able to difpenfe with it! What enjoyments of felf-love can equal those of the heart! Not to chufe to act but according to the defires of what we love, is a wifh fo fimple and fo natural! Ah! when your will directs me, I facrifice nothing to you, I gratify myself, I obey my real impulse. Come back then to difpofe of every moment of your Pauline; fhe has without you only uncertain inclinations; the no longer acts but by routine; the no longer decides but by fuppofition, faying to herfelf; he would approve, he would prefcribe this! Come back to order and reign; come back to restore to me the most pure, the most perfect, and the best appreciated happiness."

What will the difciples of Mary Wollstonecraft fay to these fentiments!-Pauline is indeed, throughout, a pattern for wives and for mothers. The author, however, has brought forward her and the Countefs de Rofmond as objects of comparifon. She has "ventured to put on a footing with perfect virtue, united to innocence, virtue fullied by a moment of weakness, and purified by every thing affecting and heroic that repentance can afford." In caufing "fpotlefs virtue to be preferred," fhe has drawn "the picture the moft worthy of exercising the pen of the real moralist.”

The juftice and propriety, if not the originality, of our author's fentiments on the organization of the oppofite fexes deserve attention. In the perfon of Monfieur Du Refnel, one of her characters, she says:

"Refpecting women, I have ideas which are peculiar to myfelf; I do not by any means believe that their organization is different from ours; for I do not fee that phyfical weakness gives more moral delicacy, or renders the understanding less extenfive or less folid. Pafcal, Pope, and feveral others, with very weak phyfical conftitutions, had genius and greatness of foul. How many a

Hercules do we not know who is extremely foolish! In short, if, in this enquiry, I endeavour to penetrate the intentions of the Author of the univerfe, I find that beings, equally deftined for immortality, muft poffefs in an equal degree every intellectual faculty, and that their fouls must be fimilar. Thus I attribute to education alone the real differences which we remark between men and women. To imagine that the Creator has formed beings calculated to be intimately united, and yet effentially diffimilar, is a frivolous and fuperficial idea. If man had not in himself all the germs of the qualities which he cherishes in women, he would not comprehend them, and could not be charmed by them; and if women were fufceptible neither of ftrength nor greatnefs of foul, they would be incapable of feeling the value of every thing that is fublime. Take away perfe& equality of mind and foul, and you annihilate every congeniality; you deftroy all union. In a word, the confort of man ought to be enabled to understand him always, to counfel

him often, and fupply his place fometimes. Notwithstanding this very equitable diftribution of the most precious gifts of the Creator, women, entrufted with the care of children, have ever in fociety a destination different from ours. It is nature herself who prefcribes to them a fedentary way of life, and who devotes them to domeftic occupations. It is nature herfelf who excludes them from public employments, the exercife of which could not be blended with the duties of a mother and a nurse. If nature had perfectly adapted their moral faculties to their fituations, fhe would have made women only inferior and subordinate beings; and this would have been, as I have already observed, an inconfiftency and an injustice the more ftrange, as they were abfolutely useless. The difference of fituations and of education fufficed for improving the qualities neceffary to the two fexes; thus ftrength and energy are exalted in man, and sweet fenfibility in women, without the oppofite virtues being nugatory or destroyed in them. Women, accuftomed from their infancy to exprefs only by halves fo many fentiments, to veil ingenioufly fo many ideas, muft have that quickness, that delicacy which characterises them, and which proceed from habit and long exercise, and not from a particular organization. This is fo true, that this pretended difference of organization has never been remarked in women of the lower clafs coarfely. brought up. This fublime plan of fubordination, fituation, and equality of faculties, conftitutes all the charm of the delightful union of the two fexes. It gives more intereft to that apparent weakness, which, far from being a humiliating inferiority, is only an affecting and generous facrifice. It fets off the dignity of man, become, by love and virtue, the protector of a being equal to himself. These ideas which ennoble empire and dependance, appear to me more juft and more useful than thofe which degrade women, in order to confecrate the authority of man, whose rights, established by nature, require only fentiment and reason to be acknowledged and refpected.'

On the fame fubject, as it more immediately relates to maternal duties, fpeaking of female writers, our author obferves:

"I think that there exifts between man and woman a perfect equality of organization, and of intellectual faculties; fo I think that the latter may cultivate letters and the sciences with full as much fuccefs as ourselves. Every creature being bound to fulfil his destination, has no right to difpofe of time according to his fancy, and cannot give himself up to his particular tastes till he has difcharged the duties of his fituation. But as we ought conftantly to prefer the occupations prescribed by duty, to those which are only the refult of inclination, we ought therefore to take care that the latter do not become paffions. It is a temerity, and a great error, to imagine that we cannot at all times mafter our paffions. They become fuch only through our own fault; and when we have fuffered them to gather ftrength and take root, it

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is no longer poffible to compound with them. We cannot mode rate them; we muft fuddenly and irrevocably renounce them, of elfe become their flave. It is in this that I particularly admire the fupreme wifdom of the arbitrary fovereign of our deftinies, who gives us fo much strength against grewing paßions, and who gives grown paflions fo much power against us. Our weaknefs then becomes a juft punishment for our imprudence; yet, in this extremity, we have ftill remaining the refource of a powerful effort that can emancipate us from them; but it is only by making the most painful facrifice. We must give up all. I have already obferved, there is no reducing a violent paffion to a moderate inclination ; to get rid of it, we must have recourfe to an abfolute divorce. If man could oppofe to great paffions a moral force capable of modifying them, his life would be a thousand times more tempeftous; he would ceafe to fear the paffions, he would never adopt the project of renouncing them, he would even be defirous of preferving them for ever and the faculty of mastering them feldom employed, would ferve but to render him more culpable, by depriving him of a falutary terror, and prolonging to the grave his follies and his errors.

"But let us return to authoreffes. From all that I have just said, it feems to me, that a tafte for writing has a great inconvenience for them, as long as they are in the bloom of youth; the affiduous at tentions required by little children, and the facred duties of a nurse, joined to domeftic duties, cannot, without much difficulty, be blended with the labours of authorship. Yet this is not impoffible, when, like Pauline, a woman has great activity, much method, a plan for the day, which nothing can derange, and an incredible fa cility in writing. But to fpeak only in general, it may be faid, that this kind of occupation by no means fuits young mothers; it is they whom nature has charged with the attentions fo neceffary to early infancy; it is they who are responsible for every accident that may happen to those feeble beings entrusted to their care. In the sequel, tutors and mafters may fecond and replace them; but who can fupply the place of a mother about a young child in arms, or beginning to walk? Who can have her vigilance, her forefight, her quick difcernment, her conftant affiduity? Pauline will not take this for a criticism. What mother is more attentive and more affectionate than fhe? I know that the never wrote but by the fide of her child's cradle, when it was afleep; yet fhe then broke in upon her own reft, and, if she was fuckling, would not this work be attended, phyfically, with fome inconvenience? When children have attained the age at which the ideas begin to unfold themfelves, then it is that mothers can, with utility, cultivate literature; it seems to me that their first labours ought to be devoted to the education of their children; they know their difpofition, their failings; and the works which they might compole for them would be always, for this reason, infinitely more useful to their family than any other of the fame kind. An authorefs, who is a mother, is inexcutable if

the

The has not written on education, and for education; the more especially as morality may be prefented under fo many different forms that governeffes are perfectly at liberty to prefer that ftyle of writing which fhall please them the best. In the reflections and particular obfervations of a mother, there will always be found fomething new and ingenious; and even with moderate talents, her works, in many refpects, will be fuperior to those of the moft celebrated authors who have not brought up children. Thefe latter prefent fyftems impracticable in the execution; and enlightened and affectionate mothers will propofe things only, the utility of which has been proved to them by experience."

Madame de Genlis expatiates much at large on this fubject;' but our limits will not permit us to extend our extract any further. On Atheism and modern Deifm her obfervations are particularly interesting.

"The people must have a religion. The lefs remote men are from a state of nature, the more they feel this want, this fublime with infpired by hope and gratitude. Atheism is a monftrous dream of civilifed man, corrupted by pride; all the favages have eftablished among them religious ceremonies; to acknowledge a fovereign power, to honour and invoke it, are ideas and actions infeperable, when we follow only the natural light of reason. Idolatry, therefore, is no more than a wandering of the inftinct which the Creator has given us; and Atheism, or what amounts to the fame, the Deifm of our modern philofophers, is the most absurd and most aftonishing depravation of it. Of all fyftems, the most extravagant is, no doubt, that of Atheism; but the indifference and the conduct of the deitical encyclopedifts are equally incomprehenfible. Who has revealed to them that that fupreme Being who created man, endowed him with feeling and reason, and gave him an immortal foul, was indifferent to his homages, and deaf to his prayers ? That he expects nothing more from intelligent creatures, who have received from him thought and the gift of fpeech, than from the animals deftitute of reafon, which he has fubjected to his empire? What! thefe fimple reflections do not even infpire our Deifts with the flightest doubt.

"God punishes not, and flands in need of no worship: they are fure of this! Of what ufe, then, can be to me the belief of a God? What influence can it have on my intentions and my conduct ? What benefit, what confolation can I derive from it? What, then, is that that impoffible being whom I cannot offend, on whom I cannot make an impreffion? that disdainful mafter who refuses to hear me? Why has he given me the faculty of knowing that he is the eternal fource of all perfection, if it be not to adore him? The Atheist is at least confiftent; he fays, No worship, because there is no God. But to fay, No worship, although there is a God, is both to blafpheme and to draw a conclufion in a manner infinitely abfurd.”

We regret our inability to accompany our ingenious author through a long chain of reafoning, tending to the refutation of the dogmas and fophifms of Voltaire, Diderot, d'Alembert, &c. but if the curiofity of our readers be excited by the quotation which we have made, it will be fully gratified by a reference to the work itself,

On reviewing the mechanical and fubordinate parts of the Rival Mothers, we must admit, that the plot is defective, the incidents are frequently ftrained, the detail is, in many places, too prolix, and a curtailment of much extraneous matter is requifite. The author's knowledge of the manners and cuftoms of England, which fhe attempt to defcribe, is very confined and incorrect; but her opinions. are liberal, and her fentiments of the inhabitants must be grateful to our English readers. Madame de Genlis is, like most of her countrymen, an evident admirer of our Richardfon; fhe frequently affects his manner, and a character, bearing fome faint analogy to his Lovelace, is vifible in the back ground of the prefent piece. In point of religion and morality, this work is not merely unexceptionable—it is highly praiseworthy.

ART, XIV. Les Colons de Toutes Couleurs. The Colonists of all Colours; an Hiftory of a new Establishment on the Coast of Guinea. By Mr. de Texier, Author of the Government of the Roman Republic. 3 Vols. 1798.

A

Ta period when we have fo many empirics in politics, as well as in theology and medicine, we must not be furprited at the variety of visionary hypotheses which present them❤ felves to our notice. To form a code of laws, to govern a nation, are, no doubt, very fimple matters; mere exercises of ingenuity, to which almost every school-boy, in the prefent day, thinks himself competent. We are led to these remarks by the erude, heterogeneous nonfenfe which is difplayed in these volumes. They exhibit a feries of letters from a French gentleman to his friend, containing an account of his travels and adventures on the coaft of Guinea, where he finds one Adrian, a white man, ruling in conjunction with Zara, a black Princess. When the French revolution took place, this Adrian was a rich planter in the island of St. Domingo. The beautiful Zara, the daughter of a King, was his favourite flave. Fearful of his property, he refolves to take shelter in Africa, in the dominions of her father, where, after having escaped many dangers, he effects a landing, accompanied by feveral other white men. On his arrival, he learns that Zara's father has

been