the proper remedies for the evils he describes. In this calamity, on
which he dwells longest, and which he seems to deplore with the deepest
sorrow, he points out one circumstance, which may be of great use to
disperse our apprehensions, and awaken us from that panick which the
reader must necessarily feel, at the first transient view of this
dreadful description. These serpents, says the original, are "haud
pugnaces," of no fighting race; they will threaten, indeed, and hiss,
and terrify the weak, and timorous, and thoughtless, but have no real
courage or strength. So that the mischief done by them, their ravages,
devastations, and robberies, must be only the consequences of cowardice
in the sufferers, who are harassed and oppressed, only because they
suffer it without resistance. We are, therefore, to remember, whenever
the pest, here threatened, shall invade us, that submission and tameness
will be certain ruin, and that nothing but spirit, vigilance, activity,
and opposition, can preserve us from the most hateful and reproachful
misery, that of being plundered, starved, and devoured by vermin and by
reptiles.

"Horrida dementes
Rapiet discordia gentes;
Plurima tunc leges
Mutabit, plurima reges
Natio."

"Then o'er the world shall discord stretch her wings,
Kings change their laws, and kingdoms change their kings."

Here the author takes a general survey of the state of the world, and
the changes that were to happen, about the time of the discovery of this
monument, in many nations. As it is not likely that he intended to touch