The past, to their correlative positions, to compress them into space that brings them more within our grasp, and by rejecting the superfluous, and digesting the essential, to enable us to traverse the vast ground of human attainment with pleasure and profit. The author, however, whose history is here presented to the English reader, in order to be duly estimated, must not be measured by a standard like this. To be appreciated, he must be measured by his own times. Neither are we to expect of him the condensed proportions, the judicious selections, and the comprehensive distribution of materials, that mark the productions of the scientific historian; nor was it the intention of our author. If we may be allowed to judge from the work itself, his object appears more like furnishing the materials, which himself or the future historian should handle with a more masterly hand or a more enlarged view.