the Egyptians, Assyrians and Persians, the Greeks, Romans and
Saracens, and finally of the modern age. The facts, he thinks,
establish the proposition that the art of warfare, eloquence,
philosophy, mathematics, and the fine arts, generally flourish and
decline together.

But they do decline. Human things are not perpetual; all pass
through the same cycle--beginning, progress, perfection, corruption,
end. This, however, does not explain the succession of empires in
the world, the changes of the scene of prosperity from one people or
set of peoples to another. Le Roy finds the cause in providential
design. God, he believes, cares for all parts of the universe and
has distributed excellence in arms and letters now to Asia, now to
Europe, again to Africa, letting virtue and vice, knowledge and
ignorance travel from country to country, that all in their turn may
share in good and bad fortune, and none become too proud through
prolonged prosperity.

But what of the modern age in Western Europe? It is fully the equal,
he assevers, of the most illustrious ages of the past, and in some
respects it is superior. Almost all the liberal and mechanical arts
of antiquity, which had been lost for about 1200 years, have been
restored, and there have been new inventions, especially printing,
and the mariner's compass, and "I would give the third place to
gunnery but that it seems invented rather for the ruin than for the
utility of the human race." In our knowledge of astronomy and
cosmography we surpass the ancients." We can affirm that the whole
world is now known, and all the races of men; they can interchange
all their commodities and mutually supply their needs, as
inhabitants of the same city or world-state." And hence there has