Sketch of the Life of Professor Heeren. 113 



ture, was received by the public with avidity. The first edition 

 was bought up in the course of one year. A second appeared 

 in 1811, as well as several counterfeits. To these labours is to 

 be added a course of lectures on the Crusades, from which M. > 

 Heeren detached a memoir, which, in 1808, carried the prize 

 at the Institute of France. In 1821, the Academy of Inscrip- 

 tions and Belles Lettres elected him among the number of f<J-^ 

 reign associates, in the place of Wyttenbach. 



He also published some details respecting a course of lectures 

 on Statistics, which he delivered at the University, but taking 

 the term in a much more extended significati6n than that 

 usually given it. He did not confine himself to cyphers and 

 tables, but included all that relates to the spirit of constitutions, 

 as well as to the administration of states. Viewing nations, not 

 as machines, but as moral beings, which have each their pecu- 

 liar manner of acting, he took certam states as representatives of 

 the principal forms of constitution and administration. For 

 example, he took Great Britain as a monarchy with a free con- 

 stitution and administration ; France, as a free monarchy with 

 an absolute administration ; Russia with a constitution and an 

 administration both absolute ; and the United States of North 

 America as a federative republic, with sovereignty of the people. 

 Such are the ideas which enlivened his historical productions. 

 What, in fact, is the study of states when they are considered as 

 inert masses, without soul or life? It must be admitted, then, 

 that in history there is something besides facts. Facts are de- 

 livered to us to serve as an exercise to the mind ; the object of 

 the philosophical historian is to discover their value and signifi- 

 cation. 



The learned author of the Manual of Ancient History pre- 

 sents to us, in his treatise on the Policy and Commerce of the Na- 

 tions of Antiquity, the intellectual and political development of 

 the nomadic and agricultural nations, and traces the origin and 

 progress of the commercial relations down to the period of the 

 discovery of America. The traditions of the ancients, the re- 

 searches of all the writers of modern times, and the accounts ob- 

 tained on the spot by the latest travellers, as Cailliaud, Belzoni, 

 Porter, Niebuhr, and ChampoUion, are detailed and analyzed 



VOL. XIV. NO. XXVn. JANUARY 1833. H 



