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fortunes gave birth to that affecting tale. Most willingly 

 indeed would they deny the existence of the author himselfj 

 if we may judge from the eagerness with which they retail 

 the grossest calumnies against his moral character. A man 

 labours under peculiar disadvantages, who, like St. Pierre, 

 publishes an account of a confined spot, such as the Isle of 

 France. If he ventures to give the slightest sketch of 

 manners, or deviates into anecdote, he is sure to offend. 

 Where all the members of a community are mutually known, 

 every awkward fact made public has instantly its application. 

 Eulogy itself, when dispensed under such circumstances, 

 changes its character and becomes satire. Praise bestowed 

 on a near neighbour seems as if it was within a short space 

 of falling to our own share, and our mortification at missing 

 it is proportionally severe. We feel somewhat like the man 

 in the lottery, who has drawn the next number to the capital 

 prize. 



" The description of a country usually receives its colouring 

 from the natural disposition or actual state of mind of the 

 describer. As all objects appear ' yellow to the jaundiced eye,* 

 so every thing with him is tinged by the prejudice through 

 which he views it. Hence it is that sentimental travellers 

 are not to be literally understood when they deal out censure 

 any more than when they bestow praise. St. Pierre ex- 

 perienced some vexations during his residence in Mauritius, 

 which disgusted him with the country as well as with the in- 

 habitants. The men, accordingly, are all rogues, the women 

 jades, and the island a loathsome receptacle for slaves and 

 felons. On his way home, he received some civilities at the 

 Cape of Good Hope, and in the barren sands of Africa he 

 sees nothing but verdant meadows; in the half-savage boors, 

 worthy representatives of the Arcadians of the Golden Age. 

 He asserts, as matter of reproach, that the trees in Mauritius 

 are covered with a grey pellicle instead of bark. Had he 

 travelled as a tanner, such a circumstance would have fur- 

 nished reasonable grounds for bad humour ; but to a philo- 

 sopher it should afford only an additional motive for admiring 

 the various means by which nature contrives to attain her 



