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 divorc❜d.

God made the country, and man made the town. What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts That can alone inake 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 wand'rer in their shades. At eve The moon-beam, sliding softly in between The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish, Birds warbling all the musick. We can spare The splendour of your lamps; they but eclipse Our softer satellite. Your songs confound Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs Scar'd, and th' offended nightingale is mute. There is a publick mischief in your mirth; It plagues your country. Folly such as yours, Grac'd with a sword, and worthier of a fan, Has made, what enemies could ne'er have done, Our arch of empire, stedfast but for you,

A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

THE TASK.

BOOK II.

ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND BOOK.

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 earthquakes.-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 for.Satirical notice taken of our trips to FontaineBleau. But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation.-The Reverend Advertiser of engraved sermons.-Petit-maître 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 with.-Sum 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.

THE TASK.

BOOK II.

THE TIME-PIECE.

O FOR a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd,
My soul is sick with ev'ry 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 natʼral 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 colour'd like his own; and having pow'r
T'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 interpos'd

Make enemies of nations, who had else