375 
COWPER’s PLAINT FOR MAI. 
Exploring far and wide the wat’ry waste 
For sight of ship from England. Ev’ry speck 
Seen in the dim horizon turns thee pale 
With conflict of contending hopes and fears; 
But comes at last the dull and dusky eve, 
And sends thee to thy cabin, well prepared 
To dream all night of what the day denied. 
Alas ! expect it not. We found no bait 
To tempt us in thy country. Doing good, 
Disinterested good, is not our trade. 
We travel far, 'tis true, but not for nought; 
And must be bribed to compass earth again 
By other hopes, and richer fruits, than yours.” 
In the visit of Mai, the experiment, in reference, 
to the effect of refinement, civilization, and philo¬ 
sophy, upon the ignorant and uncivilized, was tried 
under circumstances the most favourable for pro¬ 
ducing sympathy in one party, and impression on 
the other:—the result was affecting. The indi¬ 
vidual who had been brought from the ends of 
the earth, and shewn whatever England could 
furnish, suited to impress his wondering mind, 
returned, and became as rude and indolent a bar¬ 
barian as before. With one solitary exception, the 
humanizing and elevating principles of the Bible 
do not appear to have been presented to his notice, 
and he seemed to have derived no benefit from his 
voyage. Well might the poet lament his fate.— 
But the ship Duff had not sailed, and the spirit of 
Missionary enterprise was not aroused in the 
British churches. Institutions, the ornament and 
the glory of our country, had not arisen. The 
schoolmaster was not abroad in the earth, and, 
proceeding onward with the tide of commerce that 
rolled round the world, the progress of discovery 
and science penetrating every remote, inhospitable 
section of our globe; the Bible and the Missionary 
had not been sent. Had Cowper witnessed these 
