STUDY FIFTH.

REPLY TO THE OBJECTIONS AGAINST PROVIDENCE, FOUNDED ON THE DISORDERS OF THE

VEGETABLE KING

DOM.

TH

HE Earth is, say the Objectors, a garden very injudiciously laid out. Men of wit, who never travelled, have amused themselves with painting it, when proceeding from the hand of Nature, as if the giants had been a fighting in it. They represent it's rivers flowing at random; it's morasses as vast collections of mud; the trees of it's forests turned upside down; it's plains buried under rocks, or overspread with briars or thorns; all it's high ways rendered unpassable; all it's culture the puny efforts of human genius. Such representations, though picturesque, have, I acknowledge, sometimes afflicted me, because they inspired me with distrust of the AUTHOR of Nature. To no purpose could it be sup posed that in other respects He had loaded Man with benefits; one of our first and most pressing necessities had been overlooked, if He had neglected to care for our habitation.

The inundations of rivers, such as those of the Amazon, of the Oroonoko, and a great many others, VOL. I. Q

are

are periodical. They manure the lands which they inundate. It is well known, besides, that the banks of those rivers swarmed with populous nations before any European had formed a settlement there. The inhabitants derived much benefit from these inundations, partly from the abundance of the fisheries, partly from the fertility communicated to the lands. So far from considering them as convulsions of Na ture, they received them as blessings from Heaven, just as the Egyptian prized the overflowings of the Nile. Was it then a mortifying spectacle to them to see their deep forests intersected with long alleys of water, which they could without trouble traverse in all directions in the canoes, and pick the fruits at their ease? Nay, certain tribes, such as those of the Oroonoko, determined by these accommodations, had acquired the singular habit of dwelling on the tops of trees, and of seeking under their foliage, like the birds, an habitation, and food, and a fortress. Whatever may be in this, most of them inhabited only the banks of the rivers, and preferred them to the vast deserts with which they are surrounded, though not exposed to inundations.

We see order only where we can see corn grow. The habit which we have acquired of confining the channels of our rivers within dikes and mounds, of gravelling and paving our high roads, of applying the straight line to the alleys in our gardens, and to our basons of water, of squaring our parterres, nay, our very trees, accustoms us insensibly to consider every thing which deviates from our rectangles, as abandoned to confusion. But it is in places with

which we have been tampering, that we frequently see real disorder. We set fountains a playing on the tops of mountains; we plant poplars and limes upon rocks; we throw our vineyards into valleys, and raise our meadows to the declivities of hills.

Let these laborious exertions be relaxed ever so little, and all such petty levellings will presently be confounded under the general levelling of Continents, and all this culture, the work of Man, will disappear before that of Nature. Our sheets of water degenerate into marshes; our hedge-row `elms burst into luxuriancy; every flower is choked, every avenue closes: the vegetables natural to each soil declare war against the strangers; the starry thistle and vi gorous verbascum, stifle under their broad leaves the English short grassy sod; thick crops of rye-grass and trefoil gather round the trees of Palestine; the bramble scrambles along their stem, with it's prickly claws, as if mounting a breach; tufts of nettles take possession of the urn of the Naiads, and forests of reeds of the forges of Vulcan; greenish scales of minium corrode the faces of our Venuses, without paying any respect to their beauty. The trees themselves lay siege to the castle; the wild cherry, the elm, the maple, mount upon it's ridges, plunge their long pivots into it's lofty pediments, and at length obtain the victory over it's haughty cupolas. The ruins of a park no less merit the reflections of the Sage, than those of the empire: they equally demonstrate how insufficient the power of Man is, when struggling against that of Nature.

I have not had the felicity, like the primitive Navi

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gators,

gators, who discovered uninhabited islands, to contemplate the face of the ground as it came from the hand of the CREATOR; but I have seen portions of it which had undergone alterations sufficiently inconsiderable to satify me, that nothing could then equal their virgin beauties. They had produced an influence on the first relations which were formed by them, and had diffused over these a freshness, a colouring, a native grace inexpressible, which will ever distinguish them to advantage, notwithstanding their simplicity, from the learned descriptions which have been given of them in modern times.

To the influence of these first aspects I ascribe the superior talents of the earlier Writers who have painted Nature, and the sublime enthusiasm which a Homer and an Orpheus, have transfused into their poësy. Among the Moderns, the Historian of Anson's expedition, Cook, Banks, Solander, and some others, have described several of these natural sites in the islands of Tinian, Masso, Juan Fernandez, and Otaheité, which have delighted all persons of real taste, though these islands had been in part degraded by the Indians and Spaniards.

I have seen only countries frequented by Europeans, and desolated by war, or by slavery: but I shall ever recollect with pleasure two, of those sites, the one on this side the Tropic of Capricorn; the other beyond the sixtieth degree of North latitude. Notwithstanding my inability, I am going to attempt a sketch of these, in order to convey as well as I can an idea of the manner in which Nature disposes her plans in Climates so very opposite."

The

The first was a part, then uninhabited, of the Isle of France, of fourteen leagues extent, which appeared to me the most beautiful portion of it, though the black maroons, who take refuge there, had cut down on the sea-shore the lataniers with which they fabricate their huts, and on the mountains the palmettos, whose tips they use as food, and the liannes, of which they make fishing-nets. They likewise degrade the banks of the rivulets, by digging out the bulbous roots of the nymphæa, on which they live, and even those of the Sea, of which they eat, without exception, every species of the shelly tribes, and which they leave here and there on the shore in great piles burnt up. Notwithstanding these disorders, that part of the island had preserved traces of it's ancient beauty. It is perpetually exposed to the South-east wind, which prevents the forests that cover it from extending quite down to the brink of the Sea; but a broad selvage of turf, of a beautiful sea-green, which surrounds it, facilitates the communication all around, and harmonizes on the one side with the verdure of the woods, and on the other with the azure of the billows.

The view is thus divided into two aspects, the one presenting land, the other water. The land-prospect presents hills flying behind each other, in the form of an amphitheatre, and whose contours, covered with trees in pyramids, exhibit a majestic profile on the vault of Heaven. Over these forests rises, as it were, a second forest of palmettos, which balance above the solitary valleys their long columns, crown