ARGUMENT of the SECOND BOOK.

Reflections fuggefted by the conclufion 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 thefe calamities by fin.God the agent in them.-The philofophy that ftops at fecondary causes, reproved.—Our own late mifcarriages accounted for.-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau.—But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation-The Reverend Advertifer of engraved fermons.—Petit-maitre parfon.-The good preacher.-Picture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb.-Story-tellers and jefters in the pulpit reproved.—Apiftrophe 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 mischiefs of profufion.Profufion itself, with all its confequent evils, afcribed as to its principal caufe, to the want of dif cipline in the Univerfities.

THE

TAS K.

BOOK

II.

THE TIME-PIECE.

OH for a lodge in fome vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
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 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 interposed,
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 deplor'd
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 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, or 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 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

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 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 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 fkies, 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 feem to fail,

* Alluding to the late calamities at Jamaica,

† August 18, 1783.

And Nature + with a dim and fickly eye
To wait the clofe of all? But grant her end
More distant, and that prophecy demands
A longer refpite, unaccomplished yet;
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 fhould love.

Alas! for Sicily! rude fragments now

Lie fcatter'd where the fhapely column ftood.
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,

Disclosing paradife where'er he treads ?

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

She