absence of the means, which demonstrates the existence, and illustrates the character of virtue. This is strikingly exhibited in the history of the different ranks of polished society, and in the comparison of the savage nations with the lettered and polished nations of Europe. In civilised states the rudeness of the lower ranks is to them no protection against intemperance: whenever a full table or intoxicating liquors are within their reach, their abandonment to both ex-. ceeds every thing which can be charged upon the higher classes. The knowledge and cultivation to which these higher ranks have been introduced inspire higher views, give to their minds a firmer tone, and suggest stronger motives to self-command. Drunkenness is far, very far from being the general reproach of civilised Europe; but the Indians of North America are to a man surrendered to excess, and excess without limit, whenever the means are put into their possession. When Peter I of Russia undertook the difficult task of civilising his rude country, country, and introducing letters, science, and taste, where the very names had hardly been known, his court itself was not a stranger to drunkenness, and at any court entertainment it was necessary by a public . edict to restrain the ladies of the first rank from indulging in more than a limited number of glasses of brandy. To prohibit the indulgence altogether was probably thought. to be impracticable. The progress of lettered cultivation has effected that, which required the hand of power but imperfectly to effect before. The same proneness to every vice within their reach might be shown to be the character of every rude and unlettered nation, in which mind has not been awakened, nor raised to higher views, and more refined pleasures, than those of the mere animal. It is enough however to convict them of a propensity to gluttony and drunkenness. These are certain tests of a mind ignorant of all self-command, and of every incentive to self-command. Vice will be found in man, in whatever state of soL 2 ciety ciety he be placed; but it is the comparative quantity of vice which is the question. When a taste for learning, science, and the finer arts has taken possession of the man, he is not at leisure to be equally vicious with his ruder fellow, and he looks upon him with too much contempt to find any great inducement to tread in his debased walk. But I must check myself; I am passing into a repetition of what has already been noticed in the preceding part of my vindication of learning, science, and the arts, against the charge of luxury. I will close this part of my reply with a few plain questions, which I think will come home to the feeling of every one, and which perhaps may argue as much insight into human nature, and as much attention to the history of man, as any of the dicta of Rousseau. Granting then to Rousseau, that learning. may lead to the knowledge of new crimes,. is it credible, that she does not lead to the knowledge of new virtues? If learning bring us acquainted with new evils, has she no new blessings in her train? Does she provide no correctives, no remedy of the evils, which against her will intrude themselves into her company? Has the balance of these virtues, these correctives, and these remedies, been candidly, or even honestly, estimated? Is it of no consideration, is it no compensation for whatever of crime or evil may be alleged as the necessary concomitant, that erudition, a literary taste, science, and the elegant arts have exhibited men in various ages as Gods amidst the fellows of their race, and presented the most glorious of all spectacles, that height of dignity and worth, to which the cultivation of mind can raise human nature? Who that has a human soul, a spark of that sympathetic flame which the record of literary history enkindles, would wish that Pythagoras, Thales, Solon, Socrates, Plató, Aristotle, or Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Menander, or Herodotus, Thucydides among the Greeks; that Cicero, Seneca, the Plinies, or Terence, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, or Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, L 3 Tacitus, Suetonius among the Romans; that Ariosto, Tasso, Corneille, Montesquieu among the Italians and French; or lastly, that in our own nation Bacon, Boyle, Newton, Shakspeare, Massinger, Otway, Addison, Pope, had not existed, in order to perpetuate the inanity of the torpid savage, innocent, if Rousseau please, of crime, but innocent of virtue also? One charge yet remains, on which Rousseau expatiates with all the warmth of his glowing imagination. "The injury," says he," which licentious philosophers have done to the cause of truth and virtue is of itself sufficient to damn the use of letters for ever. The impious writings of Leucippus and Diagoras perished with them; the art of immortalising the dangerous reveries of human understanding was then unknown. But, thanks to the art of printing, the dangerous reveries of Hobbes and Spinosa will remain for ever."-No! be not alarmed, my virtuous philosopher, Hobbes and Spinosa have almost passed to the same quiet obli |