THE
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ARGUMENT of the SECOND Book,

RefleEtions 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 calcmities by fin. - 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 Fontainbleau — But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation. - The Reverend Advertiser of engraved fermons. - Petit-maître person.—The good preacher. --Pięture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb. Story-tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved. — Apostrophe to popular applaufe. Retailers of ancient philosophy expoftulated with. — Sum of the whole matter. - Efects of facerdotal mismanagement on the laity. —Their folly and extravagance. The mischiefs of profufion. - Profufion itself, with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the Universities.

THË

TAS K.

BOOK II.

THE TIME - PIECE.

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 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 asunder at the touch of fire.

He

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colour'd like his own, and having pow's
T'inforce 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 deplored
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his fweat
With stripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when fhe sees infliéted on a beast.
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 slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I neep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earn’d.

No:

No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Just estimation priz’d'above all price,
I had much rather be myself the Nave
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him..
We have no Naves at home. Then why abroad?
And they themfelves, once ferried o'er the wave
That part 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 power
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 decease,

And