this will not seem extraordinary in little
despotic states. We have accounts of some philosophical associations at
home, which were joined by Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Raleigh, but
which soon got the odium of atheism attached to them; and the
establishment of the French Academy occasioned some umbrage, for a year
elapsed before the parliament of Paris would register their patent,
which was at length accorded by the political Richelieu observing to the
president, that "he should like the members according as the members
liked him." Thus we have ascertained one principle, that governments in
those times looked on a new society with a political glance; nor is it
improbable that some of them combined an ostensible with a latent
motive.

There is no want of evidence to prove that the modern Romans, from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth century, were too feelingly alive to their
obscured glory, and that they too frequently made invidious comparisons
of their ancient republic with the pontifical government; to revive
Rome, with everything Roman, inspired such enthusiasts as Rienzi, and
charmed the visions of Petrarch. At a period when ancient literature, as
if by a miracle, was raising itself from its grave, the learned were
agitated by a correspondent energy; not only was an estate sold to
purchase a manuscript, but the relic of genius was touched with a
religious emotion. The classical purity of Cicero was contrasted with
the barbarous idiom of the Missal; the glories of ancient Rome with the
miserable subjugation of its modern pontiffs; and the metaphysical
reveries of Plato, and what they termed the "Enthusiasmus
Alexandrinus"--the dreams of the Platonists--seemed to the fanciful
Italians more elevated than the humble and pure ethics of the Gospels.
The vain and amorous Eloisa could even censure the gross manners, as it
seemed to her, of the apostles, for picking the ears of corn in their
walks, and at their meals eating with unwashed hands. Touched by this
mania of antiquity, the learned affected to change their vulgar
Christian name, by assuming the more classical ones of a Junius Brutus,
a Pomponius, or a Julius, or any other rusty name unwashed by baptism.
This frenzy for the ancient republic not only menaced the pontificate,
but their Platonic or their pagan ardours seemed to be striking at the
foundation of Christianity itself. Such were Marcellus Ficinus, and that
learned society who assembled under the Medici