C^JlP. X.] TROSPfedt Of ADtiKSKMENT IK S(;I^:NCtt. 93 



kind of ruminated liistory we highly esteem, provided the 

 waiters keep close to it professedly, for it is both unseason- 

 able and irksome to have ^n Author profess he will write a 

 proper history, yet at every turn introduce politics, and 

 ihereby break the thread of his naiTation. All wise his- 

 tory is indeed pregnant with political rules and precepts, 

 (6ut the writei* is not to take all opportunities of delivering 

 liimself of them. 



CosmogrdphiGal history is also mixed many -ways, — an 

 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, — 



** Nosque ubi primus equis orlens afflavit anhelia, 

 lllic 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, 

 moreover, 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."* 



This improvement of navigation may give us great hopes 

 of extending and improving the sciences, especially ar 

 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 in- 

 creased," <^ as if the openness and thorough passage of the 

 world and the increase of knowledge were allotted to the 

 same age, v/hich indeed we find already true in part : for tiie 

 learning of these times scarce yields to the former periods or 

 r-jturns of learning, — the one among the Greeks and the 

 other among the Komans, and in many particulars far ex- 

 ceeds them. 



• Virgil, Georgics, i. 251. «> Virgil, Mar^, vi. 5»0. 



*= Dan. xii. i. 



