The Pruffian army, being compofed chiefly of ftrangers of different countries, manners, and religion, are united only by the ftrong chain of military difcipline: this, and a moft rigid attention to keep up all the forms of difcipline eftablished, conftitutes a vast and regular machine; which, being animated by the vigorous and powerful genius of their leader, may be justly accounted one of the moft refpectable armies in Europe: but fhould this fpring, however, languifh but for an inftant only, the machine itself, being compofed of fuch heterogeneous matter, would probably fall to pieces, and leave nothing but the traces of its ancient glory behind. They have a facility in manœuvring, beyond any other troops whatever; and their victories must be afcribed to this chiefly; for all the genius of the leader can do nothing without it, and almost every thing with it. The Spaniards are brave and patient; and have befides a point of honour, which being improved, would make them good foldiers : their army at prefent would make but an indifferent figure for two or three campaigns, as their generals have neither that knowledge founded on ftudy and application, or that produced by experience. The English are neither fo lively as the French, nor fo phlegmatic as the Germans: they refemble more, however, the former; and are therefore fomewhat lively and impatient. If the nature of the English conftitution permitted fome degree more of difcipline, a more equal diftribution of favours, and a total abolishment of buying and felling commiffions, I think they would furpafs, at least equal, any troops in the world. The Turks, and every government founded on military force, muft neceffarily decay, unlefs the fame fanaticism which gave it birth, be kept up by continual wars. Mahomet understood this principle fo well, that he has made a religious precept of it, commanding his followers never to make peace with their enemies. As the force of this army depends entirely on numbers and enthufiafm, if this laft is ever extinguished, which now feems to be much the cafe, the other will avail them nothing; and that immenfe fabric, being no longer animated with the only fpirit which could fupport it, muft fink under its own weight. HE defign of this perform ance is to fhew that preaching has contributed very little, in any age of the world, to the reformation of mankind, and that it is in the power of government alone to produce this happy effect. The author appears to be a man of fenfe and genius, a friend to virtue, and a lover of mankind; his manner of writing is fprightly and agree able; and though many will, no doubt, look upon every thing that is faid in regard to improving the manners and morals of mankind, as idle and vifionary, yet the dif cerning reader, who is acquainted with the nature and hiftory of man, will be convinced of the weight and importance of many things, which he advances. He He fets out with obferving, that men, ever fince they have formed themselves into focieties, have been preaching to one another, though with little fuccefs. He fhews briefly from the hiftory of the Old Teftament, that the preachers both before and after the flood made few converts. When he comes to the time of our Saviour, he fays,"It is not for us, worms of the earth, the children of darkness, blind in the book of life. to ask, why the Light of the world did not purify the world by the fire of his word; why, after his death, both Jews and Gentiles continued what they were before? We know that he fent his apostles to preach to the nations; but we know likewife, that the nations, instead of attending to the apoftles, put them to death, and that, till the days of Conftantine, preaching made few profelytes. "Here we must carefully diftinguish between the converfion of the understanding, and that of the heart; the establishment of a new worship, and the establishment of manners. This is an important diftinction, and I fhall have occafion to return to it by and by. Conftantine spread Chriftianity over those extenfive countries that were fubject to the Roman empire. Clovis introduced it into Gaul, Charlemagne into Germany, Ethelbert into Great Britain, &c. A fine triumph for the ecclefiaftical hiftorians! Methinks I hear Gregory of Tours fay to me, "Caft your eye over Gaul, and behold in the temples which are rifing every where in honour of the true God, thofe altars, that cross, that facrifice, thofe facraments, thofe public prayers, thofe humiliVOL. IX. ations, thofe marks of penitence, that hierarchy of paftors to preferve the facred depofitum of the faith." "I fee them, but I fee at the fame time kings and queens with croffes on their foreheads, and crimes in their hearts. I fee a Clovis, with the cross on his face, fhedding the blood of five princes, his own relations, in order to invade their little territories; I fee, &c. &c. The number of preachers, fince the ages of Chriftianity, is prodigiously increased, together with the number of the faithful. At a certain hour of a certain day of the week, fifty thousand preachers, in the different countries of Europe, affemble the people, and fay to them whatever they pleafe; and to thefe preachers fovereigns truft the important bufinefs of manners. In reading the Roman history, it is obfervable, that the magiftrate alone fpoke to the people jure regali. In the days of Conftantine, the magiftrate was filent, and the prieft fpoke." Our author goes on to obferve, that the prefent manner of preaching is ill calculated to warm the imagination, or reach the heart; that the preachers of other religions have been as unfuccefsful as thofe of the true; and that preaching in every age and country, has been more fuccefsful in recommending evil than good. He then proceeds thus: But there have been preachers of another fort, who, without attending at the altar, have preached good morals; let us fee what fuccefs they have had. I begin with the poets, the first inftructors of mankind, who have the belt claim to the attention of their hearN ers, ers, as they always fpeak a divine language, os divina fonans. We have nothing left of the works of Orpheus, who fung his morals before the days of the prophets. But if fable, in order to give us a high idea of them, tells us, that he tamed the fierceft animals, and even foftened the heart of Pluto, it tells us at the fame time, that he could not calm the amorous rage of the women of Thrace, who tore him in pieces on account of his indifference: a bad omen for those poets who were to preach virtue after him. "Among the poets we are acquainted with, fome have preached in heroics, fuch as Homer, Virgil, Lucan, Taffo, Camcëns, Milton, and the author of the Henriade. When the Iliad appeared, Greece was divided into as many parties, as there were states in it. They were continually attacking each other, and inteftine convulfions fhook the general conftitution. Homer forefaw the fatal confequences of their divifions, and employed the voice of reafon, the force of example, the majefty of style, the pomp of words, the charms of poetry, to fhew them the danger of difcord; but union no where appeared. Never perhaps was the Iliad more read, or more admired, than in the days of Pericles; becaufe at that period, the tafte and genius of the Greeks were at their height; even the vulgar were ftruck with the beauties of poetry and eloquence. It is not neceflary to cite the paffages, where Homer, always attentive to the great point he had in view, paints difcord in the form of a famished monfter feeding on blood and carnage. It is fufficient for my purpofe to observe, that the Greeks, whilft they were finging the verfes of Homer, extolling his poetry and the moral he inculcated to the fkies, were tearing one another in pieces. "The wife Virgil, whilft he flattered the Romans in his Æneid, purposed to himself, no doubt, to rekindle expiring virtue in the breafts of his countrymen, Accordingly he fings of a hero ever juft, ever patient, ever brave, ever full of piety towards the gods. This is the principal character with which he marks him, pious Eneas, &c. and in order to infpirethe greater horror of irreligion, and thofe other vices which were haftening the ruin of Rome, even under her own triumphal arches, with what dreadful noife, with what horrid apparatus, does he open the infernal regions to their view? In that abyfs of tortures, nine times deeper than the distance between earth and heaven, he fhews profane mortals, thofe mifers who accumulated wealth without sharing it with the indigent; brothers who lived in enmity with brothers; fubjects who took up arms against their rightful fovereigns; traitors who fold their country for money; magiftrates who enacted or abolished laws from views of intereft; fathers guilty of inceft and children of parricide. "Was Auguftus, was Tiberius, was Caligula, was Nero, were the grandees of their courts, was that multitude of corrupt wretches who difgraced all the different orders of the empire, frighted at the fight of this picture of Tartarus? Did they change their conduct? Alas, no! Was Virgil himself truck with the picture he drew? Three lines in his Georgics incline me to doubt of it. Felix "I might say a great deal upon the Henriade; what a fermon! name to me a fingle moral virtue ; a virtue beneficial to fociety; a real virtue, which is not there placed in its ftrongest light. Valour, juftice, humanity, generofity, obedience to the laws, loyalty to the prince, appear in their most beautiful and affecting forms; the fame true and ftrong pencil draws, in the most terrible colours, thofe follies which ruined our fathers; that fanaticism, for example, that blind and stupid fury which reafon never tamed. This poem has now been preaching to us for the space of forty years; what impreflion has it made on our theological difputes, wherein our divines pelt one another with the flones of the fanctuary? What has lately happened in a great city*, where public clamour, furprizing the attention of juftice, made an innocent old mant be put to death? The annual thanksgivings that are offered up to Almighty God in the fame city for a religious maffacre, fhew that fanaticism is ftill cherished in our breafts, and that this monster would ftill commit .dreadful ravages, if the wifdom of government did not chain it down. "But of all the epic poets, Milton has chofen the grandest fubject, and the fitteft for a preacher his plan is immenfe! it comprehends the counfels of the Alnighty, and the whole creation; * Toulouse, thofe torrents of light and pleasure which flowed from the angels, whilft they continued in their allegiance; that fea of fire into which their rebellion hurled them; their rage against man when innocent and happy in the garden of Eden! It comprehends their efforts to ruin him, and their fatal fuccefs; the terrible confequences of his tranfgreffion, the air covered with black clouds, winds let loofe, ftorms, tempefts, volcano's; earth refufing her fruits, war preparing her fcourges, force, tyranny, famine, with numberlefs plagues; and this horrid fcene not even terminated by death itfelf: heaven fhut and hell opened for the miferable, who are born only to fuffer, and to fuffer, because defcended from a guilty progenitor. "But I weaken Milton; his poem, from the beginning to the end, is a fublime fermon, a difcourfe of the Almighty, a language of fire, a facred enthusiasm ! his countrymen began to read it in the reign of Charles the Second; and in this reign, more than in any other, the allurements of riches, luxury, and debauchery, made England forget both the fall and the punishment of man. But it is not one nation only that is interested in this poem; it relates to, the most important intereft of all nations. Accordingly, all Europe reads Paradife loft: It ftrikes, it aftonishes; but does it reform ? alas no!" Our author now proceeds to confider what influence the dramatic writers, and the fatirifts of ancient and modern times, have had upon the morals of mankind. † Calas. He fhews, in a fprightly and agreeable manner, that men, whether they cry or laugh, ftill continue the fame; that laws are not better obeyed, focial virtues more practifed, juftice more refpected, or faith better kept. Hiftory too, which is more natural, more fimple than poetry, though it has always endeavoured to correct the manners of mankind by facts and reflections arising from them, has, he obferves, never attained its end; whilft it continues to relate the calamities that cover the earth, it fhews the inefficacy of its own efforts. paffions, but a worthy man with paffions. "Does he fpeak of God? He takes care not to reprefent him as an arbitrary lawgiver, who commands or forbids, without any other motive but that of being obeyed. He does not fay, Honour and love your father and mother, because God commands it; but he fays, God commands it, because, if you refufe to hearken to this first call of nature, there is no other being whom you will honour, none whom you will love. He does not fay, Abstain from violence, becaufe God forbids it, but he fays, God forbids it, because with it, towns and countries would foon become an immenfe theatre of con. fufion, horror, and blood. He teaches us, after Cicero, that law is not a human invention, but the expreffion of that univerfal reafon which governs the world; that, like it, it is eternal and unchangeable; that it does not vary according to times and places; that what it commanded or forbid in the beginning of the world, it ftill commands or forbids to every nation on earth and after having fixed the boundaries between vice and virtue, far from feei an implacable ju pher fees in him punishes, form. "If the force of inftruction," continues he, "could produce good morals, this glory, next to the preaching of the gospel, fhould feem to be peculiarly referved for philofophy. The philofopher, in order to eftablifh morality, neither borrows the bitterness of fatire, nor the enchantment of the theatre; neither the thunder of eloquence, nor the fublime of infpiration. He difdains to make ufe of any inftrument of furprife; he confines himself to the fimplicity of reafon; he opens before us the book of nature, which fpeaks an intelligent language to every understanding; he looks for the foundation of morality in the conftitution of things; he fuppofes nothing, but proves every thing. Is an action hurtful to fociety? it is Now, bad, and he profcribes it. Is it beneficial to fociety? it is good, and he recommends it. Thus it is that he lays the line, and afcertains the boundaries between vice F and virtue. He allows us the ufe of all the gifts of nature, and only defires us not to abuse them:h means not to form a man with |