Lamented change! to which full many a cause
Inveterate, hopeless of a cure, conspires.

The course of human things from good to ill,
From ill to worse, is fatal, never fails.
Increase of power begets increase of wealth;
Wealth luxury, and luxury excefs;
Excefs, the fcrofulous and itchy plague,
That feizes firft the opulent, defcends
To the next rank contagious, and in time
Taints downward all the graduated scale
Of order, from the chariot to the plough.
The rich, and they, that have an arm to check
The licence of the loweft in degree,

Defert their office; and themfelves, intent
On pleasure, haunt the capital, and thus

To all the violence of lawless hands

Refign the scenes, their prefence might protect.
Authority herself not seldom fleeps,

Though refident, and witness of the wrong.
The plump convivial parson often bears
The magifterial fword in vain, and lays
His reverence and his worship both to rest
On the fame cushion of habitual floth.
Perhaps timidity reftrains his arm;

When he should strike he trembles, and sets free,
Himself enslaved by terror of the band,

The audacious convict, whom he dares not bind.
Perhaps, though by profeffion ghostly pure,
He too may have his vice, and sometimes prove
Lefs dainty than becomes his
grave outfide

In lucrative concerns. Examine well

His milk-white hand; the palm is hardly cleanBut here and there an ugly smutch appears,

Foh! 'twas a bribe that left it: he has touched
Corruption. Whofo feeks an audit here

Propitious, pays his tribute, game or fish,
Wild fowl or venifon; and his errand speeds.

But fafter far, and more than all the reft,
A noble cause, which none, who bears a spark
Of public virtue, ever wished removed,
Works the deplored and mischievous effect.
'Tis univerfal foldiership has ftabbed
The heart of merit in the meaner class.
Arms, through the vanity and brainless rage
Of those that bear them, in whatever cause,
Seem most at variance with all moral good,
And imcompatible with serious thought.

The clown, the child of nature, without guile, Bleft with an infant's ignorance of all

But his own fimple pleasures; now and then

A wrestling match, a foot-race, or a fair;

Is ballotted, and trembles at the news:
Sheepish he doffs his hat, and mumbling fwears
A bible-oath to be whate'er they please,

To do he knows not what. The task performed,
That inftant he becomes the ferjeant's care,
His pupil, and his torment, and his jeft.
His awkward gait, his introverted toes,
Bent knees, round shoulders, and dejected looks,
Procure him many a curfe. By flow degrees,
Unapt to learn, and formed of stubborn stuff,
He yet by flow degrees puts off himself,
Grows conscious of a change, and likes it well:
He stands erect; his flouch becomes a walk;
He steps right onward, martial in his air,
His form, and movement; is as smart above
As meal and larded locks can make him; wears
His hat, or his plumed helmet, with a grace;

And, his three years of herofhip expired,
Returns indignant to the flighted plough.
He hates the field, in which no fife or drum

Attends him; drives his cattle to a march;
And fighs for the smart comrades he has left.
"Twere well if his exterior change were all-
But with his clumsy port the wretch has loft
His ignorance and harmless manners too.
To fwear, to game, to drink; to show at home
By lewdnefs, idleness, and fabbath-breach,
The great proficiency he made abroad;

To aftonish and to grieve his gazing friends;
To break fome maiden's and his mother's heart;
To be a peft where he was useful once;
Are his fole aim, and all his glory, now.

Man in fociety is like a flower

Blown in its native bed: 'tis there alone
His faculties, expanded in full bloom,
Shine out; there only reach their proper ufe.
But man, affociated and leagued with man
By regal warrant, or felf-joined by bond.
For intereft-fake, or swarming into clans
Beneath one head for purposes of war,

Like flowers felected from the reft, and bound
And bundled close to fill some crowded vase,
Fades rapidly, and by compreffion marred

Contracts defilement not to be endured.

Hence chartered boroughs are fuch public plagues;
And burghers, men immaculate perhaps

In all their private functions, once combined,
Become a loathsome body, only fit

For diffolution, hurtful to the main.
Hence merchants, unimpeachable of fin
Against the charities of domeftic life,
Incorporated feem at once to lofe

Their nature; and disclaiming all regard
For mercy and the common rights of man,
Build factories with blood, conducting trade
At the fword's point, and dyeing the white robe
Of innocent commercial justice red.

Hence too the field of glory, as the world
Mifdeems it, dazzled by its bright array,
With all its majesty of thundering pomp,
Enchanting mufic and immortal wreaths,
Is but a school, where thoughtlessness is taught
On principle, where foppery atones

For folly, gallantry for every vice.

But flighted as it is, and by the great Abandoned, and, which still I more regret,