emaining continually the same, has in it a constant quantity of good
and evil; but that this good and this evil shift about from one country
to another, as we know that in ancient times empire shifted from one
nation to another, according as the manners of these nations changed,
the world, as a whole, continuing as before, and the only difference
being that, whereas at first Assyria was made the seat of its
excellence, this was afterwards placed in Media, then in Persia, until
at last it was transferred to Italy and Rome. And although after the
Roman Empire, none has followed which has endured, or in which the world
has centred its whole excellence, we nevertheless find that excellence
diffused among many valiant nations, the kingdom of the Franks, for
example, that of the Turks, that of the Soldan, and the States of
Germany at the present day; and shared at an earlier time by that sect
of the Saracens who performed so many great achievements and gained so
wide a dominion, after destroying the Roman Empire in the East.

In all these countries, therefore, after the decline of the Roman power,
and among all these races, there existed, and in some part of them there
yet exists, that excellence which alone is to be desired and justly to
be praised. Wherefore, if any man being born in one of these countries
should exalt past times over present, he might be mistaken; but any who,
living at the present day in Italy or Greece, has not in Italy become
an ultramontane or in Greece a Turk, has reason to complain of his own
times, and to commend those others, in which there were many things
which made them admirable; whereas, now, no regard being had to
religion, to laws, or to arms, but all being tarnished with every sort
of shame, there is nothing to redeem the age from the last extremity of
wretchedness, ignominy, and disgrace. And the vices of our age are the
more odious in that they are practised by those who sit on the judgment
seat, govern the State, and demand public reverence.

But, returning to the matter in hand, it may be said, that if the
judgment of men be at fault in pronouncing whether the present age or
the past is the better in respect of things whereof, by reason of their
antiquity, they cannot have the same perfect knowledge which they have
of their own times, it ought not to be at fault in old men when they
compare the days of their youth with those of their maturity, both of
which have been alike seen and know