[Professor's Smyth's] object is to teach students, and readers generally, how to read history for themselves; to show them the path, and furnish them the best lights for pursuing it; to enable them to form a just estimate of the principal authors, and to bring forward in bold relief those prominent parts of history to which their attention should chiefly be directed. His plan is unfolded with clearness and precision in his Introductory Lecture. It is broad and comprehensive, and such as could not have been carried out, in the finished manner it has been, without a critical examination of a large number of authors, and close and patient meditation upon the contents of their works. There is nothing superficial or ill digested; nothing taken at second hand; the lecturer's mind is brought to bear, with its own original vigor, upon all the subjects that come under his notice; his opinions are frankly and fearlessly expressed, and sustained by a force of reasoning which rarely fails to produce conviction, never to inspire respect and confidence.
He adopts a method at once perspicuous and well suited to the end he has in view. He selects certain periods of history, and groups together the great events in each, investigating their relation to each other in the order of cause and effect, and their results on the civil and political condition of states and communities; preserving, as he advances, an easy and natural transition from one period to another. This method affords occasion for philosophical reflections, in which the author is profound and sagacious, without any of the vague generalization and speculative theories which too much abound in works assuming the title of philosophical history. Professor Smyth's philosophy is of that rational kind which builds itself on established principles and truths, and in which he has so much respect for the good sense of his readers, that he is willing to address himself to their understanding. - Summary by American Preface
