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cious. He obferves, that the government of Milan is now modelled after that of Florence, and that thus the two Royal brothers will have the glory of introducing, at leaft into a part of Italy, (what nature has long offered, but fovereignty denied, to that fertile region) national felicity. We wish that the ru lers of every nation would weigh with attention M. d'ALBON'S arguments against the infliction of death on malefactors. His paflage through Auftrian Lombardy, where the Marquis Beccaria propofed the abolition of capital punishments, in his wellknown and justly celebrated work, fuggefted thefe arguments. Capital executions in fome cafes may be neceffary in all states, not as a mode of punishment, as Sir William Eden fo humanely and judiciously observes, but merely as our last melancholy resource in the extermination of those from fociety, whose continuance among their fellow-citizens is become inconfiftent with the public fafety.' This is limiting the cafe wifely; for to admit of the infliction of death in no cafe, as our Author and the Marquis would have it, is ftretching clemency beyond the bounds of wifdom. But there is no fort of doubt, that its being employed in fo many cafes, as it is with us, and other European nations, is not defenfible, either on the principles of humanity or public utility. We fhall not follow our Author in his reafonings on this fubject, because they must occur to every fenfible man, who confiders it attentively. We fhall only obferve, that the pain of capital punishment, as practifed among us, is flight, its fhame tranfitory, and the life it terminates is in moft cafes rather a burthen than a bleffing. Is capital punishment an evil which, in corrupt and profligate minds, will counterbalance the hopes of acquiring opulence and pleafure by rapine, or of appeafing the anguifh of indigence by injuftice! And then, take into the estimate what fociety muft fuffer by the untimely lofs of members, which, however unworthy, might either be reftored to it by their amendment, or rendered useful to it by a laborious fervitude. We moreover think, that in point of terror and example, permanent infamy and painful labour would produce more effect than a death,' which is lefs fevere than most natural ones, and whofe fhame is more or less modified and foftened by the compaffion it often excites.

GENOA is the next object that employs our traveller. The power of this republic is entirely founded on the riches, which its fubjects derive from commerce, and the wisdom that is vifible in many parts of the public adminiftration. But, as our Author obferves, it is furprifing to fee fuch a want of wisdom in other branches, fuch as the monopoly of bread, wine, oil, falt, and other things of this kind, which is carried on for the account of government, to the great detriment of the people,

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who buy dear, and are ill-served. The multitude of agents, which government is obliged to employ in its fales, carry away a great part of their profit; thus expences are multiplied, but always at the public coft. It is eafy to perceive how this evil muft extend its influence to every branch of commerce and manufacture, by encreafing the price both of goods and labour, and expofing the Genoefe traders to be underfold by their competitors in other nations. The Count d'ALBON takes always along with him the state of literature and science in the countries through which he paffes. He celebrates the eminent merit of the Marquis Lommelini at Genoa, both as a poet and a mathematician. This nobleman, to whom M. d'Alembert, certainly no fawner on high rank, dedicated one of his moft learned productions, was minifter at Paris, and afterwards Doge of the republic. He carried on a poetical correfpondence with the famous extemporary poetels Corilla Olympica, at whose coronation at Rome our Author was prefent, when (fays he) the people, incenfed to fee Corilla obtaining the laurel that has crowned the immortal heads of Taffo and Petrarch, vented their fury in obfcene prints and infults, that would have broke out into fedition, had they not been restrained by the vigour of the magiftrates. This poetical coronation-fcene, as described by our traveller, was very pompous, and not lefs ridiculous.

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Our Author gives a very interefting account of the admirable order that reigns in the government, finances, and court of the King of Sardinia, whom he holds up as a model to all fovereign princes, who are defirous of maintaining the fplen dour of the throne, without hurting the public profperity, or exhaufting their fubjects. This monarch (fays he) is always well ferved, and at a fmall expence. His ministers are almost all diftinguithed by their merit; and it is to this that they, generally speaking, owe their preferment. They confider the efteem and confidence of their fovereign as the most precious recompenfe for their fervices; and by the fmallness of their appointments, they seem to make little account of the great emoJuments that are connected in other countries with the high offices of the state. The Marquis of Ormea, who filled, with great abilities and merit, the firft pofts of the kingdom, and held at once feveral that had been rarely united in one perfon, did not, fays our Author, draw from all his appointments above 12,000 Livres, i. e. fomething less than 600 pounds SterJing annually, which feems to us incredible. Since his time the profits of civil employments are augmented, and a fecretary of ftate has a falary of 13,000 Livres. The favings of the monarch (here we follow the expreffions of our Author) difplay the happy fruits of order, and are employed in the nobleft exertions of beneficence. They are divided into various and

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feparate funds, allotted for the education of youth, for the formation and maintenance of useful fettlements, for the encouragement of eminent merit, the relief of declining families, and of the inhabitants of diftricts, that have fuffered by inundations, epidemical difeafes, or other calamities, and for other generous and charitable purposes, that must make us congratulate the people governed by fuch a sovereign.

Among the learned men that belong to this country, M. d'ALEON juftly celebrates M. de la Grange, formerly Profeffor at Turin, at prefent one of the Directors of the Academy of Berlin, and undoubtedly one of the first mathematicians in Europe. He was felf-taught, never had a mafter, and was early impelled, by a kind of inftine, to the study of geometry, in which he has made important difcoveries. His refearches in the most abftrufe branches of that science may be seen in the Mifcellanies of the Royal Society of Turin, and the Memoirs of the Royal Academies of Paris and Berlin.

Our Author's obfervations on SPAIN and PORTUGAL keep up attention, Thefe countries, particularly the latter, have been lefs frequented and described by travellers than most others. He mentions the improvements that the prefent King of Spain has made in that country, by cutting navigable canals, erecting bridges, making public roads, appointing public carriages to facilitate travelling, and, above all, by inflituting a fociety, under the denomination of Friends to their Country, whofe great object is the encouragement of agriculture and useful arts. But, as our Author obferves, much yet remains to be done in that country. He points out the abufes and grievances that are yet unredreffed, the corruptions of the court, the defpotic pretenfions and privileges of the Spanish grandees, the ufe of the torture, which fo often terminates in the triumph of guilt and the condemnation of innocence; but with respect to the Inquifition, he lets the thermometer of his zeal fink several degrees, and examines the FOR and against of this odious tribunal with a fpirit of moderation, or rather with a phlegmatic tranquillity-which is fomewhat furprising in a writer who is both hot-headed and humane.

His defcription of PORTUGAL as without agriculture, manufactures, population, strength, or motion, in the midst of a fine climate and a fertile territory, is painful to humanity. His account of the character and adminiftration of the Marquis of Pombal is a good piece of moral painting, which is too long to be tranfcribed, and would fuffer by being abridged. The refult, however, is, that this famous minifter had great parts, extenfive knowledge, audacious ambition, exhibited the contraft of unrelenting cruelty and humane fenfibility, and involved in great

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great calamities the fame country to which he rendered the moft important and fignal services.

Upon the whole, this work is entertaining and inftructive, notwithstanding its defects. If the Author would correct ftill farther the petulance of his tone, and be lefs wanton in the ufe, or rather abuse, of metaphors, he would turn out a much better and more agreeable writer than we can pronounce him to be at prefent.

ART. VI,

Phadri Augufti Lib. Fabularum, &c. i. e. The Fables of Phaedrus, in Five Books, with Notes and Supplements, by the Abbé BoTIER. Paris, from the elegant Prefs of Barbou. 1-83. 12mo. 350 Pages, with Head-pieces, engraven by Feffard, Price 6 Livres, bound and Gilt.

GR

REAT is the typographical merit of this beautiful Edition of the excellent Roman Fabulift: but the merit it has acquired by paffing through the hands of that learned and truly claffical critic, the Abbé BROTIER, Member of the Royal Academy of Infcriptions, is what will principally recommend it to men of true tafte in Latin literature. In his editions of Tacitus and Pliny, we have already fpecimens of the abilities of the Abbé Brotier; and he informs us in a Preface, prefixed to the prefent publication, of the affiftance with which he has been furnished, and which encouraged him to undertake it.The manufcript, from which the first edition of Phaedrus was printed, was communicated to him by its proprietor M. le Peletier de Rofanbo, Prefident of the Parliament of Paris. This manufcript, which is 900 years old, was difcovered in Lorrain by the Jefuit Sirmond, from whom it paffed into the hands of P. Pithow, by whom it was firft published. The Abbé Defaunays, Librarian to the King of France, communicated alio to our Editor the various readings which Dom Vincent, a Benedictine monk of the congregation of St. Maur, had copied from an ancient MS. which was in the library of Rheims, and was confumed by the flames which deftroyed that whole collection in the year 1774. By thefe aids, as alfo by confulting carefully the best printed editions of Phaedrus, of which there is a lift at the end of this volume, M. BRUTIER has been enabled to arrange the five books of Fables in a better order, to correct a confiderable number of faults in each, and to give a purer and more correct text of Phaedrus than has hitherto appeared, and which will undoubtedly be followed in all future editions of the Roman Fabulift.

The Notes which accompany this edition, are clear, elegant, and inftructive, without any oitentatious accumulation of that

infipid

infipid and barren erudition, with which the claffic writers were fwathed and disfigured in the editions of the Burmans, and their pedantic fraternity. Criticifm is now coming back to nature, tafte, philofophy, and good fenfe, from which he had fo long played the truant, and was of confequence reduced to live upon the hufks and pods of erudition. Our Abbé, befides Notes, has furnished Supplements to complete the fables which have been mutilated in their paffage through the ruins of barbarifm to modern times. This we think as bold an undertaking as that of many a modern fculptor, who has furnished a toe, or a foot, nay, even a fupplemental nofe, to an ancient ftatue; and in both cafes the boldness is proportionable to the parts or part that is to be restored. However, we think he has fucceeded here ftill better than in his Supplements to Tacitus, though justly esteemed, and that the elegant fimplicity, and the fedate amenity of Phaedrus, are well taken off. Our Abbé has added to this edition fuch fables of La Fontaine, as are imitations of the Latin poet, not with a view to compare the two Fabulifts together, but to exhibit, in their union, all the perfection of that branch of poetry which they fo happily cultivated. For, fays our Author, they had each their peculiar and original character of perfection. Nothing can be added to the one; nothing can be retrenched from the other: these two circumstances exhibit the true and infallible rules of genuine beauty, and therefore render the two Fabulifts a perfect model. In order to give farther examples and models of this kind of compofition, the Abbé BROTIER has fubjoined alfo to this edition fome of the most celebrated fables of antiquity, of which La Fontaine has dextrously availed himself; fuch as, the Country and City Moufe and the Weafel, from Horace-the Lark and her little ones, from Efop-the Members and the Stomach, from Livy-the Wolves and the Sheep, from Demofthenes-the Head and Tail of the Serpent, from Plutarch-and the Scythian Philofopher, by Herod

Atticus.

ART. VII.

Traité de la Verité de la Religion Chretienne, &c. i. e. A Treatife conIcerning the Truth of the Chritian Religion. Vols. VIII. and IX. containing the Argument, drawn from the Manner in which that Religion was propagated and established in the World. By the Reverend Dr. J. VERNET, Profeffor of Divinity at Geneva. 8vo. Laufanne. 1782.

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T is now near fifty years fince the preceding volumes of this Work were first publifhed by the very refpectable and learnedAuthor. These seven volumes, which contain a defence of the Chriftian religion, on a liberal and comprehenfive plan, display.

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