LETTER X. A CONSIDERATION of high importance claims our most fixed attention the temper of ..the French. THE great historian who has been quoted, was an eminent philosopher and statesman. He had the best opportunities for acquiring knowledge, by living in times of the greatest action, and in habits of intimacy with the most distinguished actors. IN the second Punic war, the "dire Hanibal" was at last expelled from Italy, and in the fields of Zama the doom of the world was determined. IN the third war, Carthage perished to the roots. (p) WHEN Scipio Africanus the younger entered the principal street of the devoted city, then taken, and in flames, he held Polybius by the hand. The short conversation between them, it could not but be short, was pathetic in the extreme; and therefore, I hope every reader of sensibility will excuse a recital of it. As they advanced among the blazing houses, and the flying, falling citizens, Scipio with emotion repeated some lines of Homer describing Troy in the same circumstances they now saw Carthage "Yet-come it will, the day decreed by fates, "How my heart trembles while my tongue relates! "The day when thou, imperial TROY, shall bend, "And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end-".f + The remainder of this speech of Hector to Andromache, consists of these lines:"And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind, My mother's death, the ruin of my kind, "And woes, 66 They cry-Behold the mighty Hector's wife! "A thousand griefs shall waken at the name. POLYBIUS asked the general why he repeated those lines in so tender a manner, in the midst of his success against enemies? Scipio answered, that in viewing the destruction of Carthage, he contem, plated the uncertainty of empire, with a foreboding apprehension, that the most prosperous, might some time or other share the same fate. THE historian being a man of business, and well acquainted with the world, his observations are drawn from life and manners, and therefore the fragments of his work are held in such universal esteem. He tells us, that "the Romans prevailed by a certain inflexibility peculiar to themselves." HAVE not the French sufficiently shewn, that they have an equal "INFLEXIBILITY?" That of the Romans appears to have been at times relaxed. When has that of the French ever been relaxed? Difficulties, distresses, de feats, varied, complicated, calling on all sides for remedy or relief, they have met with. There have been pauses in their affairs, of prognosticating continuance. What followed? Vollies of victories. Battles lost have been preludes to battles won. Retreats have been waited on by conquests. Mountains, fortifications, rivers fluent or frozen, the heats of summer, the 2. E VOL. II. frosts of winter, have not damped their spirits or stopped their career. There is a spring in their minds, to which weight gives energy. Their cause animates them with inextinguishable excitement. They are fighting for FREEDOM, and are fully persuaded, that they must crush their enemies, to secure it. The business comes home to the heart. The public cause is every man's own cause: "And each contends as his were all the war." WHAT a temper is this! that, move it any way, -press it any way, has the fteadiness of a cubehas the elasticity of air. If their perseverance waited twelve months for a single object, impregnable Luxemburgh, which they obtained and again has waited nearly as long for another, almost unapproachable Mantua, now probably in their hands too, what will not they venture, what will not they suffer, for the province of Munster, or the county of Cornwall, either of them the first step to THEIR enterprize is equal to their perseverance. What other nation ever formed, and so far executed, a plan for the excision of a vast maritime commerce, scarcely vulnerable on water, by conquering round the coasts of the seas on which it is managed. |