While the shores of the Baltic became famed for the studies of
Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler, those of the Mediterranean were
celebrated for giving birth to men of genius in all its variety, and for
having abounded with poets and historians, as well as with men of science.
On one side, learning took its rise from the heart and the fancy; on the
other, it is still confined to the judgment and the memory. A faithful
detail of public transactions, with little discernment of their comparative
importance; the treaties and the claims of nations, the births and
genealogies of princes, are, in the literature of northern nations, amply
preserved; while the lights of the understanding, and the feelings of the
heart, are suffered to perish. The history of the human character; the
interesting memoir, founded no less on the careless proceedings of a
private life, than on the formal transactions of a public station; the
ingenious pleasantry, the piercing ridicule, the tender, pathetic, or the
elevated strain of elocution, have been confined in modern, as well as
ancient times, with a few exceptions, to the same latitudes with the fig
and the vine.
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