, that attempts to serve God out of pure benevolence, and
without expectation of advantage, will soon spurn archangels, and may
set up for a God himself, on any day he shall think he has succeeded in
accomplishing such super-eminent disinterestedness. On the whole, it may
be remarked, that the Dr seems correct enough in his notions of
religion, considered as founded on reason; but is far from being so in
those concerning its foundation in the principles of human nature. This,
however, seems the consequence of inattention to the subject as a
speculation, rather than of studied disregard to those secret surmisings
which every human heart will oftentimes experience to carry it beyond
the brink of perishable things, and to give it a birth amid the
realities of wonder, fear, and hope. Far be it from the writer to class
him amongst those whom the poet Campbell so pathetically, and yet so
indignantly describes in the beautiful lines,--

Oh! lives there, heaven! beneath thy dread expanse,
One hopeless, dark idolater of chance,
Content to feed, with pleasures unrefined,
The lukewarm passions of a lowly mind;
Who, mouldering earthward, 'reft of every trust,
In joyless union wedded to the dust,
Could all his parting energy dismiss,
And call this barren world sufficient bliss?

He may not merit the "proud applause," the "pre-eminence in ill," of
those "lights of the world," and "demi-gods of fame," who league reason
and science against the hopes of mankind, and busy themselves in
throwing the "heaviest stones of melancholy" at the poor wretch
shivering over the dregs of life, and tottering towards the grass. And
yet it is certain, that what was written on his own tombstone implied
much less the hope of another life, than the gloomy satisfaction of
having partners in the darkness and inactivity of death. The reader will
see it in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, where a short account of him is
given.--E.]

Though I dare not assert that these people, to whom the art of writing,
and consequently the recording of laws, are utterly unknown, live under
a regular form of government, yet a subordination is established among
them, that greatly resembles the early state of every nation in Europe
under the feudal system, which secured liberty in the most licentious
excess to a few, and entailed the most abject slavery upon the rest.[34]

[Footnote 34: The government of this island, it is most certain, is both
monarc