When he gave his excellent book to the public he found a young gentleman of the county of Gloucester who candidly advanced objections as strong as his demonstrations. We can see them at the end of the first volume of Clarke; it was not on the necessary existence of the Supreme Being that he reasoned; it was on his infinity and im

The trinity, such as we acknowledge, could not be recognised in this letter; but it was a great point to have in a Greek author a guarantee of the dogmas of the dawning church. Every Greek church was therefore platonic, as every Latin church was peripatetic, from the com-mensity. mencement of the third century. Thus two Greeks whom we have never understood, were the masters of our opinions until the time in which men at the end of two thousand years were obliged to think for themselves.

SECTION I.

It appears not indeed, that Clarke has proved that there is a being who penetrates intimately all which exists, and that this being whose properties we cannot conceive has the property of extending himself to the greatest imaginable distance.

The great Newton has demonstrated

Questions on Plato and on some other that there is a void in nature; but what

Trifles.

philosopher could demonstrate to me that God is in this void; that he touches Plato in saying to the Greeks what so it; that he fills it? How, bounded as many philosophers of other nations have we are, can we attain to the knowledge said before him, in assuring them that of these mysteries? Does it not suffice, there is a supreme intelligence which that it proves to us that a supreme masarranged the universe, did he think thatter exists? It is not given to us to this supreme intelligence resided in a know what he is nor how he is. single place, like a king of the east in his seraglio? Or rather did he believe that this powerful intelligence spread itself everywhere like light, or a being still more delicate, prompt, active, and penetrating than light? The god of Plato, How could a philosopher like Samuel in a word, is he in matter, or is he sepa-Clarke, after so admirable a work on the rated from it? Oh you who have read existence of God, write so pitiable a one Plato attentively, that is to say seven or on matters of fact? eight fantastical dreams, hidden in some garret in Europe, if ever these questions reach you; I implore you to answer

them.

It seems as if Locke and Clarke had the keys of the intelligible world. Locke has opened all the apartments which can be entered; but has not Clarke wished to penetrate a little above the edifice?

How could Benedict Spinosa, who had as much profundity of mind as Samuel Clarke, after raising himself to the most sublime metaphysics, how The barbarous island of Cassiterides, could he not perceive that a supreme in which men lived in the woods in the intelligence presides over works visibly time of Plato, has finally produced phi-arranged with a supreme intelligencelosophers who are as much beyond him if it is true after all that such is the as Plato was beyond those of his con- system of Spinosa ? temporaries who reasoned not at all.

Among these philosophers, Clarke is perhaps altogether the clearest, the most profound, the most methodical, and the strongest of all those who have spoken of the Supreme Being.

How could Newton, the greatest of men, comment upon the Apocalypse, as we have already remarked?

How could Locke, after having so well developed the human understanding, degrade his own in another work?

I fancy I see eagles, who after darting into a cloud go to rest on a dunghill.

POETS.

the event, and who insolently maintain that Moses could not write in Hebrew, since Hebrew is only a comparatively modern dialect of the Phenician, of which Moses could know nothing at all. I

A YOUNG man on leaving college de-examine not with the learned Huet how liberates whether he shall be an advocate, Moses was able to sing so well, who a physician, a theologian, or a poet-stammered and could not speak. whether he shall take care of our body, If we listened to many of these auour soul, or our entertainment. We thors, Moses would be less antient than have already spoken of advocates and Orpheus, Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod. physicians; we will now speak of the We perceive at the first glance, the abprodigious fortune which is sometimes surdity of this opinion; as if a Greek made by the theologian. could be as ancient as a Jew.

The theologian becomes pope, and has Neither will I reply to those impernot only his theological valets, cooks, tinent persons who suspect that Moses is singers, chamberlains, physicians, sur-only an imaginary personage, a fabulous geons, sweepers, agnus dei makers, confectioners, and preachers, but also his poet. I know not what inspired personage was the poet of Leo. X., as David was for some time the poet of Saul.

It is surely of all the employments in a great house that which is the most useless. The kings of England, who have preserved in their island many of the ancient usages which are lost on the continent, have their official poet. He is obliged once a year to make an ode in praise of St. Cecilia, who played so marvellously on the organ or psalterion, that an angel descended from the ninth heaven to listen to her more conveniently -the harmony of the psaltery, in ascending from this place to the land of angels, necessarily losing a small portion of its

volume.

imitation of the fable of the ancient Bacchus; and that all the prodigies of Bacchus, since attributed to Moses, were sung in orgies before it was known that Jews existed in the world. This idea refutes itself; it is obvious to good sense that it is impossible Bacchus could exist before Moses.

We have still however an excellent Jewish poet undeniably anterior to Horace-King David; and we know well how infinitely superior the Miserere,' is to the Justum ac tenacem propositi virum.'

But what is most astonishing, legislators and kings have been our earliest poets. We find even at present people so good as to become poets for kings. Virgil indeed had not the office of poet to Augustus, nor Lucan that of poet to Nero; but I confess that it would have debased the profession not a little to make gods of either the one or the other.

Moses is the first poet that we know of; but it is thought that before him the Chaldeans, the Syrians, and the Indians It is asked, why poetry, being so unpractised poetry, since they possessed necessary to the world, occupies so high music. Nevertheless, the fine canticle a rank among the fine arts? The same which Moses chaunted with his sister question may be put with regard to muMiriam, when they came out of the red sic. Poetry is the music of the soul, and sea, is the most ancient poetical monu-above all of great and of feeling souls. ment in hexameter verse that we possess. I am not of the opinion of those impious and ignorant rogues, Newton, Le Clerc, and others, who prove that all this was written about eight hundred years after

One merit of poetry few persons will deny; it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Who was ever able to translate the following Latin verses with the brevity

with which they came from the brain of the poet ?

Vive memor lethi, fugit hora, hoc quod loquor indé est. I speak not of the other charms of poetry, as they are well known; but I insist upon the grand precept of Horace, Sapere est principium et fons.' There can be no great poetry without great wisdom; but how connect this wisdom with enthusiasm? Like Cæsar, who formed his plan of battle with circumspection, and fought with all possible ardour.

There have no doubt been ignorant poets, but then they have been bad poets. A man acquainted only with dactyls and spondees, and with a head full of rhymes, is rarely a man of sense; but Virgil is endowed with superior rea

son.

Lucretius, in common with all the ancients was miserably ignorant of physical laws, a knowledge of which is not to be acquired by wit. It is a knowledge which is only to be obtained by instruments, which in his time had not been invented. Glasses are necessarymicroscopes, pneumatic machines, barometers, &c. to have even a distant idea of the operations of nature.

Descartes knew little more than Lucretius, when his keys opened the sanctuary; and an hundred times more of the path has been trodden from the time of Galileo, who was better instructed physically than Descartes, to the present day, than from the first Hermes to Lu

cretius.

All ancient physics are absurd: it was not thus with the philosophy of mind, and that good sense which, assisted by strength of intellect, can acutely balance between doubts and appearances. This is the chief merit of Lucretius; his third book is a masterpiece of reasoning. He argues like Cicero, and expresses himself like Virgil; and it must be confessed, that when our illustrious Polignac attacked his third book, he refuted it only like a cardinal.

When I say, that Lucretius reasons in his third book like an able metaphysician, I do not say that he was right. We may argue very soundly, and deceive ourselves, if not instructed by revelation. Lucretius was not a Jew, and we know that Jews alone were in the right in the days of Cicero, of Possidonius, of Cæsar, and of Cato. Lastly, under Tiberius, the Jews were no longer in the right, and common sense was possessed by the { christians exclusively. Thus it was impossible that Lucretius, Cicero and Cæsar could be anything but imbecile, in comparison with the Jews and ourselves; but it must be allowed, that in the eyes of the rest of the world they were very great men.

I allow that Lucretius killed himself, as well as Cato, Cassius, and Brutus; but they might very well kill themselves, and still reason like men of intellect during their lives.

In every author let us distinguish the man from his works. Racine wrote like Virgil, but he became Jansenist through weakness, and he died in consequence of weakness equally great-because a man in passing through a gallery did not bestow a look upon him. I am very sorry for all this; but the part of Phedra is not therefore the less admirable.

POISONINGS.

LET us often repeat useful truths. There have always been fewer poisonings than have been spoken of: it is almost with them as with parricides; the accusations have been very common, and the crimes very rare. One proof is, that we have a long time taken for poison that which is not so. How many princes have got rid of those who were suspected by them by making them drink bullock's blood! How many other princes have swallowed it themselves to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies! All ancient historians, and even Plutarch,

bulls, in the idea that his blood belonged instead of tearing the membranes, are to me, since he was born in my stable opium, hemlock, henbane, aconite, and (an ancient pretension of which I will not several others. The Athenians became here dispute the validity). I drank this so refined as to cause their countrymen, blood, like Atreus and Mademoiselle de condemned to death, to die by poisons Vergi, and it did me no more harm than reputed cold; an apothecary was the horse's blood does to the Tartars, or pud-executioner of the republic. It is said, ding does to us every day, if it be not that Socrates died very peacefully, and too rich. as if he slept: I can scarcely believe it.

Why should the blood of a bull be a poison, when that of a goat is considered a remedy? The peasants of my province swallow the blood of a cow, which they call fricassée, every day; that of a bull is not more dangerous. Be sure, dear reader, that Themistocles died not of it. Some speculators of the court of Louis XIV. believed they discovered that his sister-in-law, Henrietta of England, was poisoned with powder of diamonds, which was put into a bowl of strawberries, instead of grated sugar; but neither the impalpable powder of glass or diamonds, nor that of any production of nature which was not in itself venomous, could be hurtful.

I made one remark on the Jewish books, which is, that among this people we see no one who was poisoned. A crowd of kings and priests perished by assassination; the history of the nation is the history of murders and robberies: but a single instance only is mentioned of a man who was poisoned, and this man was not a Jew-he was a Syrian named Lysias, general of the armies of Antiochus Epiphanus. The second book of Maccabees says, that he poisoned himself-veneno vitam finivit;' but these books of Maccabees are very suspicious. My dear reader, I have already desired you to believe nothing lightly.

What astonishes me most in the history They are only sharp-cutting active of the manners of the ancient Romans is, points which can become violent. The the conspiracy of the Roman women to exact observer Mead, a celebrated Eng-cause to perish by poison, not only their lish physician, saw through a microscope the liquor shot from the gums of irritated vipers. He pretends that he has always found them strewn with these cutting pointed blades, the immense number of which tear and pierce the internal membranes.

husbands, but the principal citizens in general. It was, says Titus Livius, in the year 423 from the foundation of Rome, and therefore in the time of the most austere virtue; it was before we heard speak of any divorce, though divorce was authorised; it was when woThe cantarella, of which it is pretended men drank no wine, and scarcely ever that Pope Alexander VI. and his bastard went out of their houses, except to the the Duke of Borgia made great use, was, temples. How can we imagine, that it is said, the foam of a hog rendered fu- they suddenly applied themselves to the rious by suspending him by the feet with knowledge of poisons; that they assemhis head downwards, in which situationbled to compose them; and, without any he was beat to death; it was a poison as apparent interest, thus administered death prompt and violent as that of the viper. to the first men in Rome? A great apothecary assures me, that la Lawrence Echard, in his abridged Tofana, that celebrated poisoness of Na- compilation, contents himself with sayples, principally made use of this receipt;ing, that "the virtue of the Roman ladies all which is perhaps untrue. This science is one of those of which we should be ignorant.

Poisons which coagulate the blood,

was strangely belied; that one hundred and seventy who meddled with the art of making poisons, and of reducing this art into precepts, were all at once accused,

convicted, and punished." Titus Livius assuredly does not say, that they reduced this art into rules. That would signify, that they held a school of poisons, that they professed it as a science; which is ridiculous. He says nothing about an hundred and seventy professors in corrosive sublimate and verdigris. Finally, he does not affirm that there were poisoners among the wives of the senators and knights.

The people were extremely foolish, and reasoned at Rome as elsewhere. These are the words of Titus Livius:

"The year 423 was of the number of unfortunate ones: there was a mortality caused by the temperature of the air or by human malice. I wish that we could affirm with some author, that the corruption of the air caused this epidemic, rather than attribute the death of so many Romans to poison, as many historians have falsely written, to decry this year."

They have therefore written falsely, according to Titus Livius, who believes not that the ladies of Rome were poisoners but what interest had authors in decrying this year? I know not.

"I relate the fact, continues he, "as it was related before me." This is not the speech of a satisfied man; besides, the alleged fact much resembles a fable. A slave accuses about seventy women, among whom are several of the patrician rank, of causing the plague in Rome by preparing poisons. Some of the accused demand permission to swallow their drugs and expire on the spot; and their accomplices are condemned to death without the manner of their punishment being specified.

Barjonas, surnamed Peter, disputed miracles with Simon the magician.

There is scarcely any poison of which we cannot prevent the consequences by combatting it immediately. There is no medicine which is not a poison when taken in too strong a dose.

All indigestion is a poison.

An ignorant physician, and even a learned but inattentive one, is often a poisoner. A good cook is a certain slow poisoner, if you are not temperate.

One day the Marquis d'Argenson, minister of state for the foreign department, whilst his brother was minister of war, received from London a letter from a fool (as ministers do by every post); this fool proposed an infallible means of poisoning all the inhabitants of the capital of England. This does not regard me, said the Marquis d'Argenson to us; it is a packet to my brother.

POLICY.

THE policy of man consists, at first, in endeavouring to arrive at a state equal to that of animals, whom nature has fur{nished with food, clothing, and shelter.

To attain this state is a matter of no little time and difficulty.

How to procure for himself subsistence and accommodation, and protect himself from evil, comprises the whole object and business of man.

This evil exists everywhere; the four elements of nature conspire to form it. The barrenness of one quarter part of the world, the numberless diseases to which we are subject, the multitude of strong and hostile animals by which we are surrounded, oblige us to be constantly on the alert in body and in mind, to guard against the various forms of evil.

No man, by his own individual care and exertion, can secure himself from evil; he requires assistance. Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

I suspect that this story to which Titus Livius gives no credit, deserves to be banished to the place in which the vessel is preserved which a vestal drew to shore with a girdle; where Jupiter in person stopped the flight of the Romans; where This society consists sometimes of too Castor and Pollux came to combat on many, and sometimes of too few. The horse-back in their behalf; where a flint revolutions of the globe have often dewas cut with a razor; and where Simonstroyed whole races of men and other