Excerpt from Masters in History: Gibbon, Grote, Macaulay, Motley Neither this book nor the series of which it forms a part pretends to any higher claim than to be a concise epitome of the lives which it recounts, designed for those whom youth, business, disinclination, or lack of Oppor tunity prevents perusing long biographies, but who nevertheless desire, as shortly as may be, to know what those great men were, what they did, and how they did it. The design being purely personal, criticism is intro duced only to give a more complete presentation of the subjects and the lessons they teach, and to illustrate, embellish, or vary the narrative. We are sanguine that such an effort will be found to be of use by those among whom it is believed to be most desiderated - from schoolboys who have little more than read their first novel to business - men whose exacting occupations leave scanty leisure for the pursuit of knowledge. 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.