complied with, and large colonies were sent abroad to procure furs and take possession. The French, who were equally in want of furs, (for they are as fond of muffs and tippets as the English) made the very same request to their monarch, and met with the same gracious reception from their king, who generously granted what was not his to give. Wherever the French landed, they called the country their own; and the English took possession wherever they came upon the same equitable pretensions. The harmless savages made no opposition; and could the intruders have agreed together, they might peaceably have shared this desolate country between them. But they quarrelled about the boundaries of their settlements, about grounds and rivers, to which neither side could show any other right than that of power, and which neither could occupy but by usurpation. Such is the contest that no honest man can heartily wish success to either party.

7

GOLDSMITH.

Citizen of the World, let. xvii.

I AM told that the famous combustion, raised some years ago at Hamburg, by one Krumbultz, a divine, and in which that free city had like to have perished, was occasioned by this momentous question, namely, Whether in the Lord's prayer we should say, Our Father, or Father Our-a hopeful point of debate to be the cause of civil dissention! How many peaceable nations have been robbed,

how many millions of innocents butchered out of

4

mere honour, princely honour? His grace, Vil

liers, first duke of Buckingham, engaged his country in two mad wars at once, with the two greatest powers in Europe, because his honour had suffered a rebuff in his attempts to debauch two great foreign ladies. Europe was to be embroiled; lives, treasure, and the safety of kingdoms to be risqued and thrown away, to vindicate, forsooth, his grace's debauched honour.

Cambyses, to revenge an affront put upon his father many years before by an Egyptian king in the business of sending him a wife, involved the world in a flame of war, and at the expence, perhaps, of a million of lives, and the destruction of kingdoms, did at last heroically vindicate his father's honour and his own, upon the bones of a dead king, whom he caused to be dug up, and, after many indignities, cast into the fire.

White elephants are rare in nature, and so greatly valued in the Indies, that the king of Pegu, hearing that the king of Siam had got two, sent an embassy in form, to desire one of them of his royal brother at any price: but being refused, he thought his honour concerned to wage war for so great an affront. So he entered Siam with a vast army, and 'with the loss of five hundred thousand of his own men, and the destruction of as many of the Si ameses, he made hiniself master of the elephant, and retrieved his honour.

In short, honour and victory are generally no more than white elephants; and for white elephants the most destructive wars have been often made. What man, free, either by birth or spirit,

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pirit, could, without pity and contempt, behold, as in a late French reign he frequently might behold, a swarm of slavish Frenchmen, in wooden shoes, with hungry bellies, and no clothes, dancing round a may-pole, because their grand monarque, at the expence of a million of their money, and thirty or forty thousand lives, had acquired a white elephant, or in other words, gained a town or victory?

GORDON.

Cato's Letters, vol. ii. No. 48, and 57.

Antony. - WHY did they refuse to march? Ventidius. They said they would not fight for Cleopatra.

Why should they fight indeed to make her conquer, And make you more a slave? To gain you king

doms

Which for a kiss, at your next midnight feast, You'll sell to her? - Then she new names her

jewels,

And calls this diamond such and such a tax?

Each pendant in her ear shall be a province.

Behold, you powers,

To whom you have entrusted human kind!
See Europe, Afric, Asia, put in balance,

And all weigh'd down by one light worthless wo

man!

I think the Gods are Antonies, and give,
Like prodigals, this nether world away
To none but wasteful hands.

ZA

1

DRYDEN.

All for Love, act iii.

PERPLEX'D

PERPLEX'D with trifies through the vale of life, Man strives 'gainst man, without a cause for strife; Armies embattled meet, and thousands bleed, For some vile spot where fifty cannot feed. Squirrels for nuts contend, and wrong or right, For the world's empire kings ambitious fight. What odds!-to us 'tis all the self same thing, A nut, a world, a squirrel, and a king.

CHURCHIL.

!

Night, vol. i. p. 86.

Two thousand souls, and twenty thousand

ducats,

Will not debate the question of this straw.

SHAKESPEAR.

Hamlet, act. iv.

I see

THE imminent death of twenty thousand men, That, for a fantasy, and trick of fame,

Go to their graves like beds; fight for a plot,
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain.

Ibid.

い

STRIPT of her gaudy plumes and vain disguise, See where ambition mean and loathsome lies: Reflection with relentless hand pulls down The tyrant's bloody wreath and ravish'd crown.. In vain he tells of battles bravely won,

!

A

Of nations conquer'd and of worlds undone :.....

+

Triumph

Triumphs like these but ill with mankind suit,
And sink the conqueror beneath the brute.

HELM nor Hawbeck's twisted mail,
Not ey'n thy virtues, tyrant! shall avail
To save thy soul from nightly fears;
From Cambria's curse, from Cambria's tears.

Did'st thou but view him right, thou'dst see him

black

With murder-and crimes

That strike my soul with horror but to name 'em.

ADDISON.

Cato, act ii.

THEY err who count it glorious to subdue By conquest far and wide; to overrun Large countries, and in field great battles win, Great cities by assault: what do these worthies But rob, and spoil, burn, slaughter, and enslave Peaceable nations? neighbouring or remote, Made captive, yet deserving freedom more Than those their conquerors, who leave behind Nothing but ruin wheresoe'er they rove; And all the flourishing works of peace destroys! Then swell with pride, and must be titled gods,

Great