30 



subjects, though the countiy has iuHuense inland navi7 

 gatiou on its rivers and canals, and a coasting trade, for 

 the conununications of the natives with each other, and is 

 overburthened with its population: and, although it has 

 commodities and manufactures, which foreigners are, mos^ 

 desirous of obtaining, the Chinese do not send out their 

 fleets, or engage in distant expeditions. The Japanese go- 

 vernment is still more circumspect, subject to alami, and 

 repulsive of strangers. Woe to the Jine arts, and the pro- 

 fessors of them, if the sovereign should take a fancy to 

 cultivate them! His affection and attachment will be as 

 fatal to them, as the love of Jupiter was to Semele, in 

 fable. All the jine arts declined in Rome, under Nero and 

 his successors; although that strange inconstant monster 

 not only admired, but cultivated them with so much ar- 

 dour, that he produced ejjic poems and tragedies, and 

 sung and played, for nights together, on the public stage; 

 and although his sensibility to poetic fame was such, that 

 his jealousj^ and envy of the rising talents of Lucan, are 

 supposed to have occasioned the death of tliat admirable 

 poet. 



The Jine arts were at a still lower ebb, under that mi- 

 serable race of tyrants, the later Greek emperors. The 

 drama, if it produced any thing, was probably detestable. 

 Yet these sovereigns mixed, with an extraordinary degree 

 of anxiety, in all the petty disputes and disturbances of 

 the theatre; as distinguished and marshalled, Avith the va- 

 rious colours of the different factions. Why, then, Avas 



Egypt 



