ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING 59 



both unseasonable and irksome to have an author profess he 

 will write a proper history, yet at every turn introduce politics, 

 and thereby break the thread of his narration. All wise history 

 is indeed pregnant with political rules and precepts, but 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, governments, and man- 

 ners, from civil history; the climates and astronomical phe- 

 nomena, 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 



" Nosque ubi primus equis oriens afflavit anhelis, 

 Illic sera rubens accendit lumina vesper," * 



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, more- 

 over, may justly use not only plus ultra, where the ancients 

 used non plus ultra, but also imitabile fulmen where the ancients 

 said non imitabile fulmen 



" Demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen." Virgil. t 



This improvement of navigation may give us great hopes of 

 extending and improving the sciences, especially as it seems 

 agreeable to the Divine will that they should be coeval. Thus 

 the prophet Daniel foretells, that " Many shall go to and fro 

 on the earth, and knowledge shall be increased, "a as if the open- 

 ness 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 Romans, and in many par- 

 ticulars far exceeds them. 



