ian 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. But to a soldier, who has no fixed abode, such
attentions are particularly pleasing.

DIMPLE. Sir, there is no character so respectable as that of a soldier.
And, indeed, when we reflect how much we owe to those brave men who