from the ist day of March next, which subjects the party engaged in a duel to three months imprisonment, and a tine of 2000 dollars, one half to go to the Public Treasury, the other to the Informer. The Offender to give security for his good behaviour for two years, and to be disqualified from holding any office in the State, and for being a Member of either House of the

General Assembly. The Bill requires

every officer of the state to take an oath that he has not since the passing of this act violated its provisions, and that he will not during his continuance therein."

The enactment, which imposes a new oath of office, is, in my opinion, objectionable; the others are calculated to put down a most disgraceful and wicked practice.

A. R. F. R.

Comparative Remarks upon a few of the most eminent Writers of our own and a Neighbouring Country.

IN

(Continued from p. 206.)

N Mathematics, and Astronomical Discovery, if the services and the genius of La Hire, of Huygens (although not a native genius), and of Gassendi, are acknowledged by other nations beside their own to have been great, it may be alleged that they found a counterpart in the persons of Halley, of Ward, and of Hooke, the latter of whom, as is well known, was highly instrumental in forming the Royal Society, and promoting its object and its advances by his active investigations.

If we carry our views forwards to that era of wit, of genius, and of the Muses, the reign of Lewis the Fourteenth (although indeed the advances of science were on the whole equally conspicuous), literary parallels may be found of closer resemblance, and partaking more intimately of the same characteristics of genius.

The graces and charms of brilliant wit, which are so conspicuous in Moliere, please also in Congreve, who in as high a degree partakes of them; and the simplicity of La Fontaine may be said to have been afterwards realized on this side the water in the muse of Gay, of Parnell, or of Prior. The tender, the moving, and the pathetic of Racine, may be said to have been rivalled in the tragic effusions of Otway, whose "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" may in many reGENT. MAG. April, 1820.

But it

If the French Academy in the department of history produced a Rollin, in England there appeared about the same period a Hooke. would perhaps be departing altogether from that standard of propriety in resemblance which we have endeavoured to elicit, to compare, whilst extending our views through the 18th century, our great historians of later times, the Humes, the Robertsons, and the Gibbon's with any contemporary historians of the French school; unless in the boldness of his views, the philosophic temper of his genius, and the general dignity and originality of his sentiments, the Abbé Raynal may claim pretensions of equality, both in the meed of fame which individually attaches to his memory, and the particular contexture of his taleut. It is likewise obvious that the splendid endowments of Vollaire (although his genius for History, and all the other purposes of literature, has been eulogized by his admirers,) were wholly incapable of affording him this honourable seat of rivalship; as indeed they are, when magnified in the most extravagant degree, to compete, either in extensiveness or accu

racy

racy of learning, brilliancy of invention, vigour of conception and of thought, or force and sublimity of sentiment, with those of our Johnson, who was a contemporary in fame; and in the regions of criticism and literary taste shone as an established authority in his respective country with equal lustre, and who, in the extensive field of ethical disquisition and a just knowledge of mankind, may be said to have laboured as arduously for the prize of a literary immortality.

But there are no two writers eminent for their genius in their respective countries, who present," in many particulars, such striking traits of resemblance as Addison and Fenelon, who perhaps in their spheres have engrossed an equal share of the encomiums of posterity. Of admirable invention and fine discriminating taste, the former joined the mild virtues of Christian sentiments with the exquisite charms of the most poignant, and at the same time the most delicate satire, in order to produce the fascinating writer. He (as was once said of him), has made the graces of wit and the tone of ridicule subservient to the cause of virtue and truth, instruments which are too frequently and fatally levelled against it; and whilst he pleases the imagination by his well-delineated pictures of life and manners, and his classical judgment, he often elevates to a nobler sentiment, and inculcates the love and practice of religion by a lesson raised at once to beauty and sublimity. The genius of Fenelon, although extremely similar, was probably in some of his intellectual endowments inferior, in others different, from the Raphael (as he bas, with considerable pertinence of allusion, been called) of English Essayists. As amiable and attractive in his general views and habits of moral thinking, he too shone in the paths of elegant Jiterature through the legitimate channels of allegory and agreeable fiction: but whilst Addison chose the busy pursuits of public or social life, or the scenes of nature, of Providence, and of human condition in all their varieties, contingencies, and forms, which grow out of contemplation and solitude, working upon an observant and pious breast, as the vehicles of moral instruction, and

often of descriptive beauty-the distinguished Prelate whom we have here quoted, (caught by the splendour, and where applied, to the purposes of correcting the heart, ameliorating and exalting the passions, and occasionally raising the fine emotions of our nature to objects of ennobling tendency, the novelty, which the incidents of antient fable held out to hum,) adopted as the basis of delineation a series of adventures drawn from the antient epic, dependant upon the Greek mythology, and dressed out in all the idle and extravagant fictions with which it abounds.With a mind actuated by the purest notions of benevolence and of Christian piety, he made these apparently discordant materials subservient to a lesson of elevated and signal virtue, alike addressed to our feelings and our judgments. While the singular beauty, propriety, and simplicity of his narrative, as unfolded and conducted by its judicious author, strikes and interests every reader, we realize again those scenes and teeming images of classic fiction with which our sym pathies have been early wont to be associated, our passions excited, and our taste recreated. A secret pleasure steals through the mind when we perceive that the chimeras of the poets, and the traditions of the priests which we admire, but which our sober judgment rejects, are capable of being made subservient to high morality, exalted piety, and the inculcation of those principles which are most amiable and estimable in human nature, as fortitude, generosity, disinterestedness, courage in a right cause, and gratitude; and whilst we admire that descriptive beauty, and animated sentiment, which often challenges our attention in the course of his work, and claims for him distin guished rank as a man of polite literature, our acknowledgments are equally due for that discernment and knowledge of the human heart, which knew how to turn to high utility things in themselves incompatible with real knowledge, or with real virtue.

Between these two eminent and well-established writers, therefore, a very close and intimate resemblance may be deduced; not so much perhaps in the walk which they respectively chose in literature, nor in the mode which they adopted for the mo

ral

ral instruction, or for the improvement of the understanding and the taste of their countrymen; as in the complexion of their genius, the scope and colour of their sentiments, and the general piety of their principles.

While reviewing this work, how. ever, the Adventures of Telemachus, the mind of the student will spontaneously revert to the circumstances upon which its reputation is chiefly built. It is, as is well known to the classical reader, one of the few works of modern times, which takes the interesting but highly monstrous and absurd fictions of the antient poets as the basis of a moral work, wherein imagination, the dictates of sober reason, truth, luxuriant description,' and the animated language of the heart, are all blended, for the most part perhaps, with admirable judgment and effect.

Imagination then, whilst contemplating the Telemachus of Fenelon, is apt to revert in the abstract to that pruriency and delight with which the generality of minds imbibe fictions of an imposing character, and diversified incidents, if they are in unison with the human affections and sympathies, to the rejection of things which have for their object an enlargement of the understanding, an inculcation of juster notions of men and things, and Inore correct views of human life and happiness, if they contain a mere dry abstract only of the question itself, not diversified, illustrated, or relieved by fine pictures of imagination or of art, addressed to our livelier sensibilities. We recur with awakened sentiments of interest and of plea sure to the well-wrought and wellimagined fictions of the antients, which are wont at least to rouse us to stimulate curiosity; but we find that, neither among the antients or the moderns, were these fictions rendered (as in the present instance), subservient to the office of widening our sphere of thinking, correcting the passions, or amending the heart; they, in the Grecian and Roman ages of literature, can only be considered as the offspring of a vagrant and licentious faucy, addressed to the intellectual taste of their countrymen.If the display of ingenuity of thought and of faucy, however, alone constituted their aims in writing, it must be owned that, for the accomplish

ment of their purpose, a field replete with characters of super-human, novel, and mysterious endowments, was opened, and partially displayed by their venerable prototypes, Homer and Hesiod. In the construction of their plan and outline, the diposition of their fable and machinery, and the endowment and proper animation of their personages, celestial and terrestrial, the antient poets had a range for imagination, an extent of ground unknown to him who writes with originality among the moderns. The wonderfully ingenious, but absurd system of cosmogony which prevailed among our classic ancestors, opened to genius a teeming and luxuriant field for the full employment of imagination and the play of fancy. With their indefinite privilege of using the interference of celestial deities, with all the mystic lore which forms an essential part of these antient legends, they found most powerful assistants, at once in the extensive theatre of action which it laid open for their machinery, and the scope for invention which was offered, and which would obviously have been incongruous and improper, if a faithful adherence to the nature of things as they actually exist, had alone guided their pen, and circumscribed their aspirations of thought.

Without these prodigious but beautiful fictions of preternatural appearances and influences, which the Pagan theology unfolded, the whole system of this eventful and diversified machinery, which is closely amalgamated through all the epic and tragic performances of antiquity, could never have had an existence, and the acts of mortal enterprize and valour, which would then alone have furnished out their fable, would have greatly failed in its power over the imagination. The opinion, therefore, on the other hand, of an elegant and judicious writer, that "the mythological stories of antiquity contain characters too gigantic to interest the feelings, and fiction too cold to animate the fancy," may seem to be hastily adopted."The creatures of the antient poets," says he, "were a superinduction on the popular creed. Their chimeras were the divinities of the vulgar. They addressed themselves, therefore, to imaginations heightened by enthusiasm, to the strongest passions of

our nature, to the hopes and fears of man." "But these fictions," he continues, "have now lost their sup. port, the foundation is removed, aud the superstructure has crumbled into ruins." (To be continued.)

ACCOUNT OF THE ANTIENT SCULP TURES IN THE ROYAL MUSEUM AT PARIS; WITH REMARKS BY MR. FOSBROOKE. No. III.

WE

(Resumed from p. 199.)

E now proceed to the "Saloon of the Roman Emperors." No. XIX. A BACCHIC DEMI-GOD. A bronze Bust. This mythologic personage of the race of Sileni has a long beard, and a kind of diadem confines his hair. The pedestal of the bust is a sepulchral cippus, below which is a fragment of a bas- relief, representing a woman seated, preparing garlands. Near her are placed two small figures, which represent statues. One, very remarkable, is a human skeleton. (Visconti, p. 10.) There are two sorts of Sileni (says Winckelman, Art. iv. 2); one, where he is seriously represented as the Tutor of Bacchus, under the form of a Philosopher with a long beard; the other, where he is drunk, mounted upon an ass. The former marbles are distinguished from the latter by not having a physiognomical character inclined to laughter: and they have a fine person in all the maturity of age. Of course, this bust belongs to the first kind. The human skeleton is justly supposed by Visconti to allude to the custom of throwing a skeleton on the table, during a festival, in order to recommend present enjoyment from the brevity of life. In Gori (Inser. Etrus. Tom. iii. p. 6) is a sar donyx, upon which is engraved a skull and a tripod holding viands, with this inscription in Greek, " Drink and eut, and crown yourself with flowers! It is thus that we shall very soon be.” This inscription explains the monument under discussion: and the garlands here allude to the Epula Ferales. The festoons so commonly sculptured on tombs are supposed to refer to the custom of adorning such monuments with flowers. (Gell's Pompeiana, 122, from Cuper.) The body was covered with flowers when conveyed to the funeral pile, and the tombs were dressed with them. They were renewed at the anniversary of the de

ceased, who sometimes bequeathed a sum for the purchase of flowers, and mentioned it in his epitaph. At Ra venna, upon a sepulchral marble, is this inscription, "Ut. quotannis . rosas, ad. Monumentum . ejus. deferant. et. ibi. epulentur. duntaxat. in. v. id. Julias." Almost the only monument of skeletons is one in Gori (Mus. Florent. Tom. i. pl. 91. n. 3), which is dancing before a peasant seated; and others in Stosch (Gems, 314, 317, Tom. 5, p. 108), where Prometheus is forming a man. But the Death's head of the later Hermit is no more than a copy of the annexation of it to the figure of a contemplative Philosopher, as appears from the painting of Styx in Bartoli and Montfaucon.

XX. MARCUS AURELIUS. A statue, in a military habit. Busts, &c. of this Emperor are common.

XXI. A BARBARIAN PRISONER. A statue. The ancients (says Visconti, p. 10) bad the custom of relieving, by the richness of the material, the statues they placed on the monuments of Triumphers. This statue has only the head and the hands of statuary marble. The rest is composed of rare oriental breccia. The reason why the ancients enslaved prisoners of war, was to induce the troops to abstain from carnage, on account of the profit derived from the labour of slaves, by means of whom they carried on considerable manufactories. As to prisoners of rank, their hair was cut off to serve as ornaments for the triumph. Thus Ovid, “Nunc tibi captivos mittet Germanica crines." But if death prevented the prisoner from personally attending the triumph, an image of him was carried, as that of Cleopatra was in the procession of Augustus. (See Plutarch.) The statue under dis. cussion was perhaps made for a similar purpose.

XXII. CLAUDIUS DRUSUS. A bronze bust. This is Nero Claudius Drusus, son of Livia, &c. Visconti says (p. 11) that this bust, as well as that of No. 25, is known to be his by the coins, If so, they are rare; for no mention of them is made in the best known collection of Roman portraits, the Recueil of Mongez.

XXIII. VESPASIAN. A bronze bust. There is a marble bust at the Capitol: but his figures are rare.

XXIV. TITUS. A statue.

The Emperor

Emperor is completely armed. The ocrea are remarkable. He seems to be represented in the act of haranguing his troops. The adlocutio. (Visconti, p. 11.)` Portraits of this excellent Prince are rare. There are or were two marble busts at the Capitol and Florentine Museum; another and a colossal head at the Villa Albani. The Pio-clementine Museum had another head. See also No. XXXIV. The Florentine Museum contains a portrait of him upon a gem (Gem. i. pl. vi. no. 7), probably the work of Evodus, so celebrated at that time as a seal-engraver, who sculptured the beautiful Julia, daughter of this Emperor, now at Paris.

XXV. CLAUDIUS DRUSUS. See No. XXII.

XXVI. NERO, in the character of a Conqueror, at the Grecian Games; a statue. This figure, almost naked, according to the heroic costume, is very remarkable, because it offers us the known features of Nero, although flattered by the artist. His hair is confined by a bandeau, properly called a diudem, which formerly ornamented the heads of Kings, and was at the same time the distinctive sign of the Conquerors in the sacred games of Greece. (Visconti, p. 12). Of this insane Emperor the portraits are very rare. Of the head at the Capitol called his, only one single eye is original, and, as Winckelman says, it is not easy to form an opinion of the state of the Arts in his day, from the paucity and inconsiderable character of specimens ascribed to his æra; it is dubious whether the bead and statues at the Pio-Clementine Museum, the Ruspoli Palace, the Villa Borghese, &c. are justly appropriated.

XXVII. TRAJAN. A statue. The Emperor wears a cuirass, beautifully ornamented with chased work. The bust of Isis is placed on the breast, instead of Medusa's head. A long drapery falls from the left arm aud covers the haunches. This figure is engraved in the Monumento Gabini, No. 19. The ancient head is restored. (Visconti, p. 13.) Of his busts see before No. X. Though we meet with another statue of this Emperor, No. XXXIII. in a cuirass, yet there was one different from the Pio-clementine Museum, where he is seated, in the costume of a philosopher.

XXVIII. CLAUDIUS. A bronze

bust. His portraits are not rare. The Capitol and the Florentine Museum have each a marble bust. The Pio-clementine Museum has a colossal head, found at Otricoli. The very fine bust, engraved by Montfaucon, and placed upon a richly-sculptured base, is at Madrid in the Retiro Palace.

XXIX. CALIGULA. A statne, clothed in a cuirass, found at Gabii (See Monumens de Gabies, No. 38). Thus Visconti, p. 13. His busts are very rare: only two are known at Rome, that of black basalt at the Capitol, the other of white marble at the Villa Albani, where he is represented as Pontiff with the toga over his head. A bronze bust was found at Herculaneum (Tom. v. 195), and the Pio-clementine Museum has a statue found at Otricoli, where he is naked, in heroic fashion. But his finest portrait is on a gem, bought at Rome in 1766 by the Hanoverian General Walmoden. Winkelman puts this cameo in the rank of the most perfect specimens.

XXX. TWO RHYTONS, or drinking horns. They terminate at the bottom in bulls' heads, and, widening upwards, are ornamented with leaves and branches of ivy. Perfectly void within, they were destined for the use of a fountain. An antique cistern placed between them, as if to receive the water running from the Rhytons, is ornamented with flutings and lions' heads. (Visconti, p. 14). Of the various Rhytia of Terra Cotta brought by Denon from Magna Grecia, not one is pierced at the point. The two of marble at the Villa Borghese terminate in ox's heads. They were used by the Greeks in the ninth century. Some of them at the largest opening are 19 or 20 inches. This appropriation of them to a fountain is equivocal.

XXXI. SPAIN. Bas relief. It is a colossal head, crowned with grapes and olive branches, indicative of wine and oil. (Visconti, p. 14). Spain, upon coins, is in a military habit, with a small buckler and two javelins. Sometimes she holds wheat-cars, symbolic of fertility.

XXXII. LARGE BAS RELIEF, representing a religious ceremony, celebrated before the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, of which the three gales indicate the three isles consecrated to

three