MISCELLANEOUS THO¢GIITS. 321 dered engine. The tender brain was ruffled perhaps, and the parts of it disturbed in the very embryo, or perhaps it was shaken with convulsions whin it first saw the light, but the place of its birth was the same with mine, and the neighbours say, it was born the next door to me. How miserable had I been, if, when the body was prepared, my soul had received order to go but one door farther, to fix its mortal dwelling there, and to manage that poor disabled machine ! And if the spirit also that resides there had been united to my flesh, it had been a sad exchange for me : That idiot had been all that I was by nature, and I had been that idiot. My meditations may rove farther abroad, may survey past ages and distant nations, and by the. powers of fancy, I may set myself in the midst of them. Had this spirit of mine been joined to a body formed in Lapland or Malabar, I had worshipped the images of Thor or Bramma ; and perhaps I had been a Lapland wizard with a conjuring drum, or a Malabarian priest, to wear out my life in ridiculous eastern ceremonies. Had my soul been formed and united to a British body fif- teen hundred years ago, I had been a painted Briton, a rude idolater, as well as my fathers; a superstitious druid had been my highest character, and I should have paid my absurd devo- tions to some fancied deity in a huge hollow oak, and lived and died in utter ignorance of the true God, and of Jesus my Saviour. Or had my spirit been sent to Turkey, Mahomet had been my prophet, and the ridiculous stories of the Alcoran had been all my hope of eternal life. If Gnatho the flatterer stood by, I know what he would say, for he has told me already, that as my stature is tall and manly, so my genius is too sublime and bright to be buried under those clouds of darkness. Last week he practised upon my' vanity, so far as to say, " Charistus has a soul and reason which would have led him to the knowledge of the true God, if he had been born in the wilds of America, and had for his father a sa- vage Iroquois, or his ancestors had been all Naraganset Indians." But I gave him a just and sharp reproof for his want of sense, as well as for his flattery. Fond foolish man, to imagine there are no geniuses which outshine me in the wild and barbarous world, no bright and sublime intellects but those which are appointed to act their part in the nations of Europe! Good sense and natural smartness are scattered among most of the nations of mankind. There are ingenious Africans, American wits, philosophers and poets in Malabar ; there are both the sprightly and the stupid, the foolish and the wise, on this and on the other side of the great Atlantic ocean : But the brighter powers of nature cannot exert them-
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