©ne common law, they seemed as mutual moons, each inva- 

 riably attending the other in its revolutions through the uni- 

 verse, each deriving its chief lustre, and more resplendent 

 radiance, from the same inexhaustible source of light and 

 truth, yet not a little enlivened by the reflex beams of the 

 other. And although the* genius of the Roman people seemed 

 averse from such pursuits, every man in the earlier ages of 

 that state devoting himself particularly to those studies, 

 which were calculated to procure him political pre-eminence, 

 and even to the latest period of the Commonwealth the 

 policy or superstition of the Senate discountenancing the 

 Grecian .philosophy, yet has Rome produced on a philoso- 

 phical subject one of the most sublime, and occasionally, 

 the most harmonious poems in any language; and when 

 learning began to sink under the overwhelming force of bar- 

 barism, we fmd Bocthius, one of the latest of Roman poets, 

 •singing a hynm of consolation to declining philosophy. If 

 we carry our historical view still farther, we find that in the 

 gloomy interval of Gothic ignorance, both were equally neg- 

 ^leoted and uncultivated, that these were the ages of phantas- 

 tic hypotheses and unmeaning quibbles, as well as monkish 

 rhymes and puny witticisms, and that religion was equally 

 corrupted by absurd legendary tales, and frivolous stories of 

 saints and devils, as by the scholastic jargon of metaphysi- 



* Fopulo Romano nunquam ea copia fuit, quia prudentissirous quisque maxinie i>«> 

 gotiosus erat, ingeiiiuni nemo sioe corpore exercebat. Sail. Bel. Cat. 



