thout
referring to registers or catalogues. The minutest details of houses
visited or places passed through, remained indelibly engraved upon his
memory. The characters of men lay open to his insight through their
physiognomy and gestures. When new scientific instruments were submitted
to his curiosity, he divined their uses and comprehended their mechanism
without effort. Thus endowed with a rare combination of physical and
intellectual faculties, it is no wonder that Sarpi became one of the
most learned men of his age or of any age. He was an excellent Greek,
Latin, and Hebrew scholar; an adequate master of the French and Spanish
languages; profoundly versed in canon and civil law; accomplished in the
erudition of classical and scholastic philosophy; thoroughly acquainted
with secular and ecclesiastical history. Every branch of mathematics and
natural science had been explored by him with the enthusiasm of a
pioneer. He made experiments in chemistry, mechanics, mineralogy,
metallurgy, vegetable and animal physiology. His practical studies in
anatomy were carried on by the aid of vivisection. Following independent
paths, he worked out some of Gilbert's discoveries in magnetism, and of
Da Porta's in optics, demonstrated the valves of the veins, and the
function of the uvea in vision, divined the uses of the telescope and
thermometer. When he turned his attention to astronomy, he at once
declared the futility of judicial astrology; and while recognizing the
validity of Galileo's system, predicted that this truth would involve
its promulgator in serious difficulties with the Roman Inquisition. In
his treatises on psychology and metaphysics, he originated a theory of
sensationalism akin to that of Locke. There was, in fact, no field of
knowledge which he had not traversed with the energy of a discoverer.
Only to poetry and _belles lettres_ he paid but little heed, disdaining
the puerilities of rhetoric then in vogue, and using language as the
simplest vehicle of thought. In conversation he was reticent, speaking
little, but always to the purpose, and rather choosing to stimulate his
collocutors than to make display of eloquence or erudition. Yet his
company was eagerly sought, and he delighted in the society, not only of
learned men and students, but of travelers, politicians, merchants, and
citizens of the world. His favorite places of resort were the saloons of
Andrea Morosini, and the shop of the Secchini at the sign of t