mother's last command; that but few of the honors which the Senate intended to decree to her memory should be accepted, ni, unless they would at the same time decree celestial religion; that is, decree that Christ should be worshipped." P. 134. In effect, Livia is made by Tiberius to say to the Senate, "I will not accept divine honors, unless you will decree a religion, which absolutely prohibits any mortal to accept them." We presume Mr. R. may defend this absurdity, by alledging, that Tiberius has put it into the mouth of an old woman. The cause of the retirement of Tiberius, we never can imagine, was in consequence of his disagreement with the Senate concerning the worship of Christ. In his seclusion at Capreæ, we find him not, as Mr. R. supposes, conversing with the apostolic teachers, but "cum grege Chaldæa." Yet with our author nothing is so easy as to discover Christianity both in the Chaldæan astrology, and in the Druidical immolations. We even find him transforming the Cyrenians into Christians. "Strabo says of the Cyrenians, that they held an heresy, which Anniceris was in his time desirous of rectifying. Καὶ ̓Αννικόρις ὁ δοκῶν ἐπανορθῶσαι τὴν Κυρηνιάκην αἵρεσιν, και παραγαγεῖν ἀντ ̓ αὐτῆς τὴν Αντικερίαν. But who ever heard of any heresy before the publication of Christianity? And who does not know that men of Cyrene are said to have been the first publishers of it?" P. 400. We must inform Mr. R. that heresy was heard of before the introduction of Christianity. The word apeos is used to denote both the variety of philosophical dogmata of Paganism, and of theological tenets in the Jewish Church. When applied to these, it is sometimes taken in a favourable sense; whereas when predicated of Christian division, it always indicates a defection from the Catholic faith. Has our author read his Josephus, and forgotten that writer's account of Jewish sects (alpecas;) or Epiphanius, or Hegesippus, and their enumeration of Jewish sects subsisting at the appearance of our Lord? We find St. Paul declaring of himself, " According to the strictest sect of our (i. e. the Jewish religion) nara τnv dxgibesátny αἵρεσιν τῆς ἡμετέρας θρησκείας, I lived a Pharisee.” Before we quit this part of the subject, we must communicate to our readers an important discovery, made by our author, suggested by the following verses written against Tiberius, and preserved by Suetonius; "Asper et immitis, breviter vix omnia dicam? Dispeream si te mater amare potest. Non es eques-Quare? non sunt tibi millia centum ; Aurea 1 Aurea mutasti Saturni sæcula Cæsar: Incolumi nam te ferrea semper erunt. Fastidit vinum, quia jam sitit iste cruorem, Tam bibit hunc avide, quam bibit ante merum." Our author with wonderful dexterity exculpates Tiberius from the seeming charge of cruelty, by offering a conjecture; that the "blood which Tiberius was so fond of quaffing, was no other than the blood of our Lord;" or a participation of the eucharist. Far be it from us, to detract from the originality of this idea, or to offer any thing in its refutation: we only lament that Mr. R. was not fortunate enough to find an equally conclusive proof that Tiberius was initiated into the Christian Church by receiving the rite of baptism. Dismissing the consideration of the religious principles of the Roman Emperor, we shall submit a few comments on the defence of his general character. With the opinion which we have formed concerning the one, we are not very anxious about the other. We are perfectly contented to think of Tiberius, as our fathers thought, and as our tutors instructed us to think. Experience unhappily shews, that a speculative belief in Christianity is often found joined with an immoral life, and we are not yet inclined to call the political protection of Tiberius, spe◄ culative belief. Mr. R. has engaged in the arduous attempt of defending his numerous atrocities with great confidence. The destruction of Agrippa Posthumus, of Germanicus, of Drusus, and of Sejanus, are all considered in due order, and Tiberius is exonerated from the guilt of all. We shall give the sum of our judgment on this part of the performance, by stating, that Mr. R. displays a strange mixture of credulity and distrust, that he is sometimes ingenious in proposing his own doubts, and in detecting the fallacies of others; but that his cavils are generally in the last degree puerile. Nothing that he has advanced, has contributed to alter our opinion on these historical questions. At one time we thought of entering into a minute discussion of his account of the rise and fall of Sejanus, and of exposing the weakness of his assumptions, and of his objections. But we soon desisted from the undertaking, as it is not our province to answer his book, and a complete answer would require a volume equal in size to his own, and a greater share of gravity, than we could muster up on such an occasion. We shall therefore not hazard the loss of our decorum, but take leave of Mr. R. by quoting his own conclusion, to which we shall award the praise which it deserves; viz. that of brevity. "If the premises be right, who will deny that the following conclusions may be drawn from them? viz.That the scoffers at revealed revealed religion, are incomparably greater fools than they have hitherto been thought-That Unitarians are rather more so-That the first Pope was an arch-impostor, and the greater part of the first general council, a set of knaves or fools-That the Catholic claims, are the claims of dangerous heretics." P. 432. We are by no means prepared to assent to the premises, but we trust that we are not less conscientious in our profession of Christianity, less orthodox in our belief of the Divinity of Christ, and less sincere in our renunciation of the errors of the Church of Rome. 11. 16s. ART. VI. Harmonics of Nature. By J. B. H. De St. Pierre, THERE is a figure in rhetoric, which although unnoticed by Cicero, Quinctilian, and other great masters of the ancient school, is nevertheless a vast favourite with the writers of modern days, to whom indeed may be ascribed, in great measure, the credit of its general acceptation. In former times indeed; its powers seem to have been but little understood, and its usage to have been attended with much diffidence and forbearance; a few sentences perhaps here and there were selected for its display, it being then modestly veiled under the names Metonymy, Synechdoche, Catachresis, and other unintelligible terms of art: but all this learned lumber has been long since discarded, and what was formerly the artificial ornament of a few flourishing periods, is now the natural and unaffected character of the whole, which thus becomes one entire and unadulterated specimen of perfect NONSENSE. Erasmus has composed an encomium upon Folly, and we see no reason why a similar treatise might not be written in recommendation of Nonsense. We should strongly recommend the task to some Professor or LL.D. at least, of our sister kingdom, who might present us with two closely printed quartos on the "Philosophy of Nonsense," morally and metaphysically considered, which particularly if peppered with a little atheism and treason, and with an index rationale to the whole, might prove almost as attractive as some publications of celebrity which have issued from the other side of the Tweed. Leaving however this hint to the consideration of those who are so well enabled to improve upon it, we shall now only observe observe, that in the use of no other figure is the old maxim artis est celare artem so constantly maintained; as the generality not only of authors but readers, are wholly ignorant of its existence, even while they are enjoying the gratification arising from its use; insomuch, that one man will write, and thousands will read page after page, without having even the most distant idea, the one that he is framing, the others, that they are swallowing one entire mass and volume of NONSENSE. We do not remember to have seen a happier instance of the continued usage of this exquisite figure than in the work before us, which consists of three octavo volumes, with a portrait of their author (looking exceedingly wise) prefixed to the whole. Monsieur De St. Pierre was a great friend of Rousseau, in whose school he appears to have studied with very great success. These volumes were first edited in French by Louis Aimé Martin, another philosopher of the same brood, and are now presented to the public in an English garb by W. Meeston, A.M. Of this latter gentleman we know nothing, except as the associate of the two former, and altogether they form a goodly company. M. De St. Pierre, as it appears from the account of his biographer, contrived to escape into the country during the massacres of the French Revolution, and there to be permitted in solitude and security to write as much nonsense as he chose. The following passage from the introduction of Mr. Martin will prove the biographer worthy of his hero. "It was thus when Athens was making yain attempts to bind nations to her yoke, when the Phocians were violating the temple of Delphi, when Dion fell under the assassin's poignard, and Philip, triumphing over the ruins of Olympus, threatened the liberty of Greece, that the divine Plato continued to hold, along with his disciples, his tranquil station on the summit of Cape Sunium. There, under the shade of the wood of Minerva, and in the contemplation of those azure waves amidst which the towers of Delos were seen to rise, he forgot the crimes of men, and thought only of their virtues. Nature lay stretched before his eyes, and he called divine inspiration to aid him in the study of her works. "Such a spectacle might be deemed the fruit of a poet's imagination, had it not the concurrent testimony of antiquity, and had not the example been repeated, in our days, by a philosopher, who, in point of benevolence, may be called the Plato of France. It was in the midst of the calamities of Europe, in a season when ambition called forth wicked men, and when, unhappily, wicked men held sovereign sway in France, that the amiable author of the Studies of Nature, and of Paul and Virginia, fled from our affrighted cities, and took refuge in the bosom of rural solitude solitude. He despised the honours earned by the sacrifice of virtue, and was indifferent to that fortune which deprives a man of friends, while it surrounds him with flatterers. He sought not the applause of a factious crowd, but he received the benedictions of innocent victims at their dying moments, who had found in his pages an assurance of a future and a better life. Seated on the banks of a rivulet near his hermitage at Essonne, under the shade of the willow and the poplar, he was accustomed to say, • All is not yet lost; the orb of day continues to spread his bounty over our meadows, and to ripen our corn and our vines, as if mankind continued to be virtuous.' He felt that many of the most conspicuous ornaments of the metropolis of France remind the spectator of little else than successful crimes; that palaces are scenes of meanness; and that triumphal arches are merely monuments of splendid trespasses." Introduction. Vol. I. P. iv. Passing over the blasphemous absurdity of such a driveling sentimentalist calling in the aid of divine inspiration, let us now take a nearer view of this Plato of France. We cannot however sufficiently admire the long sight of his great prototype, in discovering the towers of Delos rising amidst the azure waves which surrounded Attica. In the first place, we did not know before that there were any towers in Delos to rise at all; and secondly, if there had been, Plato must have had a pretty good telescope to discover them, unless Delos itself out of compassion to the philosopher's eyes, had been obliging enough to float a little nearer to the shores of Attica. This no doubt was the case; but to return to the philosopher. This work is entitled the "Harmonies of Nature," and is, we suppose, intended to shew the connection and correspondence of the several parts of creation. M. De St. Pierre is evidently a deist, a theophilanthropist perhaps of the school of Lepaux and Mr. Belsham; for although we have perpetually the most disgusting appeals to the Deity, the Gospel is but once mentioned throughout the whole work, and then merely by chance. It is somewhat strange however for one of these pure and rational religionists (as they choose to call themselves) to invoke the Goddess of Affection to aid him in the performance of his task. This would of itself lead us to suppose, if we had not numberless other proofs to convince us, that Polytheism, Deism, and Atheism, are but one and the same creed under different denominations. We do not know whether our author was one of the worshippers of the Goddess of Reason, when she appeared in a visible shape to greet the eyes of the French philosophers; we should suspect however, that these two Goddesses of Reason and Affection, were of the same breed, and endowed with the same attributes of Universal Philanthropy. "I address |