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sage in Procopius manifests how soon notorious facts give place to lies and prodigies. Britain" is divided into two parts; to the cast it is fruitful, and abounds with inhabitants; to the westward, humau life could not be supported half an hour.-Here the souls of the dead are transported."

Let me still farther expose the littleness of mind, that on such grounds presumes the yesterday's beginning of the world.

What has not been committed against its annals by bigots and conquerors? It was the avowed design of Adolphus, the successor of Alaric, to change the order of the existing world, and, by erecting an empire on the ruins of the Roman name, originate a new series of events. What the Goth devised has been often perpetrated. The Gaurs say that Alexander burned their religious books, which, like the Bedas of the Hindoos, contained all their religious, moral, and philosophical knowledge. By the order of Omar, an immense library was distributed to heat the public baths of Alexandria. Astronomical observations in Persia, containing (it is said) an immense portion of time, were made known to Hipparchus; yet the oblivion occasioned by the same barbarian was so complete, that, according to Gibbon," the modern Persians are wholly ignorant of the victory of Sapor over the Romans-an event so glorious to their nation." Thus their own brutality to the Egyptians was retaliated; for, at the instigation of the magi, they attacked and overcame that people, destroying at the same time their temples, and all the traditionary and learned treasures of that singular nation.

What cruel ravages have been made on the literary bequests of the Greeks and Romans! In the reign of Theodosius, a library of two hundred thousand volumes, a present from Antony to Cleopatra, fell a victim to the Christian priesthood. Pope Gregory's persecution of heathen authors will give immortal infamy to his name. During the reformer's crusade in Edward the Sixth's reign, literature of every kind was sacrificed; books of general knowledge, because they were useless; those of geometry and astronomy, because they merely contained necromancy and magic.

When the Protestants in Scotland superseded the former superstition, "Abbies, cathedrals, churches, libraries, records, and even the sepulchres of the dead, perished in one common ruin." Robertson and Hume also inform us, that when Edward the First invaded Scotland, he ransacked the depositories of the kingdom, destroying whatever related to its history and independance; and, on this account, all relations prior to that period are fabulous and doubtful.

Nor is this merciless spirit unknown to the most distant regions of the earth. The Seredaw told Symes*, that the archives of Pegue were destroyed by the state's convulsions. Chihoamti, the Chinese conqueror, ordered the professors of philosophy to be slain, and their books consumed: in consequence, the missionaries relate, all memorials, three centuries before this era, are apocryphal. These facts explain why there is such a paucity of authentic records, and by what means civilized nations re-immerge into their primeval barbarity.'

Embassy to Ava, p. 192.

Mr. Ensor

Mr. Ensor lays great stress on the fall of empires, and the ravages of the elements, as accounting for the oblivion of past

times.

Divines have incurred this writer's high displeasure by calling men atheists; a sort of beings of which he denies the possible existence. His great argument is founded on the absurdity of the tenet: but this would weigh equally against the supposition of there being any believers in transubstantiation; for can it be more difficult to refuse assent to the idea of a God, than to believe that a piece of bread is the Creator and Sovereign Ruler of all things?

In a few subsequent pages, the author ably sums up the mummeries and contrivances by which Paganism, and other superstitions, laid such complete hold on the minds of men.

The grand tenet of modern infidelity, namely, that which makes fear the parent of religion, is here confidently and strenuously maintained; and if quotations in profusion could establish the point, it could not well be doubted. The author then combats the doctrine of the soul's immortality, and thus concludes his observations on that important head: 'I do not deny the immortality of the soul as an emanation; but it seems to me the most extreme frenzy to suppose that man shall survive his mortality on earth, in a conscious independent existence.' Religious belief, he strangely insists, lends no support to morality, and has no beneficial influence on human conduct.

He next considers the subject of prophecies; a topic which he very lightly estimates, disposing of it by alleging that predictions were exceedingly common in the pagan world, and that the faculty of uttering them was taught as an art.-The effect of the confessions of dying persons, as urged in favor of religion, he thus meets :

Cleomenes, on being reproached for having, in a severe illness, fallen, from his contempt of prophecies, divination, and such nonsense, to implicit credulity, excused himself by saying, I am not what I was; but the priesthood consider dereliction of mind, by sickness or dotage, the time for sound and deliberate thinking. Wheh the mind is enfeebled, the prejudices of infancy recur, as sprains suffered in youth break forth with their original violence when robustness and strength give place to weakness and decay.'

The following passages particularly manifest the spirit of this publication, as well as the author's turn of mind:

Were the lapses of philosophical minds much more numerous and extreme than they are, shall superstition dare to contrast them with its mad and planetary hopes? whatever be the errors of philosophy, they are confessedly human, and by human means may be corrected.

Philosophy

Philosophy depends on argument, superstition on credulity; the one rests on the uniform experience of things, the other on their violation. Philosophy does not parley with the apprehensions of the timid; it does not press into its service denunciations of eternal and excruciating vengeance; its professors are not supplied by revenues extorted from the prime necessaries of the people; it requires no statute villanously foisted into the legal code, to protect its tenets from disquisition; for, truth and freedom, not falsehood and tyranny,

are its aim.'

There are men who think, that no public service can be performed except from personal interest, and that none would (unless from disappointment or ill usage) render himself obnoxious to the priesthood, a body of men, whose established order alone, in a wellknown kingdom is immense, whose power is universal; for, besides other revenues, they appropriate five millions annually of the cultivated product of the soil. My motive is not vexation from disappointed hopes; for I never asked any man, in or out of place, directly or indirectly, for office or emolument; nor envy, nor revenge, for none (even in the peevish account of the world) ever injured me; nor party, for I neither know the chiefs nor partizans of any political sect, nor ever was of any club or close society, under whatever kind appellation the members conceal their designs of interest and power. My aim is not popular ambition; my sentiments were never popular; nor wealth, nor artificial honours; for who was ever rewarded by places or pensions, or royal favours, who struck at the root of vulgar credulity? I cannot devise any motive, unless indignation at seeing the world goaded by superstitious terrors; and oppressed by an exorbitant tax, to support those who have ever conspired against the happiness and dignity of their species, their liberty, and reason.'

Mr. Ensor seems to be actuated by the greatest spleen against the clergy, and he gives the fullest vent to its ebullitions. He loses no opportunity of throwing out remarks that are disparaging to the sacred order; and, were the charges against this respectable and useful body the only unfounded allegations in these pages, we should have taken more notice of them than we design to bestow. One, however, we cannot refrain from introducing, and we shall state it in his own words. Speaking of the clergy, he says; The question again recurs, in what period of time have they made morality their object? Regard the public libraries, how few moral treatises adorn their shelves; what millions of interpretations, commentaries, glosses, paraphrases, readings, annotations, and polemical nonsense incumber these temples of learning.' As applied to the works of the divines of our church for the last century and a half, no accusation, we think, can be more groundless.

The author is offended, also, with its being maintained that the more pure moral doctrines are taught in the scriptures

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alone; for he insists that they are all inculcated and recommended by the heathen writers. He shews considerable ability in combating, also, the doctrine of the unequal distribution of good and evil in this life, as well as the notion of vice having the advantage of virtue, as far as respects, the present world. We own that we have always considered the arguments deduced from these two topics as slightly grounded, and as bordering on presumption; since we regard virtue as a line of conduct marking the most safe course of man, and deem it more becoming to view eternal life as flowing from God's goodness than as awarded by his justice.

We had abandoned all hopes of learning what this writer considered to be the Principles of Morality, when they were disclosed to us by the following passages, which occur near the end of the work:

The objects of morality are man's self, his fellow men, nor are other animals to be excluded from his attention: its principles I conceive to be instinct, sympathy, and reason; by instinct I mean antipathies and affections relating directly and entirely to self, without experience of their causes or consequences: a child wishes to interfere with most things that are presented; this curiosity I refer to instinct, as desire to eat and drink: love of the sex in its first emotions proceeds from the same cause; this we participate with brutes, to whom propagation, if it ever occupies their thinking, is subsequent to passion. Instinct is obvious in many things which a child avoids; he shrieks at a mastiff, a scowling brow repels him; fierceness increases his agitation; and the infant Astyanax, on beholding Hector armed, hides in his nurse's bosom, though ignorant that violence had ever been practised among men.

Sympathy affects through others, and refers principally to them; this we also participate with most animals; some birds, on hearing one of their flock lament the sportsman's cruelty, sympathise so blindly, that they permit themselves to be successively shot, sooner than desert their companion. Virgil remarks the sensibility of bees; and dogs have shewn attachments to their masters, that would be respectable from man to man.

Reason I consider the third principle of moral actions; by reason I mean, knowledge from direct experience, or opinions from analogy; though man does not possess this exclusively, he does preeminently, and on this he justly assumes his superiority and character.'

Some able strictures on the selfish system, and some common-place remarks on the crimes of theft and murder, conclude the volume; and it is now time for us to terminate our account of it. We must observe, then, that the parade of reading which these pages display, though apparently not digested and wholly unsystematic, may impose on the ignorant; while the scholar, who may be induced to read the book by

the

the numerous interesting quotations and the occasional lively observations which it contains, will regard it as one of the most crude productions that ever came from the pen of a man of reading and education.

ART. IX. The History of Mauritius, or the Isle of France, and the neighbouring Islands; from their first Discovery to the present Time; composed principally from the Papers and Memoirs of Baron Grant, who resided Twenty Years in the Island. By his Son, Charles Grant, Viscount De Vaux. Illustrated with Maps from the best Authorities. 4to. pp. 600. 11. 16s. Boards. Nicol. 1801.

AMONG the multiplicity of learned and expensive publica

tions which have issued from the press, it is surprising that we should still be in want of those comprehensive and accurate systems of geography, furnished with numerous maps, charts, and plans, which would truly merit a place in the library of the gentleman and the scholar. The materials for such a work are abundant; and books of partial geography, employed in descriptions of particular islands and districts, seldom come before us without exciting a wish, that the information scattered through a multitude of volumes was judiciously condensed into one whole, and enriched with such an atlas as would do honour to the literature and taste of our country. We might yet hope to see such a work, if men of science would engage in the undertaking, in concert with our opulent booksellers, as it would require some capital. At the conclusion of a war, we may consider the state of nations as fixed, for some time at least; and the geographer is invited to trace on his new maps those lines of demarcation which the sword of the conqueror, or the pen of the negociator, has drawn on the surface of this terraqueous globe. Empires are so often contracting or enlarging their limits, that mere political divisions and arrangements have no long duration. Like new discoveries in science, they require new systems, and prevent the labour of the geographer from ever being completely finished. The lines and features of Nature, however, are more permanent; and the accurate delineation of them is more immediately within his province.-The object of the history before us forms but a speck in the vast map of the earth: but, if so much be worth detail in a small island in the Indian ocean, and while so many books of the same kind are published respecting other islands, and portions of coasts and continents, what ample provision is there towards realizing the idea which we have suggested!

REV. MAY, 1802.

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