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All the women in the town have taken them up upon the foot of judgments; and the clergy, who have had no windfalls of a long season, have driven horse and foot into this opinion. There has been a shower of sermons and exhortations. Secker, the jesuitical Bishop of Oxford, began the mode. He heard the women were all going out of town to avoid the next shock; and so, for fear of losing his Easter offerings, he set himself to advise them to await God's good pleasure in fear and trembling. But what is more astonishing, Sherlock, who has much better sense, and much less of the popish confessor, has been running a race with him for the old ladies, and has written a pastoral letter, of which ten thousand were sold in two days; and fifty thousand have been subscribed for since the two first editions.

I told you the women talked of going out of town; several families have literally gone, and many more going to day and to-morrow; for what adds to the absurdity, is, that the second shock having happened exactly a month after the former, it prevails that there will be a third on Thursday next, another month, which is to swallow up London. I am almost ready to burn my letter now I have begun it, lest you should think I am laughing at you; but it is so true, that Arthur of White's told me last night, that he should put off the last ridotto, which was to be on Thursday, because he hears nobody would come to it. I have advised several who are going to keep their next earthquake in the country, to take the bark for it, as it is so periodic.* Dick Leveson and Mr. Rigby, who had supped and staid late at Bedford House the other night, knocked at several doors, and in a watchman's voice cried, "Past four o'clock, and a dreadful earthquake!" But I have done with this ridiculous panic: two pages were too much to talk of it.

*

I had not time to finish my letter on Monday. I return to the earthquake, which I had mistaken; it is to be to-day. This frantic terror prevails so much, that within these three days seven hundred and thirty coaches have been counted passing Hyde Park corner, with whole parties removing into the country. Here is a good advertisement which I cut out of the papers to-day.

"On Monday next will be published (price 6d.) a true and exact list of all the nobility and gentry who have left, or shall leave, this place through fear of another earthquake."

Several women have made earthquake gowns, that is, warm gowns to sit out of doors all to-night. These are of the more courageous. One woman, still more heroic, is come to town on purpose: she says all her friends are in London, and she will not survive them. But what will you think of Lady Caroline Pelham, I.ady Frances Arundel, and Lord and Lady Galway, who go this evening to an inn ten miles out of town, where they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish.t

I did not doubt but you would be diverted with the detail of absurdities that were committed after the earthquake. I could have filled more paper with such relations, if I had not feared tiring you. We have swarmed with sermons, essays,

* "I remember," says Addison, in the two hundred and fortieth Tatler, "when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, that there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills, which, as he told the country people, were very good against an earthquake!'

+ "Incredible numbers of people left their houses, and walked in the fields or lay in boats all night: many persons of fashion in the neighbouring villages sat in their cosches till daybreak; others went to a greater distance, so that the roads were never more thronged."-Gentleman's Magazine.

relations, poems, and exhortations on that subject. One Stukely, a parson, has accounted for it, and I think prettily, by electricity--but that is the fashionable cause, and every thing is resolved into electrical appearances as formerly every thing was accounted for by Descartes's vortices and Sir Isaac's gravitation; but they all take care, after accounting for the earthquake systematically, to assure you that still it was nothing less than a judgment. Dr. Barton, the rector of St. Andrews, was the only sensible, or at least honest, divine, upon the occasion. When some women would have had him pray to them in his parish church against the intended shock, he excused himself on having a great cold. "And besides," said he, "you may go to St. James's Church; the Bishop of Oxford is to preach there all night about earthquakes." Turner, a great chinaman, at the corner of next street, had a jar cracked by the shock: he originally asked ten guineas for the pair; he now asks twenty, "because it is the only jar in Europe that had been cracked by an earthquake."

147.-INTRODUCTION TO THE NIGHT-THOUGHTS.

YOUNG.

[WE scarcely know whether the Night Thoughts' of EDWARD YOUNG have ceased to find a place in the libraries of general readers. Half a century ago they were amongst the most popular of poems, and were reprinted in every collection which bore the name of 'English Classics. There are some things in them which ought not to be forgotten. Their general tone is gloomy; their satire is harsh; there is much of meretricious ornament in their illus trations; the blank verse wants the musical flow of the great masters of that noble instrument; but they are strikingly impressive; and we have few productions more calculated to arrest the career of levity-perhaps only for a passing moment-by presenting to its view "the vast concerns of an eternal scene." Young's Satires, entitled 'The Love of Fame,' are sometimes looked at; and they stand out to advantage amidst the poetical mediocrity of the age which succeeded Pope. His tragedies are forgotten, in their false sublime of language and exaggerated display of character. Edward Young was born in 1684, according to the most correct accounts, and died in 1765. He did not take orders in the Church till 1727.]

Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep,

He, like the world, his ready visit pays

Where fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,

And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.

From short (as usual) and disturb'd repose,

I wake: how happy they who wake no more!

Yet that were vain, if dreams infest the grave.

I wake, emerging from a sea of dreams

Tumultuous; where my wreck'd desponding thought,
From wave to wave of fancied misery,

At random drove, her helm of reason lost.

Though now restored, 'tis only change of pain,

(A bitter change!) severer for severe.

The day too short for my distress; and night,
Ev'n in the zenith of her dark domain,
Is sunshine to the colour of my fate.

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumb'ring world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor list'ning ear, an object finds;

Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the gen❜ral pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
And let her prophecy be soon fulfill'd;
Fate drop the curtain; I can lose no more.
Silence, and Darkness! solemn sisters! twins
From ancient Night, who nurse the tender thought
To reason, and on reason build resolve,

(That column of true majesty in man,)

Assist me I will thank you in the grave

The grave, your kingdom: there this frame shall fall A victim sacred to your dreary shrine.

But what are ye ?—

Thou who didst put to flight

Primæval silence, when the morning stars,
Exulting, shouted on the rising ball;

O thou, whose word from solid darkness struck
That spark, the sun; strike wisdom from my soul;
My soul, which flies to thee, her trust, her treasure,
As misers to their gold, while others rest.

Through this opaque of nature, and of soul,
This double night, transmit one pitying ray,
To lighten and to cheer. Oh, lead my mind;
(A mind that fain would wander from its woe ;)
Lead it through various scenes of life and death;
And from each scene the noblest truths inspire.
Nor less inspire my conduct, than my song;
Teach my best reason, reason; my best will
Teach rectitude; and fix my firm resolve
Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear;
Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, pour'd
On this devoted head, be pour'd in vain.

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time,
But from its loss. To give it then a tongue
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,

I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright,
It is the knell of my departed hours:

Where are they? With the years beyond the flood.
It is the signal that demands despatch;

How much is to be done! my hopes and fears
Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge
Look down-On what? A fathomless abyss;
A dread eternity! how surely mine!

And can eternity belong to me,

Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

How poor, how rich,, how abject, how august,

How complicate, how wonderful, is man!
How passing wonder he, who made him such !
Who centred in our make such strange extremes,
From diff'rent natures marvellously mix'd!
Connection exquisite of distant worlds!
Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!

Midway from nothing to the Deity!

A beam ethereal, sullied, and absorb'd!
Though sullied, and dishonour'd, still divine!
Dim miniature of greatness absolute!
An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!
Helpless immortal! insect infinite!

A worm! a god !—I tremble at myself,
And in myself am lost! at home a stranger,
Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,
And wond'ring at her own: How reason reels!
Oh, what a miracle to man is man.

Triumphantly distress'd! what joy, what dread!
Alternately transported, and alarm'd!

What can preserve my life! or what destroy!
An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave;
Legions of angels can't confine me there.

"Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof;
While o'er my limbs sleep's soft dominion spread,
What though my soul fantastic measures trod
O'er fairy fields; or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods; or down the craggy steep
Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool;
Or scaled the cliff; or danced on hollow winds,
With antique shapes, wild natives of the brain!
Her ceaseless flight, though devious, speaks her nature
Of subtler essence than the trodden clod;
Active, aërial, tow'ring, unconfined,

Unfetter'd with her gross companion's fall.
Ev'n silent night proclaims my soul immortal:
Ev'n silent night proclaims eternal day.
For human weal, Heav'n husbands all events;
Dull sleep instructs, nor sport vain dreams in vain.

Why then their loss deplore, that are not lost?
Why wanders wretched thought their tombs around,
In infidel distress? Are angels there?
Slumbers, raked up in dust, ethereal fire?

They live! they greatly live a life on earth
Unkindled, unconceived; and from an eye
Of tenderness let heav'nly pity fall

On me, more justly number'd with the dead.
This is the desert, this the solitude;
How populous, how vital, is the grave!
This is creation's melancholy vault,
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
All, all on earth, is shadow; all beyond
Is substance; the reverse is folly's creed:
How solid all, where change shall be no more!

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148.-THE SAVAGES OF NORTH AMERICA, 1784.

DR. FRANKLIN. Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility. They think the same of theirs.

Perhaps if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude as to be without any rules of politeness, nor any so polite as not to have some remains of rudeness.

The Indian men, when young, are hunters and warriors; when old, counsellors; for all their government is by counsel of the sages; there is no force, there are no officers to compel obedience, or inflict punishment. Hence, they generally study oratory; the best speaker having the most influence. The Indian women till the ground, dress the food, nurse and bring up the children, and preserve and hand down to posterity the memory of public transactions. The employments of men and women are accounted natural and honourable; having few artificial wants, they have abundance of leisure for improvement by conversation. Our laborious manner of life, compared with theirs, they esteem slavish and base; and the learning on which we value ourselves they regard as frivolous and useless. An instance of this occurred at the treaty of Lancaster, in Pennsylvania, anno 1744, between the government of Virginia and the Six Nations. After the principal business was settled, the commissioners from Virginia acquainted the Indians by a speech, that there was at Williamsburg a college, with a fund for educating youth; and that, if the Six Nations would send half a dozen of their young lads to that college, the government would take care they should be well provided for, and instructed in all the learning of the white people. It is one of the Indian rules of politeness not to answer a public proposition on the same day that it is made; they think it would be treating it as a light matter, and that they show it respect by taking time to consider it as of a matter important. They therefore deferred their answer till the day following; when their speaker began by expressing their deep sense of the kindness of the Virginian government in making them that offer. "For we know," says he, "that you highly esteem the kind of learning taught in those colleges, and that the maintenance of our young men with you would be very expensive to you. We are convinced, therefore, that you mean to do us good by your proposal, and we thank you heartily. But you, who are wise, must know, that different nations have different conceptions of things, and you will therefore not take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not to be the same with yours. We have had some experience of it; several of our young people were formerly brought up at the colleges of the northern provinces; they were instructed in all your sciences; but when they came back to us they were bad runners, ignorant of every means of living in the woods, unable to bear either cold or hunger, knew neither how to build a cabin, take a deer, or kill an enemy; spoke our language imperfectly were therefore neither fit for hunters, warriors or counsellors; they were totally good for nothing. We are, however, not the less obliged by your kind offer, though wo 2ND QUARTER.

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