when I inform you, that we faw no houses, except fhops and warehouses; and on our journey to Heckla we were obliged to take up our lodgings in the churches.

Their food principally consists of dried fish, four butter, which they confider as a great dainty, milk mixed with water and whey, and a little meat. They receive fo little bread from the Danish Company, that there is hardly any peafant who eats it above three or four months in the year. They likewife boil groats, of a kind of mofs, which has an agreeable tafte. The principal occupation of the men is fishing. The women take care of the cattle, knit ftockings, drefs, gut, and dry the fish brought home by the men, and otherwife affift in preparing this ftaple commodity of the country.

Befides this, the Company, who yearly fend fifteen or twenty hips hither, and who poffefs a monopoly, which is very burthenfome to the country, export from hence fome meat, edder-down, and falcons, which are fold in the country for feven, ten, and fifteen rix-dollars a-piece. Money is very rare, which is the reafon that all the trade is carried on by fifh and coarfe unfhorn cloth, called here Wadmal; one ell of wadmal is worth two fifhes; and forty-eight fishes are worth a rix-dollar in fpecie. With gold they were better acquainted at our departure, than on our arrival.

They are well provided with cattle, which are generally without horns: they have likewife fheep, and very good horfes; both the last are the whole winter in the fields: dogs and cats they have in abundance. Of wild and undomesticated animals they have only rats and foxes, and fome bears, which come every year from Greenland with the floating ice : thefe, however, are killed as soon as they appear, partly on account of the reward of ten dollars, which the King pays for every bear, and partly to prevent them from deftroying their cattle. The prefent Governor has introduced rein-deer into the ifland; but, out of thirteen, ten died on their paffage; the other three are alive with their young.

It is extraordinary that no wood grows fuccessfully in Iceland; nay, there is fcarcely a fingle tree to be found on the whole island, though there are certain

proofs of wood having formerly grown. there in great abundance. Corn cannot be cultivated here to any advantage; though I have met with cabbages, parfley, turnips, peafe, &c. &c. in five or fix gardens, which were the only ones in the whole island. I must now beg leave to add a few words about the Icelandic Literature. Four or five centuries ago the Icelanders were celebrated on account of their Poetry and knowledge in History. I could name many of their Poets, who celebrated in songs the warlike deeds of the northern Kings; and the famous Snorre Stuilefon is the man to whom even the Swedes are indebted for the first illustration of their history. We for this reafon fet fo high a value upon the ancient Icelandic records and writings, that they have almost all been drawn out of the country: fo exceedingly fcarce they are become, that, notwithftanding the pains I took during the whole time of my ftay there, I got a fight of only four or five Icelandic manufcripts. In the inland parts of the country, our old language has been preserved almoft quite pure; but on the coafts, where the natives have an intercourfe with the Danish Merchants, it has been fomewhat altered. Some speak the Danish language very well; but thofe who did not could fooner make themselves intelligible to us Swedes, than to the Danes. We likewife found three or four Runic infcriptions, but they were all modern, and confequently of no value. Clergy know little besides fome Latin, which they pick up in the schools eftablifhed in the Epifcopal Sees at Skallholt and Hoolum. Some of them, however, have ftudied at the University of Copenhagen; and I became acquainted with three men of great learning among them, who were particularly well verfed in the northern antiquities.

Their

That there is a printing-office in Iceland cannot be unknown, as we are acquainted with the rare editions printed at Skallholt; but I did not expect to find the Art of Printing fo ancient here, as it was reprefented to be. A Swede, whose name was John Mathiefon, brought hither the first printing-prefs, between the years 1520 and 1530; and published in the year 1531 the Breviarium Nidarofienfe.

ESSAYS

tions.

LANGHORNE.

operate as a fpur to our efforts, it will be found, when once gained, to be only the means to fome remoter end. The natural flight of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from Hope to Hope. He that directs his fteps to fome remote point, muft frequently turn his eyes toward the place he hopes to reach; he that undergoes the fatigue of labour, must refresh his weary mind with the contemplation of its reward. In agriculture, one of the most fimple and neceffary employments, no man turns up the ground without an expectation of harveft; that harvest which blights may intercept, which inundations may fweep away, or which death or calamities of many kinds may hinder him from reaping.

This propensity to look forward into futurity feems the unavoidable condition of a being whose motions are gradual, and whole life is progreffive: as his powers are limited, he must ufe means for the attainment of his wifhes, and intend firft what he performs laft. As by continual advances from the first stage of existence to the laft he is perpetually varying the horizon of his profpects, fo he difcovers new motives of action, new excitements of fear, and new allurements of defire. It is eafy enough to laugh at the folly of him who lives only on profpect, and rejects immediate eafe in hopes of diftant pleafures; and who, instead of enjoying prefent bleffings, fuffers life to glide away in preparations to enjoy them: and as this is a commodious fubject of raillery to the gay, and of declamation to the ferious; it has been ridiculed with all the pleafantry of wit, and exaggerated with all the amplifications of rhetoric, Yet as few maxims are widely received or long retained, without they have fome conformity with truth and Nature; it must be confeffed that the cautions against keeping our view too

without their propriety and usefulness: though they may have been recited with too much levity, and enforced with too little distinction. But we naturally in dulge pleafing ideas; and Hope will pof fefs every mind, until it has been checked by frequent disappointments. Youth is fome time in making the mortifying dif covery, how many evils are continually hovering about us; and, when he is fet free from the fhackles of difcipline, looks abroad into the world with rapture. He fees an Elysian region before him so stored with variegated pleasure, that his care is rather to accumulate good, than to guard against evil; and he has no other doubt before him than which path to chufe out of those which appear all to lead equally, to the bowers of happiness. He is inclined to believe no man miferable but by his own fault; and therefore seldom, looks with much pity on the mifcarriages of others, because he thinks them wilfully or negligently incurred.

Such are the delufions of rafh expectations formed without folid grounds by giddy inexperience! And the difappointments will be fuitable, and severely felt. It is natural for every man who is ftung by them to murmur at his condition, because in the general infelicity of life he feels his own miferies, without knowing that they are common to all the rest of his fpecies. But though he will not be the lets fenfible of pain, by being told that others are equally tormented; he will at least be freed from the temptation of feeking by perpetual changes that ease which is no-where to be found; hence though his difeafe may continue, he efcapes the hazard of exafperating it by injudicious remedies.

It is not in this world that our measures of Hope can ever be filled, or the latitude of our defires fatisfied by fruition. But happily our profpects reach to futurity,

there

there are pleasures still in reserve, which, if we extend our attention to them, will fupport us through all the difappointments of this life; and which will chear the gloom of the last hour. On the fuppofition of future rewards for virtue, and punishments for vice, a fatisfactory account can be given of the imperfect diftribution of good and evil in this itate. Divine juftice remains for a feafon concealed, and allows men to act their part with freedom on this temporary theatre, that their characters may be afcertained. Throughout all ages, and among all nations, the perfuafion of a future ftate has prevailed. It fprung not from the refinements of science, or the fpeculations of philofophy; but from a deeper and ftronger root, the natural sentiments of the human heart. Hence it is common to the philofopher and the favage, and is found in the barbarous, as well as in the most civilized nations. If we examine our own breasts, we find various anticipations and prefages of a future exiftence. The virtuous are

fupported by the Hope, the guilty tormented by the dread, of what is to take

place after death all the operations of confcience proceed on the persuasion of immortality; the whole moral conduct of man refers to it; all Legislators have funpofed it; all religions built on it. It is fo effential to the order of society, that, were the Hope of it erazed, human laws would prove frail barriers against the deluge of crimes and miferies that would overflow the earth!

Upon the whole, whether we confult our reafon, or listen to the discoveries of revelation, we are furnished with fufficient evidence for a well-grounded Hope, that a life of virtue and piety is the fure road to permanent felicity. This is that confolation, of which not all the evils of a delufive world can deprive the man of virtue and integrity:

For him alone, HOPE leads from goal to goal,

And opens still and opens on his foul; Till lengthen'd on to FAITH and unconfin'd,

It pours the blifs that fills up all the

mind.

THE rebellion was now quelled, and the strength of the rebels intirely broken, but the difaffection of the people was not yet conquered. The Parliament was the bulwark of the Crown; the vigour and unanimity of the King's friends, and their fuperiority in the Houfe, was the fupport of the whole affair. But the Parliament being only of three years continuance, by virtue of the Triennial Act, made in the 6th year of King William and Queen Mary; all the hopes of the other party feemed to be centered in this, that the Parliament would expire; and that they should be able, by their influence in the country, to chufe a majority of their party at the next election; or raife fuch a ferment at that juncture, as might make way for a fuccefsful invasion from abroad. This the perfons at the helm obferved with concern; and therefore refoived to baffle thefe hopes of the enemies of the Government by prolonging the fitting of the prefent Parliament. It is faid, it was firft propofed only to fufpend the Triennial Act for once, whereby this Parliament would have continued three years beyond the time, at which it was to determine; but it was afterwards thought, that a bill for enlarging the time of conti

nuance of Parliaments in general would be lefs liable to exceptions. The next thing that fell under confideration was, Whether this intended bill fhould be fet on foot in the Houfe of Lords, or in the Houfe of Commons? The firft was judged the properer for feveral reasons, particularly, becaufe, the Court being more fure of a majority in the Houfe of Commons, if the bill miscarried with the Lords, the odium of this project, which carried a face of unpopularity, would not rest upon the Commons, nor confequently prejudice future elections.

On the 9th of April, 1716, in the evening, about thirty of the Court Lords met at the Duke of Devonshire's, where, after a fhort confultation, it was refolved to begin this matter the very next day; and the Duke was defired to move it in the House of Lords. The Duke readily complied with the defire of the Affembly; and the next day, after the Lords had dispatched fome private bufinefs, the Duke stood up, and made a speech on the inconveniencies that attend triennial elections; fuggefting, in particular, that they keep up party divifions, raife and foment feuds and animofities in private families; occafion ruinous expences; and give occafion

to

to the cabals and intrigues of foreign Princes. It therefore became the wisdom of that auguft Affembly to apply a proper remedy to an evil, which might be attended with the most dangerous confequences, especially in the prefent temper of the nation. For, though the rebellion was happily fuppreffed, yet the fpirit of it remained unconquered, and feemed only to wait for an opportunity to fhew itfelf with more violence. That, the election of a new Parliament, which by the Triennial Act was not far off, being the moft favourable juncture, which the difaffected could expect, he thought it abfolutely neceffary to deprive them of it. For which purpose he had a bill to to offer to this Houfe, for inlarging the continuance of Parliaments; and moved, that the fame might be read. The Duke was feconded by the Earl of Rockingham, and fupported by the Duke of Argyle, the Earl of Dorfet, the Lord Towthend, and fome other Lords. The Duke of Bucks, the Lord Trevor, the Earls of Nottingham and Aylesford, and fome Peers of the other fide, did not directly oppofe the bill, but made long speeches for putting off the reading of it to another time. They owned, that every Member has the privilege of offering what bill he thinks fit, without afking leave; but that the Houfe is likewife at liberty either to read it or not, as they think convenient; and that the matter, now offered, was of fo high a nature, that it well deserved to be maturely weighed and confidered before the fame was debated and therefore they moved, that the bill might lie for fome days on the table. To this it was anfwered, that nothing was farther from their thoughts, than to carry any thing by furprife: that, by the ordinary method of proceeding, every Member has fufficient time to weigh and confider what is offered in the Houfe; and, to fhew how fairly they intend to act in this affair, the Earl of Dorfet propofed, that, after the bill had been once read, the fecond reading of it should be put off for fome days, and that all the Members in and about London should be fummoned to attend. The Lords of the oppofite fide, finding themselves the weaker, acquiefced in this motion; fo the bill was read the firit time, and ordered to be read a fecond on the 14th of April.

1.

people juftly looked upon as the great fecurity of their rights and liberties; and that, if it paffed this House, and the Commons agreed to it, the fame would be a breach of that trust, which was reposed in them by thofe whom they reprefented." The latter part of this affertion was denied by the Duke of Kington, who urged, That the business of the Legiflature was to rectify old laws, as well as to make new ones.' Earl Powlet declared, That he would be for it, if he thought it for the King's fervice and intereft; but that, before they went any farther in fo important an affair, fome method fhould be taken to know the fentiments of the nation.' He urged, That this bill shewed a distrust of the affection of the people, without which no King can be either fafe or eafy. That King William gained the hearts of his fubjects by the Triennial Act; and it would look fomewhat ftrange, that the most popular of our laws fhould be repealed a year after the Proteftant fucceffion took place.' After this, he endeavoured to anfwer what was fuggefted in fupport of this bill, viz. That frequent elections occafion ruinous expences. 2. That they raise a great ferment, and foment animofities, which are of the most dangerous confequence after the late rebellion: And 3. That they obftruct foreign alliances.' He faid, "That no ftrefs ought to be laid on the first of thofe objections, expences at elections being voluntary. That, as to the fecond, he was forry there had been a rebellion; but that the fame was now happily fuppreffed. And, as to the third fuggeftion, the fame was of no weight with him, it being his opinion, that in a matter, which fo nearly concerns our conftitution, we ought to have regard to ourfelves only, and not to foreigners. Upon all which confiderations, he was against the committing of this bill. The Earl of Dorset said, among other things, That they who now spoke against this bill, would be for it, if it ferved their turn. That the Triennial Act was a new law, and an alteration of the old conftitution. That the experience of twenty years having fhewn a thousand inconveniencies attending that law, they ought to apply a remedy to it. That it fowed the feeds of corruption, it being notorious, that great numbers of perfons had no other livelihood, than by being employed in bribing corporations. That we had lately a fad experience of it; fince by thofe methods a Parliament was procured by the laft Ministry, which gave fanction to most of their ill meafures, and went

On that day the bill was read, and a warm debate arofe, which lafted five hours. The Earl of Abingdon faid, The bill was of a very extraordinary nature, fince it repealed the Triennial At, which the

near