nearly so, who were to circulate them among the people at the lowest rate. These were the means used to pervert the people and bring them to the present state you see them in. I shall not see them long, for I shall die of grief and remorse !" This recital had made the company shudder, nevertheless they could not but be struck at the remorse and horrid situation in which they beheld the speaker. Their indignation for Philosophism was carried still further, when Le Roy explained the meaning of ECR: L'INF: (écrasez l'infame, crush the wretch), with which Voltaire concludes so many of his letters.' The Second Volume contains an account of the anti-monarchical conspiracy. Many reflections present themselves to us on the contents of this volume, particularly on that part of it in which the author undertakes to prove that the free masons had a great share in producing the French revolution. He intimates that the principles of liberty and equality were among the secret doctrines of the antient mysteries; that they certainly made a part, if they were not the essence, of the arcana of the Manicheans; that they survived the general destruction of the sect, and were found among its descendants in the East by the Knights Templar when they made their eastern conquests; that they were the real cause of the extinction of that order, but that they were not generally communicated among the body of Templars, a few only having the knowlege of them; that they were preserved by these few, but with determined and increased hatred to royalty, on account of the persecution which they had just suffered from the reigning sovereigns; that to the remnant of the Knights Templars, the free masons owe their origin; that the free masons must be divided into the various stages of apprentices, masters, elect, Scottish lodges,, Rosicrusians, and Kadoschs; that the first two Kadoschs are generally nothing more than clubs of good-humored persons, indulging themselves in the pleasures of the table, and systematically performing acts of the greatest beneficence: but that, among them, there are sometimes found designing members of the higher lodges, who avail themselves of the opportunities which occur, of propagating the occult doctrine, and are particularly attentive to familiarize members to the extreme notions of liberty and equality, by frequent repetition of those words, in their discourse and their songs: that the veil is just drawn up to the elect: that it is drawn up somewhat higher in the Scottish lodges,—but that even there, most of what is important is kept from sight: that much is revealed to the Rosi crusians, and almost every thing discovered to the clubs of the Kadoschs: that there the members vow eternal hatred both to Christ and to royalty: that, horrible as the Kadoschs are, there is one lodge of masons still more horrible; and these are the illuminated;—their hatred is not confined to Christ and to royalty, they are leagued to extirpate from every form of government all belief of a God. Vol. II. concludes with the Kadoschs: the author reserving the history of the illuminated for a third volume. It was our intention to include in the present Appendix a review of the second volume, and to give our sentiments, at some length, on the author's notions respecting the influence of the free-masons on the French revolution, and their supposed descent, through the Templars, from the Manicheans:-but, after some consideration, we find the subject of this second volume so much connected with the materials of the third, that we think it necessary to defer our review of the former till the latter shall lie before us. ART. IX. Philosophie de Mons. Nicolas, i. e. The Philosophy of Mons. Nicolas. By the Author of The Human Heart unveiled. 12mo. 3 Vols. about 300 Pages in each. Paris. 1796. . WE E at first suspected that irony was couched under the title of these volumes: but we were speedily convinced that every page had been penned in sober sadness; and we are concerned to say that the philosophy of Monsieur Nicolas is an ideal chaos, in which dullness and madness contend for mastery. We shall state the heads of a few of the sections and chapters, and then translate a specimen, sufficient to exemplify the spirit of the author's philosophy. An extract may be endured from a production, of which the whole is intolerable. 1. Idea of the system of the universe; 2. of the planets; 3. of the earth, and its chrystallisation; 4. of the comets; 5. origin of the planets; 6. planetisation of the comets, and their necessity in the solar system; 7. whether the comets are inhabited; 8. life of the planets; 9. death of the planets.— 239. The comets and the planets are brothers and sisters. Effects of their contact. 240. Does the intelligence of man improve, as the planet approaches the sun. 362. The terrestrial epidermis is calculable comparatively with ours. 363. Confirmation of the opinion of the existence of giants. Lice of the earth, when a comet: we are the nits. 430. That the parasitical animalcules of man and animals are necessarily produced on him, as he is himself on the epidermis of the earth; and that they are the effect of the superabundance of nourish ment. We will now exhibit the developement of some of these curiosities: Vol. ii. p. 226. It is certain that we have never penetrated into the interior of the substance of our mother. Vegetable mould is only only her foulness (sa crasse) produced by her continual perspiration. The mineral earth, where lie the stones and metals, is but her insensible epidermis, which we can calculate by comparison with our own. At the end of our fingers, the epidermis has a considerable thickness. It is thinner on the covered parts, but it would be much thicker if we went naked.'. -P. 228. I interrupt myself here to recur to an observation which confirms what I have said of the existence of giants in the human and other species. We know that there are still found skeletons of these last of an extraordinary size, and not belonging to any known species. My observation is this: our bodies being the image of the earth our mother, that which has happened to them has happened to it. Thus in infancy we had lice. The great animals that existed on the earth, when a comet, were monsters, in comparison with us. They incommoded the earth, and occasioned itching. She got rid of them, as we get rid of our vermin. She united herself to a body similar to herself, as her moon or some comet, which crushed or roasted or stifled or drowned them. Now the earth is old; and, by her proximity to the sun, she has only nits instead of lice; and they cannot act sensibly on her old epidermis, which is more callous than the tender skin of her youth:but she has still vegetable giants, viz. great trees.' The following calculation almost immediately follows: Our largest lice, being two lines in diameter, are to a man six feet high as I to 432. Accordingly, the first giants, those Briareu ses who are celebrated in antient story, could only be 432 times smaller than the planet. The earth, in its comet state, was probably, as at present, 9000 leagues in circumference, and 3000 nearly in diameter. Briareus and his equals were then little less than twentyone leagues in circumference. Such were the first great beings on the comet, newly brought forth, whether it came from the sun of was produced from a planet in child-birth.' This is all deduced from the following certain principle.' Every thing in nature has a general or individual life. Every thing is a type and image. The great beings, God, the suns, the cometoplanets, are types. God is a type for the suns; the suns for the cometoplanets; the cometoplanets for the animals which dwell on their surface. The author assures us that he writes under the immediate dictation of Nature. He does not introduce more consistency and connection, because the reader ought to perceive his manner, his march, or rather his inspiration: see vol. ii. p. 235. After these examples, we need not stop to delineate the cha racter of the present extravagant performance. One of the chapters, however, tempts us to add a few words. The learned reader will see at once why we have not given them in English. In capite 82, cui titulus, anecdotes sur les experiences physiques du Roi de Prusse, Frederic II., autumat master, jussu regis Borussorum, Frederici II. nefanda experimenta super super bominibus cum brutis animalibus coeuntibus capta esse, idque felici quoad prolem successu: præsertim in sue & aliis carnivoris. Congressus quidem cum herbivoris non esse infecundos; sed prolem periisse, propterea quod multum cibi genus rite appeteret.- Hac vana et falsa esse quis non videt? Credere fas est quendam e familiaribus auctori hujus libri, homini insulso ac ridiculo, hâcce fabulâ illusisse. The work entitled the Human Heart unveiled, by which the author characterises himself, is unpublished. It will make 12 volumes; and those who may desire to possess themselves of it need only subscribe their 24 livres at the printing-house of the Cercle Social at Paris. ART. X. Memoires de Physique & d'Histoire Naturelle, &c. i.e. Memoirs of Natural History and Natural Philosophy, established on Bases of Reasoning, independent of all Theory; with an Exposition of new Considerations on the general Cause of Solutions ; on the Matter of Fire; the Colour of Bodies; the Formation of Compounds; the Origin of Minerals; and the Organisation of living Bodies; read to the first Class of the National Institute at the ordinary Sittings. By J. B. LAMARCK, Member of the Institute. 8vo. pp. 412. Paris. 1797. Imported by De Boffe, London. Price 7s. sewed, IT appears that this essay of transcendental chemistry is but the continuation of a series of labours, undertaken by M. LAMARCK to rectify the logic of this important science. We are, however, only acquainted with his refutation of the pneumatic chemistry, and his researches, by the frequent mention of them in these memoirs; and we need not regret the privation, as it is sufficiently manifest that he who has read one has read all. As the pneumatic or Lavoisierian theory is, we imagine, the only one now received in France, we suppose it to be on this account that M. LAMARCK levels his arguments against it in particular. His general principles are equally adverse to every mode of explaining phænomena, that has been adopted by the chemists. The author did not find himself under the necessity of making a single experiment. No established fact, he thinks, opposes his principles and their consequences; and, in his preliminary discourse, he begs to be stopped by any auditor, versed in the processes of chemistry, when any acknowleged experiment is in contradiction with what he advances. The foundation of the philosophy of this writer is that all compounds exist by virtue of their essential (or integral) partièles. Of such particles consist their visible masses, if they be either liquids or solids; and their invisible masses, if they be elastic fluids. The essential particle is composed by a certain number of simple principles, united in certain proportions. As long as the particle preserves its nature, the number, proportions, and arrangement of its principles remain the same. Thus in lime-stone a particle of lime is not attached by affinity to a particle of carbonic acid, so that the nature of each is preserved. Every compound, therefore, is of a simple or identical nature; and no compound can arise from the combination of other compounds, still existing as such. This is illustrated by fictitious diagrams, in the case of the calcination of lime-stone. The essential particles of compounds are formed of a number of elementary principles; and in chemical operations, what is added or withdrawn is in no case the essential_particle of a compound, but simple or primitive elements. Thus, in the calcination of lime stone, it is not water nor carbonic acid, as such, that is separated,-but one set of elementary particles unite to form the essential particles of the quick-lime, another those of the water, and third those of the carbonic acid. In general, the author maintains that no product of analysis is contained in the matter subjected to chemical operation. When, therefore, he objects to the pneumatic chemists that they hold products and residues to be already present in compounds, on which either nature or art effects a change, it is obvious, as we before observed, that he combats a doctrine long anterior to the new French theory. It has, for instance, been supposed, since the time of Glauber, that such and such neutral salts consist of certain acid and certain alkaline particles: whereas M. LAMARCK insists that the elements of the given acid and alkali are fused (if we may so speak) into an essential molecule or particle of the neutral compound. Affinity, according to him, is not a particular force or tendency; it is merely an aptitude to union-the result of a suitableness (convenance) in the nature of certain substances, or in the shape of their particles, which allows of the aggregation of these particles, so that they may cohere in masses. Electric attraction is a pure climera. This, we believe, will suffice to give the attentive reader an idea of the author's fundamentum chemicum; and an inattentive reader would not be able to collect it from the whole original work. The manner in which the author directs his attacks against the proper tenets of the pneumatic chemists cannot be sufficiently explained within the compass of one of our articles; and it may be sufficient to say that he rejects the radicals of the gasses, as imaginary existences, and oxygene among the rest. Fire alone, in its different states, constitutes at once the car- » bone, |