Roman Nights; Or the Tomb of the Scipios (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1850. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... NIGHT THIRD. CONFERENCE I. Junius Brutus and Virginius; with a discussion on the merits of their immolition of their own offspring. The wonders that had been related to me and those that I had myself beheld, inspired my mind with animating reflections. For I thought, that if the more erudite of the living might be permitted to converse with those who in their peculiar studies and pursuits, most excelled in past ages, how much it would enlarge and exalt the range of human attainments. The learned would no longer be doomed to grieve over the intervals of oblivion that mar the unity of history, and intervene between us and a remote antiquity, like pathless deserts. Perhaps this privilege could afford but little satisfaction to the cultivators of the sciences, as these, in former times, scarce sent forth a glimmer, before revolutions and reverses united to extinguish and destroy. But at least We should learn the birth and progress of great discoveries, recover lost arts, and become instructed in many admirable phenomena and secrets of nature, once known, but now denied to our investigations. We should no longer be ignorant of even the names of the inventors of the useful and agreeable arts, nor would the occult causes of remarkable events require to be vainly sought with long and laborious researches. Then perhaps, it would be evident, that ages, revolving round the nations of the earth in an immense orbit, in turn dispense and withdraw the illumination of knowledge. Then would be less frequent our complaints on the shortness of life, in which our intellect no sooner attains its full vigour, and touches on the very goal of its hopes, with wisdom for the prize, than the fatal summons calls us away. While occupied in such conjectures, the voices of the phanto...