Statues, inscriptions, and other public monuments, which aid in perpetuating the memory of illustrious persons, and transmitting to posterity the services they have rendered their country, were accounted, among the Romans, as the most honourable rewards that could be bestowed on great actions; and virtue, in those ancient times, thought no recompense more worthy of her than the immortality which such monuments seemed to promise. Rome having produced so many examples of a disinterested patriotism and valour must have been filled with monuments of this description when taken by the Gauls. But these honorary memorials were thrown down along with the buildings, and buried in the ruins. If any escaped, it was but a small number; and the greatest part of those that were to be seen at Rome in the eighth century of the city, were founded on fabulous traditions which proved that the loss of the true monuments had occasioned the substitution of false ones. Had the genuine monuments been preserved at Rome, even till the period when the first regular annals began to be composed, though they would not have sufficed to restore the history entirely, they would have served at least to have perpetuated incontestably the memory of various important facts, to have fixed their dates, and transmitted the glory of great men to posterity. On what then, it will be asked, was the Roman history founded, and what authentic records were preserved as materials for its composition? There were first the _Leges Regiæ_. These were diligently searched for, and were discovered along with the Twelve Tables, after the sack of the city: And all those royal laws which did not concern sacred matters, were publicly exposed to be seen and identified by the people(114), that no suspicion of forgery or falsification might descend to posterity. These precautions leave us little room to doubt that the _Leges Regiæ_, and Laws of the Tables, were preserved, and that they remained as they had been originally promulgated by the kings and decemvirs. Such laws, however, would be of no greater service to Roman history, than what the _Regiam Majestatem_ has been to that of Scotland. They might be useful in tracing the early constitution of the state, the origin of several customs, ceremonies, public offices, and other points of antiquarian research, but they could be of little avail in fixing dates, ascertaining facts, and setting events in their true light, which form the peculiar objects of civil history.