On some fond breast the parting soul relies,, For thee, who mindful of th’unhonour'd dead, Haply some hoary headed swain may say, There at the foot of yonder nodding beech, Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, • Or craz❜d with care, or cross'd in hopeless love! 'One morn I miss'd him on th'accustom'd hill, Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, ner at the wood was he: The next, with dirges due, in sad array, Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne, Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay, Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn. THE EPITAPH. HERE rests his head upon the lap of earth, Fair science frown'd not on his bumble birth, Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere; He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his God." When with my intellectual eyes, I view the miseries of humanity, from the centre to the circumference of the earth, my heart almost weeps blood! "I blush to find myself a man ;" and long to die, and leave this wretched world, teeming with villany and oppression, behind. The vanity and pride of aristocracy, I would silently and sorrowfully pity and despise, did it not produce war, cruelty and murder and the chief miseries of the poor. How many this very moment, are be wailing in the shades of obscurity, the unrelenting ravages of despotism! Hungry orphans, weeping widows, violated virgins, and even the hoary head of unresisting age, are now calling upon death to deliver them from a world of woe, produced, not by nature, but man! They must worship those they despise, serve those they hate, kill those who never injured them, wretches as miserable as themselves, and at last, prematurely die in the field of battle, forgotten by all, and regretted by none; while aristocratical pride points the finger of scorn at misery produced by itself, and which it could, but would not alleviate. God in the plenitude of his goodness, has scattered plenty, especially in Europe and Asia, but man has dif. fused famine and misery, over this portion of our terraqueous globe. The lands which were flowing with milk and honey, are now drenched with the tears of hunger and distress! The fields that waved with golden grain, are now sprinkled with human blood! The plains that were gay with flowers, and bright with verdure, are now the repositories of the bleached and whitened bones of wretched man! You who doubt the correctness of the mel. ancholy picture, I exhibit to your view, only east the eyes of your mind for a moment on Africa, on the West Indies, on South America, on Russia, on Prussia, on Denmark, on Norway, on Spain, finally on England, Ireland, and Scotland, as well as the foreign settlements of the Dutch; the Swedes, the French and the English, all which places I have personally visited! and you will be constrained to acknowledge, that man has unparadised this earth, and reduced it literally to a slaughterhouse. I have already adduced categorical proof from the Old Testament of the abhorrence with which God views kings, because they infringe his rights in a compendious way, merely by put ting themselves in his place, and exacting the adoration only due to his Sacred Majesty; we will now prove from the New Testament, that kings and lords, and dukes, and earls, and their admirers, both in America, as well as Europe, are enemies to the cross of Christ and to the simplicity of his mission. Both his public and private conduct and discourses, from first to last, as well as his humble appearance in the world, all prove to a mathematical certainty, with what sovereign contempt God views the power, the pageantry, and pride of monarchy and aristocracy. The chief objects of his solicitude, were the poor and miserable; and the primary objects of his animadversions, were the Jewish priesthood, as well as the Jewish aristocracy. I will just quote a few verses from the fourth chapter of Luke, to illustrate my assertions. "And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias; and when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the |