Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/126

110 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.