There is a public mifchief in your mirth,
It plagues your country. Folly fuch as your's
Grac'd with a fword, and worthier of a fan,
Has made, which enemies could ne'er have done
Our arch of empire, ftedfast but for you,
A mutilated ftructure foon to fall..
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 Jecondary 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.—Apo- · ftrophé to popular applaufe.-Retailers of ancient philofophy expoftulated with.---Sum of the whole matter-Effects of facerdotal mifmanagement on the laity.---Their folly and extravagance.---The mifchiefs of profufion.---Profufion itself, with all its confequent evils, afcribed as to its principal caufe, to the want of difcipline in the Universities.
H for a lodge in some vaft wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of fhade,
Where rumour of oppreffion and deceit,
Of unfuccefeful 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 finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not colour'd like his own, and having pow'r
Tinforce 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 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 sweat à
With stripes, that mercy with a bleeding heart
Weeps when the fees inflicted 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 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
Juft eftimation priz'd above all price,
I had much rather be myself the flave
And wear the bonds, than fasften 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 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 seems 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 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 eye
To wait the clofe 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.
Alluding to the fog that covered both Europe and Afia during the whole fummer of 1783.
Still they are frowning fignals, and bespeak
Displeasure in his breaft who fmites the earth
Or heals it, makes it languish or rejoice.
And 'tis but feemly, that where all deferve
And ftand expofed by common peccancy
To what no few have felt, there fhould be peace,
And brethren in calamity should love.
Alas for Sicily! rude fragments now
Lie scatter'd where the fhapely column stood.
Her palaces are duft. In all her streets
The voice of finging and the sprightly chord
Are filent. Revelry and dance and show
Suffer a fyncope and folemn pause.
While God performs upon the trembling ftage
Of his own works, his dreadful part alone.
How does the earth receive him? With what figns
Of gratulation and delight, her king?
Pours fhe not all her choiceft fruits abroad,
Her sweetest flow'rs her aromatic gums,
Difclofing paradife 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 th' extremeft point
Of elevation down into th' abyfs,
His wrath is bufy and his frown is felt.
The rocks fall headlong and the vallies rife,
The rivers die into offenfive pools,
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