_Literary Society, July 16, 1779_. IV. Facta Majorum, veluti in Speculum ostendit Historia—Judex œquus bonorum et malorum. It is not without reason, that history has always been considered as the light of ages, the depository of events, the faithful evidence of truth, the source of prudence and good counsel, and the rule of conduct and manners—confined without it to the bounds of the age and country wherein we live, and shut up within the narrow circle of such branches of knowledge as are peculiar to us, and the limits of our own private reflections, we continue in a kind of infancy which leaves us strangers to the rest of the world, and profoundly ignorant of all that has preceded, or even now surrounds us. What is the small number of years which make up the longest life, or what the extent of country which we are able to possess or travel over, but an imperceptible point in comparison of the vast regions of the universe, and the long series of ages which have succeeded one another since the creation of the world? And yet all we are capable of knowing must be limited to this point, unless we call in the study of history to our aid, which opens to us every age and every country, keeps up a correspondence between us and the great men of antiquity, sets all their actions, all their achievements, virtues and faults, before our eyes, and by the prudent reflections it either presents or gives us an opportunity of making, soon teaches us to be wise in a manner far superior to the lessons of the greatest masters.