Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/477

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIEE 455 a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. 1 sincerely regret the more valuable libraries which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire ; but, when I seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the object of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion : the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity ^^^ had ad- judged the first place of genius and glory ; the teachers of ancient knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and com- pared the writings of their predecessors ; ^^^ nor can it fairly be presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages. In the administration of Egypt,!'*^ Amrou balanced the de-^^mmis-^ mands of justice and policy ; the interest of the people of the ^syp* law, who were defended by God, and of the people of the alli- ance, who were protected by man. In the recent tumult of con- quest and deliverance, the tongue of the Copts and the sword of the Arabs were most adverse to the tranquillity of the province. To the former, Amrou declared that faction and falsehood would be doubly chastised : by the punishment of the accusers, whom he should detest as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of their innocent brethren, whom their envy had laboured to injure and supplant. He excited the latter by the motives of religion and honour to sustain the dignity of their character, to endear themselves by a modest and temperate conduct to God and the caliph, to spare and protect a people who had trusted to i^'I have often perused with pleasure a chapter of Quimihan (Institut. Orator. X. i), in which that judicious critic enumerates and appreciates the series of Greek and Latin classics. i« Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c. On this subject Wotton (Reflections on ancient and modern Learning, p. 85-95) argues with solid sense against the lively exotic fancies of Sir William Temple. The contempt of the Greeks for barbaric science would scarcely admit the Indian or ^■Ethiopia books into the library of Alexandria ; nor is it proved that philosophy has sustained any real loss from their exclusion. I'is This curious and authentic intelligence of Murtadi (p. 284-289) has not been discovered either by Mr. Ockley or by the self-sufficient compilers of the Modern Universal History.