And these for ever, though a monarch reign,
Their separate cells and properties maintain.
Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state,
Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.'
Great Nature spake; observant Man obeyed;
Cities were built, societies were made:
Here rose one little state; another near

Grew by like means, and joined, through love or fear.

POPE.

The advances from the savage to the civilized state of mankind thus appear to be gradual. This is a very concise view of the origin of society, which has been adopted by most authors, both ancient and modern; for, not to enumerate the various fanciful theories of others, the origin of society must, after all, be derived from its real and only source, Nature herself.

That the associating principle is instinctive hardly requires a proof. An appeal to the feelings of any human being, and to the universal condition of mankind, is sufficient. These feelings, it may be said, are acquired by education and habit. By these causes, it is true, our social feelings are strengthened and confirmed: but their origin is coeval with the existence of the first human mind. Let any man attend to the eyes, the features, and the gestures of a child upon the breast, when another child is presented to it; both instantly, previous to the possibility of instruction or habit, exhibit the most evident expressions of joy. Their eyes sparkle; their features and gestures demonstrate, in the most unequivocal manner, a mutual attachment, and a strong desire of approaching each other, not with a hostile intention, but with an ardent affection, which, in that pure and uncontaminated state of our being, does honour to human nature. When farther advanced, children who are strangers to each other, although their social appetite is equally strong, discover a mutual shyness of approach. This shyness

or modesty, however, is soon conquered by the more powerful instinct of association. They daily mingle and sport together. Their natural affections, which, at that period, are strong, and unbiassed by those selfish and vicious motives which too often conceal and thwart the intentions of Nature, create warm friendships that frequently continue during their lives, and produce the most beneficial and cordial effects. When we thus see with our eyes, that the associating principle appears at a period much more early than many of our other instincts, who will attend to such writers as deny that man is naturally an associating animal?

The advantages which we derive from association are innumerable. Man, from the comparatively great number of instincts with which his mind is endowed, necessarily possesses a portion of the reasoning faculty highly superior to that of any other animal. He alone enjoys the power of expressing and communicating his ideas by articulate and artificial language. This inestimable prerogative is, perhaps, one of the greatest secondary bonds of society, and the greatest source of improvement to the human intellect. Without artificial language, although Nature has bestowed on every animal a mode of expressing its wants and desires, its pleasures and pains, what an humiliating figure would the human species exhibit, even upon the supposition that they did associate! But when association and language are conjoined, the human intellect, in the progress of time, arrives at a high degree of perfection. Society gives rise to virtue, honour, government, subordination, arts, science, order, happiness. All the individuals of a community conduct themselves upon a regulated system.

First gathering men their natural powers combined,
And formed a Public; to the general good
Submitting, aiming, and conducting all.

Hence every form of cultivated life
In order set, protected, and inspired,
Into perfection wrought. Uniting all
Society grew numerous, high, polite,

And happy. Nurse of art! the city reared,
In beauteous pride, her tower-encircled head.
Then Commerce brought into the public walk
The busy merchant.

Then too the pillared dome, magnific, heaved
Her ample roof; and Luxury within

Poured out her glittering stores; the canvass smooth,
With glowing life protuberant, to the view
Embodied rose; the statue seemed to breathe,
And soften into flesh, beneath the touch

Of forming Art.

The gift of Social Labour these; whate'er
Exalts, embellishes, and renders life
Delightful.

He, the kind source of every gentle art,
And all the soft civility of life!

Pensive Winter, cheered by him,

Sits at the social fire, and happy hears
Th' excluded tempest idly rave along;
His hardened fingers deck the gaudy Spring;
Without him Summer were an arid waste;

Nor to th' Autumnal months could e'er transmit
Those full, mature, immeasurable stores,
That beauteous wave around.

THOMSON.

No. LXIV.

ON THE FEATHERED CREATION.

Videmus

Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique sylvas.

LUCRETIUS.

Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade
Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix
Mellifluous.

THOMSON.

THE vocal groves, and the woodland choristers, have been favourite themes with the bard, whom the love of Nature inspires, and whose breast is formed by virtue to a true relish for her charms.

In Milton, the angel Raphael, describing the creation of the world to Adam, forgets not the feathered tribes:

Meanwhile the tepid caves, and fens and shores

Their brood as numerous hatch, from th' egg that soon
Bursting with kindly rupture forth disclosed

Their callow young, but feathered soon and fledged
They summed their pens, and soaring th' air sublime
With clang despised the ground, under a cloud
In prospect: there the eagle and the stork
On cliffs and cedar tops their eyries build:
Part loosely wing the region, part more wise,
In common, ranged in figure wedge their way,
Intelligent of seasons, and set forth

Their aery caravan high over seas

Flying, and over lands with mutual wing
Easing their flight: so steers the prudent crane
Her annual voyage, borne on winds; the air

Floats, as they pass, fanned with unnumbered plumes :
From branch to branch the smaller birds with song
Solaced the woods, and spread their painted wings
Till even, nor then the solemn nightingale
Ceased warbling, but all night tuned her soft lays :
Others on silver lakes and rivers bathed

Their downy breast; the swan with arched neck

Between her white wings mantling proudly, rows
Her state with oary feet; yet oft they quit

The dank, and rising on stiff pennons, tower

The mid aërial sky. Others on ground

Walked firm; the crested cock whose clarion sounds
The silent hours, and th' other whose gay train
Adorns him, coloured with the florid hue
Of rainbows and starry eyes.

Nor can that delightful series of pictures, so truly expressive of the general spirit that pervades the Spring, which Thomson has formed on the variety of circumstances attending the passion of the groves,' escape the notice and attention of the most negligent eye. With him we see the gay troops begin to plume the painted wing, and try again the long-forgotten strain. The woods resound with lavish harmony. Attentive to the voice of love, we behold the glossy kind pour forth their little souls in courtship to their mates. Having formed connubial leagues, they retire to their respective haunts, and build their nests with inimitable skill. The parental cares now engage their attention; and with what courage, and with what art, do they employ the varied stratagem, to divert from their tender progeny the rude foot that would molest them! How sweetly too does the poet lament the barbarous art that deprives the soft tribes of liberty and boundless air! How pathetically bemoan the misery of the nightingale, when, returning to her young with loaded bill, she finds a vacant nest, robbed by the hard hand of some unrelenting clown! What a picture does he exhibit, when the feathered youth first attempt to fly; when, the last glad office done, parental love, grown needless, dissolves at once! Nor does he forget the royal eagle, in his towering seat; nor the cawing rook in his airy city; nor the various policy of the mixed domestic kind'.

Spring, line 569 to 785.