(seq. 36)

6

most luxuriant fancy. The panegyrist may, there
fore, enjoy with impunity the sweet reveries of deliri-
ous imaginations and reiterate hyperboles in the cli-
max of his encomiums on the antients, without the
fear of opposition.

The question is not whether the antients had
knowledge, but whether the moderns have not the
same. And, surrounded with all the privileges and
improvements of this enlightened era, whether they
cannot prosecute their researches in the various
branches of science on better established principles,
and planner systems of phylosophy, than any that
can be found among the speculations of the antients.

When we contemplate the numerous and sublime
sources of knowledge, the mind is lost in a field, equally
boundless, magnificent, and beautiful. To describe the
excellence of each, and compare the merits of the whole,
would require the labor of years, and the comprehen-
sive pages of folios.

When we trace the vast chain of being from Infin-
ity, down to those minutiae which escape the keen-
est optics, and where vitality yields to vegetation; &
also consider their various destinations; connexions