do with the heroes or the
monuments of ancient times? with times which never can return, and
heroes, whose form of life was different, from all that the present
condition of mankind requires or allows?"

"To know any thing," returned the poet, "we must know its effects; to
see men, we must see their works, that we may learn what reason has
dictated, or passion has incited, and find what are the most powerful
motives of action. To judge rightly of the present we must oppose it to
the past; for all judgment is comparative, and of the future nothing can
be known. The truth is, that no mind is much employed upon the present:
recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments. Our
passions are joy and grief, love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and
grief, the past is the object, and the future of hope and fear; even
love and hatred respect the past, for the cause must have been before
the effect.

"The present state of things is the consequence of the former, and it is
natural to inquire, what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or
the evil that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the
study of history is not prudent: if we are intrusted with the care of
others, it is not just. Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal;
and he may properly be charged with evil, who refused to learn how he
might prevent it.

"There is no part of history so generally useful, as that which relates
the progress of the human mind, the gradual improvement of reason, the
successive advances of science, the vicissitudes of learning and
ignorance, which are the light and darkness of thinking beings, the
extinction and resuscitation of arts, and the revolutions of the
intellectual world. If accounts of battles and invasions are peculiarly
the business of princes, the useful or elegant arts are not to be
neglected; those who have kingdoms to govern, have understandings to
cultivate.

"Example is always more efficacious than precept. A soldier is formed in
war, and a painter must copy pictures. In this, contemplative life has
the advantage: great actions are seldom seen, but the labours of art are
always at hand, for those who desire to know what art has been able to
perform.

"When the eye or the imagination is struck with an uncommon work, the
next transition of an active mind is to the means by which it was
performed. Here begins the true use of such contemplation; we enlarge
our comprehension by new ideas