412 Biographical Account of [Dec. 



conducted. After some general prospects of what is known of 

 the Assyrian and Egyptian empires, he began with the brilliant 

 and interesting subject of Greece. He treated at length the 

 events of its civil and political history ; and in conducting his 

 narrative brought occasionally into view the situation of the 

 nations by which it was surrounded. He then examined the 

 nature of the various governments which distinguished it ; the 

 different political institutions which they had adopted ; the 

 character of their military establishments ; their principles of 

 colonization, and of internal regulation : and when time had 

 conducted him to the melancholy period of the extinction of 

 their independence, he took a retrospective view of its literary 

 history — of the state of its attainments in arts and science ; and 

 above all of the nature and causes of that unequalled excellence 

 which it attained in all the arts of taste. 



The next great subject which presented itself was the history 

 of Rome ; and in the views he took of this magnificent portion 

 of his course, he followed the same arrangement, and employed 

 the same method of instruction. After recounting its obscure 

 origin and infant institutions — after tracing the progress of its 

 political constitution, until it terminated in that illustrious 

 republic, which, though so long extinct, still reigns, as by some 

 magic spell, over the minds and imaginations of mankind, he 

 followed the progress of its arms through a world hitherto un- 

 known ; and thus gradually introducing to the observation of his 

 students those various nations of the North that were destined 

 in future years to overturn this mighty fabric, he made the 

 easiest, but the most fortunate, transition to the history of 

 modern Europe, and to the examination of the causes that pro- 

 duced the fall of Rome. At this eventful period, he again 

 availed himself of the pause which histoiy afforded him, to take 

 a retrospective view of this great people — to consider their 

 attainments in arts and arms — to compare their progress in 

 science and in literature with that of the mighty people that had 

 preceded them — and to indulge himself in that illustration of 

 the excellence of their greater writers, which he was so well 

 qualified to give, and which, far better than mere critical exa- 

 mination, was fitted to excite the admiration and to form the 

 taste of the young who heard him. 



The histoiy of modern Europe afforded not to Mr. Tytler the 

 same fortunate principle of arrangement which he had found in 

 the ancient ; but another principle of connexion presented itself 

 of which he willingly availed himself. To the historian of modern 

 Europe the natural place of observation is his own country — it 

 is the point of view to which all his interests most obviously 

 conduct him, and from which all the events of the surrounding 

 world fall into somewhat of systematic order and harmonious 

 distance. It was on this principle, therefore, that Mr. Tytler 

 conducted his views of modern history. Considering the history 

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