STUDY I. 



41 



neither to the polifhed Greeks nor Romans, but 

 to Nations which we denominate barbarous, that 

 we owe the ufe of fimples, of bread, of wine, of 

 domeftic animals, of cloths, of dye-ftuflfs, of me- 

 tals, and of every thing moft ufeful, and moll: 

 agreeable, for human life. 



Modern Europe glories in her difcoveries ; but 

 the invention of the art of Printing, one of the 

 faireft titles to immortality, is to be afcribed to a 

 perfon fo obfcure, that feveral cities of Holland, 

 of Germany, nay, of China, have claimed the dif- 

 covery as their own. Galileo would never have 

 calculated the gravity of air, but for the obferva- 

 tion of a fountain-player, who remarked that wa- 

 ter could rife only up to thirty-two feet in the 

 tubes of a forcing engine. Newton had never read 

 the ftarry heavens, unlefs a fpeftac le -maker's chil- 

 dren, in Zealand, had, at play, with the lenfes in 

 their father's (hop, fuggefted the firft idea of the 

 telefcopic cylinder. Our artillery would never 

 have fubjugated the New World, but for the ac- 

 cidental difcovery of gun-powder by a lazy monk; 

 and whatever glory Spain may pretend to derive 

 from the difcovery of that vaft Continent, the Sa- 

 vages of Afia had planted Empires there, long be- 

 fore the arrival of Cbrifiopher Columbus. What mud 

 have become of that great man himfelf, if the 

 good and fimple inhabitants whom he found in the 



country 



