Nismes, Aug. 13, 1816. "Yesterday was a day of triumph for all the fanatical and bigotted populace of Nismes. The famous brigand, TROIS-TAYONS, returned to his home at ten o'clock in the morning. His accomplices, who, like him, have escaped the justice of the laws, were about to erect triumphal arches before his house, and form a procession through all the city, accompanied with hautboys and tambourines; but it is believed that the authoritics interfered to prevent these public transports, and these things did not take place. Nevertheless, this brigand received the visits of more than twelve hundred persons, who cried with acclamations, which almost split the head (à tue téte,) Lou rey deis Bourgades es arriva," "The King of the Bourgades* is arrived."

"The arrival of this monster within our walls, with the title of King, has put an end to the mystery, and has explained to us why some victims have been already put to death on the scaffold-others sentenced to ascend itothers sent to the galleys for life, or for many years-and why others are groaning in the prisons ;-while their accusers, the murderers of their families and the robbers of their property have been triumphantly acquitted, are tranquilly enjoying the comforts which their crimes have procured them, and are cagerly employed in celebrating, with their chief, his return to this city.

"This mystery is further explained, by the conversation which the robber Magné, General of the Banditti, (assembled at Beaucaire, in June, 1815,) had a few days since with a citizen of Nismes, who was travelling the same route, on the subject of the arrest of the fanatical Boissin, the assassin of General La Garde. Replying to a question which the citizen put to him on this subject, Magué said-"This man will not perish-it is the policy, and also the interest of the Government to save him-that it may not weaken the party."

"Magné spoke from experience."

"In general the fanaties of this department are determined to do nothing which the King may order: but as far as it shall be conformable to their will. It is for this reason they will not re-organize the national guard according to the ordonnance of the King. This also would weaken the party; if they were to discharge the vagabonds (gens sans aveu), assassins, thieves, the sweepers of the streets, and the shoe blacks. It is thus that the Jacobins of the white cap decide. We are yet ignorant if the adminis tration will support them in their resolution; at present nothing moves, nothing indicates any amelioration.

“Trois-tayons, paid his visits this day, dressed up in the habit of the nstional guard, and with a sabre under his arm. This has revived the former audacity of his partizans and accomplices so much that many Protestants have already been insulted.

"How has this monster, accused of the murder of more than forty Protestants, been able to escape the authority of the laws? There can be but one answer; -It is because he has most powerful friends.

The name of the suburbs inhabited by the populace who have pillaged, whipped and murdered the Protestants.

FRENCH PROTESTANTS.

3

"During the fetes which were given to the Duke D'Angoulême, at the time of his last visit to Nismes, the busts of the royal family were placed on a stage richly decorated, surrounded by valuable trees cut from the estates of Protestants, and the stage was placed directly in front of the house in which Trestaillon lived before he was arrested.

"You know that the first lieutenant of Trestaillon, Trufeny, who was arrested on the same night with his captain, was honourably acquitted. The Protestants, sufficiently courageous to accuse him before the tribunals with having assassinated either a father, a brother, a child, or a relative, considered as false witnesses, were imprisoned. Two days after the same brigands accused five Protestants, with having wounded in the hand, a Catholic of the name of Riche, a walking vender of lemonade, a man held in abhorrence by all virtuous persons, and who is charged with having reduced his own daughter to the situation of a prostitute. The judgment of the Protestants was as follows; Sauze called Le Pur, and Deylau, father of twelve children, to the pillory, the hot iron, and the galley for life. Gourdoux, to the chains for ten years, the hot iron, and the pillory. Sauze de Pinet, to the galley for seven years, the hot iron, and the pillory. Deylau the son, to the galley for five years, the hot iron, and the pillory.

"Mark the contrast-Trestaillon enters Nismes in triumph

"A respectable widow murdered near her own house, ought to have been avenged by the justice of the laws. Her own children and her neighbours witnesses of the abominable crime, of which they know the perpetrators, after having lodged with the procureur-royal a circumstantial deposition, were compelled to withdraw it, because one night the assassins visited them on purpose to inform them, that if they deposed the truth, they should pay with their lives for their imprudent courage.

"The prisons are full of Protestants, who are detained under the most frivolous pretences, suffering many of them during a year in the most unjust and cruel captivity. It is only in the month of July 1816, that leave has been granted to perform religious worship with the prisoners.”

"No justice for the innocent; no punishment for their murderers-such is the situation in which the Protestants find themselves up to this day."

The Committee have received from the Churches in the Vallies of Piedmont, an account of the distribution of the sum which was destined for the immediate relief of the Pastors, and the Widows of the Pastors, accompanied with an expression of the support which they experienced in the christian kindness of their brethren, and the great benefit which they had derived from the amount remitted to them by the Committee. About the same time, they received information which induced them to hope that the situation of those interesting Protestant societies would be materially improved, especially as it appeared that they were to be permitted to see open the temple of the Commune of St. Jean, but from communications subsequently received, and from which they subjoin an extract, it is too evident, that they have little to hope from that papal intolerance under which their fathers suffered the loss of all things.

Extract of a Letter written from the Protestant Vallies of Piedmont.

"A Committee of English Pastors of The Three Denominations of Nonconformists, having learnt the true state of distress in which the greater part of our Pastors groan, have voted a sum for their immediate relief, to be distributed among them according to their necessities, and to the Widows of the Pastors, some of whom are really in the greatest indigence.

“The Court had promised, it is true, to assist them, but to this period, these fine promises, have been only the sound of the cymbal.

"What indeed can be expected of a Court, which, in permitting us to open the temple of the commune of St. Jean, after having been shut more than a year, has not granted this permission but on one of the three following conditions, between which we must choose; either to submit to the will, that is, the caprice of the Curé for the hour of service, or to have always the great door of the church closed, or to raise a wall to the height of twenty feet the whole length of the front: this last condition has been preferred."

A French foot is more than a foot measure English.

Collections and Donations received since the last Publication.

Rev. Mr. Bulmer and Congregation, Haverfordwest

Mr. Thomas Struchbery, jun. Buckingham

Rev. Dr. Carey's Congregation, Box-Lane

Rev. Messrs. Grundy and Robberd's Congregation, Manchester, in

addition

Rev. Dr. Estlin and Mr. Rowe's Congregation,
Rev. Mr. Bincliffe's Congregation, Selston
Rev. Mr. Eastman and Friends, Stalbridge

Mr. James Marr, Stockton

Bristol

Rev. Mr. Curtis, Wrestlingworth, 2d Benefaction
Rev. Jos. Turnbull, B. A. Öttery St. Mary

Rev. George Redford, M. A. Uxbridge

Meadows Taylor, Esq. Diss

Sincereta. Two-fifths Proportion of a Sum for full Restitution, made by a young Man, for Encroachment on his Master's Substance, during the Time of his Apprenticeship

A. S. F.

£4 2

600

Contributions will be received by the Rev. T. Morgan, Williams's Library, Red Cross Street; and such as are designed for the immediate Relief of the Necessitous VAUDOIS, or WALDENSES, will be exclusively appropriated to the Fund established for that purpose by the Committee.

To be had of all Booksellers,

1. The REPORT on the PERSECUTION of the FRENCH PROTESTANTS. By the Rev. CLEMENT PERROT. Price 28.

2. A SKETCH of the past and present STATE of the VAUDOIS, or WALDENSES, inhabiting the Vallies of Piedmont, By Rev. T. MORGAN. Price 6d.

[From Dissertation I. by Dugald Stewart, prefixed to Supplement to Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. I. p. 48-59.]

rope.

HE state of science towards the

Tclose of the sixteenth century,
presented a field of observation singu-
larly calculated to attract the curiosity,
and to awaken the genius of Bacon;
nor was it the least of his personal
advantages, that, as the son of one of
Queen Elizabeth's ministers, he had
a ready access, wherever he went, to
the most enlightened society in Eu-
While yet only in the seven-
teenth of his age, he was removed
year
by his father from Cambridge to Paris,
where it is not to be doubted, that the
novelty of the literary scene must have
largely contributed to cherish the
natural liberality and independence of
his mind. Sir Joshua Reynolds has
remarked, in one of his academical
Discourses, that "every seminary of
learning is surrounded with an atmos-
phere of floating knowledge, where
every mind may imbibe somewhat
congenial to its own original concep
tions." He might have added, with
still greater truth, that it is an atmos-
phere, of which it is more peculiarly
salutary for those who have been
elsewhere reared to breathe the air.
The remark is applicable to higher
pursuits than were in the contempla-
tion of this philosophical artist; and
it suggests a hint of no inconsiderable
value for the education of youth.

SO

The merits of Bacon, as the father of experimental philosophy, are universally acknowledged, that it would be superfluous to touch upon them here. The lights which he has struck out in various branches of the

philosophy of mind, have been much less attended to; although the whole scope and tenor of his speculations shew, that to this study his genius was far more strongly and happily turned, than to that of the material world. It

was not, as

some seem to have imagined, by sagacious anticipations of particular discoveries afterwards to be made in physics, that his writings have had'so powerful an influence in accelerating the advancement of that science. In the extent and accuracy of his physical knowledge, he was far inferior to many of his predecessors; but he surpassed them all in his knowledge of the laws, the resources and the limits of the human understanding. The sanguine expectations with which he looked forwards to the future, were founded solely on his confidence in the untried capacities of the mind; and on a conviction of the possibility of invigorating and guiding, by means of logical rules, those faculties which, in all our researches after truth, are the organs or instruments to be employed.

"Such rules," as he himself has observed, "do in some sort equal men's wits, and leave no great advantage or pre-eminence to the perfect and excellent motions of the spirit. To draw a straight line, or to describe a circle, by aim of hand only, there must be a great difference between an unsteady and unpractised hand, and a steady and practised; but to do it by rule or compass it is much.

alike."

Nor is it merely as a logician that Bacon is entitled to notice on the present occasion. It would be difficult to name another writer prior to Locke, whose works are enriched with so many just observations on the intellectual phenomena. Among these, the most valuable relate to the laws of memory, and of imagination; the latter of which subjects he seems to