But of common judgments, pronounced by competent judges against princes or men in place, is there a single one which would have been either executed, or even passed, if another time had been chosen? Is there a single one of the condemned, immolated under Cardinal Richelieu, who would not have been in favour, if their suits had been prolonged until the regency of Anne of Austria? The prince of Condé was arrested under Francis II., he was condemned to death by commissaries; Francis 11. died, and the prince of Condé again became powerful.

derable men in the state, in the church, bound and robbed two passengers, amuse and in society, who have suffered death themselves with naming in the troop an like robbers on the highway. Setting attorney-general, a president, an advoaside assassinations and poisonings, I cate and counsellors, and who, having speak only of massacres in a juridica! { signed a sentence, cause the two victims form, performed with loyalty and cere- to be hanged in ceremony: it was thus mony, I commence with kings and that the Queen of Scotland and her queens; England alone furnishes an grandson were judged. ample list; but for chancellors, knights, and esquires, volumes are required. Of all who have thus perished by justice, I do not believe that there are four in all Europe who would have undergone their sentence, if their suits had lasted some time longer, or if the adverse parties had died of apoplexy during the preparation. If fistula had gangrened the rectum of { Cardinal Richelieu some months sooner, the virtuous De Thou, Cinq Mars, and so many others, would have been at liberty. If Barnevelt had had as many Arminians for his judges as Gomerists, he would have died in his bed: if the constable de Luynes had not demanded the confiscation of the property of the lady of the Marshal d'Ancre, she would not have been burnt as a witch. If a really criminal man, an assassin, a public thief, a poisoner, a parricide, be arrested, and his crime be proved, it is certain that in all times and whoever the judges, he will be condemned. But it is not the same with statesmen; only give them other judges, or wait until time has changed interests, cooled passions, and introduced other sentiments, and their lives will be in safety.

These instances are innumerable; we should above all consider the spirit of the times. Vanini was burnt on a vague suspicion of atheism. At present, if any one was foolish and pedantic enough to write such books as Vanini, they would not be read, and that is all which could happen to them. A Spaniard passed through Geneva, in the middle of the sixteenth century; the Picard, John Calvin, learnt that this Spaniard was lodged at an inn; he remembered that this Spaniard had disputed with him on a subject which neither of them understood. Behold! my theologian, John Calvin, arrests the passenger, contrary to all laws, human or divine, contrary to the right possessed by people among all na

Suppose Queen Elizabeth had died of an indigestion on the eve of the execution of Mary Stuart, then Mary Stuart would have been seated on the throne of England, Ireland, and Scotland, insteadtions; immured him in a dungeon, and of dying by the hand of an executioner in a chamber hung with black. If Cromwell had only fallen sick, care would have been taken how Charles the First's head was cut off. These two assassinations-disguised, I know not how, in the garb of the laws-scarcely entered into the list of ordinary injustice. Figure to yourself some highwayman who, having

burned him at a slow fire with green faggots, that the pain might last the longer. Certainly this infernal manouvre would never enter the head of any one in the present day; and if the fool Servetus had lived in good times, he would have had nothing to fear: what is called justice is therefore as arbitrary as fashion. There are times of horrors and

"I CERTIFY, that I have many times killed serpents by moistening in a slight He took him aside, placed his fingers degree, with my spittle, a stick or a stone, on his ears, and looking up to heaven, and giving them a slight blow on the mid-sighed and said to him,-"Ephphatha,' dle of the body, scarcely sufficient to pro- be opened,-when the deaf and dumb duce a small contusion. 19 Jan. 1757. person immediately began to speak. Figuier, Surgeon."

money, and always made use of the coinage of other people, all gold coins weighing about a guinea, and all silver coins of the weight of a small French crown, were called a shekel; and these shekels were distinguished into those of the weight of the sanctuary, and those of the weight of the king.

It is said, in the book of Samuel, that Absalom had very fine hair, from which he cut a part every year. Many profound commentators assert, that he cut it once a month, and that it was valued at two hundred shekels. If these shekels were of gold, the locks of Absalom were worth two thousand four hundred guineas per annum. There are few seignories which produce at present the revenue that Absalom derived from his head.

It is said, that when Abraham bought a cave in Hebron from the Canaanite Ephron, Ephron sold him the cave for four hundred shekels of silver, of current money with the merchant (probatæ monetæ publicæ).

in this case has produced a very dangerous wound, otherwise thirty-two crowns was a large sum for the neighbourhood of Mount Sinai, where money was uncommon. It is for the same reason that many grave, but too hasty persons suspect, that Exodus as well as Genesis was not written until a comparatively late period.

What tends to confirm them in this erroneous opinion, is a passage in the same Exodus:-"Take of pure myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half as much; of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels; of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; and of olive oil a ton," to form an ointment to anoint the tabernacle; and whosoever anointed himself or any stranger with a similar composition, was to be put to death.

It is added, that with all these aromatics were to be united stacte, onyx, galbanum, and frankincense; and that a perfume was to be mixed up according to the art of the apothecary or perfumer.

But I cannot perceive anything in this composition which ought to excite the doubt of the incredulous. It is natural to imagine that the Jews-who, accord

We have already remarked, that there was no coined money in these days, and thus these four hundred shekels of silver became four hundred shekels in weight, which, valued at present at three livres four sous each, are equal to twelve hun-ing to the text, stole from the Egyptians dred and eighty livres of France.

all which they could bring away-had also taken frankincense, galbanum, onyx, stacte, olive oil, cassia, sweet calamus, cinnamon, and myrrh. They also, with

we have seen, that one of the most zealous partisans of this Hebrew horde estimates what they stole, in gold alone, at nine millions. I abide by his reckoning.

It follows that the little field, which was sold with this cavern, was excellent land, to bring so high a price. When Eleazer, the servant of Abraham,out doubt, stole many shekels; indeed, met the beautiful Rebecca, the daughter of Bethnel, carrying a pitcher of water upon her shoulder, from which she gave him and his camels leave to drink, he presented her with ear-rings of gold, which weighed two shekels, and bracelets which weighed ten, amounting in the whole to a present of the value of twentyfour guineas.

In the laws of the Exodus, it is said, that if an ox gored a male or female slave, the possessor of the ox should give thirty shekels of silver to the master of the slave, and that the ox should be stoned It is apparently to be understood, that the ox

SHELLS,

AND SYSTEMS FOUNDED ON SHELLS.

Ir has happened with shells as with eels-they have founded new systems. In several parts of this globe masses of shells are found, and in some others petrified oysters; thence we conclude, that notwithstanding the laws of gravitation and those of fluids, and notwithstanding the depth of the bed of the ocean, the sea

ago.

covered all the earth some millions of years, sought for them on Mount St. Gothard, Mount St. Bernard, and the mountains of the Tarentais, and have not discovered any.

The sea having thus successively inundated the earth, has formed mountains by its currents and tides; and though its flux rises only to the height of fifteen feet, in its greatest swells, on our coast it has produced rocks eighteen thousand feet high.

One physician only has written to me, that he has found a petrified oyster-shell near Mount Cenis. I ought to believe him, and I am very much astonished that hundreds have not been seen there. The neighbouring lakes nourish great muscles, the shells of which perfectly resemble those of oysters; they are even called little oysters in more than one province.

If the sea has covered every place, there was a time in which the world was peopled by fishes alone. By degrees, their fins have become arms; their forked tails, being lengthened, have formed legs and thighs; finally, fishes have become men ; Besides, it is altogether a romantic idea and all this is proved by the shells which to reflect on the innumerable number of have been dug up. These systems ad- pilgrims who departed on foot from St. mirably prove the horror of a void; sub- James in Galicia, and all the provinces, stantial forms; globular, subtle, and to go to Rome by Mount Cenis with shells tubular matter; the negation of the ex-in their bonnets! They came from Syistence of body; the divining rod of James Aimard; pre-established harmony, and perpetual motion.

ria, Egypt, and Greece, as from Poland and Austria. The number of palmers has been a thousand times more considerable than that of the Hagis who have { visited Mecca and Medina, because the roads of Rome are more easy, and they have not been forced to go in caravans. In a word, an oyster near Mount Cenis proves not that the Indian ocean enveloped all the lands of our hemisphere.

In turning over the earth, we sometimes meet with strange petrifactions, as in Austria we meet with medals struck at Rome; but as to a foreign petrifaction, there are a thousand in our climates.

It is said, there are immense wrecks of shells near Maestricht. I do not contradict it, though I have seen very few there. The sea has made horrible ravages in these quarters; it has swallowed the half of Friesland, having covered lands formerly fertile, and spared others. It is an acknowledged truth, no person disputes it-that changes have taken place on the surface of the globe in a long course of years. An earthquake might physically, and without contradicting our holy books, cause the island Atlantides Some one has said, that he would as to disappear nine thousand years before soon believe marble to be composed of Plato; as he himself relates, though his ostrich feathers, as porphyry to be commemoirs are not correct. All this how-posed of particles of ursines. If I am ever fails to prove, that the sea produced {not deceived, this person had doubtless Mount Caucasus, the Pyrenees, and the good reason. Alps.

Some years ago there were discovered, It is pretended, that there are fragments or at least it was thought so, the skeletons of shells at Montmatre, and at Courtag- of a rein deer and a hippopotamus, near non, near Rheims. We meet with them Estampes; and thence it was concluded, almost everywhere, but not on the sum-that the Nile and Lapland had been formits of mountains, as is supposed by the system of Maillet.

There is not a single one on the chain of high mountains from Sierra Morena to the last ridge of the Appenines. I have

merly on the road from Paris to Orleans. We should rather have suspected, that a virtuoso had formerly the skeleton of a rein deer and a hippopotamus in his ca{binet. An hundred other such examples

lead us to examine a long time before we and fragments of their shells are found believe.

Beds of Shells.

everywhere Why, then, should we imagine that Indian shells are amassed in our climates, when we have them among

A thousand places are filled with aus by millions? All these little fragments, thousand beds of testaceous and crusta-about which so much noise is made to ceous substances and petrifactions; but establish a system, are for the most part let us once more remark, that it is scarcely so shapeless, so decayed, and so indisever either on the extremities, or on the tinct, that we might equally believe that sides of this line of mountain, with which they are pieces of the shells of crabs or the surface of the globe is crossed. It is of crocodiles, or the nails of other animals. at some leagues from these great bodies; If we find a well-preserved shell in the it is in the midst of lands; in caverns; cabinet of a virtuoso, we know not whence in places where it is very likely that there it comes; and I doubt whether it could were lakes which have disappeared; small serve for the foundation of a system of the rivers whose courses have changed; con- universe. siderable brooks, whose sources are dry. You there see beds of tortoises, crabs, muscles, snails, minute river petrifactions, small oysters similar to those of Lorraine; but true marine substances are what you never see. If there were any, why have we never seen bones of sea-dogs, sharks, and whales?

You pretend that the sea has left in our lands signs of a very long stay. The most certain monument would assuredly be some mass of porpuses in the midst of Germany. When you have discovered them, and I shall have seen them at Nuremburg and Frankfort, I will believe you; but, in the meantime, permit me to class the majority of these suppositions with that of the petrified vessel found in the canton of Berne, an hundred feet under ground, whilst one of its anchors was on Mount St. Bernard.

I have sometimes seen beds of muscles and snails, which have been mistaken for sea-shells.

If we could only fancy that, in a rainy year, there were more snails in ten leagues of country than men on the earth, we might dispense with seeking elsewhere the origin of these fragments of shells with which the shores of the Rhine and those of other rivers are covered for the space of several miles. There are many of these snails which are more than an inch in diameter. The multitude of them sometimes destroyed vines and fruit trees;

Once more, I do not deny that at an hundred miles from the sea we meet with petrified oysters, conches, univalves, productions which perfectly resemble marine ones; but are we sure that the soil of the earth cannot produce these fossils? The formation of vegetable agate, should it not make us suspend our judgment? A tree has not produced the agate which perfectly resembles a tree; neither may the sea have produced the fossil shells which resemble the habitations of little marine animals. The following facts will give evidence of it.

Of the Fairies' Grotto.

Grottos, where stalactites and stalagmites are formed, are common. There are such in almost all the provinces. That of Chablais is perhaps the least known to men of science, and the most worthy to be so. It is situated amidst frightful rocks, in the centre of a forest of pines, at two short leagues from Ripaille, in the parish of Féterne. There are three grottos arching one over the other, hewn out by nature in an inaccessible rock. They can only be mounted by a ladder, and we must afterwards climb into these cavities, holding by branches of trees. This place is called by the people of the province the Fairies' Grotto Each has in its floor a basin, the water of which is supposed to have the same virtue as that of St. Reine. The water which distils