An ingenious Persian lately in England, gave an account of many thousand Arabian manuscripts, totally unknown to the gentlemen of the university of Oxford. It is to be wished these were procured. The Orientals and Hebrews were the parents of knowledge, and the Greeks no more than their scholars: how gross were their notions of prudence and _virtue_, till Orpheus, and the travelled philosophers taught them better! The institutions of modern nations are not to be compared to those of the ancients, as almost all these had the advantage of being founded by philosophers. Athens and Sparta were the two first formed states of Greece. Solon and Lycurgus, who had seen the success of the plan conducted by Minos in Crete, and who partly copied after that wise prince, erected these two celebrated republics. The sagacious system of Egypt served as a model to all the east.
The astronomical observatory is furnished with the best instruments; anatomy has an amphitheatre, and a spacious room filled with a compleat set of anatomical pieces in wax.
Painting and sculpture, besides a most convenient apartment for the study and practice of these arts, have two large rooms full of models of the most valuable remains of antiquity, taken from the originals.
The pupils of architecture have a hall, crowded with designs and models of the finest pieces, ancient and modern--and there are contiguous apartments where all the liberal sciences are read and taught, as logic, physic, ethics, metaphysics, astronomy, geography, geometry, etc.
These assemblage of studies in every branch is further enriched with curious museums of antiques, and natural history. All these advantages are heightened by the lectures of able professors in every art and every science.
This academy receives two hundred scholars, affords them a liberal support, and leads them through a perfect course of education; from the first elements of letters, through the whole circle of the sciences; from the lowest class of grammatical learning, to the highest degrees in the several faculties. It properly and naturally consists of two parts, rightly forming two establishments, the one subordinate to the other. The design of the one was to lay the foundation of science; that of other, to raise and compleat the superstructure: the former was to supply the latter with proper subjects; and the latter was to improve the advantages received in the former.