Charlemain’s empire soon fell to pieces. The partitions of the princes, and the ambition of some chiefs, detach whole nations from it. Weak or avaricious emperors give or sell liberty to others. The rest is under particular lords: the sovereign scarce keeps the title and shadow of authority.
Dost thou observe that battle? seest thou a numerous army defeated by fifteen hundred men? It is the æra of the liberty of the Helvetic body. Members of the empire, but oppressed by tyrants, the Swiss shake off the yoke and form a government, the wisdom of which cannot be too much admired. Their commerce extends but to necessaries: they have soldiers only for their defence, and these too are trained among other nations: a constant peace reigns in the republic. Without covetousness, without jealousy, without ambition, liberty and necessaries content them. They are a people that talk the least of philosophy, and are the most philosophical.
Whilst the new Western empire is rent, the Eastern is destroyed. Thou seest coming out of Asia the last swarm of Barbarians which were to fall upon Europe[[13]]. They advance: and, like huge masses which acquire more force in proportion to the height they fall from, they crush Constantinople and seize the Eastern empire, which they still possess to this day.
Such is the disastrous contexture of the compendious History of mankind: the crowd of particulars is only a crowd of less noted calamities. The total of the nations, especially the European, is like a mass of quicksilver, which the lightest impression puts in motion, which the least shake divides and subdivides, and of which chance unites again the parts in a thousand different manners. Who will find the means to fix them?
The End of the First Part.
GIPHANTIA:
PART II.
LONDON,
Printed in the Year MDCCLX.