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"couutry 'tis well-known no fovereign can give pleasure to his fubjects but by an early death. I hope however to make mine wait a "while." This officer was an empty fellow, with more honesty in his heart than good fenfe in his head: he had committed fome miftake which vexed his master, who cried out, " Blessed Jefus ! (turn

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ing to a crucifix in the chamber) thou haft but a blockhead for thy "vicar upon earth, God knows; but mine is really a stark ideot."

Lambertini knew how to be ferious enough however; and his piety, as his wit, was unaffected. A fellow ftopt his carriage in the street, and demanded absolution as he hung upon the door-pannel, with frantick voice and gefture. The pope ftopt, and reprimanding the man gravely for fuch indecorum, bid him apply elfewhere. "I have, I "have applied," rejoined the wretch; "no priest can absolve me.' He then confeffed fome crime, horrible to tell; and holding a knife at his own throat firmly grafped, appeared refolved on fuicide. The active fovereign feizing him, prevented the blow, and made his attendants carry the fellow into the next church, three doors off. Benedict the fourteenth there threw himself proftrate before the altar, and begged with tears and prayers celeftial direction. Retiring next into a confeffional, he heard the whole tale and preferibed the penance, which he himself faw rigorously performed. He then dispatched away the girl, who had till now witneffed a feene of which herfelf had been in fome measure both caufe and effect, to a ftrict nunnery; and never lofing fight of the life he had faved, made the poor man his gardener. It cannot chufe but grieve one to reflect, that when Voltaire's Malomet was acted 1750, this, as it appears, but half-enligtened pontiff, gave his confent to its representation.

Before that day was born to the triumvirate of impiety, already mentioned, a fon and heir in Bavaria, whom M. Barruel calls Adam Weishaupt, and adds, “That his infancy was obscure, his youth unknown; but that under the name of Spartacus he has promoted the cause of infidelity, even beyond their wifhes who moft hated the Holy One of God." 'Tis curious

if he really was baptized by name of Adam, as I have heard, that among the Wodyack:Tartars, a Man is called an Adam. Weishaupt too founds like an appellation wife-head in German, if my intelligence be right; but wifer heads than mine must make out fuch myfterious iniquities. As if our ifland trembled at the monftrous production, and half-anticipated the horrid imputation of having given courage to Voltaire for fetting forth the doctrines he promulgated after that fatal vifit to Great Britain; an earthquake, twice repeated, fhook her fhores, and filled our churches, for a while at least, with honest supplications to be spared the punishment due to our crimes and follies. At that moment, the daring engine levelled by thofe confpirators we spoke of against Christianity, was put in force; and the Encyclopædia was published. That it did much harm here, I really am not competent to fay; that we are lefs a reading nation than the French I am defirous, perhaps more defirous than able, to deny. That we were a foolish nation enough, when all London listened to a crazy fellow, who predicted a third fhock of earthquake, no one I think will deny; especially as he laid his stress chiefly upon alliteration as it seems, and foretold destruction to Liverpool and London, as to Lima in Peru, which had been destroyed but a few years before.

VOL. II.

3 G

CHAP.

CHAP. XIX.

GREAT BRITAIN, IRELAND, AND AMERICA,

WH

FROM 1750 TO 1780.

HEN empire, in the femi-barbarous days, offered itself to him who firit fhould difcern and hail the rifing fun, a faithful slave, 'tis faid, fuggefted to his master, that whilst others looked towards the eaft, he should keep his eyes fixed on the contrary point; where in effect he first of all perceived th' aufpicious phenomenon, by rays refracted to the oppofing hill. America, on the same principle, offers to our retrospective view a scene of happiness and found tranquillity, where readers are the least prepared to look for't, Paraguay. To that rich province Portugueze feverity had driven the Guaranie Indians, about the year 1734, and Don Jorge Juan tells us, that twenty years afterwards, thirty-five towns were peopled there by converts to Christianity, and ruled in gentleness by the good miffionaries who take, fays he, the Yncas for their model, and fway with mildness those souls which throw themfelves into their kind protection. Curates appointed under the vice-patron, and well acquainted with the country language, act not as fpiritual directors only, but as good magiftrates, obliging their fubjects to cultivate the arts of agriculture, and in fome fort, commerce; internal traffick with the neighbour Indians, while regular militia trained to war, and exercised on eves of festivals, protect them from all fear of inroad on their happy state. One convent is allowed in every town for fick or fuperannuated females, affording fhelter

Thelter too for helpless orphans, who study useful knowledge there, and fpin under direction of these steady matrons. Thus, while deemed criminal in Cochin China, flothful in Africk, and fufpected as too bufy upon our European fhores, the Jefuits flourished in this more favourable hemifphere; kept their fubjects from wandering by tales of the gigantick inhabitants of Patagonia, and made their countrymen at home amazed by Madalena di Niquinez's narrative concerning the tall nation, which story Don Joseph Tarrubia published in Old Spain; adding accounts of skeletons beyond the common fize, found in the countries fouth of Paraguay; where we must leave the Jesuits living much like our British feceders in Pennsylvania, feparated from these Guaranics by the Ifthmus of Darien, and distant from them one thousand leagues at least. There, in a large town, named of the words brotherly love, Philadelphia, dwelt comfortably a peaceful fet, inclined to trade and maritime connexions. Their port, in the year 1750, faw no fewer than three hundred veffels enter inwards, and the next year three hundred were cleared out. Exportations to our island were computed at half a million sterling, and an academy was erected, that no neglect of literature might difgrace thofe who acquired wealth by virtuous means. A treaty between Quakers, broad-brimmed, and starched up to a steady uniformity of look; and the Twight wees, feather'd, tattow'd, and painted with wild variety of favage ornament, must baffle all description by words. Benjamin Weft's picture of their original compact with Mr. Penn, 1681, brings to our view the state of things in 1757, when the Ohio's hollow caves re-cchoed to the oratorical powers of a Mohawk Sachem, giving his belts of wampum, with his promife to tear the tomahawks of Frenchmen from their hands, pick thorns of entanglement from legs of Britons, and pour foft oil upon the bleeding fkulls of fuch as fuffered from the Gallick hatchet. It was found however, no cafy task to detach fome tribes from that true friendship with which the fupple fubjects of Louis quatorze had infpired them. Our colonization of Nova Scotia was useful indeed on this, as upon other accounts. My 3 G 2 father

father was among the very first who touched land there, when three thousand feven hundred families went over with Cornwallis, May, 1750, and in November following, only three men were dead, and as many houfes built towards the conftruction of the new town Halifax, as the fettlers enumerated days fince government had confirmed their charter. In his travels through the interior of that region, little known to Britons in thofe days, he often fhared the hut of fome French Indians, and defcribed their manners as amiably fimple, innocent, and artlefs. We never could forget his story of a Canadian girl, eighteen years old, fetting her head-drefs by a pail of water placed as a mirror for her moucki toilette, as fhe termed it; or how, converfing with her on more ferious fubjects, fhe informed him that the nature of fin was well known to her, who had been taught by les bons François, that English women were the wickedeft upon the face of the carth, making no fcruple to wear wide hoops, like the bleed Virgin Mary, who being a French lady born, ought to have that privilege facred to herself alone— enforcing these words by pointing to a dreffed image on the houfe top, and praying to it for her new acquaintance's converfion and fafe return to Halifax. That place proved daily more and more ufeful in taking off disbanded troops turned loofe upon London, in confequence of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. A peace wife men faw plainly could never laft long, although Great Britain poured her young nobility forth in full tides to Paris, while flexible adventurers from that corrupted-metropolis, began to fwarm in ours. Among thefe a Capuchin friar, Pere Norbert by name, befide his own spirit of supplying himself with ready cash, poffeffed a fecret mandate from Pope Bendedict XIV. to inftruct us. He was an anti-Jefuit, favoured for that reafon by Lambertini, who bestowed on him a bag of zecchines, fome indulgencies neceffary to his miffion, and a box of reliques to keep Christian faith warm in our heretical, and as he deemed it, half-pagan country. We all witneffed his envoy's abilities, and I myself remember him perfectly under the feigned appellation of Monf. Parisot, who set up a gobelin

manufactory