comets, fixed stars, constellations, the milky way, &c. Then follows a description of the globes, with solutions of the usual problems, an account of the various periods of time, of the dominical letter, cycles of the sun and moon, the epact, moveable festivals, the doctrine of tides, and a chronological table of the most interesting æras of history, &c. This is the first production of a foreigner, in which we have seen the seventh planet, discovered by Herschel, called by the name of our king. La planète George, says our author p. 8. fait sa revolution dans environ quatre-vingt-trois ans. Sonre foreigners call it Uranus, who was the predecessor of Saturn; and some by the name of the discoverer. M. DESPIAU enumerates a hundred constellations; consisting of the fifty named by the antients, and of the fifty added in modern times by Hevelius, Hailey, Bayer, and Lacaille. It is certain that these constellations are unskilfully named; in a manner not easily graven on the memory, and not at all connected with the history of science. The stars composing them are also very ill distributed, into unequal lots, and mis-shapen combinations. It is surprising that the French Directory should not yet have given orders to De la Lande to turn the Pleiades adrift, and to loosen the bands of Orion; to divide the sky into a hundred new departments, and to assign as guardian spirit to each, a Thales, a Callisthenes, a Galileo, or a Newton. We shall not detain the reader by extracting and translating the author's very accurate directions how to find the hour of the day in any part of the earth, or what letter is to stand for Sunday in the next year's almanac. It is however melancholy to observe how much of astrological credulity still clings to the structure of our calendars, and how imperfect is the victory yet gained over the Sidrophels of this superstition. In his tables of chronology, M. DESPIAU ventures to note several dates anterior to the invention of the year of 365 days; which was first introduced only 888 years before Christ. Every previous date is utterly uncertain; and many of the subsequent dates are very boldly specified by him. ART. XXVI. Quelques Observations d'un Cosmopolite, &c. i. e. Some Observations, by a Cosmopolite, on the Project of shutting the Weser and the Elbe against the Commerce of Great Britain. 4to. pp. 12. No place of publication. 1797. Imported by Dulau. A REPORT was some time since industriously circulated that the French were about to demand of the Congress at Rastadt, a denial of the navigation both of the Weser and of the Eibe to the commerce of England; a regulation which would greatly injure the cities of Bremen and Hamburgh. This pamphlet contains an attempt to prove that such a meaBure would materially, though indirectly, injure the commerce of France; and would not certainly distress, in any very great degree, the commerce of England: to which Embden, and espe cially the undervalued port of Tonningen on the Eider, together with all the Danish and Baltic sea-towns, would still remain open. As this threat of the French probably had for its object to levy some contribution on the terrors of the Hamburghers, in the form of a loan, and as this end is probably accomplished, we trust that our philanthropic author will have to felicitate himself on the apparent success of his arguments. ART. XXVII. Dokimion, oder Practischer Versuch, &c. i. e. Dokimion, or a Practical Essay on the real Relation subsisting between the Living and the Spirits of the Departed. By GUSTAVUS ERNEST WILLIAM DEDEKIND. 8vo. pp. 184. Hanover. 1797. PERHAPS it is a provision of nature for the perpetuation of the religious spirit, that a hopeless atheism should render uncomfortable the individual who embraces it; and should occasion him to seek refuge even in the most improbable superstition, sooner than not be rid of that negative faith, that privative belief, which, like silence, cold, and darkness to the bodily sense, extinguishes by its very nature a vast branch of the pleasures of imagination. From the regularity with which atheism has been renounced by those who have profeffed it, and almost always for some more than usually superstitious form of religion, it should seem to operate like a directly debilitating system of regimen on the natural body; and to increase, as it were, the irritability of credulity, so as to render it more susceptible of future impressions. At least, we can in no other way account for the extraordinary increase of enthusiastical publications which seem now to inundate the literary world, and which bid fair not only to supersede the forgotten pamphlets of French sceptical philosophy, but to embarrass the use of reason itself, to subdue the very spirit of inquiry, and to darken Europe with the evening twilight of a dismal and servile superstition. The author of the work before us appears to have felt this increasing re-action of opinion. He very seriously and methodi cally labours to prove that we shall always continue, as natural Beings, to act on other natural Beings according to established laws of the universe; and that we shall for ever continue to experience, from other Beings, an analogous agency. This reci procal causality and dependence is an analogy common to the world of appearances, (Ershemungen,) and might be inferred à Q ૧ 2 priori Tay. priori with respect to the spirits of the departed, even if we did not know à posteriori that they very frequently do operate on us. We are so unwilling to favour the progress of this philosophical Swedenborgianism, that we shall content ourselves with the prefent cursory notice of a work which is certainly written with ability, and is dangerous to common and feeble intellects. Tay ART. XXVIII. John Bull der jüngere, &c. i.e. John Bull junior; or, on the recent Accident of the Bank of London. By Jous GEORGE BUSCH. 8vo. pp. 46. Hamburgh. 1797. PROFESSOR BUSCH, of Hamburgh, has long been known in the literary world as a most industrious compiler of commercial and statistical information, and as an intelligent theorist in political economy. His work on the Circulation of Money we had occasion to quote in vol. xxiii. p. 231; aud his various tracts on political subjects have obtained, both at Paris and at Rastadt, a marked attention. He probably inclines to the politics of the Gallican advisers of the king of Prussia. The pamphlet before us is only curious because it relates to the Bank of England. After having divided banks with great formality into Giro-banks (Banks of Deposit, Adam Smith calls them, B. iv. c. iii.) and Note-banks, and having classed the London Bank among the latter; after having given the history of its difficulties in 1697 and 1745, and alluded to its recent and more alarming stoppage; the venerable Professor undertakes an analysis of its present financial condition. In his opinion, (p. 24,) the nation is indebted to the Bank 11,686,800/. irrcclaimable, by agreement; and 9,964,4137. which must also be funded on the same footing. He rates the bank notes in circulation at 13,770,3907. and the advance to the India Company at 6,000,000, and makes out a probable ultimate property of 3,826,8907. on the hypothesis that government would agree to pay off at par (!) the funded capital of the Bank. As the papers annexed to Mr. Allardyce's Address to the Proprictors (see Review, July, p. 349) had not yet reached our author, and as these documents would enable him to correct many essentially erroneous assumptions, we abstain from all comment on the more material part of the work. The pamphlet winds up with an allegorical history of John Bull junior, in which the patience of the nation under its present rapid expenditure is ridiculed, and an alarm of national bankruptcy is encouraged. ART. ART. XXIX. Die Politische Wichtigkeit der Freiheit Hamburgs, &c. i.e. The Political Importance of Hamburgh and its Sister-towns considered in a new Light. By J. G. BüscH. 8vo. pp. 60. Hamburgh. 1797. SUPERSTITION has had her sacred territory, which the cons tending Greeks agreed to exempt from the ravages of war; and why not Commerce? In the opinion of Professor Büscн, it is for the common interest of the belligerent powers that Hamburgh, Lubeck, and Bremen, should not be comprehended in a war of the empire, but should be suffered, unblockaded and unplundered, to continue in peace their useful occupations. France, it is urged, gains by their neutrality a mart for her wines and oils, and a mode of supplying hct armies with clothing :-Britain, it is asserted, has an interest in maintaining some thoroughfare to the continent, that her manufactures may continue to distribute themselves over the surface of Europe; while Prussia and Austria, it is pretended, will find their internal convenience improved by suffering a regular traffic to flow, as usual, to these industrious sea-ports.is all very true, but not more true than that these powers would severally find it for their interest to be at peace themselves; and to pursue aggrandizement by internal industry rather than by conquest. These four great powers have not, however, an equal interest in the independence and neutrality of Hamburgh. England and Austria have a complete interest in it; because they can neither of them hope to usurp it for themselves:-but France or Prussia may reasonably hope to keep, if they can once seize, any of these towns; which would be a stronger interest than the temporary profit of their neutrality. They will not, therefore, in the event of war, be respected by these powers. It is wonderful that the northern Princes of Germany should not be more alive to the danger of France usurping, under the name of an independent republic, the whole interval between the Rhine and the Weser. The Overyssel is already in fact a French department. ART. XXX. Lettres Choisies, &c. i. e. Select Letters of Mad. de MONSIEUR LÉVIZAC has not, like many of his fellow emi- Tay. of that work, an ingenious tract on the French Articles, a preface to a neat and correct edition of La Fontaine's Fables, and the volume now before us. This volume contains a judicious selection of the letters of two French ladies, which have been generally accounted models of the epistolary style. Those of Mad. de Sevigné are thus characterised by the editor: La réputation dont jouissent les Lettres de Mde. de Sévigné est trop bien établie pour qu'il soit nécessaire d'insister sur leur beauté. Le temps, ee juge impartial sûr du mérite des ouvrages d'esprit, n'a fait que confirmer dans les idées qu'on en eut, dès qu'elles parurent. Chaque jour ajoute de nouvelles fleurs aux guirlandes dont le siècle du génie du bon goût s'est plu à parer cette femme aimable & extraordinaire. En effet, pensées fines & profondes, expressions animées & pittoresques, tours bardis & inattendus, style delicat, brillant & varié, grâces légères & naïves, naturel piquant, aisance continue, heureux abandon, art de narrer unique ; en un mot, tout ce qui peut attacher le caur & charmer l'esprit se trouve dans ses Lettres au degré le plus éminent. La négligence même y est une grâce.' Although we cannot entirely subscribe to this high eulogium, we allow that Mad. de Sevigné is an original writer: her style and manner are all her own; and no one, perhaps, ever possessed the talent of giving importance to the most trifling topics, in a greater degree than that lady. The main subject of her letters is not, indeed, of this description; it is maternal love, expressed in all the variety in which it can appear: but this subject is interspersed with so many unimportant anecdotes, court intrigues, jealousies, disappointments, &c. &c. that the greater part of the nine volumes may be said to consist of trifles. Yet never were trifles better told; and the careless ease of polite conversation shines through every page. Even Madame de Sevigné, however, is not without spots. M. LEVIZAC himself is obliged to acknowlege that her style is not always pure; and the notes, which he has added, are chiefly for the purpose of pointing out its defects in that respect. We beg leave to give our opinion that, even in its purest form, it is not the genuine epistolary style; and that the letters of Madame de Maintenon are far superior. We are sorry that so few of these appear in this collection. The Abbé has given in his preface a short account of the life of Madame de Sevigné, and memoirs of Madame de Maintenon are prefixed to her letters. He has also made extracts from those of the letters of Madame de Sevigné that are not here published, a selection of brilliant passages, bons mots, &c. of which we give the following as a specimen : "Long hopes wear out joy, as long maladies wear out grief." "I know |