(BRING THE TWELFTH OF A NEW SERIES.) LONDON: Printed by JOHN NICHOLS and SON, where LETTERS are particularly requested to be sent, POST-PAID ; AND SOLD BY J. HARRIS and SON (Successors to Mrs. NEWBERY), TO SYLVANUS URBAN, GENT. On completing his LXXXIXth Volume. 154806 on the fair translucent tides, So, Urban! thro' thy polish'd lines, What joys supreme, and pleasures high, The eye with transports fill; Whether tempestuous storms arise, Or heavy rains descend; Precluded, then, abroad to stray Or thro' the verdant mead; Or turn to high behests of State; What Barons great expire. Amusement each supplies. Such as at Air Chapelle were seen, There to consult fair Europe's weal, With Commerce in her band. Who War's fierce horrors brav'd ; While Time on rapid pinion flies, And joy prevails around; To favour Britain's land; Urban did ouce assail; Like dew before the morning heat On which the eye may pore; INDEX TO THE PLATES. Abbey House, Sherborne 209 Bell Tower Salisbury 305 Jews' Hospital, Whitechapel, London 489 WILLIAM RAWLINS, Oxford, St. Michael's, or Carfax Church 201 Regent's Canal Tunnel, Islington 105 Sherborne Abbey-house 209 Staunton Harold Church, co. Leicester 113 St. Sepulchre's Church, London, Porch of 577 Tiles, Ring, &c. antient 577 Tunnel of the Regent's Canal, Islington 105 PREFACE. IN announcing a continuation of our labours, we have once more to thank our numerous and kind Friends. In taking a Review, however, of the Times, as usual, we feel ourselves much in the situation of Æneas, when he made his perilous journey to visit the shade of his father Anchises. We have to pass a River Styx, and the courts where Minos is sitting in judgment, and inflicting punishment upon various Revolutionary Ixions, Tityuses, and Prometheuses, in order to arrive at those peaceful classical shades, where the spirit of Musæus sings in heavenly strains the grand elementary principles of creative power. We trust, however, that those Giant Sons of Earth, Anarchy and Irreligion, will not remove the mountains which the Parliamentary power of our Constitutional Jupiter has laid upon them. In a Country like our own, not dependent upon territory, but on commerce, arts, and a paper circulation, it is impossible that any other than pure selfish Adventurers can desire Revolution. Annihilate the Funds and our Bank Notes, what property is there left in England? We believe that it was Mr. Burke who said, that, if all the real property of England was divided in equal shares among the whole population, there would not be more than one week's subsistence. Commerce could not subsist without security, peace, law, a circulating medium, and property guaranteed. But whence could those arise, in an unsettled state of things? Conceive an annual income of fifty millions, spent among the people, diverted from trade and luxury in the greater part, and the arts thrown for support and encouragement upon the ignorant, who do not regard them. We do not wish to see that venerable matron Britannia, "the Old Lady in Threadneedle-street," placed in a course of the most violent and poisonous medicines by our political quacks, because we believe, that the insulting process would certainly end in her dissolution; and that the treatment would be infamously misapplied to a character, slandered indeed, but but in truth uncontaminated. Honest men ought to guard so high a family name from such villainous liberties and mischievous designs. we What may be the fittest remedies for political hydrophobia we leave to our authorized and legitimate State-physicians, Standing unmoved on the rock of our Constitution, trust, that SYLVANUS URBAN will preserve the proud attitude of a Guardian of Truth, Piety, Virtue, and Science. Miserable as it is, to see our lower population dispersed, like wild beasts and birds of prey, in search of plunder: grating as is their harsh croak; we yet hope that the rising of the British Lion in power, in the glory of his might, will compel them to fly for safety to the peaceable regions of security and industry. Upon the productive labours of the Nation now wholly depends its possible well-being: for by what other means is the Revenue to be supported, and the population to be fed? Our infatuated Revolutionists cry out for bread, but will only receive a stone. They would support life by inflammatory speeches, and public meetings, and precarious robbery. Pretending to be in a state of starvation, they look not for the spade, but the sceptre. They pray not to their God; and they insult his Providence, which has been pleased to ordain inequality of station, only that the rich may be bankers for the poor, and disperse among them those comforts, which under no other system they could permanently possess. Where there is no Literature, there is no Civilization: and wretched would be the support which it would derive from the friends of mere factious oratory. Their matter, to please their hearers, must consist of low crude opinions, and erroneous principles. Can Adam Smith be quoted with success among such hearers as our Northern Republicans? If the Bible be despised, will Blackstone be regarded? The Friends of Literature are therefore called upon to act, as well as the Friends of Order, lest the Barbarians divert the river of public opinion from its channel, in order to bury Science, as their ancestors the Goths did Alarick, in its hollow bed, and so restore the stream, and bury in eternal oblivion its honourable grave. Dec. 31, 1819. |