NEW YORK, TWENTIETH CENTURY PUB. CO., 4 WARREN ST. 1890.




PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.


Having recently purchased a set of stereotyped plates of Volney's Ruins,
with a view of reprinting the same, I found, on examination, that they
were considerably worn by the many editions that 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 translator's 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."