l86 STUDIES OF NATURE. 



would be difpofed to fay, that each of them had 

 borrowed it's manners, and it's indiiftry, from fome 

 fpecies of animal; fo varied are their employ- 

 ments. 



Walk out to yonder plain, at the entrance of 

 the city J behold that general officer mounted on 

 his prancing courfer : he is reviewing a body of 

 troops : fee, the heads, the (houlders, and the feet, 

 of his foldiers, arranged in the fame ftraight line ; 

 the whole embodied corps has but one look, one 

 movement. He makes a fign, and in an inftant 

 a thoufand bayonets gleam in the air ; he makes 

 another, and a thoufand fires ftart from that ram- 

 part of iron. You would think, from their preci- 

 fion, that a lingle fire had iifued from a fingle 

 piece. He gallops round thofe fmoke-covered re- 

 giments, at the found of drums and fifes, and you 

 have the image of Jupiter's eagle, armed with the 

 thunder, and hovering round Etna. A hundred 

 paces from thence, there, is an infed: among men. 

 Look at that puny chimney-fweeper, of the colour 

 of foot, with his lantern, his cymbal, and his lea- 

 thern greaves : he refembles a black-beetle. Like 

 the one which, in Surinam, is called the lantern- 

 bearer, he fhines in the night, and moves to the 

 found of a cymbal. This child, thofe foldiers, and 

 that general, are equally men ; and while birth, 

 pride, and the demands of fecial life eftablifli in- 

 finite 



