of it was astonishing. As they formed their style upon the purest models; as they were uninfected with those barbarisms, which the inaccuracy of familiar conversation, the affectation of courts, intercourse with strangers, and a thousand other causes, introduce into living languages, many moderns have attained to a degree of elegance in their Latin compositions which the Romans themselves scarce possessed beyond the limits of the Augustan age.”
Had the mental stimulus produced by the revival of letters been confined to scholars, the progress of improvement would have stopped at this point; but all who had time to read, whether they knew Latin or not, felt the influence of the movement, and this great class was receiving continual additions from the rapid increase of wealth. Hence arose a demand which the classical languages could not satisfy, and from this demand sprang the vernacular literature of Europe. We are indebted to foreign nations and distant ages both for the impulse which struck it out, and for the writings which warmed the fancy and formed the taste of its founders. Abounding, as we are, in intellectual wealth, could we venture even now to tell our youth that they have no longer occasion to seek for nourishment from the stores of
