stituted for the redemption of captives, is One of them, named Legrand, a native composed of the only useful monks, al- of Dieppe, associated himself with fifty though not accounted among the orders. determined men, and went to tempt for The Dominicans, Bernardines, Norber-tune in a bark which had not even a cantins, and Benedictines, acknowledge not non. Towards the Isle of Hispaniola the Brothers of Charity. They are sim- {(St. Domingo), he perceived a galley ply adverted to in the continuation of the strayed from the great Spanish fleet; he Ecclesiastical History of Fleuri. Why? approached it as a captain wishing to sell because they have performed cures in-provisions; he mounted, attended by his stead of miracles-have been useful and people; he entered the chamber of the not caballed-cured poor women without captain, who was playing at cards, threw either directing or seducing them. Lastly, him down, made him prisoner with his their institution being charitable, it is cargo, and returned to Dieppe with his proper that other monks should despise vessel laden with immense riches. This them. adventure was the signal for forty years unheard-of exploits.

French, English, and Dutch buccaneers associated together in the caverns of St. Domingo, of the little islands of St. Christopher and Tortola. They chose a chief for each expedition, which was the first origin of kings. Agriculturists would never have wished for a king; they had no need of one to sow thrash, and sell corn.

Medicine having then become a mercenary profession in the world, as the administration of justice is in many places, it has become liable to strange abuses. But nothing is more estimable than a physician who, having studied nature from his youth, knows the properties of the human body, the diseases which assail it, the remedies which will benefit it, exercises his art with caution, and pays equal attention to the rich and the poor. Such a man is very superior to the general of the Capuchins, however respect-non. One happy chance produced twenty able this general may be.

When the buccaneers took a great prize, they bought with it a little vessel and can

others. If they were an hundred in number, they were believed to be a thousand; PIRATES, OR BUCCANEERS. it was difficult to escape them, still more IN the time of Cardinal Richelieu, so to follow them. They were birds of when the Spaniards and French detested prey who established themselves on all each other, because Ferdinand the Catho-sides, and who retired into inaccessible lic laughed at Louis XII., and Francis I. places: sometimes they ravaged from four was taken at the battle of Pavia by an to five hundred leagues of coast; somearmy of Charles V.-whilst this hatred times they advanced on foot, or horsewas so strong, that the false author of the back, two hundred leagues up the counpolitical romance, and political piece of tries. tediousness, called the Political Testament of Cardinal Richelieu, feared not to call the Spaniards "an insatiable nation, who rendered the Indies tributaries of hell;" when, in short, we were leagued in 1635 with Holland against Spain; One of these pirates, named Olonois, when France had nothing in America, penetrated to the gates of Havanna, foland the Spaniards covered the seas with lowed by twenty men only. Having their galleys, then buccaneers began to afterwards retired into his boat, the goappear. They were at first French ad-vernor sent against him a ship of war with venturers, whose quality was at most that of corsairs.

They surprised and pillaged the rich towns of Chagra, Maracaybo, Vera-Cruz, Panama, Portorico, Campeachy, the island of St. Catherine, and the suburbs of Carthagena.

soldiers and an executioner. Olonois rendered himself master of the vessel, cut off

the heads of the Spanish soldiers, whom he had taken himself, and sent back the executioner to the governor. Such astonishing actions were never performed. by the Romans, or by other robbers. The warlike voyage of Admiral Anson round, the world is only an agreeable promenade, in comparison with the passage of the buccaneers in the South Sea, and with what they endured on terra firma.

Had their policy been equal to their invincible courage, they would have founded a great empire in America. They wanted females; but instead of ravishing and marrying Sabines, like the Romans, they procured them from the brothels of Paris, which sufficed not to produce a second generation.

They were more cruel towards the Spaniards than the Israelites ever were to the Canaanites. A Dutchman is spoken of, named Roc, who put several Spaniards on a spit and caused them to be eaten by his comrades. Their expeditions were tours of thieves, and never campaigns of conquerors; thus, in all the West Indies, they were never called anything but los ladrones.' When they surprised and entered the house of a father of a family, they put him to the torture to discover his treasures. That sufficiently proves what we say in the article QUESTION, that torture was invented by robbers.

PLAGIARISM.

Ir is said that this word is derived from the Latin word ' plaga,' and that it signifies the condemnation to the scourge of those who sold freemen for slaves. This has nothing in common with the plagiarism of authors, who sell not men either enslaved or free. They only for a little money occasionally sell themselves.

When an author sells the thoughts of another man for his own, the larceny is called plagiarism. All the makers of dictionaries, all compilers who do nothing else than repeat backwards and forwards the opinions, the errors, the impostures, and the truths already printed, we may term plagiarists; but honest plagiarists, who arrogate not the merit of invention. They pretend not even to have collected from the ancients the materials which they get together; they only copy the laborious compilers of the sixteenth century. They will sell you in quarto that. which already exists in folio. Call them if you please bookmakers, not authors; range them rather among second-hand dealers than plagiarists.

The true plagiarist is he who gives the works of another for his own, who inserts in his rhapsodies long passages from a good book a little modified. The enlightened reader, seeing this patch of cloth of gold upon a blanket, soon detects the bungling purloiner.

What rendered their exploits useless was, that they lavished in debauches, as foolish as monstrous, all that they acquired Ramsay, who after having been a Presby rapine and murder. Finally, therebyterian in his native Scotland, an Angliremains nothing more of them than their can in London, then a Quaker, and who name, and scarcely that. Such were the finally persuaded Fénélon that he was a buccaneers. Catholic, and even pretended a penchant But what people in Europe have not for celestial love-Ramsay, I say, combeen pirates? The Goths, Alains, Van-piled the Travels of Cyrus, because his dals, and Huns, were they anything else? master made his Telemachus travel. What were Rollo, who established him- { far he only imitated; but in these travels self in Normandy, and William Fier-a-he copies from an old English author, bras, but the most able pirates? Was not Clovis a pirate, who came from the borders of the Rhine into Gaul?

So

who introduces a young solitary dissecting his dead goat, and arriving at a knowledge of the Deity by the process, which is very much like plagiarism. On conducting Cyrus into Egypt, in describing that singular country, he employs the

same expressions as Bossuet, whom he copies word for word without citing: this is plagiarism complete. One of my friends reproached him with this one day; Ramsay replied, that he was not aware of it, and that it was not surprising he should think like Fénélon and write like Bossuet. This was making out the adage, “Proud as a Scotshian."

It has been with this revolution, as with all those produced by civil wars: the first who trouble a state, always unknowingly labour for others rather than for themselves.

The school of Alexandria, founded by one named Mark, to whom succeeded Athenagoras, Clement, and Origen, was the centre of the Christian philosophy. The most singular of all plagiarism is Plato was regarded by all the Greeks of possibly that of Father Barre, author of a Alexandria as the master of wisdom, the large history of Germany in ten volumes. {interpreter of the divinity. If the first The history of Charles XII. had just been { Christians had not embraced the dogmas printed, and he inserted more than two of Plato, they would never have had any hundred pages of it in his work; making philosophers, any man of mind in their a Duke of Lorraine say precisely that party. I set aside inspiration and grace, which was said by Charles XII. which are above all philosophy, and speak only of the ordinary course of hu

He attributes to the Emperor Arnold that which happened to the Swedish monarch.

He relates of the Emperor Rodolph that which was said of King Stanislaus. Waldemar, King of Denmark, acts precisely like Charles at Bender, &c. &c. The most pleasant part of the story is, that a journalist, perceiving this extraordinary resemblance between the two works, failed not to impute the plagiarism to the author of the history of Charles XII., who had composed his work twenty years before the appearance of that of Father Barre,

It is chiefly in poetry that plagiarism is allowed to pass; and certainly, of all larcenies, it is that which is least dangerous to society.

PLATO.

SECTION I.

Of the Timeus of Plato and some other
Things.

THE fathers of the church, of the first four centuries, were all Greeks and Platonists: you find not one Roman who wrote for Christianity, or who had the slightest tincture of philosophy. I will here observe, by the way, that it is strange enough, the great church of Rome, which contributed in nothing to this establishment, has alone reaped all the advantage.

man events.

It is said, that it was principally in the Timeus of Plato that the Greek fathers were instructed. This Timeus passes for the most sublime work of all ancient philosophy. It is almost the only one which Dacier has not translated, and I think the reason is, because he did not understand it, and that he feared to discover to clear-sighted readers the face of this Greek divinity, who is only adored because he is veiled.

Plato, in this fine dialogue, commences by introducing an Egyptian priest, who teaches Solon the ancient history of the city of Athens, which was preserved faithfully for nine thousand years in the archives of Egypt.

Athens, says the priest, was once the finest city of Greece, and the most renowned in the world for the arts of war and peace: she alone resisted the warriors of the famous island Atlantides, who came in innumerable vessels to subjugate a great part of Europe and Asia. Athens had the glory of freeing so many vanquished people, and of preserving Egypt from the servitude which menaced us. But after this illustrious victory and service rendered to mankind, a frightful earthquake in twenty-four hours swallowed the territory of Athens, and all the great island of Atlantides. This island is now only a

vast sea, which the ruins of this ancient world and the slime mixed with its waters rendered unnavigable.

these words, and related them to other good women of the March of Ancona, the sage would be stoned like Orpheus. This is precisely the situation in which the first christians were believed to be, who spoke not well of Cybele and Diana, which alone should attach them to Plato. The unintellgible things which he afterwards treats of, ought not to disgust us with him.

This is what the priest relates to Solon: and such is the manner in which Plato prepares to explain to us subsequently, the formation of the soul, the operations of the word, and his trinity. It is not physically impossible, that there might be an island Atlantides, which had not existed for nine thousand years, and I will not reproach Plato with saying, which perished by an earthquake, like in his Timeus, that the world is an Herculaneum and so many other cities; { animal; for he no doubt understands, but our priest, in adding that the sea that the elements in motion animate the which washes Mount Atlas is inaccessible world; and he means not, by animal, a to vessels, renders the history a little sus-dog or a man, who walks, feels, eats, picious.

It may be after all, that since Solonthat is to say, in the course of three thousand years-vessels have dispersed the slime of the ancient island Atlantides and rendered the sea navigable; but it .s still surprising, that he should prepare oy this island to speak of the " Word."

Perhaps in telling this priest's or old woman's story, Plato wished to insinuate something contrary to the vicissitudes which have so often changed the face of the globe. Perhaps he would merely say, what Pythagoras and Timeus of Locris have said so long before him, and what our eyes tell us every day—that everything in nature perishes and is renewed. The history of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the fall of Phaeton, are fables: but inundations and conflagrations are truths.

Plato departs from his imaginary island, to speak of things which the best of philosophers of our days would not disavow. "That which is produced has necessarily a cause, an author. It is difficult to discover the author of this world; and when he is found it is dangerous to speak of him to the people."

sleeps, and engenders. An author should always be explained in the most favourable sense; and it is not whilst we ac{cuse people, or when we denounce their books, that it is right to interpret malignantly and poison all their words; nor is it thus that I shall treat Plato.

According to him, there is a kind of trinity which is the soul of matter. These are his words: "From the indivisible substance, always similar to itself, and the divisible substance, a third substance is composed, which partakes of the same and of others."

Afterwards came the Pythagorean number, which renders the thing still more unintelligible, and consequently more respectable. What ammunition for people commencing a paper war!

Friend, reader, a little patience and attention, if you please: "When God had formed the soul of the world of these three substances, the soul shot itself into the midst of the universe, to the extremities of being; spreading itself everywhere, and re-acting upon itself, it formed at all time a divine origin of eternal wisdom."

And some lines afterwards: "Thus the nature of the immense animal which we call the world, is eternal."

Nothing is more true, even now, than that if a sage, in passing by our Lady of Loretto, said to another sage, his friend, Plato, following the example of his hat our Lady of Loretto, with her little predecessors, then introduces the Sublack face, governs not the entire uni-preme Being, the creator of the world, verse, and a good woman overheard forming this world before time; so that

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2 A

God could not exist without the world,} sical sun, which with the word and the nor the world without God; as the father composed the platonic trinity. sun cannot exist without shedding light into space, nor this light steal into space without the sun.

In the Epinomis of Plato there are very curious absurdities, one of which í translate as reasonably as I can, for the convenience of the reader.

I pass in silence many Greek, or rather Oriental ideas; as for example- "Know that there are eight virtues in that there are four sorts of animals-heaven: I have observed them, which is celestial gods, birds of the air, fishes, easy to all the world. The sun is one of and terrestrial animals, to which last weits virtues, the moon another; the third have the honour to belong. is the assemblage of stars; and the five I hasten to arrive at a second trinity: planets, with these three virtues, make "the being engendered, the being who the number eight. Be careful of thinkengenders, and the being which resem-ing that these virtues, or those which bles the engendered and the engenderer." This trinity is formal enough, and the fathers have found their account in it. This trinity is followed by a rather singular theory of the four elements. { The earth is founded on an equilateral triangle, water on a right angled triangle, air on a scalene, and fire on an isosceles triangle. After which he demonstratively proves, that there can be but five worlds, because there are but five regular solid bodies, and yet that there is but one world which is round.

they contain, and which animate them, either move of themselves or are carried in vehicles; be careful, I say, of believing, that some may be gods and others not; that some may be adorable, and others such as we should neither adore or invoke. They are all brothers; each has his share; we owe them all the same honours; they fill all the situations whicn the word assigned to them, wher t formed the visible universe."

Here is the word already found: we must now find the three persons. They I confess, that no philosopher in Bed- are in the second letter from Plato to lam has ever reasoned so powerfully. Dionysius, which letters assuredly are Rouse yourself, friend reader, to hear not forged; the style is the same as that me speak of the other famous trinity of of his dialogues. He often says to DioPlato, which his commentators have sonysius and Dion things very difficult to much vaunted: it is the Eternal Being, the Eternal Creator of the world; his word, intelligence, or idea; and the good which results from it. I assure you that I have sought for it diligently in this Timeus, and I have never found it there; it may be there' totidem litteris,' but it is not totidem verbis,' or I am much mistaken.

After reading all Plato with great reluctance, I perceived some shadow of the trinity for which he is so much honoured. It is in the sixth book of} his Chimerical Republic, in which he "Let us speak of the son, the says " wonderful production of good, and his perfect image." But unfortunately he discovers this perfect image of God to

be the sun,

comprehend, and which we might believe to be written in numbers, but he also tells us very clear ones, which have been found true a long time after him. For example, he expresses himself thus in his seventh letter to Dion :

"I have been convinced that all states are very badly governed; there is scarcely any good institution or administration. We see, as it were, day after day, that all follow the path of fortune rather than that of wisdom."

After this short digression on temporal affairs, let us return to spiritual ones, to the trinity. Plato says to Dionysius:

The king of the universe is surrounded by his works: all is the effect of his grace. The finest of things have their It was therefore the phy-first cause in him; the second in perfec