'Balaam's ass talk; when the waters of the cataracts are swelled by rain fifteen cubits above all the mountains; when we behold the plagues of Egypt, and the six hundred and thirty thousand fighting Jews flying on foot through the divided and suspended sea; when Joshua stops the sun and moon at noon-day; when Sampson slays a thousand Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass.... In those divine times, all was miracle, without exception; and we have the profoundest reverence for all these miracles-for that ancient world which was not our worldfor that nature which was not our nature -for a divine book, in which there can be nothing human.

The line of Arragon, who reigned in Naples in Louis XII.'s time, were bastards. Count De Dunois signed himself "the Bastard of Orleans ;" and letters were long preserved of the Duke of Normandy, King of England, which were signed "William the Bastard."

In Germany, it is otherwise; the descent must be pure; bastards_never inherit fiefs, nor have any estate. In France, as has long been the case, a king's bastard cannot be a priest without a dispensation from Rome; but he becomes a prince without any difficulty, as soon as the king acknowledges him to be the offspring of his sire, even though he be the bastard of an adulterous father and mother. It is But we are astonished at the liberty the same in Spain. The bastard of a which Dr. Kennicott takes, of calling king of England may be a duke, but not those deists and atheists, who, while they a prince. Jacob's bastards were neither revere the Bible more than he does, differ princes nor dukes; they had no lands, from him in opinion. Never will it be the reason being that their father had believed that a man with such ideas is of none; but they were afterwards called the Academy of Medals and Inscriptions.patriarchs, which may be rendered archHe is, perhaps, of the Academy of Bed- futhers. lam, the most ancient of all, and whose colonies extend throughout the earth.

BILHAH.-BASTARDS.

It has been asked, whether the bastards of the popes might be popes in turn. Pope John XI. was, it is true, a bastard of Pope Sergius III., and of the famous Marozia: but an instance is not a law

BISHOP.

BILHAH, servant to Rachel, and Zilpah, servant to Leab, each bore the patriarch Jacob two children; and, be it ́observed, that they inherited like legitiSAMUEL Ornik, a native of Basle, was, mate sons, as well as the eight other male as is well known, a very amiable young children whom Jacob had by the two man, who, moreover, knew his German 'sisters Leah and Rachel. It is true that and Greek New Testament by heart. At all their inheritance consisted in a bless-the age of twenty, his parents sent him to ing; whereas, William the Bastard inhe-travel. He was commissioned to carry rited Normandy. books to the coadjutor at Paris, in the time of the Fronde. He arrived at the archbishop's gate, and was told by the Swiss that monseigneur saw no one.Several kings of Spain and Naples have "My dear fellow," said Ornik, " you are been bastards. very rude to your countrymen; the aposIn Spain, bastards have always inhe-tles allowed every one to approach, and rited. King Henry of Transtamare was not considered as an illegitimate king, though he was an illegitimate child; and this race of bastards, founded in the house of Austria, reigned in Spain until Philip

Thierri, a bastard of Clovis, inherited the best part of Gaul, invaded by his father.

Jesus Christ desired that little children should come unto him. I have nothing to ask of your master; on the contrary, I bring him something.” —“ Enter, then,' said the Swiss.

-66

He waited an hour in the first anti

thinking he was with the evil one; and leaped from the side of his companion.

chamber. Being quite artless, he at-"Is it possible!" exclaimed the Italian tacked with questions a domestic who prelate.-"Nothing is more true: you was very fond of telling all he knew about have read it in the Gospel."-" I have his master. "He must be pretty rich," never read it," replied the bishop; "I said Omnik, "to have such a swarm of know only the office of Our Lady."-"I pages and footmen running in and out of tell you there were neither cardinals nor the house."-"I don't know," answered { bishops; and when there were bishops, the other," what his income is, but I hear the priests were almost their equals, as Joli and the Abbé Charier say that he is {St. Jerome, in several places, assures us." two millions in debt." "But who is that "Holy Virgin !" said the Italian, "I lady who is come out of a cabinet, and knew nothing about it; and what of the is passing by ?"-"That is Madame de popes ?"-"There were no popes either." Pomèreu, one of his mistresses."-"SheThe good bishop crossed himself, is really very pretty; but I have not read that the apostles had such company in their bed-chambers in a morning." "Ah! that, I believe, is monsieur, about to give audience."-"Say sa grandeur, THIS is a Greek word, signifying an monseigneur."—" Well, with all my attack on reputation. We find blasphe heart...." Ornik saluted 'sa grandeur,' mia in Demosthenes. In the Greek presented his books, and was received church it was used only to express an inwith a most gracious smile. Sa gran-jury done to God. The Romans never deur' said three words to him, and stepped into his carriage, escorted by fifty horsemen. In stepping in, monseigneur dropped a sheath, and Ornik was astoished that monseigneur should carry so arge an inkhorn. "Do you not see," said the talker, "that it is his dagger? every one that goes to parliament wears his dagger?"-Ornik uttered an exclamation of astonishment, and departed.

BLASPHEMY.

made use of this expression, not thinking (it would appear) that God's honour could be offended like that of men.

There scarcely exists one synonyme. Blasphemy does not altogether convey the idea of sacrilege. We say of a man who has taken God's name in vain, who, in the violence of anger, has sworn (as it is expressed) by the name of God, that he has blasphemed; but we do not say that he has committed sacrilege. The sacrilegious man is he who perjures him→ self on the gospel, who extends his rapa city to sacred things, who imbrues his hands in the blood of priests.

He went through France, and was edified by town after town. From thence he passed into Italy. In the papal territorities, he met a bishop with an income of only a thousand crowns, who went on foot. Ornik, being naturally Great sacrileges have always been kind, offered him a place in his cambia- punished with death in all nations, estura.-"Signor, you are no doubt goingpecially those accompanied by bloodshed. to comfort the sick ?"-"Sir, I am going The author of the Institutes au Droit to my master."-"Your master? He, 'Criminel,' reckons among divine high no doubt, is Jesus Christ."-"Sir, he is treasons in the second degree, the nonCardinal Azolino; I am his almoner. { observance of Sundays and holidays. He gives me a very poor salary; but he He should have said, the non-observance has promised to place me with Donna attended with marked contempt; for Olimpia, the favourite sister-in-law of simple negligence is a sin, but not, as he nostro signore."—"What! are you in calls it, a sacrilege. It is absurd to class the pay of a cardinal? But do you not together, as this author does, simony, the know that there were no cardinals in the carrying off a nun, and the forgetting to time of Jesus Christ and St. John ?"-go to vespers on a holiday. It is one

great instance of the errors committed by writers on jurisprudence, who, not having been called upon to make laws, take upon themselves to interpret those of the state.

would not suffer her to conceal so enormous a crime: she would run and denounce the offender to the nearest shoen that bore the image of the truth on his breast; and it is known how this image of truth was made. The tribunal of the shoens, or shotim, would condemn the Tyrian blasphemer to a dreadful death, and confiscate his vessel. Yet this merchant might be considered at Tyre as one of the most pious persons in Phoe

Blasphemies uttered in intoxication, in anger, in the excess of debauchery, or in the heat of unguarded conversation, have been subjected by legislators to much lighter penalties. For instance: the advocate whom we have already cited, says, that the laws of France condemn simplenicia. blasphemers to a fine for the first offence, Numa sees that his little horde of which is doubled for the second, tripled Romans are a collection of Latin freefor the third, and quadrupled for the booters, who steal right and left all they fourth offence; for the fifth relapse the can find-oxen, sheep, fowls, and girls. culprit is set in the pillory; for the sixth He tells them that he has spoken with relapse he is pilloried, and has his upper the nymph Egeria in a cavern, and that lip burned off with a hot iron; and for the nymph has been employed by Jupithe seventh he loses his tongue. Heter to give him laws. The senators treat. should have added, that this was an or- 3 him at first as a blasphemer, and threaten donnance of the year 1666. to throw him headlong from the Tarpeian Punishments are almost always arbi- rock. Numa makes himself a powerful bitrary, which is a great defect in juris-party; he gains over some senators, who prudence. But this defect opens the way for clemency and compassion, and this compassion is no other than the strictest justice; for it would be horrible to punish a youthful indiscretion as poisoners and parricides are punished. A sentence of death for an offence which deserves nothing more than correction, is no other than an assassination committed with the sword of justice.

go with him into Egeria's grotto. She talks to them, and converts them; they convert the senate and the people. In a little time, Numa is no longer a blas{ phemer; the name is given only to such as doubt the existence of the nymph.

In our own times, it is unfortunate that what is blasphemy at Rome, at our Lady of Loretto, and within the walls of SanGennaro, is piety in London, Amsterdam, Is it not to the purpose here to remark, Stockholm, Berlin, Copenhagen, Berne, that what has been blasphemy in one Basle, and Hamburgh. It is yet more country has often been piety in another? unfortunate that even in the same counSuppose a Tyrian merchant landed at try, in the same town, in the same street, the port of Canope: he might be scan-people treat one another as blasphemers. dalized on seeing an onion, a cat, or a goat, carried in procession; he might speak indecorously of Isheth, Oshireth, and Horeth; or might turn aside his head and not fall on his knees, at the sight of a procession with the parts of human generation larger than life he might express his opinion at supper, or even sing some song in which the Tyrian sailors made a jest of the Egyptian absurdities. He might be overheard by the maid of the inn, whose conscience

Nay; of the ten thousand Jews living at Rome, there is not one who does not regard the Pope as the chief of the blasphemers; while the hundred thousand Christians who inhabit Rome, in place of two millions of Jovians who filled it in Trajan's time, firmly believe that the Jews meet in their synagogues on Saturday, for the purpose of blaspheming.

A Cordelier has no hesitation in applying the epithet of blasphemer to a Dominican, who says that the Holy Virgin

was born in original sin; notwithstanding that the Dominicans have a bull from the Pope which permits them to teach the maculate conception in their convents, and that, besides this bull, they have in their forum the express declaration of St. Thomas Aquinas.

their turn accused the monks; and four of them were burned at Berne, on the 13th of May, 1509, at the Marsilly gate.

The number of similar sacrileges is incredible. Such are the effects of party spirit.

Such was the termination of this abominable affair, which determined the people of Berne to choose a religion, bad The first origin of the schism of three-indeed in Catholic eyes, but which defourths of Switzerland, and a part of livered them from the Cordeliers and the Lower Germany, was a quarrel in the Jacobins. cathedral church of Frankfort, between a Cordelier, whose name I forget, and a Dominican named Vigand. Both were drunk, according to the The Jesuits maintained, for a hundred custom of that day. The drunken Cor-years, that the Jansenists were blasphemdelier, who was preaching, thanked God ers, and proved it by a thousand lettresthat he was not a Jacobin, swearing that de-cachet; the Jansenists, by upwards it was necessary to exterminate the blas- of four thousand volumes, demonstrated pheming Jacobins, who believed that the that it was the Jesuits who blasphemed. Holy Virgin had been born in mortal sin, The writer of the "Gazettes Ecclésiasand delivered from sin only by the meritstiques," pretends that all honest men of her son. The drunken Jacobin cried out: "Thou hast lied; thou thyself art a blasphemer." The Cordelier descended from the pulpit with a great iron crucifix in his hand, laid it about his adversary, and left him almost dead on the spot.

blaspheme against him; while he himself blasphemes from his garret on high against every honest man in the kingdom. The gazette-writer's publisher blasphemes in return, and complains that he is starving.

He would find it better to be honest and polite.

To revenge this outrage, the Dominicans worked many miracles in Germany and Switzerland; these miracles were de- One thing equally remarkable and signed to prove their faith. They at consoling is, that never, in any country length found means to imprint the marks of the earth, among the wildest idolaters, of our Lord Jesus Christ on one of their has any man been considered as a blaslay brethren, named Jetzer. This ope- phemer for acknowledging one supreme, ration was performed at Berne by the eternal, and all-powerful God. It cer Holy Virgin herself; but she borrowedtainly was not for having acknowledged the hand of the sub-prior, who dressed this truth, that Socrates was condemned himself in female attire, and put a glory to the hemlock; for the doctrine of a round his head. The poor little lay bro- Supreme God was announced in all the ther, exposed all bloody to the veneration of Grecian mysteries. It was a faction that the people, on the altar of the Domini- destroyed Socrates: he was accused, at a cans at Berne, at last cried out murder! venture, of not recognising the secondary sacrilege! The monks, in order to quiet gods, and on this point it was that he was him as quickly as possible, administered accused as a blasphemer. to him a host sprinkled with corrosive sublimate; but the excess of the dose made him discharge the host from his stomach.

The monks then accused him, to the bishop of Lausanne, of horrible sacrilege. The indignant people of Berne in

The first Christians were accused of blasphemy for the same reason; but the partisans of the ancient religion of the empire, the Jovians, who reproached the primitive Christians with blasphemy, were at length condemned as blasphemers themselves, under Theodosius II.

Dryden says

This side to day, to-morr w t'other burns,
And they're all Gods Almighty in their turns.

BODY.

known. But from thence he passed to extent and solidity, which are essential to body; and thinks he proves that there is no extent in a piece of green cloth, because the cloth is not in reality green, the BODY and matter are here the same sensation of green being in ourselves. thing, although there is hardly any such only; therefore the sensation of extent is thing as a synonyme in the most rigorous likewise in ourselves only. Having thus sense of the word. There have been per- destroyed extent, he concludes that sosons who by this word body have under-lidity, which is attached to it, falls of itstood spirit also. They have said spirit originally signifies breath; only a body can breathe; therefore body and spirit may, after all, be the same thing. In this sense, La Fontaine said to the cele-in reality nothing more than ten thousand

brated Duke de la Rochefoucault :

J'entens les esprits corps et pétris de matière.

In the same sense, he says to Madame
Sablière :-

Je subtiliserais un morceau de matière,
Quintessence d'atome, extrait de la lumière,
Je ne sais quoi plus vif et plus subtil encor....

self; and therefore that there is nothing in the world but our ideas. So that, according to this doctor, ten thousand men killed by ten thousand cannon-shots, are

apprehensions of our understanding: and when a female becomes pregnant, it is only one idea lodged in another idea, from which a third idea will be produced.

Surely, the Bishop of Cloyne might have saved himself from falling into this excessive absurdity. He thinks he shows that there is no extent, because a body has appeared to him four times as large through a glass as to his naked eye, and four times as small through another glass. Hence he concludes, that, since a body cannot be at the same time four feet, sixteen feet, and but one foot in extent, there is no extent; therefore there is nothing. He had only to take any mea

No one thought of harassing good Monsieur La Fontaine, or bringing him to trial for his expressions. Were a poor philosopher, or even a poet, to say as much now-a-days, how many would there be to fall on him! How many scribblers to sell their extracts for sixpence! How many knaves, for the sole purpose of making mischief, to cry philosopher! peripatetic! disciple of Gassendi! pupil of Locke, and the primitive fathers!{sure, and say of whatever extent this damnable!

As we know not what a spirit is, so also we are ignorant of what a body is: we see various properties, but what is the subject in which those properties reside? { There is nothing but body, said Democritus and Epicurus; there is no such thing as body, said the disciples of Zeno, of Elia.

Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, is the last who, by a hundred captious sophisms, has pretended to prove that bodies do not exist. They have, says he, neither, colour, nor smell, nor heat; all these modalities are in your sensations, not in the objects. He might have spared himself the trouble of proving this truth, for it was already sufficiently

body may appear to me to be, it extends to so many of these measures.

He might very easily see that extent and solidity were quite different from sound, colour, taste, smell, &c. It is quite clear that these are sensations excited in us by the configuration of parts; but extent is not a sensation. When this lighted coal goes out, I am no longer warm; when the air is no longer struck, I cease to hear; when this rose withers, I no longer smell it but the coal, the air, and the rose, have extent without me. Berkeley's paradox is not worth refuting.

Thus argued Zeno and Parmenides of old; and very clever they were: thev would prove to you that a tortoise went