scription of the places, where they have acted, and their astronomy, which may enable us to fix with some accuracy the time of their actions: we shall thence be led to the hiftory of fuch other animals, of fuch minerals, and of fuch vegetables, as they may be fupposed to have found in their feveral migrations and fettlements, and fhall end with the uses to which they have applied, or may apply, the rich assemblage of natural fubftances.

I. IN the first place, we cannot furely deem it an inconfiderable advantage, that all our hiftorical researches have confirmed the Mofaick accounts of the primitive world; and our teftimony on that fubject ought to have the greater weight, because, if the result of our obfervations had been totally different, we should nevertheless have published them, not indeed with equal pleasure, but with equal confidence; for Truth is mighty, and, whatever be its confequences, must always prevail: but, independently of our interest in corroborating the multiplied evidences of revealed religion, we could scarce gratify our minds with a more ufeful and rational entertainment, than the contemplation of those wonderful revolutions in kingdoms and states, which have happened within little more than four thousand years; revolutions, almoft as fully demonstrative of an all-ruling Providence, as the

Structure of the universe and the final causes, which are difcernible in its whole extent and even in its minuteft parts. Figure to your imaginations a moving picture of that eventful period, or rather a fucceffion of crouded scenes rapidly changed. Three families migrate in different courses from one region, and, in about four centuries, establish very diftant governments and various modes of fociety: Egyptians, Indians, Goths, Phenicians, Celts, Greeks, Latians, Chinefe, Peruvians, Mexicans, all fprung from the fame immediate ftem, appear to start nearly at one time, and occupy at length those countries, to which they have given, or from which they have derived, their names: in twelve or thirteen hundred years more the Greeks overrun the land of their forefathers, invade India, conquer Egypt, and aim at univerfal dominion; but the Romans appropriate to themselves the whole empire of Greece, and carry their arms into Britain, of which they speak with haughty contempt: the Goths, in the fulness of time, break to pieces the unwieldly Coloffus of Roman power, and seize on the whole of Britain, except its wild mountains; but even those wilds become fubject to other invaders of the fame Gothick lineage: during all these transactions, the Arabs poffefs both coafts of the Red Sea, fubdue the old feat of their first progenitors, and

extend their conquefts on one fide, through Africk, into Europe itself; on another, beyond the borders of India, part of which they annex to their flourishing empire: in the fame interval the Tartars, widely diffused over the rest of the globe, fwarm in the north-eaft, whence they rush to complete the reduction of CONSTANTINE'S beautiful domains, to fubjugate China, to raise in these Indian realms a dynasty splendid and powerful, and to ravage, like the two other families, the devoted regions of Iràn: by this time the Mexicans and Peruvians, with many races of adventurers variously intermixed, have peopled the continent and ifles of America, which the Spaniards, having restored their old government in Europe, discover and in part overcome but a colony from Britain, of which CICERO ignorantly declared, that it contained nothing valuable, obtain the poffeffion, and finally the fovereign dominion, of extenfive American districts; whilst other British subjects acquire a fubordinate empire in the finest provinces of India, which the victorious troops of ALEXANDER were unwilling to attack. This outline of human tranfactions, as far as it includes the limits of Afia, we can only hope to fill up, to frengthen, and to colour, by the help of Afiatick literature; for in history, as in law, we must not follow streams, when we may inveftigate foun

tains, nor admit any fecondary proof, where primary evidence is attainable: I should, nevertheless, make a bad return for your indulgent attention, were I to repeat a dry list of all the Mufelman hiftorians, whose works are preserved in Arabick, Perfian, and Turkish, or expatiate on the hiftories and medals of China and Japan, which may in time be acceffible to members of our Society, and from which alone we can expect information concerning the ancient state of the Tartars; but on the history of India, which we naturally confider as the centre of our enquiries, it may not be fuperfluous to present you with a few particular obfervations.

Our knowledge of civil Afiatick history (I always except that of the Hebrews) exhibits a fhort evening twilight in the venerable introduction to the first book of Moses, followed by a gloomy night, in which different watches are faintly difcernible, and at length we see a dawn fucceeded by a funrise more or less early according to the diverfity of regions. That no Hindu nation, but the Cafhmirians, have left us regular hiftories in their ancient language, we muft ever lament; but from Sanferit literature, which our country has the honour of having unveiled, we may ftill collect fome rays of historical truth, though time and a feries of revolutions have obfcured that light which we might reasonably

have expected from fo diligent and ingenious a people. The numerous Puránas and Itibáfas, or poems mythological and heroick, are completely in our power; and from them we may recover fome disfigured, but valuable, pictures of ancient manners and governments; while the popular tales of the Hindus, in profe and in verse, contain fragments of history; and even in their dramas we may find as many real characters and events, as a future age might find in our own plays, if all histories of England were, like those of India, to be irrecoverably loft: for example, a most beautiful poem by So'MADE VA, COMprising a very long chain of instructive and agreeable ftories, begins with the famed revolution at Pátaliputra by the murder of King NANDA, with his eight sons, and the ufurpation of CHANDRAGUPTA; and the fame revolution is the fubject of a tragedy in Sanfcrit, entitled the Coronation of CHANDRA, the abbreviated name of that able and adventurous ufurper. From these, once concealed but now acceffible, compositions, we are enabled to exhibit a more accurate sketch of old Indian history than the world has yet seen, especially with the aid of well-attefted obfervations on the places of the colures. It is now clearly proved, that the first Purána contains an account of the deluge, between which and the Mohammedan conquests