Essays And Sketches of Character

extremes of barbarism and extravagant refinement, better suited than either of them to the free and right exercise of man's intellectual endowments and natural affections. Man was right, it appears to me, when he betook himself to soap and water; neither is he without a respectable plea for his use of combs; nor can I, in my heart, think much the worse of him, for declining to eat his meat either raw or alive. In his moral conditions too, as well as in his external circumstances, I can make many allowances for his departure from some of the simplicities of Otahcite. His emancipation from thievish propensities, for instance, may be borne with ; and his neglect of the " good old practice" of knocking young children or old persons on the head, when considered troublesome or unnecessary, is, in my opinion, absolutely commendable. These modest improvements are'within the verge of the intermediate state that I have mentioned; and no man, perhaps, in clothes and his senses, would deliberately condemn them. If there were no such state, however, and the question of preference lay between a condition purely natural or savage, and the highest degree of what we call refinement?between a wigwam and a palace, the Boshies-men and the beau monde?a man might hesitate in his decision, yet not be mad; or might finally turn from kings and their courts, and give his choice to his kindred in the woods, yet not be indifferent to the glories of human intellect, and the charms of human l... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.