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this and at length to all sides; and thus we are at once become impartial lovers of truth. Excellent profit! which accrues to us from the reading of a performance, even though against our will; I doubt much whether there be any more excellent.

To conclude; I make no apology for the blunt truth which I have contrived this book to spcak. The time for concealing and cloaking is past, if, as Christ says, the stones cry out. By pious lies I never will trespass against Christianity; where the spirit of God is, there is truth.'

These books of M. HERDER have made great impression throughout Germany; the tendency of that impression we indicated in Rev. vol. xx. p. 524. perhaps, yet we think not, uncharitably. They uniformly discover great strength of mind, and a truly benevolent heart.

ART. XXVI. Von Religion, Lehrmeynungen, und Gebrauchen, i. e. Of Religion, Doctrines, and Rites. By J. G. HERDER. Small 8vo. pp. 320. Leipzig. 1798.

ANOTHER piece from the same pen, inferior to neither of the foregoing. We shall again follow the method which we observed in respect to them, by letting the author speak for himself:

A work which treats of religion (says M. H.) ought to be written with religion, that is, conscientiously; and it is desirable that it should be read in like manner. Why may not this be expected?

Religion addresses the human intellect; she speaks for conviction unbiassed by party. In all ranks and classes of society, man has only to be man in order to acknowlege and practise religion. She grasps at all the inclinations and instincts of mankind, to harmonize them with herself, and to conduct them in the proper path.

If religion he discriminated from doctrines, she leaves each to its place; only she will not be doctrine. Doctrines divide and exasperate; religion unites: for, in all human hearts, she is but One.

Should, therefore, any thing be spoken too sharply in this piece against several doctrines, it only happens whenever these doctrines would be religion itself, or would suppress religion; so that particu larly young teachers of religion, who know not what right and left imply, regard them as religion, and think themselves in duty bound to force them on the people. So long as liberty and conscience have place among mankind, we may venture freely and bluntly to draw the line between opinion and religion; the latter belongs to the people, the former to disputations ex cathedra.

That I adopt no other method than philological exposition of the Bible, will surprise no one. On one wrong interpretation depend many false doctrines; of fancied conceits there is no end, when once we begin to indulge the fancy. Had our forefathers, for example, acquired a clear and complete idea of a symbolical act, the protestant churches would have remained unseparated; and no religious

wars

wars concerning words of scripture, misunderstood, would have sprung up.

If in regard to religion I speak against a lifeless verbal law, it is because I hold it to be a duty of humanity. Man is a living organ, composed of senses, powers, and impulses; requiring to be moved and induced, not merely commanded. To effect pleasure and joy is its element; this, no haughty legislation will supply. Now, since this is not only made to be religion, but it being boldly pretended that the religion of Christ is nothing else; what these have said gently and popularly, that is, extremely imperfectly, let that be rendered perfect now: consequently, I must remark the distinction be tween the two principles:-as Christ and Moses stand asunder.

It is curious that, behind Christianity, no idolatry should any longer hurk. Words and syllables are deified; the infatuation lasts for a time; it sinks, and the sophistry on which it was founded still remains Religion, on the contrary, is a well of living waters; though stopped and dammed, it rushes from the deep, purifies itself, revives, and animates the souls which drink.

To conclude, let Christians and Unchristians read my book; truth is the same in every human soul.'

We have said and shewn thus much of M. HERDER's performances, because we thought it not reasonable to do less. If ever they appear in an English garb, our countrymen will judge for themselves how far they deserve acceptation.

ART. XXVII. Meine letzte Reise nach Paris; i. e. My last Journey to Paris. (In 1795.) 8vo. pp. 216. Zurich. 1798. THIS amusing traveller beholds the whole vast surface of

France in a state of busy fermentation, but appears nearly as willing that it should be ascribed to the miasm of putrifaction, as to the effervescence which is preparing a generous juice.

In certain respects, (says the writer, p. 18,) I found the part of France through which I was passing (from Zurich to Paris) much changed. In other respects, I was often astonished that it was so little altered. Although the desolations of the revolutionary torrent extended to most places, and often flowed with incredible celerity; yet in many they have left behind scarcely any permanent traces. I have passed through villages, through towns, and even through whole departments, in which the inhabitants have submitted to the new forms without passion or reluctance, and in which the influence of some respectable and wealthy persons has contrived to frustrate intrigue and to obviate tyranny, and thus to maintain order and peace, The mind experiences relief in contemplating such places: their welfare is a refreshing spectacle, like that of spots of verdure scattered in a dreary vulcanic region. Many castles in France have been plundered, gutted, or destroyed: but the multitude of them was so great, that those which remain do not allow the traveller to per

ceive that their number has been diminished. In the whole of my long route, I do not remember above three or four remarkable monuments of this species of devastation. Cloisters, Abbeys, Steeples, and especially Crucifixes, suffered every where.'

One thing struck me in Paris; an expression of incertitude and anxiety, a restless mistrustful convulsive cast of countenance. A man who had entered the city with me for the first time might, I think, have been tempted to address the inhabitants in the wellknown phrase of M. Jussieu, "I have not the honor of knowing you, but I think you exceedingly altered."

The dispute between the conventionals and the sectionaries, about the re-election of one third or the whole of the legislative branch of the new constitution, was raging during the author's stay in Paris. He praises the superior tactics of the former, and the superior arguments of the latter.

The number of pure royalists, lowly as they are cast down, is yet considerable. These perceive no sensible difference between the constitution of 1795 and the former plans. They desire nothing less than the abolition of all institutions of the revolution; and they enjoy with sensible delight the liberty of thinking, speaking, and writing every thing ill of a systent to which they ascribe all their misfortunes, and of a party whose power they so much undervalued.'

Most of this author's observations are vague and general; they only describe the impression made on his mind by the new face of a country in which he was born, and which he had intimately known in other times :-they are not sufficiently founded on definite facts, and precise delineations, to enable a reader to apply the same information to the solution of any doubts which he also may entertain, respecting the operation of the modern laws. On the whole, however, the author inclines to expect, from the present constitution, a more speedy establishment of order and liberty, than has been generally predicted by the political sooth-sayers in the neighbouring nations. We are to remember that he performed his journey in 1795.

ART. XXVIII. Phraseologia Anglo-Germanica, or a Collection of more than Fifty Thousand Phrases collected from the best English Classics, disposed in Alphabetical Order, and faithfully translated into German; by F. W. HAUSSNER, Professor at the Central School of the Lower Rhinish Department. To which is added a Vocabulary, containing all the Words not comprehended in the foregoing Phraseology, nor wanting any particular Explanation, so that the Whole may be used as a complete English and German Dictionary. 8vo. pp. 1115. Strasburg. 1798. Imported by De Boffe, London. Price 18s. sewed.

DICTIONARIES of two living languages should never be undertaken by an individual, but by the co-operation of a native of each country of which the dialect is to be explained: other

wise, the phrases will certainly betray a foreign idiom, a quaint solecism, an inadmissible vulgarity, or some other impropriety. In the use of speech, all the toil of reason never attains the skill of the vernacular instinct.-The preface, or indeed the very title-page, of this vocabulary, without being ungrammatical, is not strictly idiomatic; and this is also the case with a variety of the English phrases inserted in the work, which certainly do not, in many cases, evince their derivation from the best authors, and are frequently such as could not be tolerated. In the division of words which have not been explained by phrases,' under the Letter B., in the first twelve articles, twelve errors occur: viz.

1. Babble, not bable, is the right reading.

2. Bab is not used as a contraction for Baptist, but for Barbara.

3. Babe does not mean eine puppe, a doll, but an infant.

4, 5, and 6. Bable and Bables are not English; and the word Bazules, to which reference is made, does not occur.

7. Bacchanalization is not an authorised word; and, if introduced, it would not mean, as here explained, the orgies of Bacchus, but the rendering similar to bacchanals. Thus it would be English to write the favourite sacrament of the Corinthians was a bacchanalization of the eucharist.

8. Bachelour, in modern English, is never spelt with the u. 9. Back and breast, for a coat of mail, would not now be intelligible.

10. Back-swanked is, at best, provincial; we never before heard of it.

11. A pig-back is an adverb, corrupted probably from a peak-back, and describes the attitude of a person carried on the back of another: it has nothing to do, as this interpreter supposes, with the back of a hog.

12. Backberond. In what slang dictionary this word occurs, we know not.

Of its

This, we trust, will be sufficient to convince the author that his work needs revisal by a native of Great Britain. German portion, we form a more favourable opinion.

Professor HAUSSNER certainly deserves praise for his industry in acquiring so much knowlege of our language as the work manifests that he possesses, and for the additional trouble which he has taken in endeavouring to impart that knowlege to others, or to enable the English reader to acquire a similar intimacy with the German: but we must repeat that it is scarcely possible that these ends should be accomplished solely by one na tive of either country.

ART.

ART. XXIX. Defense de l'Ordre social, &c. i. e. A Defence of Social Order against the Principles of the French Revolution. By the Abbé DuVOISIN. 8vo. pp. 380. Dulau and Co. London. 1798. Price 5s. sewed.

AMONG the very probable results of the various alterations projected or undertaken by the great continental powers, may be ranked the consolidation of Scandinavia under the imperial sceptre of Russia, and the consolidation of Germany under the imperial sceptre of Austria. With this event, the good old religion of the Constantines and Theodosiuses would again plant its crosses in the cathedral of Upsal, and again gather tithes in the Danish Chersonesus. Teachers of catholicism by the faggot would become necessary, both to accomplish the purification of the German libraries in conformity with the expurgatory index of the Vienna-censors, and to tame a wild flock into submission to the lengthening crosier. Doctors of anti-jacobinism would also become necessary to popularize the theory of arbitrary power, and the expediency of despotism on principle; to undertake the panegyric of a social order imposed and preserved by the bayonet; and to inculcate the duty and security of passive obedience to the divine right of imperial force :-lessons somewhat novel in the halls to which a Heyne, a Meiners, and an Eichhorn, or a Schiller and his coadjutors, had once invited an assemblage of as liberal students, as of old conversed in the piazzas of the Stoa or the Mousaion.

The Abbé DuvoOISIN, whose political ideas have given rise to the foregoing "Pisgah Sight of Palestine," is no mean writer; as the following extract will evince:

In the institution of governments, we ought to distinguish be tween what is of God and what is of the people. The people may have chosen their form of government; may have chosen the person in whom the sovereignty is to reside: but it is not from them, properly speaking, that authority comes; it is God who confers it; God, who, at the presentation of the people, invests the power. All power, all authority, all jurisdiction, is from him. By what title should a mortal command his fellows, if he were not delegated by the King of the universe? Where could we find a legitimate source of the terrible right of life and death, which the state exercises over its members, if it were not founded on the presumptive concession of the sovereign arbiter of our destinies ?

God, the author, the protector, the supreme chief of society, establishes the Prince as his vice-gerent; puts the sword into his hand for the defence of the good and the terror of the wicked; wills the sacredness of his person, and reserves to himself alone the right of sitting in judgment over him. Witness and guardian of the social compact, it is by his dreadful name, and in his presence, that the

sovereign

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