the maft a veffel of an unpromifing appearance bearing down upon us, and favoured by the wind. The Captain pronounced it to be a French privatcer, and as far as his glaffes could determine, one that would take them captive with a fingle broadfide. At the clofe of this information, he obferved that, though it would be a vain effort, it was his duty to clear the fhip for fighting. This was accordingly done, and the emigrants were not the leaft alert in the preparation, nor would they, it is likely, have been the leaft vigorous in the action; but on fome of them, the dread of falling into the hands of their implacable countrymen was fo great, that in cafe of defeat, they came to the desperate refolve of becoming their own executioners in the fhort interval betwixt the giving up the packet-boat and the boarding of her by the conquerors. The alarm increafed as the veffel approached, and the refolution became fo folemn, that each man who meant to adopt it pledged his honour to his friend. Poffibly it might, in a cafe of death, be the leaft evil in point of fufferance and fhame, however it might violate the laws of morality and religion. It was luckily an unneceffary alternative: for the veffel coming near enough to be fatisfied fhe had been in chafe of an English packet-boat, proved herself to be an English frigate; and foon flood off in the direction fhe had quitted on firft obferving us.

"After

"After all, fhe's one of us," cried the captain. The inftantaneous effect of the remark on the emigrants would have been astonishing to a spectator not acquainted with their temperament.

Those who had the moft defpairing thoughts had now the gayeft ideas, and fuch as had been moft agile in preparing for war, gave proof of agility in the contrary extreme of preparing for peace, for they leaped, laughed, fung, and even played as it were with the edge of the guillotine: one facetiously observed, that he fancied his neck (feeling it), was too short to be fitted to the inftrument; and another cunningly faid, though he did not think his neck too fhort he hoped it would be long enough before any experiment was made upon it, by Meffrs. le Republicains; while a third gentleman (with a fhrug which would have afcertained his country, had every other teftimony been wanting) remarked, "Ma foi, cette dame Guil"lotine eft un perfonage bien commode au fervice de "cès gueux là ; mais, pour moi, il ne me conviens

I

pas du tout du bout:-On my word, that Mr. "Guillotine is a mighty convenient gentleman in

the cause of thofe beggarly patriots: never"theless, it is not at all to my tafte." In fhort, my friend, if the immediate circumftances of the prefent moment are not abfolutely threatening; if good company, good wine, gay converfation, or any other pleasant object of the senses, are within

the reach, or in the view of these beings, the past and future are forgotten. This is not, I am now convinced, what is generally thought, and as I myself once fuppofed, the effect of little fenfibility, of much levity, and a total want of folid reflection; but proceeds in great measure, as I have before observed, from constitutional felicity. Yet you are too well fkilled in the equal laws of Nature and Providence to infer from hence that the French are, from this bias, more blessed than the rest of mankind. If they annihilate all that is gone by, and all that may come, when the "Cynthia of the minute" fmiles before them, they suffer with a bitterness of despondence peculiar to themselves, all that has afflicted them, or that may afflict, when the present is but a continuation of their gloom. They then collect all the difaftrous parts of time into one point of mifery. The paft, prefent, and future feem through this focus, but as one mafs, accumulated like fo many mountains to crush them; and they feel the weight of adverfity, if I may fo exprefs myfelf, in all its tenfes. In the English, Dutch, and German minds I think it is different. Amidft the thickeft glooms of their condition, whatever, be their degrees of natural feeling, they bear the heavy collection of grief with more equanimity. Either their minds are ftronger, or their fenfibility weaker, and befides, education, climate, and

habits

habits
may
contribute; but it brings into equipoife
the allotments of heaven, and the difpenfations of
nature, whofe fyftem is, perhaps, the only poffible
one in which equality can fubfift-the equality
of human happiness; fince the has made it with
very few exceptions, almost all her children,
though not partakers of the fame felicity, pro-
ceeding from the fame causes, nearly the fame in
effects. To bring this matter home to the scene
I have been relating: had thefe paffengers been
unmoved in the degree that a Dutch family felt
themselves the males fmoking, and the females
fnuffing all the time upon deck-they would have
fuffered lefs panick at the time of clearing the fhip,
and by the fame rule, they would have enjoyed lefs
when the danger was over:

"GOD, in the nature of each being, founds
"Its proper blifs."

And thus it may be pronounced, that one man is, upon the whole of life, allowing always exceptions, as happy as another:

"The learn'd is happy nature to explore,

"The fool is happy that he knows no more;
"The rich is happy in the plenty giv'n,

"The poor contents him with the care of heav'n:
"See the blind beggar dance, the cripple fing,

"The fot a hero, lunatick a king.

"The ftarving chymift, in his golden views

Supremely bleft; the poet in his Mufe."

If then by the very laws of nature, my dear friend, the univerfally varied fituations of human life are thus happily arranged, why prefume to invert her laws by introducing a forced and unnatural equality? that is, by making all men different from what they have been; by forcing them from their natural and proper ftations; and by making them as uniyerfally difcontented with their paft and present state as they have been contented. Miferably will the founders of the new Republick be difappointed, if they ferioufly conceive that by making the ignorant learned, or the poor rich, or (ftill worse) by making all alike, they fhall increafe the felicity of mankind. By a change of condition they may make the induftrious idle, and the humble diffatisfied; but never can either the diffatisfied or the idle be happy. There is a paffage from the noble poem I have juft quoted fo decifive on this great queftion, which now agitates the globe, that furely the reafoning is as ftrong and indifputable as the poetry is fweet and beautiful. It has all the condenfation of thought, for which Pope is fo juftly celebrated; and, methinks, fhould be written in letters of gold in a tranflation fuited to all languages, and folemnly read as an article of political, civil, and religious faith, by all the now contending nations, and indeed, all the neutral nations of the earth. On the tablet of every BRITISH memory, that has but a relish of poesy,