Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/137

 and situation of country, the customs and manners of so many original nations, which we call barbarous, and, I am sure, have treated them as if we hardly esteemed them to be a part of mankind. I do not doubt but many great and more noble uses would have been made of such conquests or discoveries, if they had fallen to the share of the Greeks and Romans, in those ages when knowledge and fame were in as great request as endless gains and wealth are among us now; and how much greater discoveries might have been made by such spirits as theirs is hard to guess. I am sure ours, though great, yet look very imperfect as to what the face of this terrestrial globe would probably appear, if they had been pursued as far as we might justly have expected from the progresses of navigation since the use of the compass, which seems to have been long at a stand. How little has been performed of what has been so often, and so confidently promised, of a North-West Passage to the east of Tartary, and north of China! How little do we know of the lands on that side of the Magellan Straits that lie towards the South Pole, which may be vast islands, or continents, for aught any can yet aver, though that passage was so