Platonism took deep root in Germany, and was the favorite of the ablest philosophers; and whether the mystic Reuchlin, or the mathematical Leibnitz, or the recondite Kant, elaborated their respective theories, they equally acknowledged the great Greek master to be the one model of their admiration. Sydenham, Spens, and Taylor, translated him in the bosom of the English race; and among the British admirers of Plato, besides the cabalists Gale and More, and the eloquent pupil of the Alexandrian school, Cudworth, were many of the ablest philosophers and poets. Not to anticipate the new age, on the border of which shone the Platonic minds of Milton and Gray, we allude to Berkeley, whose enthusiastic esteem is well known, and to Bacon, who never speaks of the political or moral works of Plato without marked respect. The mighty architects of the age to come, best understood the worth of those foundations on which they built, and with a noble sadness sometimes bemoaned the obscurity which progress necessarily throws upon the superseded past. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, philosophy appeared to have but one home, Italy; but in the seventeenth century, all Europe became the field of its culture, and the richest fruits were ripened by the setting sun. At earlier periods, inventive mind had scarcely any means of expression, save a single language, and that a dead one; but in the seventeenth century the Latin became the exception, and philosophy began to use national tongues, which it enriched and reformed. At the moment a new world was opened to the sublimest advance, philosophy admitted to its service only living languages, full of the future, and which placed it in direct communication with the masses. Thus it accumulated its resources, concentrated its influence, and pressed forward in its majestic career, promising soon to become an independent, universal, and popular power. CHAPTER V. RELIGION. For the right examination of the divine dealings in the ancient world, heaven has vouchsafed an unerring guide. The predictions of the inspired writers, and especially the prophecies of Daniel, furnish a key to all the remarkable events which authentic history records. The fact of fatal revolutions, and both the names and leading traits of their predestined agents, are declared with a boldness which ought to confound the skeptic whom it fails to convince.