country, in which we now travel, and which we missed in our former tour. Human nature here seems in it's dotage: the state is like a wicked and exhausted old man brought out into his fine garden to die, without power to enjoy any thing in it himself and without temper to let his children do so. But in vain does a stu pid despotism count upon the ignorance of the people; in vain are books forbidden and rational men imprisoned; in vain does the Inquisition gnash it's few remaining teeth. The subjugation of such a country is inevitable, unless those who interfere to sup port her, will fight for her liberty and not for her prejudices; but such a discrimination is not likely."

"No," said Truth, as they passed again through Italy and Germany; "a fatal mistake is every where prevailing. Every where the princes, roused at once to alarm and to resentment, and forgetting the original cause of these troubles, think proper to return to their false notions and to affect a disdain of the peo ple. This only serves to open an easier way to French victory, and accordingly the French are every where victorious. As to ourselves, we have nothing to do but to get out of the way, for I shudder to think what may happen to us."

The travellers indeed had a dismal peregrination. Their dis guises had become so threadbare, that their persons were some、 times recognized; and as often as this was the case, there were such quarrels among all ranks of people on their account, that it was wonderful they escaped with their lives. The lower orders huzzaed them but almost suffocated them in the croud: the middle classes cast a wistful eye of pity at them and shrugged their shoulders; while the great never condescended to notice them except it was to denounce them as French spies and order them out of their territories. Such was their treatment over the greatest part of the Continent. In Holland, indeed, the people only stared at them; but in Spain every body was for making them nuns; and at Rome, what a change from the time of Pope Ganganelli! The cardinals, it is true, though they took no notice of them in public, wrote them billets-doux of a very tender description; but all access to his Holiness was impossible; and instead of a good post-chaise to continue their journey, they could hardly procure a loaf. They had scarcely left the city, when it was entered by the French, who by a strange course of things followed our travellers every where but never came up with them.

They embarked for England in a packet, in the cabin of which was an Italian priest reading Voltaire; a German officer with dispatches which he kept in his hand that they might not make his pocket stick out; a dozen abbés vehemently settling the balance of power, while the vessel was pitching them against each other;

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a number of ladies weeping; and a peer of France who was trying to pour out tea for them into a wooden bowl. When they arrived in England, they heard of nothing but one Pitt, who was the greatest man upon earth. He got rid of every thing that was calculated to make his country too proud, that is to say, of it's gold, of it's high tone, and of certain laws, that made the English value themselves on their persons. One very remarkable instance of his superiority was, that as he made paper pass univer. sally for gold, so he made continual ill-fortune pass for success; and perhaps in all the annals of philosophy, there never was such an instance of the lustre which a great man derives from adver sity. Reason and Truth confessed that he was quite above their understandings, and they did not comprehend him a jot the bet. ter, when they found that a little lieutenant of artillery, of the name of Bonaparte, had become master of the Continent. The great man died and was succeeded in his power and wisdom by his own servants, who were almost as illustrious and quite as unfor tunate. They were of that description of great wits, which is nearly allied to madness. They would appear in public in the most indecent manner, and if you remonstrated with them, they said you had a design against the King's life. They had a great antipathy to the Irish, because the latter eat hot cross-buns for breakfast; so they tied up their hands, and then told them to perform the broad-sword exercise. One of them maintained, on his master's authority, that all poverty was to be cured, like a cut finger, with a few rags; another, on the same ground, insisted that nothing was necessary to the deliverance of Europe, but a German sausage; and a third sat looking all day at an old turtle which lay on it's back, because he had heard his master say, that all would be well the moment that animal chose to "turn up." -In the mean time the thinking part of the nation looked first at their rulers and then at themselves, and said to one another, “Are we the descendants of Burleigh and Chatham? Are we the coun trymen of Newton and Locke ?"

"It appears to me," said Truth to her mother, "that the English, in troubling themselves too much about the constitutions of others, have taken too little care of their own. But they will be well again, if they will only take a little of your advice.""I will do what I can," said Reason, "when I recover my voice, which is almost gone in talking to so little purpose. You say not a word about going back to our well; and indeed, I do not think it necessary just now. There are many things to annoy us here, but then there are plenty of loaves and post-chaises, and we live comparatively at our case. Confess, after all, my daughter, that if we have seen many shocking things, we have also seen a few more promising than we ever yet beheld.”

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"I think with you, my mother," said Truth, "as I always do. We have seen indeed events very surprising, but not at all unsuitable to their causes. Retribution has been very active, and a little has been done for improvement. The Poles have been revenged for the abominable partition of their country, and the French for the intended seizure of their's: Spain has been taught the folly of superstitious ignorance; Austria the folly of old and bad systems; England the folly of thinking to preserve and to benefit by all this; and France will, in her turn, be taught the folly of exchanging freedom for conquest.. This Bonaparte, who is by some called a man of genius and by others a man of luck, is in fact both, for his seizure of opportunities is a proof of the one, and the opportunities offered him are a proof of the other. The princes his enemies form indeed an uncommon list. Four of them are confessedly weak,-two are approaching to idiots,-one is half mad, and another is quite so. Some of them have be. come wanderers, others kiss his feet while he tramples on them, and others enter into his family in order to be safe. These men never had any glory to lose, but their adversary had the greatest of glories before him, that of being the establisher of French li berty, and he lost it for the sake of mingling with the Alexanders and Charlemagnes, who in point of real glory are some hundred fathom below the Epaminondases, the De Witts, and the Washingtons. On the other hand, literature and the arts are growing into more general repute: the Pope, so long the arbiter of power and of conscience, has fallen without noise, almost without no. tice the new world, gradually shaking off it's dependence on distant nations, has at least the good omen of coming forward as Superstition is retiring; and in a word, my dear mother, if little or nothing has been gained for civil liberty, a great deal has been gained for religious. Philosophy could not turn the sword, but it has entirely put out the stake; nay, it has almost extinguished this fire in men's bosoms, and people are no longer ranked with criminals for not kissing two sticks laid across, or for not contradicting the multiplication-table, or for not believing the divine goodness to consist in burning the majority of mankind to all eternity. This is a great good, and compensates for many evils."

"Well," said Reason, "if any country is ours, it is certainly that of Alfred, of Newton, and of Locke. We will remain here in spite of the storms, and will never return again to our well till it be out of our power to do good.

A friend of mine saw Reason and Truth the other day in their retreat, where they have a cottage embosomed in trees, a small library, and an excellent kitchen-garden, not to mention a very pretty one of flowers, for Reason affects no austerities. At the

side of the house are a bench and a well-spring for travellers. Truth was writing a history of the past years, very different from the lucubrations of Gifford, of D'Ivernois, of Mallet Du Pan, of Genta, and of the Moniteur, As for Reason, she was surrounded by a crowd of mothers, holding, out their laughing lit tle children, whom she was inoculating with the discovery of Dr. Jenner.

ART. XVII.-On War.

THAT war is the greatest evil incident to man in the social state, will scarcely be denied by those who consider, apart from preconceived system, the innumerable vices and calamities to which it gives birth, and which, however they may be glossed over by sophistry, are felt in all their reality by the immediate sufferers under their effects. The philosopher or the theologian may at his ease, sitting in his closet, make calculations of the moral and physical good produced by wars, and declaim, the one, on the manly and respectable virtues which they call into action, the other, on the uses they serve in the scheme of Providence; but the poor villager, whose house has been committed to the flames, and his family exposed to brutal outrage, in the operations of an army either of friends or enemies, will be little disposed to enter into their speculations.

Assuming therefore as a fact, that war is the most grievous pest with which the race of man is afflicted, it may be supposed that the genuine philanthropist cannot have anything more at heart than to discover the means by which this evil may be, if not eradicated, at least rendered less frequent. But before he indulges a hope of success in this attempt, he will probably think it necessary to satisfy himself concerning the questions, Whether a state of war be an unavoidable consequence of the nature of man, or whether wars be owing to imperfections in the frame of governments, or other errors in social institutions which it might be possible to correct. If the former, he will be apt to conclude that he has nothing to do but to sit down in passive acquiescence in the destiny of mankind, with no other exercise for his benevolence in respect to this object than endeavouring to mitigate some of the severities practised in warfare; and even inthat, his expectations of success will be very limited; for, war

being essentially a process of déstruction, to effect its purpose in a mild and humane way is a contradiction in terms. But if, on the other hand, he convinces himself that there is nothing in the human character and condition which should prevent men from living in peace with their fellow-men, and ranking rather among the gentle than the murderous animals, he will feel himself strongly inclined to search into, and endeavour to find a remedy for, those disorders which have so lamentably deteriorated their lot upon the earth on which Providence has placed them.

It is this leading question, therefore, that I mean in the pre. sent paper to discuss; and in order to do it usefully, I shall omit all theoretical speculations upon the human mind, and the variety and strength of the motives that may be expected to operate upon it, and shall simply consider man as that being which the narratives of his actions in all ages have shewn him to be; and thence endeavour to elicit some light as to the effects of the diffe. rent circumstances in which he has been or may be placed, upon his disposition to preserve or to violate a state of amity with his neighbours.

Ancient history is little more than a tissue of warlike transac tions, only varied by the changes in dominion, and the successive appearance of one great commander after another. In some of those instances, whole nations seem to have been ani mated with the spirit of hostility against their neighbours; in others, they have been mere machines in the hands of their rulers wherewith to carry on the chess-play of ambition: and in both cases war would appear to have been the great occupation of mankind. From the manner in which some of those states were formed we can readily account for their being involved in perpe. tual quarrels. Thus, that people which is the subject of the most ancient history extant, having emigrated in a body with the purpose of settling in countries already possessed by inhabitants whose expulsion or extermination was previously necessary, could not fail of inheriting a succession of bloody and cruel wars. Other tribes of antiquity, which deserted cold and steril regions to establish themselves amid the "plenty of the plains," were in like manner doomed to inflict and undergo the evils of incessant hostility. At the same time those larger masses which coalesced into potent empires under the controul of a despotic sovereign (as was generally the case in the East) were continually immersed in external wars kindled by the passions of their weak and misdirected masters, or in internal disorders arising from re. volts and disputed successions.

If the reader of history, disgusted with the records of barbarism, turns his view on the Grecian republic, where polished manners and elegant arts were joined with large enquiry into all

the