imagination that his acquisitions were vast. He travelled over the whole field of knowledge, as far as it had then been explored.

His various philological attainments were used to put him in possession of the wisdom stored in all countries where the intellect had been cultivated. The natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, history, theology, and political science of his own and former times, were familiar to him. Never was there a more unconfined mind; and we would cite Milton as a practical example of the benefits of that universal culture of intellect, which forms one distinction of our times, but which some dread, as unfriendly to original thought.

Let such remember, that mind is in its own nature diffusive. Its object is the universe, which is strictly one, or bound together by infinite connexions and correspondences; and accordingly its natural progress is from one to another field of thought: and wherever original power, creative genius, exists, the mind, far from being distracted or oppressed by the variety of its acquisitions, will see more and more common bearings and hidden and beautiful analogies in all the objects of knowledge; will see mutual light shed from truth to truth; and will compel, as with a kingly power, whatever it understands, to yield some tribute of proof, or illustration, or splendour, to whatever topic it would unfold. CHANNING.

ON THE GREAT HISTORICAL AGES.

EVERY age has produced heroes and politicians; all nations have experienced revolutions; and all histories are nearly alike, to those who seek only

to furnish their memories with facts; but whosoever thinks, or, what is still more rare, whosoever has taste, will find but four ages in the history of the world. These four happy ages are those in which the arts were carried to perfection; and which, by serving as the era of the greatness of the human mind, are examples for posterity.

The first of these ages to which true glory is annexed, is that of Philip and Alexander, or that of a Pericles, a Demosthenes, an Aristotle, a Plato, an Apelles, a Phidias, and a Praxiteles; and this honour has been confined within the limits of ancient Greece: the rest of the known world was then in a state of barbarism.

The second age is that of Cæsar and Augustus, distinguished likewise by the names of Lucretius, Cicero, Titus, Livius, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Varro, and Vitruvius.

The third is that which followed the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. Then a family of private citizens were seen to do that which the kings of Europe ought to have undertaken. The Medicis invited to Florence the learned, who had been driven out of Greece by the Turks. This was the age of Italy's glory. The polite arts had already recovered a new life in that country; the Italians honoured them with the title of Virtu, as the first Greeks had distinguished them by the name of Wisdom. Every thing tended towards perfection; a Michael Angelo, a Raphael, a Titian, a Tasso, and an Ariosto, flourished. The art of engraving was invented; elegant architecture appeared again, as admirable as in the most triumphant ages of Rome; and the Gothic barbarism, which had disfigured Europe in every kind of production, was driven from Italy, to make way for good taste. The arts, always transplanted from Greece to Italy, found themselves in a favourable soil, where they instantly produced fruit. France, England, Germany, and Spain, aimed in their turns to gather these fruits; but either they could not live in those climates, or else they degenerated very fast.

Francis I. encouraged learned men, but such as were merely learned men: he had architects; but he had no Michael Angelo, nor Palladio: he endeavoured in vain to establish schools for painting; the Italian masters whom he invited to France, raised no pupils there. Some epigrams and a few loose tales made the whole of our poetry. Rabelais was the only prose writer in vogue, in the time of Henry II.

In a word, the Italians alone were in possession of every thing that was beautiful, excepting music, which was then but in a rude state; and experimental philosophy, which was everywhere equally

unknown.

Lastly, the fourth age is that known by the name of the age of Lewis XIV., and is perhaps that which approaches the nearest to perfection of all the four; enriched by the discoveries of the three former ones, it has done greater things in certain kinds than those three together. All the arts, indeed, were not carried farther than under the Medicis, Augustus, and Alexander; but human reason in general was more improved. In this age we first became acquainted with sound philosophy. It may truly be said, that from the last years of Cardinal Richelieu's administration till those which followed the death of Lewis XIV., there has happened such a general revolution in our arts, our genius, our manners, and even in our government, as will serve as an immortal mark to the true glory of our country. This happy influence has not been confined to France; it has communicated itself to England, where it has stirred up an emulation which that ingenious and deeply-learned nation stood in need of at that time; it has introduced taste into Germany, and the sciences into Russia; it has even reanimated Italy, which was languishing; and Europe is indebted for its politeness and spirit of society, to the court of Lewis XIV.

Before this time, the Italians called all the people on this side the Alps by the name of Barbarians. It must be owned that the French, in some degree, deserved this reproachful epithet. Our forefathers joined the romantic gallantry of the Moors with the Gothic rudeness. They had hardly any of the agreeable arts amongst them; which is a proof that the useful arts were likewise neglected; for, when once the things of use are carried to perfection, the transition is quickly made to the elegant and the agreeable; and it is not at all astonishing, that painting, sculpture, poetry, eloquence, and philosophy, should be in a manner unknown to a nation, who, though possessed of harbours on the Western ocean and the Mediterranean sea, were without ships; and, who, though fond of luxury to an excess, were hardly provided with the most common manufactures.

The Jews, the Genoese, the Venetians, the Portuguese, the Flemish, the Dutch, and the English, carried on, in their turns, the trade of France, which was ignorant even of the first principles of commerce. Lewis XIII., at his accession to the crown, had not a single ship; the city of Paris contained not quite four hundred thousand men, and had not above four fine public edifices; the other cities of the kingdom resembled those pitiful villages which we see on the other side of the Loire. The nobility, who were all stationed in the country, in dungeons surrounded with deep ditches, oppressed the peasant who cultivated the land. The high roads were almost impassable; the towns were destitute of police; and the government had hardly any credit among foreign nations.

We must acknowledge, that, ever since the decline of the Carlovingian family, France had languished more or less in this infirm state, merely for want of the benefit of a good administration.

For a state to be powerful, the people must either enjoy a liberty founded on the laws, or the royal authority must be fixed beyond all opposition. In France, the people were slaves till the reign of Philip Augustus; the noblemen were tyrants till Lewis XI.; and the kings, always employed in maintaining their authority against their vassals, had neither leisure to think about the happiness of their subjects, nor the power of making them happy.

Lewis XI. did a great deal for the regal power, but nothing for the happiness or glory of the nation. Francis I. gave birth to trade, navigation, and all the arts: but he was too unfortunate to make them take root in the nation during his time, so that they all perished with him. Henry the Great was on the point of raising France from the calamities and barbarisms in which she had been plunged by thirty years of discord, when he was assassinated in his capital, in the midst of a people whom he had begun to make happy. The Cardinal de Richelieu, busied in humbling the house of Austria, the Calvinists, and the grandees, did not enjoy a power sufficiently undisturbed to reform the na