pound of lead, discharged at the distance of six hundred paces, shatters my body? When I expire at the age of twenty, under pains unspeakable, and amidst thousands in the same miserable condition; when my eyes at the last opening see my native town in a blaze; and the last sounds I hear are the shrieks and groans of women expiring among the ruins, and all for the pretended interest of a man who is a stranger to us?

Philosoph. Dict. Art. War.

LITERAL PROSE TRANSLATION

Of Voltaire's celebrated Poem entitled "Tactique."

I

WENT last monday to the shop of my bookseller, whose warehouses, with all their variety, often afford me nothing to read. I have got to-day said he, by good luck, a new work, necessary to the happiness of mankind, and as full of instruction as delight. No one ought to neglect the perusal of this performance; the destiny of all depends upon it: let me send it you it is entitled TACTICS.

**

Tactics! said I. Alas! to this day I have been ignorant of the meaning of this learned noun substantive.

It is a word answered my bookseller, that is

*The work alluded to is the Tactics of M. Guibert.

descended

descended to us from the Greeks. It signifies the great art, or the art by way of eminence. The sanguine wishes of the most daring genius find themselves here fully gratified.

I bought his Tactics, and rejoiced in the purchase. I hoped to find in this divine work, the art of lengthening my life; of surmounting the miseries with which it is infested; of cultivating my taste; of subduing my passions; of subjecting my desires to the yoke of reason; of being just towards all men, without ever being their dupe. I shut myself up in my study, I read, I devour, I digest every word of so admirable a work. Great Gods! the object of this was to inftru&t men to cut each others' throats.

I learned that formerly, in Germany, a guileless monk, to amuse his leisure, invented a certain composition of brimstone and saltpetre ; that a large leaden ball, thrown out with a terrible report, ought to be directed to a certain height in order to descend to a certain level: and that this rule being attended to, death infallibly flies out from a brass cylinder in a certain curve called a parabola, and overturns being once repeated and managed with sufficient skill, a hundred blue automata standing all in a row. In a word, musket, dagger, sword with a sharp edge or a sharp point, are all good, all worthy of honour, provided that they kill.

In another chapter, the author describes a set of highwaymen prepared for nightly depredation, who having taken their stand in a hol

It is derived from a Greek word fignifying to atrange or put in order.

low

low way, and being properly furnished with sabres and scaling ladders, proceed in the first place without sound of trumpet or drum, to the assassinations of five or six centinels; afterwards, having dextrously climbed the walls of a city, while each honest trader was sleeping securely in his bed, they spread from street to street fire and sword, stab the men, ravish their wives, knock out the brains of the young children, and at length, exhausted with so many efforts, carouse the wine of another in the midst. of bleeding bodies, The next morning they proceed as in duty bound, to return thanks to God for their heroical enterprize; to tell him in Latin with a nasal twang, that he alone is their protector; that while the town was in flames, they could do nothing without him, that one can neither rob nor ravish to one's heart'scontent, nor massacre the defenceless, without God to second our undertakings.

Surprized as I was at the discovery of this boasted art, I hastened once more to my bookseller, out of breath with horror and amaze, returned to him his volume, and exclaimed, my eyes flashing with rage:

Begone, accursed bookseller of Beelzebub ! carry your Tactics to the Chevalier de Tot. He teaches the Turks to march in the name of the Lord; he instructs unbelievers to cover the Dardanelles with their cannon, and kill the inhabitants of the christian world. Begone! address yourself to the Count de Romanzow; to the pitiless conqueror of Azof and Bender; but

chieffy

chiefly offer this admirable performance to the great Freileric. He knows more of this art than your author, and is upon more confidential terms with Lucifer. He is consummate master of this horrible science, more perfect in it than either Gustavus or Eugene. Begone! I will never believe that human nature came out (God knows when) from the hands of its creator, thus to insult its omnipotent benefactor, to be guilty of so much extravagance, and so much insanity. Man, with his ten fingers, unarmed either for attack or defence, was never formed violently to abridge a life which necessity has already rendered so short. The gout with its chalk-stones, and the hardened slime which forms itself into pebbles at the bottom of the bladder, the fever, the catarrh, and a hundred diseases more dreadful; a hundred mountebanks in ermine, still more the foes of our peace, would have been sufficient to render this globe a valley of tears, without its being necessary to invent this sublime art of war.

The whole race of heroes are my aversion; from Cyrus the great, down to that illustrious prince* that taught Lentulus to conquer. Talk to me as you please of their conduct, sagacity, and generalship, I fly from them all, and give them to the

*Frederick II. King of Pruffia.

Poems.

Mr

MR. JOHN WALKER:

THE melancholy retrospect, that history affords of the calamities of past ages, has been augmented through the depraved tafle of men, who have, in all ages, fince the practice of war was introduced upon earth, unhappily lavished the bewitching reward of praise on the destroyers of men; and the eager desire for falfe glory, which has stimulated poor mortals to their mutual destruction, and necessarily swelled the historic page with rueful feats of arms, seems to have almost precluded, from the records of antiquity, any account of the sweet fruits of peace: nations have seldom desired to be accounted an inglorious people, living in quietness and ease, while their exploits, in battle have been extravagantly delineated. The pious philosopher, spending his time and himself for the good of mankind, the husbandman, mechanic, and physician, with all their useful labours, cut but a poor figure in the annals of time; while the heo, the man of war, rises glaringly to view, mounted on trophies, the wreck of nations; hence history, to a feeling mind, will appear little more than a catalogue of human woes. In one page we often see thousands devoted to the sword, and the victor's triumph, raised at an expence of blood, which a remote nation mourns with floods of tears; while the sweet intervals of peace, which all nations have pro

bably