Excerpt from The Spirit of General History, in a Series of Lectures: From the Eighth, to the Eighteenth Century; Wherein Is Given a View of the Progress of Society, in Manners and Legislation, During That Period Portraits, for our entertainment and infiruc tion. 'in contemplating the characters of nations, or of eminent perfons, we feem to walk ina large gallery of family pictures, and. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.