other! thus to see creatures, wiser indeed than the monkey, and more active than the oyster, claiming to themselves a mastery of heaven! minims, the tenants of an atom, thus arrogating a partnership in the creation of universal nature! surely heaven is kind that launches no thunder at those guilty heads; : but it is kind, and regards their follies with pity, nor will destroy creatures that it loved into being.

But whatever success this practice of making demi-gods might have been attended with in barbarous nations, I do not know that any man became a god in a country where the inhabitants were refined. Such countries generally have too close an inspection into human weakness to think it invested with celestial power. They sometimes indeed admit the gods of strangers, or of their ancestors, who had their existence in times of obscurity; their weakness being forgotten, while nothing but their power and their miracles were remembered. The Chinese, for instance, never had a god of their own country; the idols which the vulgar worship at this day were brought from the barbarous nations around them. The Roman emperors, who pretended to divinity, were generally taught by a poniard that they were mortal;

and Alexander, though he passed among barbarous countries for a real god, could never persuade his polite countrymen into a similitude of thinking. The Lacedæmonians shrewdly complied with his commands by the following sarcastic edict : Ει Αλέξανδρος βουλεται είναι Θεός, Θεος εστω.

INDEX.

No.

I. Description of various Clubs

II. Specimen of a Magazine in Miniature

II Asem, an Eastern Tale

IV. On the English Clergy, and popular Preachers

V. A Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap

VI. Adventures of a Strolling Player

Page

7

21

27

40

48

71

VII. Rules enjoined to be observed at a Russian Assembly 86 VIII. Biographical Memoir, supposed to be written by the Ordinary of Newgate

988

93

97

105

XIX. Schools of Music-Objections thereto, and Answers 218

XX. On Carolan, the Irish Bard

XXI On the Tenants of the Leasowes

227

231

238

244

250