would not have laid the fcene of them in Italy: they never perverted things in this manner, but to make them originate among themselves; but we are prepared to refute all thofe impoftures of national vanity. Vanity is commonly aukward and off its guard: it has retained here one fact, which gives evidence against itfeif; a fact which carries a characteristic of the countries where the fables actually took their rife; I mean the yellow amber, that bituminous production of the fea, formerly in request as a female ornament, before the use of precious flones; at prefent valuable in the eftimation of the naturalift, as having afforded the first hints of the cle&trical fluid, which acts so great a par. in the phenomena of the univerfe. This yellow amber, which is a production of the north feas, is thrown by the waves on the shores of the Baltic. Do you not think it fomewhat fingular, Sir, that amber should grow in thofe feas, from tears fhed by the fifters of Phaëton in Italy, on the banks of the Po? It must be acknowledged, that thofe tears were fhed in the north; that Phaeton, quitting the path prefcribed to the fun, deviated towards the regions of the Bear, and was there thrown from his feat, and drowned in a river of that quarter the earth. Befides, Herodotus mentions a river which the barbarians name Eridanus, and which flows into the north feas, at the extremity of Europe. He obferves, that this is not a Greek, but a barbarous term, that is to fay, foreign to Greece." P. 234. of M. Bailly, in the next place, contends, that in Tartary, and amidst its Cimmerian darkness, the ancient Greeks, with Homer at their head, place the infernal thades and the Ely fian fields. Man iffued from the north; and to the north, his original refidence, his beatified fpirit must return, to enjoy eternal repofe and pleafure, or his condemned manes mun wander through its gloomy fubterraneous caverns, in the anguifh of defpair, and the horrors of guilt. He endeavours to fhow, that the names of the infernal rivers, and of the infernal judges alfo, are foreign to Greece, Egypt, and Italy: their roots, he tells us, are difcovered in the languages of the north. He takes here a very wide range in the fields of mythology, that is, Afiatic mythology; and labours to prove, that all other na tions have borrowed from it, or adopted it; and in this, perhaps, he is lefs far from the truth than in many other of his romantic pofitions; not the leaft of which is the final one, that the Atlantis of Plato is an island in the Frozen Ocean, he will not determine which, whether Greenland, Spitzberg, or Nova Zembla, then as warm and fertile as they are now cold and barren, and proportionably luminous, as they are now plunged in polar darknefs. Such is the refult of this pro longed and elaborate invefligation! What a waste of erudition and talent, bellowed upon fo unworthy an object of purfuit to a mind like Bailly's, capable of the fublimest and most ufeful fpeculations! To us he appears to fet out upon a wrong bafis; for the whole account of Plato, dwelt upon with fuch fuch minute attention, and every fyllable of which is weighed with fuch scrupulous geographical nicety, feems nothing more than a philofophical romance borrowed from the Egyptians, or perhaps the fole offspring of the brain of that allegorizing fage. The very existence of an Atlantis is juftly doubted; and much more, therefore, the people who performed these amazing prodigies of valour, and made fuch an aftonishing progrefs in fcience. The whole, profeffedly obtained from Egyptian fources by Plato, may have been copied from memoirs congenial with thofe of Mofes concerning the antediluvians; or might be relative, as we have hinted above, to their Cuthite anceflors. After all, however weak the bafis, we can admire the elegance of the fuperftructure; and, though his pofitions may not always be juft, nor his etymological deductions exact, we are charmed with the genius that glows through the whole, the flights of his eloquence, and the profundity of his learning. With refpect to the worship of the fun and fire, which, according to fcriptural tradition, began in Chaldæa, it was a region fufficiently cold, at certain times of the year, to lead its inhabitants to venerate the facred ray; and, with refpect to the Perfians, who are fo repeatedly the objects of his enquiry, according to Dr. Hyde, they paid not their worship to the fimple element of fire, but adored it only as the symbol of the Supreme Being, who pervades, animates, and cherishes the univerfe, The fun was ftill a brighter fymbol, a ftill purer image, the auguft temple in which the Deity was thought to have placed his throne, and was honoured with more fervent devotion, but ftill as a fecondary object. If the Maffagete worshipped alfo the orb of day, it is far more probable that they learned that worthip of the Perfians than the Perfians from them; because Zerdufht, its inftitutor, was a Perfian. With refpect to their worshipping the fun in caverns, it was not done, as M. Bailly intimates, because mankind firft dwelt in caverns; but, if Porphyry may be credited, to mark the eclipfes of that orb, and other aftronomical phanomena; for round the folar cavern, both fun and moon, and all the planetary train, were ranged in imitative orbs, compofed of different metals*. The cavern befides reprefented the world, the world warmed and invigorated by the beams of Confult Porphyry de Antro Nympharum, and Origen contra Celfum, for thefe curious facts, relative to the mysteries performed in the Cave of Mithra, and the aftronomical ladder of feven feps or gates. Mithra, Mithra, not the habitation of human beings. M. Bailly was too good a fcholar not to be acquainted with these celebrated paffages in Porphyry and Celfus, relative to his favourite fcience of aftronomy, in the earlieft ages of its cultivation; and his filence, in refpect to them, argues a difingenuoufnefs very inconfiftent with true philofophy; but they opposed his fyltem, and that fyftem was to be fupported at every hazard. We could point out feveral other glaring inaccuracies; but we have already allotted too large a portion of our Review to this publication; and we rather incline to draw a veil over, than to blazon, the errors of departed genius. ART. IV. Bibliotheque Portative des Ecrivains François, ou choix des meilleurs Morceaux extraits de leurs auvrages en Profe et en Vers. Par MM. Moyfant et De Lévifac. Seconde Edition, confiderablement augmentée, et fur uz Trois Tomes en Six. 8vo. 21. 85. Du nouveau Plan. lau. 1803. THIS HIS was from the first an excellent compilation*, and the augmentations it has now received are fuch as to increase its value in the fame proportion with its fize. It was then the work of M. Moyfant alone; but M. De Lévisac, whose name is now joined in it, is well known as a writer of eminence on the French language. It appears that the whole of the prefent additions proceeds from the latter compiler; for the Preface concludes with this paragraph. "N. B. Si parmi les 1105 nouveaux articles qu'on trouvera dans cette feconde edition il y en a quelques-unes qui déplaisent à des per fonnes d'une opinion different de celle qu'on a en Angleterre, et dans tous les pays où l'on jouit de la vraie liberté, M. De Lévifac croit qu'il eft de fon devoir de prevenir le public que M. Moyfant ayant quitté l'Angleterre trois mois avant qu'on ait commencé l'impreffion de cet ouvrage, n'a eu aucune part à l'infertion qui en a été faite, et qu'on ne peut fans injuftice la lui attribuer. M. De Lévifac fe croit encore obliger de prévenir que M. Moyfant n'eft pas le rédacteur des notices des ecrivains dent on a donné des extraits, et qu'ainfi on auroit tort de lui reprocher des jugemens et des reflections qui deplairont au même parti." With refpect to thefe notices, we have only to obferve that, upon the whole, they are much augmented both in number and extent, and are certainly improved; yet there are fill fome See Brit. Crit, vol. xvi. p. 527. few few omiffions which we rather regret. Thus, at the end of the former profe volume, we have a fhort account of Louis Mayeul Chaudon, a Benedictine, from which we firft learnt, with much fatisfaction, that fuch was the name of the author of that Dictionnaire Hiftorique, which has run through fo many editions, with fo much approbation; but here his name is altogether omitted. We cannot conceive that there are many fuch omiffions; but unless fome reason can be affigned, there certainly ought not to have been even one. The reader will have feen above, that the new articles in the prefent edition exceed eleven hundred. They are taken from the beft ancient writers, and fome modern; fuch as Montazet, late Archbishop of Lyons, Chateaubriant, and feveral more. There is alfo, prefixed to the third volume, a Discourse on French Verfification, by M. de Lévifac, which will doubtlefs be very acceptable to a great number of readers. As many perfons will, perhaps, prefer a fhort and lively specimen, to one of a contrary caft, we shall give only an Epigram. "PORTRAIT DE MDE DI ***. Elle eft vive, elle eft charmante, Elle a l'humeur bienfaifante, Ses yeux depuis peu font naître Nous n'ofons dire fon nom; A tous ces agrémens ne la pas reconnoître ?" Chaulieu. ART. V. The Elements of Phyfiology. Containing an Explanation of the Functions of the Human Body: in which the modern Improvements in Chemistry, Galvanifm, and other Sciences, are applied to explain the Actions of the Animal Economy. Tranflated from the French of A. Richerand, Profeffor of Anatomy and Phyfiology, and principal Surgeon of the Hofpital of the North in Paris, by Robert Kerrifon, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. 8vo. 464 PP. 9s. Murray. 1803. HA ALLER's Primæ Lineæ, and Caldani's Inftitutiones, both of them (but efpecially the firft) works of tranfcendent merit, embrace every phyfiological fact that was known at the time when thofe authors wrote. And if the human mind could, could, at any period, attain to a perfect knowledge of living bodies, nothing would have remained to be added to their treatifes. But all fuch knowledge is, and ever must be, imperfect and progreffive; depending upon the relative advancement of the other branches of natural fcience. Hence the fyftems of one half century will ever be receiving corrections and augmentations from the next; bettered, perhaps, by every fuc ceeding age, but brought to abfolute perfection by none. At the time when Haller wrote, the absorbent veffels, which perform fuch important fervices in the animal economy, had not been thoroughly explored; the ufes of refpiration were not well underflood; the chemical compofition of the different fluids (if we except the blood and milk) had not been inveftigated with any degree of accuracy; nor was comparative anatomy, fo fruitful a fource of phyfiological illuftration, then cultivated fo extenfively and fuccefsfully as it has latterly been. Hence a new system of phyfiology was much wanted; and we were prepared to open with pleasure the volume of which we shall now give an account. Chemistry throws much light upon phyfiology. Now, as the first-mentioned branch of natural knowledge has, within thefe few years, been cultivated with peculiar ardour by the French nation; it could not but follow, that they should turn their attention to phyfiology alfo. Accordingly, various treatifes and obfervations, on different parts of the animal economy, have recently been published in that country, by Bordieu, Bichat, Barthez, Halle, Fourcroy, &c. befides a fyftem on a larger fcale, but not yet completed, by Dumas. To thefe fources, and particularly to the manufcript lectures of Grimaud, late Profeffor of Phyfiology at Montpellier, the author of the present work acknowledges himself to be greatly indebted, as well as to the works of Haller and Semmering. The facts derived from all these authorities, as well as from his own obfervations, he has arranged with confiderable ingenuity, and brought under one point of view in the prefent compen dium*. In the four Sections of the Introduction, the author treats, first, of the Vital Powers; 2dly, of the Relation of Phyfiology to other Sciences; 3dly, of the Claffification of the Vital Functions; and, 4thly, of the Syftem of the great Sympathetic Nerves. The functions of life he refers to two Claffes. Clafs 1. comprehends the functions that ferve for the preservation of the The laft French edition confifts of 2 vols. 8vo. |