STUDY I. 65 



the Sea, and on the fummit of the loftlefl moun- 

 tains. Man is the only being who gives it all the 

 modulations of which it is fufceptible. With his 

 voice alone, he imitates the hiffing, the cries, 

 the finging of all animals ; while he enjoys the 

 gift of fpeech, denied to every other. Some- 

 times he communicates fenfibility to the Air ; he 

 makes it figh in the pipe, to complain in the flute, 

 to threaten in the trumpet, and to animate to the 

 tone of his paffions the brafs, the box-tree, and the 

 reed. Sometimes he makes it his flave ; he forces 

 it to grind, to bruife, and to move, to his advan- 

 tage, an endlefs variety of machinery. In a word, 

 he yokes it to his car, and conftrains it to waft 

 him even over the billows of the Ocean. 



That Element, in which few of the inhabitants 

 of Earth are able to live, and which feparates their 

 different clafles, by a boundary more infurmount- 

 able than that of Climate, prefents to Man alone 

 the eaiieft of communications. He fwims in it, 

 he dives, he purfues the fea-monfter to the abyffes 

 of the deep j he hunts and flabs the whale even 

 under mountains of ice j and alights on every 

 ifland in the bofom of the Sea, and aflerrs his em- 

 pire over it. 



But he had no need of that which he exercifes 



over Air and Water, to render his fovereigniy 



VOL. I. F univerfal. 



