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Yours us with the method of composing the teraphim, which were a species of image endued by magic art, with the power of prophesying. "The teraphim have spoken vanity." Zach. 10, 2. Rabbi Eliezer is quoted as the author.

Receipt for making the Teraphim.

"They killed a man that was a first born son, and wrung off his head, and seasoned it with salt and spices, and wrote upon a plate of gold, the name of an unclean spirit, and put it under the head on a wall, and lighted candles before it, and worshipped it." With such as these, the rabbis assert that Laban spake. Dr. Fuller, in his "Worthies of England," after repeating the old prophetic proverb,

"When our lady falls in our lord's lap, Then let England beware a mishap,"

and after bringing fifteen instances of singular misfortunes, which have happened to England, when such a conjunction of feasts has occurred, warns the next generation to beware of what may fall out in the year 1722. Happily that year is past, and probably another like era, without any signal misfortune happening to the kingdom.

ON THOUGHTLESS CRUELTY.

IT seems strange that a passion for the arts should have been often made a pretext for the most exquisite barbarity. The story of Giotto and his dying Christ, is within every one's reading: that of Parrhasius, the Athenian painter, which seems to have been Giotto's model, is not so well known. When Philip of Macedon had taken Olynthus, and consigned the inhabitants to slavery, Parrhasias, who had resided in the Macedonian camp, walking among the ruins of the place, was struck with the exquisite expression of sorrow which agonized the features of

an old captive, a man of some rank, whose children had been just torn from him, and exposed to public sale. He purchased him immediately, carried him to Athens, and, whilst he made the wretched Olynthian perish under every torment which art could inflict, he drew, from the writhings of his tortured frame, a Prometheus under the beak and talons of the vulture, which was allowed to be a masterpiece of art. If any circumstance could add to the horrors of this story, it is, that Olynthus had actually suffered in the cause of the very city in which Parrhasius acted this detestable scene of cruelty. The piece was given by the artist to the temple of Minerva, in Athens; and Seneca coolly argues the point, whether it ought to have been received.

An act of greater inhumanity has seldom been perpetrated than that of the cardinal of Lorraine, who, being at the head of the council, under Francis II, and finding the avenues of Fontainebleau thronged with wounded officers, and with the widows of such as had lost their lives in the king's service, had the brutality to erect a gibbet, "in order to get rid of the beggars," as he expressed himself, and, by sound of trumpet, proclaimed, that whosoever of the petitioners should not be gone, within twenty-four hours, should be executed, without mercy, upon the same.

The same age, however, produced instances of cruelty almost beyond belief, and, from their abundance, it seems they did not strike the minds of men with that degree of horror which they would raise at a milder period. Coconnas, an Italian of rank, having been executed in the reign of Henry III, of France, on suspicion of treason, the king rendered him the following public testimony of his character. "Cocon nas was brave enough, but he was one of the wickedest fellows in my realm. I have often heard him boast of having, at the massacre of St. Barthelemy, purchased upwards of thirty Huguenots out of the hands

of their enemies, merely for the sake of killing them in a more cruel method. He began with making them renounce their religion, and then he tortured them to death, by slow degrees." To this eulogium the tender-hearted prince added.... "I never liked Coconnas thoroughly after I knew this story, and am not sorry for the end to which he has brought himself."

All is not inhumanity which goes under that name. It is true, the effect is the same to the sufferers, but the motive is less detestable.

The cook-maid, who weeps at a tale of woe, although, as a poet sings....

"All the while she skins live eels,"

is by no means to be blamed for inconsistency. The same tenderness which makes her weep at a melancholy narrative, would interest her in favour of the wretches whom she tortures, were but any one kind enough to reason with her, on a barbarity, in which she is hardened by custom, and to acquaint her that, by putting the animal's head in boiling water, she might shorten its pains.

"They be used to it," was the reply made by a thoughtless fair one, to a friend who began an argument on the subject.

The drayman who cruelly lashes the poor animals trusted to his care, thinks himself only chastising them for their perverseness. For, ridiculous as it may appear, there is no doubt but he believes that they might comprehend all he says to them if they pleased. Listen to a carter, who thinks himself not over-heard; he will talk to his fore-horse; he will give his orders to him in a language which he thinks very intelligible. The horse turns this and that way, but unhappily cannot hit the right species of obedience. Then the driver, after, with the strictest impartiality, blasting the horse's eyes and limbs, and his own too, begins to use his whip, and actually believes himself only chastizing an obdurate

rebel. These mistaken men ought surely not to be punished merely for doing what appears to them to be just. No, they should be sent to some Bridewell, as to a school, there they should be ordered in the Latin language to perform some task, and should be heartily flogged, not for idleness, but for not comprehending the directions of their teachers.

When a boy, I was charmed with the tricks which an itinerant rat catcher had taught to a beautiful white ferret. "But what mean those bloody marks round his mouth?" "Why, that is where I sows up his chaps, that he ma'ant bite the rabbits in their berrys." "How can you be so barbarous," I cried, "to so tame, and so lovely an animal?" "Laud, master, a' likes it. A' will hold up his chaps to be sewed!"

That species of cruelty which has given occasion to so many elegant effusions of poetry, has scarcely ever been more beautifully lamented than by the celebrated Buchanan, in the following epigram:

Illa, mihi semper presenti, dura, Neæra, Me quoties absum, semper abesse

dolet.

Non desiderio nostri, non mæret amore, Sed se non nostro posse dolore frui.

ON DRUNKENNESS.

THE merry sin of drunkenness has met with so many, not only apologists, but even panegyrists, that every thing which can now be said on the subject must have been long anticipated. That most poets should have ranged themselves under the banner of Bacchus cannot be wondered at.

Their jovial and easy manners suit well with those of his worshippers. Anacreon, who was one of the heartiest friends to the cause, after describing the elevation of spirit which his wine had blessed him with....

πατῶ δ' απαντα θυμώ,

I kick the world before me,

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I'd rather die to revive again, than to

die for good and all.

Horace, who did every thing with grace, makes an elegant eulogium on wine, in the 21st ode of his 3d book, and in his epistles, in order completely to unite poetry with drinking, after having denied all possibility of fame to water-drinking bards, he intimates that the muses themselves had no objection to good liquor.

"Vina fere dulces oluerunt manè Camena."

The muses themselves betray their tippling by their morning breath. Many philosophers have defended tippling. Even Seneca carries his complacency so far, as to advise men of high-strained minds to get drunk now and then....

"Non ut mergat nos, sed ut deprimat."

Not to stupify but only to relieve us. He adds, afterwards, Do you call Cato's excess in wine a vice? Much sooner may you be able to prove drunkenness a virtue than Cato to be vicious.

The grave Lucretius must have been pretty well acquainted with good liquor, to have so perfectly described its effects.

■“ Cum vini vis penetravit. Consequitur gravitus membrorum, præpediuntur

Crura vacillante, tardescit lingua, madet mens,

With fluttering tongue, and staring eye, They hiccup mutual wrath and obloquy.

The humorous French philosopher, Montaigne, adduces a thousand arguments in favour of wine, although he professes himself not to be attached to it. "Lucius Piso," he remarks, from Seneca, "and Cornelius Cossus, were successively entrusted with secrets of the utmost importance, the first by Augustus, the other by Tiberius. These they were never known to betray, although each was noted for such excess in wine, as to have been carried from the senate-house, repeatedly, in a state which we should call dead-drunk."

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One might presume that the Zaporavian Cossacks were truly addicted to the pleasures of the Nant oculi, clamor, singultus, jurgia table, since their chief magistrate,

gliscunt."

When once their pates with wine are fraught,

Their limbs begin to totter, Their speech is check'd, confus'd each thought,

Each passion, too, grows hotter ;

chosen by themselves, is not, as Bell informs us, called their prince, or duke, or general, but cashavar, which literally signifies chief cook.

Were honest Howel's remedy against the love of drinking effectual, it might be of service to the

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world to repeat it. But although its success be doubtful, its oddity may entertain. "The German mothers, to make their sons fall into hatred of wine, do use, when they are little, to put owls' eggs into a cup of rhenish, and sometimes a little living eel, which, twingling in the wine, while the child is drinking, so scares him, that many come to abhor, and have an antipathy to wine, all their lives after."

The following passage is quoted from Hollingshead: "As for drink, it is not usually set on the table in pots or cruses, but each one calleth for a cup of such as he listeth to have, or as necessity urgeth him, so that when he hath tasted of it, he delivereth his cup again to some one of the standers by, who, making it clean, restoreth it to the cupboard from whence he fetched the same. By this occasion much idling tippling is cut off."

It is singular that the same custom should still continue to distinguish the meals of the English from those of their neighbours, though perhaps not always with the effect mentioned in the last sentence.

It is true of late it has become the fashion to put wine on the table during meal time in England, but it has not long been introduced, and the custom is very far from being general.

The elegant, polished females bred in the court of Louis XIV, were far less scrupulous in point of temperance than we should readily believe, had we not so indisputable an evidence as the duchess of Orleans, Charlotte Elizabeth, in a let"The ter dated May 21, 1716. duchess of Bourbon, daughter of madame de Montespan, can drink a vast deal without having her senses disordered. Her daughters wish to follow her example, but they have not heads strong enough to bear so much liquor." The editor of those letters remarks, that about this period, the practice of hard-drinking

prevailed much among women of
the best education and highest rank.
We shall close these illustrations
with those laws of conviviality
which Lipsius has handed down
to the present age.

Vinum, purum, putum, puer infundito....
A sumno ad imum, more majorum, bi-

bunto....

Decem Cyathi, summa potio, sunto....
Musis nonum.... Decumum Apollini li-

banto....

Dominan si quis habessit, indicium fa

cito....

Rixæ, clamor, contentio, ad Thracas
Abligantor....Eorum vice, carmen
Aliudve quid musæum, proferunto.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TRIFLES.

MORE than half the happiness of life depends on trifles: great events happen but seldom, and, when they occur, if unfortunate, every thing possible is done to mitigate their ill effects. Not so the chagrin produced from trifles: they do not appear of magnitude enough to engage the sympathy of others for you, and they teize away your comfort, corrode your temper, and destroy your ease. Only self-felt; at first sight, perhaps, it may seem absurd to say, that our happiness in general depends more upon trifles than events of magnitude, but this may easily be shown to be true.

Trifles occur every half hour, every minute, and, if they are of a galling irksome nature; if tinctured with the irritability of a husband or wife; with the peevishness of a parent; with the acrimonious jealousy of a sister; or the overbearing manners of a brother; our feelings wilf certainly be chafed and wounded; and the repeated stroke will as certainly undermine affection as the washing of the sea will undermine the bank against which it is continually dashing.

SUBSTANCE OF THE

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

November 19th, 1804.

REVENUE.

THE nett revenue, arising from duties on merchandise and tonnage, during 1802, amounted to ten millions one hundred and fifty-four thousand dollars. The nett revenue, from the same source, during 1803, amounted to eleven millions three hundred and six thousand dollars. The nett revenue, during the three first quarters of 1804, considerably exceeds that of the corresponding quarters of the year 1803. That branch of the reve nue may, exclusively of the Mediterranean fund, be estimated at ten millions seven hundred and thirty thousand dollars, which is the average of the two years 1802 and 1803. The actual payments in the treasury, on account of those duties, during the year ending on the 30th September last, amount nearly to the same sum, and there is no reason to suppose that the receipts of the ensuing will fall short of those of last year.

The revenue from the sale of public lands is gradually encreasing. Exclusively of the September sales at Cincinnati, three hundred and fourteen thousand acres have been sold, during the year ending on the 30th of September last. The proceeds of these sales, purchasers being entitled to the discount allowed in case of prompt payment, would yield five hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It is believed that the receipts from that source will, for the ensuing year, exceed four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The permanent revenue of the United States may, therefore, including the duties on postage, and other small incidental branches, be computed at eleven millions two hundred thousand dollars.

And the payments in the treasury, during the year 1805, on account of the temporary duties which constitute the Mediterranean fund, are estimated at five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, making in the whole, for the probable receipts of that year, a sum of eleven millions seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. $ 11,750,000

EXPENDITURES.

The expences of the year 1805, defrayed out of that revenue, consist of 1. Eight millions for the principal and interest of the public debt, of which near three millions seven hundred thousand will be applicable to the discharge of the principal, and the residue to the payment of interest

2. For the civil department, and all domestic expences of a
civil nature, including military pensions, light house and
mint establishments, and the expence of surveying public
lands

3. For the intercourse with foreign nations, including the pay-
ment of awards under the British treaty, and for Algiers
4. For the military and Indian departments
5. For the naval establishment

8,000,000

952,000

294,000

954,000

650,000

590,000

1,240,000

Carried forward 11,440,000

Extraordinary expences of the last expedition against Tripoli, payable in 1805, and chargeable to the Mediterranean fund

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