CHAP. X.] PROSPECT OF ADVANCKMENT IN SCIENCE. 93 



kind of ruminated history we highly esteem, provided the 

 writers keep close to it professedly, for it is both unseason 

 able and irksome to have an author profess he will write a 

 proper history, yet at every turn introduce politics, and 

 ihereby break the thread of his narration. All wise his 

 tory is indeed pregnant with political rules and precepts, 

 6ut the writer is not to take all opportunities of delivering 

 himself of them. 



Cosmographical history is also mixed many ways, as 

 taking the descriptions of countries, their situations and 

 fruits, from natural history; the accounts of cities, govern 

 ments, and manners, from civil history; the climates and 

 astronomical phenomena, from mathematics : in which kind 

 of history the present age seems to excel, as having a full 

 view of the world in this light. The ancients had some 

 knowledge of the zones and antipodes, 



&quot; Nosque ubi primus equis oriens afflavit anhelia, 

 Illic sera rubens accendit lumina vesper,&quot; 



though rather by abstract demonstration than fact. But 

 that little vessels, like the celestial bodies, should sail round 

 the whole globe, is the happiness of our age. These times, 

 moreover, may justly use not only plus ultra, where the 

 ancients used non plus ultra, but also iinitabile fulmen where 

 the ancients said non imitabile fulmen, 



&quot; Demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen.&quot;* 



This improvement of navigation may give us great hopes, 

 of extending and improving the sciences, especially ae 

 it seems agreeable to the Divine will that they should be 

 coeval. Thus the prophet Daniel foretells, that &quot; Many 

 shall go to and fro on the earth, and knowledge shall be in 

 creased,&quot; c as if the openness and thorough passage of the 

 world and the increase of knowledge were allotted to the 

 same age, which indeed we find already true in part : for the 

 learning of these times scarce yields to the former periods or 

 returns of learning, the one among the Greeks and the 

 other among the Humans, and in many particulars far ex 

 ceeds them. 



Virgil, Georgics, i. 251. b Virgil, ^Enoid, vi. 590. 



c Dan. ii. 4. 



