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PREFACE.

T is not my intention to detain the reader by expatiating on the variety, or the importance of the fubject, which I have undertaken to treat; fince the merit of the choice would ferve to render the weakness of the execution ftill more apparent, and still less excufable. But as I have prefumed to lay before the Public a first volume only of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, it will perhaps be expected that I should explain, in a few words, the nature and limits of my general plan.

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The memorable feries of revolutions, which, in the course of about thirteen centuries, gradually undermined, and at length destroyed, the folid fabric of Roman greatness, may, with some propriety, be divided into the three following periods.

The first volume of the quarto, is now contained in the two firft volumes of this octavo, edition.

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