king was one day, for absence
from his post at a fire, "spread out in the hot sun." He was extended on
his back in the public road for some hours in the most sultry part of
the day, with a heavy weight upon his chest,--the public executioners
being employed to administer the punishment. Nor is the king alone
authorized to perpetrate such barbarisms. A creditor is permitted to
seize the wife, children, and slaves of a debtor, and bind them at his
door to broil in the sun of Ava. Here we see in perfection the union of
the conventional and the gross in manners; and such manners cannot be
conceived to coexist with any religion of a higher character than
Buddhism.

Under ascetic forms, what grossness there is will be partially
concealed; but there will be no nearer an approach to simplicity than
under the licentious. The religion being made still to consist much in
observances, the society becomes formal in proportion as it believes
itself growing pure. We must again take an extreme case for an example.
The Shakers of America are as sophisticated a set of persons as can be
found; with their minds, and even their public discourses, full of the
one subject of their celibacy, and their intercourse with each other
graduated according to strict rules of etiquette. So extreme an
asceticism can never now spread in any nation to such an extent as to
bear a relation to its general government: but it is observable that
such societies of ascetics live under a despotism;--one of their own
appointment, if the general will has not furnished them with one.

Under the moderate aspect of religion is an approximation towards
simplicity of social manners alone to be found. There is as yet only a
remote anticipation of it in any country in the world; only a remote
anticipation of that ease of social manners which must exist there alone
where the enjoyments of life are freely used without abuse. It matters
not that the licentious and the ascetic parties each boast of having
attained this consummation,--the one under the name of ease, and the
other of simplicity. There is too much pain attendant upon grossness to
justify the boast of ease; and too much effort in asceticism to admit of
the grace of simplicity. It is the observer's business to mark, wherever
he goes, the degree in which the one is chastened and the other relaxed,
giving place to the higher form of the moderate, which, if society
learns from experience, as the individual does, must