Those, who, in the perusal of History, are fond of tracing the characters of mankind, and their close similarity, in every age, will, it is hoped, be gratified, as they scan over, with an impartial eye, the following pages. They prove, incontestibly, that, though refinement improves the ideas and embellishes the outward form, and style of living, by all the soft acquirements of luxury; yet, that the mind of / man, ever invariable, pursues, with avidity, that one darling system of visionary happiness, premised him by the propensity of his nature and disposition.

These propensities must naturally appear in different shapes, according to the versatility of the human mind. Thus, the moroseness which characterized the manners of some of our gloomy ancestors, is now changed into the deep thought of philosophy, and profound learning, or cynical censure on the manners of an age, miscalled, perhaps, corrupt! because we must still acknowledge, that the characters of mankind are only altered, in a great degree, by improvements in knowledge; / and which, according to the soil that receives the precious seed of wisdom, grows up a pernicious poison, or improves into a fair tree of perfection.

The silly, illiterate stripling, hastily emancipated from the tuition of monkish ignorance of the fifteenth century, is, in this age of improvements, the half-learned, half-travelled, trifling coxcomb4 of rank and fortune; a compound of frivolity and presumption, a smatterer of languages, a connoisseur of pictures, operas, and women! The late ferocious violator of all the rites of hospitality, who murdered the husband, that he might possess the wife in uninterrupted security, / is now the smooth-tongued, refined adulterer; who wounds the mind of the man he calls his friend, in the tenderest and dearest part, by making use of every insidious and delusive attack on the – at first unsuspecting – heart of the female, to draw away her affections from her lawful partner; while, at the same time, he pretends a disinterested regard for the injured husband.