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, what enemies could ne'er have done,
Our arch of empire, steadfast but for

A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

you,

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760

770

BOOK II-THE TIME-PIECE.

THE ARGUMENT.

Reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former book, 1-Peace among the nations recommended on the ground of their common fellowship in sorrow, 48-Prodigies enumerated, 53-Sicilian earthquakes, 75-Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sin, 133-God the agent in them, 161-The philosophy that stops at secondary causes reproved, 174–Our own late miscarriages accounted for, 206-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau, 255-But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation, 285-The reverend advertiser of engraved sermons, 351Petit-maître parson, 372-The good preacher, 395-Picture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb, 414-Story-tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved, 463 -Apostrophe to popular applause, 481-Retailers of ancient philosophy expostulated with, 499-Sum of the whole matter, 531-Effects of sacerdotal mismanagement on the laity, 545-Their folly and extravagance, 574 -The mischiefs of profusion, 667-Profusion itself, with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the universities, 699.

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 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 colour'd like his own; and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause

10

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 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,
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
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.
Sure there is need of social intercourse,

VOL. I.

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

To preach the general doom.1 When were the winds
Let slip with such a warrant to destroy?
When did the waves so haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?
Fires from beneath, and meteors2 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 exposed 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 singing and the sprightly chord
Are silent. Revelry, and dance, and show,
Suffer a syncope and solemn pause;

49

60

70

80

Alluding to the calamities in Jamaica-2 August 18, 1783.- Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Asia during the whole summer of 1783.

While God performs upon the trembling stage
Of his own works his dreadful part alone.

81

How does the Earth receive him ?-with what signs here

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 point
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 vortiginous and hideous whirl
Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense
The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs
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

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100

110