sound, and sagacious mind, reposing in calm grandeur on the rock of Revelation, and looking on with scornful pity while modern sophists go through all the drunken capers of emancipated scepticism. Does the historian, grave and thoughtful as he is, mean to countenance such vagaries of human reason? does he deem the wild mazes of the philosophic dance, in which Hobbes, Spinoza, Bolingbroke, David Hume, and Monboddo, join with Diderot, Helvetius, and the D'Holbac revellers, worthy of applause and imitation ? "Saltantes satyros imitabitur Alphesibous ?" If such be the blissful vision of his philosophy, then, indeed, may we exclaim, with the poet of Eton College," "Tis folly to be wise!" But if to possess an unrivalled knowledge of human nature-if to ken with intuitive glance all the secrets of men's hearts--if to control the passions—if to gain ascendancy by sheer intellect over mankind—if to civilise the savage-if to furnish zealous and intelligent missionaries to the Indian and American hemisphere, as well as professors to the Universities of Europe, and fessors" to the court of kings,-be characteristics of genuine philosophy and mental greatness, allow me to put in a claim for the Society that is no more; the downfal of which was the signal for every evil bird of bad omen to flit abroad and pollute the world con Obscœnique canes, importunæque volucres." And still, though it may sound strange to modern democrats, the first treatise on the grand dogma of the sovereignty of the people was written and published in Spain by a Jesuit. It was Father Mariana who first, in his book "De Institutione Regis," taught the doctrine, that kings are but trustees for the benefit of the nation, freely developing what was timidly hinted at by Thomas Aquinas. Bayle, whom the professor will admit to the full honours of a philosophic chair of pestilence, acknowledges, in sundry passages, the superior sagacity of those pious men, under whom, by the way, he himself studied at Toulouse; and if, by accumulating "Cathedra pestilentia" is the Vulgate translation of what the authorised Church-version calls the "seat of the scornful," Psalm i. 1. -O. Y. doubts and darkness on the truths of Christianity, he has merited to be called the cloud-compelling Jupiter among philosophers, voελnyegera Zevs, surely some particle of philosophic praise, equivocal as it is, might be reserved for those able masters who stimulated his early inquiries,-excited and fed his young appetite for erudition. But they sent forth from their schools, in Descartes, in Torricelli, and in Bossuet, much sounder specimens of reasoning and wisdom. 66 I hesitate not to aver, as a general proposition, that the French character is essentially unphilosophical. Of the Greeks it has been said, what I would rather apply to our merry neighbours, that they were "a nation of children," possessing all the frolicsome wildness, all the playful attractiveness of that pleasant epoch in life; but deficient in the graver faculties of dispassionate reflection: 'Exλves are παιδες, γερων δε Ελλην ουδεις.— (Plato, “ Timæus.” In the reign of Louis XIV., Père Bouhours gravely discusses, in his "Cours de Belles Lettres," the question, "whether a native of Germany can possess wit ?" The phlegmatic dwellers on the Danube might retort by proposing as a problem to the University of Göttingen, "An datur philosophus inter Gallos ?" Certain it is, and I know them well, that the calibre of their mind is better adapted to receive and discharge "small shot" than "heavy metal." That they are more calculated to shine in the imaginative, the ornamental, the refined and delicate departments of literature, than in the sober, sedate, and profound pursuits of philosophy; and it is not without reason that history tells of their ancestors, when on the point of taking the capitol, that they were foiled and discomfited by the solemn steadiness of a goose. Cicero had a great contempt for the guidance of Greek philosophers in matters appertaining to religion, thinking, with reason, that there was in the Roman gravity a more fitting disposition of mind for such important inquiries: "Cùm de religione agitur, Titum Coruncanium aut Publium Scævolam, pontifices maximos, non Zenonem, aut Cleanthum, aut Chrysippum sequor." (De Natura Deor.) The terms of insulting depreciation, Græculus and Græcia mendax, are familiar to the readers of the Latin classics; and from Aristophanes we can learn, that frogs, a talkative, saltatory, and unsubstantial noun of multitude, was then applied to Greeks, as now-a-days to Frenchmen. But of this more anon, when I come to treat of "frogs and free-trade." I am now on the chapter of philosophy. Vague generalities, and sweeping assertions relative to national character, are too much the fashion with writers of the Puckler Muskaw and Lady Morgan school: wherefore I select at once an individual illustration of my theory concerning the French; and I hope I shall not be accused of dealing unfairly towards them when I put forward as a sample the Comte de Buffon. Of all the eloquent prose writers of France, none has surpassed in graceful and harmonious diction the great naturalist of Burgundy. His work combines two qualities rarely found in conjunction on the same happy page, viz., accurate technical information and polished elegance of style; indeed his maxim was “Le style c'est l'homme:" but when he goes beyond his depthwhen, tired of exquisite delineations and graphic depicturings, he forsakes the "swan," the "Arabian horse," the "beaver," and the “ ostrich," for "Sanconiathon, Berosus, and the cosmogony of the world," what a melancholy exhibition does he make of ingenious dotage! Having predetermined not to leave Moses a leg to stand on, he sweeps away at one stroke of his pen the foundations of Genesis, and reconstructs their terraqueous planet on a new patent principle. I have been at some pains to acquire a comprehensive notion of his system, and, aided by an old Jesuit, I have succeeding in condensing the voluminous dissertation into a few lines, for the use of those who are dissatisfied with the Mosaic statement, including Dr. Buckland : 1. In the beginning was the sun, from which a splinter was shot off by chance, and that fragment was our globe. 2. And the globe had for its nucleus melted glass, with an envelope of hot water. 3. And it began to twirl round, and became somewhat flattened at the poles. 4. Now, when the water grew cool, insects began to appear, and shell-fish. 5. And from the accumulation of shells, particularly oysters (tom. i., 4to. edit. p. 14), the earth was gradually formed, with ridges of mountains, on the principle of the Monte Testacio at the gate of Rome. 6. But the melted glass kept warm for a long time, and the arctic climate was as hot in those days as the tropics now are: witness a frozen rhinoceros found in Siberia, &c. &c. &c. To all which discoveries no one will be so illiberal as to refuse the appropriate acclamation of " Very fine oysters !"* As I have thus furnished here a compendious substitute for the obsolete book of Genesis, I think it right also to supply a few notions on astronomy; wherefore I subjoin a French song on one of the most interesting phenomena of the solar system, in which effusion of some anonymous poet there is about as much wisdom as in Buffon's cosmogony. La Theorie des Eclipses. (Jupiter loquitur.) Je jure le Styx qui tournoie Dans le pays de Tartara, Le bon Soleil l'avait bien dit- Pour lui voiler son beau visage. On Solar Eclipses. (A NEW THEORY.) For the use of the London University. Shall play this day at "Blind Come, make arrangements on the Prepare the 'kerchief, draw the lot- Lot fell on SOL: the stars were struck J'er his bright brow the muslin Hence mortals learned the game. It would be scandalous indeed, if the palm of absurdity, the bronze medal of impudence in philosophic discovery, were to be awarded to Buffon, when Voltaire stands a candidate in the same field of speculation. This great man, discoursing on a similar subject, in his profound "Questions * Prout felt that dislike of geological induction common to oldfashioned churchmen-O.Y. Encyclopédiques," labours to remove the vulgar presumption in favour of a general deluge, derived from certain marinc remains and conchylia found on the Alps and Pyrenees. He does not hesitate to trace these shells to the frequency of pilgrims returning with scollops on their hats from St. Jago di Compostello across the mountains. Here are his words, q. e. (art. Coquil.): "Si nous faisons réflexion à la foule innombrable de pélérins qui partent à pied de St. Jaques en Galice, et de toutes les provinces, pour aller à Rome par le Mont Cénis, chargés de coquilles à leurs bonnets," &c. &c.-a deep and original explanation of a very puzzling geological problem. But let the patriarch of Ferney hide his diminished head before a late French philosophic writer, citoyen Dupuis, author of that sublime work, "De l'Origine des Cultes." This performance is a manual of deism, and deservedly has been commemorated by a poet from Gascony; who concludes his complimentary stanzas to the author by telling him that he has at last drawn up Truth from the bottom of the well to which the ancients had consigned her: Vous avez bien mérité De la patrie, Sire Dupuis : Vous avez tiré la vérité Truth in a well was said to dwell, From whence no art could pluck it; But now 'tis known, raised by the loan Of thy philosophic bucket. Du puits! Citizen Dupuis has imagined a simple method of explaining the rise and origin of Christianity, which he clearly shews to have been nothing at its commencement but an astronomical allegory:" Christ standing for the Sun, the twelve apostles representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac, Peter standing for "Aquarius," and Didymus for one of "the twins," &c. ; just with as much ease as a future historian of these countries may convert our grand Whig cabinet into an allegorical fable, putting Lord Althorp for the sign of Taurus, Palmerston for the Goat, Ellice for Ursa Major, and finding in Stanley an undeniable emblem of Scorpio.* Volney, in his "Ruines," seems to emulate the bold theories of Dupuis; and the conclusion at which all arrive, by the devious and labyrinthine paths they severally tread,whether, with Lamettrie, they adopt plain materialism; or, * "Bear Ellice" and "Scorpion Stanley" were household words iz 1830, as well as Lord Althorpe's bucolic and Palmerston's erotic fame. |