THE DECLINE AND FALL

116

chap, use, however rude and corrupt, of the LatinLX ' L ~ tongue had been preserved by superstition; theuniversities, from Bologna to Oxford, p werepeopled with thousands of scholars; and theirmisguided ardour might be directed to more li-beral and manly studies. In the resurrection ofscience, Italy was the first that cast away hershroud; and the eloquent Petrarch , by his les-sons and his example, may justly be applaudedas the first harbinger of day. A purer style ofcomposition, a more generous and rational strainof sentiment, flowed from the study and imita-tion of the writers of ancient Rome ; and thedisciples of Cicero and Virgil approached, withreverence and love, the sanctuary of their Gre-cian masters. In the sack of Constantinople ,the French, and even the Venetians , had de-spised and destroyed the works of Lysippus andHomer; the monuments of art may be annihi-lated by a single blow ; but the immortal mindis renewed and multiplied by the copies of thepen; and such copies it was the ambition of Pe-trarch and his friends to possess and understand.The arms of the Turks undoubtedly pressed theflight of the muses; yet we may tremble at thethought, that Greece might have been over-whelmed, with her schools and libraries, before

f At tlie end of the fifteenth century, there existed in Europe aboutfifty universities, and of these the foundation of ten or twelve is priorto the year 1300. They were crowded in proportion to their scarcity.Bologna contained 10,000 students, chiefly of the civil law. In theyear 1357, the number at Oxford had decreased from 30,000 to 0000scholars (Henry’s History of Great Britain, vol. iv, p. 478). Yet eventhis decrease is much superior to the present list of the members of theuniversity