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ebout one in fifteen hundred persons yearly. This is not much. There is more humanity in visiting the rash selfdestroyer at home, than in thus dragging his carcase to indecent exposure and contemptuous burial. For the tenderness of personal and family morality to stamp suicide with displeasure is natural; but the magistrate has no right to be angry with those, who, being tired of the banquet of life, withdraw from a place which others covet. The subterfuges to avoid confiscation often bring, in England, the reputation of insanity on families, where there was only incurable personal disease, or unexpected incurable poverty. In the year v. there were, but 130 dead bodies, and in the year 1x. but 190 brought to La Morgue; but this is understood to be below the average: of these, from ten to twelve had perished by the violence of others. If the common soldiers killed in fair duel with each other be included in this reckoning, it reduces within narrow limits the annual number of murders.

Mr. Holcroft's account of the state of religion at Paris is given in these words:

"Government has organized religion. At the head of the church no pope is placed; no cardinal governs under him: the chief consul of France will not admit of competitor in church or state; he can brook no controul; he can imagine no understanding sufficiently vast to give him instruction.

Citizen Portalis, lately an emigrant, acts under the supreme Bonaparte; by him les affaires des cultes are superintended.

"And what manner of man is citizen Portalis?

"His political career is too public to need any report of mine concerning its progress: but his private opinions are, perhaps, something less notorious.

"After he fled from France, he visited various cities of Germany; where the general tone of his conversation declared him to be what is called entirely free from religious prejudices; for him no opinion, merely as an opinion, was too licentious. But this was not because he wished to probe error, and to profit by acquired knowledge: he held it a folly to talk of corrupt ages, or corrupt nations. Though every fact of historical and individual experience prove the pernicious falsehood of the opinion, he maintained that men are and ever were the same; and that, being acted upon solely by self interest, the art of governing them is the art of profiting by their selfishness. Popery he affirmed to be the only state religion; because, as he emphatically added, it is a sieve that will suffer any politics to pass.

"Citizen Portalis is become the secret and one of the most intimate counsellors of the chief consul.

"That these, and the whole train of their relative opinions, were the daily topics of his conversation I have the word of a man of mild manners, strict probity, and no less famous for the powers of his mind than the purity of his morals.

Under politicians so profound, the church has been wrested from the precarious patronage of the pious; and once more joined to the state. What the sum of the benefits may be, which the state is to receive from religion and religion from the state, time must determine: present appearances augur but faintly. That lordly host, whose voices combined inspired even majesty with tremendous awe, and so frequently drove ignorance frantic, is now replaced by twelve parochial churches, one for each municipa lity, and twenty-seven chapels of ease, for the catholic worship.

"The protestants are allowed three chapels; the total for catholic and protestant is fortytwo; and beside these there is at present no other place of religious worship in

Paris.

"And are these churches and chapels duly and respectfully attended?

"This I made a constant object of enquiry.

"As masses, private and public, vespers, and other ceremonies are performing through per haps one half of the day, the churches are open one half of the day; the churches are open, and you seldom can enter them but a few scattered beings are seen kneeling round this or that petty side altar, and interceding, if words muttered can be called intercession, with the holy Virgin. But these solitary beings are much the greatest number of them, old women: the young of either sex are sel dom seen there; except brought to high mass by their parents, or attracted by some cere

mony, or church festival.

"At high mass itself, the old are much more numerous than the young, and the women than the men.

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In proportion as the crowd is attracted the congregation is disorderly. There are no seats, a very few within the choir excepted for persons in office; but, the choir being open, a multitude of rush-bottomed chairs, exceeding rude and generally old and dirty, stand ready to be hired; I forget if at a halfeach; and this is a source of

penny or a penny
the church revenue.

"At every part of the service, as well in sermon time as during mass, numbers are in motion: people come and go, make the church their thoroughfare, are silent or talkative, dirty or clean, and act with the most perfect indifference with respect to time, place, or other circumstance.

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Behind the preacher a prompter is seated; who as is the practice at the theatre, whispers the word, if the actor blunders in his part.

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During the sermon, the superintendents of the chairs make the round of their customers, to collect the sous.

"If the people are thus ignorant and rest

less, incapable from habit, temper, and thoughtlessness, of decent order, the priests themselves surely afford them neither countenance nor example?

"The priests themselves have the perfect appearance of machines; that proceed through a regular absolute clock-work set of motions, without any power of variety, or token of feeling. Various parcels of them are perform ing various ceremonies, in different parts of the church, at the same time. Here in the choir, it is high mass: before an altar, yonder, on the left, some private mass for a departed soal is hurried over: by the side of this, or opposite as it may happen, some other ceremony, of marriage, baptism, or burial, is per forming. In another compartment a school is kept; and the pupils have, not only the ghostly and mundane admonitions of the priest their teacher, by which to profit, but, the whole scene before them for contemplation and instruction.

“Would you then have the world believe that a body of men, still held in veneration by a great part of France, and assuming even heavenly sanctity, are but the exhibitions of shows; which can only amuse children, while they utterly disgrace wisdom and traduce

virtue?

"Let the world enquire into facts, and think for itself: if any man do not venerate the benefactors of the world, it can only be because he is not aware that they are so. Monks are but men, and men but imitators. It is taken for granted that things, which have teen sanctioned by long practice, must have much good sense in them, though they may contain a mixture of mistake; and, in a majority of instances, this opinion will be true; in others, it will be a prejudice pregnant with mischief.

"Few minds have that degree of stimulus which is necessary to carry them through a severe investigation of facts, and afterward to enable them to make deductions so clear,

and so forcible, that they shall convince

others as well as themselves.

"Boys have been indiscriminately prompted, and always by selfish motives, to follow the profession of monk or priest, which profession they are taught; yet they have been appoerd to act from divine inspiration. Are by indiscriminately inspired: indiscriminately capable of teaching wisdom and virtue? Fatal experience has proved they are not. Gifts so great are rare indeed!

Many a priest knows not how he became priest; suspects not that there can be any ror, in things which the parroted wisdom of mankind have taught him to consider as acred; and, with great innocence of intention, would hold that man as a monster, who should tell him that the functions, which he daily performs as no less than the emanaans of divine wisdom, are the extreme of surdity, the inventions of selfishness in a state of insanity, and totally destructive of those simple and pure moral principles which

the gospel contains; and which the worst man on earth reveres; how much soever he may infringe them."

Mr. Holcroft then does not believe

that religion is about to strike root at Paris. Let him recollect that the catholic religion, wherever it has been patronized by the state, has been found uniformly progressive. It favours ignorance in the multitude, and is adapted to the ignorance it diffuses. Portalis may profess to restore popery, because it is useful to the magistrate: he could not else have reconciled the ruling orders to their parts in the exhibition; but his employer is sincere. Bonaparte had a Corsican not a French education, and his reading has not extended far enough to He has prophesied and will accomplish supercede the prejudices of his infancy. the conversion of Monge, and other distinguished infidels. The Egyptian proclamation was the work of his staff of savans, and was probably signed, unread. The new generation of Frenchmen are not proselytes to infidelity, but brought upin it; they have therefore, none of the zeal of converts, and some of the boyish ambition to appear wiser than their fathers. They may take for granted the fallacy of religion; but their impiety is blind faith and they are very likely to find out with Tertullian, that it is vastly more ingenious to be a christian. From one sect to another the passage is diffi cult, it must be disputed at every stand: but from admitting nothing to admitting every thing the change is equally compatible with incuriosity. Marmontel, Laharpe, and the translator of Herodotus have apostatized from unbelief. Religious books increase in demand. In the neighbourhood of Notre Dame new editions of the Esprit de Gerson, and other manuals of devotion are exposed to sale with visible success. The jew lumberers unpack once more the altar-candlesticks; the pious buy them at second-hand, and present with triumphant glee to their churches these furbished trophies of hell subdued. Necklaces are strung like rosaries, and decorated with a cross. The courtiers know that to attend mass is a recommendation at the Tuileries: fashion is omnipotent over a Frenchman's belief, it is la grace efficace. Cuvier, the best comparative anatomist in Paris, permits himself to question in his lec tures the doctrine of final causes; he is not willingly employed by the govern

ment to lecture in the schools of the state; at the Lyceum his emoluments result from subscription. Lalande and his calendar are going out of fashion. Even the accommodating Volney has been insulted. But Chateau-briand, and the christianists, are noticed as great men; the poets are all turned hymnmakers; of Voltaire and the half-forgotten deistical writers, women seek an account in Barruel, as we in Leland. The lowest superstitions are profusely, practised; indulgencies are proclaimed on wall bills; penny-presents of painted gays are hung up by the devout in the church of Montmartre, which is become a place of pilgrimage. Sacred dramas, such as the Esther of Racine, have been revived at the opera; the death of Abel is frequently played at the French theatre; it must be owned, however, that where Cain, like the Ixion of Euripides, defies the thunderer, many of the audience seemed to applaud not only Talma, but the sentiment; and that, when the thunder-cloud descends, the actors had contrived to personate the unseen Jehovah by a broken-voiced old man, whose squeaking put the pit in a titter. There is still an antichristian faction in Paris, powerful in the armies and in the professions, friendly to liberty, and very hostile to the usurper. A Julian they could have borne; but a Constantine they abhor. The Bourbons have the folly to hope in the clergy; else

Mr. Holcroft, with real penetration, notices, as the most characteristic trait in Bonaparte's character-instantaneity of decision. The vigilant intolerance with which the press and the theatre are guarded, and individuals are removed into exile, is recorded with fidelity. Moreau, educated to the bar, and attached to the purest theories of civil liberty, had greatly the overweight of popularity; but his indecisive cautious procrastination, when he had the army of the Rhine at his devotion, and had no chance of ultimate safety but in risking a battle, lost the liberty, and saved the religion of his country. Bonaparte has chosen to retain in the restored church of France the liberty of divorce, which leads many to suppose that he intends to repudiate the empress, whenever an opportunity offers of allying himself with any of the royal families of Europe.

Mr. Holcroft reserves for his concluding chapters the repositories of antique

sculpture and modern painting, lately enriched by Bonaparte with the plunder of Italy. When it is considered that the agreements of the French general with the conquered cities, were mostly made for a hundred works of art to be picked by his commissioners, it will be perceived that almost every thing deposited in these galleries must be of first rate merit and value. The contiguity of so much excellence may somewhat weaken the effect and dim the celebrity of productions, which the Italian travellers have so often described with enthusiasm.; but it is certainly the finest collection of art ever brought together on the earth. The whole catalogue sold at the door better deserved translation and incorporation in this work than those programmes of festivals, of which so many are given. Mr. Holcroft displays original and just views in art, in assigning to Philip of Champagne a rank hardly yet recrg. nized. He paints from nature, and like nature: most of his countrymen seem to have studied only in a gallery of sculp ture: they join together busts and limbs of well-known statues, and copy passi from the tragic masks of Le Brun. Like our West, Le Brun excelled in composi tion and in drawing, and his colouring s more forward, but his expression is affected and theatrical. The painting of Poussin produce little effect on the walls of a gallery; they are minute, and the colouring is grey and watery: his deluge is admirable, but his sunshin: English. Yet for the furniture of a apartment there is no painter so desirable as Poussin: the longer his pictures are studied, the more feeling, the more lear ing, the more intellect is continually folding itself to the observer: the vig lance of his accomplished mind is d played on the minutest objects of L pencil. His physiognomies are antiqu and statue-like; his figures are place too much in a row, as if he were givir? a design for a basso-relievo; but exerts great ingenuity in telling his ster and in varying the truly pathetic expre sion of his figures.

The living painters of the French a less formidable rivals to our own tha their deceased predecessors. Gerar now passes for the best, then David, the Vincout. It has been the custom of th French school to copy the antique sen! ture perpetually this teaches drawin and gives to their contour a precis...

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We regret the absence of a list of antique statues as given in the guide-books. The Diana from Versailles has never been sufficiently praised almost in the presence of the Apollo she asserts a sis terly resemblance.

For those merits which the useful arts bestow it is impossible not to prefer London to Paris: but for the charms derived from fine art, Paris has clearly the advantage. To us it seems strange to attempt luxury before one has attained convenience; and to overlook utility in the pursuit of beauty but such is the character of French civilization.

How very capital a collection of copperplates is attached to the national li brary ought to have been noticed: the engraved stones, or cameos, and the medals are about to be placed under separate superintendants.

In the collection of minerals kept at the mint is a specimen of basalt inscribed with arrow-head characters: it should

be united to the intaglios of the national library.

The church of the Invalides, so esquisitely adorned with fresco paintings and marble floors, and remarkable for the sepulchre of Turenne, is hurried over with too fugitive a glance. This hospital appears a noble establishment; bir, like Chelsea, it is in fact a foolish luxury. If the buildings and grounds were sold, their capital funded, and the experces lavished on the maintenance of the inmates were also added to the same fund, double the number of persons could be provided for at home in the bosom of their families. It is not to one another that these cripples can delight to shoulder the crutch and show how fields were won.

In making a second edition of his work, we wish Mr. Holcroft would li mit its matter to the description of Paris, that he would throw out some of the antiquarian matter and some of the proclamations, and bring together all his remarks on a given topic in order to preclude dilatation and repetition. Perhaps a few omissions could be supplied from other sources. He would then have furnished a volume replete with good sense, with information, with entertainment, and with circumspection; by its topic interesting, by its illustrations splendid.

ART. XI. Travels in China, containing Descriptions, Observations and Comparisons, made and collected in the Course of a short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-min-Yuen, and on a subsequent Journey through the Country from Pekin to Canton. By JouN Barrow, Esq. late private Secretary to the Earl of Macartney. 4to. pp. 630.

WHATEVER may have been the tommercial effects of our embassy to China, literature has reaped ample advantages from it. The drawings of Mr. Alexander, and the work of Mr. Barrow, have communicated more information costerning this extraordinary empire and its inhabitants, than could be collected from all our former travellers.

Mr. Barrow in his preliminary chapter disclaims all intention of dwelling on Lose subjects which have been already reated on by sir George Staunton, his obpet is to shew the Chinese as they really , and to lay before the reader such facts as may enable him to settle in his own mind the point of rank which China may be considered to hold in the scale of civilized nations. By the early travel

lers, China had been represented as in a far higher degree of civilization than Europe; it is here well observed, that those travellers represented it truly, but that during the two centuries and a half which have elapsed, Europe has been progressive in all the arts of life, while China has stood still.

The first part of the Chinese dominions which the squadron touched was one of the islands of the Chusan Archipelago. It was the best in the groupe, and the most populous, except that of Chusan, a native told them that it contained ten thousand inhabitants; but the English discovered afterwards that this was an indefinite phrase of amplification, and that when a Chinese means to speak expressly of ten thousand, he always says

nine thousand nine hundred and ninetynine.

The country ships were now seen in considerable numbers sailing along the coast of the main land. They were generally laden with small timber, piled dangerously high upon the decks; beams which were too long to be upon the deck of a single ship, were laid across the decks of two lashed together. These ships are very ill adapted for such tempestuous seas. The form of the hull is like the new moon; the bow is a square flat surface, the same as the stern, without any cut water, and without any keel; the two ends of the ship rise to a great height above the deck; each mast consists of a single piece of timber, and has a single sail of matting, stretched by means of bamboos, and frequently made to furl like a fan; the rudder is so placed that it can be taken up on approaching sands and shallows. They can sail within three and a half, or four points of the wind; but lose this advantage over European ships by drifting to leeward, in consequence of the round and clumsy shape of the bottom, and their want of keel. The Chinese keep no reckoning, and have no idea of drawing charts. They keep as near the shore as possible, and never lose sight of it, except in voyages where they must fairly put out to sea they then, let the wind be fair or foul, keep the head of the ship pointing, as nearly as possible, towards the port by means of the compass; an instrument which, beyond all doubt, came from Asia to Europe, and was probably brought from China by Marco Polo. Behind the compass is usually placed a little temple with an altar, on which is continually kept burning a spiral taper of wax, tallow, and sandal-wood dust, which serves, like Alfred's time lights, to measure the twelve portions of the day. It is also an act of piety to keep this taper burning; the needle seems to be regarded as something divine, and on every appearance of a change of wea. ther they burn incense before it. When a ship leaves Canton for a foreign voyage, it is considered as an equal chance that she will never return, and in fact ten or twelve thousand persons from that single port are supposed to perish annually by shipwreck. The coast navigation also is so dangerous, that the internal communication by means of rivers and canals, between the two extremities of the empire, was opened because many of the hips employed to transport the taxes paid

in kind to the northern capital foundered on the way.

Yet, in early times, it is certain that the Chinese were an adventurous and colonizing people. M de Guignes believes that about the seventh century of our æra they carried on a trade to the west coast of North America. Wrecks of Chinese vessels were found by the early Spanish navigators in different parts of this western coast, where the nations were more civilized than in the interior and eastern parts. Mr. Barrow should have referred to his authorities in this part of his work. Even at Rio Janeiro this gentleman ob served in the native Brazilians a very strong resemblance to the Chinese in their persons. It appears from Perouse, that the island of Tcho-ka, or Saghalien, in the Tartarian sea, has been peopled by the Chinese. They traded formerly with Bussora, and many places in the Persian gulph still bear Chinese names. In some of the voyages (here again we have to re gret the want of references) it is observed, that a colony of Chinese had probably settled in Sofala, the descendants of whom were, in the time of the writers, easily distinguished from the other na tions by their colour and features. But the ruins in Sofala are said, by Barros, te resemble those in Upper Egypt, and this whiter race would be more pro bably of the Coptic or Jewish origin Marco Polo certainly visited Madagasca in a Chinese ship. Mr. Barrow even sus pects that the unmixed Hottentots are o Chinese family. The resemblance, as t appears in his annexed portraits, is very striking, and the Dutch themselves ca this people Chinese Hottentots, from the obvious similarity. Sumatra probably and Ceylon certainly, was colonized by the same enterprizing race; the Chinga lese, indeed, acknowledge their descent a fact with which Mr. Barrow seems no to have been acquainted. Ceylon derive its name from them. A fleet of eight Chinese had been wrecked between tha island and the continent, and the strait where they perished were therefore calle Chilam, signifying the destruction of th Chinese. The Moors softened it int Cilan, and applied it to the island itsel not knowing its true name: from ther the Portuguese made it Ceilam, and w retain their pronunciation in the unen glish manner wherewith we nasalize th fast syllable of Ceylon. The Chingales were so called by the other inhabitants Ceylon, as meaning the Chinese of Gal

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