92 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



of that old learning are rarely fathomed, and yet it were happy for 

 these lands, if our young nobility and gentry, instead of modem maxims, 

 would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. But in these 

 freethinking times, many an empty head is shook at Aristotle and 

 Plato, as well as at the Holy Scriptures. And the writings of those 

 celebrated ancients are by most men treated on a foot with the dry 

 and barbarous lucubrations of the schoolmen. It may be modestly 

 presumed there are not many among us, even of those who are called 

 the better sort, who have more sense, virtue, and love of their country 

 than Cicero, who, in a letter to Atticus, could not forbear exclaiming, 

 * O Socrates et Socratici viri ! Nunquam vobis gratiam referam.' 

 Would to God many of our countrymen had the same obligations to 

 those Socratic writers." ' Siris,' in Berkeley's Works, vol. ii. p. 613. 



