the daily objects of veneration, though not of imitation. This art, it
is observable; has never been improved in later ages in one single
instance; but every just and legitimate edifice is still formed
according to the five old established orders, to which human wit has
never been able to add a sixth of equal symmetry and strength.

Such, therefore, are the triumphs of the Ancients, especially the
Greeks, over the Moderns. They may, perhaps, be not unjustly ascribed
to a genial climate, that gave such a happy temperament of body as was
most proper to produce fine sensations; to a language most harmonious,
copious, and forcible; to the public encouragements and honours
bestowed on the cultivators of literature; to the emulation excited
among the generous youth, by exhibitions of their performances at the
solemn games; to an inattention to the arts of lucre and commerce,
which engross and debase the minds of the moderns; and above all, to
an exemption from the necessity of overloading their natural faculties
with learning and languages, with which we in these later times are
obliged to qualify ourselves, for writers, if we expect to be read.

It is said by Voltaire, with his usual liveliness, "We shall never
again behold the time, when a Duke de la Rochefoucault might go from
the conversation of a Pascal or Arnauld, to the theatre of Corneille."
This reflection may be more justly applied to the ancients, and it may
with much greater truth be said; "The age will never again return,
when a Pericles, after walking with Plato in a portico, built by
Phidias, and painted by Apelles, might repair to hear a pleading of
Demosthenes, or a tragedy of Sophocles."

I shall next examine the other part of Addison's assertion, that the
moderns excell the ancients in all the arts of Ridicule, and assign