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that their knowledge is contracted, and their sentiments illiberal. 

 I have occasionally mentioned the few exceptions within my own 

 observation of the natives of India, and we may conclude that 

 Gibbon's remark on the Arabians may be justly applied to the 

 generality of Asiatics, and especially of the Indian moslems in 

 higher classes of societ} r : " That they deprived themselves of 

 the principal benefits of a familiar intercourse with Greece and 

 Rome, the knowledge of antiquity, and the freedom of thought. 

 Confident in the riches of their native tongue, the Arabians dis- 

 dained the study of any foreign idiom. The Greek interpreters 

 were chosen among their Christian subjects ; they formed their 

 translations, sometimes on the original text, more frequently per- 

 haps on a Syriac version ; and in the crowd of astronomers and 

 physicians, there is no example of a poet, an orator, or even an 

 historian being taught to speak the language of the Saracens. The 

 mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of those 

 stern fanatics; they possessed in lazy ignorance the colonies of the 

 Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and Rome. The 

 heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion ; and the his- 

 tory of the world before Mahomed was reduced to a short legend of 

 the patriarchs, the prophets, and the Persian kings. Our education 

 in the Greek and Latin ochools may have fixed in our minds a 

 standard of exclusive taste; and I am not forward to condemn the 

 literature and judgment of nations, of whose language I am igno- 

 rant. Yet I know that the classics have much to teach, and I be- 

 lieve that the orientals have much to learn. The temperate dignity of 

 style, the graceful proportions of art, the forms of visible and intel- 

 lectual beauty, the just delineation of character and passion, the 



