"The Scythians, or barbarous inhabitants of Perfia, according to the account of Juftin, conquered a great part of Afia, and attacked Egypt, about 1500 years before the reign of Ninus, the founder of the Allyrian monarchy; that is, fo far as the faint light of chronology can pretend to der termine fuch remote events, about 3660 years before the Christian æra. The Egyptians, a people of Allyrian extract, as the Coptic language feems to evince, were, from fuperior local advantages, civilized at a more early period; and their genuine chronology feems to begin about 4000 years before Chrift. The venerable historical records contained in the Scriptures atteft the early civilization and ancient polity of the Egyptians; but, as the Allyrians (pread far to the eaft of Judea, they feem to be filent concerning the Perfians, except a latrap or two be implied. The firit feat of the Perfian monarchy was probably in the north-eaft, on the river Oxus, while the Allyrians poffelled the Euphrates and the Tyris, and the fouth-west of Perfia. There is no evidence whatever, from records, remains of antiquity, or any probable induction, that this planet has been inhabited above fix or feven thousand years. The invention and progrefs of the arts, the mythologies and chronologies of all nations, except the Hindoos, indicate this term as the utmost limit; before which, if men had existed, indelible traces of them must have appeared, whereas hiftory can account for every relic that is found. For the great antiquity of the earth there are many evidences; but none for the antiquity of man." (p. 325.) The fentiment expreffed in the laft of thefe fentences will to many, perhaps, appear a bold one. To us, we confefs, it appears perfectly harmless. There is, we even think, abundance of phenomena which seem to prove it well-founded; and it certainly involves no consequences inconfiftent with the doctrine of Mofes. [To be concluded in our next.] Letters of a Mameluke, or a Moral and Critical Picture of the Manners of Paris. With Notes by the Tranflator. From the French of Jofeph Lavallée, of the Philotechnic Society, &c. &c. In Two Volumes, 12mo. PP. 576. gs. boards. Murray. 1804. THE fable of this work is now a very common fiction. A perfon from one country visits another country, totally different in religion, politics, fentiments, focial, civil, and domeftic life, and communicates to his own countrymen, by letter, the impreffions which he receives from contemplating the frangers. But we think the affumed character is not very steadily maintained. Writing as a Mameluke our author fails not to fhew that he is a veritable French Thefe letters difplay vivacity, ingenuity, and penetration, and are written in an agreeable ftyle, of that. light caft, which French writers fo very often exhibit. When we allow the author the praise of penetration, it is neceffary to explain the extent in which he appears to us to poffefs that quality. Both his critical and moral ftrictures fhew that he is well acquainted with the details of French literature and manners; and alfo with the characters usually ascribed to both. But when, from acute obfervation on specific manners, cuftoms, usages, and celebrated works, he attempts to rife to general estimates, we find that the author is a man of tafte, both of literary and of of moral difcernment; but by no means a profound philofopher either in criticism or conduct. From the combined extent and circumfcription of Mr. La Vallée's talents, together with the prejudices, real or pretended, of a Frenchman, at the prefent time, we account for the motley mixture of this work, which beftows just p aifes on Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, prefents the appropriate characters of tragedy and comedy, yet feems to imagine that no moderns but Frenchmen ever arrived at any excellence in either; which paints in clear and glowing colours many of the French frivolities and foibles, yet attributes to Frenchmen the merit of the highest genius, and declares them as a nation totally free from vice; which in every detail of their purfuits and occupations marks their folly and vanity, and, in a general view, reprefents them as wife and magnanimou; which profeffes to adore benevolence and vi tue, and idolizes Buonaparte. It muft, however, be acknowledged, that, though he is the most extravagant encomiaft of the ufurping adventurer, and the fystem which he has established, he does not often introduce this fubject or dwell long upon it. He evidently withes to appear the idolizing admirer of the Corfican; and repeats the fubftance of what ycophants of the tyrant have poured out in his praife, or against the monarchy: but this part of the production is very like an effort of a man either courting fome gift, or apprehending fome evil from the poffeffor of power. Much, therefore, as we deteit a Frenchman who would defcend to flatter this bane of Frenchmen; we rather pity than abhor a poor author who panegyrises such a mifereant obviously against the grain. Wherever he touches upon politics he falls very fhort of his own exertions when writing upon other fubjects. His account of the French revolution is as fuperficial and extravagant as any that ever we have perused in the many abfurd publications that have come before us. Leaving his politics therefore as very unworthy of the rest of his letters, and not deferving of notice or refutation, we fhall chiefly confine ourselves to his moral and critical exhibition of the French as they are now found. The first object which ftruck the stranger in contemplating Paris was the height of the houfes, which in that metropolis rife to many ftories. Next was the hurry and bustle of the people. "The French (he fays) do not walk but run. Horfes, carts, coaches, cabriolets, butchers, water-carriers, hufars, pedeftrians, all run, all drive on as hard as they can they joftle, puh, and run foul of each other; they threaten and overset one another, rise again, and go on as if nothing had happened." The French have exceffive curiofity, with little felection as to objects. They were greatly agitated by the first appearance of the Mameluke in the street, until their attention was drawn off by a drum, inviting them to an exhibition of-dancing dogs. The French are beyond all other people the votaries of hope. They have not ftrong, at least steady, domestic affections; and their fentiments of friendship are very wavering and inconftant. The life of a Parifian fine lady is very humourously pourtrayed. The French poffefs a great spirit of contradiction, contradiction, and wish to render themselves confpicuous by appearing fingular. Our Mameluke, near the middle of the first volume, comes to the French drama; and fhews very evidently that he has formed his notions of dramatic excellence from the execution of eminent French writers much more than the confideration of the general ends of plays. He fubfcribes to the unities, as obferved by the chief dramatic poets of France, rather than by nature and reafon. He is a critic not upon Dr. Johnfon's enlarged plan. In fpeaking of epic poetry he ranks Voltaire with Virgi! and Homer. Thefe, however, we regard as the criticisms of a partial advocate rather than of an inadequate judge. With found difcrimination he feverely blames the conftitution of the Opera, either ferious or comic; and fhews the abfurdity of pantomime. The French are extremely inattentive to theatrical propriety. "The Parisian will know wonderfully well the number of bows he ought to make on entering a room; he will judge, without erring, what place of honour ought to be given, at table; he will mark the fhades of refpect which ought to be fhewn between fuch and such a magiftrate. In a theatrical reprefentation, the actors, forgetting the character, the rank, and the dignity of the perfonages they perform, will tranfgrefs, in his prefence, thofe rules of propriety to which he is fo much a flave. He will fee it with indifference. The most fubaltern confident will come and fpeak familiarly to Semiramis; a freedman will chat cheek-by-jowl with Auguftus; a valet will put on his hat before his master." Such inattention to probability on the ftage our author imputes to ignorance; but it must rather be forgetfulness of the purpose of the theatre, which is imitation, than ignorance of propriety in the model of that imitation. In France comedians are very much undervalued. Perfons of fashion treat them as ftrolling players, and the common people call them buffoons, or merry-andrews. Religion denied them burial, the laws branded them with infamy, and custom banished them from fociety. Thus, while the French laboured with meritorious ardour to refine their dramatic works, to render them eterual monuments of the fublimity of their poetry, and the purity of their morality, they ftrove to make the reciter of these master-pieces the moft impure clafs in the community. The degrading estimation of the profeffion vitiated the individuals. While the Mameluke afcribes thefe, and many other follies, to Frenchmen, he, in the very next page, pours on them an eulogium, that never nation 66 nor individual merited. Vanquished or victor, fubject to wise kings, or bent under defpotic monarchs; enlightened or ignorant flaves, or free; whatever were the circumftances of government, when they were called to figure as a nation on the theatre of the world, majefty, greatnefs, loyalty, bravery, fincerity, franknefs, difintereftedness, clemency, are the characteristics of the French nation. Look into their history, and judge. Individuals have been to blame, and the nation never. There is no nation that has not had a great national vice; Rome pride, Carthage treachery, Sparta hatred, Athens fickle nefs nefs, all Greece egotism, Egypt credulity, Affyria avarice, Persia meanness, and fo many others. Thence for fix thousand years paft the misfortunes of the world. Alone on the face of the earth the French nation is fill immaculate." Should we undertake to argue against fuch an affertion, we should be equally idle, as its advancer is abfurd and extravagant. The national vices of the French, when acting a great part on the theatre of the world, have been uniformly ambition and rapacity, joined with exceffive vanity and infolence, and in later periods comprehending all the enormous crimes that the moft ferocious and blood-thirty favages, affifted by ingenuity and invention, could devife and perpetrate. In intervals of peace they have been peculiarly diftinguished by vanity and infolence; we were going to add fraud and profligacy, but these they participate with fome other nations of fouthern Europe. Like many others who are ingenious without being deep, our author is much addicted to paradox. He undertakes to defend the Catholic League as, in the great body of the people, the result of a spirit of liberty, that would have been very laudable if it had not been corrupted by religious fanaticifm. We cannot feparate the League from the principles that gave it birth. Our author draws a parallel between it and the revolution, beftowing great praife on both, but the higheft on the revolution. We think that in one effect they fomewhat agree. They both exemplify the uncontrouled violence of French paffion, which, whatever object it pursues, is withheld by no moral restraint from feeking gratification. The revolution combined with the ftate which it has laft generated, is, according to our author, the moft glorious event in human history, and reached its prefent pinnacle of glory, because the genius of an extraordinary nation has been found in unifon with the genius of an extraordinary man. Such exclamations of madness or duft-licking adulation might do for a fermon, preached by the Archbishop of Rouen before Buonaparté; but what motive any Englishman could have for translating, or London book feller for vending, nonfenfical and raving flatteries towards a man who is the most bitter enemy of the British King and nation, it is, not our business to divine; we will at leaft fay the publication of this part of the work did not arife from loyalty and patriotism. But with much pleasure we take leave of our author's political differtations, and greatly as we difapprove their scope, we must candidly admit they are fo extremely flimfy and fuperficial in execution, that the badnefs of the tendency is far inferior to the badness of the object. In the fecond volume, our author keeps chiefly to the manners of the French, and very clearly demonfr/tes in detail, that they whom he had declared to have no vice are chiefly governed by caprice and vanity. This is the burden of the remaining part of the work. Under this view he paints with lively humour their fondnefs for drefs. From the fame cause he deduces their fondness for duelling; and mentions various anecdotes which place the frivolous vanity of their caufes of quarrel in a more despicable light than any in which they have ever been reprefented represented by the fevereft Antigallican fatirifts of England, who have expofed the levity of the French mind and character. The evening parties of the Parifians, by this account, are ftill more empty and infipid than the London routes, which fo far furpafs moft inventions for preventing in fafhionable parties the intrufion of British fenfe and knowledge. Speaking of French jealoufy, our author pays the men of that country a poor compliment in deriving it from imperioufnefs, and not from fentiment. Paragons as they are of angelic virtue, the French, according to the account of this their advocate, treat brutes with great cruelty. At Paris there is every appearance of active bufinefs; but really fuch grofs idlenefs, that a very great portion of the inhabitants do not know when, they rife in the morning, how they are to live the rest of the day, having no refource but fwindling and iniquity. Is this the immaculate nation? They bring up their children in the fame way, and confequently, in all moral probability, to the fame pursuits. A great portion of the French are extremely illiterate, and cannot fpell their own language. This remark he illuftrates by various entertaining anecdotes. One of the chief fubftitutes for idleness is gaming, a vice which the author allows to be extremely prevalent in France. In fhort, while our author, in his general character of the French nation, celebrates them as far beyond all other human beings, in the highest attributes of human nature, genius, wifdom, and virtue of every denomination, yet in his detail and particular defcriptions he exhibits the French as the moft frivolous, capricious, vain, unprincipled, and unfeeling people that can be conceived; and never were two accounts written by two authors hostile to each other, more opposite than this author's general and particular accounts of the French. An advocate adverse to that people, if he were to argue with this writer, might fay, like Sheridan's Sir Anthony Abfolute to Mrs. Malaprop, “You are the politeft arguer I ever met with; for one word against my caufe, you have twenty against your own." For this contrariety it is not difficult to difcover the reafon. Reprefenting the immaculate virtue of the French having no data, in fact, the writer was obliged to truft to imagination, and that airy companion hurried him up among the clouds. In painting their vices and follies he had fimply to follow his own obfervation, and in that by much the greatest part of his work, he appears perfectly at home, a very fair and true defcriber. Daubeny's Vindicia Ecclefiæ Anglicane. N the work before us Mr. D. has largely entered into the queftion real merits may, we think, be difcuffed in a very fhort compafs. The neceffity intended by the Church, in her article, is a moral neceffity, fuch |