Such squalid sloth to honourable toil. Yet even these, though feigning sickness oft They swathe the forehead, drag the limping limb And vex their flesh with artificial sores,
Can change their whine into a mirthful note When safe occasion offers, and with dance
And music of the bladder and the bag
Beguile their woes and make the woods resound. Such health and gaiety of heart enjoy
The houseless rovers of the sylvan world;
And breathing wholesome air, and wandering much, Need other physic none to heal the effects
Of loathsome diet, penury, and cold.
Blest he, though undistinguished from the crowd By wealth or dignity, who dwells secure Where man, by nature fierce, has laid aside
His fierceness, having learnt, though slow to learn, The manners and the arts of civil life. His wants, indeed, are many: but supply Is obvious; placed within the easy reach Of temperate wishes and industrious hands. Here virtue thrives as in her proper soil; Not rude and surly, and beset with thorns, And terrible to sight, as when she springs, (If e'er she springs spontaneous,) in remote And barbarous climes, where violence prevails, And strength is lord of all; but gentle, kind, By culture tamed, by liberty refreshed, And all her fruits by radiant truth matured. War and the chase engross the savage whole : War followed for revenge, or to supplant The envied tenants of some happier spot, The chase for sustenance, precarious trust! His hard condition with severe constraint Binds all his faculties, forbids all growth Of wisdom, proves a school in which he learns Sly circumvention, unrelenting hate, Mean self-attachment, and scarce aught beside. Thus fare the shivering natives of the north, And thus the rangers of the western world Where it advances far into the deep,
Towards the Antarctic. Even the favoured isles So lately found, although the constant sun Cheer all their seasons with a grateful smile, Can boast but little virtue; and inert
Through plenty, lose in morals what they gain 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 passed By navigators uninformed as they,
Or ploughed 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 thatched with leaves. Their former charms? And having seen our state, Our palaces, our ladies, and our pomp
Of equipage, our gardens, and our sports, And heard our music; are thy simple friends, Thy simple fair, 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 washed 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 climbst 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 fæculence of every land. In cities foul example on most minds Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds In gross and pampered 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. 1 do confess them nurseries of the arts,
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 proclaimed The fairest capital of all the world,
By riot and incontinence the worst.
There touched 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 powers of sculpture, but the style as much; Each province of her heart 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 thronged, so drained, and so supplied As London, opulent, enlarged and still Increasing London? Babylon of old
Not more the glory of the earth, than she A more accomplished world's chief glory now. 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 oft-times honour too To peculators of the public gold.
That thieves at home must hang; but he that puts Into his overgorged 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 threatened 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 ye can 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 splendour 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, which enemies could ne'er have done, Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you,
A mutilated structure, soon to fall.
Which opens with reflections suggested by the conclusion of the formerPeace among the nations recommended on the ground of their common fel lowship 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 mis carriages accounted for-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau -But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation-The Reverend
Advertiser of engraved sermons-Petit maitre parson-The good preacherPicture 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.
OH 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 pained, My soul is sick with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man. The natural bond Of brotherhood is severed as the flax That falls asunder at the touch of fire.
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured 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? I 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 earned. No dear as freedom is, and in my heart's Just estimation prized above all price, I had much rather be myself the slave And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him. We have no slaves at home.-Then why abroad? 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
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