162 RAY. 



moderns in nothing but acuteness of wit and ele- 

 gancy of language in all their writings, in their 

 poetry and oratory. As for painting and sculpture, 

 and musick and architecture, some of the moderns 

 I think do equal, if not excel, the best of them, not 

 in the theory only, but also in the practice of those 

 arts : Neither do we give place to them in politicks 

 or morality ; but in natural history and experimen- 

 tal philosophy we far transcend them. In the 

 purely mathematical sciences, abstracted from mat- 

 ter, as geometry and arithmetick, we may vie with 

 them, as also in history ; but in astronomy, geo- 

 graphy, and chronology, we excel them much. No 

 wonder they should outstrip us in those arts which 

 are conversant in polishing and adorning their lan- 

 guage, because they bestowed all their time and 

 pains in cultivating of them, and had but one, and 

 that their native tongue, to mind. But those arts 

 are by wise men censured, as far inferior to the 

 study of things, words being but the pictures of 

 things ; and to be wholly occupied about them, is 

 to fall in love with a picture, and neglect the life ; 

 and oratory, which is the best of these arts, is but a 

 kind of voluptuary one, like cookery, which sophis- 

 ticates meats, and cheats the palate, spoiling whol- 

 some viands, and helping unwholsome." 



Before resuming our narrative it may be proper 

 to state some particulars respecting the celebrated 

 founder of the British Museum, to whom there has 

 been more than one occasion of alluding in the pre- 

 ceding pages. Sir Hans Sloane was born at Killi- 

 leagh in Ireland on the 16th April 1660. His father 

 was a Scotchman, who headed a colony which, in the 



