several questions, and found her understanding even more perfect than her person. He had been forced when young to marry from motives of interest; he was now resolved to marry pursuant to his own inclinations. He immediately inquired the history of the fair Livonian, who was not yet eighteen. He traced her through the vale of obscurity, through all the vicissitudes of her fortune, and found her truly great in them all. The meanness of her birth was no obstruction to his design; their nuptials were solemnized in private, the prince assuring his courtiers, that virtue alone was the properest ladder to a throne. We now see Catharina, from the low mud-walled cottage empress of the greatest kingdom upon earth. The poor solitary wanderer is now surrounded by thousands, who find happiness in her smile. She, who formerly wanted a meal, is now capable of diffusing plenty upon whole nations. To her fortune she owed a part of this pre-eminence, but to her virtues more.* She ever after retained those great qualities which first placed her on a throne; and while the extraordinary prince, her husband, labored for the reformation of his male subjects, she studied in her turn the improvement of her own sex. She altered their dresses, introduced mixed assemblies, instituted an order of female knighthood; and at length, when she had greatly filled all the stations of empress, friend, wife, and mother, bravely died without regret, regretted by all. Adieu. ["There have," says Voltaire," been instances, before this, of private persons being raised to the throne; but that a poor stranger, who had been discovered amidst the ruins of a plundered town, should become the absolute sovereign of that very empire into which she was led captive, is an incident which fortune and merit have never before produced in the annals of the world."] LETTER LXIII THE RISE OR THE DECLINE OF LITERATURE NOT DEPENDENT ON MAN, BUT RESULTING FROM THE VICISSITUDES OF NATURE. From Lien Chi Altangi, to Fum Hoam, &c. In every letter I expect accounts of some new revolutions in China, some strange occurrence in the state, or disaster among my private acquaintance. I open every packet with tremulous expectation, and am agreeably disappointed when I find my friends and my country continuing in felicity. I wander, but they are at rest; they suffer few changes but what pass in my own restless imagination; it is only the rapidity of my own motion, that gives an imaginary swiftness to objects which are in some measure immovable.* Yet believe me, my friend, that even China itself is impercep tibly degenerating from her ancient greatness: her laws are now more venal, and her merchants are more deceitful than formerly; the very arts and sciences have run to decay. Observe the carv ings on her ancient bridges; figures that add grace even to nature. There is not an artist now in all the empire that can imitate their beauty. Our manufactures in porcelain, too, are inferior to what we once were famous for; and even Europe now begins to excel us. There was a time when China was the receptacle of strangers; when all were welcome who either came to improve the state, or admire its greatness: now, the empire is shut up from every foreign improvement, and the very inhabitants dis *["Before my brother Charles came hither, my thoughts sometimes found refuge from severe studies among my friends in Ireland. I fancied strange revolutions at home; but I find it was the rapidity of my own motion that gave an imaginary one to objects really at rest."-Goldsmith to D. Hodson, Esq., Dec. 27, 1757. See Life, ch. vi.] courage each other from prosecuting their own internal advantages. Whence this degeneracy in a state so little subject to exter nal revolutions? how happens it that China, which is now more powerful than ever, which is less subject to foreign invasions, and even assisted in some discoveries by her connections with Europe; whence comes it, I say, that the empire is thus declining so fast into barbarity? This decay is surely from nature, and not the result of voluntary degeneracy. In a period of two or three thousand years she seems at proper intervals to produce great minds, with an effort resembling that which introduces the vicissitudes of seasons. They rise up at once, continue for an age, enlighten the world, fall like ripened corn, and mankind again gradually relapse into pristine barbarity. We little ones look around, are amazed at the decline, seek after the causes of this invisible decay, attribute to want of encouragement what really proceeds from want of power, are astonished to find every art and every science in the decline, not considering that autumn is over, and fatigued nature begins to repose for some succeeding effort. Some periods have been remarkable for the production of men of extraordinary stature, others for producing some particular animals in great abundance; some for excessive plenty, and others again seemingly causeless famine. Nature, which shows herself so very different in her visible productions, must surely differ also from herself in the production of minds, and while she astonishes. one age with the strength and stature of a Milo* or a Maximin,† [The celebrated athlete of Crotona, who is said to have borne a bullock four years old on his shoulders. The fate of Milo is told in two lines by Ros Wedg'd in that timber which he strove to rend." +[Caius Julius Verus Maximinus, assassinated by his own soldiers before the may bless another with the wisdom of a Plato, or the goodness of an Antonine. Let us not, then, attribute to accident the falling off of every nation, but to the natural revolution of things. Often in the darkest ages there has appeared some one man of surprising abil ities, who, with all his understanding, failed to bring his barbarous age into refinement; all mankind seemed to sleep, till nature gave the general call, and then the whole world seemed at once roused at the voice; science triumphed in every country, and the brightness of a single genius seemed lost in a galaxy of contiguous glory. Thus, the enlightened periods in every age have been universal. At the time when China first began to emerge from barbarity, the western world was equally rising into refinement; when we had our Yaou,* they had their Sesostris.† In succeeding ages, Confucius and Pythagoras seem born nearly together, and a train walls of Aquileia, A. D. 278, is represented by historians as having been eight feet in height, and sufficiently strong to break, with a blow of his fist, the teeth in a horse's mouth, and to cleave young trees with his hand. * [Yaou, the pattern of all Chinese emperors, is said to have commenced his reign 2357 years before Christ. According to the Shoo-king (one of the five canonical works), he commissioned Hi and Ho, and other eminent astronomers, to observe the revolutions of the heavens, and to proclaim to the people the periods of the different seasons; and, by the assistance of these learned men, he fixed the length of the year at 365 days, and at 366 in every fourth year. See Chinese, vol. i. p. 171.] + The actions and conquests of Sesostris are recorded by Herodotus, l. ii. c. 102. He is said to have caused the kings he vanquished to draw him in his chariot. Pope has given him a niche in the Temple of Fame— world. "High on his car Sesostris struck my view, His giant limbs are arm'd in scales of gold."] ["The family of Confucius is, in my opinion, the most illustrious in the After a painful ascent of eight or ten centuries, our barons and princes of Europe are lost in the darkness of the middle ages; but, in the vast equality of the empire of China, the posterity of Confucius have maintained, above two thousand two hundred years, this peaceful honor and perpetual suc of philosophers then sprung up as well in Greece as in China. The period of renewed barbarity began to have a universal spread much about the same time, and continued for several centuries, till in the year of the Christian era 1400, the emperor Yong-lo arose, to revive the learning of the east; while, about the same time, the Medicean family labored in Italy to raise infant genius from the cradle. Thus we see politeness spreading over every part of the world in one age, and barbarity succeeding in another; at one period a blaze of light diffusing itself over the whole world, and at another, all mankind wrapped up in the profoundest ignorance. Such has been the situation of things in times past; and such probably it will ever be. China, I have observed, has evidently begun to degenerate from its former politeness; and were the learning of the Europeans at present candidly considered, the decline would perhaps appear to have already taken place. We should find among the natives of the west, the study of morality displaced for mathematical disquisition, or metaphysical subtleties; we should find learning begin to separate from the useful duties and concerns of life, while none ventured to aspire after that character, but they who know much more than is truly amusing or useful. cession. The chief of the family is still revered by the sovereign and the people, as the lively image of the wisest of mankind."-Gibbon, Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 3.] * [Yong-lo ascended the throne, A. D. 1400. On his accession, the capital was transferred to Pekin. It was in his reign that Timour, or Tamerlane, died on his way to the conquest of China.] ↑ ["But see! each Muse, in LEO's golden days, Starts from her trance, and trims her wither'd bays, Rome's ancient Genius, o'er its ruins spread, Then Sculpture and her sister arts revive; Stones leap'd to form, and rocks began to live: |