the circular orbit of Venus; it is twenty-events, was connected with the origin of seven times smaller than the earth, the things. sun is a million of times larger, and Mars Had any one of these occurrences been is five times smaller. The latter goes his ordered otherwise, the result would have round in two years, his neighbour Jupiter been a different universe. Now, it was in twelve, and Saturn in thirty; yet Sa-not possible for the actual universe not to turn, the most distant of all, is not so exist; therefore it was not possible for large as Jupiter. Where is the pretended Jupiter, Jove as he was, to save the life gradation? of his son.

And, then, how, in so many empty We are told that this doctrine of nespaces, do you extend a chain connect- cessity and fatality has been invented in ing the whole? There can, certainly, be our own times, by Leibnitz, under the no other than that which Newton dis-name of sufficing reason. It is, however, covered that which makes all the globes of the planetary world gravitate one towards another in the immense void.

Oh, much admired Plato! I fear that thou hast told us nothing but fables, that thou hast spoken to us only as a sophist! Oh, Plato! thou hast done more mischief than thou art aware of. How so? you will ask. I will not tell you.

CHAIN OR GENERATION OF

EVENTS.

of great antiquity. It is no recent discovery, that there is no effect without a cause, and that often the smallest cause produces the greatest effects.

Lord Bolingbroke acknowledges that he was indebted to the petty quarrels between the Duchess of Marlborough and Mrs. Masham, for an opportunity of concluding the private treaty between Queen Anne and Louis XIV. This treaty led to the peace of Utrecht; the peace of Utrecht secured the throne of Spain to Philip V.; Philip took Naples and Sicily from the house of Austria. Thus the Spanish prince, who is now King of Naples, evidently owes his kingdom to Mrs. Masham: he would not have had it, nor even have been born, if the Duchess of Marlborough had been more complaisant towards the Queen of England: his existence at Naples depended one folly more or less at the court of London.

on

THE present, we say, is pregnant with the future; events are linked one with another by an invincible fatality. This is the Fate which, in Homer, is superior to Jupiter himself. The master of gods and men expressly declares, that he cannot prevent his son Sarpedon from dying at the time appointed. Sarpedon was born at the moment when it was necesary that he should be born, and could not be born at any other; he could not die elsewhere than before Troy; he could not Examine the situations of every people be buried elsewhere than in Lycia; his upon earth; they are in like manner body must, in the appointed time, pro-founded on a train of occurrences seemduce vegetables, which must change into ingly without connection, but all conthe substance of some of the Lycians; nected. In this immense machine, all is his heirs must establish a new order of wheel, pulley, cord, or spring. things in his states; that new order must influence neighbouring kingdoms; thence must result a new arrangement in war and in peace with the neighbours of Lycia. So that, from link to link, the destiny of the whole earth depended on the elopement of Helen, which had a necessary connection with the marriage of Hecuba, which, ascending to higher

It is the same in physical order. A wind blowing from the southern seas and the remotest parts of Africa, brings with it a portion of the African atmosphere, which, falling in showers in the vallies of the Alps, fertilises our lands; on the other hand, our north wind carries our vapours among the negroes; we do good to Guinea, and Guinea to us. The chain

>

extends from one end of the universe to motion will be lost, and rest will be rethe other. stored. So the motion produced by M2gog in spitting into a well, cannot have influenced what is now passing in Moldavia and Wallachia. Present events, then, are not the offspring of all past events: they have their direct lines; but with a thousand small collateral lines they have nothing to do. Once more be it observed, that every being has a parent, but every one has not an offspring.

But the truth of this principle seems to me to be strangely abused; for it is thence concluded that there is no atom, however small, the movement of which has not influenced the actual arrangement of the whole world; that the most trivial accident, whether among men or animals, is an essential link in the great chain of destiny.

CHANGES THAT HAVE OCCURRED IN THE GLOBE. WHEN We have seen with our own eyes a mountain advancing into a plain-that is, an immense rock detached from that mountain, and covering the fields; an entire castle buried in the earth; or a swallowed-up river bursting from below;

Let us understand one another. Every effect evidently has its cause, ascending from cause to cause, into the abyss of eternity; but every cause has not its effect, going down to the end of ages. I grant that all events are produced one by another: if the past was pregnant with the present, the present is pregnant with the future: everything is begotten, but everything does not beget. It is a genea-indubitable marks of an immense mass of logical-tree every house, we know, ascends to Adam; but many of the family have died without issue.

The events of this world form a genealogical-tree. It is indisputable that the inhabitants of Spain and Gaul are descended from Gomer, and the Russians from his younger brother Magog; for in how many great books is this genealogy to be found! It cannot then be denied that the Grand Turk, who is also descended from Magog, is obliged to him for the good beating given him in 1769 by the Empress Catherine II. This occurrence is evidently linked with other great events; but whether Magog spat to the right or to the left near Mount Caucasus-made two or three circles in a well-or whether he lay on his right side or his left, I do not see that it could have much influence on present affairs.

water having once inundated a country now inhabited; and so many traces of other revolutions, we are even more disposed to believe in the great changes that have altered the face of the world, than a Parisian lady who knows that the square in which her house stands was formerly a cultivated field: but a lady of Naples, who has seen the ruins of Herculaneum under ground, is still less enthralled by the prejudice which leads us to believe that everything has always been as it now is.

Was there a great burning of the world in the time of Phaeton? Nothing is more likely but this catastrophe was no more caused by the ambition of Phaeton or the anger of Jupiter the thunderer, than at Lisbon, in 1755, the divine vengeance was drawn down, the subterraneous fires kindled, and half the city destroyed, by It must be remembered, because it is the fires so often lighted there by the Inproved by Newton, that nature is not a quisition :-besides, we know that Meplenum; and that motion is not commu-quinez, Tetuan, and considerable hordes nicated by collision until it has made the tour of the universe. Throw a body of a certain density into water: you easily calculate that at the end of such a time the movement of this body, and that which it has given to the water, will cease; the

of Arabs, have been treated even worse than Lisbon, though they had no Inquisition.

The island of St. Domingo, entirely devastated not long ago, had no more displeased the Great Being than the island

of Corsica: all is subject to eternal physical laws.

before his time. No one will believe this chronology, on Plato's word only: but neither can any one adduce against it any physical proof, nor even an historical testimony from any profane writer.

Pliny, in his third book, says, that from time immemorial the people of the southern coasts of Spain believed that the sea had forced a passage between Calpe and Abila:

Sulphur, bitumen, nitre, and iron, enclosed within the bowels of the earth, have overturned many a city, opened many a gulph; and we are constantly liable to these accidents attached to the way in which this globe is put together; just as, in many countries during winter, we are exposed to the attacks of famishing wolves—“Indigenæ columnas Herculis vocant, and tigers. creduntque per fossas exclusa anteà admisisse maria, et rerum naturæ mutâsse faciem."

An attentive traveller may convince himself by his own eyes, that the Cyclades and the Sporades were once part of the

If fire, which Heraclitus believed to be the principle of all, has altered the face of a part of the earth, Thales's first principle, water, has operated as great changes. One half of America is still inundated by the ancient overflowings of the Mara-continent of Greece, and especially that non, Rio de la Plata, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and all the rivers perpetually swelled by the eternal snows of the highest mountains in the world, stretching from one end of that continent to the other. These accumulated floods have almost everywhere produced vast marshes. The neighbouring lands have become uninhabitable; and the earth, which the hands of man should have made fruitful, has produced only pestilence.

The same thing happened in China and in Egypt: a multitude of ages were necessary to dig canals and dry the lands. Add to these lengthened disasters the irruptions of the sea, the lands it has invaded and deserted, the islands it has detached from the continent, and you will find that, from east to west, from Japan to Mount Atlas, it has devastated more than eighty thousand square leagues.

Sicily was once joined to Apulia. The two volcanos of Etna and Vesuvius having the same basis in the sea, the little gulph of Charybdis; the only deep part {of that sea; the perfect resemblance of the two soils; are incontrovertible testimonies. The floods of Deucalion and Ogyges are well known; and the fables founded upon this truth are still more the talk of all the west.

The ancients have mentioned several deluges in Asia. The one spoken of by Berosus happened (as he tells us) in Chaldea, about four thousand three, or four, hundred years before the Christian {era; and Asia was as much inundated with fables about this deluge as it was by the overflowings of the Tigris and Euphrates, and all the rivers that fall into the Euxine.

It is true that such overflowings cannot The swallowing up of the island Atlantis cover the country with more than a few from the ocean may, with as much reason, feet of water: but the consequent sterility, be considered historical as fabulous. The the washing away of houses, and the deshallowness of the Atlantic as far as the struction of cattle, are losses which it reCanaries, might be taken as proof of quires nearly a century to repair. We this great event, and the Canaries them-know how much they have cost Holland, selves for fragments of the island Atlantis. Plato tells us, in his Timæus, that the Egyptian priests, amongst whom he had travelled, had in their possession ancient registers which certified that island's going under water. Plato says, that this catastrophe happened nine thousand years

more than the half of which has been lost since the year 1050. She is still obliged to maintain a daily conflict with the ever threatening ocean. She has never employed so many soldiers in resisting her } enemies, as she employs labourers in continually defending her against the assaults

The character is formed of our ideas and our feelings. Now, it is quite clear, that we neither give ourselves feelings nor ideas; therefore our character caunot de

of a sea always ready to swallow her.
The road from Egypt to Phoenicia,
along the borders of lake Serbo, was once
quite practicable; but it has long ceased
to be so it is now nothing but a quick-pend on ourselves.
sand, moistened by stagnant water.
short, a great portion of the earth would
be no other than a vast poisonous marsh,
inhabited by monsters, but for the assi-
duous labour of the human race.

In If it did so depend, every one would
be perfect.

We cannot give ourselves tastes, nor talents. why, then, should we give ourselves qualities?

When we do not reflect, we think we are masters of all: when, we refleet we find that we are masters of nothing.

We shall not here speak of the universal deluge of Noah. Let it suffice to read the Holy Scriptures with submission. Noah's flood was an incomprehensible miracle, If you would absolutely change a supernaturally worked by the justice and man's character, purge him with diluents goodness of an ineffable Providence, whose till he is dead. Charles XII., in his illwill it was to destroy the whole guiltyness on the way to Bender, was no lonhuman race, and form a new and innocent ger the same man; he was as tractable as race. If the new race was more wicked a child. than the former, and became more criminal from age to age, from reformation to reformation, this is but another effect of the same Providence, of which it is impossible for us to fathom the depths, the inconceivable mysteries, transmitted to the nations of the west for many ages, in the Latin translation of the Septuagint. We shall never enter these awful sanctuaries: our questions will be limited to simple

nature.

CHARACTER.

If I have a wry nose and cat's eyes, I can hide them behind a mask and can I do more with the character that nature has given me?

A man born violent and passionate, presents himself before Francis I. King of France, to complain of a trespass. The countenance of the prince, the respectful behaviour of the courtiers, the very place he is in, make a powerful impression upon this man. He mechanically casts down his eyes, his rude voice is softened; he presents his petition with humility; [From the Greek word signifying Impression, En. you would think him as mild as (at that graving. It is what nature has engraven in us.] moment at least) the courtiers appear to CAN we change our character? Yes- be, amidst whom he is often disconcerted: if we change our body. A man born but if Francis I. knows anything of phyturbulent, violent, and inflexible, may,siognomy, he will easily discover in his through falling in his old age into an apoplexy, become but as a silly, weak, timid, puling child. His body is no longer the but so long as his nerves, his blood, and his marrow, remain in the same state, his disposition will not change, any more than the instinct of a wolf or a polecat.

same;

The English author of the Dispensary, a poem much superior to the Italian Capitoli, and perhaps even to Boileau's Lutrin, has, as it seems to me, well observed,

How matter, by the varied shape of pores,
Or idiots frames, or solemn senators.

eye, though downcast, glistening with a sullen fire, in the extended muscles of his face, in his fast-closed lips, that this man is not so mild as he is forced to appear. The same man follows him to Pavia, is taken prisoner along with him, and thrown into the same dungeon at Madrid. The majesty of Francis I. no longer awes him as before: he becomes familiar with the object of his reverence. One day, pulling on the king's boots, and happening to pull them on ill, the king, soured by misfortune, grows angry, on which our man of courtesy wishes his

majesty at the devil, and throws his boots out at the window.

many fish in this pond; they wil 10 thrive here are too many cattle in your meadows; they will want grass, and grow lean. After this exhortation, the pikes come and eat one half this man's carps, the wolves one half of his sheep, and the rest fatten. And will you applaud his economy? This countryman is yourself; one of your passions devours the rest, and you think you have gained a triumph. Do we not almost all re

Sixtus V. was by nature petulant, obstinate, haughty, impetuous, vindictive, arrogant: this character, however, seems to have been softened by the trials of his noviciate. But see him beginning to acquire some influence in his order; he flies into a passion against a guardian, and knocks him down. Behold him an inquisitor at Venice; he exercises his office with insolence. Behold him car-semble the old general of ninety, who, dinal; he is possessed della rabbia pa- having found some young officers bepale; this rage triumphs over his natural having in a rather disorderly manner with propensities, he buries his person and some young women, said to them in anhis character in obscurity, and counter-ger-" Gentlemen, is this the example feits humility and infirmity. He is that I set you?" elected pope; and the spring which policy had held back now acts with all the force of its long-restrained elasticity: he is the proudest and most despotic of sovereigns.

Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. Howe'er expell'd, nature will still return. Religion and morality curb the strength of the disposition, but they cannot destroy it. The drunkard in a cloister, reduced to a quarter of a pint of cider per meal, will never more get drunk, but he will always be fond of wine.

Age weakens the character; it is as an old tree, producing only a few degenerate fruits, but always of the same nature, which is covered with knots and moss, and becomes worm-eaten, but is ever the same, whether oak or pear-tree. If we could change our character, we could give ourselves one, and become the masters of nature. Can we give ourselves anything? do not we receive everything? To strive to animate the indolent man with persevering activity, to freeze with apathy the boiling blood of the impetuous, to inspire a taste for poetry into him who has neither taste nor ear, were as futile as to attempt to give sight to one born blind. We perfect, we ameliorate, we conceal, what nature has placed in us; but we place nothing there ourselves.

An agriculturist is told-you have too

CHARITY.

CHARITABLE AND BENEFICENT INSTITU

TIONS, ALMS-HOUSES, HOSPITALS, &c.

CICERO frequently speaks of universal charity:- -"charitas humani generis;" but it does not appear that the policy or the beneficence of the Romans ever induced them to establish charitable institutions, in which the indigent and the sick might be relieved at the expence of the public. There was a receptacle for strangers at the port of Ostia, called Xenodokium; St. Jerome renders this justice to the Romans. Alms-houses seem to have been unknown in ancient Rome. A more noble usage prevailed-that of supplying the people with corn. There were in Rome three hundred and twenty-seven public granaries. This constant liberality precluded any need of alms-houses.They were strangers to necessity.

Neither was there any occasion among the Romans for foundling charities None exposed their own children. Those of slaves were taken care of by their masters. Child-birth was not deemed disgraceful to the daughters of citizens. The poorest families, maintained by the republic, and afterwards by the emperors, saw the subsistence of their children secured.

The expression, charitable establishment, "maison de charité," implies a state