went to Rome to obtain absolution or purchase dispensations, but that the enemies of the Holy See added largely, in order to increase the odium against it. Consult Bayle, under the articles Bank, Pinet, Drelincourt.

men, God himself was compounded with, § I think that there really was a system of when the practice of confession becamerates or taxes established for those who generally established. At length Pope John XXII. established a tariff of sins. The absolution of incest, committed by a layman, cost four livres tournois: "Ab incestu pro laico in foro conscientiæ turonenses quatuor." For a man and woman who have committed incest, eighteen livres tournois, four ducats, and nine carlines. This is certainly unjust; if one person pays only four livres tournois, two persons ought not to pay more than eight.

Even crimes against nature have actually their affixed rates, amounting to ninety livres tournois, twelve ducats, and six carlins: "Cum inhibitione turonenses 90, ducatos 12, carlinos 6," &c.

It is at least positively certain, that these rates were never authorised by any council; that they constituted an enormous abuse, invented by avarice, and respected by those who were interested in its not being abolished. The sellers and the purchasers equally found their account in it; and, accordingly, none opposed it before the breaking out of the disturbances attending the reformation. It must be acknowledged that an exact list of all these rates or taxes would be eminently useful in the formation of a history of the human mind.

EXTREME.

WE will here attempt to draw from the word 'extreme' an idea that may be attended with some utility.

It is every day disputed, whether in war success is ascribable to conduct or fortune?

It is scarcely credible that Leo X. should have been so imprudent as to print this book of rates or indulgences, in 1514, which, however, we are assured he did; at the same time it must be considered that no spark had then appeared of that conflagration, kindled afterwards by the reformers; and that the court of Rome reposed implicitly upon the credulity of the people, and neglected to throw even the slightest veil over its imposi-to tions. The public sale of indulgences, which soon followed, shows that that court took no precaution whatever to conceal its gross abominations from the various nations which had been so long accustomed to them. When the complaints against the abuses of the Romish church burst forth, it did all in its power to suppress this publication, but all was

in vain.

Whether in diseases, nature or medicine is most operative in healing or destroying?

Whether in law, it is not judicious for a man to compromise although he is in the right, and to defend a cause although he is in the wrong?

Whether the fine arts contribute to the glory or to the decline of a state?

Whether it is wise or injudicious to encourage superstition in a people? Whether there is any truth in metaphysics, history, or morals?

Whether taste is arbitrary, and whether there is in reality a good and a bad taste ? { &c.

If I may give my opinion upon this book of rates, I must say that I do not believe the editions of it are genuine: the rates are not in any kind of proportion and do not at all coincide with those stated by d'Aubigné, the grandfather of Madame Maintenon, in the confession of Sanci. Depriving a woman of her virginity is estimated at six gros, and committing incest with a mother or a sister, at five gros. This is evidently ridiculous.discover the truth.

In order to decide at once all these questions, take an advantage of the extreme cases under each, compare these two extremes, and you will immediately

You wish to know whether success in war can be infallibly decided by conduct; consider the most extreme case, the most opposed situations in which conduct alone will infallibly triumph. The hostile army must necessarily pass through a deep mountain gorge; your commander knows this circumstance; he makes a forced march, gets possession of the heights, and completely encloses the enemy in the defile: there they must either perish or surrender. In this extreme case fortune can have no share in the victory. It is demonstrable, therefore, that skill may decide the success of a campaign, and it hence necessarily follows that war is an

art.

equivocal; you perceive fevers and various other maladies cured without its being possible to ascertain whether this is done by the physician or by nature: you perceive diseases, the issue of which cannot be judged of; various physicians are mistaken in their opinions of the seat or nature of them; he who has the acutest genius, the keenest eye, develops the character of the complaint. There is then an art in medicine, and the man of superior mind is acquainted with its niceties. Thus it was that Peyronius discovered that one of the courtiers had swallowed a sharp bone, which had occasioned an ulcer and endangered his life; and thus also did Boerhaave discover the complaint, as unknown as it was dreadful, of a Countess of Wassenaer.

Afterwards imagine an advantageous but not a decisive position; success is not certain, but it is exceedingly proba-There is therefore, it cannot be doubted, ble. And thus, from one gradation to an art in medicine, but in every art there another, you arrive at what may be con- are Virgils and Mæviuses. sidered a perfect equality between the In jurisprudence, take a case that is two armies. Who shall then decide? clear, in which the law pronounces deFortune; that is, some unexpected cir- cisively; a bill of exchange correctly cumstance or event; the death of a ge-drawn and regularly accepted; the acneral officer going to execute some important order; the derangement of a division in consequence of a false report, the operation of sudden panic, or various other causes for which prudence can find no remedy; yet it is still always certain that there is an art, that there is a science in war.

The same must be observed concerning medicine; the art of operating with the head or hand to preserve the life which appears likely to be lost.

ceptor is bound to pay it in every country in the world. There is, therefore, a useful jurisprudence, although in innumerable cases sentences are arbitrary, because, to the misery of mankind, the laws are ill framed.

Would you wish to know whether the fine arts are beneficial to a nation? Compare the two extremes: Cicero and a perfect ignoramus. Decide whether the fall of Rome was owing to Pliny or to Attila.

It is asked whether we should encourage superstition in the people? Consider for a moment what is the greatest extreme on this baleful subject, the mas sacre of St. Bartholomew, the massacres of Ireland, or the crusades; and the

The first who applied bleeding as speedily as possible to a patient under apoplexy; the first who conceived the idea of plunging a bistoury into the bladder to extract the stone from it, and of closing up the wound; the first who found out the method of stopping gan-question is decided. grene in any part of the human frame, were undoubtedly men almost divine, and totally unlike the physicians of Mo

Is there any truth in metaphysics? Advert to those points which are most striking and true. Something exists, something therefore has existed from all Descend from this strong and decisive eternity. An eternal being exists of himexample to cases less striking and more į self; this being cannot be either wicked

lière.

or inconsistent. To these truths we must yield; almost all the rest is open to disputation, and the clearest understanding discovers the truth.

It is in everything else as it is in colours; bad eyes can distinguish between black and white; better eyes, and eyes much exercised, can distinguish every nicer dgradation.

Usque adeo quod tangit idem est, tamen ultima distant.

EZEKIEL.

Of some singular Passages in this Prophet,

and of certain Ancient Usages.

to use that of the cow, and with the latter you shall knead your bread.

As it is now unusual to eat a preparation of bread of this description, the greater number of men regard the order in question as unworthy of the Divine Majesty. Yet it must be admitted, that cow-dung, and all the diamonds of the great Mogul, are perfectly equal, not only in the eyes of a Divine Being, but in those of a true philosopher; and, with regard to the reasons which God might have for ordering the prophet this repast, we have no right to enquire into them.

It is enough for us to see, that commands which appear to us very strange, did not appear so to the Jews.

It must be admitted that the syna

It is well known, that we ought not to judge of ancient usages by modern ones; he that would reform the court of Al-gogue, in the time of St. Jerome, did not cinous in the Odyssey, upon the model suffer Ezekiel to be read before the age of the Grand Turk, or Louis XIV. would of thirty; but this was because, in the not meet with a very gentle reception eighteenth chapter, he says that the son from the learned he who is disposed to shall not bear the iniquity of his father, reprehend Virgil for having described and it shall not be any longer said, the } King Evander covered with a bear's skin, fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the and accompanied by two dogs, at the childrens' teeth are set on edge. introduction of ambassadors, is a contemptible critic.

This expression was considered in direct contradiction to Moses, who, in the twenty-eighth chapter of Numbers, declares that the children bear the iniquity of the fathers, even to the third and

The manners of the ancient Egyptians and Jews are still more different from ours, than those of King Alcinous, his daughter Nausica, and the worthy Evan-fourth generation. der. Ezekiel, when in slavery among Ezekiel, again, in the twentieth chapter, the Chaldeans, had a vision near the makes the Lord say, that he has given to small river Chobar, which falls into the the Jews precepts which are not good. Euphrates. Such are the reasons for which the synaWe ought not to be in the least asto-gogue forbade young people from reading nished at his having seen animals with an author likely to raise doubts on the four faces, four wings, and with calves' irrefragibility of the laws of Moses. feet; or wheels revolving without aid, and "instinct with life:" these images are pleasing to the imagination; but many critics have been shocked at the { order given him by the Lord to eat, for a period of three hundred and ninety days, bread made of barley, wheat, or millet, covered with human ordure.

The prophet exclaimed, in strong disgust, My soul has not hitherto been polluted; and the Lord replied, Well, i will allow you instead of man's ordure,

The censorious critics of the present day are still more astonished with the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel. In that chapter, he thus takes it upon him to expose the crimes of the city of Jerusalem. He introduces the Lord speaking to a young woman; and the Lord said to her, When thou wast born, thy navel string was not cut, thou wast not salted, thou wast quite naked, I had pity on thee; thou didst increase in stature, thy breasts were fashioned, thy hair was

grown, I passed by thee, I observed thee, with Ruth, and of Judah with his daughI knew that the time of lovers was come,ter-in-law. are not indelicate in the HeI covered thy shame, I spread my skirt brew language, but would be so in our over thee; thou becamest mine; I own. washed and perfumed thee, and dressed and shod thee well; I gave thee a scarf of linen, and bracelets, and a chain for thy neck; I placed a jewel in thy nose, pendants in thy ears, and a crown upon thy head," &c.

....

"Then, confiding in thy beauty, thou didst in the height of thy renown, play the harlot with every passer-by And though hast built a high place of profanation.... and thou hast prostituted thyself in public places, and opened thy feet to every one that passed .... and thou hast committed fornication with the Egyptians... and finally thou hast paid thy lovers and made them presents, that they might lie with thee.... and by hiring them, instead of being hired, thou hast done differently from other harlots The proverb is, as is the mother, so is the daughter, and that proverb is used of thee," &c.

Still more are they exasperated on the subject of the twenty-third chapter. A mother had two daughters, who early lost their virginity. The elder was called Ahola, and the younger Aholibah "Aholah committed fornication with young lords and captains, and lay with the Egyptians from her early youth.... Aholibah, her sister, committed still greater fornication with officers and rulers, and well made cavaliers; she discovered her shame, she multiplied her fornications, she sought eagerly for the embraces of those whose flesh was as that of asses, and whose issue was as that of horses."

These descriptions which so madden weak minds, signify, in fact, no more than the iniquities of Jerusalem and Samaria: these expressions which appear to us licentious, were not so then. The same vivacity is displayed in many other parts of scripture without the slightest apprehension. Opening the womb is very frequently mentioned. The terms made use of to express the union of Boaz

People who are not ashamed of nakedness, never cover it with a veil. In the times under consideration, no blush could have been raised by the mention of particular parts of the frame of man, as they were actually touched by the person who bound himself by any promise to another; it was a mark of respect, a symbol of fidelity, as formerly among ourselves, feudal lords put their hands between those of their sovereign.

We have translated the term adverted to, by the word thigh. Eliezer puts his hand under Abraham's thigh. Joseph puts his hand under the thigh of Jacob. This custom was very ancient in Egypt. The Egyptians were so far from attaching any disgrace to what we are desirous as much as possible to conceal, and avoid the mention of, that they bore in proces{sion a large and characteristic image, called Phallus, in order to thank the gods for making the human frame so instrumental in the perpetuation of the human species.

All this affords sufficient proof, that our sense of decorum and propriety is different from that of other nations. When do the Romans appear to have been more polished, than in the time of Augustus? Yet Horace scruples not to say, in one of his moral pieces,

Nec metuo, ne dum futuo vir rure recurrat.
Satire II. book i. v. 127.

Augustus uses the same expression in an epigram on Fulvia.

The man who should among us pronounce the expression in our language corresponding to it, would be regarded as a

drunken porter; that word, as well as various others used by Horace and other authors, appears to us even more indecent than the expressions of Ezekiel. Let us then do away with our prejudices when we read ancient authors, or travel among distant nations. Nature is the

same everywhere, and usages are everywhere different.

It might also very well happen, that men naturally liking images and tales, ingenious persons amused themselves with composing them, without any other motive. However that may be, fable is more ancient than history.

It is said, in the book of Judges, that Gideon had seventy sons born of his many wives; and that, by a concubine, he had another son named Abime {lech.

I once met at Amsterdam a rabbi quite brimful of this chapter. "Ah! my friend," says he, "how very much we are obliged to you. You have displayed all the sublimity of the Mosaic law, Ezekiel's Among the Jews, who are quite a mobreakfast; his delightful left-sided atti- dern people in comparison with the Chaltudes; Aholah and Aholibah are admira-deans and Tyrians their neighbours, but ble things; they are types, my brother-very ancient by their own accounts, fatypes which show that one day the Jew-bles, very similar to those of Æsop, exish people will be masters of the whole {isted in the time of the Judges, 1233 years world; but, why did you admit so many before our era, if we may depend upon others which are nearly of equal strength? received computations. Why did not you represent the Lord saying to the sage Hosea, in the second verse of the first chapter, Hosea, take to thyself a harlot, and make to her the children of a harlot?' Such are the very words. Hosea takes the young woman, and has a son by her, and afterwards a daughter, and then again a son; and it was a type, and that type lasted three years. That is not all; the Lord says in the third chapter, 'Go and take to thyself a woman who is not merely a harlot, but an adul-known in history. teress.' Hosea obeyed, but it cost him fifteen crowns and eighteen bushels of barley; for you know, there was very little wheat in the land of promise:-but are you aware of the meaning of all this?" "No," said I to him. "Nor I neither," said the rabbi.

Now, this Abimelech slew sixty-nine of his brethren upon one stone, according to Jewish custom, and, in consequence, the Jews, full of respect and admiration, went to crown him king, under an oak near Millo, a city which is but very little

Jotham alone, the youngest of the brothers, escaped the carnage (as it always happens in ancient histories), and harangued the Israelites, telling them that the trees went one day to chuse a king; we do not well see how they could march, but if they were able to speak, they might just as well be able to walk. They first addressed themselves to the olive, saying, "Reign thou over us." The olive replied, "I will not quit the care of my oil to be promoted over you." The fig-tree said that he liked his figs better than the

A grave person then advanced towards us, and said, they were ingenious fictions, and abounding in exquisite beauty. "Ah, sir," remarked a young man, "if you are inclined for fictions, give the preference to those of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid." He who prefers the prophecies of Eze-trouble of the supreme power. The vine kiel, deserves to breakfast with him.

FABLE.

Ir is very likely that the more ancient fables, in the style of those attributed to Esop, were invented by the first subjugated people. Free men would not have had occasion to disguise the truth; a tyrant can scarcely be spoken to except in parables; and at present, even this is a dangerous liberty."

gave the preference to its grapes. At last, the trees addressed themselves to the bramble, which answered:-" If in truth ye anoint one king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon."

It is true, that this fable falsifies throughout, because fire cannot come from a bramble, but it shows the antiquity of the use of fables.