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 Stops at fecondary causes reproved. Our own late miscarriages 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 fermons.-Petitmaitre parfon. The good preacher.-Pictures of a theatrical clerical coxcomb. -Story-tellers and jefters in the pulpit reproved. - Apostrophe to popular applause. Retailers of ancient philofophy expostulated with.-Sum of the whole matter. Effects of facerdotal mismanagement on the laity. Their folly and extravagance. -The mischiefs of profusion.Profusion itself, with all its confequent evils, afcribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of difcipline in the univerhties.
On for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unfuccefsful or successful war,
Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd,
My foul is fick, 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 nat'ral bond
Of brotherhood is sever'd as the flax
That falls afunder 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 interfected 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 broadeft, fouleft blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his fweat
With stripes, that mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beaft.
Then what is man? And what man, feeing 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 fleep,
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 flave,
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 bleffing. 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 focial intercourse, Benevolence, and peace, and mutual aid, Between the nations, in a world that feems To toll the death-bell of its own decease, And by the voice of all its elements
To preach the gen'ral doom*. When were the
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,
: * Alluding to the calamities at Jamaica.
† August 18, 1783.
Portentous, unexampled, unexplain'd,
Have kindled beacons in the skies; and th' 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 fickly eye
To wait the close of all? But grant her end
More distant, and that prophecy demauds
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
* Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Afia during the whole fummer of 1783.
|