Of warm encouragement, and in the eye

Of public note, they reach their perfect size.

Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaimed
The fairest capital of all the world,

By riot and incontinence the worst.

There, touched by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes

A lucid mirror, in which Nature sees

All her reflected features. Bacon there

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701

Gives more than female beauty to a stone,

And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips.

Nor does the chisel occupy alone

705

The powers of Sculpture, but the style as much;

Each province of her art her equal care.

With nice incision of her guided steel

She ploughs a brazen field, and clothes a soil

710

So sterile with what charms soe'er she will,
The richest scenery and the loveliest forms.
Where finds Philosophy her eagle eye,
With which she gazes at yon burning disk
Undazzled, and detects and counts his spots?
In London. Where her implements exact,
With which she calculates, computes, and scans
All distance, motion, magnitude, and now
Measures an atom, and now girds a world?
In London. Where has commerce such a mart,

715

So rich, so thronged, so drained, and so supplied, 720
As London, opulent, enlarged, and still
Increasing London? Babylon of old
Not more the glory of the earth than she,
A more accomplished world's chief glory now.

She has her praise. Now mark a spot or two
That so much beauty would do well to purge;
And show this queen of cities, that so fair

725

May yet be foul, so witty yet not wise.

It is not seemly, nor of good report,

That she is slack in discipline; more prompt

730

To avenge than to prevent the breach of law;
That she is rigid in denouncing death

On petty robbers, and indulges life

And liberty, and ofttimes honour too,

To peculators of the public gold;

735

That thieves at home must hang, but he that puts

Into his overgorged and bloated purse
The wealth of Indian provinces, escapes.

Nor is it well, nor can it come to good,
That, through profane and infidel contempt
Of Holy Writ, she has presumed to annul
And abrogate, as roundly as she may,
The total ordinance and will of God;
Advancing Fashion to the post of Truth,
And centering all authority in modes

740

745

And customs of her own, till Sabbath rites

Have dwindled into unrespected forms,

And knees and hassocks are wellnigh divorced.

God made the country, and man made the town :

What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts

750

That can alone make sweet the bitter draught

That life holds out to all, should most abound

And least be threatened in the fields and groves?

There only minds like yours can do no harm.
Our groves were planted to console at noon

760

At eve

The pensive wanderer in their shades.
The moonbeam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish,
Birds warbling all the music. We can spare
The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse
Our softer satellite. Your songs confound
Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs
Scared, and the offended nightingale is mute.
There is a public mischief in your mirth,
It plagues your country. Folly such as yours
Graced with a sword, and worthier of a fan,
Has made, what enemies could ne'er have done,
Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you,
A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

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770

BOOK II.

The Timepiece.

ARGUMENT.-Reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former book-Peace among the nations recommended on the ground of their common fellowship in sorrow-Prodigies enumerated-Sicilian earthquakes-Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sin— God the agent in them-The philosophy that stops at secondary causes reproved-Our own late miscarriages accounted for-Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau-But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation-The reverend advertiser of engraved sermons-Petit-maître parson-The good preacher-Picture of a theatrical clerical coxcomb-Story-tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved - Apostrophe to popular applause — Retailers of ancient philosophy expostulated with-Sum of the whole matter -Effects of sacerdotal mismanagement on the laity-Their folly and extravagance-The mischiefs of profusion-Profusion itself with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the universities.

OH for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more!

My ear is pained, 5

My soul is sick with every day's report

Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,

It does not feel for man; the natural bond

Of brotherhood is severed as the flax

That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not coloured like his own, and having power

10

To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause

Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.

Lands intersected by a narrow frith

Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations who had else
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 broadest, foulest blot,
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat
With stripes that Mercy, with a bleeding heart,
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.

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20

25

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 sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews bought and sold have ever earned.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my
heart's
Just estimation prized above all price,
I had much rather be myself the slave

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home. Then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
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 blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein

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35

40

45

Of all your empire; that where Britain's power