| Citation |
MS-B.770.034
20-24 Dec 1770:11,12 (1/54)
Sketch of a moral and political map of Europe. By Mr.
Moser, envoy from the Elector Palatine to Hanover. . . [1
column, sketches of Russia, Sweden, etc.]
England, the domain of liberty and property, the country
of extremes. Virtue is here divine, vice infernal. Here are
liberty of conscience, political liberty, civil liberty,
commercial liberty, liberty of thought, tongue and pen, to
and beyond the limits of the most profligate licence; news-
papers, magazines, pamphlets, registers, heaven and earth a
job; turfs, cockpits, clubs, maccaronis, blackguards,
stocks, lotteries, schemes, lame ducks, clever fellows,
humour, and Novembers big with suicide; post-chaises,
Italian music and pictures, but few ears or eyes; the nest
of foreigners; the country of Shakespeare, Newton and
Hogarth.
France, the country of citoyens and mode. Here things
are estimated by their air: a watch may be a master-piece,
without exactness; and a woman rule the town, without
beauty, if they have air. Here life is a dance, and
aukwardness of step its great disgrace. Character here is
dissolved into the public, and an original a name of mirth.
Their religion is superstition, fashion, sophism; the ladies
lay on rouge in equilateral squares, and powder with brick-
dust. Tyranny may grind the face, but not the countenance
of a Frenchman; his feet are made to dance in wooden shoes.
The Parliament resemble an old toothless mastiff. France
was the country of Le Sueur and Racine, and is that of
Voltaire.
. . . [17 lines, Spain, Portugal]
Italy, an unweeded garden, its inhabitants flies breed on
a dead horse. --Slavery, and licence. Each moral principle
the pimp of pampered organs: the country of arts, tricks,
castration, and banditti; of Raphael, Goldoni, Farinelli,
Archangeli.
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