ancient laws; that of Pisistratus, the punishment of a base and crafty policy, and that of Nabuchodonosor, the dreadful consequences of relapsing into impiety, after due light and admonition. The Prince is at first instructed by fables, to preserve him from the passions of youth; he afterwards instructs himself by his own reflections, by the examples he sees, and by all the adventures he meets with in his travels; he goes from country to country, collecting all the treasures, con∣versing with the great men he finds there, and per∣forming heroic exploits as occasion presents.V. SOME persons, to discredit the author's work, have insinuated that far from doing homage to religi∣on he degrades it.HE should think himself very unhappy to have pro∣duced a work so contrary to his intentions. All that he advances upon religion may be reduced to two prin∣cipal points: the first is to prove against the Atheists the existence of a supreme Deity, who produced the world by his power, and governs it by his wisdom. To this end Zoroaster unvails to us all the wonders of nature, Hermes consults the native and genuine tendency of the heart, and Pythagoras ascends to first principles: and thus the author endeavors to unite the strength of all that sense, natural sentiment, and reason can afford us for the proof of the first and most important of all truths. Tradition strikes in with phi∣losophy: the author has endeavored to shew that the earliest opinions of the most knowing and civilized na∣tions come nearer the truth than those of latter ages; that the theology of the Orientals is more pure than that of the Egyptians, that of the Egyptians less cor∣rupted than that of the Greeks, and that of the Greeks more exalted than that of the Romans: that the pri∣mitive system of the world was that of one supreme Deity; that in order to adapt this idea to the capacity of the vulgar, the divine attributes were represented by 0