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FOR love of all the Gods

Let's leave the hermit pity with our mothers;
And when we have our armour buckl'd on,

The venom'd vengeance ride upon our sword.

SHAKESPEAR.

Troilus and Cressida, act iv.

WHEN the blast of war blows in our ears
Then imitate the action of the tyger ;-
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage:
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect,

Let it pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it,
As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To his full height.

IDEM.

Henry V. act iii.

Let not thy sword skip one.

Pity not honour'd age for his white beard;

Let not the virgin's cheek

Make soft thy trenchant sword;

Spare not the babe,

Whose dimpl'd smiles from fools exhaust their

mercy;

Think it a bastard, whom the oracle

Hath doubtfully pronounc'd thy throat shall cut, And mince it sans remorse: swear against objects,

Put

Put armour on thine ears, and on thine eyes; Whose proof, nor yells of mothers, maids, nor babes,

Nor sight of priests in holy vestments bleeding, Shall pierce-a jot. There's gold to pay thy soldiers: Make large confusion.

*

Follow thy drum;

With man's blood paint the ground, gules, total gules:

Religious canons, civil laws are cruel;

Then what should war be?

IDEM.

Timon of Athens, act iv,

EVILS

EVILS OF WAR.

WAR is the most dreadful of all evils by which

heaven has afflicted man.

FENELON.

Telemaque, liv. xi.

WAR never fails to exhaust the state, and endanger its destruction, with whatever success it is carried on. Though it may be commenced with advantage, it can never be finished without danger of the most fatal reverse of fortune. With whatever superiority of strength an engagement is begun, the least mistake, the slightest accident, may turn the scale and give victory to the enemy. Nor can a nation that should be always victorious prosper : it would destroy itself by destroying others: the country would be depopulated, the soil untilled, and trade interrupted: and what is worse, the best laws would lose their force, and a corruption of manners insensibly take place. Literature will be neglected among the youth; the troops, conscious of their own importance, will indulge themselves in the most pernicious licentiousness with

impunity,

impunity, and the disorder will necessarily spread through all the branches of government.

IDEM.

Liv. xiv.

FAMINE, the plague, and war, are the three most famous ingredients in this lower world. Under famine. may be classed all the noxious foods which want obliges us to have recourse to, thus shortening our life while we hope to support it. In the plague are included all contagious distempers, and there are not less than two or three thousand.

These two gifts we hold from Providence; but war, in which they are concentred, we owe to the fancy of three or four hundred persons scattered over the surface of the globe, under the name of princes and ministers; and on this account it may be that in several dedications they are called living images of the deity.

The most hardened flatterers will allow, that war is ever attended with plague and famine, especially if he has seen the military hospitals in Germany, or passed through some villages where some notable feat of arms has been performed.

It is unquestionably a very notable art to ravage countries, destroy dwellings, and one year with another, out of a hundred thousand men to cut off forty thousand. This invention was originally cultivated by nations assembled for their common good. It is otherwise in our time.

An odd circumstance in this infernal enterprize is, that every chief of these ruffians has his colours

con

consecrated, and solemnly prays to God before he goes to destroy his neighbour. If the slain in a battle do not exceed two or three thousand, the fortunate commander does not think it worth thanking God for; but if, besides killing ten or twelve thousand men, he has been so far favoured by heaven as totally to destroy sore remarkable place, then a verbose hymn is sung in four parts, composed in a language unknown to all the comba

tants.

All countries pay a certain number of orators to celebrate these sanguinary actions, some in a long black coat, and over it a short docked cloak ; others in a gown with a kind of shirt over it. They are all very long winded in their harangues, and to illustrate a battle fought in Wateravia, bring up what passed thousands of years ago in

Palestine.

At other times these gentry declaim against vice: they prove by syllogisms and antitheses, that ladies, for slightly heightening the hue of their cheeks with a little carmine, will assuredly be the eternal objects of eternal vengeance; that Polyeucte and Athalia are the devil's works; that he whose table on a day of abstinence is loaded with fish to the amount of two hundred crowns, is infallibly saved; and that a poor man, for eating two penny worth of mutton, goes to the devil for ever and

ever.

Among

Two French Tragedies.

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