series
of the most direful objects, assassinations, rebellions, anarchy,
tyranny, and religion itself, either cruel, or gloomy and unsocial. An
historian who would paint it in its true colours must take the pencil of
Guercino or Salvator Rosa. But the most agreeable imagination can hardly
figure to itself a more pleasing scene of private and public felicity
than will naturally result from the union, if all the prejudices against
it, and all distinctions that may tend on either side to keep up an idea
of separate interests, or to revive a sharp remembrance of national
animosities, can be removed.

_Douglas_.--If they can be removed! I think it impossible they can be
retained. To resist the union is indeed to rebel against Nature. She
has joined the two countries, has fenced them both with the sea against
the invasion of all other nations, but has laid them entirely open the
one to the other. Accursed be he who endeavours to divide them. What
God has joined let no man put asunder.

DIALOGUE XXVI.

CADMUS--HERCULES.

_Hercules_.--Do you pretend to sit as high on Olympus as Hercules? Did
you kill the Nemean lion, the Erymanthian boar, the Lernean serpent, and
Stymphalian birds? Did you destroy tyrants and robbers? You value
yourself greatly on subduing one serpent; I did as much as that while I
lay in my cradle.

_Cadmus_.--It is not on account of the serpent I boast myself a greater
benefactor to Greece than you. Actions should be valued by their utility
rather than their eclat. I taught Greece the art of writing, to which
laws owe their precision and permanency. You subdued monsters; I
civilised men. It is from untamed passions, not from wild beasts, that
the greatest evils arise to human society. By wisdom, by art, by the
united strength of civil community, men have been enabled to subdue the
whole race of lions, bears, and serpents, and what is more, to bind in
laws and wholesome regulations the ferocious violence and dangerous
treachery of the human disposition. Had lions been destroyed only in
single combat, men had had but a bad time of it; and what but laws could
awe the men who killed the lions? The genuine glory, the proper
distinction of the rational species, arises from the perfection of the
mental powers. Courage is apt to be fierce, and strength is often
exerted in acts of oppression. But wisdom is the associate of justice.
It assists her to form equal laws, to pursue right meas