t of reflection, and not of
prejudice; the British constitution approached nearer than any other to
that perfection of government, the democracy of Athens, he hoped one
day to see revived; he mentioned the death of Charles the First, and the
expulsion of his son, with raptures of applause; inveighed with great
acrimony against the kingly name; and, in order to strengthen his
opinion, repeated forty or fifty lines from one of the Philippics of
Demosthenes.

Jolter, hearing him speak so disrespectfully of the higher powers,
glowed with indignation: he said his doctrines were detestable, and
destructive of all right, order, and society; that monarchy was of
divine institution, therefore indefeasible by any human power; and
of consequence those events in the English history, which he had so
liberally commended, were no other than flagrant instances of sacrilege,
perfidy, and sedition; that the democracy of Athens was a most absurd
constitution, productive of anarchy and mischief, which must always
happen when the government of a nation depends upon the caprice of the
ignorant, hair-brained vulgar; that it was in the power of the most
profligate member of the commonwealth, provided he was endowed with
eloquence, to ruin the most deserving, by a desperate exertion of his
talents upon the populace, who had been often persuaded to act in the
most ungrateful and imprudent manner against the greatest patriots that
their country had produced; and, finally, he averred, that the liberal
arts and sciences had never flourished so much in a republic as under
the encouragement and protection of absolute power: witness the Augustan
age, and the reign of Louis the Fourteenth: nor was it to be supposed
that genius and merit could ever be so amply recompensed by the
individuals or distracted councils of a commonwealth, as by the
generosity and magnificence of one who had the whole treasury at his own
command.

Peregrine, who was pleased to find the contest grow warm, observed that
there seemed to be a good deal of truth in what Mr. Jolter advanced;
and the painter whose opinion began to waver, looked with a face
of expectation at his friend, who, modelling his features into an
expression of exulting disdain, asked of his antagonist, if he did not
think that very power of rewarding merit enabled an absolute prince
to indulge himself in the most arbitrary license over the lives and
fortunes of his people? Before the governor had time to ans