i62 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



nations, I ought to except ihe men,:ind particularly the young men, 

 of this age, who generally believe thcmfelves to be better men than 

 their fathers, or than any of their predecefTors. — But, to return to 

 our fubjedt : 



Nor is it in Britain only that this decline of the human body is to 

 be obferved. It is, in a greater or lefs degree, all over Europe. The 

 King of Pruffia's army, according to my information, is nothing, in 

 refpedl to the ftature of men, like what it v/as when he entered Sa- 

 xony in the beginning of the laft war, at the head of eighty thoufand 

 men, of whom there was none, even in the middle ranks, that was 

 below fix feet, as I was told by a gentleman who was prefent at the 

 review of them. This decline has happened in the memory of men, 

 who are not yet old. But, when we go farther back, the fuperiority in 

 bodily ftrength, and, I fuppofe, in fize, to the men of this generation, 

 appears, from memorials yet extant, to be ftill greater. Thefe 

 memorials are military weapons, fuch as the fwoid of Charles XII. 

 of Sweden, which a late traveller in the north, Mr Wraxall, faw at 

 Rofenbourg, a palace of the King of Denmark, which was four feet 

 long in the blade, and fuch as, he is pofitive, the prefent King of 

 Denmark could not draw ; and he doubts whether he could heanje 

 it, as he exprefles it *. What the ftature of Charles was, I do 

 -not know ; but the ftature of his antagonift, Peter, the Emperor of 

 Ruffia, is well known at Peterfburgh, from an image of wax there 

 preferved of him, to have been fix feet four inches — a ftature much 

 exceeding that of the prefent heir-apparent of that empire, or, I be- 

 lieve, of any of the grandees in it. 



If we go farther back, we find, in Elbing, a town of Germany, 

 fwords, which are there preferved, of the Knights of the Teutonic 



order, 



♦ Wraxall's Tour, p. 28, of the fecor.d edition. 



