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ARGUMENT of the SECOND BOOK.

Which opens with reflections fuggefted by the conclufion of the former.-Peace among the nations recommended on the ground of their common fellowship in forrow.Prodigies enumerated.-Sicilian earthquakes-Man rendered obnoxious to thefe calamities by fin.-God the agent in them.-The philofophy that stops at fecondary causes, reproved.-Our own late mifcarriages accounted for.-Satyrical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau-But the pulpit, not fatire, the proper engine of reformation.-The Reverend Advertiser of engraved fermons.-Petit maitre parfon.-The good preacher.-Picture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb.— Story-tellers and jefters in the pulpit reproved.-ApoStrophe to popular applaufe.-Retailers of ancient philofophy expoftulated with.- Sum of the whole matter.-Effects of facerdotal mismanagement 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 difcipline in the Univerfitics.

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BOOK II.

THE TIME-PIECE.

H for a lodge in fome vaft wilderness,

Some boundless contiguity of fhade,
Where rumour of oppreffion and deceit,
Of unfuccefsful or fuccefsful 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 fever'd as the flax

That falls afunder at the touch of fire,

He

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colour'd like his own, and having pow'r
T'inforce the wrong, for fuch a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands interfected by a narrow frith

Abhor each other. Mountains interpofed,
Make enemies of nations who had elfe
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 broadeft, fouleft blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his fweat
With ftripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when the fees 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 slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I fleep, 4;
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That finews bought and fold have ever carn'd.

No:

No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
Juft eftimation priz'd above all price,

I had much rather be myself the flave

And wear the bonds, than faften 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 fhackles fall.
That's noble, and befpeaks 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 power
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

And by the voice of all its elements

*

To preach the gen'ral doom. When were the winds

Let flip with fuch a warrant to destroy,
When did the waves fo haughtily o'erleap
Their ancient barriers, deluging the dry?

Fires from beneath, and meteors † from above
Portentous, unexampled, unexplained,

Have kindled beacons in the skies, and th' old
And crazy earth has had her fhaking fits
More frequent, and foregone her ufual reft.
Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet seem to fail,
And Nature with a dim and fickly e, e
To wait the close of all? But grant her end
More diftant, and that prophecy demands

A longer refpite, unaccomplished yet;

*Alluding to the late calamities at Jamaica.

+ August 18, 1783.

Still

Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Afia during the whole fummer of 1783.

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