digging out the buried
contents of Herculaneum. And we may add, that the novelties of the
Society or Sandwich Islands seem better calculated to engage the
attention of the studious in our times, than the antiquities which
exhibit proofs of Roman magnificence.

The grounds for making this remark cannot be better explained, than in
the words of a very ingenious writer: " In an age," says Mr Warton,[57]
"advanced to the highest degree of refinement, that species of curiosity
commences, which is busied in contemplating the progress of social life,
in displaying the gradation of science, and in tracing the transition
from barbarism to civility. That these speculations should become the
favourite topics of such a period, is extremely natural. We look back on
the savage condition of our ancestors with the triumph of superiority;
and are pleased to mark the steps by which we have been raised from
rudeness to elegance; and our reflections on this subject are
accompanied with a conscious pride, arising, in a great measure, from a
tacit comparison of the infinite disproportion between the feeble
efforts of remote ages, and our present improvements in knowledge. In
the mean time, the manners, monuments, customs, practices, and opinions
of antiquity, by forming so strong a contrast with those of our own
times, and by exhibiting human nature and human inventions in new
lights, in unexpected appearances, and in various forms, are objects
which forcibly strike a feeling imagination. Nor does this spectacle
afford nothing more than a fruitless gratification to the fancy. It
teaches us to set a just estimation on our own acquisitions, and
encourages us to cherish that cultivation, which is so closely connected
with the existence and the exercise of every social virtue." We need not
here observe, that the manners, monuments, customs, practices, and
opinions of the present inhabitants of the Pacific Ocean, or of the west
side of North America, form the strongest contrast with those of our own
time in polished Europe; and that a feeling imagination will probably be
more struck with the narration of the ceremonies of a _Natche_ at
Tongataboo, than of a Gothic tournament at London; with the
contemplation of the colossuses of Easter Island, than of the mysterious
remains of Stonehenge.[58]

[Footnote 57: Preface to his History of English Poetry.]

[Footnote 58: This may be disputed, both in point of fact, and on
principles of reasoning. As