The Publishers annex the following Extracts of Letters commendatory of Gould's Abridgment of Alison's History of Europe.

From Jas. Kent, ex-Chancellor of the State of New York.

"The numbers of Alison's History, as they successively appeared, I read with great interest. I have now read Mr. Gould's Abridgment, and permit me to say, I think it is admirably executed; it is, indeed, one of the best abridgments I ever saw. The mate rial facts are all retained, and stated in strong and perspicuous language; and Mr. Gould has displayed great industry and skill in preserving the substance of so great a history, and yet giving it in language of his own."

From Joseph Story, a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States.

"It seems to me an excellent abridgment of Alison's great work, written in a clear and chaste style, presenting the narrative in an exact form for the general reader, and condensing the facts and materials, so as to bring them within the reach of all classes of persons desirous of information of that most interesting period, and justly to command their confidence. The work cannot fail to be extensively useful; for few can command the leisure to read Mr. Alison's bulky volumes, even if the expense were no object; and all may, as I believe, profit from an abridgment so completely within the reach of the means of the curious and the educated, and whose fidelity may be relied on."

From Rev. J. M. Matthews, D.D., late Chancellor of the University of N. York. "I have examined Mr. Gould's Abridgment of Alison's History of Europe, and have no hesitation in saying that Mr. G. has performed his task with singular fidelity and ability. In abridgments of historical works, the important incidents are often so detached from each other, and from their attending circumstances, as to impair the connexion and interest of the narrative; and the spirit and character of the original are sacrificed for the sake of brevity. Mr. Gould cannot be charged with this fault. He has infused into his Abridgment most of the excellencies which distinguish the History as written by Alison himself; and has conferred a benefit on our seminaries of learning, by bringing within their reach the substance of a work which is acknowledged to be one of the most valuable histories in our language."

From Col. Stone, Deputy-Superintendent of Common Schools in the city of New
York, and Editor of the Commercial Advertiser.

"Mr. Alison's noble work-the noblest of modern histories-notwithstanding the sur prising cheapness and the popular form in which it has been brought out by the Harpers, is, nevertheless, by far too voluminous to be universally read by the people. There are, therefore, thousands and thousands to whom Mr. Gould has rendered a valuable service by the present Abridgment. Upon Mr. Gould's book we place a high estimate. Our knowledge of his character forbids us question its fidelity; and, having read much of his volume, we are free to vouch the clearness and spirit of his narrative, the vigour of his style, and the soundness of his principles."

ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by

EDWARD S. GOULD,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

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PREFACE.

ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE is the most voluminous work of the day; it employed its author twenty-eight years in study and composition; it contains more than double the reading matter of Scott's Napoleon, occupies ten large octavos, and fills between eight and nine thousand pages: such a work—at whatever price it may be published-is sealed to the general reader, as well as to colleges, academies, and other seminaries of learning. The editor of this volume has therefore undertaken to place before his countrymen, within a compass that all may have leisure to read and means to purchase, a condensed account of that eventful period which Mr. Alison styles the era of Napoleon.

With this object in view, the editor has, as he believes, extracted every materia fact from Mr. Alison's work, adding nothing of his own in the way of opinion, argument, or assertion, and endeavoring to present the original narrative— abridged of its repetitions, superfluities, inaccuracies, and inelegancies-in the spirit of its author: the preservation of Mr. Alison's language, however, is but partially attained, as the requisite degree of condensation often rendered that impossible. To avoid misapprehension on this point, it may be proper to say that every line of this volume has been transcribed by the editor's own hand, and not one paragraph is given in the precise words of the original.

It is not to be supposed that the omissions, in the compilation of this book, have been made with unerring judgment; but on that subject the editor contents himself with believing that no two living men would entirely agree as to what should be rejected and what retained in such an Abridgment of such a work.

The campaigns of Wellington in India, which Mr. Alison narrates at great length, have been omitted in the Abridgment on account of their entire irrelevancy: the chapter on Britisu Finances is placed at the end of the volume, in the form of an Appendix.

The chapter on the American War-which the editor believes is destined to an unenviable notoriety whenever it shall be currently circulated--is a tissue of misiepresentation; and, as it has no legitimate connexion with the "History of Europe," is a gratuitous libel. on the people and institutions of the United States, and could not be admitted into an American book without alterations contradictory to the title-page of this volume-it has been wholly omitted.

There are many faults in Mr. Alison's book, which it is to be hoped he may revise for a future edition. Corrections of style cannot, indeed, be expected, for such a process would require a re-writing of the entire work; and, besides, an author capable of so many blunders, would almost necessarily be incapable of amending them. His constant use of the word whole, as synonymous with all, is singularly absurd: "a diplomatic note from the whole sovereigns;" "the whole soldiers retreated;" "he brought the whole guns to the front;" "the whole houses were occupied by marksmen." The word important is reiterated until it forces a smile: almost every town, fortress, and post defended or captured throughout the whole narrative is designated as an "important" one. The repetition of the same word in a sentence is another great fault in Mr. Alison's style: "a large supply of mules was obtained to supply the great destruction of those useful animals ;" "the first business committed to the Senate and Chamber was the nomination of a committee;" "because a brave nation is not to be regarded as overthrown because it has experienced reverses;" "had no alternative but to submit, even on the hard terms of submitting to the cession of Norway;" "while this bloody conflict was going on on the steeps above Zadorra on the right;" "even the generals were shaken by the general contagion;" "obtain for Sweden the support of some foreign power able to support its independence;" "it was owing to the time lost in this march and countermarch that the failure of the operation was owing:" these examples are but a small portion of what might be quoted. A worse fault than this is Mr. Alison's misuse of words: he frequently writes of "a majority of seventyfour to five," "a majority of two hundred and twenty-six to thirty;" "the officers and soldiers of the army were the seat of this conspiracy;" "officials, nominated by the crown, who enjoyed their seats only during life;" "both in the tribune, in the Club of Clichy and in the public journals;""the stocks rose from forty-five to seventy, an advance of twenty-five per cent. ;" "the taxes on the inhabitants were raised to two hundred per cent. on their incomes;" "their respective shares in the partition of Europe were chalked out;" "the Russians and Austrians threw upon each other the late disasters;" "he was believed to be the sole survivor of his fol lowers."

Mr. Alison frequently falls into magniloquence. Speaking of Napoleon's return from Egypt, he says: "Discourses of this sort, in every mouth, threw the public into transports, so much the more entrancing as they succeeded a long period of disaster; the joyful intelligence was announced, amid thunders of applause, at all the theatres; patriotic songs again sent forth their heart-stirring strains from the orchestra; and more than one enthusiast expired of joy at the advent of the hero who was to terminate the difficulties of the Republic." Referring to the retreat of the French army from Germany after the battle of Leipsic, Mr. Alison says: "the French eagles bade a final adieu to the German plains, the theatre of their glories, of their crimes, and of their punishment." When the British troops entered Bordeaux, in 1814, the inhabitants of that town proclaimed Louis XVIII. king: Mr. Alison thus comments on the proceeding: "Thus had England the glory of, first of all the allied powers, obtaining an open declaration from a great city in France in favor of their ancient but exiled monarch-just twenty years

and one month after the contest had begun, from the murder of the best and most blameless of their line."(!) After the battle of Malo-Jaroslawitz, Napoleon held a council of war, of which Mr. Alison remarks: "An Emperor, two Kings, and three Marshals were there assembled: upon their deliberations hung the destinies of the world." This Emperor was Napoleon, the two kings were Eugene Beauharnois and Murat, the marshals, Berthier, Bessières and Davoust; and the time was during the retreat from Moscow, when it was doubtful whether the parties thus deliberating could force their way through the lines of their enemies. In concluding this subject of inaccuracies and inelegancies of style, it may be remarked, that the History of Mr. Alison abounds in mis-prints, for which, of course, he is not responsible, although their correction is important to the accuracy of the work. Pius VII. is denominated Pius VI.; Austria is printed for Asturia, and again for Custrin; Finland for Sweden; Souham for Jourdan; notres liberateurs for nos liberateurs; 31st for the 30th of April; and in an indefinite number of instances the dates in the marginal notes are erroneous.

Of the historical inaccuracies of Mr. Alison, it will suffice to designate a few of the many instances in which he contradicts himself. In speaking of the events at Malo-Jaroslawitz, on the retreat from Moscow, 1812, he says, that was "the first time Napoleon ever retired in an open field from his enemies;" yet at Aspern, in 1809, after a much more disastrous defeat, Napoleon, he says, "retreated from his enemies in an open field." Commenting on the battle of Dresden, August, 1813, he says the action was memorable from being "the last pitched battle Napoleon ever gained;" yet he tells us that Napoleon won the battle of Hanau, October, 1813; of Champaubert, February, 1814; of Montereau, February, 1814 -which also he styles "the last and not the least brilliant of Napoleon's victories;" and, finally, the battle of Ligny, June, 1815. Relating the arbitrary measures of Napoleon to sustain the war and his government, after the battle of Leipsic, Mr. Alison says, "a decree was passed by the Senate vesting the nomination of President of the Chamber of Deputies in the Emperor, and prorogating the seat of such of the Deputies as had expired, and required to be filled up anew, so as to prevent any new election in the present disturbed state of the public mind." Mr. Alison's meaning in this ill-written sentence is, that the Deputies, whose terms of service had expired were made, in the phrase of the present day, to hold over, i. e. to continue to occupy their seats; yet, soon after, in referring to the proceeding, he says, “notwithstanding the pains which had been taken to secure the interest of Napoleon in the Chamber, by granting to him the nomination of its President, and the filling up of the vacant seats by the same authority, it soon appeared," etc. Here we are told that the old members were kept in office and that new members were put into their vacated seats: it is not, indeed, material which of the two accounts is the true one, but the contradiction is a serious blunder in an elaborate History. Again, speaking of the Charter granted by Louis XVIII., after his first restoration, Mr. Alison recites its merits and its faults; in the former enumeration, he says, "prosecution or imprisonment was forbidden, except in the cases provided for by law, and according to its forms:" in the latter, he

says, no provision was inserted to prevent or restrain arbitrary imprisonment, or limit the period during which a person arrested might be detained before trial." The value of Mr. Alison's work is also greatly impaired by an accumulation of useless and uninteresting details; by repetitions, to the third, fourth and fifth time, of the same events; and by the immethodical arrangement of chapters and paragraphs, which places so many things out of the true order of their occurrence, that the reader is constantly perplexed as to the chronological bearing of the incidents upon each other.

It is unnecessary, though it would be easy, to prolong the perhaps ungracious task of pointing out the faults of Mr. Alison's History: the editor has said thus much in dispraise of the work, in order to furnish substantial reasons for undertaking its abridgment; whether he has committed errors equal in number and consequence to those he has detected, is a matter for the public to decide.

NEW YORK, October, 1843.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

The Editor takes the occasion presented by the issuing of a Fourth Edition of this Abridgment, to express his gratification at the decided success of the book; it has been, so far as he knows, universally approved-especially by those whose approbation he was most desirous to secure; and he will add, as a proof of its success, that the number of copies sold in the past sixteen months exceeds six thousand.

The present edition, as well as the one that immediately preceded it, is furnished with an elaborate series of Questions which, without injuring it for libraries, will render it more generally useful in seminaries of learning: its value is also increased by the correction of a great number of verbal and typographical errors, which existed in the earlier editions, and which, indeed, seem to be inseparable from the first publication of a printed book.

NEW YORK, March, 1845.