This volume appears three years later than, when the second edition of the first was publisht, I confidently thought it would have done; and I am bound to explain the occasion of this delay to the friendly reader who may have complained of it.

Ever since the continuation of my history was interrupted, my mind had been in a very different state with regard to the contents of the second volume and to those of the first. With the latter I was incessantly busied: every fresh piece of information I acquired concerning the original institutions of other nations combined itself with the researches there commenced into kindred institutions at Rome; and many of my views were modified by the sight of Rome and of Italy. To the second volume, which relates only to particular points in the condition and laws of the Romans, and was never recalled to my thoughts by any such occasions, I had become a stranger. At the same time I knew very well that the dissertations comprised in it were incomparably more mature and complete than those in the first: in the former, especially in that on the agrarian institutions, the investigation of which had been gone through before the design of treating the history of Rome arose in my mind, there was nothing to correct, little to add.