He says: "The history of Greece exposes the dangerous turbulence of democracy, and arraigns the despotism of tyrants. By describing the incurable evils inherent in every republican policy, it evinces the inestimable benefits resulting to liberty itself from the lawful dominion of hereditary kings, and the steady operation of well-regulated monarchy." In the year 1784 appeared the first volume of WILLIAM MITFORD'S "History of Greece", subsequently extended to eight and ten volumes, 8vo. It is the first history of Greece that combines extensive research and profound philosophical reflection; but it is "a monarchical" history, by a writer of very strong anti-republican principles. "It was composed," says Alison, the distinguished historian of modern Europe, "during, or shortly after, the French Revolution; and it was mainly intended to counteract the visionary ideas in regard to the blessings of Grecian democracy, which had spread so far in the world, from the magic of Athenian genius." Says Chancellor Kent: "Mitford does not scruple to tell the truth, and the whole truth, and to paint the stormy democracies of Greece in all their grandeur and in all their wretchedness." Lord Byron said of the author: "His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants, abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and--what is strange, after all--his is the best modern history of Greece in any language." But this was penned before Thirlwall's and Grote's histories were published. Lord Macaulay says of Mitford: "Whenever this historian mentions Demosthenes he violates all the laws of candor and even of decency: he weighs no authorities, he makes no allowances, he forgets the best authenticated facts in the history of the times, and the most generally recognized principles of human nature." The North British Review, after calling Mitford "a bad scholar, a bad historian, and a bad writer of English," says, farther, that "he was the first writer of any note who found out that Grecian history was a living thing with a practical bearing." The next truly important and comprehensive Grecian history, published from 1835 to 1840, in eight volumes, 8vo, was written by CONNOP THIRLWALL, D. D., Bishop of St. David's. It is a scholarly, elaborate, and philosophical work evincing a thorough knowledge of Greek literature and of the German commentators. The historian Grote said that, if it had appeared a few years earlier, he should probably never have undertaken his own history of Greece. "I should certainly," he says, "not have been prompted to the task by any deficiencies such as those I felt and regretted in Mitford."