In manners-victims of luxurious ease.
These therefore I can pity, placed remote
From all that science traces, art invents,
Or inspiration teaches; and enclosed
In boundless oceans, never to be pass'd
By navigators uninform'd as they,

Or plough'd perhaps by British bark again:
But, far beyond the rest, and with most cause,
Thee, gentle savage! whom no love of thee
Or thine, but curiosity, perhaps,

Or else vain-glory, prompted us to draw
Forth from thy native bowers, to show thee here
With what superior skill we can abuse
The gifts of Providence, and squander life.
The dream is past; and thou hast found again
Thy cocoas and bananas, palms and yams,
And homestall thatch'd with leaves. But hast
thou found
[state,
Their former charms? And. having seen our
Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp
Of equipage, our gardens, and our sports,
And heard our music; are thy simple friends,
Thy simple fare, and all thy plain delights
As dear to thee as once? And have thy joys
Lost nothing by comparison with ours?
Rude as thou art, (for we returned thee rude
And ignorant, except of outward show),
I cannot think thee yet so dull of heart,
And spiritless as never to regret

Sweets tasted here, and left as soon as known.
Methinks I see thee straying on the beach,
And asking of the surge that bathes thy foot,
If ever it has wash'd our distant shore.
I see thee weep and thine are honest tears,
A patriot's for his country: thou art sad
At thought of her forlorn and abject state,
From which no power of thine can raise her up.
Thus fancy paints thee, and though apt to err,
Perhaps errs little when she paints thee thus.
She tells me, too, that duly every morn
Thou climb'st the mountain top, with eager eye
Exploring far and wide the watery waste
For sight of ship from England. Every speck
Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale
With conflict of contending hopes and fears.
But comes at last the dull and dusky eve,
And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared
To dream all night of what the day denied.
Alas! expect it not.
We found no bait
To tempt us in thy country. Doing good,
Disinterested good, is not our trade.

We travel far, tis true, but not for nought;
And must be bribed to compass earth again
By other hopes and richer fruits than yours.

But though true worth and virtue in the mild And genial soil of cultivated life

Thrive most and may perhaps thrive only there,
Yet not in cities oft: in proud, and gay,
And gain-devoted cities. Thither flow,
As to a common and most noisome sewer,
The dregs and feculence of every land.
In cities foul example on most minds
Begets its likenesss. Rank abundance breeds
In gross and pamper'd cities sloth, and lust,
And wantonness and gluttonous excess.
In cities vice is hidden with most ease,
Or seen with least reproach; and virtue. taught
By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there
Beyond the achievement of successful flight.
I do confess them nurseries of the arts,

* Omai.

In which they flourish most; where, in the beams
Of warm encouragement, and in the eye
Of public note, they reach their perfect size.
Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim'd
The fairest capital of all the world:

By riot and incontinence the worst.

There, touch'd by Reynolds a dull blank becomes
A lucid mirror, in which Nature sees
All her reflected features. Bacon there,
Gives more than female beauty to a stone,
And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips.
Nor does the chisel occupy alone

The power of sculpture, but the style as much;
Each province of her art her equal care.
With nice incision of her guided steel
She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil
So sterile with what charms soe'er she will,
The richest scenery and the loveliest forms.
Where finds Philosophy her eagle eye,
With which she gazes at yon burning disk
Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots ?
In London: where her implements exact,
With which she calculates, computes, and scans
All distance, motion, magnitude, and now
Measures an atom, and now girds a world?
In London. Where has commerce such a mart,
So rich, so throng'd, so drain'd, and so supplied,
As London-opulent, enlarg'd, and still
Increasing London? Babylon of old
Not more the glory of the earth than she,
A more accomplish'd world's chief glory now.

[puts

She has her praise. Now mark a spot or two, That so much beauty would do well to purge; And show this queen of cities that so fair May yet be foul; so witty, yet not wise. It is not seemly nor of good report, That she is slack in discipline; more prompt To avenge than to prevent the breach of law: That she is rigid in denouncing death On petty robbers, and indulges life And liberty, and ofttimes honor too, To peculators of the public gold: That thieves at home must hang; but he, that Into his over-gorged and bloated purse The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes. Nor is it well, nor can it come to good. That through profane and infidel contempt Of holy writ, she has presumed to annul And abrogate, as roundly as she may, The total ordinance and will of God; Advancing Fashion to the post of Truth, And centring all authority in modes And customs of her own, till sabbath rites Have dwindled into unrespected forms, And knees and hassocks are well-nigh divorced. God made the country, and man made the

town.

What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds out to all, should most abound
And least be threaten'd in the fields and groves?
Possess ye, therefore, ye who, borne about,
In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue
But that of idleness and taste no scenes
But such as art contrives, possess ye still
Your element; there only can ye shine;
There only minds like yours can do no harm.
Our groves were planted to console at noon
The pensive wanderer in their shades.
At eve
The moonbeam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish,
Birds warbling all the music. We can spare

The splendor of your lamps; they but eclipse
Our softer satellite. Your songs confound
Our more harmonious notes; the thrush departs
Scared, and the offended nightingale is mute.
There is a public mischief in your mirth;
It plagues your country. Folly such as yours,
Graced with a sword, and worthier of a fan,
Has made, what enemies could ne'er have done,
Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you,
A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

BOOK II.

THE TIME-PIECE.

THE ARGUMENT.

Reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former book-Peace among the nations recommended on the ground of their common fellowship in sorrow-Prodigies enumerated-Sicilian earthquake-Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sin-God the agent in them-The philosophy that stops at secondary causes reproved-Our own late miscarriages accounted forSatirical notice taken of our trips to FontainbleauBut the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation-The reverend advertiser of engraved sermonsPetit-maitre parson-The good preacher-Picture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb-Story-tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved-Apostrophe to popular applause -Retailers of ancient philosophy expostulated withSum of the whole matter-Effects of sacerdotal mismanagement on the laity-Their folly and extravagance-The mischiefs of profusion-Profusion itself, with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the universities.

Ou for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumor of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more! My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man; the natural bond
Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax
That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not color'd like his own; and, having power
To enforce the wrong for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And worse than all. and most to be deplored,
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes that Mercy with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.
Then what is man? And what man seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush.
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me. to fan me while I sleep,
And tremble when I wake for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is and in my heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,

We have no slaves at home:-then why abroad 1
And they themselves, once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein

Of all your empire; that where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

Sure there is need of social intercourse. Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid Between the nations in a world that seems To toll the death-bell of its own decease, And by the voice of all its elements [winds To preach the general doom. When were the Let slip with such a warrant to destroy? When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry f Fires from beneath, and meteors † from above, Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd, Have kindled beacons in the skies; and the old And crazy earth has had her shaking fits More frequent, and foregone her usual rest. Is it a time to wrangle, when the props And pillars of our planet seem to fail, And Nature with a dim and sickly eye To wait the close of all? But grant her end More distant and that prophecy demands A longer respite, unaccomplished yet; Still they are frowning signals, and bespeak Displeasure in his breast who smites the earth Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice. And 'tis but seemly, that, where all deserve And stand exposed by common peccancy To what no few have felt, there should be peace, And brethren in calamity should love.

[signs

Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now Lie scatter'd where the shapely column stood. Her palaces are dust. In all her streets The voice of singing and the sprightly chord Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show Suffer a syncope and solemn pause; While God performs upon the trembling stage Of his own works the dreadful part alone. How does the earth receive him ?-with what Of gratulation and delight her King? Pours she not all her choicest fruits abroad, Her sweetest flowers, her aromatic gums, Disclosing Paradise where'er he treads? She quakes at his approach. Her hollow womb Conceiving thunders through a thousand deeps And fiery caverns roars beneath his foot. The hills move lightly and the mountains smoke, For he has touch'd them. From the extremest Of elevation down into the abyss His wrath is busy and his frown is felt. The rocks fall headlong, and the valleys rise. The rivers die into offensive pools, And, charged with putrid verdure breathe a gross And mortal nuisance into all the air. What solid was by transformation strange Grows fluid; and the fix'd and rooted earth, Tormented into billows heaves and swells, Or with a vortiginous and hideous whirl Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs

* Alluding to the calamities in Jamaica. † August 18, 17-3.

[point

And agonies of human and of brute
Multitudes, fugitive on every side,
And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene
Migrates uplifted; and with all its soil
Alighting in far distant fields, finds out
A new possessor and survives the change.
Ocean has caught the frenzy, and, upwrought
To an enormous and o'erbearing height,
Not by a mighty wind, but by that Voice
Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore
Resistless. Never such a sudden flood,
Upridged so high, and sent on such a charge,
Possess'd an inland scene. Where now the
throng

That press'd the beach, and, hasty to depart,
Look'd to the sea for safety? They are gone,
Gone with the refluent wave into the deep-
A prince with half his people! Ancient towers,
And roofs embattled high, the gloomy scenes
Where beauty oft and letter'd worth consume
Life in the unproductive shades of death.
Fall prone: the pale inhabitants come forth,
And happy in their unforeseen release
From all the rigors of restraint, enjoy
The terrors of the day that sets them free. [fast,
Who then, that has thee, would not hold thee
Freedom! whom they that lose thee so regret,
That e'en a judgment making way for thee,
Seems in their eyes a mercy for thy sake.

Such evil sin hath wrought; and such a flame
Kindled in heaven that it burns down to earth,
And, in the furious inquest that it makes
On God's behalf. lays waste his fairest works.
The very elements, though each be meant
The minister of man, to serve his wants,
Conspire against him. With his breath he draws
A plague into his blood; and cannot use
Life's necessary means, but he must die.
Storms rise to o'erwhelm him: or if stormy winds
Rise not, the waters of the deep shall rise,
And needing none assistance of the storm,
Shall roll themselves ashore, and reach him there.
The earth shall shake him out of all his holds,
Or make his house his grave: nor so content,
Shall counterfeit the motions of the flood,
And drown him in her dry and dusty gulfs.
What then!-were they the wicked above all,
And we the righteous whose fast-anchor'd isle
Moved not, while theirs was rock'd like a light
skiff,

The sport of every wave? No: none are clear,
And none than we more guilty. But, where all
Stand chargeable with guilt, and to the shafts
Of wrath obnoxious. God may choose his mark:
May punish if he please, the less, to warn
The more malignant. If he spared not them,
Tremble and be amazed at thine escape,
For quiltier England, lest he spare not thee!
Happy the man who sees a God employ'd
In all the good and ill that chequer life!
Resolving all events, with their effects
And muni old results, into the will
And arbitration wise of the Supreme.
Did not his eye rule all things and intend
The least of our concerns (since from the least
The greatest ott originate) could chance
Find place in his dominion, or dispose
One lawless particle to thwart his plan;
Then God might be surprised, and unforeseen
Contingence might alarin him and disturb
The smooth and equal course of his affairs.
This truth Philosophy, though eagle-eyed

In nature's tendencies, oft overlooks;
And having found his instru:nent, forgets,
Or disregards, or more presumptuous still,
Denies the power that wields it. God proclaims
His hot displeasure against foolish men,
That live an atheist life: involves the heaven
In tempests; quits his grasp upon the winds,
And gives them all their fury; bids a plague
Kindle a fiery boil upon the skin,

And putrify the breath of blooming Health.
He calls for Famine, and the meagre fiend
Blows mildew from between his shrivell'd lips,
And taints the golden ear. He springs his mines,
And desolates a nation at a blast.
Forth steps the spruce philosopher, and tells
Of homogeneal and discordant springs
And principles; of causes, how they work
By necessary laws their sure effects;
Of action and re-action. He has found
The source of the disease that nature feels,
And bids the world take heart and banish fear.
Thou fool! will thy discovery of the cause
Suspend the effect, or heal it? Has not God
Still wrought by means since first he made the
And did he not of old employ his means [world?
To drown it? What is his creation less
Than a capacious reservoir of means
Form'd for his use, and ready at his will?
Go, dress thine eyes with eye-salve; ask of him
Or ask of whomsoever he has taught;
And learn, though late, the genuine cause of all.
England, with all thy faults, I love thee still-
My country! and, while yet a nook is left
Where English minds and manners may be
found.
[clime
Shall be constrain'd to love thee. Though thy
Be fickle, and thy year most part deform'd
With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost,
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies,
And fields without a flower, for warmer France
With all her vines; nor for Ausonia's groves
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bowers.
To shake thy senate, and from heights sublime
Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire
Upon thy foes, was never meant my task;
But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake
Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart
As any thunderer there. And I can feel
Thy follies too, and with a just disdain
Frown at effeminates, whose very looks
Reflect dishonor on the land I love.

How, in the name of soldiership and sense,
Should England prosper, when such things, as
And tender as a girl, all essenc'd o'er, [smooth
With odors, and as profligate as sweet;
Who sell their laurel for a myrtle wreath, [these
And love when they should fight; when such as
Presume to lay their hand upon the ark

Of her magnificent and awful cause?
Time was when it was praise and boast enough
In every clime, and travel where we might,
That we were born her children. Praise enough
To fill the ambition of a private man,
That Chatham's language was his mother tongue,
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.
Farewell those honors and farewell with them
The hope of such hereafter! They have fallen
Each in the field of glory; one in arms,
And one in council-Wolfe upon the lap
Of smiling victory that moment won,
And Chatham heart-sick of his country's shame;
They made us many soldiers. Chatham still