ing knowledge among all the eastern nations; that therefore it would be as unfair to understand these literally, as to quote the fabulists of other nations with a design to prove that they were so credulous, as to believe that the beasts formerly talked and reasoned together.

From the neglect, into which these ancient books have now fallen, the writer has no idea that any thing he can say will recover them; nor has he a wish to vindicate their corrupt glosses, their absurd speculations, or visionary rhapsodies. He can only say for himself, that he has consulted them with advantage; and has found that the MISHNA in particular contains many things, which authenticate the antiquity of the books of the OLD TESTAMENT, afford considerable light to those prophecies, which relate to the MESSIAH, and agreeably elucidate several national customs, manners, and proverbial expressions, alluded to, or cited in the NEW TESTAMENT.

* So JEROM says,

"Familiare est Syris, et maxime Palestinis, ad omnem sermonem parabolas jungere."

RETROSPECT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

[Written in the summer of 1800.]

No. III.

POLITICS.

As a political era the eighteenth century is eventful. The first fifty years contain little new. The different nations of the globe pursued their ancestorial policy. Contented with their old establishments of government, whether royal, aristocratic, or popular, their malady was jealousy of neighbors, and their business encroachment. The result of this jealousy and ambition has been continual war. In age, as in all preceding, innumerable human beings has this besom swept from the stage of life. Who can contem

this

plate its havoc without mingled pity and indignation. War is massacre legalized, and called glory. The heart recoils at the recital of personal murder, and imagines in the stores of heaven a bolt, red with uncommon vengeance to blast the "wretch," whose hands are reeking with a brother's blood. Shall then a drop of heaven's mercy reach the sceptred monarch, or the titled magistrate, who, without unquestionable necessity," cries havoc, and lets slip the dogs of war." The pages of history blush with the crimson of war from Nimrod the hunter to the military Consul of France. Such is the experience of nations, that war is regarded a necessary evil, as thunder to clear the atmosphere, and earthquake to relieve the intestine troubles of the earth. Grave senators vote it expedient, as the price of a sand bank in the ocean, or of a few acres of tillage. More, like very duelists they even give and accept the challenge to settle the punctilio of national honor. Ah, when shall the sweet spirit of the gos pel prevail in such power, as to shut the iron gates of war forever! Through eighteen centuries with her silver trumpet has she proclaimed peace on earth, good will to men. Through eighteen centuries has the maddening world drowned her voice in the clangors of war.

The last half of the century has given rise to events strange and in their consequences incalculable. The spirit of liberty, as illy defined or understood by most nations, as the electric fluid, and, without perfect conductors, as fatal in the social world, as ever that is to the natural, has been furiously excited in a large portion of the world. In Europe instead of correcting, it has annihilated old governments; and for one Bastile laid in ruins has erected a thousand scaffolds. It is generally believed that the revolution, which now holds its furious course among the nations, existed in the ambitious minds of philosophists long before the visible commencement of its career. The bold design was ripening for execution; the axe was laid at the root of royalty, probably also of all regular government; and even a crowned head in Europe, who was ambitious to shine among the wits as

well, as the warriors, was himself sharpening the instrument, when the revolution in this country, RIGHTEOUS IN PRINCIPLE, HUMANE IN PROGRESS, and SUCCESSFUL IN EVENT, was the innocent cause of hurrying the catastrophe.

Of our glorious revolution suffice it to say, heaven and earth will acquit it of being the example, or just occasion of the horrors, which have involved the course of political change in Europe. This country has been ambitious to be esteemed the cradle and nurse of liberty; and to its immortal honor so let it be esteemed. In 1792 and even in 1800 some in this country with conscious pride have claimed the new order of things in France, as the legitimate offspring of American liberty. But that monster, born on the fatal tenth of August, dandled on the ferocious knee of successive parties, nursed with the blood of the scaffold, and battened on the carnage of millions, God forbid should be thought the rela tive of American liberty. Fair as the spirit of light was our liberty from her very birth. In all the terrors of defensive war her heart was gentle. She never triumphed over a pros❤ trate foe; she never stained her lance with a drop of civil blood. But, having frowned oppression from our shores by the music of her voice and the power of persuasion alone, she charmed the people to the equal restraints of constituted authority and law. Religion smiled, and embraced her. But of French liberty the infant breath was pestilence to religion. She set her rugged foot first upon the neck of nobles and then of peasants; plundered the palace and the temple; and, through boundless profligacy again reduced to necessities, she levies indiscriminate tax upon the commerce of the ocean, enemy and neutral. With her cap more ambitious, than the crown or turban, with her pike more bloody, than the sword or scimitar, with diplomacy more dubitable, than Punic faith, she has sallied forth, trampling on the humble, and assailing the high.

Every virtue has its opposite vice; so has liberty. There is such neighborhood between liberty and licentiousness, that it is extremely difficult to distinguish the limit between them;

as in a changeable silk we can easily see that there are different colors, but cannot discern where the one ends, or the other begins. The present century has shown the good and the ill extreme. As examples, the pen of the historian may give in detail the liberty of America, and the liberty of France. The first let him surround with the effulgence of glory, and present the manner of its attainment, as the model, and its blessings, as the prize of oppressed nations. But while his gloomy fancy shall shroud the latter under clouds of darkest shade, let him erect his beacon high on the Gallic strand, and thus inscribe it, THE HIGH WAY TO EASTERN DESPOTISM LIES THROUGH THE TEMPESTUOUS OCEAN OF LICENTIOUS LIB

ERTY.

BIOGRAPHY.

MEMOIRS OF THE AUTHOR OF ANACHARSIS

THAT department of the Literary Miscellany, which may be devoted to Biography, cannot perhaps be filled with a more interesting life, than that of the celebrated author of the Travels of Anacharsis; a work equally familiar to the polite scholar and the lover of ancient learning both in Europe and America. The present account is translated from the last French edition of the Travels of Anacharsis, and is contained in three memoirs, written by the Abbè Barthelemy himself, when his age and the misfortune of the revolution had turned him from other employments.

The translator presumes it has not yet appeared in our language, as he has not been able to find it in the last English edition of Anacharsis in this country. To pre

serve the admirable style of the author requires an abler hand, but he hopes that even in its present dress it will afford pleasure and instruction to the reader.

FIRST MEMOIR.

IN that state of inaction, to which my misfortunes and

*

the course of events have reduced me, established in a dwelling, where the image of the greatest virtues would be sufficient to soften the impression of the deepest sorrows, I am going to write in haste and without vanity the principal cir cumstances of my life!

Formerly the materials, which I am going to assemblë, would have served the perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belleslettres, charged with making the eulogium of each of the members of that body; they would have served those Biographers, such as the Pere Niceron, who, engaged in the history of men of letters, collected the slightest productions, and the most important actions; they would be useful to be consulted by those, who in foreign countries are occupied on the same subject, which I have treated; I say in foreign countries, for this species of literature must be considered as absolutely lost in France:

Some celebrated authors, such as M. Huet, have left us a recital of their actions and writings; they had a claim to perpetuate their remembrance, and to interest posterity. As for me I have no other motives, than to consume some of those moments, which at present pass so heavily. I shall leave these garrulous pages to my nephews, and I regret that I cannot leave them any thing more substantial.

My family has been long established in Aubagne, a pretty little town, situated between Marseilles and Toulon. Joseph Barthelemy, my father, who possessed a moderate fortune, married Magdalen Rustit, daughter of a merchant of Cassis, a small neighboring port, whose commerce at that period was flourishing. I was born the twentieth of Janu

* In an apartment, which Madame, the cidevant Duchess, de Choiseul had given him in her house.