who almost all came from Scythia, and destroyed your empire, and the
arts and sciences. We lived for seven or eight centuries like savages,
and to complete our barbarism, were inundated with a race of men termed
monks, who brutified, in Europe, that human species which you had
conquered and enlightened. But what will most astonish you is, that
in the latter ages of ignorance amongst these very monks, these very
enemies to civilization, nature nurtured some useful men. Some invented
the art of assisting the feeble sight of age; and others, by pounding
together nitre and charcoal, have furnished us with implements of war,
with which we might have exterminated the Scipios, Alexander, Caesar,
the Macedonian phalanxes, and all your legions; it is not that we
possess warriors more formidable than the Scipios, Alexander, and
Caesar, but that we have superior arms.[8]

_Tullia._--In you, I perceive united, the high breeding of a nobleman,
and the erudition of a man of (literary) consideration; you would have
been worthy of becoming a Roman senator.

_Duke._--Ah, madam, far more worthy are you of being at the head of our
court.

_Mad. de P._--In which case, this lady would prove a formidable rival to
me.

_Tullia._--Consult your beautiful mirrors made of sand, and you will
perceive you have nothing to fear from me. Well, sir, in the gentlest
manner in the world, you have informed me that your knowledge
(infinitely) transcends our own.

_Duke._--I said, madam, that the latter ages are better informed than