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were every day performed; the dupes of the new folly daily increafed; and they who faw through it were awed into filence. Every vice was covered by an attachment to, but no virtue could redeem the man who dared to be difobedient to, thefe pretended holy orders.

But the object in this period the, moft worthy of attention is the reign of Alfred. It cannot be too much ftudied in this country, by either prince or people. In it we difcern the feeds of every thing great and good that ftill remains in the conftitution of the united kingdom. Whether he was the founder of various inftitutions, or whether he only more firmly eftablished them, it is in his reign that their influence was feen to the greateft advantage. The Wittena-gemati, or the meeting of the men of wisdom in the laws of their country, performed the duties of the parliament at prefent; and the principles of representation, though not fo well known as at the prefent day, were held in the highest honour by the wifeft and greateft prince that has ever been feated on the English throne. The trial by jury immortalifes the name of Alfred; and the noble inftance of juft feverity, which marked one year of his reign, is a proof of his regard for juftice and the welfare of his people. In one year, forty-four judges were hanged up for their mal-practices; and the example was highly beneficial, for it has been the mean of impreffing a regard for juftice in our courts of law, unknown in moft other countries. The annual election of the executive officers of government, such as sheriffs, aldermen, conftables, bersholders, and the like, who were all annually elected by the people, is another great proof of the wisdom and magnanimity of this king, which made his office more easy and more honourable, and the effential parts of the adminiftration of government lefs ex

penfive than in any state where a. fimilar election is not allowed. For thefe and many other confiderations, both in the public and private character of the great Alfred, his name will remain upon record among those who have defended their country by arms, improved it by arts, and established it on the firm bafis of wife laws and impartial administration of juftice. Neither Lycurgus, nor Solon, Numa, nor any hero of antient or modern times except Mofes, can claim the fuperiority over, or be placed even on the fame level with, our immortal countryman.

nor

Quest. III. What is the meaning of Druidifm, and what were the chief points of the Druids' faith?

Druidifm means the faith and doctrine of the Druids, who were the priests of the antient religion of the Britons, Gauls, and the northern states of Europe, before they were conquered by the Romans. They derive their name from the word Drew, which in the antient Celtic language means wisdom or knowledge; and from its affinity to drus in Greek, which means an oak, and the religious ceremonies ufed by the Druids in cutting the milletoe from the oak, they were fuppofed by the Greeks to derive their name from the oak and their, attachment to it. The more ignorant a nation is, the more attached it is to thofe who pretend to fuperior knowledge, and particularly to those who affect to have an intercourfe with heaven, and are imployed in the rites of religion. The Druids abufed their influence in the moft horrid manner; interfered in every affair of life; fecured to themfelves the education of youth; poffeffed a variety of immunities; and by the formidable inftrument of excommunication kept in awe alltheir opponents. The wretched object of this fentence was held in abhorrence by all his countrymen, even by his family and friends: he

might laugh at the impudent folly of the priest, and think himself happy in being relieved from affociating with fuch bafe and intriguing characters; but his contempt of their knavery and fuperftition did not preferve him from the contempt and the infults of all who furrounded him; and whilst he was an object of horror, the priests enjoyed their triumph in the gradual deAtruction of their victim.

Dark groves were the places where their rites were performed, and human facrifices appeafed their intolerant deities. Every thing was contrived to infix awe and terror on the deluded objects of their fraud; and the tranfmigration of fouls, in which the priest could fecure to their favourites every advantage of the new birth, was a doctrine that was impreffed on the mind with all the vehemence that an opinion fo lucrative to the priest could infpire. Their doctrines are well defcribed by a Roman poet in the following lines :

A tribe, who fingular religion love, And haunt the lonely coverts of the grove.

To thefe, and thefe of all mankind

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Provoke approaching fate, and bravely fcorn

To fpare that life which muft fo foon

return.

Queft. IV. What are the advantages and difadvantages attending the ufe of glafs lenfes in lamps for lighting

the streets of London?

Lamps are placed in our streets to compenfate for the abfence of the fun; and if we can do this in but a small degree, ftill it is of confequence to make our artificial light as advantageous as circumftances will admit. The light of day is fteady and univerfal; that by lamps cannot poffefs either of these advantages, for the light of each lamp will extend to but a small distance; and in walking we enjoy the light of each lamp in greater or lefs degrees as we approach to it. The light iffuing from each lamp is diffufed in every direction. The rays which proceed upwards are loft as to any ufeful effect, and those which ftrike against the houses would be more usefully employed, if they could be brought upon the pavement. Thefe reflections probably ftruck the first perfon who introduced the lenfes into our lamps. Of the rays which strike the surface of this lens, fome would have gone into the air, and confequently would have been loft; the others, whofe direction is changed, act more powerfully by being thrown in greater numbers upon a given spot. But, by changing the direction of thefe rays, it did not probably occur to him, that a space must be left dark between the place whose light he increafes by means of his lens, and the place enlightened by the remaining rays left to their own action. This is one objection to the ufe of a lens.

Another circumftance is, that though many rays which would have been loft in the air are by means of the lens brought to act upon the pavement, yet, from the reflecting power of the glafs, as many

rays are probably loft by reflection as are gained by refraction: confequently the bottom of the street does not gain more light, upon the whole, than if it had been left to the natural action of the lamp.

But a third circumftance is of much greater confequence. The intent of thefe lenfes is to throw as much light as poffible upon the pavement; and to do this, care must be taken that the lamp and the lens fhould be adjusted in such а manner that this advantage fhould be obtained. Very flight things in the adjustment will difconcert the whole plan; and inftead of throwing the light upon the pavement, it will be feen at fome diftance upon an oppofite wall, or wafting itfelf in the air. Among feveral lamps in one place, which the writer of this article noticed not long ago, two out of three were in this laft predicament, and instead of fuperior light, a confiderable degree of gloom prevailed. It may be worth the reader's while to notice this circumstance in any ftreet where thefe lenfes are ufed: and he may find fome amufement in obferving the cones formed by the rays of light and the furfaces of the pavement, or the houfes, as they are enlightened by these refracted rays; and he will then, perhaps, be of opinion, that it is not to be expected from lamp lighters, lampcleaners, and lamp-makers, that all the requifites which the theory of the lens requires will be obferved in practice.

Befides, if we fuppofe that every thing is properly adjufted, then patches of pavement are very light, the intervals between them dark. The walker, in paffing over them, feels his eyes affected by a glare of light, as long as he is in a cone of rays; and before it recovers its tone, he enters another cone equally glaring. Thus the eye, paffing from light to dark, is very difagree

ably affected; and the glare of fo many balls in the air, contrafted with the gloom around, is by no means pleafing.

The advantage, then, of patches of pavement being lighted in a fuperior manner than they would be by a common lamp, feems to be very much overbalanced by the difagreeable effects of the lenfes on the eye, when placed in the best manner; by the lofs of light which is certain when they are ill placed ; and the almoft impoffibility that the managers of these lamps thould even give to them the advantages of which they are fufceptible. It is to be observed, also, that these lenfes add to the expence as well as diminish the comfort which a lamp is intended to communicate.

POLYHISTOR.

QUESTIONS, to be answered next Month.

Which are the most important epochs between the flood and the erecting of the tent in the wildernefs by Mofes for the worship of the one and only true God?

To what reflections do these epochs give rife?

Which are the most important epochs between the invasion of this kingdom by William the Norman and the prefent times?

What are the reflections to which they give rife?

Is it poffible to improve the lighting of our streets by fome contrivance free from the objections fpecified to the lenfes now in ufe, and which fhall throw the light on the pavement which is now loft in the air?

Suppofe fifty men to be placed in a ftraight line one hundred feet long, and to be wheeled into a line perpendicular to the first direction, the pivot man remaining in his place; how many yards will they go over more than if each man march fraight to his laft pofition?

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篆大

Ta-chuen, or great

antient characters, it is evident, that, to prevent adulteration rather than rectifying and felecting the characters at that time extant, they invented or chofe from the mafs a fort of fingular characters, which, although in the manner of grouping, feem to be analogous to the molt antient and claffical; yet, in oppofition to moft characters extant, the direction of the component strokes is continually parallel; and though often undulating, yet they never bend, or come in con

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tact otherwife than by forming right or femi-right angles. In fhort, the authors of this ftyle of characters feem to have attempted to introduce in their compofition both the Kua of Fo-hi and the groups of Çam-hie.

This hand-writing, from its formal ftatelinefs, could not, nor did not become general, notwithstanding the precautions taken by the emperor in caufing them to be engraven on ten large cylinders of marble, expreffing fome poem of his own compofition. They were, however, for large infcriptions over the hyperadopted, and are at this day in ufe umphal arches; on the frontispieces thyrons of public edifices and triof their temples; on ftate feals, &c.

The licence of inventing and adopting various ftyles of Chinese hand-writing, in the fucceffive ages of the weak government of the Cheu, was increafed in the fame proportion as the empire was divided into numberlefs fmall principalities, each claiming independence; fo that little more was left to the emperors of their former dignity than the imperial refidence and the bare title.

This

Such was the ftate of literature and government in China, till after the extinction of the dynafty Cheu, 255 B.C., when Xi-hoam-ti, the Second emperor (according to others the fourth) of the fucceffive dynasty Çin, afcended the throne. magnanimous and enterprising monarch could not behold but with the deepeft regret his vaft empire thus weakened and difmembered by faction, and illegal authority. He refolved to deftroy the power and the very exiftence of the many petty princes who had thus fhared the empire: being himself a great warrior, his achievements were marked with glory; and after many fortunate battles he faw himfelf at laft as abfolute a mafter upon the throne, as the former emperors of the firft dynafties Hia and Xam.

But the many literati, and other men of eminent abilities, who, by Ddd

such a sudden change, found themfelves deprived of their pofts, began to expoftulate with the people against the conduct of this mighty monarch, and, quoting the golden morals of fubmiflion and humility, with which their facred books are replete, endeavoured to reprefent the celebrated exploits of their fovereign as acts of the greatest inhumanity, and the moft defpotical tyranny.

士隸

Li-fu, Prime Minifter

of Xi-hoam-ti, a man of very fuperior talents, was the infamous infinuator of a moft barbarous project to check the complaints of the learned. He ordered, with the confent which he artfully obtained from the emperor, that all the facred and other books fhould be burnt throughout the empire (thofe on agriculture, medicine, and foothfay ing, only excepted), and attached to the neglect of fuch a vile injunction the moft atrocious and capital punishments.

This fatal decree was put into execution in the 25th year of the reign of Xi-hoam-ti, being the

212th B.C.

Li-fu, to be more certain of the ftrict compliance with this decree, caufed the books excepted to be copied in a particular ftyle of chaSiaoracters, called chuen; and all the copies written otherwife were doomed, without exception, to the flames.

篆小

F. Mailla,with many authors, maintain this fort of characters to be the

敬母胡

affiftants

em

invention of Hu-mu-kim, and ployed by Li-fu: but, if we compare the characters of the dictionary Xue-ven (compiled by Hiurin at the beginning of the dynafty Han, about two hundred years B.C.), which Father Mailla himself

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斗科

and other characters analogous to them, which were compofed during the two firft and part of the third dynafty: they were called, as ob. ferved above, Chuen-çu.

And fince it is but natural to fuppofe that thefe characters, as foon as the large and magnificent form Ta-chuen (fee above) was invented, from their apparent diminutive fize and flender ftrokes, fhould be diftinguished with the name of Siao-chuen, it is more than probable that this denomination is antecedent to the time of the conflagration of books by fix whole centuries, and that it is but improperly applied to the characters of the dictionary Xue-ven exclufively of all others, they being, as above obferved, only a fimplitication of the most antient characters extant

analogous to the Ko-teu; and for that reafon more near the prefent Chinese mode of writing, as even the fpecimen given by Dr. Hager at page xlviii of his Analyfis may be fufficient to prove (0).

(0) While I here refer your readers, Sir, to Dr. Hager, let them not fuppofe his authority, in the prefent inftance, as derogatory, in the leaft, from what has been previously obferved. Dr. Hager gives us a convincing proof, in his Analyfis, why he has not entered into the ipecification of the characters Tu-chuen and Siuo-chuen, and has improperly called the latter by the general denomination of Chuen-çu. We fee at pp. xxix, xxx, and xxxí, fuperb fpecimens of the Ta-chuen promifcuoufly exhibited with other antient characters, to which he could align no name. Alas! the famous Encyclopedy (as he

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