anner in which many of the facts herein recorded
have come to hand rendered such an attempt extremely difficult. This
difficulty was likewise increased by one of the grand objects contemplated
in my work, which was to trace the rise of sundry customs and institutions
in these best of cities, and to compare them, when in the germ of infancy,
with what they are in the present old age of knowledge and improvement.

But the chief merit on which I value myself, and found my hopes for future
regard, is that faithful veracity with which I have compiled this
invaluable little work; carefully winnowing away the chaff of hypothesis,
and discarding the tares of fable, which are too apt to spring up and
choke the seeds of truth and wholesome knowledge. Had I been anxious to
captivate the superficial throng, who skim like swallows over the surface
of literature; or had I been anxious to commend my writings to the
pampered palates of literary epicures, I might have availed myself of the
obscurity that overshadows the infant years of our city, to introduce a
thousand pleasing fictions. But I have scrupulously discarded many a pithy
tale and marvelous adventure, whereby the drowsy ear of summer indolence
might be enthralled; jealously maintaining that fidelity, gravity, and
dignity which should ever distinguish the historian. "For a writer of this
class," observes an elegant critic, "must sustain the character of a wise
man writing for the instruction of posterity; one who has studied to
inform himself well, who has pondered his subject with care, and addresses
himself to our judgment rather than to our imagination."

Thrice happy, therefore, is this our renowned city, in having incidents
worthy of swelling the theme of history; and doubly thrice happy is it in
having such an historian as myself to relate them. For, after all, gentle
reader, cities of themselves, and, in fact, empires of themselves, are
nothing without an historian. It is the patient narrator who records their
prosperity as they rise--who blazons forth the splendor of their noontide
meridian--who props their feeble memorials as they totter to decay--who
gathers together their scattered fragments as they rot--and who piously,
at length, collects their ashes into the mausoleum of his work, and rears
a triumphant monument to transmit their renown to all succeeding ages.

What has been the fate of many fair cities of antiquity, whose nameless
ruins encumber the plains of E