We will know whatever is to be known of
Australasia, of Japan, of Persia, of Egypt, of Timbuctoo, of
Palestine.
Thus Christendom has become a great reading-room; and its books
have the convenient merits of the newspaper, its eminent propriety,
and its superficial exactness of information. The age is well bred,
knows the world, has no nonsense, and herein is well distinguished
from the learned ages that preceded ours. That there is no fool like
your learned fool, is a proverb plentifully illustrated in the
history and writings of the English and European scholars for the
half millenium that preceded the beginning of the eighteenth century.
The best heads of their time build or occupy such card-house theories
of religion, politics, and natural science, as a clever boy would now
blow away. What stuff in Kepler, in Cardan, in Lord Bacon.
Montaigne, with all his French wit and downright sense, is little
better: a sophomore would wind him round his finger. Some of the
Medical Remains of Lord Bacon in the book for his own use, "Of the
Prolongation of Life," will move a smile in the unpoetical
practitioner of the Medical College.
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