I06 STUDIES OF NATURE, 



Here a young ruftic, with a bafket and ladder, 

 mounts a fruit-tree, like another Vertumms j while 

 fome young girl, in a winding of the adjoining 

 valley, fings her fong loud enough to be heard by 

 him, prefenting the image of another Pomona. If 

 cruel prejudices have flricken with fteriliiy and fo- 

 litude a confiderable part of France, and hence- 

 forth allot the pofleffion of a great Kingdom to a 

 little handful of proprietors, how is it that, inftead 

 of Founders of new orders. Founders of new co- 

 lonies do not arife among us, as among the Egyp 

 tians and the Greeks ? Shall France never have to 

 boaft of an Inachus, and of a Danaus f Why do we 

 force the African tribes to cultivate our lands in 

 America, while our own peafantry is ftarving for 

 want of employment at home ? Why do we not 

 tranfport thither our miferable poor by families ; 

 children, old men, lovers, coufms, nay, the very 

 churches and faints of our villages, that they may 

 find in thofe far diftant lands, the loves and the 

 illufions of a country. 



Ah ! had liberty and equality been invited to 

 thofe regions, where Nature does fo much with 

 moderate cultivation, the cottages of the New 

 World would, at this day, have been preferable 

 to the palaces of the Old. Will another Arcadia 

 never fpring up in fome corner of the Earth ? 

 When I imagined 1 had fome influence with men 



in 



