ABSTRACT
In the multitude of occupations of which one may judge by the immensity of the work that I place under the gaze of the Nations, in the midst of the agitations with which my constancy has been fatigued, within the persecutions inseparable from the publication of great conceptions and passions which have exhausted themselves against my energy, almost always constrained by those narrow calculations, fearful fortunes and capricious wilfulness that stay the impetus of genius, I shall not offer to my readers that sort of project that loses itself in the vagueness of imaginary combinations, or whose awful feasibility annuls in advance the execution.
