ture, and contracts itself to every size of understanding or estate. His censures and reprobation are therefore fastened on the quality of the thing; and the inherent turpitude of base actions are exposed, in whatever guise they may appear.

On the other hand, it is a gross mistake to regard vice as less vicious, because it dazzles with the glitter of polished life; or that the tones of satire are to be softened into complaisance, because injustice and profligacy are decorated with ribands, and operate through the medium of softer habitudes. The pleasantry in which the Spectator abounds was not meant as indulgence to crime and infamy, or to alter the old rules of ethics by giving new names and notions to actions authentically virtuous or vicious. Mr. Addison employed that fine raillery of his, where severer treatment had been justified; because he felt that the first consideration with the writer was to attract readers; and the votaries of pleasure and ease will only bear to hear the exposure of their own errors and immoralities, where the satire is sheathed in a courtesy of phrase; and where truth, in the disguise of raillery and ridicule, plays amusively about the heart, and penetrates by the avenues of pleasure to the seat of corruption.

The reader will perhaps think that Mr. OLIVEBRANCH is not without a share of this seasonable and sober sort of humour, where he has treated on subjects that called for the exercise of it; and perhaps he might be justified in a little less frequent use of it than some of his predecessors, because, in the present conjuncture, a hardihood, the effect of the spreading infidelity of the times, has entered into the vices of every class of society, which seems to require a robuster satire, and a less qualified exposure. Politics and Religion are introduced with some

reserve and, I think, he should totally have declined them, as not suited to a light and popular production, if the attacks of the present innovators on those subjects had not been characterised by such a vulgar intrepidity, as to need no subtlety of argument to encounter them. The appeal from these fanatics is only to common sense and common nature. The LOOKER-ON, therefore, contains a few papers on the subjects of religion and politics. Religion, because it is the soul of morality, and the basis of every felicity and grace of life: politics, because of the great question to which it is now generalised human society itself is become a part, and the interests of man are involved, not only as he is the member of a corporation, but as a member of humanity; not only as having a person and property to be protected, or civil rights to be maintained, but as having an understanding to be improved, passions to be restrained, a body to be nourished, and a soul to be saved. The particular state of these subjects brought home, as they are, to every man's bosom, seemed to make it necessary for Mr. OLIVE-BRANCH to bestow some consideration upon them ; to rescue them a little, according to his power, from mischievous misrepresentation; to save them from the gripe of a mercenary philosophy, the hungry ravings of garretteers; and a little to resist the quackery, cant, and cunning of prostituted scribblers. To allure the reader to these graver matters, tales and fables, the common artifices of moralists, have been made use of. The good effects of this mode of instruction are happily illustrated in a scheme lately instituted for distributing cheap publications among the poor; a labour of love above all praise, and a scheme fraught with more unequivocal good to mankind, as far as it goes, than philanthropy or patriotism have yet devised.

To have been silent on the subjects of criticism and polite letters, might have looked like a disregard in the author for these interesting and important inquiries, and would have very much circumscribed that variety of matter by which a production of this sort requires to be diversified. The present state, however, of literature in the country, had given Mr. OLIVE-BRANCH a disrelish for this part of his undertaking. But little is furnished from modern exertions to exercise criticism or taste; and the round of criticism on ancient authors, has been travelled almost to satiety. Every classic is half smothered in commentaries; and there is now but little encouragement to prosecute an inquiry where the theme no longer delights the fancy, or interests the curiosity of his contemporaries. The papers, therefore, which are bestowed on the subjects of literature, are generally of a desponding cast; they lament the sensible decay of learning and taste among us, and lament it the more, because our country is, perhaps, arrived at that period of its course, when the example of history hardly suffers us to hope that the age of genius will return. I own, for myself, I much doubt, whether that vigorous efflorescence of national maturity in science, and learning, and taste, can be recalled, when once the fated æra is passed, and things are returning in a descending climax to the slow consummation of national fortunes. Without being of the persuasion, that there is any necessity in the constitution of things, which carries nations along in a course analogous to the progress of individuals from infancy to decrepitude; I cannot but think, that, however different the things may be in their causes and their natures, there is sometimes a strik ing resemblance in procedure that gives a plausibility to these fanciful notions.

There certainly is a period in the growth of states, when a florid health appears to circulate through the sytem,—a transitory period, and placed, I think, somewhere between the struggles of unformed empire, and the secure enjoyment of political greatness; while the stimulating effects of public agitations yet remain, and show themselves in a glowing vivacity of national character; and when there is a sufficient exemption from actual commotions, to give opportunity for the display of these intellectual advantages. It is to be hoped, that the imaginations of speculators have carried this parallel beyond the truth, when they tell us, that when once the race is run, when once the national welfare is betrayed by individual profligacy, the period is then come which corresponds with the physical decay of old-age in man; that nothing can restore the departed vigour; and that luxury, grown into second nature, becomes necessary to the life of the state, interposing a lingering suspense between disease and dissolution. But though it be confessed, that the tumults of rising states are well fitted to provoke the powers of the mind, yet it seems clear that such commotions as take place in nations in an advanced stage of their history, are not productive of the same effects. They are very different from the fermentation of youthful ardours, and the effects which arise from the contests of emulation and the fierce desire of glory: they are ungenerous strifes, of which avarice, envy, and the baser passions, are the stimulants and fomenters. When the bottom is dry, we shake the vessel in vain. In the early struggles of rising Rome, contentions for power and superiority called forth individual manhood and exercised the national vigour in the declining periods of that great nation, the revolutions of state were only fruitful in changes

for the worse, and hardened depravity into desperation. Few, indeed, of the nations of modern Europe are still standing at the highest point of their elevation. With a declination more or less rapid, they are leaving this altitude; and some, perhaps, viewing the course of ancient states and kingdoms, may think that this altitude can never again be arrived at by the same people, and never, perhaps, again be seen on the same spot, unless a fresh incursion of barbarous invaders shall again pitch upon it their desolating camps, and resolve things again into primæval rudeness, and the inceptive forms of society.

green

There is, to be sure, a spring and vigour in these establishments, which after-times can seldom supply; and there does seem to be a succeeding period, when early agitations have yet an operation, and work upon a system of things that allows leisure for decoration and improvement: there then comes a sickly second childhood of national infirmity, wantoning in the imbecilities of decayed genius, and displaying the hoary puerilities of political dotage. I fear there is no magical kettle in which this national old-age can be concocted, and its virility reproduced: no revolutions seem able to effect this transformation; nor do the present convulsions of the political world promise any such compensation for the miseries they occasion. In the present view of things, however, there are circumstances in our own country that offer some consolation. The other nations of Europe have not proceeded as we have done in our political advancement. Many of them have forestalled their constitutional decay, by leaping at once out of barbarism into luxury, and have become rotten before they were ripe. In our own country, the growth and maturation of our