XIV.

On the moral Uses of Geography.

AMONG those studies which are usually recommended to young people, there are few that might be improved to better uses than Geography: I mean by this, indeed, not a bare acquaintance with the outlines of a map, but some general knowledge of the people who inhabit this our globe; not their situation only, but their history and manners. It may, perhaps, be objected, that the title which I have given to this study, belongs to a subject much more bounded than the definition which I have since been making of it; but I think it may very well include a general knowledge of history, as extended to all parts of the habitable globe, though a more particular application to the histories of those few people who have made themselves very remarkable on it, may belong to a different science.

It is not only the error of the peasant boy, who imagines there is no habitable land beyond those mountains that enclose his native valley, but of many more, that we have to guard against, and of much more important tendency. How the idea of greatness and superiority vanish in a moment at

the unrolling a large map of the world, where we see England itself make so inconsiderable a figure! Let our thoughts be never so strongly attached to any particular place in this inconsiderable spot, it must give us a moment's reflection upon the insignificance of all those cares that centre in so imperceptible a point! Innumerable interruptions, indeed, trifling and vexaticus, will often happen to call down our most exalted thoughts; but for that very reason, we have the more need of returning to them often; and not only taking a transient view. of them in our minds, as shadows passing before a looking-glass, but trying to fix them there by reducing them to something solid; and ever drawing some practical precept from them, that may remain in our hearts, to whatever trifles imagination is hurried away by the various avocations of life.

Considered as a part of space, the spot each of us takes up, is, indeed, very insignificant; but nothing is so as relating to the internal system of the universe; and therefore, properly to fill the station there assigned us, deserves an equal degree of careTM in persons of every rank, and is not to be measured by the acres they possess.

This sort of consideration restores a higher value to the elevated circumstances of life than the former has robbed them of, in the low notion of intrinsic value. This should teach the miser to esteem his riches, rather by the treasure spent than by his secret hoard: it should teach every body, in general, from the day labourer to the king, by every possible

(

means, to raise themselves, in the moral world, to a degree of consideration, that their place in the natural world can never attain.

Could we (it is a strange wild fancy) imagine to * ourselves a map delineated of this as well as of the other, we should see then, that those vast continents which overspread the one, would be reduced upon the other to moderate bounds; while the smallest civilized tracts of land became extensive empires, in proportion to the improvements they have made in religious virtue and knowledge. This, after all, is the map of real consequence, and which will remain, with indelible strokes, long after the other; when all that it relates to is reduced to no

thing.

Can any one imagine riches the soul of life and source of joy? Let him but consider those vast tracts of land where the bosom of the earth is filled with glorious gems, and glows with unnumbered mines of gold: let him consider these countries barbarous and wretched, ignorant of almost every useful art and speculative science; untaught both in the elegance and use of life: then let him see, in some character of civilized generosity at home, what it is that gives all the gloss to fortune, and whence alone riches derive their lustre.

Is power the idol of the soul? Cast your eyes on the monarchs of Mogul or emperors of China: see how infinitely their grandeur, in immensity of wealth, in extent of dominion, in the adoration of

their subjects, exceeds whatever greatness we are dazzled with, in those minute instances that come within our sphere of personal knowledge: then, consider this greatness in itself; divested of all higher considerations-what is it but a wondrous tale to astonish foreigners; the shining subject of a book of voyages, perhaps, that will be thrown aside by the first incredulous person, as a lie, and read by the serious and the thoughtful, with such reflections, as the pride of the monarch would little approve. It must be considered too as subject to hourly revolutions: besides, that all the state of an Eastern monarch is incapable of affording the least relish to one who has been used to the refinements of life in more humanized nations.

The highest gratitude must surely be raised in us by such comparisons as these, when we reflect that those moral and civil improvements, which seem to set our little corner of the globe so far above the rest, that, like that mountain which the Siamese imagined to stand on those gems in the midst of the earth, the sun and moon seem to have their revolutions only around that, cheering and enlightening it with their warmest beams.

Such an extensire view of human kind as this, leads, likewise, to a general benevolence, dilates and enlarges the heart as well as the imagination. Where we behold a cultivated spot of land, the eye dwells on it with pleasure; and when we see nothing but wild and barren deserts around us, we wish that they could be improved into the same

A

smiling scene: we learn to look on the savage Indian as our fellow-creature, who has a mind as capable of every exalted satisfaction as ours; and therefore we pity him for the want of those enjoyments on which we pride ourselves. Frosa compassionate thoughts kind actions naturally flow: our endeavours will, in some degree, follow our wish, wherever it is sincere; and would we all join our endeavours to do all the good we are able, this earth would soon become a subject of such delightful contemplation, as should make us reflect, with infinite delight, upon the study that had first led us into so useful a train of thoughts.