Daniel thought himself a historian, because he transcribed dates and narratives of battles, of which I can understand nothing. He should have informed me of the rights of the nation, the rights of the chief corporate establishments in it; its laws, usages, manners, with the alterations by which they have been affected in the progress of time. This nation might not improperly address him in some such language as the following:--I want from you my own history rather than that of Louis le Gros and Louis Hutin; you tell me, copying from some old, unauthenticated, and carelessly-written chronicle, that when Louis VIII. was attacked by a mortal disease, and lay languishing and powerless, the physicians ordered the more than half-dead monarch to take to his bed a blooming damsel, who might cherish the few sparks of remaining life; and that the pious king rejected the unholy advice with indignation. Alas! Daniel, you are unacquainted, it seems, with the Italian proverb--"_Donna ignuda manda l'uomo sotto la terra_." You ought to possess a little stronger tincture of political and natural history. The history of a foreign country should be formed on a different model to that of our own. If we compose a history of France, we are under no necessity to describe the course of the Seine and the Loire; but if we publish a history of the conquests of the Portuguese in Asia, a topographical description of the recently explored country is required. It is desirable that we should, as it were, conduct the reader by the hand round Africa, and along the coasts of Persia and India; and it is expected that we should treat with information and judgment, of manners, laws, and customs so new to Europe. We have a great variety of histories of the establishment of the Portuguese in India, written by our countrymen, but not one of them has made us acquainted with the different governments of that country, with its religious antiquities, Brahmins, disciples of St. John, Guebers, and Banians. Some letters of Xavier and his successors have, it is true, been preserved to us. We have had histories of the Indies composed at Paris, from the accounts of those missionaries who were unacquainted with the language of the Brahmins. We have it repeated, in a hundred works, that the Indians worship the devil. The chaplains of a company of merchants quit our country under these impressions, and, as soon as they perceive on the coast some symbolical figures, they fail not to write home that they are the portraits and likenesses of the devil, that they are in the devil's empire, and that they are going to engage in battle with him. They do not reflect that we are the real worshippers of the devil Mammon, and that we travel six thousand leagues from our native land to offer our vows at his shrine, and to obtain the grant of some portion of his treasures.