A HISTORY OF THE ORIENTAL NATIONS, CHIEFLY POSSESSIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN, COMPRISING INDIA, CHINA, AUSTRALIA, SOUTH AFRICA, AND HER OTHER Dependencies or Connexions in the Eastern and Southern Seas, A COMPLETE ACCOUNT OF THEIR HISTORY, RELIGION, LAWS MANNERS AND BY LEITCH RITCHIE, AUTHOR OF "THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY," &c. &c. IN TWO VOLUMES. FOR IBRARY NEW-YORK VOL. I. LONDON: W. H. ALLEN AND CO., 7, LEADENHALL STREET. MDCCCXLVÍZr. LIBRARY PREFACE. "As one saith in a brave kind of expression, the sun. never sets in the Spanish dominions, but ever shines upon one part or other of them." So remarked Bacon of a country which is now one of the least considerable of the powers of Europe, ignorant that one day the "brave expression" would be a simple truth when applied to his own. In like manner, it perhaps never occurred to Gibbon that the phrase he seems to delight so much in repeating, "the Roman World," might be adopted and modified with more than equal propriety by future historians of the British empire. Rome was great and powerful at a time when the rest of the world was mean and weak, but England is a giantess even among the proudest nations of the earth; and as for the extent of her territory, to use the felicitous language of Webster, "her morning drumbeat following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth daily with one continuous and unbroken strain of its martial airs." |