328 ON TH^: JLIXPRARY EDUCATION 



Romx nutriri mihi contigit, atque doceri, 

 Iratus Grajis quantum nocuiaset Achilles. 



Adjicere bonae pauIo plus artis Athense : \ 

 Scilicet ut possem curvo dignoscere rectum, 

 Atque inter silvas Academi qusetere verum.* 



At Rome I first was bred, and early taught 

 What woes to Greece Achilles' anger wrought. < 

 Famed Athens added some increase of skill 

 In the great art of knowing good from ill ; 

 And led me, yet an inexperienced youth, ' 

 To academic groves in search of truth, 



BOSCAWEN. 



Nor were other branches of science, or even the extensive circle of arts 

 and manufactures forgotten in the midst of the fashionable study of phi- 

 losophy and literature, either at Rome or in the Greek states. We have 

 not time to enter into a survey of the very extensive, and, in various re- 

 spects, accurate views that were taken of many of the most important 

 pursuits of our own day, and the activity vvith which they were followed up. 

 In statuary and architecture, as well as in poetry and eloquence^ the models 

 of ancient Rome, as well as of ancient Greece, are still the models of 

 our own times. We have already touched upon the skill of the Greek 

 masters in the art of designing ; which they practised with great perfec- 

 tion in every diversity, from simple outline or linear drawing, to every 

 variety of silhouette, or light and shadow, as well as every kind of paiiiting 

 with colours ; while in one or two varieties they went far beyond our own 

 day, as in encaustic painting, both on wax and on ivory ;' a branch of 

 the art, which has, unfortunately, been lost for ages, yet the most valuable 

 of all, as being the most durable. Their acquirements are truly astonish- 

 ing in almost every ramification of invention or execution that the mind 

 can follow up ; and the progress which we have still proofs of their having 

 exhibited in metallurgy, crystallography, mirrors, mineralogy, chemistry, 

 mechanics, navigation, optics and catoptrics, weaving, dyeing, pottery, 

 and a niultiplicity of other manufacturing or handicraft trades, must 

 appear incredible to those who have not deeply entered into the subject. 

 Their splendid purple cloths, — Babylonica magnifico colore, — have, per- 

 haps, never been equalled since ; the immense and fearful machinery in- 

 vented by Archimedes, at Syracuse, for laying hold of the largest and 

 most formidable Roman galleys with its ponderous and gigantic arms, and 

 whirling them with instantaneous destruction into the air, as they 

 approached the walls of this famous city during its siege ; — the burning 

 glasses contrived by him for setting them on fire at a distance, by a con- 

 centration of the sun's heat alone ; — their knowledge of the existence 

 and fall of meteoric stones — not many years ago laughed at as a chimera 

 among ourselves ; and the adumbration, to call it by no stricter term, with 

 which the grand principles of the Copernican system of the heavens was 

 approached by Nicetas, Philolaus, Aristarchus, and other disciples of the 

 Copernican school — are, I trust, sufificient proofs of the truth of this 

 remark, though hundreds of other examples migiit be added to the list.t 



Still, however, the observation I have made with respect to the education 

 and study of the Athenians applies with considerable, though not alto- 



* Epist. Lib. II. ii. 41. ' 



] t On a former occasion the author had an opportunity of following up and developing this 

 interesting subject at considerable length ; and those who are desirous of pursuii^ it with 

 him, may turn to the running commentary to his Translation of Lucretius, vol. i. p. 338 

 414. vol. ii. p. 50. 13L 135. 154. 159. 401. 491. 668, 



