that knowledge is favourable to slavery."Science, learning, and the arts," he says, "spread garlands of flowers over the chains "with which they are loaded, stifle the senti

ments of original liberty with which we are "born, and make us in love with slavery." Here the very terms, if we rightly understand their meaning, furnish the confutation of the charge. For, if liberty be stifled, and by liberty be understood the liberty of mind, where are we to look for the science and the learning which are to spread their garlands of flowers over the chains which tyranny imposes on men? Science and learning cannot possibly exist, where tyranny has for any length of time been triumphant; as, I think, it must be conceded, that science, with every thing kindred to it, requires an unfettered mind. The truth is, that tyranny destroys both learning and mind; she knows no enemy so formidable as freedom of mind, and when she decrees its death, she decrees the death of genius.

In

the

the commencement of tyranny, the genius, which had flourished under liberty, may have a short respite, but it is sure to experience a rapid decline. Tacitus, who was, at least, as good a judge as Rousseau, felt this truth, and pathetically laments it. In some degree it may be said, that in himself he exhibited a proof of that injury, which pure and elegant literature must suffer from the oppression of tyranny. For though in vigour of mind, and energy of expression, he was excelled perhaps by no one, yet something of that barbarism of language, which is sure to accompany the decline of genius, appears even in this interesting writer. We find not in him that chastity and purity of style, which distinguished the preceding age. Whoever will compare Sallust with Tacitus must be sensible of this, and the comparison is the more just, as in every other character they remarkably approach each other. His example is also in another view singularly opposed to the theory of Rousseau, as we owe even a Tacitus to a temporary gleam of liberty.

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liberty. With Trajan liberty and learning may be said to have expired. Tacitus was nearly the last, as he certainly was the brightest ray of that expiring genius, which the better days of Rome had fostered.

But the history of literature under the tyranny of the Roman emperors is not a solitary proof, that genius cannot live without the encouraging smiles of liberty. The history of every age and nation proclaims the same truth, nor can it possibly be otherwise. It is founded in the very nature of man. When God made man, and conferred upon him the gift of mind, he conferred it freely, graciously, and without restraint; he subjected the world to it as a field, wherein it should expatiate at pleasure; and as if this were not enough to exercise its powers, and fill up the immensity of its desires, he gave to him imagination, whereby to create ideal worlds, and shadow to himself something more beautiful, more graceful, and more perfect, than what even this wonderful universe presents to his view. Man is not re

strained

strained even in the estimate of God himself; his perfections, providence, laws, and government are weighed in the scale of human judgment.-Is this the character of mind? Is this freedom designed for it by its Maker, as the soil wherein alone it can grow and flourish? And can a vain theorist hope to persuade us, that this is all a dream; that mind, and vigorous mind, can be brought to delight in slavery; that science, which is the grand object and result of mind in all its bold excursions, can be friendly to oppres→ sion, can welcome the very restraint, which is abhorrent to its nature, and destructive of its being? If fact were not in contradiction to so wild and unauthorised an assertion, yet the mere supposition would be revolting to the immediate feeling of man. The author could not, methinks, believe what he wrote, or rather perhaps belief was out of the question. Belief is the province of the vulgar; it is the privilege of certain superior geniuses to sport with their cre

dulity, and impose the wildest extravagancies on their simple understandings. To say therefore common things, and utter common truths, would excite no surprise; while to be eccentric, to make the world stare, appears to be the only object for which some men write, to which we owe a Hume, a Voltaire, and a Rousseau. Had the writer, whom I am impleading, but condescended to look on a map of the world as adapted to his own or to any day, he must have perceived, that wherever tyranny is absolute, and every thing is subjected to the apprehensive caprice of the tyrant, genius is dead; that in proportion as tyranny dominates, genius is depressed; and that whereever law and a sense of hereditary liberty impose a rule even on tyranny, genius more or less expands itself. A mind accustomed to reflection and investigation cannot in the range of its discursive knowledge be ignorant of the rights of human nature, and thence must derive a tone and energy, which will

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