thread?

_Duke._--Madam, the equivalent of this term will scarcely be found in
the orations of Cicero. It is to unweave a stuff, to draw out thread by
thread, so as to separate the gold. Thus has Newton done by the rays of
the sun, the stars also have submitted to him; and one Locke has
accomplished as much by the Human Understanding.

_Tullia._--You know a great deal for a duke and a peer of the realm; you
seem to me more learned than that literary man who wished me to think
his verses good, and you are far more polite.

_Duke._--Madam, I have been better brought up; but as to my knowledge
it is merely commonplace. Young people now, when they quit school, know
much more than all the philosophers of antiquity. It is only a pity that
we have, in Europe, substituted half-a-dozen imperfect jargons, for the
fine Latin language, of which your father made so noble a use; but with
such rude implements we have produced, even in the _belles lettres,_
some very fair works.

_Tullia._--The nations who succeeded the Romans must needs have lived
in a state of profound peace, and have enjoyed a constant succession of
great men, from my father's time until now, to have invented so many new
arts, and to have become acquainted so intimately with heaven and earth.

_Duke._--By no means, madam, we are ourselves, some of those barbarians,
who almost all came from Scythia, and destroyed your empire, and the
arts and sciences. We lived for seven or eight centuries like savages,
and to complete our barbarism, were inundated with a race of men termed
monks, who brutified, in Europe, that human species which you had
conquered and enlightened. But what will most astonish you is, that
in the latter ages of ignorance amongst these very monks, these very
enemies to civilization, nature nurtured some useful men. Some invented
the art of assisting the feeble sight of age; and others, by pounding
together nitre and charcoal, have furnished us with implements of war,
with which we might have exterminated the Scipios, Alexander, Caesar,
the Macedonian phalanxes, and all your legions; it is not that we
possess warriors more formidable than the Scipios, Alexander, and
Caesar, but that we have superior arms.[8]

_Tullia._--In you, I perceive united, the high breeding of a nobleman,
and the erudition of a man of (literary) consideration; you would have
been worthy of becoming a Roman senator.

_Duke._--Ah, madam, far more worthy are you of being at t