The following Essay, hastily prepared, and—though some time has elapsed since its composition—now hastily corrected for the press, was successful during the year 1836 in gaining an honorary premium, established by William Taylor Copeland , Esq. , M. P., during the year of his Mayoralty. The writer regrets that pressing avocations prevent his devoting to his subject that application and research which alone could make his composition more worthy of the name of the amiable and highly esteemed foun

The attention of the student is so universally directed in modern days to the attainment of Classic Literature, and to the knowledge of that period of History which has been stamped at once as the age of the purest taste and of the highest philosophy, that the youth of our country are too generally in entire ignorance of the early history of their own race; and with few, with very few, exceptions know no more than the names of those who in the “dark ages,” as they are erroneously termed, exercis