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It reminds one of what he meets in tales of eastern romance, where young and beautiful princesses are all at once transformed by malignant genuises into old and withered hags. In truth, on entering an Italian town one feels as if the last trumpet were about to sound. The world, and all that is in it, seems old very old.
I have heard one of the greatest genuises this age has produced, who had been trained up in all the polite studies of antiquity, assure me, upon his being obliged to search into several rolls and records, that notwithstanding such an employment was at first very dry and irksome to him, he at last took an incredible pleasure in it, and preferred it even to the reading of Virgil or Cicero.
As to his answer that truth is the most wise thing, it is as incongruous as if he had affirmed the light to be an eye if he judged the light to be the most beautiful how could he omit the sun; as to his solutions concerning the gods and evil genuises, they are full of presumption and peril.
However, I think I have said enough to shew that one of the striking effects of the revolution has been to make the arts and sciences popular in France. It has rendered common those doctrines which had till then been reserved for first-rate savans and genuises.
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