Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/234

210 210 CASTILIAN LITERATURE. I. PART century was distinguished by a zeal for research and laborious acquisition, especially in ancient lit- erature, throughout Europe, which showed itself in Italy in the beginning of the age, and in Spain, and some other countries, towards the close. It was natural that men should explore the long-buried treasures descended from their ancestors, before venturing on any thing of their own creation. Their efforts were eminently successful ; and, by opening an acquaintance with the immortal pro- ductions of ancient literature, they laid the best foundation for the cultivation of the modern. In the sciences, their success was more equivocal. A blind reverence for authority, a habit of specula- tion, instead of experiment, so pernicious in phys- ics, in short an ignorance of the true principles of philosophy, often led the scholars of that day in a wrong direction. Even when they took a right one, their attainments, under all these impediments, were necessarily so small, as to be scarcely percep- tible, when viewed from the brilliant heights to which science has arrived in our own age. Unfor- tunately for Spain, its subsequent advancement has been so retarded, that a comparison of the fifteenth century with those which succeeded it, is by no means so humiliating to the former as in some oth- er countries of Europe ; and it is certain, that in general intellectual fermentation, no period has sur- passed, if it can be said to have rivalled, the age of Isabella.