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luxury muft be injurious by which a country is depopulated, 

 but a foreigner who took his ideas of England in the year 

 1769 from Goldfmith's Defertcd Village would be flrangely 

 milled. Yet on this imaginary and infecurc foundation has 

 been conftrudled a poem which may be expe(5led to lafl: as 

 long as the Englifli language fliall endure, and nature and fim- 

 plicity delight. 



But though Goldfmith's Theories are not eftablifhed truths, 

 the author certainly wrote himfelf into a full perfuafion of 

 them, and it is our fatisfaction that they afford topics admi- 

 rably adapted for difplaying his peculiar felicities and com- 

 municating his felefled information. About two hundred lines 

 of the Traveller were fcnt by him from Switzerland to his 

 brother. It is natural to fuppofe that thefe contained the 

 author's defcriptions of the countries through which he had 

 travelled, and obfcrvations on the manners of their inhabi- 

 tants. The fuperior excellency of the portrait of the Swifs 

 feems to warrant this fuppofition. Pleafed with his own ram- 

 bling life he faw the people apparently happy wherever he 

 went. At his return he faw the happinefi of his own coun- 

 try and compofed his poem on the theory of equal happinefs 

 every where, and in the contrafted charaders of the feveral 

 ftates which he had vifited he thought he faw the particular 

 principle on which it was founded. As a writer more than 

 as a politician he perceived the powerful influence of party in 



England, 



