At that time almost everything that was worth reading was contained in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Had our ancestors acted as the Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto acted; had they neglected the language of Cicero and Tacitus; had they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own island; had they printed nothing, and taught nothing at the universities, but chronicles in Anglo-Saxon, and romances in Norman French, would England have been what she now is?
What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India.

The literature of England is now more valuable than that of classical antiquity.

I doubt whether the Sanscrit literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors.
In some departments--in history, for example--I am certain that it is much less so.
"Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes.

Within the last hundred and twenty years a nation which had previously been in a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors were before the Crusades has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilised communities.