Have proved at length the mineral's tempting hue, The brute made ruler and the man made brute! But, oh my Forbes! while thus, in flowerless song, Those rebel fiends that rack the world were nurst! And Frenchmen learn'd to crush the throne they serv'd- That bard hath fancied or that sage hath been! Forgive me, Forbes-and should the song destroy One generous hope, one throb of social joy, 1 See PORCUPINE's Account of the Pensylvania Insurrection in 1794. In short, see Porcupine's works throughout, for ample corroboration of every sentiment which I have ventured to express. In saying this, I refer less to the comments of that writer, than to the occurrences which he has related and the documents which he has preserved, Opinion may be suspected of bias, but facts speak for themselves. In Virginia the effects of this system begin to be felt rather seriously. While the master raves of liberty, the slave cannot but catch the contagion, and accordingly there seldom elapses a month without some alarm of insurrection amongst the negroes. The accession of Louisiana, it is feared, will increase this embarrassment, as the numerous emigratious, which are expected to take place from the southern states to this newly-acquired territory, will considerably diminish the white population, and thus strengthen the proportion of negroes to a degree which must ultimately be ruinous. Nay-look not thus, with brow reproving; you BLEST infant of eternity! Before the day-star learn'd to move, 'Love and Psyche are here considered as the active and passive principles of creation, and the universe is supposed to have received its first harmonizing impulse from the nuptial sympathy between these two powers. A marriage is generally the first step in cosmogony. Timaus beld Form to be the father, and Matter the mother of the World; Elion and Berouth, I think, are Sanchoniatho's first spiritual lovers, and Manco-Capac and his wife introduced creation amongst the Peruvians. In short, Harlequin seems to have studied cosmogonies, when he said tutto il mondo é fatto come la nostra famiglia.. Yet, yet, when Friendship sees thee trace, On which her eye delights to rest; While o'er the lovely look serene, The smile of peace, the bloom of youth, The cheek, that blushes to be seen, The eye, that tells the bosom's truth; While o'er cach line, so brightly true, She feels the value of thy art, And owns it with a purer zeal, A rapture, nearer to her heart Than critic taste can ever feel! THE PHILOSOPHER ARISTIPPUS.' TO A LAMP WHICH WAS GIVEN HIM BY LAIS. Dulcis conscia lectuli lucerna. MARTIAL. lib. xiv. epig. 39. On! love the Lamp (my mistress said), The faithful lamp that, many a night, Beside thy Lais' lonely bed Has kept its little watch of light! . Full often has it seen her weep, And fix her eye upon its flame, Till, weary, she has sunk to sleep, Repeating her beloved's name! Oft has it known her cheek to burn With recollections, fondly free, And seen her turn, impassion'd turn, To kiss the pillow, love! for thee, And, in a murmur, wish thee there, That kiss to feel, that thought to share! Then love the Lamp-'t will often lead Thy step through Learning's sacred way; And, lighted by its happy ray, Whene'er those darling eyes shall read It was not very difficult to become a philosopher amongst the ancients. A moderate store of learning, with a considerable portion of confidence, and wit enough to produce an occasional apophthegm, were all the necessary qualifications for the purpose. The principles of moral science were so very imperfectly understood, that the founder of a new sect, in forming his ethical code, might consult either fancy or temperament, and adapt it to his own passions and propensities; so that Mahomet, with a little more learning, might have flourished as a philosopher in those days, and would have required but the polish of the schools to become th rival of Aristippus, in morality. In the science of nature, too, though they discovered some valuable truths, yet they seemed not to know they were truths, or at least were as well satisfied with errors; and Xenophanes, who asserted that the stars were igneous clouds, lighted up every night and extinguished again in the morning, was thonght and styled a philosopher, as generally as he who anticipated Newton in developing the arrangement of the universe. For this opinion of Xenophanes, see PLUTARCH. de Placit. Philos. lib. ii, cap. 13. It is impossible to read this treatise of Plutarch without alternately admiring and smiling at the genius, the absur dities of the philosophers. Of things sublime, of Nature's birth, Yes, dearest Lamp! by every charm On which thy midnight beam has hung;' The neck reclined, the graceful arm Across the brow of ivory flung; The heaving bosom, partly hid, The sever'd lips' delicious sighs, By these, by all that bloom untold, I'll love my little Lamp of gold, And often, as she smiling said, In fancy's hour, thy gentle rays Shall guide my visionary tread Through poesy's enchanting maze! Thy flame shall light the page refined, Where still we catch the Chian's breath, Where still the bard, though cold in death, Has left his burning soul behind! Or, o'er thy humbler legend shine, Oh man of Ascra's dreary glades! 2 To whom the nightly-warbling Nine 3 A wand of inspiration gave,4 Pluck'd from the greenest tree that shades The Chrystal of Castalia's wave. 'Tis thus my heart shall learn to know I'll tell thee, as I trim thy fire, Swift, swift the tide of being runs, The ancients had their lucernæ cubicularia, or bed-chamber lamps, which, as the Emperor GALIENUS said, nil cras meminere; and with the same commendation of secresy, Praxagora addresses her lamp, in ARISTOPHANES, Exxλns. We may judge how fanciful they were in the use and embellishment of their lamps, from the famous symbolic Lucerna which we find in the Romanum Museum MICH. ANG. CAUSEI, p. 127. ↑ HESIOD, who tells us in melancholy terms of his father's flight to the wretched village of Ascra. Εργ. και Ημερ. ν. 151. 3 Εννυχίαι ςείχον, περικαλλέα όσσαν ιείσαι.- V. 10. .--Theog. 4 και μοι σκήπτρον εδόν, δαφνης εριθήλεα οζον.Id. v. 30. 5 Ρειν τα όλα ποταμου δίκην, as expressed among the dogmas of HERACLITUS the Ephesian, and with the same image by SENECA, in whom we find a beautiful diffusion of the thought:« Nemo est mane qui fuit pridie. Corpora nostra rapiuntur fluminum more; quicquid vides currit cum tempore. Nihil ex his quæ videmus manet. Ego ipse, dum loquor mutari ípsa, mutatus sum, ♥ etc. And Time, who bids thy flame expire, Will also quench yon heaven of suns!. Oh then, if earth's united power On which it dies, and loves to die? Pleasure! thou only good on earth!! Then far be all the wisdom hence, And all the lore, whose tame control Would wither joy with chill delays ' Alas! the fertile fount of sense, At which the young, the panting soul Drinks life and love, too soon decays! Sweet Lamp! thou wert not form'd to shed Thy splendour on a lifeless pageWhate'er my blushing Lais said Of thoughtful lore and studies sage, 'T was mockery all-her glance of joy Told me thy dearest, best employ!! 2 And, soon as night shall close the eye To find their future orbs of rest; Glide to the pillow of my love. Calm be her sleep, the gentle dear! Nor let her dream of bliss so near, ARISTIPPUS Considered motion as the principle of happiness, in which idea he differed from the Epicureans, who looked to a state of repose as the only true voluptuousness, and avoided even the too lively agitations of pleasure, as a violent and ungraceful derangement of the senses. MAUPERTUIS has been still more explicit than this philosopher, in ranking the pleasures of sense above the sublimest pursuits of wisdom. Speaking of the infant man, in his production, he calls him une nouvelle créature, qui pourra comprendre les choses les plus sublimes, et ce qui est bien au-dessus, qui pourra goûter les mêmes plaisirs. See his Vénus Physique. This appears to be one of the efforts at Fontenelle's gallantry of manner, for which the learned President is so well ridiculed in the Akakia of VOLTAIRE. MAUPERTUIS may be thought to have borrowed from the ancient ARISTIPPUS that indiscriminate theory of pleasures which he has set forth in his Essai de Philosophie Morale, and for which he was so very justly condemned. ARISTIPPUS, according to LAERTIUS, held μη διαφέρειν τε ήδονην ήδονης, which irrational sentiment has been adopted by MAUPERTUIS: « Tant qu'on ne considère que l'é tat present, tous les plaisirs sont du même genre, etc. etc. For still she saw his playful fingers Fill'd with sweets and wanton toys; And well she knew the stain that lingers After sweets from wanton boys! And so it chanced, one luckless night In vain he sought, with eager lip, The honey from the leaf to drink, For still the more the boy would sip, The deeper still the blot would sink! Oh! it would make you weep, to see The traces of this honey flood Steal o'er a page, where Modesty Had freshly drawn a rose's bud! And Fancy's emblems lost their glow, At length the urchin Pleasure fled, (For how, alas! could Pleasure stay?) And Love, while many a tear he shed, In blushes flung the book away! The index now alone remains, Of all the pages spoil'd by Pleasure, And though it bears some honey stains, Yet Memory counts the leaf a treasure! And oft, they say, she scans it o'er, I know not if this tale be true, But thus the simple facts are stated; And I refer their truth to you, Since Love and you are near related! EPISTLE VII. TO THOMAS HUME, ESQ. M. D. FROM THE CITY OF WASHINGTON. Διηγήσομαι διηγήματα ίσως απιςα, κοινωνα ὧν πε που θα ουκ εχων. XENOPHONT. Ephes. Ephesiac. lib. v. "T Is evening now; the heats and cares of day Where blest he wooes some black Aspasia's grace, And dreams of freedom in his slave's embrace i In fancy now beneath the twilight gloom, And look, how soft in yonder radiant wave, The black Aspasia of the present ********* of the United States, inter Avernales haud ignotissima nymphas, has given rise to much pleasantry among the anti-democrat wits in America. 2 On the original location of the ground now allotted for the seat of the Federal City (says Mr WELD), the identical spot on which the capitol now stands was called Rome. This anecdote is related by many as a certain prognostic of the future magnificence of this city, which is to be, as it were, a second Rome.-WELD'S Travels, letter iv. 3 A little stream runs through the city, which, with intolerable affectation, they have styled the Tiber. It was originally called GooseCreek. To be under the necessity of going through a deep wood for one or two miles, perhaps, in order to see a next-door neighbour, and in the same city, is a curious and I believea novel circumstance.» -WELD, letter iv. The Federal City (if it must be called a city) bas not been much increased since Mr Weld visited it. Most of the public buildings which were then in some degree of forwardness, have been since utterly suspended. The Hotel is already a ruin; a great part of its roof has fallen in, and the rooms are left to be occupied gratuitously by the miserable Scotch and Irish emigrants. The President's house, a very noble structure, is by no means suited to the philosophical humility of its present possessor, who inhabits but a corner of the mansion himself, and abandons the rest to a state of uncleanly desolation, which those who are not philosophers cannot look at without regret. This grand edifice is encircled by a very rude pale, through which a common rustic stile introduces the visitors of the first man in America. With respect to all that is within the house, I shall imitate the prudent forbearance of Herodotus, and say, τα δε εν απορρήτω. The private buildings exhibit the same characteristic display of arrogant speculation and premature ruin; and the few ranges of houses which were begun some years ago, have remained so long waste and unfinished, that they are now for the most part dilapidated. The picture which Burron and DE PAUW have drawn of the American Indian, though very humiliating, is, as far as I can judge, much more correct than the flattering representations which Mr JEFFERSON has given us. See the Notes on Virginia, where this gentleman endeavours to disprove in general the opinion maintained strongly by some philosophers, that nature (as Mr JEFFERSON expresses it) belittles her productions in the western world. M. DE PAUW attributes the imperfections of animal life in America to the ravages of a very recent deluge, from whose effects upon its soil and atmosphere it has not yet sufficiently recovered.-See his Recherches sur les Américains, part. i, tom. i, p. 102. |