the circular orbit of Venus; it is twenty- { seven times smaller than the earth, the sun is a million of times larger, and Mars is five times smaller. The latter goes his round in two years, his neighbour Jupiter in twelve, and Saturn in thirty; yet Saturn, the most distant of all, is not so large as Jupiter. Where is the pretended gradation?

events, was connected with the origin of
things.

Had any one of these occurrences been
ordered otherwise, the result would have
been a different universe. Now, it was
not possible for the actual universe not to
exist; therefore it was not possible for
Jupiter, Jove as he was, to save the life
of his son.

We are told that this doctrine of necessity and fatality has been invented in our own times, by Leibnitz, under the

And, then, how, in so many empty spaces, do you extend a chain connecting the whole? There can, certainly, be no other than that which Newton dis-name of sufficing reason. It is, however, covered that which makes all the globes of the planetary world gravitate one towards another in the immense void.

Oh, much admired Plato! I fear that thou hast told us nothing but fables, that thou hast spoken to us only as a sophist! Oh, Plato! thou hast done more mischief than thou art aware of. How so? you will ask. I will not tell you.

CHAIN OR GENERATION OF

EVENTS.

of great antiquity. It is no recent dis-
covery, that there is no effect without a
cause, and that often the smallest cause
produces the greatest effects.

Lord Bolingbroke acknowledges that
he was indebted to the petty quarrels be-
tween the Duchess of Marlborough and
Mrs. Masham, for an opportunity of con-
cluding the private treaty between Queen
Anne and Louis XIV. This treaty led
to the peace of Utrecht; the peace of
Utrecht secured the throne of Spain to
Philip V.; Philip took Naples and Sicily
from the house of Austria. Thus the
Spanish prince, who is now King of Na-
ples, evidently owes his kingdom to Mrs.
Masham: he would not have had it, nor
even have been born, if the Duchess of
Marlborough had been more complaisant
towards the Queen of England:
existence at Naples depended
one folly more or less at the court of

THE present, we say, is pregnant with the future; events are linked one with another by an invincible fatality. This is the Fate which, in Homer, is superior to Jupiter himself. The master of gods and men expressly declares, that he cannot prevent his son Sarpedon from dying at the time appointed. Sarpedon was born at the moment when it was necesary that he should be born, and could not be born at any other; he could not die else-London. where than before Troy; he could not be buried elsewhere than in Lycia; his body must, in the appointed time, produce vegetables, which must change into the substance of some of the Lycians; his heirs must establish a new order of things in his states; that new order must influence neighbouring kingdoms; thence must result a new arrangement in war and in peace with the neighbours of Lycia. So that, from link to link, the destiny of the whole earth depended on the elopement of Helen, which had a necessary connection with the marriage of Hecuba, which, ascending to higher

his

on

Examine the situations of every people upon earth; they are in like manner founded on a train of occurrences seemingly without connection, but all connected. In this immense machine, all is wheel, pulley, cord, or spring.

A

It is the same in physical order. wind blowing from the southern seas and the remotest parts of Africa, brings with it a portion of the African atmosphere, which, falling in showers in the allie of the Alps, fertilises our lands; on the other hand, our north wind carries vapours among the negroes; we do goo to Guinea, and Guinea to us. The cani

extends from one end of the universe to › motion will be lost, and rest will be rethe other. stored. So the motion produced by MaBut the truth of this principle seems togog in spitting into a well, cannot have me to be strangely abused; for it is thence concluded that there is no atom, however small, the movement of which has not influenced the actual arrangement of the whole world; that the most trivial accident, whether among men or animals, is an essential link in the great chain of destiny.

Let us understand one another. Every effect evidently has its cause, ascending from cause to cause, into the abyss of eternity; but every cause has not its effect, going down to the end of ages. I grant that all events are produced one by another: if the past was pregnant with the present, the present is pregnant with the future: everything is begotten, but everything does not beget. It is a genealogical-tree: every house, we know, ascends to Adam; but many of the family have died without issue.

influenced what is now passing in Moldavia and Wallachia. Present events, then, are not the offspring of all past events: they have their direct lines; but with a thousand small collateral lines they have nothing to do. Once more be it observed, that every being has a parent, but every one has not an offspring.

CHANGES THAT HAVE OCCURRED IN THE GLOBE. WHEN We have seen with our own eyes a mountain advancing into a plain-that is, an immense rock detached from that mountain, and covering the fields; an entire castle buried in the earth; or a swallowed-up river bursting from below; indubitable marks of an immense mass of water having once inundated a country now inhabited; and so many traces of other revolutions, we are even more dis

have altered the face of the world, than a Parisian lady who knows that the square in which her house stands was formerly a cultivated field: but a lady of Naples, who has seen the ruins of Herculaneum under ground, is still less enthralled by the prejudice which leads us to believe that everything has always been as it now is.

The events of this world form a genea-posed to believe in the great changes that logical-tree. It is indisputable that the inhabitants of Spain and Gaul are descended from Gomer, and the Russians from his younger brother Magog; for in how many great books is this genealogy to be found! It cannot then be denied that the Grand Turk, who is also descended from Magog, is obliged to him for the good beating given him in 1769 by the Empress Catherine II. This occurrence is evidently linked with other great events; but whether Magog spat to the right or to the left near Mount Caucasus-made two or three circles in a well-or whether he lay on his right side or his left, I do not see that it could have much influence on present affairs.

Was there a great burning of the world in the time of Phaeton? Nothing is more likely: but this catastrophe was no more caused by the ambition of Phaeton or the anger of Jupiter the thunderer, than at Lisbon, in 1755, the divine vengeance was drawn down, the subterraneous fires kindled, and half the city destroyed, by the fires so often lighted there by the Inquisition :-besides, we know that Me

It must be remembered, because it is proved by Newton, that nature is not a plenum; and that motion is not commu-quinez, Tetuan, and considerable hordes aicated by collision until it has made the tour of the universe. Throw a body of certain density into water: you easily calculate that at the end of such a time the movement of this body, and that which it has given to the water, will cease; the

of Arabs, have been treated even worse than Lisbon, though they had no Inqui{sition.

The island of St. Domingo, entireiv devastated not long ago, had no more aispleased the Great Being than the island

of Corsica: all is subject to eternal phy- before his time. No one will believe this sical laws. chronology, on Plato's word only: but Sulphur, bitumen, nitre, and iron, en-neither can any one adduce against it any closed within the bowels of the earth, have physical proof, nor even an historical tesoverturned many a city, opened many a timony from any profane writer. gulph; and we are constantly 'iable to these accidents attached to the way in which this globe is put together; just as, in many countries during winter, we are exposed to the attacks of famishing wolves—“Indigenæ columnas Herculis vocant, and tigers. creduntque per fossas exclusa anteà admisisse maria, et rerum naturæ mutâsse faciem."

Pliny, in his third book, says, that from time immemorial the people of the southern coasts of Spain believed that the sea had forced a passage between Calpe and Abila:

If fire, which Heraclitus believed to be the principle of all, has altered the face of a part of the earth, Thales's first principle, An attentive traveller may convince water, has operated as great changes. himself by his own eyes, that the Cyclades One half of America is still inundated and the Sporades were once part of the by the ancient overflowings of the Mara-continent of Greece, and especially that non, Rio de la Plata, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and all the rivers perpetually swelled by the eternal snows of the highest mountains in the world, stretching from one end of that continent to the other. These accumulated floods have almost everywhere produced vast marshes. The neighbouring lands have become uninhabitable; and the earth, which the hands of man should have made fruitful, has produced only pestilence.

The same thing happened in China and in Egypt: a multitude of ages were necessary to dig canals and dry the lands. Add to these lengthened disasters the irruptions of the sea, the lands it has invaded and deserted, the islands it has detached from the continent, and you will find that, from east to west, from Japan to Mount Atlas, it has devastated more than eighty thousand square leagues.

Sicily was once joined to Apulia. The two volcanos of Etna and Vesuvius having the same basis in the sea, the little gulph of Charybdis; the only deep part {of that sea; the perfect resemblance of the two soils; are incontrovertible testimonies. The floods of Deucalion and Ogyges are well known; and the fables founded upon this truth are still more the talk of all the west.

The ancients have mentioned several deluges in Asia. The one spoken of by Berosus happened (as he tells us) in Chaldea, about four thousand three, or four, hundred years before the Christian {era; and Asia was as much inundated with fables about this deluge as it was by the overflowings of the Tigris and Euphrates, and all the rivers that fall into the Euxine.

It is true that such overflowings cannot The swallowing up of the island Atlantis cover the country with more than a few from the ocean may, with as much reason, feet of water: but the consequent sterility, be considered historical as fabulous. The the washing away of houses, and the deshallowness of the Atlantic as far as the struction of cattle, are losses which it reCanaries, might be taken as a proof of quires nearly a century to repair. We this great event, and the Canaries them-know how much they have cost Holland selves for fragments of the island Atlantis. more than the half of which has been los Plato tells us, in his Timæus, that the since the year 1050. She is still oblige Egyptian priests, amongst whom he had to maintain a daily conflict with the eve travelled, had in their possession ancient threatening ocean. She has never em registers which certified that island's go-ployed so many soldiers in resisting he ing under water. Plato says, that this enemies, as she employs labourers in cor catastrophe happened nine thousand years tinually defending her against the assaul

The character is formed of our ideas and our feelings. Now, it is quite clear, that we neither give ourselves feelings nor ideas; therefore our character cannot de

of a sea always ready to swallow her.
The road from Egypt to Phoenicia,
along the borders of lake Serbo, was once
quite practicable; but it has long ceased
to be so it is now nothing but a quick-pend on ourselves.
sand, moistened by stagnant water. In
short, a great portion of the earth would
be no other than a vast poisonous marsh,
inhabited by monsters, but for the assi-
duous labour of the human race.

If it did so depend, every one would be perfect.

We cannot give ourselves tastes, nor talents. why, then, should we give ourselves qualities?

We shall not here speak of the universal When we do not reflect, we think we deluge of Noah. Let it suffice to read the are masters of all: when, we reflect we Holy Scriptures with submission. Noah's find that we are masters of nothing. flood was an incomprehensible miracle, If you would absolutely change a supernaturally worked by the justice and man's character, purge him with diluents goodness of an ineffable Providence, whose { till he is dead. Charles XII., in his illwill it was to destroy the whole guiltyness on the way to Bender, was no lonhuman race, and form a new and innocent ger the same man; he was as tractable as race. If the new race was more wicked a child. than the former, and became more criminal from age to age, from reformation to reformation, this is but another effect of the same Providence, of which it is impossible for us to fathom the depths, the inconceivable mysteries, transmitted to the nations of the west for many ages, in the Latin translation of the Septuagint. We shall never enter these awful sanctuaries: { our questions will be limited to simple

nature.

CHARACTER.

[From the Greek word signifying Impression, En. graving. It is what nature has engraven in us.]

If I have a wry nose and cat's eyes, I can hide them behind a mask and can I do more with the character that nature has given me?

A man born violent and passionate, presents himself before Francis I. King of France, to complain of a trespass. The countenance of the prince, the respectful behaviour of the courtiers, the very place he is in, make a powerful impression upon this man. He mechanically casts down his eyes, his rude voice is softened; he presents his petition with humility; you would think him as mild as (at that moment at least) the courtiers appear to CAN we change our character? Yes-be, amidst whom he is often disconcerted: if we change our body. A man born but if Francis I. knows anything of phyturbulent, violent, and inflexible, may,siognomy, he will easily discover in his through falling in his old age into an apo-eye, though downcast, glistening with a plexy, become but as a silly, weak, timid, puling child. His body is no longer the same; but so long as his nerves, his blood, and his marrow, remain in the same state, his disposition will not change, any more than the instinct of a wolf or a polecat.

sullen fire, in the extended muscles of his face, in his fast-closed lips, that this man is not so mild as he is forced to appear. The same man follows him to Pavia, is taken prisoner along with him, and thrown into the same dungeon at Madrid. The majesty of Francis I. no The English author of the Dispensary, longer awes him as before: he becomes poem much superior to the Italian Ca- familiar with the object of his reverence. patoli, and perhaps even to Boileau's Lu-One day, pulling on the king's boots, and i, has, as it seems to me, well observed,

How matter, by the varied shape of pores,
Or idiots frames, or solemn senators.

happening to pull them on ill, the king, soured by misfortune, grows angry, on which our man of courtesy wishes his

majesty at the devil, and throws his boots out at the window.

many fish in this pond; they will 10 thrive here are too many cattle in your Sixtus V. was by nature petulant, ob- meadows; they will want grass, and stinate, haughty, impetuous, vindictive, grow lean. After this exhortation, the arrogant: this character, however, seems pikes come and eat one half this man's to have been softened by the trials of his carps, the wolves one half of his sheep, noviciate. But see him beginning to ac- and the rest fatten. And will you apquire some influence in his order; he plaud his economy? This countryman flies into a passion against a guardian, is yourself; one of your passions devours and knocks him down. Behold him an the rest, and you think you have gained inquisitor at Venice; he exercises his a triumph. Do we not almost all reoffice with insolence. Behold him car-semble the old general of ninety, who, dinal; he is possessed della rabbia pa- having found some young officers bepale; this rage triumphs over his natural having in a rather disorderly manner with propensities, he buries his person and some young women, said to them in anhis character in obscurity, and counter- ger--"Gentlemen, is this the example feits humility and infirmity. He is that I set you?" elected pope; and the spring which policy had held back now acts with all the force of its long-restrained elasticity: he is the proudest and most despotic of sovereigns.

Naturam expellas fureâ, tamen usque recurret.
Howe'er expell'd, nature will still return.

Religion and morality curb the strength of the disposition, but they cannot destroy it. The drunkard in a cloister, reduced to a quarter of a pint of cider per meal, will never more get drunk, but he will always be fond of wine.

CHARITY.

CHARITABLE AND BENEFICENT INSTITU

TIONS, ALMS-HOUSES, HOSPITALS, &C.

CICERO frequently speaks of universal charity :- "charitas humani generis;" but it does not appear that the policy or the beneficence of the Romans ever induced them to establish charitable institutions, in which the indigent and the sick might be relieved at the expence of the public. There was a receptacle for strangers at the port of Ostia, called XeAge weakens the character; it is as an nodokium; St. Jerome renders this justice old tree, producing only a few degenerate to the Romans. Alms-houses seem to fruits, but always of the same nature, have been unknown in ancient Rome. A which is covered with knots and moss, more noble usage prevailed—that of supand becomes worm-eaten, but is ever the plying the people with corn. There were same, whether oak or pear-tree. If we in Rome three hundred and twenty-seven could change our character, we could { public granaries. This constant liberality give ourselves one, and become the mas- precluded any need of alms-houses.— ters of nature. Can we give ourselves They were strangers to necessity. anything? do not we receive everything? To strive to animate the indolent man with persevering activity, to freeze with apathy the boiling blood of the impetuous, to inspire a taste for poetry into him { who has neither taste nor ear, were as futile as to attempt to give sight to one born blind. We perfect, we ameliorate, we conceal, what nature has placed in us;sistence of their children secured. but we place nothing there ourselves.

Neither was there any occasion among the Romans for foundling charities. None exposed their own children. Those of slaves were taken care of by their masters. Child-birth was not deemed disgraceful to the daughters of citizens. The poorest families, maintained by the republic, and afterwards by the emperors, saw the sub

The expression, charitable establish

An agriculturist is told-you have too ment, "maison de charité," implies a state