TRANSLATION OF THE LINES, Inserted in the 4th Number of the Selector. "ON THE DEATH OF MISS E L-ce." She is no more, ah ! wherefore should we'mourn In vain do we lament that she is gone; In vain our tears in copious showers flow, In vain does Friendship o'er her ashes mourn, Or weeping friends lament the cruel Blow. None can elude the tyrant's dread decree, In vain did Fortune hail her fav'rite child, The mind of her whose loss we now deplore, Was stor'd with wisdom, blessed with ev'ry grace, Clear sense and truth with virtue's gifts in store, Shone bright in her the lov'liest of her race. Taught by thy rules O Virtue! how to live; Taught by thy rules to estimate mankind; Those rules alone can peace and pleasure give, Subdue the passions and exalt the mind. But in an hour when all was thought secure, Come let us now attune the mournful lyre, And weep that she so soon hath met her doom; For in the heart of ev'ry virtuous friend, Is deeply fix'd the fair Eliza's tomb. Falmouth, May 8th, 1826. BIRTHS IN APRIL. At Camelford, Mrs. Amall, of a son. IN MAY. At Truro, Mrs. Plummer, of a daughter. At St. Erme, Mr. J. Willson to Miss Moire. At Kea, Mr. J. Stephens to Miss Geach. DEATHS-IN APRIL. At Fowey, Mr Wilcocks, Ship builder. At St. Austle, Mr. H. Blackmore, Surgeon. IN MAY. At Truro, Mrs. Clark relict of the late Mr. J. At Higher Perran, the wife of Mr. M. Bath. At St. Columb, Mr. D. Mallet, also infant daughter of Mr: Mallet. At St. Columb, G. White, Smith aged 31. At Trelill, Mrs. Clave, aged 64. N. T. At Helston, Mrs. Edmonds. At St. Austle, Mrs. J. Blackmore, of a daughter, At St. Austle, Mrs. Caddy, of a sou. At Liskeard, Mr. E. Beard, aged 95. At St Agnes, Mrs. Fox, aged 59. At St. Martins, Mr. R. Ellis, aged 33. At Falmouth William eldest son of Mr. Triverton. At Pentewan, Mr. J. Simpson, aged 41. At Falmouth, Miss Francis, aged 17. At Camborne, Capt. J. Thomas. At Trevorah, Mrs. Avis. At St. Columb Mrs. Grouden, aged 84. Printed and Published by J. PHILP, Falmouth, and sold by most Booksellers în the County. No. 7.] The Selector. "WE CULL THE CHOICEST” JULY, 1826. ON THE FINAL EXTINCTION OF WAR. "And they shall beat their swords into plough shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." A few remarks on the final extinction of War, we deem an appropriate sequel to the excellent observations of our correspondent JUNIUS, on the " Diffusion of Knowledge." Amongst the many happy results of which it has been ably shown this will be the means, we think that may be ranked amongst its highest and most desirable. We shall avail ourselves of one or two positions already proved in the article referred to, in arguing the proposed question. 1st. "Freedom is the result of knowledge;"-the loss of freedom is one inevitable result of war;-therefore by the diffusion of the one we may gladly anticipate the extinction of the other. The first position has been already proved, and if the second can be established, we cannot doubt of the result. And who does not perceive that war is fatal to liberty? To the carrying on of war, as at present conducted, there must be soldiers. Every soldier on his entrance into the army gives up his liberty. He has no will,no power of his own. He must go whither, and do whatever he is commanded. Even where conscience opposes he must obey. His commander perhaps wishes some unholy, unjust, or merciless work to be performed. His soul recoils from the task, but he recollects that he is only a mere instrument, and must do that which his VOL. 1. H [Price 3d. superior bids him. And thus whatever of generosity or manly feeling he may another's inclinations however strange possess, he must be the slave of or brutish they may be. Nor is the absolute obedience of soldiers fatal to their own liberty alone, but frequently also to the civil liberty of nations. "Its death warrant is signed in any country which aspires to conquest and military glory. Thus was Rome ruined. The armies made their commanders emperors, who, by their aid made the people slaves, until the citizens, who in their days of freedom looked down on sovereigns, held property and life at the caprice of any fool, or wretch, or villain, to whom the Praetorian bands gave the imperial crown, or sold it by public auction." Still oftener does slavery follow in the train of victorious war. The vanquished become the property of the victors, and as such they are disposed of just as it may suit the inclination or interests of their owners. The loss of liberty, whatever else, they may be permitted to retain, is one of the first, as it is one of the most painful, consequences. However lenient may be the disposition of the conqueror, he claims and exercises the right of abridging the liberties of the conquered; but when it happens, as it frequently does, that the former is cruel and despotic, the latter becomes the sport of his tyranny and malignity. If then freedom be the result of knowledge, the diffusion of knowledge will ultimately lead to the extermination of wAR. 2d. We borrow another proposition from which we deduce the same inference. "If there be any speculative truth more clearly demonstrated than another, it is, that the diffusion of knowledge conduces to the happiness of man, in the exact proportion to the extent of its dissemination." In precisely the same proportion does war conduce to the misery of man. Trace it through all its stages, and you will find suffering, in a greater or lesser degree, to be its invariable attendant. Happily we know but comparatively Jew of its horrors save only by report. But those are sufficient to harrow up the feelings of humanity. Our country having been long free from hostile invaders, we have never witnessed in its fields the dread conflict of contending armies, nor seen our shores covered with its slain. But we have seen some of the heart-rending consequences of such lamentable scenes as these. We have seen drafted from our shores, thousands of our fellow-countrymen, to be set up as marks on a foreign land for men to shoot at, or themselves to become the unhappy executioners of their, perhaps, innocent and unoffending fellow-mortals. We have seen tender mothers bidding adieu to the children of their affection, and whilst they stood before them in all the pride and lovliness of youth, regarding them only as the shadows of death. We have seen wives taking leave of their husbands, with sorrow even surpassing that which is felt on occasions of death. In short we have seen all the relative and sympathetic affections put to the torture, by the painful separations which have taken place during a protracted foreign And what else have we seen? The realization of most of these dreaded anticipations. Mother and children joining in one common lamentation, for the loss of those on whom they hung for support:-parents and relatives bewailing the pride of their hopes and expectations:-or, perhaps the return of the few remnants escaped from the wreck of death, to tell by their emaciated looks,-their mangled bodies, their depraved habits, or atrocious crimes, that they have been engaged in the direful and demoralizing work of warfare war. But these are only the distant traces of this adversary to haman happiness. What then must be the calamity in those places where conflicting armies meet? "What multitudes are there assembled that the scythe of death may mow them down with greater facility— that not individuals, but thousands, may be levelled at a stroke! Dreadful scene of indiscriminate slaughter! There perish the mighty and renowned, there the young, the healthy, and the vigorous. The qualities which, in the ordinary course of things, seem to promise exemption from the ravages of mortality, there only recommend them for the sacrifice and fit them to be victims." But there the mischief, though great, does not terminate. The surviving armies go from the field of carnage, and "wherever they go, they carry desolation,—they devour like locusts, they blast like the lightning,—they destroy like the volcano,-they overwhelm like the earthquake. Little is spared by plunder, revenge, or wantonness. At their approach, harvests vanish, and burning villages are torches to light their march. Law is at an end: life, honour, property, are held on sufferance by the mercy of the sword. O what have the peaceful inhabitants to recount, by whose abodes this torrent has rolled! They have survived scenes, they have tales to tell, which, long as they remember, shall wring their hearts, which their tongues shall faulter to repeat, and at which the listening traveller shall shudder.” But enough of these horrors! Enough to convince us that the tendency of war is the very reverse of that of knowledge! Facts assure us that the one carries in its train the most afflictive evils; whilst the other produces the greatest possible good. Is there not then some consolation to be drawn, even from the mournful circumstances which we have brought to remembrance? Do not the iniquity, immorality, and misery attendant on war, amount to assurances that it must recede as knowledge advances; and that when the latter shall have extended its empire over all the earth, the former shall be known only as the dread demon of former times, when men had not yet learned to bring into subjection the fiercer passions of their nature, and to live under the milder-the happier dominion of wisdom. We do not pretend to trace the direct march of knowledge to the attainment of this great victory. The attempt would perhaps only perplex the mind with apparently insuperable difficulties, and lead us to despair of the result. Certain it is that a mighty revolution must first take place in the minds, the dispositions, and the pursuits of men. The proud must be humbled, the ambitious restrained,the cruel humanized in short mankind must be greatly changed and improved before the arrival of the predicted period. But no obstacle presents itself which may not be overcome by the consideration of the effects to be produced by the progress of knowledge. Let every difficulty be met by this test, and we shall find a solution that will suppress our apprehensions, and bid us hope that the time will arrive when the olive-branch of Peace shall become the universal insignia of man. One important question, however, yet remains to be answered, relating to this subject; viz. whether knowledge will ever make such progress on the earth as to put an end to all war? It must be confessed that the arguments hitherto advanced only prove that the one is incompatible with the other; and that if the one prevail, the other must be vanquished. As this is a very essential point to be considered in determining the question, and one which will require rather considerable discussion, we shall reserve our remarks on this head for another paper. Suffice it to say at present, that we think favourable, if not conclusive, arguments can be adduced to prove that this desirable period will arrive. Past, and perhaps present times, do not afford that ground of hope the benevolent heart could wish; but if the voice of prophecy may be permitted to be heard, and its promises received as evidence, we may then indulge the pleasing anticipation, and rejoice that in some future age "nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. No. 7. PALESTINE, OR THE HOLY LAND. JERUSALEM. THE ROYAL SEPULCHRES. (From the Modern Traveller.) THE Royal Sepulchres, which Josephus seems to make the Northern boundary of the ancient city, lies about a mile distant from the present walls, towards the northwest of this extraordinary cemetary, the best account is furnished by Maundrell and Dr. Clarke. The first place to which the traveller is conducted, on the north side of the City, is a large grot, a little without the Damascus gate, sut to have been for some time the residence of the prophet Jeremiah; they pretend to shew as his bed a shelf on the rock, about eight feet from the ground; and the place is held in great veneration by both Turks and Jews, as well as Christians. In Maundrell's time it was a College of dervises. "The next place we came to," that accurate traveller proceeds, "was those famous grots called the sepulchres of the kings; but for what reason they go by that name is hard to resolve; for it is certain none of the kings, either of Israel or Judah, were buried here; the holy scriptures assiguing other places for their sepulchres, unless it may be thought perhaps that Hezekiah was here interred, and that these were the sepulchres of the sons of David, mentioned 2 Chron. XXXII. 33. Whoever was buried here, this is certain, that the place itself discovers so great an expense both of labour and treasure, that we may well suppose it to have been the work of kings. You approach to it at the east side, through an entrance cut out of the natural rock, which admits you into an open court of about forty paces square, cut down into the rock, with which it is compassed instead of walls. On the south side of the court is a portico, nine paces long and four broad, hewn likewise out of the natural rock. There is a kind of architrave running along the front, adorned with sculpture of fruits and flowers, still discernable, but by time much defaced. At the end of the portico, on the left hand, you descend to a passage into the sepulchres. The door is now so obstructed with stones and rubbish, that it is a thing of some difficulty to creep through it; but within, you arrive in a large fair room about seven or eight yards square, eut out of the natural rock. Its sides and ceiling are so exactly square, and its angles so just, that no architect with levels and plummets could build a room more regular; and the whole is so firm and entire, that it may be called a chamber hollowed out of one piece of marble. From this room you pass into (I think) six more, one within another, all of the same fabric with the first. Of these, the two innermost are deeper than the rest, having a second decsent of about six or seven steps into them. "In every one of these rooms, except the first, were coffins of stone, placed in niches in the sides of the chambers. They had been at first covered with handsome lids, and carved with garlands; but now most of them were broken to pieces by sacrilegious hands. The sides of the ceiling of the rooms were always dropping, with the moist damps condensing upon them. To remedy which nuisance, and to preserve these chambers of the dead polite and clean, there was in each room a small channel cut in the floor, which served to drain the drops that fall constantly into it. "But the most surprizing thing belonging to these subterraneous chambers was the doors, of which there is only one that remains hanging, being left as it were on purpose to puzzle the beholders. It consisted of a plank of stone of about six inches in thickness, and in its other dimensions equalling the size of an ordinary door, or somewhat less. It was carved in such a manner as to resemble a piece of wainscot; the stone of which it was made was visibly of the same kind with the, whole rock; and it turned upon two hinges in the nature of axles. These hinges were of the same entire piece of stone with the door; and were contained in two holes of the immoveable rock, one at the top, the other at the bottom. "From this description it is obvious to start a question, how such doors as these were made? or whether they were cut out of the rock, in the same place and manner as they now hang? or whether they were brought, and fixed in their station like other doors?-One of these must be supposed to have been done; and whichever part we choose as most probable, it seems at first glance to be not without difficulty. But this much I have to say, for the resolving of this riddle (which is wont to create no small dispute amongst pilgrims), viz. that the door which was left hanging, did not touch its lintel by at least two inches; so that I believe it might easily have been lifted up and unhinged. And the doors which have been thrown down, had their hinges at the upper end twice as long as those at the bottom; which seems to intimate pretty plainly by what method this work was accomplished. "As to the history of this most princely place of burial, we shall find it difficult to obtain much information. That it was not what its name implies, is very evident, because the sepulchres of the kings of Judah were in Mount Zion. The most probable opinion is maintained by Pococke who considered it as the sepulchre of Helen, queen of Adiabene. Indeed it seems evident, that, by the royal caves, nothing more is intended by Josephus than the royal sepulchre of Helena he had before mentioned, thus repeated under a different appellation." A CHILD SCREENING A DOVE FROM A HAWK. BY STEWARDSON. Ay, screen thy favourite dove, fair child, That dove will die, that child will weep,- Some evil thing must be. Ay, moralize, is it not thus We've monrn'd our hope and love? Alas there's tears for every eye, A hawk for every dove! |