An ornamental woodcut drop cap 'Q' depicts foliage and scrolls within a square frame.

To the Most Serene & Most Illustrious Prince

AND LORD, CHARLES, ARCHDUKE OF AUSTRIA, etc. Richard Strein, greetings.

What the reason might be, Prince Charles, most illustrious, that while almost every age has brought forth for us studies of the best things, yet they appear to grow old having been led from humble to high, to fulfill their own fate as it were, and again at some time to be brought forth and emerge, I am often and greatly accustomed to doubt. For we see, and this is indeed evident to all, that the last age of men, which was the closer it was to its origin, the more it excelled in talent and greatness of spirit, both in noting diligently and explaining accurately the power of celestial things, the fixed courses of the spheres, the motions, transits, and progressions of the stars, as well as the whole obscurity of nature and the vicissitudes of things; all of which, though they had been placed on a high level, began to slip away little by little and be cast down. For the age that followed immediately did not so much know these most excellent things as it began to plainly despise and neglect them. The third age, however, which is that of the Greeks—for one is that of the Assyrians, another of the Persians—not only roused these best and most correct studies of nature which seemed to lie prone and buried, but also introduced all kinds of doctrines and arts, rights, laws, and finally all humanity, and distributed them into all lands. At this time, philosophers arose as teachers of virtue, who unfolded the nature of all things, explained the subtlety of disputation, and handed down life and customs; they were, in a way, the progenitors and parents of all other good arts. I will not proceed further; I come to the Romans. What was more excellent in the flourishing Roman Empire than the study of letters? What more illustrious? What, indeed, more erudite than that age? Yet, that these fell along with the empire, no one who is even moderately learned is ignorant. Nevertheless, when these were thought to be repressed by antiquity, or rather oppressed and extinct, in our own memory and that of our fathers, they began to be reclaimed into the light by most learned men and restored to their former dignity after a long interval. I think the cause of such a great change lies in nature itself, such that, because it neither appears nor is seen in this weakness of ours, it must be left to the wisdom of God alone, who is the almighty over all things: the other cause, placed outside of nature, I judge can be comprehended by mind and intelligence. For just as a limit is given to each part of an age, and a certain timeliness, which being run through and finished, it is necessary that it be completed and extinguished: so also the ages of all other things are accustomed to be seen as marked out and circumscribed by certain limits. And, not to mention those things that can be seen by the eyes and noted by outcome, all the offspring of the earth, fruits, berries of trees, and whatever nature has bestowed for the comforts of men, are found to be very unlike their own selves in the passage of time: the talent of man and human nature, indeed, it cannot be said how much it has degenerated from previous ages, how broken and weakened it is now, driven by a certain vehement impulse toward old age and destruction. Yet there are sparks of virtues innate in the talents of men, and seeds of doctrines given, which, if they were to grow, nothing could be more excellent than human nature: now, however, since there is such a depravity of nature that as soon as we are born and brought into the light, our minds, imbued with the errors of wickedness, are turned in total perversity, when the sparks, if there are any, are quickly extinguished, then the seeds turn themselves into contrary parts.