Page:The battle of the books - Guthkelch - 1908.djvu/139

 have heard it said among the Dutch, that their East India Company have long since forbidden, and under the greatest penalties, any further attempts of discovering that continent, having already more trade in those parts than they can turn to account, and fearing some more populous nation of Europe might make great establishments of trade in some of those unknown regions; which might ruin or impair what they have already in the Indies.

Thus we are lame still in geography itself, which we might have expected to run up to so much greater perfection by the use of the compass, and it seems to have been little advanced these last hundred years. So far have we been from improving upon those advantages we have received from the knowledge of the ancients, that since the late restoration of learning and arts among us, our first flights seem to have been the highest, and a sudden damp to have fallen upon our wings, which has hindered us from rising above certain heights. The arts of painting and statuary began to revive with learning in Europe, and made a great but short flight, so as for these last hundred years we have not had one master in either of them, who deserved a rank with