The interest, however, which the philosophic historian should take in all that relates to humanity in general, and to the various nations of the earth, ought not to be regulated by the false standard of an indiscriminate equality, that would consider all nations of equal importance, and pay equal attention to all without distinction. This would indeed betray an indifference to, or at least ignorance of, the higher principle implanted in the human breast. But this interest should be measured not merely by the degree of population in a state, or by geographical extent of territory, or by external power, but by population, territory and power combined--by moral worth and intellectual pre-eminence, by the scale of civilization to which the nation has attained. The Tongoosses, though a very widely diffused race, the Calmucks, though, compared with the other nations of central Asia, they have much to claim our attention, cannot certainly excite equal interest, or hold as high a place in the history of human civilization, as the Greeks or the Egyptians; though the territory of Egypt itself is certainly not particularly large, nor according to our customary standard of population, were its inhabitants in all probability ever very numerous. In the same way, the Empire of the Moguls, which embraced China itself, has not the same high interest and importance in our eyes as the Roman Empire either in its rise or in its fall. Writers on universal history have not however always avoided this fault, and have been too much disposed to place all nations on the same historical footing,--on the false level of an indiscriminate equality; and to regard humanity in a mere physical point of view, and according to the natural classification of tribes and races. In these sketches of history, the high and the noble is often ranked with the low and the vulgar, and neither what is truly great, nor what is of lesser importance, (for this, too, should not be overlooked) has its due place in these portraits of mankind.