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 ar duously 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 poig nant, 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 literature 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 him,) adopted as the basis of deline

ation a series of adventures drawn from the antient epic, dependant upon the Greek mythology, and dressed out in all the idle and extravagant fictious 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 sympathies 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 distinguished 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 judg ment 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 awaken. ed sentiments of interest and of pleasure to the well-wrought and well. imagined 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, aloue 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 systein 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.

(Resumed from p. 199.)

Wo the Roman Emperors."

E now proceed to the " Saloon

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 sardonyx, upon which is engraved a skull and a tripod holding viands, with this inscription in Greek, “Drink and eat, and crown yourself with flowers! It is thus that we shall very soan 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.

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

XXIV. TITUS. A statue. The
Emperor

The

three associated deities, Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno. The top of this trumeau is ornamented with many pieces of sculpture; among them is the fragment of a frieze which represents two griffins, with a vase, &c. between them. (Visconti, p. 4). griffin was in fact an ancient Egyptian hierogy ph, meaning Osiris, and, being composed of the union of the eagle and the lion, perhaps was intended to represent the powerful action of the sun, when in the constellation of Leo. It was not only, however, the symbol of Apollo Sol, but was sometimes consecrated to Jupiter, and even Nemesis. Herodotus, Elian, Solinus, &c. really believed that there was such an animal.

XXXIII. TRAJAN. A statue. The cuirass is of excellent workmanship; and the mask of a Triton, instead of Medusa's head, may allude to the Roman Fleets, which appeared under Trajan in the Indian Seas, and the Trophy refers to the Dacian War. Visconti, p. 15. engr. Monum. Gabini, No. III.

XXXIV. TITUs, a bronze bust. See No. XXIV.

These are all the Sculptures in the "Salle des Empereurs Romains."

Ancient Anecdotes, &c. from VALERIUS MAXIMUS, by Dr. CAREY, West Square.

(Continued from p. 200.) Mr. URBAN, West-square, April 15. Y shall

or the Spaniards, or of the Spanish fashion, as gladius Hispanicus, a Spanish sword, or a sword of the Spanish fashion: Hispaniensis, connected, in some way, with Spain, as Exercitus Hispaniensis, the Roman army in Spain; Mercatores Hispunienses, Roman merchants residing or trading in Spain. Children, also, born in Spain, of Roman parents, were Hispanienses: whence Martial (lib. 12, præf.) jocularly applies the term to a book written in Spain, "Non Hispaniensem, sed Hispanum;" as we might describe a native of the Western world, "not even a Creole, but a pure Barbarian, of unmixed Indian blood."

I am aware, that the Roman writers did not always observe such distinctions: but it may be well to notice their propriety in particular instances.—And now I proceed to Cato.

When he was yet a child, and living with his uncle Drusus, a deputation of the Latines came to Rome, in hopes of obtaining, for their countrymen, the freedom of the City, through the agency of Drusus, then tribune of the commons: and Poppedius, the chief of the deputation, was lodged and entertained in Drusus's house.-Availing himself of that intimacy, Poppe dius requested young Cato to use his influence with his uncle in favor of the Latines: but the child steadily refused to comply, though repeatedly urged. At length Poppedius took

sometimes aukwardly mis- named "Calo of Utica," or, still worse, "Cato the Utican; the adjective "Ulicensis" meaning nothing more (in conjunction with his name) than, connected (in whatever manner) with Vlien," or, as we might say in English, “of Utica celebrity." Thus Cicero (in Verr. act. ii. 5, S6) has "Elicense exemplum," i.e. "which occurred at Utica," (viz. the burning of a Roman governor alive in his own house.)

Here I am tempted to add a remark on Latin gentile adjectives, which, to some of your readers, may perhaps be not unacceptable. To Spain (for example) belong Hispanus, Hispanicus, and Hispaniensis, all different: viz. Hispanus, a native Spaniard, of unmixed Spanish blood: Hispanicus, of or belonging to Spain

headlong, unless he would promise his compliance. But the threat proved ineffectual; and Cato still inflexibly persevered in his refusal.-Lib. 3, 1, 2.

Some years after this, but before he had attained the age of seventeen, he was conducted by his pedagogue (or guardian attendant) to pay his respects to the Dictator Sylla, then uncontrolled master of Rome, and lavishly indulging his vindictive cruelty in the indiscriminate proscription of all who had opposed him. On entering the dictator's house, young Cato was shocked to see the bloody heads of the murdered citizens brought into the hall by the wretches who came to claim the promised rewards for the perpetration of the murders: and, turning to his conductor, he asked, why there was not some person to be found, who would rid the world

of