Excerpt from An History of England, Vol. 1: In a Series of Letters From a Nobleman to His Son There feems to be a natural tendency in every nation to run its antiquity as far back as pofiible, and when once they have arrived at the regionso of fie'tion, no bounds are fer to*the wonders of every narration. Were we to take our character of the ancient inhabitants of this inand from the lea gends monuments or traditions which have been eft by thofe inhabitants themfelves we might be apt to imagine, that arts even in that early period were cultivated and fciences known to fome de gree of perfeetion. The Druids, if weobelieve forne fragments of their own, underflood ai'tronomy and medicine, and gave lefl'ons in morality and meta phyfics. But what credit can be given to the ac counts of a barbarous people told by themfelves The knowledge and learning indeed of their priefis might be great, if compared with the almoft brutal' fimplicity and ignorance of the rei't of the people but it could nor deferve the name of fcience, if put in competition with what was known and prac tifed by their polite contemporaries of Greece and Rome. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.