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ated and improved by transportation, stercoration, incision, pruning, watering, and other arts and devices. Till and manure thy fields, sow them with thy seeds, extirpate noxious and unprofitable herbs, guard them from the invasions and spoils of beasts, clear and fence in thy meadows and pastures; dress and prune thy vines, and so rank and dispose them as is most suitable to the climate; plant thee orchards, with all sorts of fruit trees, in such order as may be most beautiful to the eye, and most comprehensive of plants; gardens for culinary herbs, and all kinds of salading; for delectable flowers, to gratify the eye with their agreeable colours and figures, and thy scent with their fragrant odours; for odoriferous and evergreen shrubs and suffrutices ; for exotic and medicinal plants of all sorts, and dispose them in their comely order, as may be both pleasant to behold, and commodious for access. I have furnished thee with all materials for building, as stone, and timber, and slate, and lime, and clay, and earth, whereof to make bricks and tiles. Deck and bespangle the country with houses and villages convenient for thy habitation, provided with outhouses and stables for the harbouring and shelter of thy cattle, with barns and granaries for the reception and custody, and storing up thy corn and fruits. I have made thee a sociable creature, Zov Toxo, for the improvement of thy understanding by conference, and communication of observations and experiments; for mutual help, and assistance, and defence; build thee large towns and cities, with straight and well paved streets, and elegant rows of houses, adorned with magnificent temples for thy honour and worship, with beautiful palaces for thy princes and grandees, with stately halls for public meetings of the citizens and their several companies, and the sessions of the courts of judicature, besides public porticos and aqueducts. I have implanted in thy nature a desire of seeing strange and foreign and finding out unknown countries, for the improvement and advance of thy knowledge in geography, by observing the bays, and creeks, and havens, and promontories, the outlets of rivers, the situation of the maritime towns and cities, the longitude and latitude, &c., of those places: in politics, by noting their government, their manners, laws, and customs, their diet and medicine, their trade and manufactures, their houses and buildings, their exercises and sports, &c. In physiology, or natural history, by searching out their natural rarities, the productions both of land and water, what species of animals, plants, and minerals, of fruits and drugs.

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are to be found there, what commodities for bart tation, whereby thou mayest be enabled to make natural history, to advance those other sciences, a enrich thy country by increase of its trade and have given thee timber and iron to build the h trees for masts, flax and hemp for sails, cables and e I have armed thee with courage and hardness to and traverse the spacious plains of that liquid eleme thee with a compass to direct thy course when thou view of land, and have nothing in view but sky and for the purposes forementioned, and bring home ful and beneficial to thy country in general, or thyse

I persuade myself that the bountiful and gracio being and faculties, and all things else, delights in creation, and is well pleased with the industry of earth with beautiful cities and castles, with pl country houses; with regular gardens and orchard all sorts of shrubs, and herbs, and fruits for meat rate delight; with shady woods and groves, and w elegant trees; with pastures clothed with flocks, and with corn, and meadows burdened with grass, an ferenceth a civil and well cultivated region from a wilderness.

If a country thus planted and adorned, thus po thus improved to the height by all manner of cu and sustenance and convenient entertainment of tudes of people, be not to be preferred before a ba pitable Scythia, without houses, without plantations or vineyards, where the roving hordes of the sava habitants transfer themselves from place to place can find pasture and forage for their cattle, and flesh roasted in the sun at the pommels of the and unpolished America, peopled with slothful an stead of well built houses living in pitiful huts poles set endwise; then surely the brute beasts ner of living, to which what we have mentioned d is to be esteemed better than man's, and wit and bestowed on him.

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are to be found there, what commodities for bartering and permu tation, whereby thou mayest be enabled to make large additions to natural history, to advance those other sciences, and to benefit and enrich thy country by increase of its trade and merchandize. I have given thee timber and iron to build the hulls of ships; tall trees for masts, flax and hemp for sails, cables and cordage for rigging. I have armed thee with courage and hardness to attempt the seas, and traverse the spacious plains of that liquid element; I have assisted thee with a compass to direct thy course when thou shalt be out of all view of land, and have nothing in view but sky and water. Go thither for the purposes forementioned, and bring home what may be useful and beneficial to thy country in general, or thyself in particular.

I persuade myself that the bountiful and gracious Author of man's being and faculties, and all things else, delights in the beauty of his creation, and is well pleased with the industry of man in adorning the earth with beautiful cities and castles, with pleasant villages and country houses; with regular gardens and orchards, and plantations of all sorts of shrubs, and herbs, and fruits for meat, medicine, or moderate delight; with shady woods and groves, and walks set with rows of elegant trees; with pastures clothed with flocks, and valleys covered over with corn, and meadows burdened with grass, and whatever else differenceth a civil and well cultivated region from a barren and desolate wilderness.

If a country thus planted and adorned, thus polished and civilized, thus improved to the height by all manner of culture for the support and sustenance and convenient entertainment of innumerable multitudes of people, be not to be preferred before a barbarous and inhospitable Scythia, without houses, without plantations, without corn fields or vineyards, where the roving hordes of the savage and truculent inhabitants transfer themselves from place to place in waggons, as they can find pasture and forage for their cattle, and live upon milk, and flesh roasted in the sun at the pommels of their saddles; or a rude and unpolished America, peopled with slothful and naked Indians, instead of well built houses living in pitiful huts and cabins, made of poles set endwise; then surely the brute beasts' condition and manner of living, to which what we have mentioned doth nearly approach, is to be esteemed better than man's, and wit and reason was in vain bestowed on him.

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117.-EPISTLE TO A FRIEND.

S. ROGERS. [IN 1786 was published, An Ode to Superstition, with other Poems.' This was the first work of Samuel Rogers, one of our living authors. Mr. Rogers, himself a banker of the city of London, was the son of a city banker. He received a liberal education; his taste was assiduously cultivated. At a time which preceded the early days of Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Southey, and Campbell, Mr. Rogers produced The Pleasures of Memory,' which appeared in 1792. His other most considerable poem, Italy,' did not appear till 1830. There are few such examples of the imagination and the taste remaining unchanged for half a century. The Epistle to a Friend,' which we give below, was printed in the same beautiful illustrated volume with the Pleasures of Memory,' in 1834, but was originally published in 1798. In his preface to this charming poem Mr. Rogers says, It is the design of this epistle to illustrate the virtue of True Taste; and to show how little she requires to secure, not only the comforts, but even the elegancies of life. True Taste is an excellent economist. She confines her choice to few objects, and delights in producing great effects by small means; while False Taste is for ever sighing after the new and the rare; and reminds us, in her works, of the scholar of Apelles, who, not being able to paint his Helen beautiful, determined to make her fine."]

When, with a Reaumur's skill, thy curious mind
Has classed the insect-tribes of human-kind,
Each with its busy hum, or gilded wing,

Its subtle web-work, or its venomed sting;

Let me, to claim a few unvalued hours,

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Point out the green lane rough with fern and flowers;
The sheltered gate that opens to my field,

And the white front thro' mingling elms revealed.
In vain, alas, a village-friend invites

To simple comforts, and domestic rites,
When the gay months of carnival resume
Their annual round of glitter and perfume;

When London hails thee to its splendid mart,
Its hives of sweets, and cabinets of art;

VOL. II.

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