was an ingenious compliment paid by Virgil to his countrymen; a grave, serious, sober, virtuous people, like ourselves, devoted to the great interests of their country, absorbed in public affairs, and preferring the study of government, or the art of politics, to all other arts whatever: to this art they were indebted for their prudence, generosity, fortitude, and magnanimity; for their excellent laws and institutions; for their admirable skill in negociations; for the treaties they made, the victories they gained, and for their conquests, in almost every corner of the known world; for all which they are so deservedly celebrated and renowned. Part of the Roman, and even part of the Grecian art of politics, happily escaped the injuries of time and accident, and continued, for many hundred years, the constant theme, admiration, and example of all writers on politics; but as we lament the irreparable loss of the greater part of the productions of those wise and venerable ancients in philosophy, history, poetry, &c. so we must despair of recovering the most valuable part of their writings on the art of politics. The Anticatones of Cæsar; the Acta Diurna, which Cicero expressly mentions to have read daily, with great delight and instruction, as containing, Senatus consulta, edicta, fabulæ, rumores, &c. and ten thousand writings of the same kind, are all lost in one common ruin; and of all these daily Papers and Pamphlets, not one, that I know of, is remaining, to discover to us the stupendous genius and art with which they must have been composed, to produce the astonishing effects they manifestly appear to have done, especially in the latter times of these republics; such as, by a sort of magic, to fascinate the understandings and passions of the people, to wield at their pleasure that unwieldy body the multitude; to compel them, as it were, to choose or to dismiss what ministers the authors of them thought proper; to enact or to repeal what laws they pleased; to provoke them to war, or cajole them into peace; in short, to persuade them that Scipio was a knave and a traitor, Aristides a common cheat, Cato a coward, and Socrates a sodomite and an impostor; whereas all the historians, biographers, philosophers, and poets of those countries, agree in representing them as the justest, the greatest, and the wisest men of the times in which they lived, or indeed in the times that succeeded. It is manifest, likewise, that the very people themselves had, for many years together, possessed the same opinion of them; that they were universally beloved, honoured, and revered, until they were dismissed or had resigned, and that after their executions or deaths, they were as universally and sincerely lamented.