THE LITEHARi' EDUCATION 



'This comparative view of the arts and sciences of Greece may, :wiik 

 little variation, be applied to those of Rome. The study of the fine arts, 

 however, was here less extensive ; and the race of orators and pohtical 

 demagogues, in consequence of the peculiar character of the government 

 and of the people, more numerous. Natural history and agriculture, 

 moreover, appear to have made more progress, and various branches of 

 trade and manufacture to have been cultivated with more success. 



Upon the whole, however, Rome added but little to what she derived 

 from Greece : nor has much been added in any subsequent era, or by any 

 nation amidst which the variable fortunes of science and literature have 

 compelled them to take shelter, till within the course of the last two cen- 

 turies ; towards the beginning of which period. Lord Bacon observed, with 

 not more severity than correctness, that " the sciences which we profess 

 fiave 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, aro built upon the founda- 

 tion 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 further 

 progress. It is to Bacon, and alniost to Bacon alone, that we are indebted, 

 if not for the scientific discoveries that have enriched the last two centu- 

 ries, 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 discoveries ; 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 wliole. 



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 amidst the eastern and western cahphats, ii> 

 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 re-appearance and first spread, their resurrec- 

 tion 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 fa- 

 mily derive their descent ; to have surveyed them as basking under the pa- 

 tronage of Leo X. ; but especially as they were aflfected 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 ais the subject 



^ Noy. Org. 



