Endnotes + 

The notes will probably be found too voluminous for the taste of some readers; but others would doubtless be better pleased to see them still augmented, as several of the philosophical subjects and historical allusions are left unexplained. Were I to offer apologies in this case, I should hardly know on which side to begin. I will therefore only say that in this appendage, as in the body of the work, I have aimed, as well as I was able, at blending in due proportions the useful with the agreeable. + 

The death of Queen Isabella, which happened before the last return of Columbus from America, was a subject of great sorrow to him. In her he lost his only powerful friend in Spain, on whose influence he was accustomed to rely in counteracting the perpetual intrigues of a host of enemies, whose rank and fortune gave them a high standing at the court of Valladolid. Their situation and connections must havee commanded a weight of authority not easily resisted by an individual foreigner, however illustrious from his merit. + 

It was a grievous reflection for Columbus that his services, though great in themselves and unequalled in their consequences to the world, had been performed in an age and for a nation which knew not their value, as well as for an ungrateful monarch who chose to disregard them. ↩ + 

Atlas and Hesper were of the race of Titans. They were sons of Uranus, or of Japetus, according as the fable is traced to different countries, whose supreme god (originally the sun) was called by different names. Atlas, from being king of Mauritania, became a mountain to support the heavens, and gave his name to the western ocean. Hesper frequented that mountain in the study of astronomy; till one evening he disappeared, and returned no more. He was then placed in the western heaven; and, having been a beautiful young man, he became a beautiful planet, called the evening star. This circumstance gave his name to the western regions of the earth indefinitely. Italy was called Hesperia by the Greeks, because it lay west from them, and seemed under the influence of the star of evening; Spain was called Hesperia by the Romans, for the same reason. + 

If the nations which adopted this fable had known of a country west of the Atlantic, that country must have been Hesperia to them all; and pursuing this analogy I have so named it, in several instances in the course of the poem. Considering Hesper as the guardian genius, and Columbus as the discoverer of the western continent, it may derive its name, in poetical language, from either of theirs indifferently, and be called Hesperia or Columbia. + 

Atlas is considered in this poem as the guardian genius of Africa. See his speech in the eighth book, on the slavery of his people. ↩ + 

The original inhabitants of Hispaniola were worshippers of the sun. The Europeans, when they first landed there, were supposed by them to be gods, and consequently descended from the sun. See the subject of solar worship treated more at large in a subsequent note. ↩ + 

The White Mountain of New Hampshire, though eighty miles from the sea, is the first land to be discovered in approaching that part of the coast of North America. It serves as a landmark for a considerable length of coast, of difficult navigation. ↩ + 

This river, from different circumstances, has obtained several different names. It has been called Amazon, from an idea that some part of the neighboring country was inhabited by a race of warlike women, resembling what Herodotus relates of the Amazons of Scythia. It has been called Orellana, from its having been discovered by a Spanish officer of that name, who, on a certain expedition, deserted from the younger Pizarro on one of the sources of this river and navigated it from thence to the ocean. Maragnon is the original name given it by the natives; which name I choose to follow. + 

If we estimate its magnitude by the length of its course and the quantity of water it throws into the sea, it is much the greatest river that has hitherto come to our knowledge. Its navigation is said by Condamine and others to be uninterrupted for four thousand miles from the sea. Its breadth within the banks is sixty geographical miles; it receives in its course a variety of great rivers, besides those described in the text. Many of these descend from elevated countries and mountains covered with snow, the melting of which annually swells the Maragnon above its banks; when it overflows and fertilizes a vast extent of territory. ↩ + 

Some of the richest diamond mines are found on the banks of the lake Xaraya. The river Paraguay is remarkable for the quantities of gold dust found in its channel. The Rio de la Plata, properly so called, has its source in the mountains of Potosi; and it was probably from this circumstance that it received its name, which signifies River of Silver. This river, after having joined the Paraguay, which is larger than itself, retains its own name till it reaches the sea. Near the mouth, it is one hundred and fifty miles wide; but in other respects it is far inferior to the Maragnon. ↩ + 

The great object of Columbus, in most of his voyages, was to discover a western passage to India. He navigated the Gulf of Mexico with particular attention to this object, and was much disappointed in not finding a pass into the South Sea. The view he is here supposed to have of that ocean would therefore naturally recall his former desire of sailing to India. ↩ + 

The straits of Magellan, so called from having been discovered by a Portuguese navigator of that name, who first attempted to sail round the world, and lost his life in the attempt. ↩ + 

Colonel Palfrey of Boston was an officer of distinction in the American army during the war of independence. Soon after the war he proposed to visit Europe and embarked for England; but never more was heard of. The ship probably perished in the ice. His daughter, here alluded to, is now the wife of William Lee, American consul at Bordeaux. ↩ + 

The color of animals is acquired partly from the food they eat through successive generations and partly from the objects with which they are usually surrounded. Dr. Darwin has a curious note on this subject, in which he remarks on the advantages that insects and other small animals derive from their color, as a means of rendering them invisible to their more powerful enemies, who thus find it difficult to distinguish them from other objects where they reside. Some animals which inhabit cold countries turn white in winter when the earth is covered with snow, such as the snowbird of the Alps. Others in snowy regions are habitually white, such as the white bear of Russia. ↩ + 

Paria is a fertile country near the river Orinoco; the only part of the continent of America that Columbus had seen. Tombut in the same latitude is the most sterile part of Africa. America embraces a greater compass of latitude by many degrees than the other continent; and yet its inhabitants present a much less variety in their physical and moral character. When shall we be able to account for this fact? ↩ + 

Without entering into any discussion on the theory of heat and cold (a point not yet settled in our academies) I would just observe, in vindication of the expression in the text, that some solid matter, such for instance as the surface of the earth, seems absolutely necessary to the production of heat. At least it must be a matter more compact than that of the sun’s rays; and perhaps its power of producing heat is in proportion to its solidity. + 

The warmth communicated to the atmosphere is doubtless produced by the combined causes of the earth and the sun; but the agency of the former is probably more powerful in this operation than that of the latter, and its presence more indispensable. For masses of matter will produce heat by friction, without the aid of the sun; but no experiment has yet proved that the rays of the sun are capable of producing heat without the aid of other and more solid matter. The air is temperate in those cavities of the earth where the sun is the most effectually excluded; whereas the coldest regions yet known to us are the tops of the Andes, where the sun’s rays have the most direct operation, being the most vertical and the least obstructed by vapors. Those regions are deprived of heat by being so far removed from the broad surface of the earth; a body that appears requisite to warm the surrounding atmosphere by its cooperation with the action of the sun. + 

From these principles we may conclude that cultivation, in a woody country, tends to warm the atmosphere and ameliorate a cold climate; as by removing the forests and marshes, it opens the earth to the sun, and allows them to act in conjunction upon the air. + 

According to the descriptions given of the middle parts of Europe by Caesar and Tacitus, it appears that those countries were much colder in their days than they are at present; cultivation seems to have softened that climate to a great degree. The same effect begins to be perceived in North America. Possibly it may in time become as apparent as the present difference in the temperature of the two continents. ↩ + 

The complexion of the inhabitants of North America, who are descended from the English and Dutch, is evidently darker, and their stature taller than those of the English and Dutch in Europe. ↩ + 

We may reckon three stages of improvement in the graphic art or the art of communicating our thoughts to absent persons and to posterity by visible signs. First, The invention of painting ideas, or representing actions, dates and other circumstances of historical fact, by the images of material things, drawn usually on a flat surface or sometimes carved or moulded in a more solid form. This was the state at which the art had arrived in Egypt before the introduction of letters, and in Mexico before the arrival of the Spaniards. The Greeks in Egypt called it hieroglyphic. + 

Second, The invention of painting sounds, which we do by the use of letters or the alphabet, and which we call writing. This was a vast improvement; as it simplified in a wonderful degree the communication of thought. For ideas are infinite in number and variety; while the simple sounds we use to convey them to the ear are few, distinct and easy to be understood. It would indeed be impossible to express all our ideas by distinct and visible images. And even if the writer were able to do this, not many readers could be made to understand him; since it would be necessary that every new idea should have a new image invented and agreed upon between the writer and the reader, before it could be used: which preliminary could not be settled without the writer should see and converse with the reader. And he might as well in this case convey his ideas by oral speech; so that his writing could be of little use beyond a certain routine of established signs. + 

The number of simple sounds in human language used in discourse is not above eighteen or twenty; and these are so varied in the succession in which they are uttered, as to express an inconceivable and endless variety of thought and sentiment. Then, by the help of an alphabet of about twenty-six letters or visible signs, these sounds are translated from the ear to the eye; and we are able, by thus painting the sound, to arrest its fleeting nature, render it permanent and talk with distant nations and future ages, without any previous convention whatever, even supposing them to be ignorant of the language in which we write. This is the present state of the art, as commonly practised in all the countries where an alphabet is used. It is called the art of writing; and to understand it is called reading. + 

Third, Another invention, which is still in its infancy, is the art of painting phrases, or sentences, commonly called shorthand writing. This is yet but little used and only by a few dexterous persons who make it a particular study. Probably the true principles on which it ought to be founded are yet to be discovered. But it may be presumed, that in this part of the graphic art there remains to the ingenuity of future generations a course of improvements totally inconceivable to the present; by which the whole train of impressions now made upon the mind by reading a long and well written treatise may be conveyed by a few strokes of the pen and be received at a glance of the eye. This desideratum would be an abridgment of labor in our mental acquisitions, of which we cannot determine the consequences. It might make, in the progress of human knowledge, an epoch as remarkable as that which was made by the invention of alphabetical writing, and produce as great a change in the mode of transmitting the history of events. + 

One consequence of the invention of alphabetical writing seems to have been to throw into oblivion all previous historical facts; and it has thus left an immense void, which the imagination knows not how to fill, in contemplating the progress of our race. How many important discoveries, which still remain to our use, must have taken their origin in that space of time which is thus left a void to us! A vast succession of ages and ages of improvement must have preceded (for example) the invention of the wheel. The wheel must have been in common use, we know not how long, before alphabetical writing; because we find its image employed in painting ideas, during the first stage of the graphic art above described. The wheel was likewise in use before the mysteries of Ceres or those of Isis were established; as is evident from its being imagined as an instrument of punishment in hell, in the case of Ixion, as represented in those mysteries. The taming of the ox and the horse, the use of the sickle and the bow and arrow, a considerable knowledge of astronomy and its application to the purposes of agriculture and navigation, with many other circumstances which show a prodigious improvement, must evidently have preceded the date of the zodiac; a date fixed by Dupuis, with a great degree of probability, at about seventeen thousand years from our time. This epoch would doubtless carry us back many thousand years beyond that of the alphabet; the invention of which was sufficient of itself to obliterate the details of previous history, as the event has proved. + 

How far the loss of these historical details is to be regretted, as an impediment to our progress in useful knowledge, I will not decide; but in one view, which I am going to state, it may be justly considered as a misfortune. + 

The art of painting ideas, being arrested in the state in which the use of the alphabet found it, went into general disuse for common purposes; and the works then extant, as well as the knowledge of writing in that mode, being no longer intelligible to the people, became objects of deep and laborious study and known only to the learned; that is, the men of leisure and contemplation. These men consequently ran it into mystery; making it a holy object, above the reach of vulgar inquiry. On this ground they established, in the course of ages, a profitable function or profession, in the practice of which a certain portion of men of the brightest talents could make a reputable living; taking care not to initiate more than a limited number of professors; no more than the people could maintain as priests. This mode of writing then assumed the name of hieroglyphic, or sacred painting, to distinguish it from that which had now become the vulgar mode of writing, by the use of the alphabet. This is perhaps the source of that ancient, vast and variegated system of false religion, with all its host of errors and miseries, which has so long and so grievously weighed upon the character of human nature. + 

In noticing the distinction of the three stages in the graphic art above described, I have not mentioned the wonderful powers we derive from it in the language of the mathematics and the language of music. In each of these, though its effects are already astonishing, there is no doubt but great improvements are still to be made. Our present mode of writing in these, as in literature, belongs to the second or alphabetical stage of the graphic art. The ten ciphers and the other signs used in the mathematical sciences form the alphabet in which the language of those sciences is written. The few musical notes and the other signs which accompany them furnish an alphabet for writing the language of music. + 

The mode of writing in China is still different from any of those I have mentioned. The Chinese neither paint ideas nor sounds: but they make a character for every word; which character must vary according to the different inflections and uses of that word. The characters must therefore be insupportably numerous, and be still increasing as the language is enriched with new words by the augmentation and correction of ideas. + 

The English language is supposed to contain about twelve thousand distinct words and the Italian about seventeen thousand, in the present state of our sciences. I know not how many the Chinese may contain; but if we were to write our languages in the Chinese method, it would be the business of a whole life for a man to learn his mother tongue, so as to read and write it for his ordinary purposes. + 

As the Chinese have not adopted an alphabet, but have adhered to an invariable state of the graphic art, which is probably more ancient by several thousand years than our present method, may we not venture to conjecture that the traces of their very ancient history have been, for that reason, better preserved? and that their pretensions to a very high antiquity, which we have been used to think extravagant and ridiculous, are really not without foundation? If so, we might then allow a little more latitude to ourselves, and conclude that we are in fact as old as they and might have been as sensible of it, if we had adhered to our ancient method of writing; and not changed it for a new one which, while it has facilitated the progress of our science, has humbled our pride of antiquity, by obliterating the dates of those labors and improvements of our early progenitors, to which we are indebted for more of the rudiments of our sciences and our arts than we usually imagine. + 

It is much to be regretted, that the Spanish devastation in Mexico and Peru was so universal as to leave us but few monuments of the history of the human mind in those countries, which presented a state of manners so remarkably different from what can be found in any other part of the world. The pictorial writing of the Mexicans, though sometimes called hieroglyphic, does not appear to merit that name, as it was not exclusively appropriated by the priests to sacred purposes. Indeed it could not be so appropriated till a more convenient method could be discovered and adopted for common purposes. For a thing cannot become sacred, in this sense of the word, until it ceases to be common. ↩ + 

Bovadilla and Ovando are mentioned in the Introduction as the enemies and successors of Columbus in the government of Hispaniola. They began that system of cruelty towards the natives, which in a few years almost depopulated that island, and was afterwards pursued by Cortez, Pizarro and others, in all the first settlements in Spanish America. + 

Boyle was a fanatical priest who accompanied Ovando, and, under pretence of christianizing the natives by the sword, gave the sanction of the church to the most shocking and extensive scenes of slaughter. ↩ + 

The conduct of Cortez, when he first landed on the coast of Mexico, was as remarkable for that hardy spirit of adventure, to which success gives the name of policy, as his subsequent operations were for cruelty and perfidy. As soon as his army was on shore, he dismantled his fleet of such articles as would be useful in building a new one; he then set fire to his ships, and burnt them in presence of his men, that they might fight their battles with more desperate courage, knowing that it would be impossible to save themselves from a victorious enemy by flight. He constructed a fort, in which the iron and the rigging were preserved. ↩ + 

It is worthy of remark, that the countries where the worship of the sun has made the greatest figure are Egypt and Peru; the two regions of the earth the most habitually deprived of rain and probably of clouds, which in other countries so frequently obstruct his rays and seem to dispute his influence. Though in the rude ages of society it is certainly natural in all countries to pay adoration to the sun, as one of the visible agents of those changes in the atmosphere which most affect the people’s happiness, yet it is reasonable to suppose that this adoration would be more unmixed, and consequently more durable, in climates where the agency of the sun appears unrivalled and supreme. + 

On the supposition that Greece and Western Asia, regions whose early traditions are best known to us, derived their first theological ideas from Egypt, it is curious to observe how the pure heliosebia of Egypt degenerated in those climates in proportion as other visible agents seemed to exert their influence in human affairs. Greece is a mountainous country, subject to a great deal of lightning and other meteors, whose effects are tremendous and make stronger impressions on rude savages than the gentle energies of the sun. + 

The Greeks therefore, having forgotten the source of their religious system, ceased to consider the sun as their supreme god; his agency being, in their opinion, subject to a more potent divinity, the Power of the air or Jupiter, whom they styled the Thunderer. So that Apollo, the god of light, became in their mythology the subject and offspring of the supreme god of the atmosphere. This religion became extremely confused and complicated with new fables, according to the temperature and other accidents of the different climates through which it passed. The god of thunder obtained the supreme veneration generally in Europe: known in the south by the name of Jupiter or Zeus and in the north by that of Thor. + 

Europe in general has an uneven surface and a vapory sky, liable to great concussions in the lower regions of the atmosphere which border the habitation of man. There is no wonder that in such a region the god of the air should appear more powerful than the god of light. This disposition of the elements has given a gloomy cast to the mind, and in the north more than in the south. The Thor of the Celtic nations was more tremendous, more feared and less beloved, than the Jupiter of the Greeks and Romans; he was worshipped accordingly with more bloody sacrifices. But in all Europe, western Asia and the northwestern coast of Africa, where the earth is uneven and the climate variable, their religion was more gloomy and their gods more ferocious than among the ancient Egyptians. + 

A like difference is observed in the religions of the two countries in America where civilization was most advanced before the arrival of the Spaniards. Peru enjoyed a climate of great serenity and regularity. Of all the sensible agents that operated on the earth and air, the sun was apparently the most uniform and energetic. The worship of the sun was therefore the most predominant and durable; and it inspired a mildness of manners analogous to his mild and beneficent influence. In Mexico and other uneven countries where storms and earthquakes were frequent, the sun, although he was reckoned among their deities, was not considered so powerful as those of a more boisterous and maleficent nature. The Mexican worship was therefore addressed chiefly to ferocious beings, enemies to human happiness, who delighted in the tears and blood of their votaries. The difference in the moral cast of religion in Peru and Mexico, as well as in Egypt and Greece, must have been greatly owing to climate. Indeed in what else should it be found, since the origin of religious ideas must have been in the energies of those visible agents which form the distinctive character of climates? ↩ + 

The traditions respecting these founders of the Peruvian empire are indeed obscure; but they excite in us the same sort of veneration that we feel for the most amiable and distinguished characters of remote antiquity. The honest zeal of Garcilasso de la Vega in collecting these traditions into one body of history, as a probable series of facts, is to be applauded; since he has there presented us with one of the most striking examples of the beau ideal in political character, that can be found in the whole range of literature. He treats his subject with more natural simplicity, though with less talent, than Plutarch or Xenophon, when they undertake a similar task, that of drawing traditional characters to fill up the middle space between fable and history. + 

With regard to the true position that the portrait of Manco Capac ought to hold in this middle space, how near it should stand to history and how near to fable, we should find it difficult to say and perhaps useless to inquire. Plutarch has gravely given us the lives and actions of several heroes who are evidently more fabulous than Capac, and of others who should be placed on the same line with him. The existence of Theseus, Romulus and Numa is more doubtful and their actions less probable than his. The character of Capac, in regard to its reality, stands on a parallel with that of the Lycurgus of Plutarch and the Cyrus of Xenophon; not purely historical nor purely fabulous, but presented to us as a compendium of those talents and labors which might possibly be crowded into the capacity of one mind and be achieved in one life, but which more probably belong to several generations; the talents and labors that could reduce a great number of ferocious tribes into one peaceable and industrious state. + 

Garcilasso was himself an Inca by maternal descent, born and educated at Cusco after the Spanish conquest. He writes apparently with the most scrupulous regard to truth, with little judgment and no ornament. He discovers a credulous zeal to throw a lustre on his remote ancestor Manco Capac, not by inventing new incidents, but by collecting with great industry all that had been recorded in the annals of the family. And their manner of recording events, though not so perfect as that of writing, was not so liable to error as traditions merely oral, like those of the Caledonian and other Celtic bards, with respect to the ancient heroes of their countries. + 

His account states, that about four centuries previous to the discovery of that country by the Spaniards, the natives of Peru were as rude savages as any in America. They had no fixed habitations, no ideas of permanent property; they wandered naked like the beasts and like them depended on the events of each day for a subsistence. At this period Manco Capac and his wife Mama Oella appeared on a small island in the lake Titicaca, near which the city of Cusco was afterwards built. These persons, to establish a belief of their divinity in the minds of the people, were clothed in white garments of cotton, and declared themselves descended from the sun, who was their father and the god of that country. They affirmed that he was offended at their cruel and perpetual wars, their barbarous modes of worship and their neglecting to make the best use of the blessings he was constantly bestowing, in fertilizing the earth and producing vegetation; that he pitied their wretched state and had sent his own children to instruct them and to establish a number of wise regulations, by which they might be rendered happy. + 

By some uncommon method of persuasion, these persons drew together a few of the savage tribes, laid the foundation of the city of Cusco and established what is called the kingdom of the Sun, or the Peruvian empire. In the reign of Manco Capac, the dominion was extended about eight leagues from the city; and at the end of four centuries it was established fifteen hundred miles on the coast of the Pacific ocean, and from that ocean to the Andes. During this period, through a succession of twelve monarchs, the original constitution, established by the first Inca, remained unaltered; and this constitution, with the empire itself, was at last overturned by an accident which no human wisdom could foresee or prevent. + 

For a more particular detail of the character and institutions of this extraordinary personage the reader is referred to a subsequent note, in which he will find a dissertation on that subject. + 

In the passage preceding this reference, I have alluded to the fabulous traditions relating to these children of the sun. In the remainder of the second and through the whole of the third book, I have given what may be supposed a probable narrative of their real origin and actions. The space allowed to this episode may appear too considerable in a poem whose principal object is so different. But it may be useful to exhibit in action the manners and sentiments of savage tribes, whose aliment is war; that the contrast may show more forcibly the advantages of civilized life, whose aliment is peace. ↩ + 

As the art of spinning is said to have been invented by Oella, it is no improbable fiction to imagine that they first assumed these white garments of cotton as an emblem of the sun, in order to inspire that reverence for their persons which was necessary to their success. Such a dress may likewise be supposed to have continued in the family as a badge of royalty. ↩ + 

Although the original inhabitants of America in general deserve to be classed among the most unimproved savages that had been discovered before those of New Holland, yet the Mexican and Peruvian governments exhibited remarkable exceptions, and seemed to be fast approaching to a state of civilization. In the difference of national character between the people of these two empires we may discern the influence of political systems on the human mind, and infer the importance of the task which a legislator undertakes, in attempting to reduce a barbarous people under the control of government and laws. + 

The Mexican constitution was formed to render its subjects brave and powerful; but, while it succeeded in this object, it kept them far removed from the real blessings of society. According to the Spanish accounts (which for an obvious reason may however be suspected of exaggeration) the manners of the Mexicans were uncommonly ferocious, and their religion gloomy, sanguinary and unrelenting. But the establishments of Manco Capac, if we may follow Garcilasso in attributing the whole of the Peruvian constitution to that wonderful personage, present the aspect of a most benevolent and pacific system; they tended to humanize the world and render his people happy; while his ideas of deity were so elevated as to bear a comparison with the sublime doctrines of Socrates or Plato. + 

The characters, whether real or fabulous, who are the most distinguished as lawgivers among barbarous nations, are Moses, Lycurgus, Solon, Numa, Muhammad, and Peter of Russia. Of these, only the two former and the two latter appear really to deserve the character of lawgivers. Solon and Numa possessed not the opportunity of showing their talents in the work of original legislation. Athens and Rome were considerably civilized before these persons arose. The most they could do was to correct and amend constitutions already formed. Solon may be considered as a wise politician, but by no means as the founder of a nation. The Athenians were too far advanced in society to admit any radical change in their form of government; unless recourse could have been had to the representative system, by establishing an equality of rank and instructing all the people in their duties and their rights; a system which was never understood by any ancient legislator. + 

The institutions of Numa (if such a person as Numa really existed) were more effective and durable. His religious ceremonies were for many ages the most powerful check on the licentious and turbulent Romans; the greater part of whom were ignorant slaves. By inculcating a remarkable reverence for the gods and making it necessary to consult the auspices when anything important was to be transacted, his object was to render the popular superstition subservient to the views of policy and thus to give the senate a steady check upon the plebeians. But the constitutions of Rome and Athens, notwithstanding the abundant applause that has been bestowed upon them, were never fixed on any permanent principles; though the wisdom of some of their rulers and the spirit of liberty that inspired the citizens may justly demand our admiration. + 

Each of the other legislators above mentioned deserves a particular consideration, as having acted in stations somewhat similar to that of the Peruvian patriarch. Three objects are to be attended to by the legislator of a barbarous people: First, That his system be such as is capable of reducing the greatest number of men under one jurisdiction: Second, That it apply to such principles in human nature for its support as are universal and permanent, in order to insure the duration of the government: Third, That it admit of improvements correspondent to any advancement in knowledge or variation of circumstances that may happen to its subjects, without endangering the principle of government by such innovations. So far as the systems of such legislators agree with these fundamental principles, they are worthy of respect; and so far as they deviate, they may be considered as defective. + 

To begin with Moses and Lycurgus: it is proper to observe that in order to judge of the merit of any institutions, we must take into view the peculiar character of the people for whom they were framed. For want of this attention, many of the laws of Moses and some of those of Lycurgus have been ridiculed and censured. The Jews, when led by Moses out of Egypt, were not only uncivilized, but having just risen to independence from a state of servitude they united the manners of servants and savages, and their national character was a compound of servility, ignorance, filthiness and cruelty. Of their cruelty as a people we need no other proof than the account of their avengers of blood and the readiness with which the whole congregation turned executioners and stoned to death the devoted offenders. The leprosy, a disease now scarcely known, was undoubtedly produced by a want of cleanliness, continued for successive generations. In this view their frequent ablutions, their peculiar modes of trial and several other institutions may be vindicated from ridicule and proved to be wise regulations. + 

The Spartan lawgiver has been censured for the toleration of theft and adultery. Among that race of barbarians these habits were too general to admit of total prevention or universal punishment. By vesting all property in the commonwealth, instead of encouraging theft he removed the possibility of the crime; and, in a nation where licentiousness was generally indulged, it was a great step towards introducing a purity of manners, to punish adultery in all cases wherein it was committed without the consent of all parties interested in its consequences. + 

Until the institution of representative republics, which are of recent date, it was found that those constitutions of government were best calculated for immediate energy and duration, which were interwoven with some religious system. The legislator who appears in the character of an inspired person renders his political institutions sacred and interests the conscience as well as the judgment in their support. The Jewish lawgiver had this advantage over the Spartan: he appeared not in the character of a mere earthly governor, but as an interpreter of the divine will. By enjoining a religious observance of certain rites he formed his people to habitual obedience; by directing their cruelty against the breakers of the laws he at least mitigated the rancor of private hatred; by directing that real property should return to the original families in the year of Jubilee he prevented too great an inequality of wealth; and by selecting a single tribe to be the interpreters of religion he prevented its mysteries from being the subject of profane and vulgar investigation. With a view of securing the permanence of his institutions, he prohibited intercourse with foreigners by severe restrictions and formed his people to habits and a character disagreeable to other nations; so that any foreign intercourse was prevented by the mutual hatred of both parties. + 

To these institutions the laws of Lycurgus bear a striking resemblance. The features of his constitution were severe and forbidding; it was however calculated to inspire the most enthusiastic love of liberty and martial honor. In no country was the patriotic passion more energetic than in Sparta; no laws ever excluded the idea of separate property in an equal degree or inspired a greater contempt for the manners of other nations. The prohibition of money, commerce and almost everything desirable to effeminate nations, excluded foreigners from Sparta; and while it inspired the people with contempt for strangers it made them agreeable to each other. By these means Lycurgus rendered the nation warlike; and to insure the duration of the government he endeavored to interest the consciences of his people by the aid of oracles and by the oath he is said to have exacted from them to obey his laws till his return, when he went into perpetual exile. + 

From this view of the Jewish and Spartan institutions, applied to the principles before stated, they appear in the two first articles considerably imperfect, and in the last totally defective. Neither of them was calculated to bring any considerable territory or number of men under one jurisdiction: from this circumstance alone they could not be rendered permanent, as nations so restricted in their means of extension must be constantly exposed to their more powerful neighbors. But the third object of legislation, that of providing for the future progress of society, which as it regards the happiness of mankind is the most important of the three, was in both instances entirely neglected. These symptoms appear to have been formed with an express design to prevent future improvement in knowledge or enlargement of the human mind, and to fix those nations in a state of ignorance and barbarism. To vindicate their authors from an imputation of weakness or inattention in this particular, it may be urged that they were each of them surrounded by nations more powerful than their own; it was therefore perhaps impossible for them to commence an establishment upon any other plan. + 

The institutions of Muhammad are next to be considered. The first object of legislation appears to have been better understood by him than by either of the preceding sages; his jurisdiction was capable of being enlarged to any extent of territory, and governing any number of nations that might be subjugated by his enthusiastic armies; and his system of religion was admirably calculated to attain this object. Like Moses, he convinced his people that he acted as the vicegerent of God; but with this advantage, adapting his religion to the natural feelings and propensities of mankind, he multiplied his followers by the allurements of pleasure and the promise of a sensual paradise. These circumstances were likewise sure to render his constitution durable. His religious system was so easy to be understood, so splendid and so inviting, there could be no danger that the people would lose sight of its principles, and no necessity of future prophets to explain its doctrines or reform the nation. To these advantages if we add the exact and rigid military discipline, the splendor and sacredness of the monarch and that total ignorance among the people which such a system will produce and perpetuate, the establishment must have been evidently calculated for a considerable extent and duration. But the last and most important end of government, that of mental improvement and social happiness, was deplorably lost in the institution. There was probably more learning and cultivated genius in Arabia in the days of this extraordinary man, than can now be found in all the Muhammadan dominions. + 

On the contrary, the enterprising mind of the Russian monarch appears to have been wholly bent on the arts of civilization and the improvement of society among his subjects. Established in a legal title to a throne, which already commanded a prodigious extent of country, he found the first object of government already secured; and by applying himself with great sagacity to the third object, that of improving his people, it was reasonable to suppose that the second, the durability of his system, would become a necessary consequence. He effected his purposes, important as they were, merely by the introduction of the arts and the encouragement of politer manners. The greatness of his character appears not so much in his institutions, which he copied from other nations, as in the extraordinary measures he followed to introduce them, the judgment he showed in selecting and adapting them to the genius of his subjects and the surprising assiduity by which he raised a savage people to an elevated rank among European nations. + 

To the nature and operation of the several forms of government above mentioned I will compare that of the Peruvian lawgiver. I have observed in a preceding note that the knowledge we have of Manco Capac is necessarily imperfect and obscure, derived through traditions and family registers (without the aid of writing) for four hundred years; from the time he is supposed to have lived, till that of his historian and descendant, Inca Garcilasso de la Vega. About an equal interval elapsed from the supposed epoch of the first kings of Rome to that of their first historians; a longer space from Lycurgus to Herodotus; probably not a shorter one from the time of the great Cyrus to that of Xenophon, author of the elegant romance on the actions of that hero. + 

I recall the reader’s attention to these comparisons, not with a view of contending that our accounts of the actions ascribed to Capac are derived from authentic records, and that he is a subject of real history, like Muhammad or Peter; but to show that our channels of information with regard to him being equally respectable with those that have brought us acquainted with the classical and venerable names of Lycurgus, Romulus, Numa and Cyrus, we may be as correct in our reasonings from the modern as from the ancient source of reference, and fancy ourselves treading a ground as sacred on the tomb of the western patriarch, as on those more frequented and less scrutinized in the east, consecrated to the demigods of Sparta, Rome and Persia. + 

It is probable that the savages of Peru before the time of Capac, among other objects of adoration, paid homage to the sun. By availing himself of this popular sentiment he appeared, like Moses and Muhammad, in the character of a divine legislator endowed with supernatural powers. After impressing these ideas on the minds of the people, drawing together a number of the tribes and rendering them subservient to his benevolent purposes, he applied himself to forming the outlines of a plan of policy, capable of founding and regulating an extensive empire, wisely calculated for long duration and well adapted to improve the knowledge, peace and happiness of a considerable portion of mankind. In the allotment of the lands as private property he invented a mode somewhat resembling the feudal system of Europe: yet this system was checked in its operation by a law similar to that of Moses which regulated landed possessions in the year of Jubilee. He divided the lands into three parts: the first was consecrated to the uses of religion; as it was from the sacerdotal part of his system that he doubtless expected its most powerful support. The second portion was set apart for the Inca and his family, to enable him to defray the expenses of government and appear in the style of a monarch. The third and largest portion was allotted to the people; which allotment was repeated every year, and varied according to the number and exigences of each family. + 

As the Incan race appeared in the character of divinities, it seemed necessary that a subordination of rank should be established, to render the distinction between the monarch and his people more perceptible. With this view he created a band of nobles who were distinguished by personal and hereditary honors. These were united to the monarch by the strongest ties of interest: in peace they acted as judges and superintended the police of the empire; in war they commanded in the armies. The next order of men were the respectable landholders and cultivators, who composed the principal strength of the nation. Below these was a class of men who were the servants of the public and cultivated the public lands. They possessed no property; and their security depended on their regular industry and peaceable demeanor. Above all these orders were the Inca and his family. He possessed absolute and uncontrollable power. His mandates were regarded as the word of heaven; and the double guilt of impiety and rebellion attended on disobedience. + 

To impress the utmost veneration for the Incan family it was a fundamental principle that the royal blood should never be contaminated by any foreign alliance. The mysteries of religion were preserved sacred by the high priest of the royal family under the control of the king, and celebrated with rites capable of making the deepest impression on the multitude. The annual distribution of the lands, while it provided for the varying circumstances of each family, was designed to strengthen the bands of society by perpetuating that distinction of rank among the orders which is supposed necessary to a monarchical government: the peasants could not vie with their superiors, and the nobles could not be subjected by misfortune to a subordinate station. A constant habit of industry was inculcated upon all ranks by the force of example. The cultivation of the soil, which in most other countries is considered as one of the lowest employments, was here regarded as a divine art. Having had no knowledge of it before and being taught it by the children of their god, the people viewed it as a sacred privilege, a national honor, to assist the sun in opening the bosom of the earth to produce vegetation. That the government might be able to exercise the endearing acts of beneficence, the produce of the public lands was reserved in magazines to supply the wants of the unfortunate and as a resource in case of scarcity or invasion. + 

These are the outlines of a government the most simple and energetic, and at least as capable as any monarchy within our knowledge of reducing great and populous countries under one jurisdiction; at the same time, accommodating its principle to every stage of improvement, by a singular and happy application to the passions of the human mind, it encouraged the advancement of knowledge without being endangered by success. + 

In the traits of character which distinguish this institution we may discern all the great principles of each of the legislators above mentioned. The pretensions of Capac to divine authority were as artfully contrived and as effectual in their consequences as those of Muhammad; his exploding the worship of evil beings and objects of terror, forbidding human sacrifices and accommodating the rites of worship to a god of justice and benevolence, produced a greater change in the national character of his people than the laws of Moses did in his; like Peter he provided for the future improvement of society, while his actions were never measured on the contracted scale which limited the genius of Lycurgus. + 

Thus far we find that although the political system of Capac did not embrace that extensive scope of human nature which is necessary in forming republican institutions, and which can be drawn only from long and well recorded experience of the passions and tendencies of social man, yet it must be pronounced at least equal to those of the most celebrated monarchical lawgivers, whether ancient or modern. But in some things his mind seems to have attained an elevation with which few of theirs will bear a comparison: I mean in his religious institutions and the exalted ideas he had formed of the agency and attributes of supernatural beings. + 

From what source he could have drawn these ideas it is difficult to form a satisfactory conjecture. The worship of the sun is so natural to an early state of society, in a mild climate with a clear atmosphere, that it may be as reasonable to suppose it would originate in Peru as in Egypt or Persia; where we find that a similar worship did originate and was wrought into a splendid system; whence it was probably extended, with various modifications, over most of the ancient world. + 

Or if we reject this theory and suppose that only one nation, from some circumstance peculiar to itself, could create the materials of such a system, and has consequently had the privilege of giving its religion to the human race, we may in this case imagine that the Phoenicians (who colonized Cadiz and other places in the west of Europe at the time when they possessed the solar worship in all its glory) must have had a vessel driven across the Atlantic, and thus conveyed a stock of inhabitants, with their own religious ideas to the western continent. + 

The first theory is doubtless the most plausible. And the mild regions of Peru, for the reasons mentioned in a former note, became like Egypt the seat of an institution so congenial to its climate. But in more boisterous climates, where storms and other violent agents prevail, many different fables have wrought themselves into the system, as remarked in the same note; and the solar religion in such countries has generally lost its name and the more beneficent parts of its influence. Being thus corrupted, religion in almost every part of the earth assumed a gloomy and sanguinary character. + 

Savage nations create their gods from such materials as they have at hand, the most striking to their senses. And these are in general an assemblage of destructive attributes. They usually form no idea of a general superintending providence; they consider not their god as the author of their beings, the creator of the world and the dispenser of the happiness they enjoy. They discern him not in the usual course of nature, in the sunshine and in the shower, the productions of the earth and the blessing of society. They find a deity only in the storm, the earthquake and the whirlwind; or ascribe to him the evils of pestilence and famine. They consider him as interposing in wrath to change the course of nature and exercise the attributes of rage and revenge. They adore him with rites suited to these attributes, with horror, with penance and with sacrifice. They imagine him pleased with the severity of their mortifications, with the oblations of blood and the cries of human victims; and they hope to compound for greater judgments by voluntary sufferings and horrid sacrifices, suited to the relish of his taste. + 

Perhaps no single criterion can be given which will determine more accurately the state of society in any age or nation than their general ideas concerning the nature and attributes of deity. In the most enlightened periods of antiquity, only a few of their philosophers, a Socrates, Tully or Confucius, ever formed a rational idea on the subject, or described a god of purity, justice and benevolence. But Capac, erecting his institutions in a country where the visible agents of nature inspired more satisfactory feelings, adopted a milder system. As the sun with its undisturbed influence seemed to point itself out as the supreme controller and vital principle of nature, he formed the idea, as the Egyptians had done before, of constituting that luminary the chief object of adoration. He taught the nation to consider the sun as the parent of the universe, the god of order and regularity; ascribing to his influence the rotation of the seasons, the productions of the earth and the blessings of health; especially attributing to his inspiration the wisdom of their laws and that happy constitution which was the delight and veneration of the people. + 

A system so just and benevolent, as might be expected, was attended with success. In about four centuries the dominion of the Incas had extended fifteen hundred miles in length and had introduced peace and prosperity through the whole region. The arts of society had been carried to a considerable degree of improvement and the authority of the Incan race universally acknowledged, when an event happened which disturbed the tranquillity of the empire. Huana Capac, the twelfth monarch, had reduced the powerful kingdom of Quito and annexed it to his dominions. To conciliate the affections of his new subjects, he married a daughter of the ancient king of Quito, who was not of the race of Incas. Thus, by violating a fundamental law of the empire, he left at his death a disputed succession to the throne. Atabalipa, the son of Huana by the heiress of Quito, being in possession of the principal force of the Peruvian armies left at that place on the death of his father, gave battle to his brother Huascar, who was the elder son of Huana by a lawful wife, and legal heir to the crown. + 

After a long and destructive civil war the former was victorious, and thus was that flourishing kingdom left a prey to regal dissensions and to the few soldiers of Pizarro, who happened at that juncture to make a descent upon the coast. In this manner he effected an easy conquest and an utter destruction of a numerous, brave, unfortunate people. + 

It is however obvious that this deplorable event is not to be charged on Capac, as the consequence of any defect in his institution. It is impossible that an original legislator should effectually guard against the folly of all future sovereigns. Capac had not only removed every temptation that could induce a wise prince to wish for a change in the constitution, but had connected the ruin of his authority with the change; for he who disregards any part of institutions deemed sacred, teaches his people to consider the whole as an imposture. Had he made a law ordaining that the Peruvians should be absolved from their allegiance to a prince who should violate the laws, it would have implied possible error and imperfection in those persons whom the people were ordered to regard as divinities. The reverence due to characters who made such high pretensions would have been weakened; and instead of rendering the constitution perfect, such a law would have been its greatest defect. Besides, it is probable the rupture might have been healed and the succession settled, with as little difficulty as frequently happens with partial revolutions in other kingdoms, had not the descent of the Spaniards prevented it. And this event, for that age and country, must have been beyond the possibility of human foresight. But viewing the concurrence of these fatal accidents, which reduced this flourishing empire to a level with many other ruined and departed kingdoms, it only furnishes an additional proof that no political system has yet had the privilege to be perfect. + 

On the whole it is evident that the system of Capac (if the Peruvian constitution may be so called) is one of the greatest exertions of genius to be found in the history of mankind. When we consider him as an individual emerging from the midst of a barbarous people, having seen no example of the operation of laws in any country, originating a plan of religion and policy never equalled by the sages of antiquity, civilizing an extensive empire and rendering religion and government subservient to the general happiness of a great people, there is no danger that we grow too warm in his praise, or pronounce too high an eulogium on his character. ↩ + 

One of the great temples of the sun was built on an island in the lake Titicaca near Cusco, to consecrate the spot of ground where Capac and Oella first made their appearance and claimed divine honors as children of the sun. ↩ + 

The high priest of the sun was always one of the royal family; and in every generation after the first, was brother to the king. This office probably began with Rocha; as he was the first who was capable of receiving it, and as it was necessary, in the education of the prince, that he should be initiated in the sacred mysteries. ↩ + 

The lautu was a cotton band, twisted and worn on the head of the Incas as a badge of royalty. It made several turns round the head; and, according to the description of Garcilasso, it must have resembled the Turkish turban. + 

It is possible that both the lautu and the turban had their remote origin in the ancient astronomical religion, whose principal god was the sun and usually represented under the figure of a man with the horns of the ram; that is, the sun in the sign of aries. The form of the lautu and of the turban (which I suppose to be the same) seems to indicate that they were originally designed as emblems or badges; and when properly twisted and wound round the head, as Turks of distinction usually wear the turban, they resemble the horns of the ram as represented in those figures of Jupiter Ammon where the horns curl close to the head. + 

There is an engraving in Garcilasso representing the first Inca and his wife, Capac and Oella; and the heads of both are ornamented with rams’ horns projecting out from the lautu. Whether the figures of these personages were usually so represented in Peru previous to the Spanish devastation, would be difficult at this day to ascertain. If it could be ascertained that they were usually so represented there, we might esteem it a remarkable circumstance in proof of the unity of the origin of their religion with that of the ancient Egyptians; from which all the early theological systems of Asia and Europe, as far as they have come to our knowledge, were evidently derived. ↩ + 

Garcilasso declares that the different tribes of those mountain savages worshipped the various objects of terror that annoyed the particular parts of the country where they dwelt: such as storms, volcanos, rivers, lakes, and several beasts and birds of prey. All of them believed that their forefathers were descended from the gods which they worshipped. ↩ + 

The historian of the Incas relates that by the laws of the empire none but sacred fire could be used in sacrifices; and that there were three modes in which it might be procured. First, the most sacred fire was that which was drawn immediately from the sun himself by means of a concave mirror, which was usually made of gold or silver highly polished. Second, in case of cloudy weather or other accident, the fire might be taken from the temple, where it was preserved by the holy virgins, whose functions and discipline resembled those of the vestals of Rome. Third, when the sacrifice was to be made in the provinces at an inconvenient distance from the temple, and when the weather was such as to prevent drawing the fire immediately from the sun, it was permitted to procure it by the friction of two pieces of dry wood. + 

The two latter modes were resorted to only in cases of necessity. Not to be able to obtain fire by means of the mirror was a bad omen, a sign of displeasure in the god; it cast a gloom over the whole ceremony and threw the people into lamentations, fearing their offering would not be well received. + 

This method of procuring fire directly from the sun, to burn a sacrifice, must have appeared so miraculous to the savages who could not understand it, that it doubtless had a powerful effect in converting them to the solar religion and to the Incan government. ↩ + 

Xaraya is a lake in the country of Paraguay and is the principal source of the river Paraguay. This river is the largest branch of the Plata. ↩ + 

The Condor is supposed to be the largest bird of prey hitherto known. His wings, from one extreme to the other, are said to measure fifteen feet; he is able to carry a sheep in his talons, and he sometimes attacks men. He inhabits the high mountains of Peru, and is supposed by some authors to be peculiar to the American continent. Buffon believes him to be of the same species with the laemmer-geyer (lamb-vulture) of the Alps. The similarity of their habitations favors this conjecture; but the truth is, the Condor of Peru has not been well examined, and his history is imperfectly known. ↩ + 

It is natural for the worshippers of the sun to consider any change in the atmosphere as indicative of the different passions of their deity. With the Peruvians a sanguine appearance in the sun denoted his anger. ↩ + 

New-moon days were days of high festival with the Incas, according to Garcilasso. Eclipses of the sun must therefore have happened on solemn days and have interrupted the service of the temple. ↩ + 

Bartholomew de las Casas was a Dominican priest of a most amiable and heroic character. He first went to Hispaniola with Columbus in his second voyage, where he manifested an ardent but honest zeal, first in attempting to instruct the natives in the principles of the Catholic faith and afterwards in defending them against the insufferable cruelties exercised by the Spanish tyrants who succeeded Columbus in the discoveries and settlements in South America. He early declared himself Protector of the Indians; a title which seems to have been acknowledged by the Spanish government. He devoted himself ever after to the most indefatigable labors in the service of that unhappy people. He made several voyages to Spain to solicit, first from Ferdinand, then from cardinal Ximenes and finalty from Charles V, some effectual restrictions against the horrid career of depopulation which everywhere attended the Spanish arms. He followed these monsters of cruelty into all the conquered countries; where, by the power of his eloquence and that purity of morals which commands respect even from the worst of men, he doubtless saved the lives of many thousands of innocent people. His life was a continued struggle agaiust that deplorable system of tyranny, of which he gives a description in a treatise addressed to Philip prince of Spain, entitled Brevissima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Yndias. + 

It is said by the Spanish writers that the inhabitants of Hispaniola, when first discovered by the Spaniards, amounted to more than one million. This incredible population was reduced in fifteen years to sixty thousand souls. + 

Vincent Valverde was a fanatical priest who accompanied Pizarro in his destructive expedition to Peru. If we were to search the history of mankind, we should not find another such example of the united efforts of ecclesiastical hypocrisy and military ferocity, of unresisted murder and insatiable plunder, as we meet with in the account of this expedition. + 

Father Valverde in a formal manner gave the sanction of the church to the treacherous murder of Atabalipa and his relations; which was immediately followed by the destruction and almost entire depopulation of a flourishing empire. + 

Pedro de la Gasca was one of the few men whose virtues form a singular contrast with the vices which disgraced the age in which he lived and the country in which he acquired his glory. He was sent over to Peru by Charles V, without any military force, to quell the rebellion of the younger Pizarro and to prevent a second depopulation, by a civil war, of that country which had just been drenched in the blood of its original inhabitants. He effected this great purpose by the weight only of his personal authority and the veneration inspired by his virtues. As soon as he had suppressed the rebellion and established the government of the colony he hastened to resign his authority into the hands of his master. And though his victories had been obtained in the richest country on earth he returned to Spain as poor as Cincinnatus; having resisted every temptation to plunder and refused to receive any emolument for his services. ↩ + 

Frederic of Saxony, surnamed the Wise, was the first sovereign prince who favored the doctrines of Luther. He became at once his pupil and his patron, defended him from the persecutions of the pope and gave him an establishment as professor in the university of Wittenberg. ↩ + 

Francis I, out of respect to the great learning and moderation of Melancthon, and disregarding the pretended danger of discussing the dogmas of the church, invited him to come to France and establish himself at Paris; but the intrigues of the cardinal de Tournon frustrated the king’s intention. + 

If every leader of religious sects had possessed the amiable qualities of Melancthon and every monarch who wished to oppose the introduction of new opinions had partaken of the wisdom of Francis, the blood of many hundreds of millions of the human species, which has flowed at the shrine of fanaticism, would have been spared. This circumstance alone would have made of human society by this time a state totally different from what we actually experience; and its influence on the progress of improvement in national happiness and general civilization must have been beyond our ordinary calculation. ↩ + 

The British colonies in all their early struggles for existence complained, and with reason, of the uniform indifference and discouragement which they experienced from the government of the mother country. But it was probably to that very indifference that they owed the remarkable spirit of liberty and self dependence which created their prosperity, by inducing them uniformly to adopt republican institutions. These circumstances prepared the way for that mutual confidence and federal union which have finally formed them into a flourishing nation. + 

Ministers who feel their power over a distant colony to be uncontrolled are so naturally inclined to govern too much, that it may be a fortunate circumstance for the colony to be neglected altogether. This neglect was indeed fatal to the first Virginia settlers sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh; and the companies who afterwards succeeded in their establishments at Jamestown in Virginia and at Plymouth in Massachusetts were very near sharing the fate of their predecessors. But after these settlements had acquired so much consistence as to assure their own continuance, it may be assumed as an historical fact, that the want of encouragement from government was rather beneficial than detrimental to the British colonies in general. + 

These establishments were in the nature of private adventures, undertaken by a few individuals at their own expense, rather than organised colonies sent abroad for a public purpose. They were companies incorporated for plantation and trade. All they asked of the mother country (after obtaining acts of incorporation enabling them to acquire property and exercise other civil functions, such as incorporated companies at home could exercise) was to give them charters of political franchise, ascertaining the extent and limits of their rights and duties as subjects of the British crown forming nations in parts of the earth that had been found in an uncultivated state, and far removed from the mother country. + 

As they could not in this situation be represented in the parliament of England, these charters stipulated their right of having parliaments or legislative assemblies of their own, with executive and judiciary institutions established within their territories. + 

The acknowledgment of these rights placed them on a different footing from any other modern colonies; and the restricting clause, by which their trade was confined to the mother country, rendered their situation unlike that of the colonies of ancient Greece. Indeed the British system of colonization in America differed essentially from every other, whether ancient or modern; if that may properly be called a system, which was rather the result of early indifference to the cries of needy adventurers, and subsequent attempts to seize upon their earnings when they became objects of rapacity. This singular train of difficulties must be considered as one of the causes of our ancient prosperity and present freedom. ↩ + 

The author of this poem will not be suspected of laying any stress on the mere circumstance of lineage or birth, as relating either to families or nations. The phrase, however, in the text is not without its meaning. Among the colonies derived from the several nations of Europe in modern times, those from the English have flourished far better than the others, under a parity of circumstances, such as climate, soil and productions. The reason of this undeniable fact deserves to be explained. + 

Colonies naturally carry with them the civil, political and religious institutions of their mother countries. These institutions in England are much more favorable to liberty and the development of industry than in any other part of Europe which has sent colonies abroad. But this is not all: when men for several generations have been bred up in the habit of feeling and exercising such a portion of liberty as the English nation has enjoyed, their minds are prepared to open and expand themselves as occasion may offer. They are able to embrace new circumstances, to perceive the improvements that may be drawn from them, and not only make a temperate use of that portion of self-control to which they are accustomed, but devise the means of extending it to other objects of their political relations, till they become familiar with all the interests of men in society. + 

The habitual use of the liberty of the press, of trial by jury in open court, of the accountability of public agents and of some voice in the election of legislators, must create, in a man or a nation, a character quite different from what it could be under the habitual disuse of these advantages. And when these habits are transplanted with a young colony to a distant region of the earth, enjoying a good soil and climate, with an unlimited and unoccupied country, the difference will necessarily be more remarkable. + 

A most striking illustration of this principle is exhibited in the colonies of North America. This coast, from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, was colonized by the French and English. (I make no account of the Dutch establishment on the Hudson nor of the Swedish on the Delaware; they being of little importance and early absorbed in the English settlements.) If we look back only one hundred years from the present time, we find the French and English dominions here about equally important in point of extent and population. The French Canada, Acadia, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Florida and Louisiana were then as far advanced in improvement as the English settlements which they flanked on each side. And the French had greatly the advantage in point of soil, interior navigation and capability of extension. They commanded and possessed the two great rivers which almost met together on the English frontier. And the space between the waters of those rivers on the west was planted with French military posts, so as to complete the investment. + 

New Orleans was begun before Philadelphia and was much better situated to become a great commercial capital. Quebec and Montreal were older, and had the advantage of most of our other cities. Add to this that the French nation at home was about twice as populous as the English nation at home; and as that part of the increase of colonial population which comes from emigration must naturally be derived from their respective mother countries, it might have been expected that the comparative rapidity of increase would have been in favor of the French at least two to one. + 

But the French colonists had not been habituated to the use of liberty before their emigration, and they were not prepared nor permitted to enjoy it in any degree afterwards. Their laws were made for them in their mother country, by men who could not know their wants and who fell no interest in their prosperity; and then they were administered by a set of agents as ignorant as their masters; men who, from the nature of their employment and accountability, must in general be oppressive and rapacious. + 

The result has solved a great problem in political combination. One of these clusters of colonies has grown to a powerful empire, giving examples to the universe in most of the great objects which constitute the dignity of nations. The other, after having been a constant expense to the mother country and serving for barter and exchange in the capricious vicissitudes of European despotism, presents altogether at this day a mass of population and wealth scarcely equal to one of our provinces. + 

This note is written at the moment when Louisiana, one of the most extensive but least peopled of the French colonies, is ceded to the United States. The world will see how far the above theory will now be confirmed by the rapid increase of population and improvement in that interesting portion of our continent. ↩ + 

Eripuit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis. + 

This epigraph, written by Turgot on the bust of Franklin, seems to have been imitated from a line in Manilius; where noticing the progress of science in ascribing things to their natural and proper causes instead of supernatural ones, he says, + 

Eriput Jovi fulmen, viresque tonandi, + 

Et sonitum ventis concessit, nubibus ignem. + 

↩ + 

Ultima ratio regum; a device of Louis XIV, engraved on his ordnance, and afterwards adopted by other powers. When we consider men as reasonable beings and endowed with the qualities requisite for living together in society, this device looks like a satire upon the species; but in reality it only proves the imperfect state to which their own principles of society have yet advanced them in the long and perhaps interminable progress of which they are susceptible. This ultima ratio being already taken out of the hands of individuals and confided only to the chiefs of nations, is as clear a proof of a great progress already made, as its remaining in the hands of those chiefs is a proof that we still remain far short of that degree of wisdom and experience which will enable all the nations to live at peace one with another. + 

There certainly was a time when the same device might have been written on the hatchet or club or fist of every man; and the best weapon of destruction that he could wield against his neighbour might have been called ultima ratio virorum, meaning that human reason could go no farther. But the wisdom we have drawn from experience has taught us to restrain the use of mortal weapons, making it unlawful and showing it to be unreasonable to use them in private disputes. The principles of social intercourse and the advantages of peace are so far understood as to enable men to form great societies and to submit their personal misunderstandings to common judges; thus removing the ultima ratio from their own private hands to the hands of their government. + 

Hitherto there has usually been a government to every nation; but the nations are increasing in size and diminishing in number; so that the hands which now hold the ultima ratio by delegation are few, compared with what they have been. I mean this observation to apply only to those extensions of nationality which have been formed on the true principles of society and acquiesced in from a sense of their utility. I mean not to apply it to those unnatural and unwieldy stretches of power, whose overthrow is often and erroneously cited as an argument against the progress of civilization; such as the conquests of Alexander, the Roman generals, Omar, Genghis Khan and others of that brilliant description. These are but meteors of compulsive force, which pass away and discourage, rather than promote, the spirit of national extension of which I speak. + 

This spirit operates constantly and kindly; nor is its progress so slow but that it is easily perceived. Even within the short memorials of modern history we find a heptarchy in England. Ossian informs us that in his time there was a great number of warlike states in Ireland and as many more in Scotland. Without going back to the writings of Julius Caesar to discover the comparative condition of France, we may almost remember when she counted within her limits six or seven different governments, generally at war among themselves and inviting foreign enemies to come and help them to destroy each other. Every province in Spain is still called a kingdom; and it is not long since they were really so in fact, with the ultima ratio in the hands of every king. + 

The publicist who in any of those modern heroic ages could have imagined that all the hundred nations who inhabited the western borders of Europe, from the Orknies to Gibraltar, might one day become so far united in manners and interests as to form but three great nations, would certainly have passed for a madman. Had he been a minister of Phararnond or of Fingal he could no more have kept his place than Turgot could keep his after pointing out the means of promoting industry and preventing wars. He would have been told that the inhabitants of each side of the Humber were natural enemies one to the other; that if their chiefs were even disposed to live in peace they could not do it; their subjects would demand war and could not live without it. The same would have been said of the Seine, the Loire and every other dividing line between their petty communities. It would have been insisted on that such rivers were the natural boundaries of states and never could be otherwise. + 

But now since the people of those districts find themselves no longer on the frontiers of little warlike states, but in the centre of great industrious nations, they have lost their relish for war, and consider it as a terrible calamity. They cherish the minister who gives them peace and abhor the one who drives them into unnecessary wars. Their local disputes, which used to be settled by the sword, are now referred to the tribunals of the country. They have substituted a moral to a physical force. They have changed the habits of plunder for those of industry, and they find themselves richer and happier for the change. + 

Who will say that the progress of society will stop short in the present stage of its career? that great communities will not discover a mode of arbitrating their disputes, as little ones have done? that nations will not lay aside their present ideas of independence and rivalship and find themselves more happy and more secure in one great universal society, which shall contain within itself its own principles of defence, its own permanent security? It is evident that national security, in order to be permanent, must be founded on the moral force of society at large, and not on the physical force of each nation independently exerted. The ultima ratio must not be a cannon, but a reference to some rational mode of decision worthy of rational beings. ↩ + 

General Arnold, the leader of this detachment, had acquired by this and many other brilliant achievements a degree of military fame almost unequalled among the American generals. His shameful defection afterwards, by the foulest of treason, should be lamented as a national dishonor; it has not only obliterated his own glory, but it seems in some sort to have cast a shade on that of others whose brave actions had been associated with his in the acquisition of their common and unadulterated fame. + 

The action here alluded to, the march through the wilderness from Casco to Quebec, was compared in the gazettes of that day to the passage of the Alps by Hannibal. And really, considered as a scene of true military valor, patient suffering and heroic exertion (detached from the idea of subsequent success in the ulterior expedition) the comparison did not disgrace the Carthaginian. + 

Yet since the defection of Arnold, which happened five years afterwards, this audacious and once celebrated exploit is scarcely mentioned in our annals. And Meigs, Dearborn, Morgan and other distinguished officers in the expedition, whom that alone might have immortalized, have been indebted to their subsequent exertions of patriotic valor for the share of celebrity their names now enjoy. + 

See the character of Arnold treated more at large in the sixth book. ↩ + 

The systematic and inflexible course of cruelties exercised by the British armies on American prisoners during the three first years of the war were doubtless unexampled among civilized nations. Considering it as a war against rebels, neither their officers nor soldiers conceived themselves bound by the ordinary laws of war. + 

The detail of facts on this subject, especially in what concerned the prison ships, has not been sufficiently noticed in our annals; at least not so much noticed as the interest of public morals would seem to require. Mr. Boudinot, who was the American commissary of prisoners at the time, has since informed the author of this poem that in one prison ship alone, called the Jersey, which was anchored near New York, eleven thousand American prisoners died in eighteen months; almost the whole of them from the barbarous treatment of being stifled in a crowded hold with infected air, and poisoned with unwholesome food. + 

There were several other prison ships, as well as the sugar-house prison in the city, whose histories ought to be better known than they are. I say this not from any sort of enmity to the British nation, for I have none. I respect the British nation; as will be evident from the views I have given of her genius and institutions in the course of this work. I would at all times render that nation every service consistent with my duty to my own; and surely it is worthy of her magnanimity to consider as a real service every true information given her relative to the crimes of her agents in distant countries. These crimes are as contrary to the spirit of the nation at home as they are to the temper of her laws. ↩ + 

General Burgoyne had gained some celebrity by his pen, as well as by his sword, previous to the American war. He was author of the comedy called The Heiress, and of some other theatrical pieces which had been well received on the London theatres. ↩ + 

The water of Lake George was held in particular veneration by the French Catholics of Canada. Of this they formerly made their holy water, which was carried and distributed to the churches through the province and probably produced part of the revenues of the clergy. This water is said to have been chosen for the purpose on account of its extreme clearness. The lake was called Lac du Saint Sacrement. ↩ + 

This was General Sir John Johnson, an American royalist in the British service. He was the son of Sir William Johnson, who had been a rich proprietor and inhabitant in the Mohawk country in the colony of New York, and had been employed by the king as superintendant of Indian affairs. Sir William had married a Mohawk savage wife; and it was supposed that the great influence which he had long exercised over that and the neighboring tribes must have descended to his son. It was on this account that he was employed on the expedition of Burgoyne, in which he had the rank of brigadier general and the special direction of the savages. ↩ + 

General Sir Guy Carleton, afterwards Lord Dorchester, was the British governor of Canada and superintendant of Indian affairs at the time of Burgoyne’s campaign. Having great influence with the warlike tribes who inhabited the west of Canada and the borders of the lakes, he was ordered by the minister to adopt the barbarous and unjustifiable measure of arming and bringing them into the king’s service in aid of this expedition. + 

This was doubtless done with the consent of Burgoyne, though he seems to have been apprehensive of the difficulty of managing a race of men whose manners were so ferocious and whose motives to action must have been so different from those of the principal parties in the war. Burgoyne, in his narrative of this campaign, informs us that he took precautions to discourage that inhuman mode of warfare which had been customary among those savages. He ordered them to kill none but such persons as they should find in arms fighting against the king’s troops; to spare old men, women, children and prisoners, and not to scalp any but such as they should kill in open war. He intimated to them that he should not pay for any scalps but those thus taken from enemies killed in arms. + 

It is unfortunate for the reputation of the general and of his government, that they did not reflect on the futility of such an order and the improbability of its being executed. A certain price was offered for scalps; the savages must know that in a bag of scalps, packed and dried and brought into camp and counted out before the commissary to receive payment, it would be impossible to distinguish the political opinions or the occupation, age or sex of the heads to which they had belonged; it could not be ascertained whether they had been taken from Americans or British, whigs or tories, soldiers killed in arms or killed after they had resigned their arms, militia men or peasants, old or young, male or female. + 

The event proved the deplorable policy of employing such auxiliaries, especially in such multitudes as were brought together on this occasion. No sooner did hostilities begin between the two armies than these people, who could have no knowledge of the cause nor affection for either party, and whose only object was plunder and pay, began their indiscriminate and ungovernable ravages on both sides. They robbed and murdered peasants, whether royalists or others; men, women, children, straggling and wounded soldiers of both armies. The tragical catastrophe of a young lady of the name of Macrea, whose story is almost literally detailed in the foregoing paragraphs of the text, is well known. It made a great impression on the public mind at the time, both in England and America. + 

General Carleton, in the preceding campaigns, when the war was carried into Canada, had been applauded for his humanity in the treatment of prisoners. But the part he took in this measure of associating the savages in the operations of the British army was a stain upon his character; and the measure was highly detrimental to the royal cause, on account of the general indignation it excited through the country. ↩ + 

The assumed right of kings or that supreme authority which one man exercises over a nation, and for which he is not held accountable, has been contended for on various grounds. It has been sometimes called the right of conquest; in which is involved the absolute disposal of the lives and labors of the conquered nation, in favor of the victorious chief and his descendants to perpetuity. Sometimes it is called the divine right; in which case kings are considered as the vicegerents of God. + 

This notion is very ancient, and it is almost universal among modern nations. Homer is full of it; and from his unaffected recurrence to the same idea everywhere in his poems, it is evident that in his day it was not called in question. The manner in which the Jews were set at work to constitute their first king proves that they were convinced that, if they must have a king, he must be given them from God and receive that solemn consecration which should establish his authority on the same divine right which was common to other nations from whom they borrowed the principle. + 

There are some few instances in history wherein this divine right has been set aside; but it has generally been owing rather to the violence of circumstances, which sometimes drive men to act contrary to their prejudices, though they still retain them, than to any effort of reasoning by which they convinced themselves that this was a prejudice and that no divine right existed in reality. For it does not violate this supposed right to change one king for another, or one race of kings for another, though done in a manner the most unjust and inhuman. In this case the same divine right remains and only changes, with the diadem, from one head to another. And though this change should happen six times in one day (as in one instance it has done in Algiers by the murder of six successive kings) they would still say it was God who did it all; and the action would only tend to prove to the credulous people, that God was made after their own image, as changeable as themselves. + 

It is only in the case of Tarquin and a few others (whose overthrow has been followed by a more popular form of government) that it can be said that the principle of the divine right has been disregarded, laid aside and forgotten for any length of time. + 

The English are perhaps the first and only people that ever overturned this doctrine of the divinity of kings, without changing their form of government. This was brought on by circumstances, and took effect in the expulsion of James II. Books were then written to prove that the divine right of kings did not exist; at least, not in the sense in which it had been understood. And these writings completely silenced the old doctrine in England. This indeed was gaining an immense advantage in favor of liberty; though the effort of reason, to arrive at it, seems to be so small. + 

But while the English were discarding the old principle they set up a new one; which indeed is not so pernicious because it cannot become so extensive, but which is scarcely more reasonable: it is the right of kings by compact; that is, a compact, whether written or understood, by which the representatives of a nation are supposed to bind their constituents and their descendants to be the subjects of a certain prince and of his descendants to perpetuity. This singular doctrine is developed with perspicuity, but ill supported by argument, in Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution. + 

The principle of the American government denies the right of any representatives to make such a compact, and the right of any prince to carry it into execution if it were made. Whatever varieties or mixtures there may be in the forms of government, there are but two distinct principles on which government is founded. One supposes the source of power to be out of the people and that the governor is not accountable to them for the manner of using it; the other supposes the source of power to be in the people and that the governor is accountable to them for the manner of using it. The latter is our principle. In this sense no right divine nor compact can form a king; that is, a person, exercising underived and unreverting power. ↩ + 

The English general Elliott commanded the post of Gibraltar, against which the combined forces of France and Spain made a vigorous but fruitless attack in the year 1781. This attack furnished the subjects for two celebrated pictures alluded to in the eighth book: The Burning of the Floating Batteries, painted by Copley; and The Sortie, painted by Trumbull. ↩ + 

It is less from national vanity than from a regard to truth and a desire of rendering personal justice, that the author wishes to rectify the history of science in the circumstance here alluded to. The instrument known by the name of Hadley’s Quadrant, now universally in use and generally attributed to Dr. Hadley, was invented by Thomas Godfrey of Philadelphia. See Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia; likewise Miller’s Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century, in which the original documents relative to Godfrey’s invention are fully detailed. ↩ + 

Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy in London, was born and educated in Pennsylvania. At the age of twenty-three he went to Italy to perfect his taste in the art to which his genius irresistibly impelled him; in which he was destined to cast a splendor upon the age in which he lives and probably to excel all his cotemporaries, so far at least as we can judge from the present state of their works. After passing two years in that country of models, where canvas and marble seem to contribute their full proportion of the population, he went to London. + 

Here he soon rendered himself conspicuous for the boldness of his designs, in daring to shake off the trammels of the art so far as to paint modern history in modern dress. He had already staggered the connoisseurs in Italy while he was there, by his picture of The Savage Chief Taking Leave of His Family on Going to War. This extraordinary effort of the American pencil on an American subject excited great admiration at Venice. The picture was engraved in that city by Bartolozzi, before either he or West went to England. The artists were surprised to find that the expression of the passions of men did not depend on the robes they wore. And his early works in London, The Death of Wolfe, The Battles of the Boyne, Lahogue, etc., engraved by Woollett and others, not only established his reputation, but produced a revolution in the art. So that modern dress has now become as familiar in fictitious as in real life; it being justly considered essential in painting modern history. + 

The engraving from his Wolfe has been often copied in France, Italy and Germany; and it may be said that in this picture the revolution in painting really originated. It would now be reckoned as preposterous in an artist to dress modern personages in Grecian or Roman habits, as it was before to give them the garb of the age and country to which they belonged. + 

The merit of Mr. West was early noticed and encouraged by the king; who took him into pay with a convenient salary, and the title of historical painter to his majesty. In this situation he has decorated the king’s palaces, chapels and churches with most of those great pictures from the English history and from the Old and New Testament, which compose so considerable a portion of his works. + 

The following catalogue of his pictures was furnished me by Mr. West himself in the year 1802. It comprises only his principal productions in historical painting, and only his finished pictures; without mentioning his numerous portraits or his more numerous sketches and drawings. + 

The pictures marked thus * have been engraved. The ciphers express the size of the pictures. When the same subject is mentioned more than once, there is more than one picture on that subject. + 

* Regulus Departing from Rome. + 

* Death of Wolfe. + 

* Death of Epaminondas. + 

* Death of Chevalier Bayard. + 

* Cyrus, with a King and Family Captives. + 

* Hannibal Sworn When a Child. + 

Damsel Accusing Peter. + 

Apotheosis of the Two Young Princes. + 

Germanicus, with Segestus and His Daughter Prisoners. + 

Edward III crossing the Somme. + 

Edward III crowning Ribemond at Calais. + 

The Six Burgesses of Calais Before Edward. + 

Battle of Cressy, Edward Embracing His Son. + 

St. George Destroying the Dragon. + 

Battle of Poitiers, King of France Prisoner to the Black Prince. + 

Institution of the Order of the Garter. + 

Battle of Nevilcross. + 

Christ’s Crucifixion. + 

The same on glass for the west window of the church at Windsor. 36 feet by 28. + 

Peter, John and Women at the Sepulchre. + 

The same on glass for the east window of the same church, 36 feet by 28. + 

The Angels Appearing to the Shepherds. + 

Nativity of Christ. + 

Kings Presenting Gifts to Christ. + 

Hymen Dancing with the Hours Before Peace and Plenty. + 

Boys with the Insignia of Riches. + 

Boys with the Insignia of the Fine Arts. + 

A complete history of Revealed Religion, divided into four dispensations, and comprised in thirty-eight pictures. + 

Adam and Eve Created. 9 feet by 6. + 

Adam and Eve Driven from Paradise. Ditto. + 

The Deluge. Ditto. + 

Noah Sacrificing. Ditto. + 

Abraham Going to Sacrifice Isaac. Ditto. + 

Birth of Jacob and Esau. Ditto. + 

Death of Jacob, Surrounded by His Sons. Ditto. + 

Bondage of the Israelites in Egypt. Ditto. + 

Moses Called. Ditto. + 

Moses and Aaron Before Pharaoh, Their Rods Turned to Serpents. 15 feet by 10. + 

Pharaoh’s Army Lost in the Sea. + 

Moses Receiving the Law. 18 feet by 12. + 

Moses Consecrating Aaron and His Sons to the Priesthood. 15 feet by 10. + 

Moses Shows the Brazen Serpent. 15 feet by 10. + 

Moses on Mount Pisgah Sees the Promised Land and Dies. 9 feet by 6. + 

Joshua Passing the Jordan. Ditto. + 

The Twelve Tribes Drawing Their Lots. Ditto. + 

David Called and Anointed. Ditto. + 

John Baptist Called and Named. Ditto. + 

Christ Born. Ditto. + 

Christ Offered Gifts by the Wise Men. Ditto. + 

Christ Among the Doctors. Ditto. + 

Christ Baptized and the Holy Spirit Descending on Him. 15 feet by 10. + 

Christ Healing the Sick. 15 feet by 10. + 

Christ’s Last Supper. Ditto. + 

Christ’s Crucifixion. 36 feet by 28. + 

Christ’s Resurrection, Peter, John and the Women at the Sepulchre. Ditto. + 

* Christ’s Ascension. 18 feet by 12. + 

Peter’s First Sermon, Descent of the Holy Spirit. 15 feet by 10. + 

The Apostles Preaching and Working Miracles. Ditto. + 

Paul and Barnabas Turning from the Jews to the Gentiles. Ditto. + 

John Seeing the Son of Man, and Called to Write. 9 feet by 6. + 

The Throne Surrounded by the Four Beasts, and Saints Laying Down Their Crowns. 9 feet by 6. + 

Death on the Pale Horse and the Opening of the Seals. Ditto. + 

The White Horse and His Legions, and the Man Destroying the Old Beast. Ditto. + 

General Resurrection, the End of Death. Ditto. + 

Christ’s Second Coming. Ditto. + 

The New Jerusalem. Ditto. + 

Michael and His Angels Casting Out the Red Dragon and His Angels. + 

The Woman Clothed with the Sun. + 

John Called to Write the Apocalypse. + 

The Beast Rising Out of the Sea. + 

The Mighty Angel, One Foot on Sea the Other on Land. + 

St. Anthony of Padua. + 

The Madre Dolorosa. + 

Simeon with the Child in His Arms. + 

Landscape, with a Hunt in the Background. + 

Abraham and Isaac Going to Sacrifice. + 

Thomas à Becket. + 

Angel in the Sun. + 

Order of the Garter, Differing in Composition from That at Windsor. + 

The Shunamite’s Son Raised to Life by Elisha. + 

Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph. + 

* Death of Wolfe. + 

* Battle of Lahogue. + 

* Battle of the Boyne. + 

* Restoration of Charles II. + 

* Cromwell Dissolving the Parliament. + 

The Golden Age. + 

General Wolfe When a Boy. + 

* Telemachus and Calypso. + 

* Angelica and Madora. + 

The Damsel and Orlando. + 

Cicero at the Tomb of Archimedes. + 

St. Paul’s Conversion. + 

St. Paul Persecuting the Christians. + 

His Restoration to Sight by Ananias. + 

Mr. Hope’s family; nine figures, size of life. + 

Citizens of London Offering the Crown to William the Conqueror. + 

The Queen Soliciting King Henry to Pardon Her Son John. + 

Paul Shaking the Viper from His Finger. + 

Paul Preaching at Athens. + 

Elymas the Sorcerer Struck Blind. + 

Cornelius and the Angel. + 

Peter Delivered from Prison. + 

Conversion of St. Paul. + 

Paul Before Felix. + 

Return of the Prodigal Son. + 

Faith, + 

Hope, + 

Charity, + 

Innocence, + 

Matthew, + 

Mark, + 

Luke, + 

Matthias, + 

Thomas, + 

Simon, + 

James major, + 

James minor, + 

Philip, + 

Peter, + 

Malachi, + 

Micah, + 

Zechariah, + 

Daniel, + 

Jude, + 

John, + 

Andrew, + 

Bartholomew. + 

Michael Chaining the Dragon. + 

Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ. + 

St. Stephen Stoned to Death. + 

Raising of Lazarus. + 

Paul Shaking Off the Viper. + 

The Last Supper. + 

Resurrection of Christ. + 

Peter Denying Christ. + 

Moses Showing the Brazen Serpent. + 

John Seeing the Lamb of God. + 

A Mother Leading Her Children to the Temple of Virtue. + 

Lord Clive Taking the Dunny from the Mogul. + 

The same. + 

Christ Receiving the Sick. Pennsylvania hospital. + 

* Leonidas Exiling Cleombrotus and Family. + 

The Two Marys at the Sepulchre. + 

Alexander and His Physician. + 

Caesar Reading the Life of Alexander. + 

Death of Adonis. + 

Continence of Scipio. + 

* Savage Warrior Taking Leave of His Family. + 

Venus and Cupid. + 

Alfred Dividing His Loaf with the Beggar. + 

Helen Presented to Paris. + 

Cupid Stung by a Bee. + 

Simeon and the Child. + 

* William Penn Treating with the Savages. + 

Destruction of the Spanish Armada. + 

Philippa Soliciting of Edward the Pardon of the Citizens of Calais. + 

Europa on the Bull. + 

Death of Hyacinthus. + 

Death of Caesar. + 

Venus Presenting Her Cestus to Juno. + 

Rinaldo and Armida. + 

Pharaoh’s Daughter with the Child Moses. + 

The Stolen Kiss. + 

Angelica and Madora. + 

Woman of Samaria at the Well with Christ. + 

Agrippina Leaning on the Urn of Germanicus. + 

Death of Wolfe. + 

The same; smaller size. + 

Romeo and Juliet. + 

King Lear and His Daughters. + 

Belisarius and the Boy. + 

Sir Francis Baring and Family. + 

* Mr. West and Family. + 

A Mother and Child. + 

Jupiter and Semele. + 

Petus and Arria. + 

Venus and Cupid Smiling at Europa When Jupiter Had Left Her. + 

Rebecca Coming to Jacob. + 

Rebecca Receiving the Bracelets at the Well. + 

Agrippina Landing at Brundusium with the Ashes of Germanicus, + 

The same. + 

The same. + 

Endymion and Diana. + 

Ophelia Distracted, Before the King and Queen. + 

* King Lear in the Storm. + 

Hector Taking Leave of His Wife and Child. + 

Elisha Raising the Shunamite’s Son. + 

The Raising of Lazarus. + 

Macbeth and the Witches. + 

The Return of Tobias. + 

Return of the Prodigal Son. + 

Ariadne on the Sea Shore. + 

Death of Adonis. + 

King of France Brought to the Black Prince. + 

* Death of Wolfe. + 

Venus and Adonis. + 

Battle of Lahogue. + 

Edward III Crossing the Somme. + 

Philippa at the Battle of Nevilcross. + 

Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ. + 

Kings Bringing Presents to Christ. + 

View on the River Thames. + 

View on the Susquehanna. + 

Picture of Tangere Mill at Eton. + 

Chryseis Restored to Her Father. + 

Antiochus and Stratonice. + 

King Lear and His Daughters. + 

Chryseus on the Sea Shore. + 

Nathan and David. Thou art the man. + 

Elijah Raising the Widow’s Son. + 

Choice of Hercules. + 

Venus and Europa. + 

Daniel Interpreting the Writing on the Wall. + 

Marius on the Ruins of Carthage. + 

* Cymon and Iphigenia. + 

Cicero at the Tomb of Archimedes. + 

* Alexander, King of Scotland, Rescued from the Stag. + 

Battle of Cressy. + 

* Mr. West and his family. + 

* Anthony Shows Caesar’s Robe and Will. + 

Egysthus Viewing the Body of Clytemnestra. + 

Recovery of King George in 1789. + 

A Large Landscape in Windsor Forest. + 

Ophelia Before the King and Queen. + 

Leonidas Taking Leave of His Family. + 

Phaeton Receiving from Apollo the Chariot of the Sun. + 

The Eagle Giving the Cup of Water to Psyche. + 

Moonlight and the Beckoning Ghost. Pope. + 

Angel Sitting on the Stone at the Sepulchre. + 

The same subject differently composed. + 

* Angelica and Madora. + 

The Damsel and Orlando. + 

The Good Samaritan. + 

Old Beast and False Prophet Destroyed. + 

Christ Healing the Sick in the Temple. + 

Death on the Pale Horse. + 

Jason and the Dragon. + 

Venus and Adonis Seeing the Cupids Bathe. + 

Moses and Aaron Before Pharaoh. + 

Passage Boat on the Canal. + 

Paul and Barnabas Rejecting the Jews and Turning to the Gentiles. + 

Diomed, His Horses Struck with Lightning. + 

Milk-woman in St. James’s Park. + 

Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. + 

Order of the Garter. + 

Orion on the Dolphin’s Back. + 

The Deluge. + 

Queen Elizabeth’s Procession to St. Paul’s. + 

Christ Showing a Child, Emblem of Heaven. + 

Harvest Home. + 

Washing Sheep. + 

St. Paul Shaking Off the Viper. + 

Sun Setting at Twickenham on Thames. + 

Driving Sheep and Cows to Water. + 

Cattle Drinking, and Mr. West Drawing, in Windsor Park. + 

Pharaoh and His Host in the Red Sea. + 

Telemachus and Calypso. + 

Moses Consecrating Aaron and His Sons. + 

A Mother Inviting Her Little Boy to Come to Her Through a Brook. + 

Brewer’s Porter and Hod Carrier. + 

Venus Attended by the Graces. + 

Naming of Samuel. + 

Birth of Jacob and Esau. + 

Ascension of Christ. + 

Samuel Presented to Eli. + 

Moses Shown the Promised Land. + 

Christ Among the Doctors. + 

Reaping Scene. + 

Adonis and His Dog. + 

Mothers with Their Children in Water. + 

Joshua Crossing the Jordan with the Ark. + 

Christ’s Nativity. + 

* Pyrrhus When a Child Before King Glaucus. + 

The Man Laying His Bread on the Bridle of the Dead Ass. Sterne. + 

The Captive. Ditto. + 

Cupid Letting Loose Two Doves. + 

Cupid Asleep. + 

Children Eating Cherries. + 

St. Anthony of Padua and the Child. + 

Jacob and Laban with His Two Daughters. + 

The Women Looking Into the Sepulchre and Seeing Two Angels Where the Lord Lay. + 

The Angel Unchaining Peter in Prison. + 

Death of Sir Philip Sidney. + 

Death of Epaminondas. + 

Death of Chevalier Bayard. + 

Death of Cephalus. + 

* Kosciusko on a Couch. + 

Abraham and Isaac. Here is the wood and fire, but where is the lamb to sacrifice? + 

Eponina with Her Children Giving Bread to Her Husband When in Concealment. + 

King Henry Pardoning His Brother. + 

John at the Prayer of His Mother. + 

Death of Lord Chatham. + 

Presentation of the Crown to William the Conqueror. + 

Europa Crowning the Bull with Flowers. + 

West’s Garden, Gallery and Painting Room. + 

Cave of Despair. Spenser. + 

Arethusa Bathing. + 

Cupid Shows Venus His Finger Stung by a Bee. + 

Ubald Brings His Three Daughters to Alfred for Him to Choose One for His Wife. + 

* Pylades and Orestes. + 

Besides the two hundred and ninety-nine large finished pictures here mentioned, Mr. West has done about one hundred portraits, and upwards of two hundred drawings with the pen; which last, for sublimity of conception, are among the finest of his works. So that the whole of his pieces amount to above six hundred. Some of them are larger in size than any in the national gallery of France, and he has not been assisted by any other painter. + 

Mr. West is now about sixty-eight years of age. He discovers no abatement in the activity of his genius, nor in the laborious exercise of his talents. He has painted several fine pictures since the above catalogue was made, three of which I have particularly noticed in his painting room: Tobet and Tobias with the Fish; Abraham Sending Away Hagar with Her Child; Achilles Receiving from Thetis the New Armor; and we hear that he has lately painted the Death of Nelson. He may yet produce many more original works; though it is presumed he has already exceeded all other historical painters, except Rubens, in the number and variety of his productions. With regard to the merit of his pictures, I cannot pretend to form a judgment that would be of any use in directing that of others. He is doubtless the most classical painter, except Raphael, whose works are known to us. + 

The critics find fault with the coloring of Mr. West. But in his works, as in those of Raphael, we do not look for coloring. It is dignity of character, fine expression, delicate design, correct drawing and beautiful disposition of drapery which fix the suffrage of the real judge. All which qualities can only spring from an elevated mind. ↩ + 

O sanctas gentes, quibus haec nascuntur in hortis Numina. + 

Juv. Sat. 15. + 

↩ + 

The state of the arts and sciences among the ancients, viewed with reference to the event of universal civilization, was faulty in two respects. First, in their comparative estimation: Second, in their flourishing only in one nation at a time. These circumstances might be favorable to the exertions of individual genius; and they may be assigned both as causes of the universal destruction of the arts and sciences by the Gothic conquest, and as reasons why we should not greatly lament that destruction. + 

From the political state of mankind in the days of their ancient splendor it was natural that those arts which depend on the imagination, such as Architecture, Statuary, Painting, Eloquence and Poetry, should claim the highest rank in the estimation of a people. In several, perhaps all of these, the ancients remain unrivalled. But these are not the arts which tend the most to the general improvement of society. A man in those days would have rendered more service to the world by ascertaining the true figure and movements of the earth, than by originating a heaven and filling it with all the gods of Homer; and had the expenses of the Egyptian pyramids been employed in furnishing ships of discovery and sending them out of the Mediterranean, the nations called civilized would not have been afterwards overrun by Barbarians. + 

But the sciences of Geography, Navigation and Commerce, with their consequent improvements in Natural Philosophy and Humanity, could not, from the nature of things at that time, become objects of great encouragement or enterprise. Talent was therefore confined to the cultivation of arts more striking to the senses. As these arts were adapted to gratify the vanity of princes, to help carry on the sacred frauds of priests, to fire the ambition of heroes, or to gain causes in popular assemblies, they were brought to a degree of perfection which prevented their being relished or understood by barbarous neighbors. + 

The improvements of the world therefore, whether in literature, sciences or arts, descended with the line of conquest from one nation to another, till the whole were concentred in the Roman empire. Their tendency there was to inspire a contempt for nations less civilized, and to teach the Romans to consider all mankind as the proper objects of their military despotism. These circumstances prepared, through a course of ages, and finally opened a scene of wretchedness at which the human mind has been taught to shudder. But some such convulsion seemed necessary to reduce the nations to a position capable of commencing regular improvements. And, however novel the sentiment may appear, I will venture to say that, as to the prospect of universal civilization, mankind were in a better situation in the time of Charlemagne than they were in the days of Augustus. + 

The final destruction of the Roman empire left the nations of Europe in circumstances similar to each other; and their consequent rivalship prevented any disproportionate refinement from appearing in any particular region. The principles of government, firmly rooted in the Feudal System, unsocial and unphilosophical as they were, laid the foundation of that balance of power which discourages the Caesars and Alexanders of modern ages from attempting the conquest of the world. + 

It seems necessary that the arrangement of events in civilizing the world should be in the following order: first, all parts of it must be considerably peopled; second, the different nations must be known to each other; third, their wants must be increased, in order to inspire a passion for commerce. The first of these objects was not probably accomplished till a late period. The second for three centuries past has been greatly accelerated. The third is a necessary consequence of the two former. The spirit of commerce is happily calculated to open an amicable intercourse between all countries, to soften the horrors of war, to enlarge the field of science and to assimilate the manners, feelings and languages of all nations. This leading principle, in its remoter consequences, will produce advantages in favor of free government, give patriotism the character of philanthropy, induce all men to regard each other as brethren and friends and teach them the benefits of peace and harmony among the nations. + 

I conceive it no objection to this theory that the progress has hitherto been slow; when we consider the magnitude of the object, the obstructions that were to be removed, and the length of time taken to accomplish it. The future progress will probably be more rapid than the present. Since the invention of printing, the application of the properties of the magnet and the knowledge of the structure of the solar system, it is difficult to conceive of a cause that can produce a new state of barbarism; unless it be some great convulsion in the physical world, so extensive as to change the face of the earth or a considerable part of it. This indeed may have been the case already more than once, since the earth was first peopled with men and antecedent to our histories. But such events have nothing to do with the present argument. ↩ + 

The planet discovered by Herschel was called by him Georgium Sidus; but in all countries except England it is named Herschel and probably will be so named there after his death and that of the patron to whom his gratitude led him to make this extraordinary dedication. + 

I would observe that, besides the impropriety of giving it another name than that of the discoverer, it is inconvenient to use a double name or a name composed of two words. Let it be either George or Herschel. + 

The passage referred to in this note was written before the discovery of the three other planets which are now added to our catalogue. Could my voice have weight in deciding on the names to be given to these new children of the sun, I would call them by the names of their respective discoverers, Piazzi, Olbers and Harding, instead of the senseless and absurd appellations of Ceres, Pallas and Juno. The former method would at least assist us in preserving the history of science; the latter will only tend farther to confuse a very ancient mythology which is already extremely confused, and increase the difficulty of following the faint traces of real knowledge that seems couched under the mass of that mythology; traces which may one day lead to many useful truths in philosophy and morals. ↩ + 

A most useful book might be written on this subject. It should be a Review of Poets and Historians, as to the moral and political tendency of their works. It should likewise treat of the importance of the task assigned to these two classes of writers. It might attempt to point out the true object they ought to have in view; perhaps do this with such clearness and energy as to gain the attention of writers as well as readers, and thus serve in some measure as a guide to future historians and poets. At least it would prove a guide to readers; and by teaching them how to judge, and what to praise or blame in the accounts of human actions, whether real or fictitious, the public taste would be reformed by degrees. In this case the recorders of heroic actions, as well as the authors of them, would find it necessary to follow this reform, or they must necessarily fail of obtaining the celebrity to which they all aspire. + 

I think every person who will give himself the trouble to form an opinion on the manner in which actions, called heroic, have been recorded, must find it faulty; and must lament, as one of the misfortunes of society, that writers of these two classes almost universally, from Homer down to Gibbon, have led astray the moral sense of man. In this view we may say in general of poets and historians, as we do of their heroes, that they have injured the cause of humanity almost in proportion to the fame they have acquired. + 

I would not be understood by this observation to mean that such writers have done no good. Even the works of Homer, which have caused more mischief to mankind than those of any other, have likewise been a fruitful source of a certain species of benefits. They elevate the mind of every reader; they have called forth great exertions of genius in poets, artists, philosophers and heroes, through a long succession of ages. But it remains to be considered what a fruitful source they have likewise been of those false notions of honor and erroneous systems of policy which have governed the actions of men from his day to ours. + 

If, instead of the Iliad, he had given us a work of equal splendor founded on an opposite principle, whose object should have been to celebrate the useful arts of agriculture and navigation; to build the immortal fame of his heroes and occupy his whole hierarchy of gods, on actions that contribute to the real advancement of society, instead of striking away every foundation on which society ought to be established or can be greatly advanced; mankind, enriched with such a work at that early period, would have given a useful turn to their ambition through all succeeding ages. + 

It is not easy to conceive how different the state of nations would have been at this day from what we now find it, had such a bent been given to the pursuits of genius and such glory cast upon actions truly worthy of imitation. I have treated this subject more at large in the third chapter of Advice to the Privileged Orders. + 

But it will be asked how this kind of censure can attach to the writers of history, whose business is to invent nothing, to confine themselves to the simple narration of facts and relate the actions of men, not as they should be, but as they are. This is indeed a part of the duty of the historian; but it is not his whole duty. His narrative should be clear and simple; but he should likewise develop the political and moral tendency of the transactions he details. + 

In reviewing actions or doctrines which favor despotism, injustice, false morals or political errors, he should not suffer them to pass without an open and well supported censure. He should show how the authors of such actions might have conducted themselves and succeeded in gaining the celebrity which they sought, by doing good instead of harm to the age and country where they acquired their fame. + 

The history of human actions, in a political view, has generally been the history of human errors. The writers who have given it to us do not appear to have been sensible of this. How then are young readers to be sensible of it? Their minds are still to be formed; and those who are destined for public life must in a great measure take their bias from the study of history. But history in general, to answer the purpose of sound instruction to the future guides of nations, must be rewritten. For example: among the hundred historians who have treated of what is called the Roman Republic I know not one who has told us this important fact, that Rome never had a Republic. The same may be said of Athens, and of several other turbulent associations of men in former ages. And it is for want of this attention or this knowledge in the writers of their histories, that the republican principle of government is so generally associated, even at this day, with the idea of insurrection, anarchy and the desire of conquest. Whereas it is in fact the want of the republican principle, not the practice of it, which has occasioned all the insurrections, anarchy and desire of conquest, that have disturbed the order of society both in ancient and modern times. + 

Again: in relating the destruction of Carthage, a measure which the zealous patriots, both before and after, considered so essential to the glory of the Roman state, and which has immortalized so many heroes as the authors and projectors of that destruction, I believe no historian has told us that the disease, decay and downfall of Rome itself were occasioned by that measure and must be dated from that epoch; and that the actions of Regulus and Scipio, the themes of universal applause, were really more injurious to their country than those of Marias and Sylla, the objects (and justly so) of universal detestation. + 

If these principles had been understood by Polybius and his successors in the brilliant heritage of history and had been properly impressed on the minds of their readers, we should not have heard old Cato’s vociferation delenda est Carthago applied to the American states by an orator of the British parliament, as we did during the war; because every member of that parliament must have understood that the prosperity of these states would be highly advantageous to Britain, from the extensive commercial intercourse that the relative situation of the two countries required. Neither should we see at this day the French and English nations seeking to impoverish and extirpate each other; each of them entertaining the erroneous and absurd opinion that its own prosperity is to be increased by the adversity of its neighbor. We should have learned long ago from the plain dictates of reason, instead of having it beat into us some ages hence by costly experience, that the true dignity of a state is in the happiness of its members; and that their happiness is best promoted by the pursuit of industry at home and the free exchange of their productions abroad. + 

We should have perceived the real and constant interest that every nation has in the prosperity of its neighbors, instead of their destruction. France would have perceived that the wealth of the English would be beneficial to her, by enabling them to receive and pay for more of her produce. England would have seen the same thing with regard to the French; and such would have been the sentiments of other nations reciprocally and universally. + 

I know I must be called an extravagant theorist if I insinuate that all these good things would have resulted from having history well written and poetry well conceived. No man will doubt however that such would have been the tendency; nor can we deny that the contrary has resulted, at least in some degree, from the manner in which such writings have been composed. And why should we write at all, if not to benefit mankind? The public mind, as well as the individual mind, receives its propensities; it is equally the creature of habit. Nations are educated, like a single child. They only require a longer time and a greater number of teachers. ↩ + 

Absurdities in speculative opinion are commonly considered as innocent things; and we are told every day that they are not worth refuting. So far as opinions are sure to rest merely in speculation and cannot in any degree become practical, this is doubtless the proper way of treating them. But there are few opinions of this dormant and indifferent kind, especially among those that become general and classical among the nations. + 

The activity of such, though imperceptible, is extensive. They get wrought into our intellectual existence and govern our modes of acting as well as thinking. The interest of society therefore requires that they should be scrutinized, and that such as are erroneous should be exposed, in order to be rejected; when their place may be supplied by truth and reason, which nourish the mind and accelerate the progress of improvement. + 

Among the absurd notions which early turned the heads of the teachers of mankind and which are so ridiculous as generally to escape our censure, is that of a Golden Age; or the idea that men were more perfect, more moral and more happy in some early stage of their intercourse, before they cultivated the earth and formed great societies. + 

The author of Don Quixote has played his artillery upon this doctrine to very good effect; he has summoned against it all the force of our contempt by making it the text of one of the gravest discourses of his hero. But my sensibility is such on moral and political errors, as rarely to be satisfied with the weapon of ridicule; though I know it to be one of the most mortal of intellectual weapons. + 

The notion that the social state of men cannot ameliorate, that they have formerly been better than they now are, and that they are continually growing worse, is pregnant with infinite mischief. I know no doctrine in the whole labyrinth of imposture that has a more immoral tendency. It discourages the efforts of all political virtue; it is a constant and practical apology for oppression, tyranny, despotism, in every shape, in every corner of society, as well as from the throne, the pulpit, the tribunal and the camp. It inculcates the belief that ignorance is better than knowledge; that war and violence are more natural than industry and peace; that deserts and tombs are more glorious than joyful cities and cultivated fields. + 

One of the most operative means of bringing forward our improvements and of making mankind wiser and better than they are, is to convince them that they are capable of becoming so. Without this conviction they may indeed improve slowly, unsteadily and almost imperceptibly, as they have done within the period in which our histories are able to trace them. But this conviction, impressed on the minds of the chiefs and teachers of nations, and inculcated in their schools, would greatly expedite our advancement in public happiness and virtue. Perhaps it would in a great measure insure the world against any future shocks and retrograde steps, such as heretofore it has often experienced. ↩ + 