k it wise to
abandon. The furniture and personages of our romance are sought, when
the writer desires to please most easily, in the centuries which we
profess to have surpassed in everything; the art which takes us into
the present times is considered as both daring and degraded; and while
the weakest words please us, and are regarded as poetry, which recall
the manners of our forefathers, or of strangers, it is only as
familiar and vulgar that we accept the description of our own.

In this we are wholly different from all the races that preceded us.
All other nations have regarded their ancestors with reverence as
saints or heroes; but have nevertheless thought their own deeds and
ways of life the fitting subjects for their arts of painting or of
verse. We, on the contrary, regard our ancestors as foolish and
wicked, but yet find our chief artistic pleasures in descriptions of
their ways of life.

The Greeks and mediaevals honoured, but did not imitate their
forefathers; we imitate, but do not honour.

With this romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history, and in
external nature, the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary life, we
mingle a more rational passion, the due and just result of newly
awakened powers of attention. Whatever may first lead us to the
scrutiny of natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its reward.
Unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us with both
reverence and delight; and every hour we give to them renders their
beauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing. Natural
science--which can hardly be considered to have existed before modern
times--rendering our knowledge fruitful in accumulation, and exquisite
in accuracy, has acted for good or evil, according to the temper of
the mind which received it; and though it has hardened the
faithlessness of the dull and proud, has shown new grounds for
reverence to hearts which were thoughtful and humble. The neglect of
the art of war, while it has somewhat weakened and deformed the
body,[117] has given us leisure and opportunity for studies to which,
before, time and space were equally wanting; lives which once were
early wasted on the battle-field are now passed usefully in the study;
nations which exhausted themselves in annual warfare now dispute with
each other the discovery of new planets; and the serene philosopher
dissects the plants, and analyzes the dust, of lands which were of old
only traversed by the k