effusion, she tenderly kissed the feeble creature she had bewailed, folded it up more warmly, and seeing it begin to close the eyes, rocked it on her lap, and hushed it to slumber.' This detail is followed by some observations on the impolicy of imprisonment for debt, with a selection from which we shall finish our extracts: A There is here no need of declamatory vehemence; we live in an age of commerce and computation; let us therefore coolly inquire what is the sum of evil which the imprisonment of debtors brings upon our country. It seems to be the opinion of the late computists, that the inhabitants of England do not exceed six millions, of which twenty thousand is the three hundredth part. What shall we say of the humanity or the wisdom of a nation that voluntarily sacrifices oue in every three hundred to lingering destruction! The misfortunes of an individual do not extend their influence to many; yet if we consider the effects of consanguinity and friendship, and the general reciprocation of wants and benefits, which make one man dear or necessary to another, it may reasonably be supposed, that every man languishing in prison gives trouble of some kind te two others who love or need him. By this multiplication of misery we see distress extended to the hundredth part of the whole society. If we estimate at a shilling a day what is lost by the inaction and consumed in the support of each man thus chained down to involuntary idleness, the public loss will rise in one year to three hundred thousand pounds; in ten years to more than a sixth part of our circulating coin. 6 I am afraid that those who are best acquainted with the state of our prisons will confess that my conjecture is too near the truth, when I suppose that the corrosion of resentment, the heaviness of sorrow, the corruption of confined air, the want of exercise, and sometimes of food, the contagion of diseases, from which there is no retreat, and the severity of tyrants, against whom there can be no resistance, and all the complicated horrors of a prison, put an end every year to the life of one in four of those that are shut up from the common comforts of human life. Thus perish yearly five thousand men, overborne with sorrow, consumed by famine, or putrified by filth; many of them in the most vigorous and useful part of life; for the thoughtless and imprudent are commonly young, and the active and busy are seldom old.' The statement of the population of England, included in this passage, is below the mark: but the force of the argument is not thus much diminished. On the views of Peace and War, Mr. Pratt's reflections are truly spirited and patriotic: but, as they do not differ from those of other writers, who have liberally volunteered their services in the present momentous crisis, we may excuse ourselves from subjecting them to particular notice With much apparent reluctance, the gleaner takes leave of the reader; for to a Retrospect he adds a Summary, and to the Summary he affixes something by way of Appendix.-In the preface, he produces evidence of a fact formerly maintained, that, in some parts of Wales, lovers carry on innocent courtship in bed; but, however true this account may be, we do not recommend the adoption of the practice in England. What Mr. Pratt means (p. 83,) by Pliny's history being a pleasing romance, we do not understand; and there are several expressions, such as 'gleanworthy;' some two years ago,' &c. which we as little approve as the following line in one of the Sonnets, 6 To mark the place where god-like friend has been.' Mr. Pratt's intentions, however, are so good and benevolent, that it is impossible not to pardon trifling errors in style; and though fastidious readers may at times disapprove his prolix sentimentality, it must be their own fault if their hearts be not warmed in the cause of virtue. We are glad to find that Mr. Pratt has adopted a hint thrown. out in one of our former articles, and is preparing for publication a work in two octavo volumes, forming an Inquiry into National Inventions, Improvements, moral and social state of the Artizans in manufacturing towns, public prisons,' &c. &c. We hope that he will be diligent in collecting facts sufficient to warrant indisputable deductions, and that from them he will reason logically, temperately, and successfully. ART. V. Indian Antiquities: or, Dissertations, relative to the An- WE * This expression is employed when speaking of M. de la Condamine's visit to London, and is a great error in chronology as well as inelegance of construction. See the Gentleman's Magazine for June 1763, (Vol. 33.) P. 304. Moy. to remark on his unwarrantable flights and his strained hypotheses, or to point out his defects and his mistakes, we endeavoured to perform this duty with gentleness, and were carful not to disregard any grounds for praise which we were able to discern; being unwilling to damp laudable ardour, or to deprive the public of the benefit of labours which, however they may be appreciated, will be admitted by all to have been directed to useful and important objects *. If Mr. Maurice since our acquaintance commenced, has improv ed in his style, and displays greater judgment, he still continues more the rhetorical than the philosophical narrator; he is industrious in accumulating, but takes not much pains in arranging his materials; his collection is an exhibition of specimens of the ore mixed with its various alloys, and adhering to its matrix,-not of the purified metal. He may be compared to a traveller who has marked out the boundaries of a country, and traced some of its prominent features, but who leaves it to more accurate adventurers to draw out a distinct and correct map; he has sketched a design, rather than executed a chef d'oeuvre. If, however, we regret what has not been accomplished, we applaud much of what has been done; and we express our unfeigned thanks to him for the large stores of knowlege which he has amassed relative to a subject of great interest to the republic of letters, and of high and peculiar importance to this country. This volume is introduced by a dissertation on the bullion and coined money of the antient world; the facts to elucidate which are very judiciously selected. Mr. M. gives a short account of the several mines which in former days furnished the precious metals, as those of antient Arabia, which he supposes to have been the Havilah of the Pentateuch; those of Sofala, the Ophir of the scriptures, as he contends after Bruce; those of the Pyrenean mountains of Spain; those of the Thebais in Egypt; those of Caramania in Persia; those of silver at Sunium in Attica; and those of Thrace, which are said to have yielded three millions of our money annually to Philip and Alexander. To illustrate this subject, he exhibits to his reader the wealth which centered at Persepolis when Alexander held his court there; and he then traces it to the capitals of his Generals who divided his conquests among them. He discovers an immense portion of it displayed in the procession at Alexandria, made to celebrate the coronation of Ptolemy Philadelphus, of which Athenæus gives an account; another division of it fell to the share of Seleucus, and was See M. R. Vols. xii. pp. 1. 129. 246. xiv. p 311. xix. p. 401. and xxiv. p. 37. N. S. exhibited at Daphne near Susa by Antiochus Epiphanes, the particulars of which are related by Polybius; the remaining share of it went to the kings of Macedon, and we meet with the statement of its contents in Plutarch's relation of the triumph of Paulus Æmilius. Mr. M. next enters into a detail of the riches of Rome in the days of the republic, and under the first emperors. It appears that, in the time of Antony, the revenue drawn annually from Asia exceeded three millions of our money, and that the taxes paid by Alexandria alone in the reign of Augustus amounted to more than a million and a half. In the subsequent extract, our modern bankers will see what venerable persons their predecessors were in antient times; yet, notwithstanding the sanctity of their characters, they do not seem to have been so weil entitled to confidence as their less pretending successors: The principal hoards of treasure, both in bullion and coined money, among the Greeks, we know to have been in their temples, which were crowded with presents of immense value, brought by the superstitious from every part of Greece. These temples were consi dered as national banks, and the priests officiated as bankers, not always indeed the most honest, as was once proved at Athens, where the state-treasurers, having expended or embezzled the public money, had the audacity to set fire to that part of the temple of Minerva where the treasure was contained, by which sacrilegious act that magnificent fane was near being wholly consumed. Their purpose, however, was fully answered, since the registers of the temple were reported to have perished with the treasures, and all responsibility precluded. The temple, just mentioned, the superb fane of Jupiter Olym pius, at Elis, and that of Apollo, at Delphi, were the principal of those sacred depositaries. The priests, at all times, concealed the total sum of the treasures lodged in them with too much caution for us to know the amount, yet, when the Phocenses, urged to despair by the exactions of the Thebans, seized on the treasures of Delphi, they amounted to ten thousand talents, above two millions two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling; and probably that but a small portion of what holy perfidy had previously secured. Those deposited at the great temple of Ephesus, considered through all ages as inviolable, probably far exceeded those of the three lastmentioned.' We shall now copy the details of some facts, which will enable the reader to form an idea of the opulence and extravagance prevailing in the latter days of Rome : Its inhabitants, in their magnificent entertainments and sumptuous mode of living, far surpassed the princes of Asia itself; for, we soon after find them sleeping on beds of gold and ivory, quaffing the rich wines of Chios and Falernus out of gold and silver goblets, and L 3 riding riding in carriages shining all over with those bright and precious metals. To supply this unlimited extravagance, the governors of these provinces, whence they were principally obtained, as we learn from Cicero against Verres, committed the most unheard of extortions; while the most shameless corruption pervaded every department of the state, and the most infamous crimes polluted the whole body of the citizens. Indeed, how was it possible for the stream to be pure when the fountain itself was so deeply contaminated? When we find a Vitellius consuming between seven and eight millions a year on entertainments, and a Caligula expending above eighty thousand pounds sterling on a supper, we cannot wonder at the tragedian Clo dius Esopus lavishing on one luxurious dish 600 sestertia, £.4,843, 10s. or the young spendthrift, his son, treating each of his guests, after dinner, with a superb cordial, in which a costly pearl had been dissolved +. The wealth of Crassus was proverbially great, and amounted to £1,614,583, 6s. 8d.; but far greater was that of Pallas, the freed man of Claudius, for it was valued at £2,421,875; but both were exceeded by that of Lentulus, the augur, who was worth quater millies, or £.3.229,166, 13s. 4d. Even poets and philosophers, in those golden days, amassed vast fortunes; for Seneca, in four years, acquired ter millies, £2,421,875; and, according to Servius, in the life of Virgil, that poet was worth centies H.S. or 4.80,729, 35. 4d. This sum, however, though great for a poet, was not thought sufficient to support existence by a pampered Roman senator, since the famous Apicius, after spending in culinary delicacies millies H.S. or £.807,291, 135. 4d. and squandering, besides, the amount of immense grants and pensions, on casting up his accounts, finding he had only this exact sum remaining, poi soned himself, that he might not perish by the severer pangs of famine. In their dress and furniture they were equally expensive; for Lollia Paulina, the great beauty of Rome in the time of Caligula, and on that account compulsively advanced to his bed, when fulldrest, constantly wore jewels of the value of £.322,916, 13s. 4d. and the price for rich Babylonian triclinaria, coverlids, or carpets for their dining-beds, was £6,458, 6s. 8d. Nor could their houses themselves be of mean fabric or decoration; since that of Crassus was valued at sexagies, H.S or £.48,437, 10s. while that of Clodius cost centies et quadragies octies, or £.119,479, 5s. 4d. ‡ Those houses were externally cased with marble, and had marble pillars to support the lofty ceilings; they were internally decorated with rich tapestry; with costly hangings of Tyrian purple; with urns and statues exquisitely sculptured and polished, and paintings of the most beautiful desigu and brilliant colours; fountains of variegated marble played in their cenacula, or great banqueting-rooms, cooling the air and refreshing the guests, who dined off gold plate, served up on tables overlaid with silver, and reclined on sofas sustained by legs of ivory, silver, and sometimes even gold. They were also uncommonly splendid in the article of lamps, which were often fabricated of the most precious Ibid. lib. xxxv. cap. 12.' Pliny, lib. x. cap. 60.' materials, |