310 TRAVELS IN U-PPER 



But the consequences which would infallibly en- 

 sue, under favourable circumstances, have been pre- 

 vented under those which have accompanied the 

 French expedition into Egypt. War is universally 

 allowed to be the greatest impediment to the esta- 

 blishment of colonics. Like a devouring confla- 

 gration, it consumes, it destroys every thing which 

 it approaches ; commerce, agriculture, every source 

 of public prosperity, is dried up or annihilated; the 

 bright flame of the torch which the genius of the 

 arts and sciences displays to enlighten mankind, 

 grows pale at the spectacle of public calamity, and 

 is at leufTth extinguished in the tears which mlsfor- 

 tunc every where causes to flow. The pestilential 

 breath of ambitious passions stiflesthe voice of phi- 

 losophy ; all good vanishes ; every species of woe 

 accumulates. Instead of waters producing fruit- 

 fulness, the earth is inundated with blood, the fer- 

 tility of which is dreadful. Ravage succeeds to cul- 

 tivation, and famine takes the place of abundance. 

 Misfortunes of every kind throng the stage of the 

 theatre of desolation and blood which war rears ; 

 and the man of sensibility, with a v^'ounded spirit 

 and a heart oppressed with sorrow, feels his indig- 

 nation roused against atrocious wretches, who in 

 the pursuits of ambition make a cruel sport of the 

 life of men, and whose ferociousness has no coun- 

 terpart in nature ; the tigers at least never revel 

 in the blood of their own species. 



No 



