by the reflection, that his country was deprived of this ornament by the
enmity of a people, from whom, indeed, it might have been dreaded, but
from whom it was not deserved. For, actuated always by the most
attentive care and tender compassion for the savages in general, this
excellent man was ever assiduously endeavouring, by kind treatment, to
dissipate their fears, and court their friendship; overlooking their
thefts and treacheries, and frequently interposing, at the hazard of his
life, to protect them from the sudden resentment of his own injured
people.

The object of his last mission was to discover and ascertain the
boundaries of Asia and America, and to penetrate into the northern ocean
by the north-east Cape of Asia.

Traveller! contemplate, admire, revere, and emulate this great master in
his profession; whose skill and labours have enlarged natural
philosophy; have extended nautical science; and have disclosed the
long-concealed and admirable arrangements of the Almighty in the
formation of this globe, and, at the same time, the arrogance of
mortals, in presuming to account, by their speculations, for the laws by
which he was pleased to create it. It is now discovered, beyond all
doubt, that the same Great Being who created the universe by his _fiat_,
by the same ordained our earth to keep a just poise, without a
corresponding southern continent--and it does so! "He stretches out the
north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing."--Job,
xxvi. 7.

If the arduous but exact researches of this extraordinary man have not
discovered a new world, they have discovered seas unnavigated and
unknown before. They have made us acquainted with islands, people and
productions, of which we had no conception. And if he has not been so
fortunate as Americus to give his name to a continent, his pretensions
to such a distinction remain unrivalled; and he will be revered, while
there remains a page of his own modest account of his voyages, and as
long as mariners and geographers shall be instructed, by his new map of
the southern hemisphere, to trace the various courses and discoveries he
has made.

If public services merit public acknowledgments; if the man who adorned
and raised the fame of his country is deserving of honours, then Captain
Cook deserves to have a monument raised to his memory, by a generous and
grateful nation.

Virtutis uberrimum alimentum est honos.