A
modern Italian is distinguished by sensibility, quickness, and art, while
he employs on trifles the capacity of an ancient Roman; and exhibits now,
in the scene of amusement, and in the search of a frivolous applause, that
fire, and those passions, with which Gracchus burned in the forum, and
shook the assemblies of a severer people.
The commercial and lucrative arts have been, in some climates, the
principal object of mankind, and have been retained through every disaster;
in others, even under all the fluctuations of fortune, they have still been
neglected; while in the temperate climates of Europe and Asia, they have
had their ages of admiration as well as contempt.
In one state of society arts are slighted, from that very ardour of mind,
and principle of activity, by which, in another, they are practised with
the greatest success. While men are engrossed by their passions, heated and
roused by the struggles and dangers of their country; while the trumpet
sounds or the alarm of social engagement is rung, and the heart beats high,
it were a mark of dulness, or of an abject spirit, to find leisure for the
study of ease, or the pursuit of improvements, which have mere convenience
or ease for their object.
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