صفحة 218 من 483

"While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of

letters as it was taught to the stranger, and this opened before

me a wide field for wonder and delight.

"The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney's _Ruins

of Empires_. I should not have understood the purport of this

book had not Felix, in reading it, given very minute

explanations. He had chosen this work, he said, because the

declamatory style was framed in imitation of the Eastern authors.

Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of history and a

view of the several empires at present existing in the world; it

gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and religions

of the different nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful

Asiatics, of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the

Grecians, of the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans-of

their subsequent degenerating-of the decline of that mighty

empire, of chivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the

discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the

hapless fate of its original inhabitants.