Commencement of Oriental Investigations, 9 



agreeable one; for the ascendancy thus gained in the Eastern 

 world, owing to the lust of power and of wealth which mark the 

 darker shades of the European character, and the faithlessness 

 that stains the Asiatic, has been purchased at an expenditure of 

 human blood too enormous to contemplate without horror. Turn- 

 ing then from these scenes of conquest and political greatness, let 

 us direct our views to the fair regions of intellectual power, where 

 the best feelings and perceptions of our nature can dwell with 

 unalloyed delight in the contemplation of objects worthy of the 

 human character ; — objects entirely consonant with the great ends 

 of our being. 



The establishment and extensive prosecution of a commercial 

 intercourse with India, by the principal maritime nations of Eu- 

 rope, was not productive, until nearly two centuries had elapsed, 

 of any considerable accession to the stores of oriental knowledge. 



During this period, one great portion of mankind in Europe 

 was intent on the schemes of conquest and the prospects of 

 wealth excited by the success of the first adventurers in the newly- 

 explored seas. Another part of the community, and that by 

 far the more intelligent, was occupied either in issuing to the 

 world, by means of the new art of printing, the works of the 

 ancient poets, historians, and philosophers, with the commentaries 

 on them prodliced in the monastic ages, or in the disputes on 

 Theological subjects which at length terminated in the Reforma- 

 tion. And when that momentous change had been effected, the 

 writings of Bacon gave an impetus to experimental philosophy, 

 that caused it to exercise an absorbing influence over the minds 

 of the new race of inquirers it had called forth. From the con- 

 joint agency of these circumstances, the oriental fields of re- 

 search long remained almost without cultivation. With America, 

 indeed, the case was different ; a multitude of writers, chiefly 

 natives of the countries whieh first obtained settlements in the 

 Western Hemisphere, were engaged in researches on the origin 

 and nature of the people and the productions, so recently made 

 known to them. The cause of this preference is evident: the 

 discovery of America was that of a " New World :" with in- 

 habitants^ natural phajnomena, and productions of every class, 



