Xiv ON ASIATIC HISTORY, 



L In the first place, we cannot surely deem it an 

 inconsiderable advantage, that all our historical research- 

 es have confirmed the Mosaic accounts of the primi- 

 tive world ; and our testimony on that subject ought 

 to have the greater weight, because, if the result of 

 our observations had been totally different, we should 

 nevertheless have published them, not indeed with 

 equal pleasure, but with equal confidence ; for Truth 

 is mighty ) and, whatever be its consequences, must al- 

 ways prevail : but, independently of our interest in 

 corroborating the multiplied evidences of revealed 

 religion, we could scarce gratify our minds with a 

 more useful and rational entertainment than the con- 

 templation of those wonderful revolutions in king- 

 doms and states, which have happened within little 

 more than four thousand years ; revolutions almost 

 as fully demonstrative of an all-ruling Providence as 

 the structure of the universe, and the final causes 

 which are discernible in its whole extent, and even in 

 its minutest parts. Figure to your imaginations a 

 moving picture of that eventful period, or rather a 

 succession of crowded scenes rapidly changed. Three 

 families migrate in different courses from one re- 

 gion, and, in about four centuries, establish very- 

 distant governments and various modes of society : 

 Egyptians, Indians, Goths, Phen/cians, Celts, Greeks, 

 Latians, Chinese, Peruvians, Mexicans, all sprung 

 from the same immediate stem, appear to start nearly 

 at one time, and occupy at length those countries, to 

 which they have given, or from which they have de- 



rived. 



