through the same ordeal of experience, must be their natural peers and judges.

Such an establishment would cost the State a

very small matter. Every Province of France might found within itself an asylum for a family of the Nation with which it is most closely connected by it's Commerce. A similar exertion might be made by those of our Grandees, who having merited well of their own vassals, feel themselves worthy of being the protectors of a Nation. Finally, foreign powers should be admitted to the honour of establishing similar refuges in our Country, for a family of their unfortunate subjects. Those powers would not be slack to imitate our example at home. Most of them have, like us, foreign soldiers in their pay, and National Ambassadors at Foreign Courts, all to display their glory, that is, frequently to scatter misery over the World. It would cost them much less to do for the interests of humanity, what they have been doing so long, and to so little purpose, for the promotion of their political views.

We

The most unspeakable benefits would result from it in favour of our Manufactures and Trade. should find in those families an accession of new industry, for the improvement of arts and agriculture; of observations to assist scholars and philosophers; of interpreters for all languages; and of centres of correspondence for every part of the Globe. Thus, as at Amsterdam, every pillar of the Exchange, inscribed with the name of a foreign City, is the centre of the Commerce of Holland with that City, every family, escaped from the calamity

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lamity would be, in this sanctuary, the centre of the hospitality of France with respect to a foreign Nation. A Frenchman would no longer have occasion to travel from home, in order to acquire the knowledge of Nature and of Mankind: he might see in the spot I have been describing all that is most interesting over the face of the Earth; the most useful plants and animals; and what is of all other things the most affecting to the heart of man, unfortunate beings who have ceased to be such. By bringing all these families into contact, we should extinguish among them the prejudices and the animosities which inflame their respective Nations, and occasion the greatest part of the miseries which they endure.

In the midst of their habitations there should be an uninhabited grove, formed of all the foreign trees which have been naturalized by time and culture in our country, and of those which grow spontaneously in our forests, such as the elm, the poplar, the oak, and the like.....In the centre of this grove there should be plantations of all our fruit trees, walnuts, vines, apples, pears, chesnuts, apricots, peaches, cherries, interspersed amidst fields of corn, strawberries, and pot-herbs which serve for food to man. Amidst this scene of cultivation, terminated by a brook with banks sufficiently steep to serve as a fence to the animals, should be a vast down for the continual pasturage of herds of cows, flocks of sheep, of goats, and of all the animals which minister to the comfort of man by their milk, their wool, or their services. Toward the centre of this down should be reared a spacious Temple

in form of a rotundo, open to the four cardinal points of the Globe, without figures, without ornaments, without inscriptions and without gates, like those which in the early ages of the world were consecrated to the Author of Nature. On every day of the year, each family would resort hither in it's turn, at the rising and setting of the sun, there to recite in the language of their fathers, the prayer of the Gospel, which being addressed to God as the Father of Mankind, is adapted to men of all nations. Accordingly, as most religions have set apart to God a particular day

of

every week; the Turks, Friday; the Jews, Saturday; Christians, Sunday; the Nations of Nigritia, Tuesday; and other Nations undoubtedly, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, the Deity would be approached in this Temple with solemn religious worship every day of the week, and in a different language all the days of the year.

As happy animals gather round the habitations of men without fear, in like manner, happy men would assemble without the spirit of intolerance around the Temple of the Divinity. A sense of gratitude to God, and to men, would there gradually draw to approximation the languages, the customs, and the worship which separate the inhabitants of all the earth. Nature would there triumph over political distinction. The inhabitants. of this Colony would there present to God in common the fruits with which he sustains human life

in our climates. As the year is a perpetual circle of his benefits, and as every Moon brings new foliage, or fruits, or pot-herbs, every new Moon would be the epocha of their crops, of their offer

ings, and of their principal festivals. On these hallowed days all the families might assemble round the temple, there to partake in common of a harmless repast, consisting of the roots of the plants, the fruits of the trees, the corn of the grasses, and the milk of the flocks. Love would bring them still nearer to each other. The young people of both sexes would there dance upon the down to the sound of the different instruments of their own Country. The female Indian of the Ganges, with a tambour in her hand, brown and lively like a daughter of Aurora, would behold with smiles a son of the Thames, smitten with her charms laying at her feet the rich muslins of which Calcutta strips her country. The blessing of love would there compensate the rapine of war. The timid Indian girl of Peru would there permit her eyes to repose on those of a young Spaniard, become her lover and protector. The Negress of the Guinea coast, with her necklace of coral and teeth of ivory, would smile on the son of the European who formerly led her fathers in chains of iron, and would desire no other revenge than to lock the son, in her turn, in her arms of ebony.

Love and marriage would there unite lovers of all Nations, Tartars and women of Mexico, the Siamese and Laponian, the Russian and the Algonkine, the Persian and the Moresco, the Kamtschadale and the female Georgian. Felicity would attract thither all men to the practice of toleration. The French woman during the dance would with one hand place a garland of flowers on the head of a German, and with the other pour out. wine into the cup of a Turk, She would animate

by

by her frankness and decent graces, those hospitable feasts given in her country to all the tribes of the universe, and when the setting sun should lengthen on the downs the shadow of the groves, and gild their summits with his departing beams, all the choirs of the dance collected round the Temple, would sing in concert to the Author of Nature a hymn of gratitude, repeated by the echoes from distance to distance.

Ah! why should I not one day see in this Asylum for the misery of the Human Race, some of the wretched beings whom I have met far from their native country, without any one to take an interest in them! One day in the Isle of France, a weakly white slave, whose shoulders were flead by carrying stones, threw himself at my feet, and besought me to intercede for his liberty, of which, for several years past, he had been deprived by Europeans, in violation of the Law of Nations, for he was a Chinese. I represented his case to the intendant of the island, who having been in China, knew him to be a Chinese, and sent him home to his country. But what purpose does it serve to be delivered from slavery, if a man must continue to struggle with poverty, neglect and old-age? At Paris, on a time, an old Negro quite emaciated, smoking on a post the stump of a pipe, and almost naked in the midst of winter, said to me in a dying tone of voice: "Take pity on a miserable Negro." Unfortunate creature said I to myself, What good can the pity of such a man as myself do to thee? Not only thou, but thy whole Nation stands in need of pity from the powers of Europe! How many times have children, women, old men, who