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In a word, Philo possessed all the phi

of Candale, Bishop of Aire, to translate { the Hermes, or Mercury Trismegistus,losophy of his time. We are therefore deceived, when we doubts not that the original was Egyptian. Add to these reasons, that it is not very believe that the Jews, under the reign of probable that a Greek would have ad- Herod, were plunged in the same state of dressed himself so often to Thaut. It is ignorance in which they were previously not natural for us to address ourselves to immersed. It is evident that St. Paul strangers with so much warm-hearted-was well informed. It is only necessary ness; at least, we see no example of it in antiquity.

The Egyptian Esculapius, who is made to speak in this book, and who is perhaps { the author of it, wrote to Ammon, King of Egypt:-"Take great care how you suffer the Greeks to translate the books of our Mercury, our Thaut, because they would disfigure them." Certainly, a Greek would not have spoken thus; there is therefore every appearance of this book being Egyptian.

" In

to read the first chapter of St. John,
which is so different from those of the
others, to perceive that the author wrote
precisely like Hermes and Plato.
the beginning was the word, and the word
was with God, and the word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
In him
All things were made by him, and with-
out him was not anything made.
was life; and the life was the light of
man."

It is thus that St. Paul says,-" that
God made the worlds by his Son."

There is another reflection to be made, In the time of the apostles were seen which is, that the systems of Hermes and Plato were equally formed to extend whole societies of Christians who were themselves through all the Jewish schools, only too learned, and thence substituted from the time of the Ptolemies. This a fantastic philosophy for simplicity of doctrine made great progress in them; faith. The Simons, Menanders, and Ceyou see it completely displayed by therinthuses, taught precisely the doctrines of Hermes. Their Aons were only the Jew Philo, a learned man after the mansubaltern gods, created by the great ner of those times.

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He copies entire passages from Mer-Being. All the first Christians, therefore, cury Trismegistus, in his chapter on the were not ignorant men, as it always has been asserted; since there were several Firstly," says formation of the world. he, "God made the world intelligible, the of them who abused their literature: even in the Acts, the governor Festus says heavens incorporeal, and the earth invisible; he afterwards created the incorporeal to St. Paul-" Paul, thou art beside essence of water and spirit; and finally, thyself; much learning doth make thee the essence of incorporeal light, the origin mad." of the sun, and of the stars.'

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Such is the pure doctrine of Hermes. He adds, that the word, or invisible and intellectual thought, is the image of God. Here is the creation of the world by the word, by thought, by the logos, very strongly expressed.

Afterwards follows the doctrine of Numbers, which descended from the Egyptians to the Jews. He calls reason the relation of God. The number of seven is the accomplishment of all things, "which is the reason," says he, "that the lyre has only seven strings."

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Cerinthus dogmatised in the time of St. John the Evangelist. His errors were of a profound, refined, and metaphysical cast. The faults which he remarked in the construction of the world made him think—at least so says Dr. Dupin-that it was not the sovereign God who created it, but a virtue inferior to this first principle, which had not the knowledge of the sovereign God. This was wishing to correct even the system of Plato, and deceiving himself, both as a Christian and a philosopher; but at the same time it displayed a refined and well-exercised mind.

throw the leaves numbered into a vast hall, through an orifice resembling the lion's mouth at Venice, into which is cast all secret intelligence. When the dynasty

It is the same with the primitives called Quakers, of whom we have so much spoken. They have been taken for men who cannot see beyond their noses, and who make no use of their reason. How-is extinct the hall is opened, and the maever, there have been among them several {terials digested, of which an authentic who employed all the subtleties of logic. history is composed. The general journal Enthusiasm is not always the companion of the empire also serves to form the body of total ignorance, it is often that of erro- of history; this journal is superior to our neous information. newspapers, being made under the superintendance of the mandarins of each province, revised by a supreme tribunal, and every piece bearing an authenticity which is decisive in contentious matters.

HISTORIOGRAPHER:

A TITLE very different from that of historian. In France we commonly see men of letters pensioned, and, as it was said formerly, appointed to write history. Alain Chartier was the historiographer of Charles VII.; he says that he interrogated the domestics of this prince, and { put them on their oaths, according to the duty of his charge, to ascertain whether Charles really had Agnes Sorel for his mistress. He concludes, that nothing free ever passed between these lovers; and that all was reduced to a few honest caresses, to which these domestics had been the innocent witnesses. However, it is proved, not by historiographers, but by historians supported by family titles, that Charles VII. had three daughters by Agnes Sorel, the eldest of whom, married to one Breze, was stabbed by her husband. From this time there were often titled historiographers in France, and it was the custom to give them commissions of councillors of state, with the provisions of their charge. They were commensal officers of the king's house. Matthieu had these privileges under Henry IV., but did not therefore write a better history.

At Venice, it is always a noble of the senate who possesses this title and function, and the celebrated Nani has filled them with general approbation. It is very difficult for the historiographer of a prince not to be a liar; that of a republic flatters less; but he does not tell all the truth. At China, historiographers are charged with collecting all the events and original titles, under a dynasty, They

VOL. II.-62

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Every sovereign chose his own historiographer. Vittorio Siri was one; Pelisson was first chosen by Louis XIV. to write the events of his reign, and acquitted himself of his task with eloquence in the history of Franche Comté. Racine, the most elegant of poets, and Boileau, the most correct, were afterwards substituted for Pelisson. Some curious persons have collected Memoirs of the Passage of the Rhine, written by Racine. We cannot judge by these memoirs whether Louis XIV. passed the Rhine or not with his troops, who swam across the river. This example sufficiently demonstrates how rarely it happens that an historiographer dare tell the truth. Several also, who have possessed this title, have taken good care of writing history; they have followed the example of Amyot, who said that he was too much attached to his masters to write their lives. Father Daniel had the patent of historiographer, after having given his History of France; he had a pension of 600 livres, regarded merely as a suitable stipend for a monk.

It is very difficult to assign true bounds to the arts, sciences, and literary labour. Perhaps it is the proper duty of an historiographer to collect materials, and that of an historian to put them in order. The first can amass everything, the second arrange and select. The historiographer is more of the simple annalist, while the historian seems to have a more open field for reflection and eloquence.

We need scarcely say here, that both

B

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should equally tell the truth, but we can selves superior. The historiographer or
Ne historian encourages them in these senti-
examine this great law of Cicero :-"
quid veri tacere non audeat,"-That wements, and, in retracing the wars of go-
ought not to dare to conceal any truth.vernment and religion, prevents their re-
This rule is of the number of those that petition.

Suppose a prince con

want illustration.
fides to his historiographer an important
secret to which his honour is attached, or
that the good of the state requires should
not be revealed-should the historiogra-
pher or historian break his word with the
prince, or betray his country to obey
Cicero? The curiosity of the public
seems to exact it; honour and duty for-
bid it. Perhaps in this case he should
renounce writing history.

HISTORY.

SECTION I.

Definition of History.

HISTORY is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the contrary, is the recital of facts represented as fiction.

There is the history of human opinions, which is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors.

If a truth dishonours a family, ought The history of the arts may be made the historiographer or historian to inform the public of it; No; doubtless he is the most useful of all, when to a knownot bound to reveal the shame of indi-ledge of their invention and progress, it viduals; history is no satire.

But if this scandalous truth belongs to public events, if it enters into the interests of the state-if it has produced evils of which it imports to know the cause, it is then that the maxims of Cicero should be observed; for this law is like all others, which must be executed, tempered, or neglected, according to circumstances.

Let us beware of this humane respect, when treating of acknowledged public faults, prevarications, and injustices, into which the misfortunes of the times have betrayed respectable bodies. They cannot be too much exposed; they are beacons which warn these always-existing bodies against splitting again on similar rocks. If an English parliament has condemned a man of fortune to the torture-if an assembly of theologians had demanded the blood of an unfortunate { who differed in opinion from themselves, it should be the duty of an historian to inspire all ages with horror for these juridical assassins. We should always make the Athenians blush for the death of Socrates.

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adds a description of their mechanical means and processes.

Natural history, improperly designated history,' is an essential part of natural philosophy. The history of events has been divided into sacred and profane. Sacred history is a series of divine and miraculous operations, by which it has pleased God formerly to direct and govern the Jewish nation. and, in the present day, to try our faith. To learn Hebrew, the sciences, and history, says La Fontaine, is to drink up the sea.

Si j'apprenois l'Ilebreu, les sciences, l'histoire,
Tout cela, c'est la mer à boire.

La Fontaine, book viii fable 25.

The Foundations of History. The foundations of all history are the recitals of events, made by fathers to their children, and afterwards transmitted from one generation to another. They are, at most, only probable in their origin when they do not shock common sense, and they lose a degree of probability at every successive transmission. time, the fabulous increases and the true Happily, even an entire people always disappears; hence it arises that the orifind it good to have the crimes of their ginal traditions and records of all nations ancestors placed before them; they like are absurd. Thus the Egyptians had to condemn them, and to believe them-been governed for many ages by the

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gods. They had next been under the history, is to ascertain whether there government of demi-gods; and, finally, remain any incontestable public monuthey had kings for eleven thousand threements, We possess only three such, in hundred and forty years, and, during the way of writing or inscription. The that period, the sun had changed four first is the collection of astronomical obtimes from east and west. servations made during nineteen hun

The Phenicians, in the time of Alex-dred successive years at Babylon, and ander, pretended that they had been transferred by Alexander to Greece. settled in their own country for thirtyThis series of observations which goes thousand years; and those thirty thou-back two thousand two hundred and sand years were as full of prodigies as the thirty-four years beyond our vulgar era, Egyptian chronology. I admit it to be decidedly proves that the Babylonians perfectly consistent with physical possi-existed as an associated and incorporated bility that Phenicia may have existed, people many ages before; for the arts not merely for thirty thousand years, but are struck out and elaborated only in the thirty thousand millions of ages, and slow course of time, and the indolence that it may have endured, as well as the natural to mankind permits thousands of other portions of the globe, thirty inil-years to roll away without their acquiring lions of revolutions. But of all this weany other knowledge or talents than what possess no knowledge. are required for food, clothing, shelter, and mutual destruction, Let the truth of these remarks be judged of from the state of the Germans and the English in the time of Cæsar, from that of the Tartars at the present day, from that of twothirds of Africa, and from that of all the various nations found in the vast continent of America, excepting, in some respects, the kingdoms of Peru and Mexico, and the republic of Thlascala. Let it be recollected, that in the whole of the new world not a single individual could write or read.

The ridiculous miracles which abound in the ancient history of Greece are universally known.

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The Romans although a serious and grave people, have, nevertheless, equally involved in fables the early periods of their history. That nation, so recent in comparison with those of Asia, was five hundred years without historians. It is impossible, therefore, to be surprised on finding that Romulus was the son of Mars; that a she-wolf was his nurse; that he marched with a thousand men from his own village, Rome, against The second monument is the central twenty thousand warriors belonging to eclipse of the sun, calculated in China the city of the Sabines; that he after-two thousand one hundred and fifty-five wards became a god; that the elder Tarquin cut through a stone with a razor, and that a vestal drew a ship to land with her girdle, &c.

The first annals of modern nations are no less fabulous: things prodigious and improbable ought sometimes, undoubtedly, to be related, but only as proofs of human credulity. They constitute part of the history of human opinion and absurdities; but the field is too immense.

years before our vulgar era, and admitted by all our astronomers to have actually occurred. We must apply the same remark to the Chinese as to the people of Babylon. They had undoubtedly, long before this period, constituted a vast empire and social polity. But what places the Chinese above all the other nations of the world, is that neither their laws, nor manners, nor the language exclusively spoken by their men of learning, have experienced any change in the Of Monuments or Memorials. course of about four thousand years. The only proper method of endeavour-Yet this nation and that of India, the ing to acquire some knowledge of ancient most ancient of all that are now subsist

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Hercules is initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, but not a single word is mentioned of the twelve labours, nor of his passage to Africa in his cup, nor of his divinity, nor of the great fish by which he was swallowed, and which, according Lycophron, kept him in its belly three days and three nights.

ing, those which possess the largest and ventions of Triptolemus and Ceres is most fertile tracts of territory, those given; but Ceres is not called goddess. which had invented nearly all the arts Notice is taken of a poem upon the rape almost before we were in possession even of Proserpine; but it is not said that she of any of them, have been always omitted, is the daughter of Jupiter and a goddess, down to our time, in our pretended uni- } and the wife of the god of hell. versal histories. And whenever a Spaniard or a Frenchman enumerated the various nations of the globe, neither of them failed to represent his own country as the first monarchy on earth, and his king as the greatest sovereign, under the flattering hope, no doubt, that that great-to est of sovereigns, after having read his book, would confer upon him a pension. The third monument, but very inferior to the two others, is the Arundel Marbles. The chronicle of Athens was inscribed on these marbles two hundred and sixty-three years before our era, but it goes no further back than the time of Cecrops, thirteen hundred and nineteen years beyond the time of its inscription. In the history of all antiquity, these are the only incontestable epochs that we

possess.

Let us attend a little particularly to these marbles, which were brought from Greece by my Lord Arundel.

The chronicle contained in them commences fifteen hundred and seventy-seven years before our era. This, at the present time, makes an antiquity of 3348 years, and in the course of that period, you do not find a single miraculous or prodigious event on record. It is the same with the Olympiads. It must not be in reference to these that the expression can be applied of "Grecia mendax," lying Greece. The Greeks well knew how to distinguish history from fable, and real facts from the tales of Herodotus; just as in relation to important public affairs, their orators borrowed nothing from the discourses of the sophists or the imagery of the poets.

Among us, on the contrary, a standard is brought by an angel from heaven to the monks of St. Dennis; a pigeon brings a bottle of oil to the church of Rheims; two armies of serpents engage in pitched battle in Germany; an archbishop of Mayence is besieged and devoured by rats; and to complete and crown the whole, the year in which these adventures occurred, is given with the most particular precision. The abbé Langlet, also condescending to compile, compiles these contemptible fooleries, while the almanacks, for the hundredth time, repeat them. In this manner are our youth instructed and enlightened ; and all these trumpery fables are put in requisition even for the education of princes!

All history is comparatively recent. It is by no means astonishing to find, that we have, in fact, no profane history that goes back beyond about four thousand years. The cause of this is to be found in the revolutions of the globe, and the long and universal ignorance of the art which transmits events by writing. There are still many nations totally unacquainted with the practice of this art. It existed only in a small number of civilised states, and even in them was confined to comparatively few hands. Nothing was more rare among the French and GerThe date of the taking of Troy is spe-mans than knowing how to write: down cified in these marbles, but there is no mention made of Apollo's arrows, or the sacrifice of Iphigenia, or the ridiculous battles of the gods. The date of the in

to the fourteenth century of our vulgar era, scarcely any public acts were attested by witnesses. It was not till the reign of Charles VII. in France, in 1454,

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