ing to give the dispute an effectual termination by the intervention of the cudgel, when I awoke, and behold it was a dream! The third night I found myself in the midst of a brilliant company of ladies and gentlemen. Cheerfulness and innocence seemed to beam from every countenance. I was treated with the utmost affability and complaisance. My heart began to exult with the most pleasant emotions. The music struck up ; each took his fair partner by the hand, and a sprightly dance immediately commenced. My spirits were much more elevated than I ever had experienced on any former occasion. I moved through the various evolutions of the dance with as much ease and alacrity as if my body had been a mere vehicle of air. But, in the midst of this enchanting scene, while setting to a young lady, my breeches fell plump to my heels! I quickly attempted to lay hold of them; but in vain. The very power of reaching forth my hand was abstracted from me. I remained fixed as a statue, and the dance was interrupted. The blushes of the company discovered how sensibly they felt my misfortune, but none had the courage to assist me. In short, the feelings peculiar to such a whimsical situation became at last so exquisitely painful, that I should infallibly have fainted away, had not sleep instantly departed, and restored me to reason and joy. The fourth night's employment was still more serious and awful. I saw a groupe of winged angels descending from the sky. One of them, who seemed to lead and command the rest, had a large golden trumpet in his hand. When near the surface of the earth, he sounded the instrument, the noise of which made all nature shrink. He announced the arrival of the last day, that day when the quick and the dead are to be judged, and receive everlasting rewards or torments, according to the merit or demerit of the deeds done by individual mortals. Astonishment and anxiety arrested all the living. They stood motionless, and looked aghast. A new scene instantly appeared. I saw the dead rising in myriads all around me. I particularly remarked, that, in the Grey-friars' church-yard, hundreds of both sexes pushed one another out of the same graves! The day was so cold and frosty, that the terrified expectants of doom were all shivering. Another phenomenon solicited my attention. I saw immense numbers of leaden pipes, filled with cold water. Another trumpet was sounded, and the angel proclaimed, that, instead of being roasted in the flames of hell, the damned were to have their limbs eternally immersed in these water pipes. Terrified, and half petrified with this frigifying idea, I got the start, and awoke. Upon examination, I found, that, by some accident, my limbs had been uncovered, and were excessively cold. This simple incident produced the whole scenery I have represented. But here I must stop, lest I should discover more of my own character than would be consistent with prudence. For the Literary Magazine. HINDOO ALMANACS. THE almanacs in common use in India are computed at Benares, Tirhut, and Nadeea, the three principal seminaries of Hindoo learning in the company's provinces; and hence they are annually dispersed through the adjacent country. Every Brahmin who has the charge of a temple, and who announces the time for observing religious ceremonies, is furnished with one of these almanacs; and, if he be an astronomer, he introduces those corrections which a difference of latitude and longitude may require. The Benares almanac is used in the upper part of India; that computed at Nadeea, in Bengal; and the Tirhut in Bahar. 'To these almanacs the Hindoos are obliged to recur, in order to know what day of the month it is; because the several months, both solar and lunar, consist neither of a determinate number of days, nor are regulated by any cycle, but depend solely on the motions of the sun and moon; and their months sometimes begin on different days in various places, on account of the difference of latitude and longitude, as well as of the difference which arises from error in computation. The civil day in all parts of India begins at sun-rise, and is divided into sixty parts, called dandas, the astronomical year. The Hindoos of Bengal, in all their common transactions, date according to solar time, and use what is commonly called the Bengal era: but, in the correspondence of the Brahmins, in dating books, and in regulating feasts and fasts, they generally note the teethee. Of the Tirhut almanac, there is reason to conjecture that it agrees with that of Nadeea more than with that of Benares. For the Literary Magazine. TRANSLATOR. THE facetious author of Hudibras, in the argument of his first canto, alludes to Ariosto's method of telling a story: which are subdivided into sixty pa- REMARKS ON ARIOSTO AND HIS las. Wherever the Benares patra is used, the civil year is lunisolar, consisting of twelve lunar months, with an intercalary month occasionally introduced. It begins at the day after the new moon next before the beginning of the solar year. The lunar month is divided into thirty parts called teethees, each of which is equal to the time in which the true motion of the moon from the sun is twelve degrees. The method of computing the days by these teethees, and also of counting their months, is extremely intricate. The Nadeea almanac begins with the day after that on which the astronomical year commences; this is called the first of the month, the next is denominated the second, and so on to the end; and therefore the number of days in the month varies from twenty-nine to thirty-two. The names of the months are the same with those of the lunar months in the Benares almanac: but the lunar months begin, not as those do at the full, but at the new moon, and are called by the name of the solar month which ends during the course of them. From the commencement of the Nadeea almanac, and from its giving the day of the solar month, which that of Benares does not, we may infer that it is customary, in those parts of India where the Nadeea almanac is used, to date by the solar month, and to begin the year on the next day to Th' adventure of the bear and fiddle for this most celebrated Italian poet frequently contrives to end his cantos in the most interesting part of his narrative; and, instead of presenting us, in the succeeding canto, with a continuation of it, introduces the reader perhaps to a new series of adventures, which, in like manner, are left half told, for the sake of resuming a story suddenly dropt in a former part of the poem. From this circumstance, much of the pleasure which might be derived from the perusal of the Orlando is destroyed. Such frequent interruptions dissolve the enchantments raised by his genius, and give a painful check to the pleasing illusions of the fancy. This is one reason why the readers of the Jerusalem of Tasso are more numerous than those of the Orlando of Ariosto. It is not, however, the only one. Setting aside the extreme length of the Orlando, there is a oneness in the Jerusalem, which this poem does not possess. This work of Ariosto, who is the Shakespeare of the epic poets, is a rich tissue of adventures of dames and knights, in which a luxariant imagination sports at large, regardless of former patterns, and of the prescribed rules. Every lover of poetry will pardon these eccentricities, and will follow Ariosto, with an enthusiasm of admiration, through all his meanders; but the general reader, finding his attention perplexed and distracted, will soon be induced to throw the work aside. The object of Hoole, the translator, in one of his Ariostos, was to remove the difficulties which occur in the perusal of the Orlando, by giving a greater regularity to the work than the author assigned to it, in order that more readers may be invited to enjoy the beautiful fictions with which it is so eminently enriched. He does not make a partial and unmeaning display of fables, sentiments, or descriptions, which, by being violently taken from their proper places, must lose all relative merit; but he reduces his translation into a narrower compass, by omitting many parts not essential to the connection, and by compressing others: at the same time he arranges the different adventures in a more uniform series, so as not only to lead the reader through all the pleasing diversities of the poet, but to form a complete whole, in which the great and important action might stand sufficiently marked amidst a variety of subordinate episodes. This undertaking is sufficiently hazardous, and will ever be regarded with an evil eye by men of true taste. Such will be apt to exclaim, let us have the original just as it is, and leave us to find fault and amend according to our own judgment. For the Literary Magazine. L. A SKETCH OF DR. HUGH BLAIR. DR. HUGH BLAIR was born in Edinburgh, on the 7th day of April, 1718. His father, John Blair, a respectable merchant in that city, was a descendant of the ancient family of Blair, in Ayrshire, and grandson of the famous Mr. Robert Blair, minister of St. Andrews, chaplain to Charles I, and one of the most zealous and distinguished clergymen of the period in which he lived. The views of Dr. Blair, from his earliest youth, were turned towards the church, and his education received a suitable direction. In the year 1739, he took his degree of A. M. On that occasion he printed and defended a thesis De Fundamentis et Obligatione Legis Natura, which contains a short but masterly discussion of this important subject, and exhibits, in elegant Latin, an outline of the moral princi. ples, which have been since more fully unfolded and illustrated in his sermons. On the completion of his academical course, he underwent the cus, tomary trials before the presbytery of Edinburgh, and received from that venerable body a license to preach the gospel, on the 21st of October, 1741. His public life now commenced with very favourable prospects. The reputation which he brought from the university was fully justified by his first appearances in the pulpit; and, in a few months, the fame of his eloquence procured for him a presentation to the parish of Colessie, in Fife, where he was ordained to the office of the holy ministry, on the 23d of September, 1742. But he was not permitted to remain long in this rural retreat. A vacancy in the second charge of the Canongate of Edinburgh furnished to his friends an opportunity of recalling him to a station more suited to his talents. And though one of the most popular and eloquent clergymen in the church was placed in competition with him, a great majority of the electors decided in favour of this young orator, and restored him, in July, 1743, to the bounds of his native city. In this station Dr. Blair continued eleven years, discharging with great fidelity and success the various dųties of the pastoral office. In consequence of a call from the town-council and general-session of Edinburgh, he was translated from the Canongate to Lady Yester's, one of the city churches, on the 11th of October, 1754; and on the 15th day of June, 1758, he was promoted to the High Church of Edinburgh, the most important ecclesiastical charge in the kingdom. To this charge he was raised at the request of the lords of council and session, and of the other distinguished official characters who have their seats in that church. And the uniform prudence, ability, and success which, for a period of more than forty years, accompanied all his ministerial labours in that conspicuous and difficult station, sufficiently evince the wisdom of their choice. No production of his pen had yet been given to the world by himself, except two sermons preached on particular occasions, some translations, in verse, of passages of scripture for the psalmody of the church, and a few articles in the Edinburgh Review; a publication begun in 1755, and conducted, for a short time, by some of the ablest men in the kingdom. But standing, as he now did, at the head of his profession, and released, by the labour of former years, from the drudgery of weekly preparation for the pulpit, he began to think seriously on a plan for teaching to others that art which had contributed so much to the establishment of his own fame. With this view, he communicated to his friends a scheme of lectures on composition; and, having obtained the approbation of the university, he began to read them in the college on the 11th of December, 1759. To this undertaking he brought all the qualifications requisite for executing it well, and along with them a weight of reputation, which could not fail to give effect to the lessons he should deliver. For, besides the testimony given to his talents by his successive promotions in the church, the university of St. Andrew's, moved chiefly by the merit of his eloquence, bad in June, 1757, conferred on him VOL. VI. NO. XXXIV. the degree of D.D., a literary honour which, at that time, was very rare in Scotland. Accordingly his first course of lectures was well attended, and received with great applause. The patrons of the university, convinced that they would form a valuable addition to the system of education, agreed in the following summer to institute a rhetorical class, under his direction, as a permanent part of their academical establishment: and on the 7th of April, 1762, his majesty was graciously pleased "To erect and endow a professorship of rhetoric and belles lettres in the university of Edinburgh, and to appoint Dr. Blair, in consideration of his approved qualifications, regius professor thereof, with a salary of 701." It was not until the year 1777 that he could be induced to favour the world with a volume of the sermons which had so long furnished instruction and delight to his own congregation. But this volume being well received, the public approbation encouraged him to proceed: three other volumes followed at different intervals, and all of them experienced a degree of success of which few publications can boast. They circulated rapidly and widely whereever the English tongue extends; they were soon translated into almost all the languages of Europe; and his present majesty, with that wise attention to the interests of religion and literature which distinguishes his reign, was graciously pleased to judge them worthy of a public reward. By a royal mandate to the exchequer in Scotland, dated July 25th, 1780, a pension of 2001. a year was conferred on their author, which continued unaltered till his death. The sermons contained in the last volume which bears his name were composed at very different periods of his life; but they were all written out anew in his own hand, and in many parts re-composed, during the summer of 1800, after he had completed his eighty-second year. They were delivered to the publishers 10 about six weeks before his death, in the form and order in which they now appear. And it may gratify his readers to know that the last of them which he composed, though not the last in the order adopted for publication, was the sermon on a Life of Dissipation and Pleasure, a sermon written with great dignity and eloquence, and which should be regarded as his solemn parting admonition to a class of men whose conduct is highly important to the community, and whose reformation and virtue he had long laboured most zealously to promote. In April, 1748, he married his cousin, Katherine Bannatine, daughter of the Rev. James Bannatine, one of the ministers of Edinburgh. By her he had a son, who died in infancy, and a daughter, who lived to her twenty-first year, the pride of her parents, and adorned with all the accomplishments that became her age and sex. Mrs. Blair herself, a woman of great good sense and spirit, was also taken from him a few years before his death, after she had shared with the tenderest affection in all his fortunes, and contributed near half a century to his happiness and comfort. Dr. Blair had been naturally of a feeble constitution of body; but as he grew up his constitution acquired greater firmness and vigour. Though liable to occasional attacks from some of the sharpest and most painful diseases that afflict the human frame, he enjoyed a general state of good health, and, through habitual cheerfulness, temperance, and care, survived the usual term of human life. For some years he had felt himself unequal to the fatigue of instructing his very large congregation from the pulpit; and, under the impression which this feeling produced, he has been heard at times to say with a sigh, "that he was left almost the last of his cotemporaries." Yet he continued to the end in the regular discharge of all his other official duties, and particularly in giving advice to the afflict ed, who, from different quarters of the kingdom, solicited his correspondence. His last summer was devoted to the preparation of the last volume of his Sermons, and, in the course of it, he exhibited a vigour of understanding and capacity of exertion equal to that of his best days. He began the winter pleased with himself on account of the completion of this work; and his friends were flattered with the hope that he might live to enjoy the accession of emolument and fame which he expected it would bring. But the seeds of a mortal disease were lurking unperceived within him. On the 24th of December, 1800, he complained of a pain in his bowels, which, during that and the following day, gave him but little uneasiness, and he received as usual the visits of his friends. On the afternoon of the 26th, the symptoms became violent and alarming: he felt that he was approaching the end of his appointed course; and retaining to the last moment the full possession of his mental faculties, he expired on the morning of the 27th, with the composure and hope which became a christian pastor. The lamentation for his death was universal and deep through the city which he had so long instructed and adorned. Its magistrates, participating in the general grief, appointed his church to be put in mourning; and his colleague in it, the writer of this narrative, who had often experienced the inestimable value of his counsel and friendship, delivered, on the sabbath after his funeral, a discourse to his congregation. For the Literary Magazine. WHY THE ARTS ARE DISCOURAGED IN AMERICA. THAT the arts are not encour aged in America is a fact which cannot be disputed. The cause of it forms a subject of curious speculation. That it arises from nothing |