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 forrow. --- Prodigies enumerated. -Sicilian earthquakes.-Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by fin. God the agent in them. The philoSophy that ftops at fecondary causes reproved. Our own late miscarriages accounted for. -Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau. But the pulpit, not fatires the proper engine of reformation. - The Reverend Advertifer of engraved fermons.-Petit-maitre parfon.-The good preacher.-Pictures of a theatrical clerical coxcomb. -Story-tellers and jifters in the pulpit reproved.--ApoStropbe to popular applause. Retailers of ancient philoSophy expoftulated with. -Sum of the whole matter. Effects of farcedotal mismanagement on the laity. Their folly and extravagance. The mischiefs of profufion.Profufion itself, with all its confequent evils, afcribed, as to its principal caufe, to the want of discipline in the universities.
On for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppreffion and deceit,
Of unfuccessful or fuccessful war,
Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd,
My foul is fick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'a.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,
It does not feel for man; the nat'ral 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'
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,
Like kindred drops, been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplor'd,
As human nature's broadest, fouleft 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 beaft.
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 flave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I lеер,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That finews bought and fold have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's.
Just estimation priz'd above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no flaves at home-Then why abroad
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loos'd.
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 ev'ry vein
Of all your empire; that where Britain's pow'r
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 deceafe,
And by the voice of all its elements
To preach the gen'ral doom *. When were the winds
Let flip with such a warrant to destroy?
When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?
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, unaccomplish'd 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 expos'd by common peccancy
To what no few have felt, there should be peace,
And brethren in calamity should love.
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 finging and the sprightly chord Are filent. Revelry, and dance, and show Suffer a syncope and folemn pause; While God performs upon the trembling stage Of his own works his dreadful part alone. How does the earth receive him?-With what figns
* Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Asia during the whole fummer of 1783.
|