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(said I,) an ox foot. Ah! then, (quoth he,) thou hast, in my 'opinion, the delicatest bit in Spain; there being neither partridge, ' pheasant, nor any other thing, that I like near so well as that.

Will you please to try, sir? (said I,) putting the ox foot in his 'hand, with two good morsels of bread; when you have tasted it, 'you will be convinced that 'tis a treat for a king, 'tis so well 'dressed and seasoned.

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'Upon that, sitting down by my side, he began to eat, or rather 'to devour what I had given him, so that the bones could hardly 'escape. Oh, the excellent bit, (did he cry,) that this would be 'with a little garlick. Ha! thought I to myself, how lustily thou 'eatest it without sauce. Gad, (said the 'squire,) I have eaten this ' as heartily as if I had not tasted a bit of victuals to-day; which I did very easily believe. He then called for the pitcher with the water, which was full as I had brought it home; so you may guess whether he had eat any.'

Our hero's master being one day in better humour than ordinary, because he had had a tolerable dinner, was pleased to give him the following account of his affairs.

'He told me, that he was of Old Castile, and that he had left 'his country only because he would not pull off his hat to a person 'of quality of his neighbourhood. But, sir, (quoth I,) if he was 'your superior by his birth and estate, as you seem to own he was, 'you might well enough have saluted him first, without any injury 'to yourself, since he did not fail to make you a civil return.

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All that's true enough, answered the 'squire. He was a greater 'man than I, and returned my civilities; but he should have begun once, and forced me to let myself be saluted first, by taking me "by the hand when he saw me carrying it to my head to pull off 'my hat.

For my part, sir, (quoth I,) I should not have minded things 'so nearly.

'Yes, that's well enough for thee, (interrupted he.) Thou art but 'young, and so a stranger to those sentiments of honour, in which 'the riches of those that now profess it do principally consist. But 'thou must know, that, a simple 'squire as I am, if I met a prince in the street, and he did not take off his hat to me right, (I say, 'take it off right,) gadzooks, on the first occasion I would find a 'way to go into some house, under pretence of business, or slip 'away into the next street before he came near me, that I might 'not be obliged to salute him. Look ye, (continued the 'squire,) 'except God and the king, a gentleman is inferior to none, and ought not to yield an ace to any.

'I remember, (added he,) I taught an officer good manners once, and had like to have caned him for saluting me with a God save 'you. Learn to speak as you ought, Mr. Scoundrel, (said I,) and

'don't use me like such a clown as yourself, with your God save 'you! And after that, he never failed to salute me as far as he 'could see me, and to speak when he came near me, as became ' him.

Here I could not avoid interrupting him. What, sir, (said I,) is it an offence to say, God save a man?

'What a foolish boy is this! (answered the 'squire.) That's well enough for ordinary people; but for a man of my quality, the 'least that can be given is, your most humble servant, sir; or at 'least, your servant, if it be a gentleman that speaks to me: and 'you may see by that, whether it was fit for me to submit to the 'behaviour of my noble neighbour, who, to tell you the truth, did likewise use to plague me, upon all occasions, with a God save 'you, sir! No, by St. Anthony, I'll never take a God save you 'at any body's hands but the king's, if they were to add, my lord, at the end of the compliment, to sweeten it.'

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This production, which was printed in 1586, is attributed to D. Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, who was not only a soldier, philosopher, historian, and statesman, but a poet; who, in his vernacular language, was second to none of his age. It is by some, also, ascribed to John de Ortega, a monk.*

The work being left incomplete by the author, a second part was added by H. de Luna, which is much inferior to the first.-Lazarillo, after having served all sorts of masters, been water-carrier, public crier, Indian merchant, sea-monster, gentleman-usher, &c. died a recluse. His being converted into a sea-monster is vastly extravagant. As he is returning from South America, he is wrecked off the coast of his native country, and escapes on a plank to shore, but so intangled and covered with sea-weeds, that certain fishermen, by whom he is found, conceive the idea of showing him about the country as a sea-monster, which they actually put in execution.

The translation, as our readers have no doubt remarked, is executed in a masterly, spirited, and excellent style.

ART. VII. Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence; London, 1761. [Review-August, 1820.]

Mr. WALLACE, the author of the work before us, was of the number of those speculators who have delighted to form schemes of ideal felicity for their species. Men of this class, often despised as dreaming theorists, have been found among the best and wisest of all ages. Those, indeed, who have seen the farthest into their na

* Vide Bibliot. Hisp. Nova, tom. 1. p. 291.

ture, have found the surest grounds of hope even for its earthly destiny. Their gentle enthusiasm has been, at the least, innoxious. The belief, that humanity is on the decline-that the energy of man is decaying that the heart is becoming harder-and that imagination and intellect are dwindling away-lays an icy finger on the soul, confirms the most debasing selfishness, and tends to retard the blessedness which it denies. We propose, therefore, in this article, very cursorily to inquire how far the hopes of those who believe that man is, on the whole, advancing, are sanctioned by experience and by reason.

But we must not forget, that, in the very work before us, an obstacle to the happiness of the species is brought forward, which has subsequently been explained as of a dreadful nature, and has been represented as casting an impenetrable gloom over the brightest anticipations of human progress. We shall first set it forth in the words of Wallace-then trace its expansion and various application by Malthus-and inquire how far it compels us to despair for man. 'Under a perfect government, the inconveniences of having a fa'mily would be so entirely removed, children would be so well ta'ken care of, and every thing become so favourable to populous'ness, that though some sickly seasons or dreadful plagues in par'ticular climates might cut off multitudes, yet, in general, mankind 'would increase so prodigiously, that the earth would at last be 'overstocked, and become unable to support its numerous inha'bitants.

'How long the earth, with the best culture of which it is capable 'from human genius and industry, might be able to nourish its perpetually increasing inhabitants, is as impossible as it is unnecessary to be determined. It is not probable that it could have 'supported them during so long a period as since the creation of Adam. But whatever may be supposed of the length of this pe'riod, of necessity it must be granted, that the earth could not 'nourish them for ever, unless either its fertility could be continually augmented, or, by some secret in nature, like what certain enthu siasts have expected from the philosopher's stone, some wise adept in the occult sciences should invent a method of supporting man'kind, quite different from any thing known at present. Nay, though some extraordinary method of supporting them might possibly be found out, yet, if there was no bound to the increase of mankind, which would be the case under a perfect government, there would not even be sufficient room for containing their bodies upon the surface of the earth, or upon any limited surface whatsoever. It would be necessary, therefore, in order to find room 'for such multitudes of men, that the earth should be continually *enlarging in bulk, as an animal or vegetable body.' ***

'How dreadfully would the magistrates of such commonwealths

'find themselves disconcerted at that fatal period, when there was 'no longer any room for new colonies, and when the earth could 'produce no farther supplies! During all the preceding ages, 'while there was room for increase, mankind must have been hap'py; the earth must have been a paradise in the literal sense, as the 'greatest part of it must have been turned into delightful and fruitful gardens. But when the dreadful time should at last come, 'when our globe, by the most diligent culture, could not produce 'what was sufficient to nourish its numerous inhabitants, what hap'py expedient could then be found out to remedy so great an 'evil? * * * *

'Such a melancholy situation, in consequence merely of the want of provisions, is in truth more unnatural than all their present calamities. Supposing men to have abused their liberty, by which 'abuse, vice has once been introduced into the world; and that 'wrong notions, a bad taste, and vicious habits, have been strengthened by the defects of education and government, our present dis'tresses may be easily explained. They may even be called natu'ral, being the natural consequences of our depravity. They may 'be supposed to be the means by which Providence punishes vice; and, by setting bounds to the increase of mankind, prevents the 'earth's being overstocked, and men being laid under the cruel ne'cessity of killing one another. But to suppose, that, in the course of a favourable Providence, a perfect government had been esta'blished, under which the disorders of human passions had been powerfully corrected and restrained; poverty, idleness, and war, 'banished; the earth made a paradise; universal friendship and 'concord established, and human society rendered flourishing in all respects; and that such a lovely constitution should be overturn'ed, not by the vices of men, or their abuse of liberty, but by the 'order of nature itself, seems wholly unnatural, and altogether dis'agreeable to the methods of Providence.'

To this passage, the gloomy theories of Mr. Malthus owe their origin. He took the evil, which Wallace regarded as awaiting the species in its highest state of earthly perfection, as instant and pressing in almost every state of society, and as causing mankind perpetually to oscillate. He represented nature herself as imposing an adamantine barrier to improvement, against which the fertilizing waters must beat in vain, and which would strike them back again, to a distance proportioned to the force by which they were rolled towards it. He depicted the tendency of the species to increase in numbers, as arising from passion, mad and ungovernable as well as universal, and as resisted, in its fatal consequences, only by war, famine, or disease. He maintained, that man was placed by naturė between two tremendous evils, and could never recede from the gloomy strait within which his movements were contracted.

He

treated the love between the sexes as a brute instinct, without adverting to the infinite varieties of its developement, to its modifications by imagination and sentiment, to the refined delicacies of its intellectual enjoyments, to its thoughts which "do often lie too deep for tears," or its hopes, reaching far beyond death and the grave. Man was thus debased into a wretched animal, whose passions were irresistible, yet could not be satisfied without bringing on his race incalculable miseries.

The system thus promulgated in the first edition of the work on Population, could not be well applied to any practical uses. It tended to destroy the fair visions of human improvement, and to place a gigantic demon in their room. But it could not form a part of any rational scheme of legislation, because it represented the evils which it depicted as hopeless. Its only moral was despair. But its author-a man of genuine personal benevolence, in spite of his doctrines-became anxious to discover some moral purposes to which he might apply his scheme. Accordingly, in his second edition, which was so altered and re-written as to be almost a new work, he introduced a new preventive check on the tendency of population to increase, which he designated "moral restraint;" and proposed to inculcate, by the negative course of leaving all those who did not practise it, to the consequences of their error. This new feature appears to us subversive of the whole system, in so far, at least, as it is designed to exhibit insuperable obstacles to the progressive happiness of man. Instead of the evil being regarded as inevitable, a means was expressly enforced by which it might be completely avoided. Celibacy, instead of a dreadful misfortune, was shown to be a state of attainable and exalted virtue. In calculating on the tendency of the species to increase, we were no longer required to speculate on a mere instinct, but on a thousand moral and intellectual causes-on the movements of reason, sensibility, imagination, and hope-on the purest as well as the intensest emotions of the human soul. The rainbow could be as easily grasped, or a sun-beam measured by a line, as the operations of the blended passion and sentiment of love estimated by geometrical series!

The real question, in this case, is not whether, when the world is fully cultivated, the tendency of the species to increase will be greater than the means of subsistence; but whether this tendency really presses on us at every step of our progress. For, if there is no insuperable barrier to the complete cultivation of the earth, the cessation of all the countless evils of war, and the union of all the brethren of mankind in one great family, we may safely trust to heaven for the rest. When this universal harmony shall begin, men will surely have attained the virtue and the wisdom to exercise a self-denial, which Mr. Malthus himself represents as fully within VOL. II.

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