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tivated productions of Nature, we are to examine the characteristic differences of climate and soil, so in an estimate of the genius of a people, we must look among the sons of unpolished rusticity. The vulgar English therefore may be easily distinguished from all the rest of the world, by superior pride, impatience, and a peculiar hardiness of soul.

Perhaps no qualities in the world are more susceptible of a fine polish than these; artificial complaisance and easy deference being superinduced over these generally form a great character; something at once elegant and majestic, affable yet sincere. Such in general are the better sort; but they who are left in primitive rudeness are the least disposed for society with others, or comfort internally, of any people under the sun.

The poor indeed of every country are but little prone to treat each other with tenderness; their own miseries are too apt to engross all their pity; and perhaps too they give but little commiseration, as they find but little from others. But in England the poor treat each other upon every occasion with more than savage animosity, and as if they were in a state of open war by nature. In China, if two porters should meet in a narrow street, they would lay down their burthens, make a thousand excuses to each other for the accidental interruption, and beg pardon on their knees: if two men of the same occupation should meet here, they would first begin to scold, and at last to beat each other. One would think they had miseries enough resulting from penury and labour not to increase them by ill-nature among themselves, and subjection to new penalties; but such considerations never weigh with them.

But to recompence this strange absurdity they are in the main generous, brave, and enterprising. They feel the slightest injuries with a degree of ungoverned impatience,

impatience, but resist the greatest calamities with surprising fortitude. Those miseries under which any other people in the world would sink, they have often shewed they were capable of enduring; if accidentally cast upon some desolate coast, their perseverance is beyond what any other nation is capable of sustaining; if imprisoned for crimes, their efforts to escape are greater than among others. The peculiar strength of their prisons, when compared to those elsewhere, argues their hardiness; even the strongest prisons I have ever seen in other countries would be very insufficient to confine the untameable spirit of an Englishman. In short, what man dares do in circumstances of danger, an Englishman will. His virtues seem to sleep in the calm, and are called out only to combat the kindred storm.

But the greatest eulogy of this people is the generosity of their miscreants; the tenderness in general of their robbers and highwaymen. Perhaps no people can produce instances of the same kind, where the desperate mix pity with injustice; still shew that they understand a distinction in crimes, and even in acts of violence, have still some tincture of remaining virtue. In every other country robbery and murder go almost always together; here it seldom happens, except upon ill-judged resistance or pursuit. The banditti of other countries are unmerciful to a supreme degree; the highwayman and robber here are generous at least in their intercourse among each other. Taking therefore my opinion of the English from the virtues and vices practised among the vulgar, they at once present to a stranger all their faults, and keep their virtues up only for the enquiring eye of a philosopher.

Foreigners are generally shocked at their insolence upon first coming among them; they find themselves ridiculed and insulted in every street; they meet with

none

none of those trifling civilities, so frequent elsewhere, which are instances of mutual good-will without previous acquaintance; they travel through the country either too ignorant or too obstinate to cultivate a closer acquaintance, meet every moment something to excite their disgust, and return home to characterise this as the region of spleen, insolence, and ill-nature. In short, England would be the last place in the world I would travel to by way of amusement; but the first for instruction. I would chuse to have others for my acquantance, but Englishmen for my friends.

LETTER XCI.

TO THE SAME.

THE mind is ever ingenious in making its own distress. The wandering beggar, who has none to protect, to feed, or to shelter him, fancies complete happiness in labour and a full meal; take him from rags and want, feed, cloath, and employ him, his wishes now rise one step above his station; he could be happy were he possessed of raiment, food and ease. Suppose his wishes gratified even in these, his prospects widen as he ascends; he finds himself in affluence and tranquility indeed, but indolence soon breeds anxiety, and he desires not only to be freed from pain, but to be possessed of pleasure ; pleasure is granted him, and this but opens his soul to ambition, and ambition will be sure to taint his future happiness, either with jealousy, disappointment, or fatigue.

But

But of all the arts of distress found out by man for his own torment, perhaps, that of philosophic misery is most truly ridiculous, a passion no where carried to so extravagant an excess as in the country where I now reside. It is not enough to engage all the compassion of a philosopher here, that his own Geisharassed with wars, pestilence, or barbarity, he shall grieve for the inhabitants of the moon, if the situation of her imaginary mountains happen to alter; and dread the extinction of the sun, if the spots on his surface happen to increase: one should agine, that philosophy was introduced to make men happy; but here it serves to make hundreds miserable.

My landlady some days ago brought me the diary of a philosopher of this desponding sort, who had lodged in the apartment before me. It contains the history of a life, which seems to be one continued tissue of sorrow, apprehension, and distress. A single week will serve as a specimen of the whole.

Monday.In what a transient decaying situation are we placed, and what various reasons does philosophy furnish to make mankind unhappy! A single grain of mustard shall continue to produce its similitude through numberless successions; yet what has been granted to this little seed, has been denied to our planetary system; the mustard-seed is still unaltered, but the system is growing old, and must quickly fall to decay. How terrible will it be, when the motions of all the planets have at last become so irregular as to need repairing, when the moon shall fall into frightful paroxysms of alteration, when the earth, deviating from its ancient track, and with every other planet forgetting its circular revolutions, shall become so eccentric, that unconfined by the laws of system, it shall fly off into boundless space, to knock against some distant world, or fall in upon

the

the sun, either extinguishing his light, or burned up by his flames in a moment. Perhaps while I write, this dreadful change has begun. Shield me from universal ruin! Yet idiot man laughs, sings, and rejoices in the very face of the sun, and seems no way touched with his situation.

Tuesday. Went to bed in great distress, awaked and was comforted, by considering that this change was to happen at some indefinite time, and therefore, like death, the thoughts of it might easily be borne. But there is a revolution, a fixed determined revolution, which must certainly come to pass; yet which, by good fortune, I shall never feel, except in my posterity. The obliquity of the equator with the ecliptic is now twenty minutes less than when it was observed two thousand years ago by Piteas. If this be the case, in six thousand the obliquity will be still less by a whole degree. This being supposed, it is evident, that our earth, as Louville has clearly proved, has a motion, by which the climates must necessarily change place, and in the space of about one million of years, England shall actually travel to the Antarctic pole. I shudder at the change! How shall our unhappy grandchildren endure the hideous climate! A million of years will soon be accomplished: they are but a moment when compared to eternity; then shall our charming country, as I may say, in a moment of time, resemble the hideous wilderness of Nova Zembla.

Wednesday. To night, by my calculation, the long predicted comet is to make its first appearance. Heavens what terrors are impending over our little dim speck of earth! Dreadful visitation! Are we to be scorched in its fires, or only smothered in the vapour of its tail? That is the question! Thoughtless

mortals,

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