they are still exceeded by the fieges and facking of great, wealthy, and populous cities. Befide the houses and most sumptuous buildings frequently fet on fire, and the numbers of people killed by the various inftruments and devices of flaughter made use of for that purpose; if the fiege continues 'till the provifions are all confumed, what multitudes often perish by the more lingering and painful deaths of famine and peftilence? When the wretched, ftarving inhabitants, many of whom have probably lived long at their ease, and in the delightful enjoyment of whatever riches, plenty, and fafety could afford, have eaten their rats, mice, cats, dogs, horfes, &c. they are fometimes forced to feed on the flesh of meagre and diftempered human carcases: nay, mothers have been put to the terrible neceffity of feeding upon their own children. And when the enraged and merciless enemy has entered a city by ftorm, the remainder of the miserable inhabitants are not only butchered in the streets, and other public places, but fought for in their moft fecret receffes; there the hufband is torn from the arms of the wife, and children from the clofe embraces of their mothers, and all involved in the fame cruel carnage.

SUCH of my readers as are well acquainted with accounts of fieges, I believe, will not

think that in this description any thing has been exaggerated: but if fome, not fo converfant in these relations, fhould be of a different opinion, I fhall transcribe a matter of fact, and a recent one too, from an author who was perfectly well informed of what he relates, which will effectually convince them, that it is hardly poffible, on this fubject, for any description to exceed the truth.

ABOUT the end of March, in the year 1722, the city of Ifpahan, capital of Persia, was befieged by Myrr-Maghmud: in July and Auguft the citizens were reduced to eat camels, mules, horfes, and affes, and there was no other meat. An horfe's carcafe, at the end of August, was worth a thousand crowns. In September and October, they eat cats and dogs, of which so many were devoured, that one would have thought the species had been destroyed. In September a pound of bread was fold for thirty fhillings, and in October for above fifty. Ifpahan being very full of trees, fome of them were felled, and the leaves and bark fold by the pound for food. Shoe-leather boiled was for a while the common victuals. At last they came to eat the flesh of the dead carcafes that lay in the ftreets. Tho' thofe, who were caught doing so, were bastinadoed for it; yet neceffity, which has no law, made the evil increase: infomuch

infomuch that feveral children were stolen and eaten, worn as they were to skeletons by famine; and even fome mothers killed and fed upon their own children. The people of quality fuffered no lefs than the vulgar, as we may judge from the conduct of a Perfian nobleman, who, finding there was no more food to be had, poifoned himself and his whole family. It is faid that no less than à million and forty thousand Perfians died in Ifpahan during the fiege'.

WOULD a reasonable and compaffionate man suppose, that at the fight of these horrid fcenes any of his fellow-creatures fhould find not only matter of pleasure and fatisfaction, but of the highest exultation and triumph? That conquerors do, is nevertheless a fad truth! But how much this redounds to the honour of human nature, let mankind reflect.

SURELY this havock and destruction of our fpecies by war, inftead of being an honour to us, and affording matter of pride and glory,

The history of the revolution of Perfia, taken from the memoirs of father Krufinfki, who lived twenty years in that country.

I cannot forbear to obferve, that these miseries, and the terrible calamities which the whole kingdom of Perfia was afterwards, and remains to this day afflicted with, were entirely owing to the extreme weakness of the king, the ill conduct of his minifters, and particularly the diffenfions that reigned among them.

glory, is one of the greatest disgraces of human nature, and ought much rather to occafion fhame and mortification.

LORD Brooke fays,

From the devil's image we receive

This fpirit, which firres mankind with man to warre, Which devils doe not; wherein worse we are

d

AND our celebrated poet Milton, to the fame purpose:

Oshame to men! devil with devil damn'd
Firm concord holds, men only difagree

Of creatures rational.

and God proclaiming peace,

Yet live in hatred, enmity, and firife
Among themfelves, and levy cruel wars,
Wafting the earth, each other to destroy".

AND again, when the angel Michael had, as it were, fet before our first parent's eyes his pofterity murdering one another in war, he breaks out,

O what are these?

Death's minifters, not men! who thus deal death
Inhumanly to men ; and multiply

Ten thousand fold the fin of him who flew
His brother: for of whom fuch massacre

Make they, but of their brethren; men of men?

IT

a His works, p. 75. Ibid. book XI,

e

Paradife Loft, book II.

IT is indeed difficult to determine, whether unneceffary wars are more wicked and barbarous, or prepofterous and abfurd. That they are not seen in this light, by Europeans especially, among whom knowledge, learning, and politeness are fo generally diffused, is greatly to be wondered at as well as lamented. However, that wars of late times, and in these politer parts of the world, have been carried on with fewer circumftances of cruelty than formerly, and in countries lefs polished, is certain; which may afford fome glimmering of hope, that in time, if we do not relapse into barbarity, they may alfo at leaft become less common.

How happy would it be for mankind, were wars entirely to ceafe, and that men would beat their fwords into plough-fhares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; and inftead of learning the art of war, that is, becoming fo ingenious in rendering their own fpecies miferable, or deftroying them, that

they

Whatever the French, who are very apt to fancy themselves the most knowing and polite people of Europe, may vainly imagine, it is far from being an honour to them, that they are fo infatiably fond of war. And their conduct in North America, where they frequently excite and hire the favages, even in time of peace, to murder and scalp the harmless English planters, and their wives and children, in the out-lying fettlements, is a flagrant proof of the most barbarous and inhuman cruelty,