the
university of Upsal. Whatever is celebrated either in history or fable,
this zealous patriot ascribes to his country. From Sweden (which formed
so considerable a part of ancient Germany) the Greeks themselves derived
their alphabetical characters, their astronomy, and their religion. Of
that delightful region (for such it appeared to the eyes of a native)
the Atlantis of Plato, the country of the Hyperboreans, the gardens of
the Hesperides, the Fortunate Islands, and even the Elysian Fields, were
all but faint and imperfect transcripts. A clime so profusely favored by
Nature could not long remain desert after the flood. The learned Rudbeck
allows the family of Noah a few years to multiply from eight to about
twenty thousand persons. He then disperses them into small colonies to
replenish the earth, and to propagate the human species. The German
or Swedish detachment (which marched, if I am not mistaken, under the
command of Askenaz, the son of Gomer, the son of Japhet) distinguished
itself by a more than common diligence in the prosecution of this
great work. The northern hive cast its swarms over the greatest part of
Europe, Africa, and Asia; and (to use the author's metaphor) the blood
circulated from the extremities to the heart.

But all this well-labored system of German antiquities is annihilated
by a single fact, too well attested to admit of any doubt, and of too
decisive a nature to leave room for any reply. The Germans, in the age
of Tacitus, were unacquainted with the use of letters; and the use of
letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilized
people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection.
Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or
corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of
the mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually
forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the
imagination languid or irregular. Fully to apprehend this important
truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate the immense
distance between the man of learning and the illiterate peasant. The
former, by reading and reflection, multiplies his own experience, and
lives in distant ages and remote countries; whilst the latter, rooted to
a single spot, and confined to a few years of existence, surpasses but
very little his fellow-laborer, the ox, in the exercise of his mental
faculties. The sam