D. Appleton & Co.'s Educational Publications. PROF. WILHELM PÜTZ. Manual of Ancient Geography and History. Translated from the German. Edited by the Rev. THOMAS K. ARNOLD, "At no period has History presented such strong claims upon the attention of the learned, as at the present day; and to no people were its lessons of such value as to those of the United States. With no past of our own to revert to, the great masses of our better educated are tempted to overlook a science, which comprehends all others in Its grasp. To prepare a text-book, which shall present a full, clear, and accurate view of the ancient world, its geography, its political, civil, social, religious state, must be the result only of vast industry and learning. Our examination of the present volume leads us to believe, that as a text-book on ancient history, for Colleges and Academies, it is the best compend yet published. It bears marks in its methodical arrangement, and condensation of materials, of the untiring patience of German scholarship; and in its progress through the English and American press, has been adapted for acceptable use In our best institutions. A noticeable feature of the book, is its complete list of 'sources of information' upon the nations which it describes. This will be an invaluable aid to the student in his future course of reading." PROF. WILHELM PUTZ. Hand-Book of Medieval Geography and His tory. Translated from the German, by Rev. R. B. PAUL, M. A. 12mo. Price 75 cents. "The characteristics of this volume are-Precision, condensation, and luminous ar rangement. It is precisely what it pretends to be-a manual, a sure and conscientious guide for the student through the crooks and angles of Mediaval history. * * All the great principles of this extended Period are carefully laid down, and the most important facts skilfully grouped around them. There is no period of History for which It is more difficult to prepare a work like this, and none for which it is so much needed. The leading facts are well established, but they are scattered over an immense space. To reduce such materials to a clear and definite form is a task of no small difficulty, and in which partial success deserves great praise. It is not too much to say that it has never been so well done within a compass so easily mastered, as in the little volume which is now offered to the public." PROF. WILHELM PUTZ. Manual of Modern Geography and History. Translated from the German. Revised and corrected. 12mo. 81 50. "This volume completes the series of the author's works on geography and history. First came his consideration of ancient and medieval geography and history; and this continues the subject, from the conquest of the Byzantine empire by the Turks, down to the present time. Every important fact of the period, comprehensive as it is both in geography and history, is presented in a concise yet clear and connected manner; so as to be of value, not only as a text-book for students, but to the general reader for refer ence. Although the facts are greatly condensed, as of necessity they must be, yet they are presented with so much distinctness as to produce a fixed impression on the mind. It is also reliable as the work of an indefatigable German scholar, for correct information relating to the progress and changes of states and nations-literature, the sciences, and the arts-and all that combines in modern civilization. The portion relating to our own continent has been carefully revised, so as to free it from mistakes which all foreigners are liable to make when speaking of our complex institutions of government. Appended to the work is a chronological table; and also an extended series of questions, desig: ed to facilitate the use of the work in the schools," 10 LATE REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF XFORD, HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL, AND MEMBER OF THE ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF ROME. THREE VOLUMES IN ONE. REPRINTED ENTIRE, FROM THE LAST LONDON EDITION. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 200 BROADWAY. MDCCC LIII. PREFACE. In attempting to write the History of Rome, I am not afraid of incurring the censure pronounced by Johnson upon Blackwell,* that he had chosen a subject long since exhausted; of which all men knew already as much as any one could tell them. Much more do I dread the re proach of having ventured, with most insufficient means, upon a work of the greatest difficulty; and thus by possibility deterring others from accomplishing a task which has never yet been fulfilled, and which they might fulfil more worthily. The great advances made within the last thirty years in historical knowledge have this most hopeful symptom, that they have taught us to appreciate the amount of our actual ignorance. As we have better understood what history ought to be, we are become ashamed of that scanty information which might once have passed for learning; and our discovery of the questions which need to be solved has so outrun our powers of solving them, that we stand hu-miliated rather than encouraged, and almost inclined to envy the con-dition of our fathers, whose maps, so to speak, appeared to them com-plete and satisfactory, because they never suspected the existence of a world beyond their range. Still, although the time will, I trust, arrive, when points now altogether obscure will receive their full illustration, and when this work must be superseded by a more perfect history, yet it may be possible in the mean while to render some service, if I shall be able to do any justice to my subject up to the extent of our present knowledge. And we, who are now in the vigor of life, possess at least one advantage which our children may not share equally. We have lived in a period rich in historical lessons beyond all former example; we have witnessed one of the great seasons of movement in the life of mankind, in which the arts of peace and war, political parties and principles, philosophy and religion, in all their manifold forms and influences, have been developed with extraordinary force and freedom. Our own experience has thus thrown a bright light upon the remoter past: much which our fathers could not fully understand, from being accustomed only to. *In his review of Blackwell's Memoirs of the Court of Augustus.-Works, Vol. II. 8vo. 1806. quieter times, and which again, from the same cause, may become obscure to our children, is to us perfectly familiar. This is an advantage common to all the present generation in every part of Europe; but it is not claiming too much to say, that the growth of the Roman commonwealth, the true character of its parties, the causes and tendency of its revolutions, and the spirit of its people and its laws, ought to be understood by none so well as by those who have grown up under the laws, who have been engaged in the parties, who are themselves citizens of our kingly commonwealth of England. Long before Niebuhr's death I had formed the design of writing the History of Rome; not, it may well be believed, with the foolish notion of rivalling so great a man, but because it appeared to me that his work was not likely to become generally popular in England, and that its discoveries and remarkable wisdom might best be made known to English readers by putting them into a form more adapted to our common taste. It should be remembered, that only the two first volumes of Niebuhr's History were published in his lifetime; and although careful readers might have anticipated his powers of narration even from these, yet they were actually, by the necessity of the case, more full of dissertations than of narrative; and for that reason it seemed desirable to remould them for the English public, by assuming as proved many of those results which Niebuhr himself had been obliged to demonstrate step by step. But when Niebuhr died, and there was now no hope of seeing his great work completed in a manner worthy of its beginning, I was more desirous than ever of executing my original plan, of presenting in a more popular form what he had lived to finish, and of continuing it afterwards with such advantages as I had derived from a long study and an intense admiration of his example and model. It is my hope, then, if God spares my life* and health, to carry on this history to the revival of the western empire, in the year 800 of the Christian era, by the coronation of Charlemagne at Rome. This point. appears to me its natural termination. We shall then have passed through the chaos which followed the destruction of the old western empire, and shall have seen its several elements, combined with others which in that great convulsion had been mixed with them, organized again into their new form. That new form exhibited a marked and recognized division between the so-called secular and spiritual powers, and thereby has maintained in Christian Europe the unhappy distinction which necessarily prevailed in the heathen empire between the church and the state; a distinction now so deeply seated in our laws, our language, and our very notions, that nothing less than a miraculous interposition of God's providence seems capable, within any definite * Dr. Arnold died June 12th, 1842. He had completed the present volume, with the exception of adding a running commentary to the last part of it. |