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the Scriptural Researches into the Licitness of the Slave-trade, which paralyzed so extensively the zeal of the religious in be half of the Negroes, was the work of a Jesuit *?-but enough; it is not our wish to become the heralds of alarm: all denun ciations favour intolerance, though in different directions.

ART. X. Oeuvres diverses de J. J. BARTHÉLEMY; i, e. The Miscellaneous Works of J. J. BARTHELEMY. 2 Vols. 8vo. pp. 400. Paris. 1798. Imported by De Foffe, London. Price 145.

TH

HOUGH this edition of the posthumous works of the Abbé BARTHÉLEMY Contains little, which is intrinsically and highly valuable, the name of the author confers on it an im portance which will no doubt secure to it many purchasers.

A life, or eulogy, is prefixed. The leading circumstances in the fortunes of this classical writer were enumerated by us on another occasion + but some additional particulars are contained in this more circumstantial narrative. In the journey to Italy, for which a salary was allotted to him in 1754, and which took place in the following year, the Abbé was presented to Benedict XIV. and was received by him with his characteristic urbanity. The antiquary Paciandi, the chrono logist Corsini, the Syriac Assemanni, and the architect Piranesi, are enumerated among the acquaintance formed by the Abbé, From the manuscripts partially unrolled at Herculaneum, he preserved by memory, and transmitted to Paris, a fragment relative to the democratic revolution which excluded from the Grecian cities, or colonies, the Pythagorean philosophers.-His controversy with Dr. Swinton is narrated unfavourably to the English antiquary. His contributions conferred on the work of Comte Caylus all its merit.-The exquisite delicacy observed by BARTHÉLEMY in some competitions for elective offices in the Academy, and his profuse but silent beneficence to various literary friends, do honour to his cultivated mind, and to his heart. In an early period of the Revolution, which his writings certainly had not contributed to resist, he foretold the literary declension of his country. "A quoi bon desormais cela? on ne s'en occupera plus; ils detruiront tout." Such were the terms in which he bewailed the systematic contempt of the new lawgivers for merely curious inquiries; and this lamentation was sufficient to provoke an accusation of aristocracy, which exposed him to a transient imprisonment, speedily and

Harris, by name.

Essay on the Life of Barthélemy, by the late Duke de Nivernois. See Rev. vol. xviii. N. S. p. 558.

honourably

honourably terminated by an express interference of the legis lative body. Yet so little did he ascribe the evils and immo rality of his countrymen to their antichristian fanaticism, that he said: The revolution was ill named; it ought to be called a revelation.

Of the pieces comprehended in this collection, the first is a Moral Treatise founded on a passage of Xenophon, which de scribes the laws of the Persians as punishing those who offend against their gods, their parents, their country, or their friends. It recommends ecclesiastical and filial piety, and patriotic and social fidelity.

The next is a novel of no great interest, of which the fable is Grecian, intitled Charite & Polydore. There is reason for suspecting that this was the exercise of a noble pupil, merely corrected and improved by the Abbé.

The third paper is a short burlesque epopea in three cantos, narrating the Wars of the Fleas against his patrons in the magnificent state-rooms of Chanteloupe. It is written in the spirit of the Batrachomyomachia, and in rhime, and is superscribed la Chanteloupée. The conquered insects were not humanely destroyed.

The remainder of the volume consists of a collection of various antiquarian articles, drawn up by BARTHÉLEMY for the Journal des Sçavans. These critical analyses are introduced by an ingenious preface; which maintains that, of our extant literature, literary journals alone will be consulted by posterity, and will be supposed to have preserved the cream of the publications of the times, far too immense for future consultation. Sallo, Bayle, Basnage, Le Clerc, and Fontenelle, are praised for having founded and excelled in the art of reviewing. The leading European annals of literature are also enumerated; among which a distinguished place is politely assigned to the Monthly Review. The articles here reprinted are seven in number, and are those few which respect or involve points of contro versy between the Abbé and other antiquaries: many more flowed from his pen, which display equal sagacity and erudition.

The Second Volume opens with a dissertation on the distribution of booty among the antients; in a letter to a member of the British parliament, Mr. Stanley. This gentleman had written to the Abbé for his opinion of the usage of nations in this respect under the civil law, at a time when the House of Commons was inclined to interfere with the fortunes acquired by certain nabobs. The letter transmits, seemingly, the first part only of a dissertation, consisting originally of three parts; which appear all to have reached England; as Mr. Stanleys in a letter of the 24th Dec. 1773, expresses his satisfactioni

with

with them. It deserves inquiry whether these remaining portions have been preserved; or whether the French editor has wrongly interpreted the words of Mr. Stanley.

From the succeeding Fragments of Literary Travels in Italy, we shall transcribe a few passages:

In the Belvedere, the statue of Apollo presents itself to admiration. The left arm from the elbow is modern, but has four fingers antique. The legs, which were broken, are well restored. The right hand is modern. On the side of the left thigh, the remains of a holdfast are visible. Parts of the drapery are modern, and also of the great toes. There are no eyeballs. On the head of the serpent, an excrescence may be perceived, resembling a beetle. It is perhaps the symbol or mark of the statuary.

The Laocoon, also, has no eyeballs: it has been more injured than the Apollo. The child on the right was carved from the same original block: that on the left could not have been attached without the serpents. Part of the lower serpent which enfolds the child, and which meets a fold from the thigh of Laocoon, does not exactly join. The connection is made out with broken fragments, but is not well indicated; and it seems an extremity of a hewn serpent supported behind on a part of that which is attached to the thigh of Laocoon. The upper part is full of breaks and modern accommodations. All the three figures have been finished with the mallet, and the strokes of the chizel are still apparent. The right arm, part of the main serpent, the toes of the left foot, the head of the serpent which is biting Laocoon, the toes of the right foot, the hand and part of the arm of the left child, the caps of both the children, their noses, and the whole pediment or support, except in front, are modern, and have been restored. Under the right shoulder of the Laocoon is a mark, apparently intended for that of the bite of the serpent. It is thicker than it ought to have been to prop the tail, and (as is singular) the head, which has the same dimensions as this wound, is placed on the other side: yet it seems strange that the tw● heads should have been intended for the same side.

On the 8th October 1756 I had an opportunity of examining, contiguously, the Transfiguration, which was copying in mosaic for Saint Peter's. The two figures above, besides the mystery, repre sent Saint Lorenzo and Saint Julio; and as this picture was bought by the Medici, after the death of Rafael, and given by them to the church where it now hangs, it may be suspected that Lorenzo and Julio dei Medici got their patron-saints added by Julio Romano or some other of Rafael's pupils. The painter, who was copying it, told me that he perceived some difference in the touches.'

These itinerary-fragments are succeeded by a dissertation on Mexican paintings; by instructions to M. Dombey on his setting out for Peru; by a memoir on the preservation of public monuments; by an attack on the early history of Rome, conducted with Lucianic pleasantry; by various skilful disquisitions in numismatics, which form the most valuable part of

the whole collection; and by several private letters, of a literary cast. A separate edition of his Memoirs, published by the Academy of Inscriptions, may be expected.

ART. XI. Essai sur l'Histoire de l'Espèce humaine; i. e. Essay on the History of the Human Species. By C. A. WALCKENAER. 8vo. pp. 422. Paris, 1798. Imported by De Boffe, London. Price 6s.

SINCE the philosophers of the continent have agreed to regard the Chaldaic cosmogony rather as mythic allegory than as historic document, attempts have been frequent among them, by comparing the manners of rude nations and tracing the progress of infant societies, to infer by analogy a probable early history of the human race; and to erect, on the basis of deduction from observation and experience, a new cosmogony of reason, and a probable theory of the incipient condition of man. Some writers have supposed four originally distinct races of men, a white, a yellow, a black, and a red, to have been severally placed by the Creator on Caucasus, Imaus, Atlas, and Andes, the nucleus-mountains of those great continents, which have slowly grown out of the ocean. Others suppose the human animal to have been less the product of a plastic force exerted at some specific period, than a late result of very gradual modification, a slow transformation by time and circumstance of some sea-monkey, first amphibious and then terrestrial. To these unsupported speculations concerning primæval population, M. WALCKENAER scarcely ascends; he takes the unfeathered biped in a state of scanty dispersion. among the other beasts of the field, and traces his progress from savagism to barbarism, to civilization and to corruption *. He ranks the human species among the gregarious animals; and he attributes to an innate, instinctive, or occult propensity, (p. 18,) the sentiment of pleasure which man experiences on approaching a being similar to himself. This inclination to breathe in company, to conspire, which in the human animal is by no means self-evident, is advanced by our author to the rank of an axiom, and is assumed as the essential cause of gregarious manners or social living. Sympathy, as defined by Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, is also con

* There is no convenient name for that stage in the life of nations, which succeeds to the acme of refinement; when a selfish profligacy supersedes the liberal virtues, when purity of taste ceases, and the bloom of art withers; a stage sometimes spent in the heedless tran quillity of superstition and cowardice, sometimes in the convulsive agonies of civil discord.

sidered

sidered as an instinctive quality by our author, and is applied to account for the phænomena of progressive civilization. These are divided into six principal periods.

The first comprehends those times in which human societies find, in the spontaneous productions of the soil, a sufficient supply, and subsist without labour.

The second comprehends those times in which human societies, either from their own multiplication or from the occasional sterility of the surrounding region, do not find sufficient means of subsistence, but begin to recur to hunting and fishing, and to reciprocal hostility, for the satisfaction of their hunger.

The third comprehends those times in which the art of taming certain animals has been discovered; and when the rearing of flocks and herds becomes a certain source of plentiful nourishment.

The fourth comprehends those times in which the labour of subject-animals is applied to the culture of the soil, and to the transport of rude commodities: but in which, division or distribution of labour is as yet unknown.

In the fifth period of human societies, the division, distribution, or appropriation of labour is established, and the consequent separation of professions: the arts and sciences improve; commerce extends; manufactures multiply; luxury arises; and soon a nation, arrived at a high degree of prosperity, finds in the very circumstances which elevated it the causes of its decline and fall.

In the sixth and last period of the history of nations, those causes are at work which modify, accelerate, or retard their declension.'

The preliminary matter occupies one book, and the discussion of each of these six periods employs one book also; so that the whole work is divided into seven books, which are again subdivided into sections or chapters. So much has been written concerning nations in the hunter-state, and in the grazier-state, that nothing very new or very interesting was to be expected from a repetition of the leading facts collected concerning the manners of the Nigritians and Canadans, of the Tartars and Chiliese. A relapse into these primitive conditions threatens no European society. If fixed property has been attacked by modern philosophers, it is for the purpose of confiscating rentals to the profit of the state, or of distributing more equally the produce of the soil; not for the purpose of abolishing the occupations of agriculture, and of favouring the resumption of wandering habits. Our farms may be parcelled, like those of China, into occupancies for gardeners, but they will not be consolidated into pasturages for a horde. It is in the antient laws of Hindostan that we must study our future fortunes; not in the laws of the Visigoths, nor in the con stitution of the Oneida-nation. Destiny prohibits retrogression The Palmyrenes do not grow wilder, and become wandering

5

Arabs.

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