prepared for their
gratification. We have every reason to suppose that the reading class of
the ancient world was small in comparison with that of the modern. Even
setting aside the circumstance of the narrow limits by which the
creative literature of ancient Europe was bounded--Greece and Rome being
almost the only nations whence new productions were derived--we shall
still be constrained to acknowledge the vast distance which separates
the creative literary power of modern from that of ancient times. Our
schools, which abound with such a variety of class-books upon every
subject, bear little or no resemblance to those of Greece and Rome; nor
can the text-books prepared for our universities be brought into
comparison with the oral instructions of the old philosophers. Passing
by, also, the subjects which have been opened to our research by the
discoveries of modern science, and confining our attention to the single
branch of philosophy, in the old sense of the word, which has always
been more or less studied and disputed upon since the days of the
earliest Greeks, we shall probably find that the productions of any one
modern school outnumber those of the whole body of Greek philosophers.
How much more would the balance lean towards the moderns were we to add
all the varieties of the French, German, English, and Scottish schools,
to say nothing of those whose tenacious subtleties have procured them
the name of schoolmen! If, going a step further, we consider that
reading, which the peculiar cast of modern civilization has classed
among the luxuries of life, is one of those luxuries, in the enjoyment
of which all classes come in for a share, we shall find here also a wide
distinction between ancient times and our own. During that epoch of
splendid decay, in which the immense wealth of the Roman senators was
found insufficient to satisfy the longings for new forms of stimulant
and of pleasure, their reading, as we are told by Ammianus Marcellinus,
a contemporary historian, was confined to the writings of Marius Maximus
and Juvenal. What would they not have given for a modern novel, or to
what unlimited extent would the imagination have poured forth its
fantastic creations, had the art of printing been at hand to keep pace
with the productive powers of the mind, and the cravings of a morbid
intellect? On every score, therefore, the numerical difference between
the intellectual wealth of ancient and of modern Europe must hav