ty, and economy, are qualities effential to his situation; and though it is poffible that he may take them up, as he does the seals of his office, for the public use merely, while in his private capacity he never thinks of exercising them; yet the people will hardly coufide in this occasional conformity, but will rather suppose that the habits of his life will outweigh the duties of the hour, and the bonds of his fociety be stronger than the obligations of his business. The few who are acquainted with the force or the pliability of his mind may conceive him to be above the debasement of his ordinary occupations, or the contagion of his favourite company; but the public imagination is less ductile, and will not so suddenly love the irreverent ideas it has form ed of a man's private manners and private connexions. credit of the state, and to taint the purity of public administration. The minister of a great empire has other opinions to gain besides those of his own countrymen. The credit of Britain is one of the proudell circumstances in the comparison between her and the surrounding nations. You know, Sir, for you were abroad at a critical juncture, the effect which the virtue of a minifter has on that credit: they are polite on the Continent; and it might poffibly not reach your ears how much that credit might be lessen'd by his vices or his diffipation. I am afraid you have thrown away your talents, as well as fullied your reputation, by your adherence to men who were often as unfortunate in the objects they pursued as in the conduct they held. You have exhibited your eloquence with the dexterity of a prize-fighter rather than the dignity of a champion for truth; owing, perhaps, to that fituation in which you had the misfortune to be placed, the most admirable of its exertions oftener pleased than perfuaded, oftener astonished than pleafcd. You indulged a subtlety in are gument which sometimes vanquished your adversaries in debate, but like other barten conquests, rather gained an increase of glory than an extent of of power. Your audience contrived to separate the debater from the man, and lavished its applause on the first, without bestowing its commendation on the latter. You will easily apply these general positions, Sir; you applied them indeed, already, during the short time you and your friends were in adminstration; you assumed the grave and serious deportment which you knew was suitable to your office; you put on the externals of decorum with scupulous attention; but the public opinion was refractory, and we did not truft our fight against the conviction of our understanding. The folemn fuit and its dignified appendages only recalled to our remembrance the blue frock and the familiar rattan; and we faw still at your fide fome persons who were only entitled to be there from their participation of those loofer hours in which surely:no-truth; who is attached to no inter thing was to be acquired that could fit men for the high offices of the State. We regretted this in your former, and feared it in your future advancement. Unless divorced from your former connexions, you must have risen into power, as the vulgar suppose of comets, with a noxious atmosphere around you, to blight the VOL. XI. No. 65. Ss This letter, Sir, is addressed to you by one who is of no party but that of ests but those of his country. Did personal attachment or acquaintance weigh with him, he has known you enough to be fascinated by your fociety, and has felt the chilling virtue and unconciliating pride of some of your oponents. He calls to you" with a friendly voice," for the fake of his country, to which your wonderful talents lents have been hitherto almost unproductive. In modern men of your rank, talents, anyways approaching to yours, are of a rarity that enhances their value, and the public cannot spare them to idleness, to intemper ance, or to faction. We would call, Sir, on the patriotism of the citizen; or, if that claim should appear too general, we would rouse the pride of the man. Did heaven form a foul like yours, and endow it with powers so exalted to calculate the throws at Brooks's, or to measure the ground at Newmarket? Think of yourself more worthily, Sir; leave those provinces to the Dukes of Piccadilly or Bloomsbury, or to any other Dukes or Lords, whose reputation no meanness can lower, whose minds no infignificance of employment can debase. But for you, Sir, thus to to misemploy your talents, is a fuicide of the mind, impious to heaven, and unjust to yourself and your country. Think how many events may arise to call them into important stations, when the war of parties shall have ceafed, when personal distinctions shall be forgotten. Political profperity is of very uncertain duration; and to states as to individuals, profperity itself has its dangers. In oppofition, or in power, your fupereminent abilities must always be valuable, if you will but know their value, and point their use; but while you fink the one and pervert the other, though we may afford you our admiration or our regret, we cannot bestow our respect or our confidence. BRUTUS, Bruce's Travels, [As Bruce's Travels to discover the Source of the Nile at present very much engage the public attention, we hope it will be agreeable to our readers if we select, in this and fome future Numbers, a few of the most entertaining and interesting paffages of that work. In the Introduction there is an account of the author's proceedings preparatory to his fetting out on the expedition which makes the subject of his book: and he concludes that introduction as follows:] "I HAVE now one remaining part of my promise to fulfil, to account for the delay in the publication. It will not be thought surprising to any that shall reflect on the diftant, dreary, and defert ways by which all letters were necessarily to pass, or the civil wars then raging in Abyssinia, the robberies and violences infeparable from a total dissolution of government, such as happened in my time, that no accounts for many years, one excepted, ever arrived in Europe. One letter, accompanied by a bill for a sum borrowed from a Greek at Gondar, found its way to Cairo; all the reft had miscarried; my friends at home gave me up for dead; and, as my death must have happened in cir cumstances difficult to have been proved, my property became as it were an hereditas jacens, without an owner, abandoned in common to those whose original title extended no further than temporary poffeffion. "A number of law-fuits were the inevitable consequence of this upon my return. One carried on with a very expensive obstinacy for the space of ten years, by a very opulent and active company, was determined finally in the House of Peers, in the compass of a very few hours, by the well-known sagacity and penetration of a noble Lord, who, happily for the fubjects of both countries, holds the first office in the law; and so judicious was the sentence, that harmony, mutual mutual confidence, and good neighbourhood has ever since been the con.. sequence of that determination. Other suits still remained, which unfortunately were not arrived to the degree of maturity to be so cut off; they are yet depending; patience and attention, it is hoped, may bring them to an issue at some future time. No imputation of rasiness can possibly fall upon the decree, fince the action lhas depended above thirty years. "To these difagreeable avocations, which took up much time, were added others still more unfortunate. The relentless ague caught at Bengazi maintained its ground at times for a space of more than fixteen years, though every remedy had been used, but in vain; and, what was worst of all, a lingering distemper had feriously threatened the life of a most near relation, which, after nine years constant alarm, where ever duty bound me to attention and attendance, conducted her at last, in very early life, to her grave*. "The love of folitude is the constant follower of affliction; this again paturally turns an instructed mind to study. My friends unanimously affailed me in the part most accessible when the fpirits are weak, which is vanity. They represented to me how ignoble it was, after all my dangers and difficulties were over, to be conquered by a misfortune incident to all men, the indulging of which was unreasonable in itself, fruitless in its confequences, and so unlike the expectation I had given my coustry, by the firmness and intrepidity of my former character and behaviour. Among these, the principal and most urgent was a gentleman well known to the literary world, in which he holds a rank nearly as diftinguished as that to which his virtues entitle him in civil life; this was the Hon. 1 "No great time has pafsed since the work was in hand. The materials collected upon the spot were very full and seldom deferred to be set down beyond the day wherein the events described happened; but oftner, when fpeeches and arguments were to be mentioned, they were noted the instart afterwards; for, contrary I believe to what is often the cafe, I can assure the reader these speeches and conversations are absolutely real, and not the fabrication of after-hours "It will perhaps be said, this work hath faults; nay, perhaps, great ones too, and this I readily confefs. But I must likewise beg leave to say, that I know no books of the kind that have not nearly as many, and as great, though perhaps not of the fame kind with mine. To fee distinctly and accurately, to describe plainly, dispaffionately and truly, is all that ought to be expected from one in my situation, constantly furrounded with every fort of difficulty and danger. It may be faid, too, there are faults in the language; more pains should have been taken. Perhaps it may be so; yet there has not been wanting a confiderable degree of attention even to this. I have not indeed confined myself to a painful and flavish nicety that would have produced nothing but a disagreeable stiffness in the narrative. It will be remembered likewife, that one of the motives of my Ss2 writing * Mrs Bruce died in 1784. nor writing is my own amusement, and I would much rather renounce the fubject altogether, than walk in fetters of my own forging. The language is, like the fubject, rude and manly. My paths have not been flowery ones, would it have added any credit to the work, or entertainment to the reader to employ in it a stile proper only to works of imagination and pleasure. These trifing faults I willingly leave as food to the malice of critics, who perhaps, were it not for these blemithes, would find no other enjoyment in the perusal of the work. It has been faid that parties have been formed against this work. Whether this is really the cafe I cannot say, nor have I ever been very anxious in the inquiry. They have been harmless adversaries at least, for no bad effects, as far as I know, have ever as yet been the consequences; reither is it a disquisition that I shall ever enter into, whether this is owing to the want of will or of power. I rather believe it is to the former, the want of will, for no one is so perfectly in confiderable, as to want the power of doing mischief. "Having now fulfilled my promife to the reader, in giving him the motive and order of my travels, and the reason why the publication has been delayed, I shall proceed to the last article promifed, the giving some account of the work itself. The book is a large one, and expensive by the number of engravings; this was not at first intended, but the journey has proved a long one, and matter has increased as it were insensibly under my hands. It is now come to fill a great chasm in the history of the universe. It is not intended to resemble the generality of modern travels, the agreeable and rational amusement of one vacant day, it is calculated to employ a greater space of time. "Those that are the best acquainted with Diodorus, Herodotus, and fome other Greek historians, will find some very confiderable difficulties re moved; and they that are unacquainted with these authors, and receive from this work the first information of the geography, climate, and manners of thefe countries, which are little altered, will have no great occafion to regret they have not fearched for information in more ancient fources. "The work begins with my voyage from Sidon to Alexandria, and up the Nile to the first cataract, The reader will not expect that I should dwell long upon the particular history of Egypt, every other year has furnished us with fome account of it, good or bad; and the two last publications of M. Savary and Volney seem to have left the subject threadbare. This, however, is not the only reason. "After Mr Wood and Mr Dawkins had published their Ruins of Palmyra, the late king of Denmark, at his own expence, fent out a number of men, eminent in their several professions, to make discoveries in the east, of every kind, with thefe very flattering instructions, that thơ they might, and ought, to visit both Baalbec and Palmyra for their own studies and improvement, yet he prohibited them to so far interfere with what the English travellers had done, as to form any plan of another work fimilar to theirs. This compliment was gratefully received; and, as I was directly to follow this mithon, Mr Wood defired me to return it, and to abstain as much as poffible from writing on the same subjects chosen by M. Niebuhr, at least to abstain either fiom criticising or differing from him on such subjects. I therefore passed slightly over Egypt and Arabia; perhaps, indeed, I have faid enough of both: if any shall be of another opinion they may have recourse to M. Niebuhr's more copious work; he was the only person of fix who lived to come home, the rest hawing died in different parts of Arabia, ( bia, without having been able to enter Abyffinia, one of the objects of their miffion. "My leaving Egypt is followed by my furvey of the Arabian gulf as far as the Indian Ocean---Arrival at Mafuah-Some account of the first peopling of Atbara and AbyssiniaConjectures concerning language First ages of the Indian trade---Foundation of the Abyssinian monarchy, and various revolutions till the Jewish ufurpation about the year yoo. These compose the first volume. "The second begins with the reftoration of the line of Solomon, compiled from their own annals, now first tranflated from the Ethiopic; the original of which has been lodged in the British Museum, to fatisfy the curiofity of the public. "The third comprehends my journey from Mafuah to Gondar, and the manners and customs of the Abyffinians, also two attempts to arrive at the fountains of the NileDescription of these sources, and of every thing relating to that river and its inundation. "The fourth contains my return from the fource of the Nile to Gondar-The campaign of Serbraxos, and revolution that followed - My return through Sennaar and Beja, or the Nubian defert, and my arrival at Marseilles. " In overlooking the work I have found one circumstance, and I think no more, which is not fufficiently clear, and may create a momentary doubt in the reader's mind, although to those who have been sufficiently at tentive to the narrative, I can scarce think it will do this. The difficulty is, How did you procure funds to support yourself, and ten men, so long, and so easily, as to enable you to undervalue the useful character of a physician, and seek neither to draw money nor protection from it? And how came it, that, contrary to the ufage of other travellers, at Gondar you maintained a character of independence and equality, especially at court; instead of crouching, living out of fight as much as possible, in continual fear of priests, under the patronage, or rather as servant to some men of power. "To this sensible and well-founded doubt I answer with great pleasure and readiness, as I would do to all others of the fame kind, if I could possibly divine them:-It is not at all extraordinary that a stranger like me, and a parcel of vagabonds like those that were with me, should get themselves maintained, and find at Gondar a precarious livelihood for a limited time. A mind ever so little polished and instructed has infinite superiority over Barbarians, and it is in circumstances like these that a man fees the great advantages of education. All the Greeks in Gondar were originally criminals and vagabonds; they neither had, nor pretended to any profeffion, except Petros the king's chamberlain, who had been a shoemaker at Rhodes, which profession at his arrival he carefully concealed. Yet these were not only maintained, but by. degrees, and without pretending to be physicians, obtained property, command, and pla ces. "Hospitality is the virtue of Barbarians, who are hofpitable in the ratio that they are barbarous, and for obvious reasons this virtue subsides among polished nations in the fame proportion. If on my arrival in Abyssiria I assumed a spirit of independence, it was from policy and reflection. I had often thought, that the misfortunes that had befallen other travellers in Abyssinia arose from the base estimation the people in general entertained of their rank, and the value of their perfons. From this idea I resolved to adopt a contrary behaviour. I was going to a court where there was a king of kings, whose throne was furrounded by a number of |