beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character and habit of
a blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and instruments of murder, and
followed by a frantic and intoxicated multitude, but under the placid
and chaste aspect of Justice, holding with a pure and unsullied hand the
sacred scales in which the actions of mortals are weighed on the brink
of eternity.


The first translation was made and published in London soon after the
appearance of the work in French, and, by a late edition, is still
adopted without alteration. Mr. Volney, when in this country in 1797,
expressed his disapprobation of this translation, alleging that the
translator must have been overawed by the government or clergy from
rendering his ideas faithfully; and, accordingly, an English gentleman,
then in Philadelphia, volunteered to correct this edition. But by his
endeavors to give the true and full meaning of the author with great
precision, he has so overloaded his composition with an exuberance
of words, as in a great measure to dissipate the simple elegance and
sublimity of the original. Mr. Volney, when he became better acquainted
with the English language, perceived this defect; and with the aid of
our countryman, Joel Barlow, made and published in Paris a new, correct,
and elegant translation, of which the present edition is a faithful and
correct copy.




CONTENTS

Publisher's Preface