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and yet another billow has rolled on, each emulating its predecessor in height; towering, for its moment, and curling its foaming honours to the clouds, men roaring, breaking and perishing on the same shores.

Is it not strange that, familiarly and universally as these things are known, each generation is as eager in the pursuit of its earthly objects, projects its plan on a scale as extensive, and labours in their execution with a spirit as ardent and unrelaxing as if this life and this world were to last for ever? -It is indeed a most benevolent interposition of Providence, that these palpable and just views of the vanity of human life, are not permitted entirely to crush the spirits and unnerve the arm of industry. But at the same time, methinks it would be wise in man to permit them to have, at least, so much weight with him as to prevent his total absorption by the things of this earth, and to point some of his thoughts and his exertions to a system of being, far more permanent, exalted and happy. Think not this reflection too solemn. It is irresistibly inspired by the objects around me, and, as rarely as it occurs (much too rarely) it is most certainly and solemnly true, my S*******.

It is curious to reflect what a nation in the course of two hundred years, has sprung up and flourished from the feeble, sickly germ which was planted here! Little did our shortsighted court suspect the conflict which she

was preparing for herself; the convulsive throe by which her infant colony would, in a few years, burst from her, and start into a political importance that would astonish the earth!-But Virginia, my dear S******* as rapidly as her population and her wealth must continue to advance, wants one most important sourse of solid grandeur; and that, too, the animating soul of a republick. Í I mean, public spirit, that sacred armor patriæ, which filled Greece and Rome with patriots, heroes and scholars. There seems to me to be but one object throughout the state; to grow rich; a passion which is visible not only in the walks of private life, but which has crept into and poisoned every public body in the state. Indeed from the very genius of the government, by which all the publick characters are at short, periodical elections, evolved from the body of the people, it cannot but happen that the councils of the state must take the impulse of the private propensities of the country.-Hence Virginia exhibits no great publick improvements; hence, in spite of her wealth, every part of the country manifests her sufferings either from the penury of her guardians, or their want of that attention, and noble pride wherewith it is their duty to consult her appearance. Her roads and highways are frequently impassable, sometimes frightful-the very few publick works which have been set on foot, instead of being carried on with spirit, are per

mitted to languish and pine and creep feebly along, in such a manner that the first part of an edifice grows grey 'with age and almost tumbles in ruins, before the last part is lifted from the dust-highest offices are sustained with so avaricious, so nigardly a hand, that if they are not driven to subsist on roots, and drink ditch water with old Fabricus, it is not for the want of republican economy in the projectors of the salaries-and, above all, the general culture of the human mind, that best cure for the aristocratick distinctions which they profess to love; this culture, instead of becoming a national care, is entrusted merely to such individuals as hazard, indigence, misfortunes or crimes, have forced from their native Europe to seek an asylum and bread in the wilds of America. They have only one publick seminary of learning; a college at Williamsburg, about seven miles from this place, which was erected in the reign of our William and Mary, and bears their name. This college, in the fastidious folly and affectation of republicanism, they have endowed with a few despicable fragments of surveyor's fees, &c. converting a body of polite, scientifick and highly respectable professors, into a shop board of contemptible cabbaging taylors.

And, then, instead of aiding and energizing the police of the college, by a few civil regulations,permitting their youth to run and riot in all the wildness of dissipation; while

the venerable professors are forced to look on in the deep mortification of conscious impotence, and see their care and zeal requited, by the ruin of their pupils and the destruction of their seminary. These are points which, at present, I can barely touch; when I have an easier seat and writing desk, than a grave and a tomb stone, it will give me pleasure to dilate on them; for it will afford an opportunity of exulting in the superiority of our own energetick monarchy over this republican body without a soul.

For the present, my dear S*******, I bid you adieu.

BRITISH SPY.

LETTER IX.

RICHMOND, OCTOBER 30.

TALENTS, my dear S*******, wherever they have had a suitable theatre, have never failed to emerge from obscurity and assume their proper rank in the estimation of the world. The celebrated Camden is said to have been the tenant of a garret. Yet from the darkness, poverty and ignominy of this residence, he advanced to distinction and wealth, and graced the first offices and titles of our island.-It is impossible to turn over the British Biography without being struck and charmed by the multitude of correspondent examples; a venerable groupe of novi homines as the Romans called them; men, who, from the lowest depths of obscurity and want, and without even the influence of a patron, have risen to the first honours of their country, and founded their own families anew. In every nation and in every age, great talents, thrown fairly into the point of publick observation, will, invariably produce the same ultimate effect. The ealous pride of power may attempt to re