EDITOR." Nothing can be more elegant or more just !" Admirably imitated from Blackmoor's description of the dried brook: "Won by the summer's importuning ray, Th' eloping stream did from her channel stray, "Son experience fertile Dans une herbe autrefois sterile Surprit le germe de moissons." EDITOR." Fertile experience: a new expression: surprit has an admirable effect." The astronomer, however, surpasses all the preceding: EDITOR. "Il lit sur le front des etoiles, To imprison Eolus! happy boldness, which proves the invincible force of genius:" Here we fear our learned editor's candle wanted snuffing: "Yon luminary amputation needs, Thus shall you save its half-extinguish'd life.” In gratitude, however, for the profound, original information entertainment which he has furnished us, we can only express hope that some future Martinus Scriblerus will kindly become his b grapher. To the great French Pindar, who has "Brought forth some remnant of Promethean theft ; Quick to expand th' inclement air congeal'd By Boreas rude breath We must in charity vote the laurel, since he has lost the sceptre. "All hail arch-poet, without peer! Vine, bay, or cabbage, fit to wear, To all quacks, and "certain disease" doctors, physicians to horses, dogs and cats, state and gaol doctors, nostrum-mongers, medicine-venders, perfumers, merchant-taylors, and men-milliners, lottery dealers, razor-strap-makers, and last, but not least, les artistes decrotteurs des bottes *, or, in plain English, our shoe-blacks, we * Whatever may be the claims of the French to invention, it must be confessed, that in giving names to their professions, or callings, they evince great address in the sublime art of puffing. Even the most illiterate and vulgar, stimulated by the connate vanity of their country, naturally assume we most earnestly recommend these, our author's "Prodigies of the Imagination," as a magazine of bombast, whence they may have materials for carrying the modern art of puffing to its highest degree of perfection. There are yet two of M. Lebrun's most poetical stanzas, which we ought not, perhaps, to omit; and in which he both remonstrates and prophecies to this country on the idea of invasion, by means of air balloons! "Dût l'aigle nous preter ses ailes, Pour vaincre les autans rebelles, "Emu d'une crainte importune, "Should the eagle lend us her wings to vanquish the rebel south winds, and pass the starry plains, England shall see our celestial Argonauts de. scend in winged vessels on her shores. To be moved by importunate fear, is even to betray fortune in dastardly suspecting her: boldness works miracles; nothing but a wise temerity can vanquish obstacles." Audacity and remerity may succeed among ignorant and venal slaves; but M. Lebrun will soon find their inefficacy when opposed to British valour. The fortune of the day, however, seems changed; and it is hoped that Britons will in future think of invading, but never again of being invaded. Essais de Moral et de Politique. Moral and Political Essays. 8vo. PP. 264. Paris. 1806. Imported by Deconchy. COMPILERS of books called moral and political, are nearly as numerous in France as the novel-manufacturers are in England.Such characters are, perhaps, of all others, those who may be considered the most inefficient in society; their gleanings leave no impression, and are only read, or perhaps rather hummed over either to kill time, or to be instantly forgotten. The present author is therefore assume something more important; and, in the multitude of these ridiculous and preposterous attempts at consequence, like that of their shoeblacks assuming the appellatiou of artists, some happy combinations acci. dentally occur, which the good-natured world has hitherto mistaken for invention and proofs of genius. very tight in disclaiming all pretensions to novelty, and, we fear, he will be disappointed also in his benevolent hopes of utility. "These Essays" (he observes)" are divided into two parts, the first of which tends to make known the nature of man; and the second to shew the government which is suitable to him." He commences" by establishing this truth: that a being is the proof of all the beings which ought to contribute to his existence, or co-existing with him. Hence he draws a proot of the absolute, although abstract, existence of the good and the beautiful." "These Essays," he adds, "have for object to demonstrate that only one form of government is suitable to the nature of man. The first part of this work consists of fourteen chapters, which, if they are not very original, are often shrewd, and marked with some good sense, though too frequently enveloped in a mystical jargon, which seems to have become fashionable in Paris at the present day, perhaps in consequence of the despotism under which the people groan. In the chapter on L'Esprit, however, the author is sufficiently clear and animated. He endeavours to assign a reason why certain minds seem born for error, while others reflect objects with all the accuracy of a faithful mirror. "Precipitation blindfolds the mind, pride misleads it, and interest is the cause of almost all our errors. One might judge of the goodness of our actions, by the interest which they give us not to deceive ourselves + thus one might judge, without knowing them, of the whole of men's actions, from the whole of their opinions. To know the state of a society, it is only necessary to examine the state of the minds which compose it; for the passions do not immediately act, but on the dispositions of the individuals. Another source of error is, the impressions which men receive without being able to comprehend them. The poor love riches, without knowing in what the pleasures of the rich consist. Slaves love liberty, without knowing what it is to be free. Take heed, therefore, of speaking to the poor and to slaves of riches and independence; above all, take care of inflaming the imagination of those who will not know that it is their imagination which governs them. They will give to their torments the finest names, and in their fierceness they will com mit all manner of crimes. In truth, we calumniate the passions; they are but the cause of evils, of which error is the principle. The passions decline and must repose; error is eternal, and never fatigued. Passions infatuate, torment, blindfold, and often ruin. Error conducts with method, and counsels with prudence; it does not entirely take away knowledge, and it avoids danger; it is austere, and even inexorable; the evil which it causes to be committed is executed with the rigour of a duty; it enlightens the vices; it is in secret intelligence with pride, and all the crimes which it occasions are rewarded by pride. Vanity! vanity! that is the history of man.” Such are the sentiments of which this volume is chiefly composed; many of them are extremely trite, only disguised under another garb;while others are somewhat new, and pointed in a manner likely to attract attention. The Essays on L'Esprit are very different from those those of Helvetius, or Beaumelle's posthumous volume on that subject; and unquestionably are much more useful to society, and to the advancement of the philosophy of social life. The observations also on Pascal, although too much in the French style of louange, contain some interesting truths. "When I read Pascal the first time, his work appeared to me not less dangerous than admirable; his morality, dictated by the strength of his genius, must infatuate those ardent minds which also mislead others; it will at first exalt the spirit of religion, and finish by extinguishing it! The genius of Pascal sometimes sleeps, and even mistakes certain things." The chapter on the “ Beautiful and Good," is lively, animated, and ingenious, abounding in the most praiseworthy sentiments of morality, and the conduct of human life. The author has read and understood the English ethic poets. "Order is heaven's first law," said Pope; and this writer observes, "if we search among moral beings that which appears the most beautiful, and the most proper to be adinired, it will be found that it is order. It is the expression of the will of God; it contains all the treasures of his wisdom." The sublime he considers only a "higher point of elevation of the beautiful, which we could not have believed possible, supposing it above our powers." Our author gives a new colour to the arguments in defence of civil society, against the paradoxes of Rousseau. "Man bears the weight of his intelligence; it is necessary that he should develop it, and it is but by the aid of his equals that he can satisfy this imperious necessity. His propensity to pleasure draws him to his species; his love of the beautiful to the contemplation of his nature; it is as necessary that his mind should know that his heart loves, and that his passions agitate it, as that his legs and arms move." In the chapter on Liberty we find many excellent remarks and bold truths, which have perhaps rendered it prudent for the author to conceal his name. "A conqueror" (says he) « in the first alarm which he inspires, can beat down those heads which raise themselves, and dare again to command; but his reign will be short! Ages and misfortunes without number are necessary to exhaust and debase a people, to the point that they neither can nor wish to shake off their chains!" From these detached sentences, taken promiscuously, our readers may fairly appreciate the value of this little volume of "Essays on Morals and Politics." If we judge it somewhat partially, it is, perhaps, because we have been obliged to pass over such a multiplicity of French publications, which are too infamous and despicable for us to record, even their titles in our pages. These Essays, indeed, are more unexceptionably moral than inost of the similar works in the same language and country; their essence, however, is extracted from English authors, and it still retains something of its primitive energy, even when dressed in the French style. The work may innocently amuse, and perhaps instruct many of the admirers of French literature in this country. Traité D'Education Physique des Enfans. Treatise on the Physical Education of Children, preceded by Instructions. on the Convulsions, and the Means of avoiding them in both Sexes. By Dr. Sacombe. 8vo. Paris. 1806. Deconchy. THIS little tract is the work of a popular Medecin-Accoucheur in Paris, and discovers the author to have read much, and also observed a little. There is, perhaps, no other country in which children are more subject to convulsion fits than in France, owing, doubtless, to the intemperance and epicurism of the mothers. So general, indeed, is this disease, and so fatal, that more than one half of the children born, die, principally in convulsions, considerably under five years of age; and from one-fourth to one-third usually die in the first ten or eleven months. This estimate has been made by Morgue and several other physicians (independent of the number of deaths by the smallpox), and confirmed on the average necrology of twenty-one years by the avowal of Chaptal, who has 30 successfully deluded the world with this exaggerated (or rather multiplied) accounts of French population. Dr. Sacombe here endeavours to enumerate the general causes of his fatal malady, which is truly a visitation of "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children," and quotes the opinions of more than fifty-five of the most celebrated physicians of all ages and nations, who have written on the diseases of children. Out of an indefinite number of causes, the author thinks the following are the most general:-hereditary diseases, natural vices, light clothes (a custom very common in France, in order to improve the figure), bad qualities of the milk (the natural consequence both of the enormous quantity and quality of the nurse's food), abuse of eating and drinking, improper management with regard to sleep, exercise, excretions and retentions; constipations, physical irritators, such as acids, &c. and moral causes, such as fear, anger, jealousy, and all the violent passions. To these he adds, that children, whose parents are either too young, or too old (the stages in which marriages are most commonly contracted in France), are always the most subject to convulsive diseases. The Dissertation on the Physical Education of Children is divided into three principal precepts-Cleanliness, Sobriety, and Exercise; in all of which are some useful observations, worthy the attention of parents and medical practitioners. They are accompanied, however, with some superstitious opinions, which seem to find a particular place in the minds of almost all professors of midwifery, as well as that of our author. Dr. Sacombe, with great propriety, rid.cules. the preposterous practice of submitting new-born children all at once to the cold bath, instead of preparing them gradually for it by the use of the tepid bath; and gives instances of parents who, in obedience to the superficial opinions of Rousseau, have killed their children by such practices. The author also relates a practice in Guada loupe, |