298 ON THE LITERARY EDUCATION OF FORMER TIMES. 



the beginning of which period Lord Bacon observed, with not more severity 

 than correctness, that " the sciences which we profess have flowed almost 

 entirely from the Greeks ; for those which the Roman or Arabian, or still 

 later writers, have added, are but few, and these few of but little moment; 

 and, whatever they may be, are built upon the foundation of what the Greeks 

 invented ; so that the judgment, or rather the prophecy of the Egyptian 

 priest, concerning the Greeks, is by no means inapplicable, ' that they should 

 always continue boys, nor possess either the antiquity of science, nor the 

 science of antiquity.' "* 



It remained for this extraordinary character, who thus fairly estimated in 

 his own day the value of ancient and modern learning, to break through the 

 spell which fatally pressed upon it, and seemed to prohibit all farther pro- 

 gress. It is to Bacon, and almost to Bacon alone, that we are indebted, if not 

 for the scientific discoveries that have enriched the last two centuries, and 

 struck home to every man's business and bosom, at least for that mode of 

 generalizing the laws of nature, and of connecting the various branches of 

 the different arts and sciences, which have chiefly contributed to those dis- 

 coveries ; which have called mankind from the study of words to the study 

 of things, and have established from the book of nature the truth of that 

 maxim, which had hitherto only loosely floated in the books of the poets, that 



All are but parts of one stupendous whole. 



It was my intention, in proof of this assertion, to have taken a brief survey, 

 even before we closed the present lecture, of the shifting scenes of science 

 and literature from the decline of the Roman empire to their re-establishment 

 in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ; to have given a glance at them in 

 their retreat amid the eastern and western caliphats, in what have usually 

 been called the dark ages of the world, extending from the fifth, but especially 

 from the seventh to the fifteenth century ; to have contemplated them on 

 their reappearance and first spread, their resurrection and restoration to life 

 and action, under the fostering providence of the illustrious houses of Medici, 

 Urbino, Gonzaga, and Este ; from which last, the most ancient and most 

 distinguished of the whole, our own royal family derive their descent ; to 

 have surveyed them as basking under the patronage of Leo X. ; but especially 

 as they were affected by the wonderful and all-controlling influence of the 

 Reformation which occurred during his papacy; and to have compared the 

 character they then assumed, with that which they exhibit in our own day ; — 

 but, interesting as the subject is, I am compelled by want of time to postpone 

 it till our next lecture, when I shall return to the subject, and carry it for- 

 ward as the period will allow. 



I shall only farther observe, that, on the first reviviscence of literature, it 

 was chiefly limited to classical and philosophical subjects, and confined to 

 the courts of princes, or the walls of universities, which were now establish- 

 ing in almost every state of Europe ; the classical or ornamental branches 

 being mostly cultivated in the courts, and the speculative or philosophical in 

 the schools. And such, with little variation, continued to be the course of 

 learning, till the appearance of that great luminary in the hemisphere of let- 

 ters to whom I have just adverted. No sooner, however, had the writings of 

 Bacon, and of other characters of a similar comprehensiveness of mind, who 

 co-operated in his views, become diffused, than institutions of another class 

 were found wanting: — a something that might fill up the space between the 

 cloistered scholar and the irrecondite citizen : the dry principles of speculative 

 science, and the living practice of the artist and the mechanic. And hence, 

 academies and societies for natural knowledge became organized and incor- 

 porated — museums were founded — taste, ingenuity, and invention commenced 

 a happy intercourse — the general results of their communications were, for 

 the most part, periodically published, and the great mass of mankind became 

 more generally enlightened than in any former period of the world. 



• Nov. Org. 



