Angola's natives scourged by ruffian hands,

And toil's hard product shipp'd to foreign lands.

Talk not of blossoms, and your endless spring;

What joy, what smile, can scenes of misery bring?

Though Nature, here, has every blessing spread,

Poor is the labourer-and how meanly fed!

Here Stygian paintings light and shade

renew,

Pictures of hell, that Virgil's pencil drew: Here, surly Charons make their annual trip,

And ghosts arrive in every Guinea ship, To find what beasts these western isles afford,

Plutonian scourges, and despotic lords:Here, they, of stuff determined to be free,

Must climb the rude cliffs of the Liguanee;

Beyond the clouds, in sculking haste repair,

And hardly safe from brother traitors there.

1784. National Gazette, July 21, 1792.

THE PROGRESS OF BALLOONS "Perdomita tellus, tumida cesserunt freta, Inferna nostros regna sensere impetus; Immune cœlum est, dignus Alcida labor, In alta mundi spatia sublimes feremur." -SENEC. HERC. FURENS.

Assist me, ye muses, (whose harps are in tune)

To tell of the flight of the gallant balloon! As high as my subject permit me to soar To heights unattempted, unthought of before,

Ye grave learned Doctors, whose trade is to sigh,

Who labour to chalk out a road to the sky,

Improve on your plans-or I'll venture to say,

A chymist, of Paris, will show us the way. The earth on its surface has all been survey'd,

The sea has been travell'd-and deep in the shade

10

The kingdom of Pluto has heard us at work,

When we dig for his metals wherever they lurk.

too near,

That the spirits of cuckolds inhabit her sphere.

Our folks of good morals it wofully grieves,

That Mercury's people are villains and thieves,

You'll see how it is-but I'll venture to shew

For a dozen among them, twelve dozens below.

From long observation one proof may be had

That the men in the moon are incurably mad;

However, compare us, and if they exceed They must be surprizingly crazy indeed. 60 But now, to have done with our planets and moons

Come, grant me a patent for making balloons

For I find that the time is approaching—

the day

LITERARY IMPORTATION

However we wrangled with Britain awhile
We think of her now in a different stile.
And many fine things we receive from
her isle;

Among all the rest,
Some demon possessed

Our dealers in knowledge and sellers of

sense

To have a good bishop imported from thence.