ng at quick time; and if its progress be not accompanied by a
corresponding improvement in morals and religion, the faster it proceeds,
with the more violence will you be hurried down the road to ruin.

One of the first effects of printing was to make proud men look upon
learning as disgraced by being thus brought within reach of the common
people. Till that time learning, such as it was, had been confined to
courts and convents, the low birth of the clergy being overlooked because
they were privileged by their order. But when laymen in humble life were
enabled to procure books the pride of aristocracy took an absurd course,
insomuch that at one time it was deemed derogatory for a nobleman if he
could read or write. Even scholars themselves complained that the
reputation of learning, and the respect due to it, and its rewards were
lowered when it was thrown open to all men; and it was seriously proposed
to prohibit the printing of any book that could be afforded for sale
below the price of three _soldi_. This base and invidious feeling was
perhaps never so directly avowed in other countries as in Italy, the land
where literature was first restored; and yet in this more liberal island
ignorance was for some generations considered to be a mark of
distinction, by which a man of gentle birth chose, not unfrequently, to
make it apparent that he was no more obliged to live by the toil of his
brain, than by the sweat of his brow. The same changes in society which
rendered it no longer possible for this class of men to pass their lives
in idleness have completely put an end to this barbarous pride. It is as
obsolete as the fashion of long finger-nails, which in some parts of the
East are still the distinctive mark of those who labour not with their
hands. All classes are now brought within the reach of your current
literature, that literature which, like a moral atmosphere, is as it were
the medium of intellectual life, and on the quality of which, according
as it may be salubrious or noxious, the health of the public mind
depends. There is, if not a general desire for knowledge, a general
appearance of such a desire. Authors of all kinds have increased and are
increasing among you. Romancers--

_Montesinos_.--Some of whom attempt things which had hitherto been
unattempted yet in prose or rhyme, because among all the extravagant
intellects with which the world has teemed none were ever before so
utterly extravagant as