Page:An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe.djvu/74

 learned in a different line, consequently their progress must be slow in gaining a proper eminence, from which to view their subject, and their strength will be exhausted in attaining the station from whence they should have set out. With regard to the Royal Society of London, the greatest, perhaps, the oldest institution of the kind, had it widened the basis of its institution, though they might not have propagated more discoveries, at least, they would have delivered them in a more pleasing and compendious form. They would have been hitherto free from the contempt of the ill-natured, and the raillery of the wit, for which, even candour must allow, there is but too much foundation.

Berlin academy is subject to none of the inconveniencies above mentioned, but