the pureft efFu- fions of friendfliip and general philan- thropy, and fhew how great a degree of the latter may be compounded with ftrong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn of his compliments, and his ftile is eafy and familiar, except when he afFefts a Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant, ef- capes inceflantly from every reftraint of reafon and tafte, and, in the courfe of its vagaries, leaves a trad: of thought as in- coherent and eccentric, as is the courfe of a meteor through the Iky. His fubjefts Jhould often have led him to a procefs of fober reafoning: yet we find him always fubftituting fentiment for demonftration* Upon the whole, though we admit him to the firft place among thofe of his own colour who have prefented themfelves to the public judgment, yet when we com- pare him wdth the writers of the race among whom he lived and particularly with the epiftolary clafs, m which he has taken his own (land, we are compelled to enrol him at the bottom of the column.
This criticifm fuppofes the letters publiihed under his name to be genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand ; points which would not be of eafy inveftigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the firft in- ftance of their mixture with the whites, has been obferved by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the ef- fed: merely of their condition of life. We know that among the Romans, about the Auguftan age efpecially, the condition of their flaves was much more deplo- rable than that of the blacks on the con- tinent of America. The two fexes were confined in feparate apartments, becaufe to raife a child coft the mafler more than to buy one. Cato, for a very reftrifted indulgence to his flaves in this particular*, took from them a certain price. But in this country the flaves multiply as faft as * Tous doulous etaxen orifmenou nomefmatos homikin tais therapainfin.
Elutarch. Cato, the free inhabitants. Their fituation and manners place the commerce between the two fexes almoft without reflraint.—The fame Cato, on a principle of oeconomy, always fold his fick and