96
The PRESENT STATE
of the people to whom the criticism is directed.
If, for instance, the English be a people who look upon death as an incident no way terrible, but sometimes fly to it for refuge from the calamities of life, why should a Frenchman be disgusted at our bloody stage? there is nothing hideous in the representation to one of us, whatever there might be to him.
We have long been characteriz'd as a nation of spleen, and our rivals on the continent as a land of levity. Ought they to be offended at the melancholly air which many of our modern poets assume, or ought we to be displeased with them for all their harmless trifling upon pincushions, parrots, and pretty faces. What is rational with us, becomes with themfor-
