["A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a
mighty stream; and so with other things—­a tree, a man—­anything
appears greatest to him that never knew a greater.”—­Idem, vi. 674.]

“Consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur,
neque requirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper vident.”

["Things grow familiar to men’s minds by being often seen; so that
they neither admire nor are they inquisitive about things they daily
see.”—­Cicero, De Natura Deor., lib. ii. 38.]

The novelty, rather than the greatness of things, tempts us to inquire into their causes.  We are to judge with more reverence, and with greater acknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite power of nature.  How many unlikely things are there testified by people worthy of faith, which, if we cannot persuade ourselves absolutely to believe, we ought at least to leave them in suspense; for, to condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption to pretend to know the utmost bounds of possibility.  Did we rightly understand the difference betwixt the impossible and the unusual, and betwixt that which is contrary to the order and course of nature and contrary to the common opinion of men, in not believing rashly, and on the other hand, in not being too incredulous, we should observe the rule of ‘Ne quid nimis’ enjoined by Chilo.

When we find in Froissart, that the Comte de Foix knew in Bearn the defeat of John, king of Castile, at Jubera the next day after it happened, and the means by which he tells us he came to do so, we may be allowed to be a little merry at it, as also at what our annals report, that Pope Honorius, the same day that King Philip Augustus died at Mantes, performed his public obsequies at Rome, and commanded the like throughout Italy, the testimony of these authors not being, perhaps, of authority enough to restrain us.  But what if Plutarch, besides several examples that he produces out of antiquity, tells us, he knows of certain knowledge, that in the time of Domitian, the news of the battle lost by Antony in Germany was published at Rome, many days’ journey from thence, and dispersed throughout the whole world, the same day it was fought; and if Caesar was of opinion, that it has often happened, that the report has preceded the incident, shall we not say, that these simple people have suffered themselves to be deceived with the vulgar, for not having been so clear-sighted as we?  Is there anything more delicate, more clear, more sprightly; than Pliny’s judgment, when he is pleased to set it to work?  Anything more remote from vanity?  Setting aside his learning, of which I make less account, in which of these excellences do any of us excel him?  And yet there is scarce a young schoolboy that does not convict him of untruth, and that pretends not to instruct him in the progress of the works of nature.  When we read in Bouchet the miracles of St. Hilary’s relics, away with