There is nothing in the boys we fend to India worfe than the boys whom we are whipping at school, or that we fee trailing a pike, or bending over a desk at home. But as English youth in India drink the intoxicating draught of authority and dominion be fore their heads are able to bear it, and as they are full grown in fortune long before they are ripe in principle, neither nature nor reafon have any opportunity to exert themselves for remedy of the exceffes of their premature power. The confequences of their conduct, which in good minds, (and many of theirs are probably fuch) might produce penitence or amendment, are unable to purfue the rapidity of their flight. Their prey is lodged in England; and the cries of India are given to feas and winds, to be blown about, in every breaking up of the monfoon, over a remote and unhearing ocean.- -Speech on Mr. Fox's Eaft India Bill.

EXTENSION DEFINED.

EXTENSION is either in length, height, or depth. Of thefe the length ftrikes leaft; an hundred yards of even ground will never work fuch an effect as a tower an hundred yards high, or a rock or mountain of that altitude. I am apt to imagine likewife, that height is lefs grand than depth; and that we are more ftruck at looking down from a precipice, than looking up at an object of equal height; but of that I am not very pofitive. A perpendicular has more force in forming the fublime, than an inclined plain; and the effects of a rugged and broken furface feem Aronger than where it is smooth and polished. It would carry us out of our way to enter in this place into the caufe of thefe appearances; but certain it is they afford a large and fruitful field of speculation. However, it may not be amifs to add to these remarks upon magnitude, that, as the great extreme of dimenfion is fublime, fo the last extreme of littleness

is in fome micafure fublime likewife; when we attend to the infinite divifibility of matter, when we pursue animal life into thefe exceffively finall, and yet organized beings, that escape the niceft inquifition of the fenfe, when we pufh our difcoveries yet downward, and confider those creatures fo many degrees yet fmaller, and the ftill diminishing fcale of exiftence, in tracing which the imagination is loft as well as the fenfe, we become amazed and confounded at the wonders of minutenefs; nor can we diftinguish in its effect this extreme of littleness from the vast itfelf. For divifion muft be infinite as well as addition; because the idea of a perfect unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a complete whole, to which nothing can be added. Sublime and Beautiful.

EYE.

I think then, that the beauty of the eye confifts, fitft, in its clearness; what coloured eye fhall please moft, depends a good deal on particular fancies; but none are pleased with an eye whofe water (to use that term) is dull and muddy. We are pleafed with the eye in this view, on the principle upon which we like diamonds, clear water, glafs, and fuch like transparent fubftances. Secondly, the motion of the eye contributes to its beauty, by continually fhifting its direction; but a flow and languid motion is more beautiful than a brifk one; the latter is enlivening; the former lovely. Thirdly, with regard to the union of the eye with the neighbouring parts, it is to hold the fame rule that is given of other beautiful ones; it is not to make a strong deviation from the line of the neighbouring parts; nor to verge into any exact geometrical figure.-Ibid.

ECCLESIASTICS.

OUR education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclefiaftics, and in all ftages from infancy to manhood. Even when our youth, leaving fchools and universities, enter that most important period of life which begins to link experience and study together, and when with that view they vifit other countries, inftead of old domeftics whom we have seen as governors to principal men from other parts, threefourths of thofe who go abroad with our young nobility and gentlemen are ecclefiaftics; not as austere masters, nor as mere followers; but as friends and companions of a graver character, and not feldom perfons as well born as themselves. With them, as relations, they moft commonly keep up a clofe connexion through life. By this connexion we conceive that we attach our gentlemen to the church; and we liberalize the church by an intercourfe with the leading characters of the country. -Reflections on the Revolution in France.

ENGLISH CHARACTER.

FOUR hundred years have gone over us; but I believe we are not materially changed fince that period. Thanks to our fullen refiftance to innovation, thanks to the cold fluggishness of our national cha racter, we ftill bear the ftamp of our forefathers. We have not (as I conceive) loft the generosity and dignity of thinking of the fourteenth century; nor as yet have we fubtilized ourfelves into favages. We are not the converts of Rouffeau; we are not the difciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progrefs amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no difcoveries; and we think that no discoveries are to be made in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were underflood long before we

were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould upon our prefumption, and the filent tomb fhall have impofed its law on our pert loquacity. In England we have not yet been completely embowelled of our natural entrails; we ftill feel within us, and we cherifh and cultivate thofe inbred fentiments which are the faithful guardians, the active monitors of our duty, the true fupporters of all liberal and manly morals. We have not been drawn and truffed, in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags, and paltry blurred fhreds of paper about the rights of man. We preferve the whole of our feelings ftill native and entire, unfophifticated by pe dantry and infidelity. We have real hearts of flefh and blood beating in our bofoms. We fear God; we look up with awe to kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magiftrates; with reverence to priefts; and with refpect to nobility*. Becaufe when fuch ideas are brought before our minds, it is natural to be so affected: becaufe all other feelings are falfe and fpurious, and tend to corrupt our minds, to vitiate our primary morals, to render us unfit for rational liberty; and by teaching us a fervile, licentious, and abandoned infolence, to be our low fport for a few holidays, to make us perfectly fit for, and juftly deferving of flavery, through the whole courfe of our lives.

You fee, Sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confefs, that we are generally men

*The English are, I conceive, mifreprefented in a Letter publifhed in one of the papers, by a gentleman thought to be a diffenting minifter.When writing to Dr. Price, of the spirit which pres vails at Paris, he fays, "The fpirit of the people in this place has "abolished all the proud diftinctions which the king and nobles had "ufurped in their minds; whether they talk of the king, the noble, "or the priest, their whole language is that of the most enlightened " and liberal amongst the English." If this gentleman means to confine the terms enlightened and liberal to one fet of men in Eng land, it may be true. It is not generally so,

of untaught feelings; that inftead of cafting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very confiderable degree, and, to take more fhame to ourfelves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lafted, and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private ftock of reafon; because we fufpect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail them. felves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. Many of our men of fpeculation, inftead of exploding general prejudices, employ their fagacity to discover the latent wifdom which prevails in them. If they find what they feek, and they feldom fail, they think it more wife to continue the prejudice, with the reafon involved, than to caft away the coat of prejudice, and to leave nothing but the naked reafon; because prejudice, with its reafon, has a motive to give action to that reafon, and an affection which will give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previoufly engages the mind in a steady courfe of wildom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decifion, fceptical, puzzled, and unrefolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through juft prejudice his duty becomes a part of his nature.Ibid.

FRANCE.

Old Conftitution of France-Confequences of the

Revolution.

You might, if you pleased, have profited of our example, and have given to your recovered freedom a correfpondent dignity. Your privileges, though difcontinued, were not loft to memory. Your con

G