TO THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, FOR THE PROMOTION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE, THIS fourth edition of "Otis's Botta," is dedicated, in token of acknowledgment for the distinction conferred upon the Translator, on the appearance of the first edition. This honor was not the less flattering for having been imparted early, and in 1821, before the public voice had been declared upon "Gloria est consentiens laus bonorum, inthe merit of the work. currupta vox bene judicantium de excellenti virtute." The writer has not been unmindful of his obligations as a member of this Society, whose objects are the most noble that man can have in view; but has now in manuscript, a careful translation of Cicero's Offices, Old Age and Friendship, comprising the best system of moral Philosophy, by common consent of the wiser part of mankind, for twe thousand years, that the world has ever seen; and of which there has never been an American edition by any other author. Boston, January 9, 1834. ENGRAVINGS IN VOLUME I. Map shewing the situation of the armies in New Jersey, Penn- sylvania and Delaware NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. THERE will be found, in the course of this history, several discourses of a certain length. Those I have put in the mouth of the different speakers have really been pronounced by them, and upon those very occasions which are treated of in the work. I should however, mention that I have sometimes made a single orator say what has been said in substance by others of the same party, Sometimes, also, but rarely, using the liberty granted in all times to historians, I have ventured to add a small number of phrases, which ap peared to me to coincide perfectly with the sense of the orator, and proper to enforce his opinion; this has appeared especially in the two discourses pronounced before congress, for and against independence, by Richard Henry Lee and John Dickinson. It will not escape attentive readers, that in some of these discourses are found predictions which time has accomplished. I affirm that these remarkable passages belong entirely to the authors cited. In order that these might not resemble those of the poets, always made after the fact, I have been so scrupulous as to translate them, word for word, from the original language. 1* TRANSLATOR'S NOTICE TO THE SECOND EDITION THE translator of this history, in laying before his fellow-citizens a second edition of it, would offer them his sincere acknowledgments for their favorable reception of the first; a reception the more gratifying, as, notwithstanding his own high value of the work, it surpassed his most sanguine expectations. It evidently appeared that Botta, like all his great predecessors in the march of immortality, was greeted with the most enthusiasm and admiration by those who were, doubtless, the most conscious of being his fellow-travelers on the road to posterity. How warmly was he welcomed by the surviving patriots who had distinguished themselves the most eminently in the great scenes he describes! The venerable John Adams, on receiving the second volume of the translation, expressed himself in the words following: 'I unite with many other gentlemen in the opinion that the work has great merit, has raised a monument to your name, and performed a valuable service to your country. If it should not have a rapid sale at first, it will be, in the language of booksellers, good stock, and will be in demand as long as the Ameri-' can Revolution is an object of curiosity. It is indeed the most classical and methodical, the most particular and circumstantial, the most entertaining and interesting narration of the American War, that I have seen.' In like manner, the hand that penned the Declaration of American Independence, on receiving the first volume of the translation, having already for some years been possessed of the original, addressed the translator the words of encouragement which are here set down: I am glad to find that the excellent history of Botta is at length translated. The merit of this work has been too long unknown with us. He has had the faculty of sifting the truth of facts from our own histories with great judgment, of suppressing details which do not make part of the general history, and of enlivening the whole with the constant glow of his holy enthusiasm for the liberty and independence of nations. Neutral, as an historian should be, in the relation of facts, he is never neutral in his feelings, nor in the warm expression of them, on the triumphs and reverses of the conflicting parties, and of his honest sympathies with that engaged in the better cause. Another merit is in the accuracy of his narrative of those portions of the same war which passed in other quarters of the globe, and especially on the ocean. |