Perhaps Bayle was discontented with Holland when he thus wrote; and probably my republican friend, who refutes him, is contented with his little demo- } cratic city "for the present."

we shall see that that court far exceeds Athens in point of tyranny and atrocity. There is ordinarily no comparison to be made between the crimes of the great, who are always ambitious, and those of the people, who never desire, and who never can desire, anything but liberty and equality. These two sentiments,

It is difficult to weigh, in an exquisitely nice balance, the iniquities of the republic of Athens and of the court of Macedon. We still upbraid the Athe-"liberty and equality," do not necessanians with the banishment of Cymon, Aristides, Themistocles, and Alcibiades, and the sentences of death upon Phocion and Socrates; sentences similar in absurdity and cruelty to those of some of our own tribunals.

rily lead to calumny, rapine, assassination, poisoning, and devastation of the lands of neighbours; but, the towering ambition and thirst for power of the great, precipitate them headlong into every species of crime in all periods and all places.

In this same Macedon, the virtue of which Bayle opposes to that of Athens, we see nothing but a tissue of tremendous crimes for a series of two hundred

In short, what we can never pardon in the Athenians is the execution of their six victorious generals, condemned because they had not time to bury their dead after the victory, and because they were prevented from doing so by a tem-years. pest. The sentence is at once ridiculous and barbarous, it bear such a stamp of superstition and ingratitude, that those of the inquisition, those delivered against Urbain, Grandier, against the wife of Marshal D'Ancre, against Montrin, and against innumerable sorcerers and witches, &c., are not, in fact, fooleries more atrocious.

It is in vain to say, in excuse of the Athenians, that they believed, like Homer before them, that the souls of the dead were always wandering unless they had received the honours of sepulture, or burning. A folly is no excuse for a barbarity.

A dreadful evil, indeed, for the souls of a few Greeks to ramble for a week or two on the shore of the ocean! The evil is, in consigning over living men to the executioner; living men who have won a battle for you; living men, to whom you ought to be devoutly grateful.

It is Ptolemy, the uncle of Alexander the Great, who assassinates his brother Alexander to usurp the kingdom.

It is Philip, his brother, who spends his life in guilt and perjury, and ends it by a stab from Pausanius.

Olympias orders Queen Cleopatra and her son to be thrown into a furnace of molten brass. She assassinates Arideus.

Antigonus assassinates Eumenes.

Antigonus Gonathas, his son, poisons the governor of the citadel of Corinth, marries his widow, expels her, and takes possession of the citadel.

Philip, his grandson, poisons Demetrius, and defiles the whole of Macedon with murders.

Perseus kills his wife with his own hand, and poisons his brother.

These perfidies and cruelties are authenticated in history.

Thus, then, for two centuries, the madness of despotism converts Macedon Thus, then, are the Athenians con- into a theatre for every crime; and in victed of having been at once the most the same space of time you see the posilly and the most barbarous judges inpular government of Athens stained only by five or six acts of judicial iniquity, five or six certainly atrocious judgments, of which the people in every instance re

the world.

But we must now place in the balance the crimes of the court of Macedon;

The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty. There have been republicans in mountainous regions wild and ferocious; but they were made so, not by the spirit of republicanism, but by nature. The North American savages were entirely republi-solved and scourged another Henry, the can; but they were republics of bears.

Democracy seems to suit only a very small country; and even that fortunately situated. Small as it may be, it will commit many faults, because it will be composed of men. Discord will prevail in it, as in a convent of monks; but there will be no St. Bartholomews there, no Irish massacre, no Sicilian vespers, no inquisition, no condemnation to the gal-bled to say, "Rome and I." She kept leys for having taken water from the ocean without paying for it; at least, un

manos rerum dominos,-and the poor inhabitants of a corner of the world long unknown in a country of poverty and goitres.

and many other Indian hordes, have no kings; they elect chiefs when they go on their expeditions of plunder.

Such are also many of the hordes of Tartars. Even the Turkish empire has long been a republic of Janissaries, who have frequently strangled their sultan, when their sultan did not decimate them. We are every day asked, whether a re

The main point was, to decide how Europe should think on the subject of certain questions which no one under stood. It was the conflict of the human mind. The Calvins, the Bezas, and Turetins, were the Demostheneses, Pla-publican or a kingly government is to be tos, and Aristotles of the day.

The absurdity of the greater part of the controversial questions which bound down the attention of Europe, having at length been acknowledged, this small republic turned our consideration to what appears of solid consequence-the acquisition of wealth. The system of law, more chimerical and less baleful than that of the supralapsarians and the sublapsarians, occupied with arithmetical calculations those who could no longer gain celebrity as partisans of the doctrine of crucified divinity. They became rich, { but were no longer famous.

preferred? The dispute always ends in agreeing that the government of men is exceedingly difficult. The Jews had God himself for their master; yet observe the events of their history. They have almost always been trampled upon and enslaved; and, nationally, what a wretched figure do they make at present!

DEMONIACS.

HYPOCHONDRIACAL and epileptic persons, and women labouring under hysterical affections, have always beer considered the victims of evil spirits, malignant demons, and divine vengeance. We have seen that this disease was called the sacred disease; and that whilst the physicians were ignorant, the priests of antiquity obtained everywhere the care and management of such diseases.

It is thought that at present there is no republic, except in Europe. I am mistaken if I have not somewhere made the remark myself; it must, however, have been a great inadvertence. The Spaniards found in America the republic of Tlascala perfectly well established. When the symptoms were very comEvery part of that continent, which has plicated, the patients were supposed to not been subjugated, is still republican. be possessed with many demons-a In the whole of that vast territory, when demon of madness, one of luxury, one it was first discovered, there existed no of avarice, one of obstinacy, one of shortmore than two kingdoms; and this may sightedness, one of deafness; and the well be considered as a proof that repub-exorciser could not easily miss finding lican government is the most natural. a demon of foolery created, with another Men must have obtained considerable of knavery. refinement, and have tried many experiments, before they submitted to the government of a single individual.

The Jews expelled spirits from the bodies of the possessed by the applica. tion of the root barath, and a certain formula of words; our Saviour expelled them by a divine virtue; he cominuni{cated that virtue to his apostles, but it is now greatly impaired.

In Africa, the Hottentots, the Caffres, and many communities of negroes, are democracies. It is pretended that the countries in which the greater part of the negroes are sold, are governed by kings. A short time since an attempt was Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers, are repub-made to renew the history of St. Paulin. lics of soldiers and pirates. There are That saint saw on the roof of a church a similar ones in India. The Mahrattas, poor demoniac, who walked under, or

spects very well informed, but ignorant of orthography, substituted the word histories for that of lives (vies). Her step-mother, who hated her, said to her in a tone of harshness, "Why don't you

rather upon, this roof or ceiling, with his head below and his feet above, nearly in the manner of a fly. St. Paulin clearly perceived that the man was possessed, and sent several leagues off for some relics of St. Felix of Nola, which were ap-read as it is there?" The girl blushed plied to the patient as blisters. The and trembled, but did not venture to say demon who supported the man against anything; she wished to avoid disclosthe roof instantly fled, and the demoniacing which of her companions had interfell down upon the pavement. preted the word upon a false orthography, We may have doubts about this his- and prevented her using it. A monk, tory, while we preserve the most pro-who was the familiar confessor, pretended found respect for genuine miracles; and that the devil had taught her the word. we may be permitted to observe, that The girl chose to be silent rather than this is not the way in which we now cure vindicate herself; her silence was considemoniacs. We bleed them, bathe dered as amounting to confession; the them, and gently relax them by medi- inquisition convicted her of having made cine; we apply emollients to them. This a compact with the devil; she was conis M. Pome's treatment of them; and demned to be burnt, because she had a he has performed more cures than the large fortune from her mother, and the priests of Isis and Diana, or of any one confiscated property went by law to the else who ever wrought by miracles. inquisitors, She was the hundred thouAs to demoniacs who say they are sandth victim of the doctrine of demopossessed merely to gain money, in-niacs, persons possessed by devils and stead of being bathed, they are at pre-exorcisms, and of the real devils who sent flogged. swayed the world.

DESTINY.

It often happened, that the specific gravity of epileptics, whose fibres and muscles withered away, was lighter than Of all the books written in the westwater, and that they floated when putern climes of the world, which have into it. A miracle! was instantly ex-reached our times, Homer is the most claimed. It was pronounced that such a person must be a demoniac or a sorcerer; and holy water or the executioner was immediately sent for. It was an unquestionable proof that either the demon had become master of the body of the floating person, or that the latter had voluntarily delivered himself over to the demon. On the first supposition the person was exorcised, on the second he was burnt.

ancient. In his works we find the manners of profane antiquity, coarse heroes, and material gods, made after the image of man, but mixed up with reveries and absurdities; we also find the seeds of philosophy, and more particularly the idea of destiny, or necessity, who is the dominatrix of the gods, as the gods are of the world.

When the magnanimous Hector determines to fight the magnanimous Achilles, and runs away with all possible speed, making the circuit of the city three times, in order to increase his vigour; when Homer compares the light-footed Achilles, who pursues him, to a man that is asleep! and when Madame Dacier breaks into a rapture of admiration at the art and meaning exhibited in this passage, it is precisely then that Jupiter,

DESTINY.

arrives when he necessarily loses his
teeth, hair, and ideas.

It is contradictory to say that yesterday should not have been; or that today does not exist; it is just as contradictory to assert that which is to come will not inevitably be.

Could you derange the destiny of a single fly, there would be no possible reason why you should not control the

desirous of saving the great Hector, who has offered up to him so many sacrifices, bethinks him of consulting the destinies, upon weighing the fates of Hector and Achilles in a balance. He finds that the Trojan must inevitably be killed by the Greek, and is not only unable to oppose it, but from that moment Apollo, the guardian genius of Hector, is compelled to abandon him. It is not to be denied that Homer is frequently extra-destiny of all other flies, of all other vagant, and even on this very occasion animals, of all men, of all nature. displays a contradictory flow of ideas, would find, in fact, that you were more according to the privilege of antiquity; powerful than God. but yet he is the first in whom we meet. with the notion of destiny. It may be concluded, then, that in his days it was a prevalent one.

You

Weak-minded persons say, my physician has brought my aunt safely through a mortal disease; he has added ten years to my aunt's life. Others of more judgment say, the prudent man makes his own destiny.

Nullum numen abest, si sit Prudentia, sed te
Nos facimus, Fortuna, deam coloque locamus.
Juvenal, sat. x. v. 365.

We call on Fortune, and her aid implore,
While Prudence is the goddess to adore.

and a dozen other parliamentary leaders had been assassinated eight days before Charles I. had his head cut off, that king

The Pharisees, among the small nation of Jews, did not adopt the idea of a destiny till many ages after. For these Pharisees themselves, who were the most learned class among the Jews, were but of very recent date. They mixed up, in Alexandria, a portion of the dogmas of the stoics with their ancient Jewish ideas. But frequently the prudent man sucSt. Jerome goes so far as to state, that cumbs under his destiny, instead of their sect is but a little anterior to our making it. It is destiny which makes men prudent. Profound politicians asvulgar era. Philosophers would never have re-sure us, that if Cromwell, Ludlow, Ireton, quired the aid of Homer, or of the Pharisees, to be convinced that everything is performed according to immutable laws, that everything is ordained, that every-would have continued alive and have died thing is, in fact, necessary. ner in which they reason is as follows:Either the world subsists by its own nature, by its own physical laws, or a supreme being has formed it according to his supreme laws; in both cases these Cardinal d'Ossat was unquestionably laws are immoveable; in both cases more clever than an idiot of the petites ,everything is necessary; heavy bodies tend toward the centre of the earth maisons; but is it not evident that the without having any power or tendency organs of the wise d'Ossat were differto rest in the air. Pear trees cannot pro-ently formed than those of that idiot?duce pine apples. The instinct of a spaniel cannot be the instinct of an ostrich; everything is arranged, adjusted, and fixed.

The man

Man can have only a certain number of teeth, hairs, and ideas; and a period

in his bed; they are right; and they may add, that if all England had been swallowed up in the sea, that king would not have perished on a scaffold before Whitehall. But things were so arranged, that Charles was to have his head cut off.

Just as the organs of a fox are different from those of a crane or a lark.

Your physician saved your aunt, but in so doing he certainly did not contradict the order of nature, but followed it. It is clear that your aunt could not pre