comprehended better the holiness of thought! Noble and venerable shades of Reuchlin, of Henry Stephens, of Casaubon, of Descartes, rise up and teach us what price you put upon truth; by what toil you attained it; what you suffered for it! It was the comprehensive speculations of twenty persons in the seventeenth century which entirely changed the notions of civilized nations throughout the world; it was the obscure labours of some poor scholars of the sixteenth century which founded historical criticism, and opened up a total revolution in ideas on the past history of man.
I have had too sensible an experience of the intellectual discernment of the public, not to feel certain that all those who supported me yesterday will approve of my following a like course, the most profitable assuredly for science and the wholesome discipline of the mind.
Paris, February 23rd, 1862.
