This is a literal translation. The text, like many other texts, appears to want common sense. What is meant by "Do not kill yourself, for God is merciful"? Perhaps we are to understand-Do not sink under your misfortunes, which God may alleviate: do not be so foolish as to kill yourself to-day, since you may be happy-to-morrow.. And whosoever killeth himself through malice and wickedness."-This is yet more difficult to explain. Perhaps, in all antiquity, this never happened to any one but the Phædra of Euripides, who hanged herself on purpose to make Theseus believe that she had been forcibly violated by Hippolytus. In our own times, a man shot himself in the head, after arranging all things to make another man suspected of the act. In the play of George Dandin, his jade of a wife threatens him with killing herself to have him hanged. Such cases are If Mahomet foresaw them, he may be said to have seen a great way. rare. The famous Duverger de Haurane, Abbot of St. Cyran, regarded as the founder of Port Royal, wrote, about the year 1608, a treatise on Suicide, which has become one of the scarcest books in Europe. good of his prince, for that of his country, or for that of his relations." We do not, indeed, see how Codrus or Curtius could be condemned. No sovereign would dare to punish the family of a man who had devoted himself to death for him: nay, there is not one who would dare neglect to recompense it. St. Tho mas, before St. Cyran, had said the same thing. But we need neither St. Thomas, nor Cardinal Bonaventure, nor Duverger de Haurane, to tell us that a man who dies for his country is deserving of praise. The Abbot of St. Cyran concludes, that it is allowable to do for ourselves what it is noble to do for others. All that is advanced by Plutarch, by Seneca, by Montaigne, and by fifty other philosophers, in favour of suicide, is sufficiently known it is a hacknied topic-a wornout common-place. I seek not to apologise for an act which the laws condemn; but neither the Old Testament, nor the New, has ever forbidden man to depart this life when it has become insupportable to him. No Roman law condemned self-murder on the contrary, the following was the law of the Emperor Antonine, which was never revoked : "If your father or your brother, not being accused of any crime, kill himself, "The Decalogue," says he, "forbids either to escape from grief, or through us to kill. In this precept, self-murder { weariness of life, or through despair, or seems no less to be comprised than mur-through mental derangement, his will der of our neighbour. But if there shall be valid; or, if he die intestate, his are cases in which it is allowable to heirs shall succeed." kill our neighbour, there likewise are Notwithstanding this humane law of our cases in which it is allowable to kill our-masters, we still drag on a sledge, and selves. drive a stake through the body of a man who has died a voluntary death: we do all we can to make his memory infamous; we dishonour his family as far as we are able; we punish the son for having lost his father, and the widow for being deprived of her husband. "We must not make an attempt upon our lives until we have consulted reason. The public authority, which holds the place of God, may dispose of our lives. The reason of man may likewise hold the place of the reason of God: it is a ray of the eternal light." St. Cyran extends this argument, which may be considered as a mere sophism, to great length; but when he comes to the explanation and the details, it is more difficult to answer him. He says “A man may kill himself for the We even confiscate the property of the deceased; which is robbing the living of the patrimony which of right belongs to them. This custom is derived from our canon law, which deprives of Christian burial such as die a voluntary death. Hence it is concluded, that we cannot in The herit from a man who is judged to have no inheritance in heaven. The canon law, under the head "De Pœnitentiâ," assures us, that Judas committed a greater crime in strangling himself than in selling our Lord Jesus Christ. CELTS. We have also been duly told that Noah's son, Japhet, came out of the Ark, and went with all speed to people all those vast regions with Celts, whom he governed marvellously well. But authors of greater modesty refer the origin of our Celts to the tower of Babel-to the confusion of tongues to Gomer, of whom no one ever heard, until the very recent period when some wise men of the west read the name of Gomer in a bad trans AMONG those who have had the leisure, the means, and the courage, to seek for the origin of nations, there have been some who have found that of our Celts,lation of the Septuagint. or at least would make us believe that they had met with it. This illusion being the only recompense of their immense travail, we should not envy them its possession. Bochart, in his Sacred Chronology—— (what a chronology !)-takes quite a different turn. Of these innumerable hordes of Celts he makes an Egyptian colony, skilfully and easily led by Hercules from the fertile banks of the Nile into the forests and morasses of Germany, whither, no doubt, these colonists carried the arts and the language of Egypt, and the mysteries of Isis, no trace of which has ever been found among them. If we wish to know anything about the Huns (who, indeed, are scarcely worth knowing anything about, for they have rendered no service to mankind), we find some slight notices of those barbarians among the Chinese that most ancient of all nations, after the Indians. From I think they are still more to be conthem we learn that, in certain ages, the gratulated on their discoveries, who say Huns went, like famishing wolves, and that the Celts of the mountains of Dauravaged countries which, even at this day, phiny were called Cottians from their are regarded as places of exile and of King Cottius; that the Bérichons were horror. This is a very melancholy, a named from their King Betrich; the very miserable sort of knowledge. It is, Welsh, or Gaulish, from their King Waldoubtless, much better to cultivate a use-lus; and the Belgians from Balgem, ful art at Paris, Lyons, or Bourdeaux, which means quarrelsome. than seriously to study the history of the Huns and the bears. Nevertheless we are aided in these researches by some of the Chinese archives. A still finer origin is that of the CeltoPannonians, from the Latin word punnus, cloth; for, we are told, they dressed themselves in old pieces of cloth badly sewn But for the Celts, there are no ar-together, much resembling a harlequin's chives. We know no more of their jacket. But the best origin of all is, unantiquities than we do of those of the deniably, the tower of Babel. Samoyeds or the Australasians. We have learned nothing about our ancestors, except from the few words which their conqueror, Julius Cæsar condescended to say of them. He begins his Commentaries by distinguishing the Gauls into the Belgians, Aquitanians, and Celts. Whence some of the daring among the erudite have concluded, that the Celts were the Scythians; and they have made these Scythio-Celts include all Europe. But why not include the whole earth? Why stop short in so fine a career? CEREMONIES-TITLES-PRECE- ALL these things, which would be very useless and very impertinent, in a state of pure nature, are, in our corrupt and ridiculous state, of great service. Of all nations, the Chinese are those who have carried the use of ceremonies to the greatest length; they certainly serve to calm as well as to weary the mind. The Chinese porters and carters are obliged, whenever they occasion the least hindrance in the streets, to fall on their knees, and ask one another's pardon according to the prescribed formula. This prevents ill language, blows, and murders. They have time to grow cool, and are then willing to assist one another. The more free a people are, the fewer ceremonies, the fewer ostentatious titles, the fewer demonstrations of annihilation in the presence of a superior, they possess. To Scipio, men said "Scipio;" to Cæsar, "Cæsar;" but in after times they said to the emperors, "your Majesty,' 'your Divinity." The titles of St. Peter and St. Paul, were "Peter" and "Paul." Their successors gave one another the title of “ your Holiness," which is not to be found in the Acts of the Apostles, nor in the writings of the disciples. We read in the history of Germany, that the Dauphin of France, afterwards Charles V., went to the Emperor Charles IV. at Metz, and was presented after Cardinal De Périgord. There has since been a time when chancellors went before cardinals; after which, cardinals again took precedence of chancellors. In France, the peers preceded the princes of the blood, going in the order of their creation, until the consecration of Henry III. etiquette concerning arm-chairs to the circumstance that our barbarians of ancestors had at most but one in a house, and even this was used only by the sick. In some provinces of Germany and England, an arm-chair is still called a sickchair. Long after the times of Attila and Dagobert, when luxury found its way into our courts, and the great men of the earth had two or three arm-chairs in their donjons, it was a noble distinction to sit upon one of these thrones; and a castellain would place among his titles, how he had gone half a league from home to pay his court to a count, and how he had been received in an easy-chair. We see in the Memoirs of Mademoiselle, that that august princess passed onefourth of her life amid the mortal agonies of disputes for the back-chair. Were you to sit, in a certain apartment, in a chair, or on a stool, or not to sit at all? Here was enough to involve a whole court in intrigue. Manners are now more easy; ladies may use couches and sofas without occasioning any disturbance in society. When Cardinal De Richelieu was treating with the English ambassadors for the marriage of Henriette of France with Charles I., the affair was on the point of being broken off on account of a demand made by the ambassadors of two or three steps more towards a door; but the cardinal removed the difficulty by taking to his bed. History has carefully handed down this precious circumstance. I believe that, if it had been proposed to Scipio to get between the sheets to receive the visit of Hannibal, he would have thought the ceremony something like a joke. The dignity of peer was, until that time, so exalted, that at the ceremony of the consecration of Elizabeth, wife to Charles IX., in 1572, described by Simon Bouquet, echevin of Paris, it is said that the queen's dames and demoiselles having handed to the dame d'honneur the bread, wine, and wax, with the silver, for the offering to be presented to the queen by For a whole century, the order of carthe said dame d'honneur, the said dame riages, and taking the wall, were testimod'honneur, being a duchess, commanded 3 nials of greatness and the source of prethe dumes to go and carry the offering to tensions, disputes, and conflicts. Το the princesses themselves, &c. This dame procure the passing of one carriage before d'honneur was the wife of the constable another, was looked upon as a signal vicMontmorency. tory. The ambassadors went along the streets as if they were contending for the prize in the circus; and when a Spanish minister had succeeded in making a Portuguese coachman pull up, he sent a The arm-chair, the chair with a back, the stool, the right hand, and the left, were for several ages important political matters. I believe that we owe the ancient courier to Madrid to apprise the king his "Be it so," answered the other," what master of this great advantage. matters it to me?" "But only princes Our histories regale us with fifty pugi-go there; are you a prince?" "Pshaw!" listic combats for precedence-as that of the parliament with the bishops' clerks, at the funeral of Henry IV.-the chambre des comptes with the parliament, in the cathedral, when Louis XIII. gave France to the Virgin-the Duke of Epernon with the Keeper of the Seals, Du Vair, in the church of St. Germain. The presidents of the enquêtes buffeted Savare, the doyen of the conseillers de grand chambre, to make him quit his place of honour (so much is honour the soul of monarchical governments!) and four archers were obliged to lay hold of the President Barillon, who was beating the poor doyen without mercy. We find no contests like these in the Areopagus, nor in the Roman said the colonel, "they are a very good sort of princes; I had a dozen of them in my anti-room last year, when we had taken the town, and they were very polite." senate. In turning over the leaves of Horace, I observe this line in an epistle to Mecenas, "Te, dulcis amice revisam.”—“ I will come and see you, my good friend." This Mecanas was the second person in the Roman empire; that is, a man of greater power and influence than the greatest monarch of modern Europe. Looking into the works of Corneille, I observed that in a letter to the great Scuderi, Governor of Notre Dame de la Garde, &c., he uses this expression in reference to Cardinal Richelieu :-" Mon In proportion to the barbarism of coun-sieur the Cardinal, your master and mine." tries or the weakness of courts, we find ceremony in vogue. True power and true politeness are above vanity. We may venture to believe that the custom will at last be given up which some ambassadors still retain, of ruining themselves, in order to go along the streets in procession with a few hired carriages, fresh painted and gilt, and preceded by a few footmen. This is called "making their entry ;" and it is a fine joke, to make your entry into a town seven or eight months before you arrive. This important affair of punctilio, which constitutes the greatness of the modern Romans-this science of the number of steps that should be made in showing in a monsignor, in drawing or half-drawing a curtain, in walking in a room to the right or to the left-this great art, which not Fabius nor Cato could ever imagine, a beginning to sink; and the train-bearers to the cardinals complain that everything radicates a decline. A French colonel, being at Brussels a year after the taking of that place by Martal de Saxe, and having nothing to do, olved to go to the town assembly. "It beld at a princess's," said one to him. It is, perhaps, the first time that such language has been applied to a minister, since there have been ministers, kings, and flatterers in the world. The same Peter Corneille, the author of Cinna, humbly dedicates that work to the Sieur de Montauron, the king's treasurer, whom, in direct terms, he compares to Augustus. I regret that he did not give Montauron the title of monseigneur, or my lord. An anecdote is related of an old officer, but little conversant with the precedents and formulas of vanity, who wrote to the Marquis Louvois as plain monsieur, but receiving no answer, next addressed him under the title of monseigneur, still however without effect, the unlucky monsieur continuing to rankle in the minister's heart. He finally directed his letter, "to my God, my God Louvois;" commencing it by the words," my God, my Creator." Does not all this sufficiently prove that the Romans were magnanimous and modest, and that we are frivolous and vain? How d'ye do, my dear friend? said a duke and peer to a gentleman. At your service, my dear friend, replied he; and from that instant his "dear friend" be came his implacable enemy. A grandee { mind them of what in fact they ought to be. of Portugal was once conversing with a Spanish hidalgo, and addressed him every moment in the terms," your Excellency. The Castillian as frequently replied, "your Courtesy," (vuestra merced), a title bestowed on those who have none by right. The irritated Portuguese, in return, retorted "your Courtesy" on the Spaniard, who then called the Portuguese, "your Excellency." The Portuguese, at length wearied out, demanded, "How is it that you always call me your Courtesy, when I call you your Excellency, and your Excellency when I call you your Courtesy ?" "The reason is," says the Castilian with a bow, "that all titles are equal to me, provided that there is nothing equal between you and me." The vanity of titles was not introduced into our northern climes of Europe, till the Romans had become acquainted with Asiatic magnificence. The greater part of the sovereigns of Asia were, and still are, cousins-german of the sun and the moon; their subjects dare not make any pretension to such high affinity; and many a provincial governor, who styles himself nutmeg of consolation," and "rose of delight," would be impaled alive, if he were to claim the slightest relationship to the sun and moon. Men sometimes take upon themselves Formerly, the emperor alone had the The German chancery, ever unchangeable in its stately formalities, has preConstantine was, I think, the first Ro- tended, down to our own times, that no man emperor who overwhelmed Christian } kings have a right to a higher title than humility in a page of pompous titles. It serenity. At the celebrated treaty of is true that, before his time, the emperors Westphalia, in which France and Swebore the title of God, but the term im- { den dictated the law to the holy Roman plied nothing similar to what we under-empire, the emperor's plenipotentiaries stand by it. Divus Augustus, Divus continually presented Latin memorials, Trajanus, meant St. Augustus, St. Trajan. in which, "his most sacred imperial maIt was thought only conformable to the jesty" negociated with the "most serene dignity of the Roman empire, that the kings of France and Sweden;" while, soul of its chief should, after his death, on the other hand, the French and ascend to heaven; and it frequently even Swedes fail not to declare, that their happened that the title of Saint, of God," sacred majesties of France and Swe was granted to the emperor by a sort of anticipated inheritance. Nearly for the same reason, the first patriarchs of the Christian church were all called "your holiness." They were thus named, to re den" had many subjects of complaint against the "most serene emperor." Since that period, however, the great so vereigns have, in regard to rank, been considered as equals, and he alone, whe |