Epitome of the Progress of JVatural Science. 203 



reviving the taste for classical literature. In the universities 

 and colleges of Padua, Bologna, and other cities, where the seven 

 arts, as they are still called, were taught, to the exclusion of 

 that literature ; the Greek and Roman writers were compara- 

 tively unknown; but the Divina Commedia, of which Virgil, 

 the model of Dante, is one of the principal characters, necessarily 

 awakened the public attention to the writings of the Roman 

 poet ; and thus the classics, which had been so long overlooked, 

 at the middle of the 14th century, were sought after with the 

 greatest avidity, and by no one more than Petrarch, to whom 

 Itahan literature and learning owe so much. Such was the 

 state of ignorance in one of the most celebrated universities, Bo- 

 logna, that, as it is related in one of the familiar letters of Pe- 

 trarch, one of the professors writing to him on the subject of the 

 ancient writers, supposed Plato and Cicero to have been poets ; 

 had never heard of Naevius and Plautus, and believed that Ennius 

 and Statins, who lived two hundred and seventy years apart, 

 were cotemporaries. 



Having brought this epitome down to the 14th century, when 

 literature was once more cherished, and the seeds of learning 

 securely planted in various countries, — until that greatest of all 

 discoveries, the art of printing, effected in the next century, had 

 placed a barrier against the future obscuration of the general in- 

 tellect — we shall, in our next number, take up the History and 

 Progress of Geology and Comparative Anatomy. In the mean 

 time we conclude this imperfect sketch, with the following sum- 

 mary of the leading features of the long period we have been 

 reviewing, as far as they concern the progress of human intellect, 

 from the first dawnings of civilization. 



1. It has been shown that the only satisfactory channel, whereby 

 we can trace the progress of authentic antiquity, is through the 

 Greeks, with whom science sprung up, consequent upon their 

 intercourse with Egypt. 



2. That this intercourse was nearly cotemporary with the period 

 of Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver, who was brought up from his 

 infancy by the Egyptian priests, and instructed by them in 

 their knowledge. 



3. That the first philosophical period known to us, arose about 

 fifteen centuries before the Christian era, when the Egyptians 

 first carried their letters — the type of our own alphabet — into 



