Page:The Hunterian Oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons ... February 14, 1817 (IA b22009358).pdf/21

13 recorded in history! From a period of great learning, of general science, and of elegant and accomplished society, the prospect is hideous and disgusting. Twelve hundred long years passed without the slightest improvement deserving of notice being made in any art or science; and even the records of the accumulated knowledge of many centuries were destroyed or mutilated. This lamentable degeneracy took place, not merely in one country, that had formerly been the favourite seat of learning, and the elegant arts, but overspread all Europe. Should the causes of such general and deplorable calamity be enquired into, they will, alas! be found to be the same that never fail to produce similar eflects when long continued; éhe ambition of rapacious tyrants, and the universal influ- © �