oa 
i 
%, 
On Learning and the Arts. 471 
and scientific vison, and. though the vanity of 
_ the Greeks may render them very justly suspected 
in their estimate of foreign merit, yet it is pro- 
bable that in this instance they erred not much 
from the truth. But the ruins of Persepolis present 
‘the idea of a structure, which might have rival- 
ed the proudest monument of Grecian architec- 
ture. "They are at this day the admiration of 
Europ artists, to whose judgments and taste 
the hi e: defference is paid. To rude an- 
‘cestors we owe the first idea of a ship, and no 
inconsiderable progress to that “complex and won- 
ul state in which it now exists. To the 
“Greeks and Romans in their more rude and un- 
learned state we are indebted, if a debt it may 
. 1 nl deemed, for the discipline, the order, the com- 
Binations, the evolutions and the general tactics 
of war; nor, unless perhaps i in the application of 
gunpowder has all the science and ingenuity of 
Aig moderns much surpassed them | in this dan- 
gerous arts The practlfe:9 oF astronomy, though 
without a sufficient knowledge of its theory, yet 
founded on principles derived from an obser= 
vance of the motian of the planetary bodies, is 
of very remote antiquity, and. has been applied 
th considerable accuracy by nations of no 
tc character, and but in a moderate de- 
“‘gree) removed from | barbarism. If a simple - 
elementary language, wherein from a-few cha- 
WOLe Vi we 
