erty; but we need
not go so far from home to wonder at such a phenomenon, when one of
the most enslaved people in all Europe (the French, no doubt, are
intended; this was published in 1777,) are characterised as the
merriest and most facetious of mankind. Still there may be more
sincerity in the cheerfulness of the natives of Tonga-tabboo, for,
exclusive of great and almost servile submission, their king does not
seem to exact any thing from them, which, by depriving them of the
means to satisfy the most indispensable wants of nature, could make
them miserable. Be this as it may, so much seems to be certain, that
their systems of politics and religion, from their similarity with the
Otaheitan, as far as we could judge, must have had one common origin,
perhaps in the mother country, from whence both these colonies issued.
Single dissonant customs and opinions may have acceded to the
primitive ideas, in proportion as various accidents, or human
caprices, have given rise to them. The affinity of their languages is
still more decisive. The greatest part of the necessaries of life,
common to both groups of islands, the parts of the body, in short, the
most obvious and universal ideas, were expressed at the Society and
Friendly Isles, nearly by the same words. We did not find that
sonorousness in the Tonga-tabboo dialect, which is prevalent in that
of Otaheite, because the inhabitants of the former have adopted the F,
K, and S, so that their language is more replete with consonants. This
harshness is compensated, however, by the frequent use of the liquid
letters L, M, N, and of the softer vowels E and I, to which we must
add that kind of singing tone, which they generally retain even in
common conversation."--G.F.

No apology, it is presumed, need be given, for the insertion of so
able a specimen of philosophical discernment, and judicious reasoning.
Few men have exhibited happier talents for this department of
literature, than the younger Forster; and it is perhaps the more
generous to yield him this commendation now, as his merit has hitherto
been almost totally immersed in the celebrity of greater names. His
work is glaringly superior, in perhaps every particular, to the
compilation of Dr Hawkesworth; and the writer for one, would feel
ashamed of himself, if he had not courage to avow