vices of man are thought to preponderate overhis virtues, because history is little other than a record of his follies, his crimes, and his misery. Whether we take a retrospective view of past ages, or consult the present history of the world, what have we generally presented to our view, but one disgusting series of the heaviest calamities and the most shocking vices, that can afflict or degrade humanity! We hardly turn over a page, which is not crimsoned with blood, or polluted with foul crimes. Barbarous violence, sanguinary wars, horrid devastations, merciless persecutions, murders, rapes, poisons, and assassinations, lordly tyrants trampling upon and insulting the rights of human nature, and abject slaves crouching beneath the yoke of a withering despotism, which from age to age has gone on debasing the human character, and blasting every rising effort of genius and virtue.→→→ Such are the scenes which history chiefly exhibits to our view. To the reader, there fore, who looks perhaps solely for amuse

ment,

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ment, and with no view to any specific instruction or advantage, such a picture of the debasement and misery of his fellowcreatures can afford no gratification. Where the heart is not strangely corrupted, its most natural impression must be that of pain and disgust. Who can peruse the bloody proscriptions of a Roman triumvirate, the devastating march of a Genghischan or a Tamerlane, the barbarities of a Mexican or Peruvian conquest, the systematic coldblooded cruelties of a Spanish Inquisition, without the most painful emotions of indignation and abhorrence? The frequent contemplation of such scenes, in which hu man nature is so outraged, and yet few, if any, better specimens of human characters are exhibited, must have a strong tendency to corrupt the heart of the reader; to chill all the warm affections of his innocent youth, to induce a cold, illiberal, and misanthropic spirit, or, as if all resistance to the general current were impotent, to reconcile him to a partnership in the selfishness and depravity

of

of man. For, as the reader becomes more and more conversant with the continued tale of human folly and wickedness, his estimation of his species must be lowered, and his humane and benevolent principles impaired. It requires indeed a strong mind, and standing upon strong principles, such as the world will not teach him, to resist this most malignant of all impressions. Now and then indeed it must be allowed, that some characters arise, such as Alfred. What! does history pause at the mention of this single name, and in her lengthened catalogue of kings, and legislators, and boasted heroes, has she no fellow worthy to place beside thee? Then stand alone, thou glory of the British isle, and be thou alone, that verdant spot of the wide waste of an Arabian desert, on which the wearied and disgusted eye can gaze with delight; and at the mention of thy name may the heart be warmed anew, and reexcited to every virtuous aspiring! But even thou, with all thy wonderful virtues, polished in the midst of barbarism,

barbarism, learned in the midst of ignorance, religious in the midst of superstition, and on a throne the father and the friend of thy people, art but as the bright meteor, which for a moment illuminates the dark face of night, and is soon obliterated and lost in the returning gloom. te bug When we further observe, that the prospect of the vice and misery which has at all times existed, according to the report of history, has led even men of superior discernment and deep reflection into religious doubts and scepticism, assuredly no little danger in this respect is to be apprehended to the light and superficial reader. For, if any thing can make him doubt of the su perintending agency of a wise and good Providence, it is certainly the view of those dismal tragedies which are continually taking place on the theatre of the world; wherein the principal actors not only escape with apparent impunity, but reap the reward of their wickedness, wherein suffering innocence and virtue are trampled on and in

sulted,

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sulted, while triumphant villany lords it with an unpitying and savage rule. quor milzu It is true that these conclusions against the moral government of the world, from the seeming triumphs of vice, and which terminate in so unfavourable a judgment both of God and man, admit of a very satisfactory and dignified reply. But› thê argument lies too deep, and is of a character too abstract and sublime for common minds; and history furnishes no antidote to the poi son, no argument to him, who would wish to retain his good opinion both of God and man. The man, who forms his judgment of human scharacter and of human enjoyment from the representation of history, commits himself to a supposed înstructor, who certainly does not, and who probably means not to give him any adequate information of either. His indeed is a very different object, with very little, if any, 'moral-investigation whatever, to tell you what one part, and that infinitely the smallest part of the human race, have acted on the

stage