Page:The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India.djvu/37

 the enthusiasm of military honour characterizes the rank of gentlemen, that nation will rise into empire. But no sooner does conquest give a continued security, than the mere soldier degenerates; and the old veterans are soon succeeded by a new generation, illiterate as their fathers, but destitute of their virtues and experience. Luxury prevails; titles and family are the only merit, and the whole body of the nobility are utterly ignorant of the principles of commerce and true policy. A stately grandeur is preserved, but it is only outward, all is decayed within, and on the first storm the weak fabrick falls to the dust. Thus rose and thus fell the empire of Rome, and the much wider one of Portugal. But most essentially different from this is the present character of the British nation: Science and every branch of liberal study have here taken deep root, and spread their fruitful boughs wide over the unrivalled empire. Our politicians of the day may declaim as ignorant passion leads them, but the true character of the present age, compared with that of the last and the preceding centuries, does honour to human nature. Neither do the slavish principles of the Royalists of the last century, nor the unconstitutional fury of the Republicans, constitute the present general character. A spirit more manly than that of the former, more rational, more liberal than that of both, predominates in every branch of the people. The weakness of effeminacy has neither appeared in the Camp nor in the Senate. The advantages of cultivated talents, on the contrary, never shone forth with greater lustre, than the present age has beheld them displayed, in the disputes of the Senate and in the arts of war. And if thus we are defended against the evils of effeminacy, we may also presume, that the same liberal cultivation of the minds of the Great will preserve us from those evils which other nations have suffered from the sudden influx of enormous wealth. The wisdom of legislature might certainly have prevented every evil which Spain and Portugal have experienced from their acquisitions in the two Indies. But what other than