The HISTORY of KNOWLEDGE LEARNING, and TASTE, WITH A NEW MAP OF SPAIN, IMPROVED FROM MENTELLE'S NINE-SHEET MAP. LONDON: PRINTED FOR JOHN STOCKDALE, PICCADILLY. PUBLIC LIBRARY, ASTOR, LEVE AND R. TAYLOR & Co., Shoe Lane; T, GILLET, Crown Court, Fleet Street; & T. DAVISON, Lombard Street, Whitefriars; Printers. PREFACE. IN presenting our Annual Volume to the public we feel satisfied that no preface, either for specific detail or studied eulogium, can be necessary. The plan of the work is sufficiently known; but of the general performance we may be permitted to remark, that if favourable acceptance be deemed a just criterion of literary execution, we shall be justified in reviewing our labours with no inconsiderable feelings of satisfaction. Gratitude for favours received, has operated as a stimulus to increased exertions, and we offer the present Volume to the public, in the confidence that it is entitled to, and will experience, similar approbation with those which have preceded it. We may, perhaps, be excused again adverting to those efforts by which we have been enabled to procure so early a publication of the Volume, and to give it in this respect a superiority over every other work of a similar description;-a superiority whith few will estimate lightly, and which those particularly, who are eager to convey to their friends in remote settlements the earliest arranged intelligence of the events transacted on the theatre of Europe in the preceding year, will know how to appreciate. It is with regret that we find ourselves, in the Historical Department of our Labours, compelled still to detail the atrocities and ravages of war; and that we see year after year pass away, marked by all the crimes of ambition and all the virulence of hostility. To observe and narrate the progress of science and the arts, of wise legislation, philoso phic research and internal improvement, would to us be infinitely more pleasing, than to exhibit that moving picture of guilt and bloodshed, of privation and calamity, to which, through the union of extraordinary talents, ambition, and success in a single individual, the province of historic annals. is now almost exclusively confined. During a great part of the preceding year, the patriotic and benevolent were animated by the hope that a barrier was about to be raised against the oppression under which the civilised world has so long groaned. The flame of opposition kindled in Spain, by the succession of frauds and violences which the despot of the Continent employed against its independence, excited an enthusiasm which the wise were unwilling to repress by calculation, and which in the sanguine was connected with the certainty of success. To aid in its accomplishment the blood and treasure of this country have been employed with an almost unsparing, hand. the result, hitherto, it must be acknowledged, has little tended to verify the fond expectations which were excited; and which, it will be seen another part of the Volume, we cherished with the warmest emotions of our hearts. Still we cannot, we will not, despair: we will not abandon as lost the cause, which is not only the cause of every European nation, but that for which it is the bounden duty of them all to contend with the best energies that they possess. We trust, and, from the papers contained in the present Volume, we know, that the patriots of Spain did not undertake a defence of their rights without counting the costs; -without calculating upon much suffering,, and many But |