AN UNIVERSAL HISTORY. To the DAUPHIN. T of T The HOUGH hiftory were no use to other men, it general fhould be made the ftudy defign of princes. There is no work. better means of difcovering to them the power of paffions and interefts, the importance of times and conjunctures, and the confequences of good and evil counfels. Hiftories are compofed only of fuch actions as they are engaged in, and every thing in them feems calculated for their use. If experience is neceffary towards their acquiring that prudence which teaches to reign well, there is nothing more useful for their inftruction, than to join B their their own daily experience to the ex→ amples of paft ages. Whereas they ufually learn only at the hazard of their fubjects, and of their own glory, to judge of the critical affairs that come before them; by the aid of hiftory they form their judgment upon paft events, without risking any thing. When they fee even the most secret faults of princes, exposed to the view of all men, notwithstanding the falfe praises beflowed on them in their life-time, they are ashamed of the vain delight which flattery occafions them, and convinced that true glory can only confift with merit. Befides, it were fhameful, not to fay for a prince, but in general for any gentleman, to be unacquainted with mankind, and the memorable revolutions which the courfe of time has produced in the world. If we do not learn from history to diftinguish times, we shall reprefent men under the law of nature, or under the written law, fuch as they are under the evangelical; we fhall confound the Perfians conquered under Alexander, with the Perfians victorious under Cyrus; we shall make Greece as free in the days of Philip, as in thofe of Themistocles, or Miltiades; the Roman people as highfpirited fpirited under the emperors, as under the confuls; the church as quiet under Dioclefian, as under Conftantine; and France, torn with civil wars in the time of Charles IX. and Henry III. as powerful as in the time of Lewis XIV. when united under fo great a monarch, fhe alone triumphs over all Europe. It was, SIR, to avoid these inconveniencies, that you have read fo many ancient as well as modern hiftories. It was expedient, before all things, to make you read in fcripture, the hiftory of the people of God, which is the foundation of religion. You have not been left ignorant of the Grecian, nor of the Roman history; and what was to you of still greater importance, you have been carefully inftructed in the history of that kingdom, which you are bound one day to render happy. But left these hiftories, and thofe you have yet to learn, fhould confufe one another in your mind, there is nothing more neceffary than to fet before you in a distinct, but concife, manner, the feries of all ages. This fort of univerfal hiftory, is to the hiftories of each country and people, what a general map is to particular ones. In particular maps you see the whole detail of a kingdom, or proB 2 vince vince in itself; in general maps you learn to fituate those parts of the world in their whole; you fee what Paris, or the ifle of France, is in the kingdom, what the kingdom is in Europe, and what Europe is in the World. Juft fo particular hiftories represent the feries of events, that have happened to a people with all their respective circumstances turn, into; but in order to understand the whole, we must know the relation each history bears to others: which is only to be effected by an abridgment, wherein we fee, as it were with oneglance, the whole order of time. Such an abridgment, SIR, exhibits a noble spectacle to your view. You see all preceding ages unveil themselves, fo to speak, in a few hours before you: you fee how empires fucceed one another, and how religion, in its various ftates, fupports itself from the beginning of the world, down to our days. 'Tis the progrefs of thefe two particulars, I mean that of religion, and that of empires, that you ought to imprint upon your memory; and as religion and political government are the two hinges, whereon all human things turn, to fee whatever concerns those particulars fummed up in an epitome, and by this means to discover the whole |