Having travelled with you through the splendid ?ras of the Venetian story, and presented their statesmen and heroes to your view, let us now return to the present race, in whose life and conversation, I forewarn you, there is nothing heroic. The truth is, that in every country, as well as Venice, we can only read of heroes; they are seldom to be seen: for this plain reason, that while they are to be seen we do not think them heroes. The historian dwells upon what is vast and extraordinary; what is common and trivial finds no place in his records. When we hear the names of Epaminondas, Themistocles, Camillus, Scipio, and other great men of Greece and Rome, we think of their great actions, we know nothing else about them;—but[216] when we see the worthies of our own times, we unfortunately recollect their whole history. The citizens of Athens and Rome, who lived in the days of the heroes above mentioned, very probably had not the same admiration of them that we have; and our posterity, some eight or ten centuries hence, will, it is to be hoped, have a higher veneration for the great men of the present age, than their intimate acquaintance are known to have, or than those can be supposed to form, who dail............