

Of a like high, and yet more sacred order, have been your exertions to promote the interests of the Magdalen Charity. That purity of life which has marked your private capacity, and that incorruptible integrity of principle which has distinguished your public one, have eminently qualified you for your dignified sway over so godlike an Institution: and the great good you have effected therein has been registered by a Hand which never records in vain.

Permit me to close this address with my most sincere wishes that you may long continue an ornament to learning, religion, and your family, and a blessing to your country and your friends; and allow me to subscribe myself,

Dear Sir,

Your most obliged and

Most humble Servant,

ELMS, MITCHAM, SEPTEMBER 1, 1838.

PHILIP PRINCE.

PREFACE.

A VERY few remarks will explain the intentions of the Author in bringing before the Public a new compendium of Universal History and Biography.

To those engaged in the instruction of Youth, the value of a history of the world, arranged in the simple order of time, both sufficiently concise and explanatory, and judiciously divided into periods, will be readily acknowledged.

The labour of the Author, therefore, has been to comprise such a history in a single volume. Though classical events have, on that account, been necessarily abbreviated, it will be found, on placing the book in the pupil's hands, that few transactions and Characters of Greece and Rome have been left without mention: certainly no important fact or name has been omitted.

Where the place of truth, in early records, has been occupied by fable, the fable, rather than leave a blank, has been suffered to remain. It is allowed, on all sides, that such narratives were rather corrupted facts than entire fictions; and they have become too legalized by the prevailing system of baseing education on Greek and Latin, to allow of their total exclusion.

Intelligence has been gleaned from all sources believed to be authentic. History is, or ought to be, a true relation. There can therefore be nothing original in a work which aims at registering events with the finger of truth, if indeed we except opinions upon those events. Such opinions as have been offered in this book must be regarded, not as resulting from the author's wish to dogmatize, but from his sincere desire to instil sober sentiments into the youthful mind.

The Biography has been selected to afford the best view of the progress of history and science, to guide the reader in the choice of authors, and, what is of most importance, to point out the conduct of the good for imitation, and that of the bad for censure and aversion.

There are no deviations in the work from the usual course of historians which need be noticed, beyond the introduction of the reign of Matilda, as independent of that of Stephen, and the carrying on of the Middle Ages to the death of the third Richard. The great change in the habits and language of our country effected by printing, began not to display itself until (strictly speaking) the reign of the eighth Henry: and before that period, both humane letters and physical science were at a sufficiently low point in England, to warrant the extension of the Middle Ages of British History to the accession of the Tudor family. The reign of Matilda is introduced with as fair reason as that of Edward V.; since, although might was too often prevalent over right in the early periods, the princess in question was not only the undoubted heiress of the crown, but

was put in legal possession of it by the usual forms. While the French nation place Louis XVII. in their list of sovereigns, hommage aux dames alone, swayed as the British sceptre now is by a female hand, should be sufficient excuse for our insertion of Matilda's name in the list of British monarchs.

Lastly, every book attempting to crowd within its limits the events of all time, must necessarily afford but a skeleton of Universal History. That skeleton, however, the diligent scholar may beneficially exercise himself in filling up; and it is gratifying to the author to state that, after using the substance of his work during a course of years, many of his pupils have passed, on entering various Public Schools, an examination in History so creditable, as to bring a distinct acknowledgment to him of the fact from more than the parents of the boys. That approbation has been his principal incentive to publish.