creatures be suffered to despair, what will become of nations? The past
is perhaps too discouraging; I must anticipate futurity, and disclose to
the eye of virtue the astonishing age that is ready to begin; that, on
viewing the object she desires, she may be animated with new ardor, and
redouble her efforts to attain it.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NEW AGE.

Scarcely had he finished these words, when a great tumult arose in the
west; and turning to that quarter, I perceived, at the extremity of
the Mediterranean, in one of the nations of Europe, a prodigious
movement--such as when a violent sedition arises in a vast city--a
numberless people, rushing in all directions, pour through the streets
and fluctuate like waves in the public places. My ear, struck with the
cries which resounded to the heavens, distinguished these words:

What is this new prodigy? What cruel and mysterious scourge is this? We
are a numerous people and we want hands! We have an excellent soil, and
we are in want of subsistence? We are active and laborious, and we live
in indigence! We pay enormous tributes, and we are told they are not
sufficient! We are at peace without, and our persons and property are
not safe within. Who, then, is the secret enemy that devours us?

Some voices from the midst of the multitude replied:

Raise a discriminating standard; and let all those who maintain and
nourish mankind by useful labors gather round it; and you will discover
the enemy that preys upon you.

The standard being raised, this nation divided itself at once into
two bodies of unequal magnitude and contrasted appearance. The one,
innumerable, and almost total, exhibited in the poverty of its clothing,
in its emaciated appearance and sun-burnt faces, the marks of misery and
labor; the other, a little group, an insignificant faction, presented in
its rich attire embroidered with gold and silver, and in its sleek and
ruddy faces, the signs of leisure and abundance.

Considering these men more attentively, I found that the great body was
composed of farmers, artificers, merchants, all professions useful
to society; and that the little group was made up of priests of every
order, of financiers, of nobles, of men in livery, of commanders of
armies; in a word, of the civil, military, and religious agents of
government.

These two bodies being assembled face to face, and regarding each other
with astonishment, I saw indignation and rage arising in one sid