of enjoyment, opens, also, a thousand new sources of contention and
want: Luxury! which renders a people weak at home, and accessible to
bribery, corruption, and force from abroad. When the Grecian states
knew no other tools than the axe and the saw, the Grecians were a
great, a free, and a happy people. The kings of Greece devoted their
lives to the service of their country, and her senators knew no other
superiority over their fellow-citizens than a glorious pre-eminence in
danger and virtue. They exhibited to the world a noble spectacle,--a
number of independent states united by a similarity of language,
sentiment, manners, common interest, and common consent, in one grand
mutual league of protection. And, thus united, long might they have
continued the cherishers of arts and sciences, the protectors of the
oppressed, the scourge of tyrants, and the safe asylum of liberty. But
when foreign gold, and still more pernicious foreign luxury, had crept
among them, they sapped the vitals of their virtue. The virtues of
their ancestors were only found in their writings. Envy and suspicion,
the vices of little minds, possessed them. The various states
engendered jealousies of each other; and, more unfortunately, growing
jealous of their great federal council, the Amphictyons, they forgot
that their common safety had existed, and would exist, in giving them
an honourable extensive prerogative. The common good was lost in the
pursuit of private interest; and that people who, by uniting, might
have stood against the world in arms, by dividing, crumbled into
ruin;--their name is now only known in the page of the historian, and
what they once were is all we have left to admire. Oh! that America!
Oh! that my country, would, in this her day, learn the things which
belong to her peace!

Enter DIMPLE.

DIMPLE

You are Colonel Manly, I presume?

MANLY

At your service, Sir.

DIMPLE

My name is Dimple, Sir. I have the honour to be a lodger in the same
house with you, and, hearing you were in the Mall, came hither to take
the liberty of joining you.

MANLY

You are very obliging, Sir.

DIMPLE

As I understand you are a stranger here, Sir, I have taken the liberty
to introduce myself to your acquaintance, as possibly I may have it in
my power to point out some things in this city worthy your notice.

MANLY An attention to strangers is worthy a liberal mind, and must ever
be gratefully received.