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nay fwarms, with courts, defpotic, luxurious, infignificant, and- 

 corrupl ? — The influence operates more generally, in example and 

 oppreffion, to the depravation of man, by reafon of the confined 

 fphere in which it adls. A thoufand pigmy fovereign potentates, 

 with minds as barbarous as their titles, at once, weak and oppref- 

 five, contemptible and terrible, have, each his little puny ftanding, 

 army, his court, and his courtiers, his mafter of the revels, his 

 mafler of the hunt, and his prime minifter, his train of comedians,, 

 his train of courtifans, and his train of flatterers. 



The civil and religious tyranny, which prevail through the. 

 country, and check the free circulation of opinion, prevent th& 

 growth of knowledge, and the expanfion of intelled. Nations,, 

 wjiich are held, by civil and religious terrors, in the trammels of 

 ignorance, muft, of courfe, become ftupid, and depraved, in their 

 taftes and judgments ; they muft refemble children, and will, there- 

 fore, be delighted with fuch things as pleafe children, with the 

 monftrous and unnatural, with ftories of bloody murders, and le- 

 gends of ghofts and goblins, of giants and enchanters. It is the 

 natural effeQ of fuperflition, to retain men in a certain grofl'nefs of 

 manners. While it prevailed in England, the moft rude and 

 barbarous ftage reprefentations (the old myfteries , for inftance) 

 were received with applaufe. The public tafte, in moft parts o£ 

 Germany, (I mean the popular tafte among the mafs of ihe people) 

 is little more advanced at this day than it was two centuries ago 



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