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Show 140 ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO IV. Her rapid shafts with airs volcanic wings, Or steeps in putrid vaults her venom'd stings. Arrests the young in Beauty's vernal bloom, And bears the innocuous strangers to the tomb!- 120 " AND now, e'en I, whose verse reluctant sings The changeful .state of sublunary things, Bend o'er Mortality with silent sighs, And wipe the secret tear-drops from tny eyes, Hear through the night one universal groan, And mourn unseen for evils _not my own, With restless limbs and throbbing heart complain, Stretch'd on the rack of sentimental pain! 130 fVith air8 volcanic, 1. 119. Those epidemic complaints, which are generally termed influenza, are believed to arise from vapours thrown out from earthquakes in such abundance as to affect large regions of the atmosphere, see Botanic Garden, V. I. Canto IV. 1. 65. while the diseases properly termed contagious originate from the putrid effluvia of decomposing animal or vegetable matter. SentimentaljJain, I. 130. Children should be -taught in their early education to feel for all the remediable evils, which they observe in others; but they should at the same time be taught sufficient firmne:5s CANTO IV. OF GOOD AND EVIL. -Ah where can Sympathy reflecting find One bright idea to console the mind? One ray of light in this terrene abode To prove to Man the Goodness of his Gon? '' 14{ II. " HEAR, 0 YE SoNs oF TIME!'' the· Nymph replies~ Quick indignation darting from her eyes; " When in soft tones the Muse lamenting sings, And weighs with tremulous hand the sum of things; She loads the scale in melancholy n1ood, Presents the evil, but forgets the good. 140 of mind not intirely to destroy their own happiness by their sympathizing with too great sensibility with the numerous irremediable eYils, which ex ist in the present system of the world: as by indulging that kind of melancholy they decrease the sum total of public happin ess ; which is so far rather reprehensible than commendable. See Plan for Female Education by Dr. Darwin, Johnson, London, Sect. XVII. This has been carried to great ex cess in the East by the disciples of Confucius; the G en toos during a famine in Inclia refused to eat the fl esh of cows and of other animals to satisfy their hunger, and save themselves from death. And at other times they l1ave been said to permit fleas and mus quitoes to feed upon them f1 .. om this erroneou sympathy. |