traordinary antiquity, as the longest age would seem needful to have matured such supreme and awful heorism. Surely the creature that thus lifts his voice, and defies all invisible power within the possibilities of infinity, challenging whatever unknown being may hear him, and may appropriate that title of Almighty, which is pronounced in scorn, to evince his existence, if he will, by his vengeance, was not as "yesterday, a little child, that would tremble and cry at the approach of an insignificant reptile!

But, indeed, it is heroism no longer, if he knows that their is no God; the amazement then turns on that great process by which a man could grow to the piercing and immense intelligence that can know, or without matchless presumption assume, that there is no God. What ages, and what light are requisite for THIS attainment! This intelligence involves the very attributes of divinity while a God is denied; for, unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every place in the universe, he cannot know but there may be in some place manifestations of a deity, by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not know, absolutely, every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know, may be God. If he be not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so, may be God; if he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be, there is a God; if he cannot with certainty assign the cause of all that exists, that cause may be a God;

if he does not know every thing that has been done in the unmeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God: thus, unless he knows all things, that is, precludes another deity by being one himself, he cannot know that the being whose existence he rejects, does not exist; but he must know that he does not exist, else he deserves ineffable contempt for the madness with which he firmly avows his rejection, and acts accordingly. And yet a man of ordinary age and intelligence may present himself to you with the triumphant avowal of being thus distinguished from the crowd; and, if he would describe the manner in which he has attained this eminence, you would feel a melancholy interest in contemplating that process of which the result is so portentous.

Oh! why is it so possible that this greatest inhabitant of every place frequented by man, should be the last whose society is sought, or whose vicinity is felt important? why is it possible to be surrounded with the intelligent reality which is infinite, and not feel all other things in the creation by which our minds could be effected, as if retaining with difficulty their forms of existence, and continually just on the point of vanishing, first into shadows and then into nothing? why is this stupendous intelligence so retired and silent in his presence over all the scenes of the earth, and in all the paths of, and abodes of man? why does he keep his glory invisible behind the shades and visions of the material world? why does he not, to each generation, disclose for once

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some celestial spectacle, some awful visage to make an indelible impression of sacred fear? and, why is it possible, in contempt of all that he has displayed, to fear, or to love to advance towards him in the last confirmed state of a character completed by the full assemblage of all those unworthy acquisitions, which he has separately disapproved through every stage of the accumulation? Why is it possible for little feeble creatures to maintain their poor dependant beings, fortified and invincible in sin, amidst the all-pervading presence of omnipotent purity? why does not the awful thought of such a being strike through the mind with such intense intolerable antipathy to evil, as to blast with death every active principle that is beginning to pervert it, and render gradual additions of depravity, growing into the solidity of habit, as impossible as to build structures of wood and stone amidst the fires of the last day? how is it possible to forget the solemn solicitude which should accompany the consciousness that such a being is continually darting upon us the mighty beams of observant thought (if we may apply such a term to Omniscience), the piercing inspection, compared to which the concentrated attention of all the beings in the universe besides, would be but as the powerless gaze of an infant? why is faith, that spiritual faculty of seeing the invisible, so absent, or so incomparably more slow and reluctant to receive a just perception of the grandest of its objects, than the senses are adapted to receive the impressions of theirs? why have the few particles of

dust which the spirit inhabits, the triumphant artificial power to avert from around it, that sacred essence which diffuses through the world its infinite intensity of being, thus placing that spirit as in a vacuity and extinction of God?"

Hume's work on natural religion has made a great noise amongst free-thinkers; but who, after this declaration, will dare to say that Hume was an honest man? Can any profligacy be greater than that of a man professing, and endeavouring to propagate, certain doctrines which he would not wish his wife and daughters to entertain or believe? Either Hume believed that his doctrines were true, or he knew them to be false. In the first instance it was the height of injustice not to seek to impress the same belief on the minds of those whom he most valued: and, in the last case, his conduct in labouring to propagate falsehood as truth, was most infamous*.

St Augustin admirably observes, " Religionis summa est imitari quem colis." The highest pitch of religion is, to imitate the being you worship. And Pythagoras being asked what it was that man could do like what God does, answered, "Speak the truth."

Hume deserved at least the merit of consistency, for he died as he lived. An elegant writer, alluding to his miserable end, observes, "Hume died as a fool dieth! the very hour in which he knew that his recovery was impossible, he spent in playing at whist, and making obscene jests against christianity!""

ACCOUNT Of the bagne, or chief PRISON OF CONSTANTINOPLE; WITH THE HISTORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE TURKISH CHIEF.

THE Bagne is a part of the arsenal, and, as in all the countries of Europe, the place of confinement for malefactors who are condemned to the gallies. Here are also imprisoned those Greeks of distinction who are sentenced to death, or are left to be redeemed by their families; as likewise the Turks who are to be secretly executed. It also serves for holding the prisoners of war taken by the Turks, as well as the slaves captured in Maltese vessels, with which the Porte is always at variance.

The capoudan-pacha, or grand admiral, is the supreme head of the arsenal; there are besides an intendant, and an effendi, who is a sort of police officer, and has the power of ordering the prisoners to be enchained, or liberated and beaten, but not to put them to death; he has under his orders the tchiaoux or hussars, and the executioners who strangle the criminals: these butchers are all of Maltese origin, and think they do a meritorious action when they murder a Turk; they are both in size and athletic structure, true descendants of Hercules; the Turks choose them from amongst the slaves, and they voluntarily consent to follow such an infamous employment: they enjoy, in consequence, the privilege of doing commissions for the captives; they are married, and have their houses out of the prison, whither they go to pass the night with their families.

The police, or rather the torments, of the Bagne,