Volney s Ruins, with a view of reprinting the same, I found, on examination, that they were considerably worn by the many editions thai had been printed from them, and that they greatly needed both repairs and corrections. A careful estimate showed that the amount necessary for this purpose would go far towards reproducing this standard work in modern type and in an improved form. After due reflection this course was at length decided upon, and all the more readily, as by discarding the old plates and resetting the entire work, the publisher was enabled to greatly enhance its value, by inserting the translators preface as it appeared in the original edition, and also to restore many notes and other valuable material which had been carelessly omitted in the American reprint. An example of an important omission of this kind may be found on the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth pages of this volume, which may be appropriately referred to in this connection. It is there stated, in describing the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia, and the ruins of Thebes, her opulent metropolis, that There a people, now forgotten, discovered, while others were yet barbarians, the elements of the arts and sciences, A race of men, now rejected from society for their sable skin and frizzled hair, founded on the study of the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe. A voluminous note, in which standard authorities are cited, seems to prove that this statement is substantially correct, ,and that we are in reality indebted to the ancient Ethiopians, jtothe fervid imagination ofthe persecuted and despised negro, for the various religious systems now so highly revered byij the different branches of both the Semitic and A ryan races, i This fact, which is so frequently referred to in Mr.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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