national strength has slowly and gradually proceeded, and a long time has been taken in travelling to its accomplishment. Initiated and exercised in its progress in almost every form of policy, it has at length obtained a constitution in which the best ingredients of different states of society are admirably compounded; and has brought with it a strong experimental sagacity on the spirit of governments and laws, that may ensure to it a longer continuance of its greatness than other nations have enjoyed. It seems, however, as if there was a certain self-moving principle, a sort of acquired mechanical velocity, in the progress of a great nation, that forces it on in a career of outward prosperity, long after the national spirit has been on the decline. It is much to be hoped, that this is not the case with England, and that the public spirit of the people has not for some time been moving in a direction retrograde to the national wealth and exterior aggrandisement. But it is not this exterior importance, and this political splendor, that cherishes the exertions of genius: true taste, and a noble relish of the arts, can only consist with a vigorous state of the public mind, and a prevailing bent towards objects that exalt the feelings and expand the intellect. Public spirit, national virtue, and a severe sense of the sublime in morals, must predominate greatly among a people, to inspire that true sentiment of taste, which is the foundation of intellectual eminence.

When the manners rest at a polished luxury, which finds its gratification in the real embellishments of life, and the national energies are not yet corrupted and enfeebled by excess; when the fierce prejudices of ruder times have made way for a gentler, though not less animated system of manners; it is then that literature and the arts are placed in

the soil most propitious to their growth. May we hope that this golden crisis is not over with our own country, and that its capacities in the elegant attainments of genius and taste have not yet arrived at their greatest allowable perfection? It may be temporary, but the fact is too apparent, that there is, at this period, a general neglect of letters among us. The justness of this observation will be clear, while there remains to us a competent discernment between the true and the false sublime, between chaste and meretricious beauty in composition.

The same fate has attended the fine arts, under similar circumstances, in every period of history. And the hand of Providence, clearly discernible in this disposition, seems to have set certain bounds to national improvement, agreeably to his dispensations with respect to individuals, and to have stamped every thing in this preparatory world with the same revolutionary character. The plot of our adversities is laid in our felicities; and the consequence of a high degree of national prosperity, is the subduction of national virtue, and the loss of that principle, that sentiment, and sensibility, which as they are the grace and support of taste and genius in the individual, so do they nourish the fine arts among a people, and give a happy turn to their collective industry. It is much too wide a position which some are so fond of maintaining, that commerce, luxury, or war, is favourable to the growth of genius. The dispassionate observer, and the sound politician, will think, perhaps, that there are kinds of luxury, and degrees of commerce, diametrically opposite in their effects; he will discern the proximity of extremes, and that excess of refinement is on the confines of barbarity itself; he will see, perhaps, that there is a degree of commerce which administers

VOL. XLI.

only to depraved enjoyments, and nourishes capricious and sickly appetites; and that there is a degree of it which operates as the spring of political life, and opens all the streams of population and resource. So luxury, according to the nature of its objects, may decorate or debase society.

Of the effects of war, too, very different accounts may be given. In former times, ere funding systems were thought of, war brought only its immediate evils. Quarrels between states were the means of a circulation of treasure which peace had accumu. lated, and supplied, in some measure, the want of commerce: in modern times it proceeds by an anticipation of resource, and contrives that future generations, though no sharers in its iniquity, shall yet be visited with its worst effects.

There cannot, to be sure, be imagined an æra more destructive than the present of the arts and polite literature. In the midst of times that are but too much calculated to repress the growth of genius, by the spirit of profligacy that prevails, and by a distraction of mean pursuits in social life, that ener vates the force of every generous sentiment, there has sprung up a wasting war, founded in an irreconcilable strife of opinion, and interwoven with so many domestic wrongs and animosities, as to disclose no prospects of permanent peace to Europe, till the pride of ancestry and the ties of blood are forgotten.

Yet, in the midst of these national sorrows, luxury and debauchery are no where checked in their car reer; but are become, by the crooked chicane of modern policy, a great and standing source of revenue. The English go sullenly on in their wasteful pleasures, and gild their despondency with unremitted profusion. Almost converted, by the recurrence of

public loans, into a nation of annuitants, they all rush to the capital whence their incomes arise, which, by its present injurious plan of extension, promises to become the universal mart of vicious profusion.

Bribed by their miserable wealth to an apostacy from all intellectual interests, the inhabitants of this country turn all their eyes to the National Bank, as the great centre of their hopes and fears; a pedlar principle of profit and loss has absorbed all greater cares, and dignity is departed from the public mind. The state of science and letters is as low as might be expected from the circumstances of the nation. Though the number of writers may not be decreased, yet the contributors to the genuine stock of literature are easily counted. A prurience towards authorship produces some literary volunteers among the rich, who find it cheaper to purchase flattery than to patronise wit. What province of genius or letters maintains any longer a struggle with this declining destiny? Oratory, which, until the dimensions of the human capacity shrinks, will always mount towards its perfection in times of political fermentation, still remains to console the friends of genius, if consolation can arise from the successes of an art that is cherished by public calamities. Posterity will see whether the present æra of astonishing events is able to revive among them the sober spirit of history, gravely and impartially to record these violent transactions, to extricate them from the perplexity in which they are involved, and give life to those embryon lessons of wisdom with which they are impregnated.

At present the solidity of history is crumbled into anecdotes; and its ill-digested compilations no longer promote the study of man, or hold up to nations the mirror of their own imperfections. Foetry

is banished from our island, as effectually as if Plato had moulded its institutions: but if a Plato had done it, he might have given us a little good philosophy in its place. It is strange that such an æra as this has not bred a single satirist of ability. There is, surely, enough in our political fantasies and literary absurdities to employ this salutary talent, if there was any genius to be provoked.

This inquiry would lead me, if I were to follow it further, into a wearisome extent of investigation; and my excuse for pursuing it thus far, must be the extreme importance of the subject, the provocation of existing circumstances, and the difficulty of disengaging the thoughts from a subject which includes such a variety of facts and inferences reciprocally illustrative and corroborative of each other. I was led moreover into the consideration, by the desire of accounting for the infrequency of papers, in the LOOKER-ON, upon the subjects of literature and the arts; topics which have principally exercised the pens of his predecessors. I shall conclude with making over to the reader what has been committed to me, in trust for him, by Mr. SIMON OLIVE-BRANCH. They are, in great part, the collected sentiments of a race of virtuous and sober-minded men, whose philosophy it has been to keep clear of all sects of opinionists; whose ethics have been honesty and simplicity of dealing; and whose politics have been compounded of sincere patriotism and the love of their kind.