all serious inquiries on this subject will be, that, in the moral as well as the physical world, there is a correspondent propriety in every member, as far as its relation to the rest is considered, and that the manners of every age and nation have as much propriety in their designation, as the passions peculiar to the different periods of life, and the instinctive qualities of the animal world.

The striking analogy which subsists between the two first may afford matter for a digression, which my readers will the more readily pardon, as it arises immediately from the subject, contributes in some measure to illustrate it, and throws light on a similitude whose leading features seem to have struck every observer, but whose more minute corresponding peculiarities have never been traced with any degree of accuracy. The first attempts of a rising state, struggling into eminence and observation, the strength of an established constitution, and the weakness of declining empire, have so strong an analogy to the first efforts of infancy, the confirmed vigour of maturity, and the debility of age, that expressions adopted into one from the other are hardly considered as metaphorical, and are to be met with in stiles the most unadorned, or even the flow of common conversation.

The progress of national refinement, considered as analogous to the improvement of personal taste, may, perhaps, furnish a less trite and more interesting subject of discussion.

The objects with which children are most delighted are such as strike most forcibly upon the senses; the simplest tunes, the sweetest tastes, a fanciful association of the most gaudy colours, are most agreeable

K

to our infancy; and a fondness for similar objects is a certain indication of a national taste in the first stages of cultivation. An implicit credulity in what they hear, and the utmost deference to the authority of what they read, is another leading characteristic of childhood; insomuch, that a system of education, which confines its pupils to ignorance, has been grounded on the fear of imbibing early and mistaken opinions. The grand and fundamental error which makes this system entirely impracticable, is the supposition that the implicit adherence to superior authority was to be destroyed, not by the researches of learning, but the advances of age. Unprejudiced ignorance is always diffident; and to this cause are to be attributed the credulity of childhood, and that readiness with which a barbarous age receives the opinions of a superior genius.

A mind too ignorant or too indolent for reflection, is pleased to repose itself under the shadow of some great authority, and to adopt a set of dogmas implicitly, without hesitation or inquiry. Hence, in our earliest moral writers, almost every sentence is prefaced with an authority for the sentiment it contains; and in Spain, a country some centuries behind the rest of Europe in point of taste and learning, the same species of writing still subsists.

Of all the periods of human life, the passions and opinions of youth are, perhaps, the most remarkable; the mind perceives a sensible dilation of its faculties, becomes jealous of an unprejudiced freedom of inquiry, and ashamed of that implicit deference it had formerly entertained for the opinions of others. New systems are daily raised, inveterate prejudices examined and rejected, and we flatter ourselves for

a while with the sufficiency of private observation and unassisted endeavours; the ardour of innovation at length subsides, and we discover, in time, that a credulous attention to the opinions of others, and a blind confidence in our own, are equally insufficient for the pursuits of truth and wisdom.

If we should trace back the progress of natural science to the first dawn that dispelled the clouds of prejudice and error, we should discover a number of circumstances parallel to those in the improvement of personal knowledge-the immediate rejection of all received opinions, and the readiness with which a new system is embraced, are circumstances common to both, and highly characteristic.

After the existence of a similitude between the progress of personal and of popular taste has been proved, it would be needless to vindicate the propriety of either; I shall, therefore, confine myself to an examination of the reasons from which an idea of modern inferiority has arisen.

Man, though constantly in pursuit of happiness, so seldom appears to be in possession of his object, that his constant failure of success has been attributed to a supposed defect in his formation. A principle that offers to its followers so compendious a protection from the feelings of conscious humiliation, and the agonies of conviction and remorse, could hardly fait of being popular; the invention of lenitives, similar in their effect, though not equally comprehensive in their operation, had long employed the invention of mankind. The narratives of our first adventurers were filled with descriptions of more favoured realms, where the manners of patriarchal life were supposed to exist among a people unenvied and undisturbed,

in a simplicity as happy as it was innocent;-while the volumes of our earliest moralists were filled with the idea of progressive degeneracy, against which, as it was impossible to succeed, so it was useless to contend.

The discoveries of navigation, and the lights of reviving learning, were, for a time, insufficient to convince our ancestors that there had not been a period in which men were wiser, or a land in which they were happier, than themselves. The visionary worlds of Bacon and Sir Thomas Moore have a situation assigned them in some part of the globe then unknown; and Spencer's lines, in which he obviates any objections that might arise to the actual existence of his " delightful lond of Faery," are so curious for the subject and method of reasoning, as to deserve citation:

Right well I wote, most mighty soueraine,
That all this famous antique history,

Of some, th' aboundance of an idle braine
Will iudged be, and painted forgery,
Rather than matter of iust memory;

Sith none, that breatheth living aire, does know
Where is this happy lond of Faëry.

Which I so much do vaunt, yet no where show,
But vouch antiquities which no body can know.
But let that man with better sense advise,
That to the world least part to vs is red:
And daily how, through hardy enterprize,
Many great regions are discouered,
Which to late age were never mentioned.
Who euer heard of the Indian Peru?
Or who, in venturous vessell, measured
The Amazons' huge river, now found trew?
Or fruitfullest Virginia who did euer vew?

Yet all these were when no man did them know; Yet haue from wisest ages hidden beene: And later times things more unknown shall show. Why then should witless man so much misweene That nothing is but that which he hath seene? What if, within the moon's faire shining sphere, What if, in every other star unseene,

Of other worlds he happily should heare?

He wonder would much more, yet such to some appeare.

An argument of the actual existence of a country, derived from the impossibility of demonstrating the contrary, was so singular, that I could not resist the temptation of offering it to my readers. These visionary obstacles to perfection did not vanish before the morning of science; on the contrary, from some circumstances before observed, they seem to have gained additional terrors. Milton himself was under apprehensions that his poem was produced too late for admiration, if not for excellence; and our ancestors were long content to believe themselves born in an age too late, or a climate too cold, for the attainment of perfection. In the first it will be sufficient to observe, that countries, the least polished by literature, or civilized by commercial intercourse, have always been found the most resolute assertors of their ancient dignity; a cause to which we must attribute the prolix catalogue of Scottish monarchs, and the Milesian colony of the Irish antiquaries. The second, as the malice of my inquiry does not war with the dead, I shall not examine; the very existence of such an opinion may, in time, become doubtful.

There are, perhaps, few popular opinions, so repugnant as the former to truth and wisdom, which