﻿22 THE FIFTH DISCOUS.SE*. 



of little consequence when our ideas are distinct with- 

 out them. Having given, therefore, a correct notion 

 of the country which I proposed to examine, I shall 

 not scruple to call it by the general name of Tartary ; 

 though I am conscious of using a term equally impro- 

 per in the pronunciation and the application of it. 



Tdrtary, then, which contained, according to Pliny, 

 an innumerable multitude of nations, by whom the rest 

 of Asia and all Europe has in different ages been over- 

 run, is denominated, as various images have presented 

 themselves to various fancies, the great hive of the 

 northern Swarms, the nursery of irresistible legions, and, 

 by stronger metaphor, the foundery of the human race ; 

 but M. BaiVy, a wonderfully ingenious man and a. 

 very lively writer, seems first to have considered it as 

 the cradle of our species, and to have supported an 

 opinion that the whole ancient world was enlightened 

 by sciences brought from the most northern parts of 

 Scythia, particularly from the banks of the Jenisca, or 

 from the Hyperborean regions. All the fables of old 

 Greece, Italy, Persia, India, he derives from the north; 

 and it must be owned, that he maintains his paradox 

 with acuteness and learning. Great learning and 

 great acuteness, together with the charms of a most 

 engaging style, were indeed necessary to render even 

 tolerable a system which places an earthly parndise, 

 the gardens of Hesperus, the islands of the Macares, 

 the groves of Elysium, if not of Eden, the heaven 

 of India, the Peristan, or fairy-land of the Per- 

 sum poets, with its city of diamonds and its 

 country of Shadcam, so named fiom Pleasure and 

 Love, not in any one climate which the common 

 jense of mankind considers as the seat of de- 

 lights, but bej'ond the mouth of the Oby, in the 

 Frozen Sea, in a region equalled only by that where 

 the wild imagination of Dante led him to fix the 

 worst of criminals in a state of punishment after 



