distinguished by his apparel, his equipage, or his number of servants, from those inferior to him; and though possessing real power is divested of almost every external mark of it.  Even our religious worship partakes of the same simplicity.  It is far from my intention to condemn or depreciate these manners, considered in a general scale of estimation.  Probably, in proportion as the prejudices of sense are dissipated by the light of reason, we advance towards the highest degree of perfection our natures are capable of; possibly perfection may consist in a certain medium which we have already stepped beyond; but certainly all this refinement is utterly incomprehensible to an uncivilized mind which cannot discriminate the ideas of humility and meanness.  We appear to the Sumatrans to have degenerated from the more splendid virtues of our predecessors.  Even the richness of their laced suits and the gravity of their perukes attracted a degree of admiration; and I have heard the disuse of the large hoops worn by the ladies pathetically lamented.  The quick, and to them inexplicable, revolutions of our fashions, are subject of much astonishment, and they naturally conclude that those modes can have but little intrinsic merit which we are so ready to change; or at least that our caprice renders us very incompetent to be the guides of their improvement.  Indeed in matters of this kind it is not to be supposed that an imitation should take place, owing to the total incongruity of manners in other respects, and the dissimilarity of natural and local circumstances.  But perhaps I am superfluously investigating minute and partial causes of an effect which one general one may be thought sufficient to produce.  Under the frigid, and more especially the torrid zone, the inhabitants will naturally preserve an uninterrupted similarity and consistency of manners, from the uniform influence of their climate.  In the temperate zones, where this influence is equivocal, the manners will be fluctuating, and dependent rather on moral than physical causes.

DIFFERENCE IN CHARACTER BETWEEN THE MALAYS AND OTHER SUMATRANS.

The Malays and the other native Sumatrans differ more in the features of their mind than in those of their person.  Although we know not that this island, in the revolutions of human grandeur, ever made a distinguished figure in the history of the world (for the Achinese, though powerful in the sixteenth century, were very low in point of civilization) yet the Malay inhabitants have an appearance of degeneracy, and this renders their character totally different from that which we conceive of a savage, however justly their ferocious spirit of plunder on the eastern coast may have drawn upon them that name.  They seem rather to be sinking into obscurity, though with opportunities of improvement, than emerging from thence to a state of civil or political importance.  They retain a strong share of pride, but not of that laudable kind which restrains men