in consequence of his death, the box being unlocked, his heirs found the shield carefully cleaned, and accompanied with a written document, containing an account of the manner in which it was discovered, and his opinion concerning it.

It was well preserved, twentyseven inches in diameter, and weighed more than twenty pounds; but the ornamental parts were neither so well executed nor so highly finished, nor the figures in relief so numerous as those on the shield which had been so long in the bed of the Rhone. A lion was seen reposing under a palm tree, with the lacerated limbs of wild boars, wolves and other animals lying scattered around him.

A learned man to whom I am indebted for a considerable portion of the present article has taken great pains to prove that this ancient votive relict was of fered by Hannibal when he conducted a Carthaginian army into Italy this opinion he supports by the collateral evidence of me dals, on which the lion and the palm tree are exhibited as national symbols of Carthage; and by similar devices, on a votive shield of one hundred and thirty-eight pounds weight, found among the spoils of Asdrubal, deposited af,

ter his defeat in the Capitol, and accurately described by an ancient writer.

We may further observe that THE CARTHAGINIAN LION was a common appellation bestowed on Hannibal, and that it had been the frequent boast of his father Hamilcar, during the childhood of his son, that he was nourishing a lion, who would hereafter destroy the Roman wolves; alluding either to the fabulous origin or the sanguinary hostility of the foes of Carthage.

Should the conjecture of this respectable writer prove well founded, the circumstances I relate are not a little singular; that the production of an African artist and a piece of Spanish plate, the one wrought for a victorious Carthaginian conqueror, and another for the destroyer of Carthage, should both be buried, one in earth, and the other under water, in a remote province of Gaul; and that at the end of more than two thousand years, they should be fortunately recovered, in a state of excellent preservation, and both be placed in the same collection. The subject of my little narrative being considered as interesting, genuine and curious, it was purchased and placed in the cabinet of the KING of France: whether

it

Indeed the whole of Sir Richard Strachan's dispatch which conveyed intelligence of his victory to the Admiralty is as an English seaman's language ought to be, strongly marked with unextinguishable courage; to meet with an enemy, whatever the superiority, his first object; to take, burn, sink or destroy him, at all risques, his unconquerable resolution. To this may be added the modest, unassuming language of real worth, so different from French gasconade, and that spirit of pious gratitude, the sailor's best companion.

and after many friendly attempts to prevail on him to conform to the established religion of his country, was ultimately dismissed.

"I have been called by my adversaries capricious and whimsical" observes the subject of this article," but I defy any one to prove that I ever preached any doctrine that was not warranted by Scripture. If I have at any time been capricious or fantastical, it was never against my conscience and from interested motives. If my conduct or appearance has ever laid me open to this accusation, it must have originated from a tendency to nervous diseases, to which from my youth I was always subject..

"For this class of complaints, medical men informed me, I was indebted to my unceasing application to study; but while under the roof of my worthy and excellent father, he preserved me in a great measure by rouzing me early and obliging me to walk four or five miles on a frosty morning, before I sat down to my books.

"I remember particularly being greatly alarmed with a fear that I should lose my eye-sight; as after reading a little, my eyes became dazzled and discharged a thin, acrimonious water; my seeing was also considerably imri impaired.

paired. After consulting professional men, they recommended a relaxation from study, and applied blisters behind my ears, but without effect. Blindness with all its horrors now presented itself to my imagination, and I sunk into the lowest state of nervous melancholy.

"In this miserable condition, I fortunately recollected a circumstance. mentioned by Mr. Robert Boyle, of a person who had nearly lost his sight from reading by a glaring light and in a study newly white-washed, on which the sun shone strongly the greater part of the day.

"He was advised to hang his book-room with green, and his eyes soon became better; pursuing the same plan, I experienced similar benefit.

"At this time, mathematics took up eight hours of my day, but sick of the fictitious hypothesis of De Cartes, then all in vogue, I plunged at once into NEWTON'S PRINCIPIA, but was rouzed from my literary dream, the happiest period of my life, by the complaints of my poor mother, who was now left a widow, with an income not equal to the support of herself and family.

"I was persuaded to take orders, by Bishop Moor, Archbishop Tillotson and Dr. Lloyd,

Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry." Besides these prelates, he was favourably noticed by Mr. Locke, and associated with Dr. Hoadley, Bishop of Bangor and afterwards of Winchester. With such helps and a small share of prudence and common sense, he might have got on in the church; but religious scruples gradually arose in his mind, and he adopted an unrestrained mode of censuring public men and public measures, which created him many enemies, and deprived him of several of his friends.

To Dr. Hoadley he once observed" You have now received eight hundred pounds a year, for keeping primitive Christianity out of England; this too for a period of six years, without having set foot in or seen your diocese; a scandalous and indecent example, more injurious to the cause of religion than the attacks of its most bitter enemies." If a man thought himself obliged by Christian sincerity to address such language to his old associates, we may guess in what style he would address his. professed adversaries. It is scarcely necessary to add that all friendship ceased between Whiston and the Bishop of Bangor.

When Dr. Hoadley was afterwards advanced to the see of Winchester, his old friend did

not

not forget him." In direct contradiction of the laws of Christ, you left your first church, and though now advanced to a more lucrative bishopric, during a good part of the year, your abandon the duties of your ecclesiastic office, to become a political member of our civil constitution.

"Though a very old man, and in express contradiction to the letter of the holy Scriptures, you have married a second time, a young woman. These notorious practices together with your injudicious and unlearned Treatise on the Lord's Supper will hand you down in no very favourable light to posterity."

ny

"You have no doubt heard" says the worthy Bishop, in a letter to a female correspondent, "you have heard of Mr. Whiston's bitterness against me; maof his assertions are idle, all malignant, and many false. The whole of his conduct may be expressed in the words pious titthe-tattle. He is a mixture of lliberal censoriousness, fanatic pride and immoral zeal; encouraging himself as many wiser and better men do in actions which they condemn as inexcusable in others. I have since had a spiritual, satirical and recriminating conversation with him; he was

all humility, thankfulness and profession."

This rude attack on the hero of the Bangorian controversy, whom we have generally been taught to consider as the great assertor of civil and religious liberty, did not diminish the outcry Whiston had already raised by his paradoxes and his prophecies concerning the destruction. of Rome and Autichrist, in which he was mistaken.

He had also been an enthusiastic admirer of Archbishop Potter, but became suddenly exasperated against him, for suffering the Bishops to kneel before him when they received his blessing, at a meeting held for propagating the Gospel. He afterwards criticised, and somewhat roughly, the forms of prayer published by his Grace, as mean and unedifying. These attacks the Primate bore and answered with moderation, imputing them to an old man's dotage,

Whiston was the favourite scholar of Sir Isaac Newton, and his theory of the earth is praised and recommended by Mr. Locke. He was a learned and an honest man, but wanted judgment; his zeal o'er-informed its tenement, and he knew little of the world. To these circumstances may be ascribed much of his unaccom1 i 2 modating

modating spirit, even in nonessentials, and many of the difficulties he encountered.

Whiston and his friend Ditton, who wrote on the longitude, could not escape the filthy muse of Swift; he wrote on them some of the nastiest lines in the English language, which I hope the good taste of future editors will suppress.

WHY

DON'T YOU MARRY? a question repeatedly asked of a middleaged man, who occasionally peruses my volumes, and whose celibacy originates rather from

position and circumstance than from want of inclination.

One

of his reasons for continuing single my readers will agree is important; he has fixed his affections on a lady who unfortunately loves another.

On a late occasion, and at a christening, being hard pressed on the usual subject, with a room full of mothers and daughters fit for mothers, he assumed more courage than he generally exhi, bits, and in reply to the question which stands at the head of this article, sported in a chearful and humorous way the following song. Whether the tune and the words were his own or the work of a near neighbour was not known; he called it