Roman citizens.-Men not born to action are inconsequential in government.-Collectitious troops.-The foot by their violent attack began the fatal break in the Phasaliac field.-He and his brother, with a politic common to other countries, had taken opposite sides.

His epithets are of the gaudy or hyperbolical kind. The glorious news-eager hopes and dismal fears -bleeding Rome-divine laws and hallowed customs-merciless war-intense anxiety.

Sometimes the reader is suddenly ravished with a sonorous sentence, of which when the noise is past, the meaning does not long remain. When Brutus set his legions to fill a moat, instead of heavy dragging and slow toil, they set about it with huzzas and racing, as if they had been striving at the Olympick games. They hurled impetuous down the huge trees and stones, and with shouts forced them into the water; so that the work, expected to continue half the campaign, was with rapid toil completed in a few days. Brutus's soldiers fell to the gate with resistless fury, it gave way at last with hideous crash. -This great and good man, doing his duty to his country, received a mortal wound, and glorious fell in the cause of Rome; may his memory be ever dear to all lovers of liberty, learning, and humanity This promise ought ever to embalm his memory.— The queen of nations was torn by no foreign invader.-Rome fell a sacrifice to her own sons, and was ravaged by her unnatural offspring all the great men of the state, all the good, all the holy, were openly murdered by the wickedest and worst.

234 MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF AUGUSTUS.

Little islands cover the harbour of Brindisi, and form the narrow outlet from the numerous creeks that compose its capacious port.-At the appearance of Brutus and Cassius a shout of joy rent the heavens from the surrounding multitudes.

Such are the flowers which may be gathered by every hand in every part of this garden of eloquence. But having thus freely mentioned our Author's faults, it remains that we acknowledge his merit; and confess that this book is the work of a man of letters, that it is full of events displayed with accuracy, and related with vivacity; and though it is sufficiently defective to crush the vanity of its Author, it is sufficiently entertaining to invite readers.

REVIEW

OF

FOUR LETTERS FROM SIR ISAAC NEWTON

TO DR. BENTLEY,

CONTAINING

SOME ARGUMENTS IN PROOF OF A DEITY.*

It will certainly be required, that notice should be taken of a book, however small, written on such a subject, by such an author. Yet I know not whether these Letters will be very satisfactory: for they are answers to enquiries not published; and therefore though they contain many positions of great importance, are in some parts, imperfect and obscure, by their reference to Dr. Bentley's Letters.

Sir Isaac declares, that what he has done is due to nothing but industry and patient thought; and indeed long consideration is so necessary in such abstruse enquiries, that it is always dangerous to publish the productions of great men, which are not known to have been designed for the press, and of which it is uncertain whether much patience and thought have been bestowed upon them. The principal question of these Letters gives occasion to observe how even the mind of Newton gains ground gradually upon darkness.

* Literary Magazine, Vol. I. 1756, p. 89.

"As to your first query," says he, "it seems to me, that if the matter of our sun and planets, and all the matter of the universe, were evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity towards all the rest, and the whole space throughout which this matter was scattered was but finite; the matter on the outside of this space would by its gravity tend towards all the matter on the inside, and by consequence fall down into the middle of the whole space, and there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter was evenly disposed throughout an infinite space, it could never convene into one mass, but some of it would convene into one mass, and some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered at great distances from one to another throughout all that infinite space. And thus might the sun and fixed stars be formed, supposing the matter were of a lucid nature. But how the matter should divide itself into two sorts, and that part of it which is fit to compose a shining body, should fall down into one mass and make a sun, and the rest which is fit to compose an opaque body, should coalesce, not into one great body like the shining matter, but into many little ones; or if the sun at first were an opaque body like the planets, or the planets lucid bodies like the sun, how he alone should be changed into a shining body, whilst all they continue opaque, or all they be changed into opaque ones whilst he remains unchanged, I do not think more explicable by mere natural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent."

The hypothesis of matter evenly disposed through infinite space, seems to labour with such difficulties, as makes it almost a contradictory supposition, or a supposition destructive of itself.

Matter evenly disposed through infinite space, is either created or eternal; if it was created, it infers a Creator: if it was eternal, it had been from eternity evenly spread through infinite space; or it had been once coalesced in masses, and afterwards been diffused. Whatever state was first, must have been from eternity, and what had been from eternity could not be changed, but by a cause beginning to act as it had never acted before, that is, by the voluntary act of some external power. If matter infinitely and evenly diffused was a moment without coalition, it could never coalesce at all by its own power. If matter originally tended to coalesce, it could never be evenly diffused through infinite space. Matter being supposed eternal, there never was a time when it could be diffused before its conglobation, or conglobated before its diffusion.

This Sir Isaac seems by degrees to have understood: for he says, in his second Letter, "The reason why matter evenly scattered through a finite space would convene in the midst, you conceive the same with me; but that there should be a central particle, so accurately placed in the middle, as to be always equally attracted on all sides, and thereby continue without motion, seems to me a supposition fully as hard as to make the sharpest needle stand upright upon its point on a looking-glass. For if the very mathematical centre of the central particle