that the brutal ferocity of
feeding upon human flesh, and the horrid superstition of offering human
sacrifices, should be found to exist amongst the natives lately
discovered in the Pacific Ocean, who, in other respects, appear to be no
strangers to the fine feelings of humanity, to have arrived at a certain
stage of social life, and to be habituated to subordination and
government, which tend so naturally to repress the ebullitions of wild
passion, and expand the latent powers of the understanding?

Or, if we turn from this melancholy picture, which will suggest copious
matter for philosophical speculation, can we, without astonishment,
observe to what a degree of perfection the same tribe (and indeed we may
here join, in some of those instances, the American tribes visited in
the course of the present voyage) have carried their favourite
amusements, the plaintive songs of their women, their dramatic
entertainments, their dances, their olympian games, as we may call them,
the orations of their chiefs, the chants of their priests, the solemnity
of their religious processions, their arts and manufactures, their
ingenious contrivances to supply the want of proper materials, and of
effective tools and machines, and the wonderful productions of their
persevering labour under a complication of disadvantages, their cloth
and their mats, their weapons, their fishing instruments, their
ornaments, their utensils, which in design and in execution may vie with
whatever modern Europe or classical antiquity can exhibit?

It is a favourite study with the scholar to trace the remains of Grecian
or Roman workmanship; he turns over his Montfaucon with learned
satisfaction; and he gazes with rapture on the noble collection of Sir
William Hamilton. The amusement is rational and instructive. But will
not his curiosity be more awakened, will he not find even more real
matter for important reflection, by passing an hour in surveying the
numerous specimens of the ingenuity of our newly-discovered friends,
brought from the utmost recesses of the globe to enrich the British
Museum, and the valuable repository of Sir Ashton Lever? If the
curiosities of Sir Ashton's Sandwich-room alone were the only
acquisition gained by our visits to the Pacific Ocean, who, that has
taste to admire, or even eyes to behold, could hesitate to pronounce
that Captain Cook had not sailed in vain? The expence of his three
voyages did not, perhaps, far exceed that of