Essay on the progressive improvement of mankind. An oration, delivered in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the day of Commemoration. Monday, Dec. 17, 1798 / [Anon].

  • Melbourne, William Lamb, Viscount, 1779-1848.
Date:
1799
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay on the progressive improvement of mankind. An oration, delivered in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, on the day of Commemoration. Monday, Dec. 17, 1798 / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/18 (page 14)
    [ ‘4 ] fortune, has opened every heart to the social affections, and has encouraged and cherished those virtues which increase every day in private life, scatter blessings upon all around them, and se¬ cure eternal satisfaction to themselves. Man is improved; im¬ proved in the most essential point; in his consideration for man. War, even horrid war, has submitted itself to the regulations of humanity, which have restrained the indiscriminate carnage that involved those who yielded, and those who resisted, in one de¬ struction, and polluted the glory of the conqueror with the blood of the defenceless suppliant.. Complaints of general degeneracy inflame the rage of the sati¬ rist, and adorn the periods of the rhetorician; but they have as little foundation in truth, as the hyperboles of those ancient poets, who, to celebrate and magnify the bodily strength of their heroes, represented them singly lifting, and hurling with ease, a weight which the united efforts of twelve of their own cotem¬ poraries would have been unable to move. Particular periods are distinguished by the lustre of genius, and ages are hallowed by the characters that chance to ornament them. But that is a false judgment of the public temper and disposition, which is formed upon those illustrious spirits, whose notions, confined to no age and no country, reach far beyond the narrow views, mean prejudices, and little passions, that actuate the generality of