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Excerpt from Historical Parallels, Vol. 1 of 3 Valuable, therefore as is the assistance of those authors who have devoted their talents and learning to epitomizing and renderin accessible the story of past ages, it is far from desirab c that we should content our selves with a blind trust in them, without checking their assertions, and filling up their sketches by a more detailed knowledge than it is possible for them to communicate. To apply these observations to the ezcat work, the Histo of Greece contained in the Library of Useful Know e necessarily gives a very short account of many things which deserve to be known in detail, both on account of their historical notoriety and for the ia trinsic value which they possess as striking exam es of human power, passion, and su'ering. Much of t e ex cessive commendation which has been bestowed upon ancient virtue and Intriotism ought probably to be attri buted to the eager intered naturally excited by the re vival of learning and the culiar circumstancm under which it took place. The °scovery of the works of the most celebrated writers of antiquity, whose names at least had not been forgotten, must at any time have pro duced much curiosity and excitement: and peculiarly so when modern literature did not yet possess many names to divide the palm of genius With them. Besides this the political circumstances of the Italian states, in which the new discoveries were at first most successfully and generally prosecuted, would give an additional interest and a peculiar bias to the study of ancient literature; for their inhabitants would naturally be dis osed, as Italians, to exalt in the glories of ancient I y, and as republicans to look for patterns both of polity and of conduct among the famous republics of Greece and Rome. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Fo