and fro these four thousand years. Ask the rich which is best, and they will unanimously vote for an aristocracy; inquire of the people, and they will, one and all, cry up a democracy; as for royalty, it is only kings who will prefer it. How then comes it to pass, that almost the whole earth is governed by monarchs? ask the rats, who proposed to hang a bell about the cat's neck. But the true reason is, that men very rarely deserve to be their own governors.

It is a sad case, that often there is no being a good patriot, without being an enemy to other men. The elder Cato, that worthy patriot, in giving his vote in the senate, was always accustomed to say, Such is my opinion; and down with Carthage. A great part of patriotism is thought to consist in wishing one's native country a flourishing trade, and distinguished success in war. Now it is manifest that, for one country to gain, another must lose, and its successes must, of course, spread calamity in other parts. Such then is the state of human affairs, that to wish an increase of grandeur to one's native country, is wishing harm to its neighbours. He who is a citizen of the universe, would have his native country neither greater nor smaller, richer nor poorer.

CRITICISM.

I Do not here intend to speak of the criticism of scholiasts, who pretend to restore a word of an ancient author, very well understood before; neither shall I meddle with those real critics who, as far as is possible, have cleared up ancient history and philosophy. The satirical critics are the men I am now to deal with.

A man of letters one day reading Tasso with me, fell on this stanza:

"The trumpet now, with hoarse resounding breath
Convenes the spirits in the shades of death:
The hollow caverns tremble at the sound!
The air re-echoes to the noise around!
Not louder terrors shake the distant pole,

When through the skies the rattling thunders roll;
Not greater tremors heave the labouring earth,
When vapours, pent within, contend for birth!"

He afterwards read, as they fell under his eye, several stanzas of the like force and harmony: "How!" cried he; "is this what your Boileau is pleased to call tinsel; is it thus he

strives to depreciate a great man, who lived a hundred years before him, the better to exalt another great man, who lived sixteen hundred years before him, and who would not have failed to have done justice to Tasso?"

"Be easy," said I to him; "let us look into Quinaut's operas." What we met with at the opening of the book, could not but incense us against the petulance of criticism; it was the following passage in the admirable opera of Armida.

"Sidonia. The monster hatred is of barbarous mien,

And truly frightful, wheresoever seen.

Those hearts love fetters in his silken chain,
He dooms to suffer anxious, poignant pain:
If, then, thy future lot be in thy power,

Choose thou indifference. Many a happy hour
She will insure thee;-but beware love's schemes;
They are but meteors, phantoms, visions, dreams.

Armida. No, no: it is not possible to change,

(And, like the bee, from sweet to sweet, to range,)
This heart enthralled. Can we the ocean still
When heaved and troubled, by the word or will?
Renoud offends; too amiable soul!

And fate commands me, fate beyond control,

To hate, or love. No choice to walk between
The pangs of love divine, the sting of hatred keen."

We went through the whole piece, and it must be owned that the beauty of Tasso's genius is enhanced by Quinaut. “Well,” said Ï to my friend," after this could you think that Boileau should continually make it his business to expose Quinaut as a wretched poetaster? He even brought Louis XIV. to believe that this beautiful, soft, pathetic, elegant writer, owed all his merit to Lully's music."-" That I can very easily account for," answered my friend; "it was not the musician Boileau was jealous of, but the poet."-" However, what signifies the saying of a man who, to tag a rhyme to a line ending in aut, sometimes fell foul of Boursaut, sometimes of Henaut, sometimes of Quinaut, according to the terms on which he stood with those gentlemen? But, that your warmth against injustice may not cool, only go to the window, and view that grand front of the Louvre, by which Perraut has gained immortal reputation. This ingenious artist happened to be brother to a very learned member of the Academy, between whom and Boileau there had been some literary wrangling; and for this, truly, M. Boileau transmits this man to posterity with the character of a paltry architect."

"My friend, after a pause, replied with a sigh, "This is the temper of man.” The duc de Sully, in his Memoirs, speaks of the cardinal d'Ossat, and secretary Villeroy, as bad ministers. Louvois strove to suppress in himself for the great Colbert: "They," said I, "did not print any thing against each other whilst living: this is a folly, scarcely seen in any but divines, scholars and lawyers."

any esteem

We had a man of merit, La Motte, who has written very fine stanzas.

"This amiable author," said my companion," has, more than once, arrayed philosophy in the graceful attire of poesy. Had he always written such stanzas, he would have been the chief lyric poet among us; yet, whilst such beautiful pieces came from him, a contemporary of his could call him, 'A green goose; and in another place say, 'The tiresome beauty of his propositions;' and in another, They have but one fault, they should have been written in prose: one sees, withhalf an eye, they came from Quinaut.' ”

6

He pursues him every where; every where charges him with dryness, and want of harmony.

"Perhaps you would be glad to see the odes, written some years after, by this same censor, who tried La Motte in so arbitrary a manner, and decried him with such contempt? Here are some specimens."

"This sovereign power is but a glittering chain,
Which rivets him to others' bliss or pain,

The brilliant virtues, that adorn his mind,

Are not by nature his, though these in him you'll find."

"Nought doth exist, that time will not devour :
Nature's arcana's placed beyond our power."

"The virtue, that in her displays,

Its thousand charms, so sweet to see
Is but the well-reflected rays

Of what exists in thee.

Enriched, alone, by thee possessed,
It lives congenial in thy breast.
Her's is politeness, glimmering bright,
Derived from thy resplendent light."

66 They through thy probity, have seen
Thy people's false alarms;

And hate, who comes with rancour keen,
Subdued by virtue's arms."

"Unveil to my bewildered sight

Those deities, of thought or night;
Abstraction's emblems, oft our care;
Synonimous with empty air."

"What is more sweet, and passing strange,
When two, one common burden share,
That one, the least, at large should range
And make her part the other bear?
Thus o'er the frame, the human soul,
For pleasure, holds her high control."

"To be sure," said my judicious philologist, "this is wretched trash, to be published as models, after criticising a writer with so much scurrility." The author had done much better to have left his adversary in the quiet enjoyment of his merit, and have retained his own share of it: but, alas! the genus irritabile vatum" is still as sick as ever, with the overflowings of an acrid bile. The public, its views, extending no farther than amusement, overlook these trifles in men of talents. It sees in an allegory called Pluto, some judges con

demned to be flead, and sitting in hell, on a seat covered with their skins, instead of the lilies:* the reader never troubles himself, whether the judges deserved it or not, or whether the plaintiff, who had summoned them before Pluto, be in the right or wrong; he reads those verses purely for his pleasure, and, if they afford him pleasure, that is all he desires; if the allegory disgusts him, he closes the book, and would not stir a foot, to have the sentence fully confirmed or annulled.

Racine's inimitable tragedies have been all criticised, and very badly, because the critics were his rivals. The competent judges of an art, are the professors of it; true, but when is it they are not corrupted?

An artist, very skilful, and, withal, a man of taste, without either prejudice or envy, would make an excellent critic; but it is a very difficult matter to meet with such a man.

DELUGE.

THAT ever the whole globe was, at one time, totally overflowed with water, is physically impossible. The sea may have covered all parts successively, one after the other; and this could be only in a gradation so very slow, as to take up a prodigious number of ages. The sea, in the space of five hundred years, has withdrawn from Aiguesmortes, from Frejus, and from Ravenna, once large ports, leaving about two leagues of land quite dry. This progression shows, that, to make the circuit of the globe, it would require two millions two hundred and fifty thousand years. A very remarkable circumstance is, that this period comes very near to that which the earth's axis would take up in raising itself again, and coinciding with the equator; a motion, so far from improbable, that, for these fifty years past, some apprehensions have been entertained of it, but it cannot be accomplished under two millions three hundred thousand years.

The strata, or beds of shells, every where found, sixty, eighty, and even a hundred leagues from the sea, prove, beyond all dispute, that it has insensibly deposited those maritime products on grounds which were once its shores; but that the water, at one and the same time, should cover the whole earth, is a physical absurdity, which the laws of gravitation, as well

*The arms of France, embroidered on the covering of the benches, in courts of justice.