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ART. VIII.

Hiftoire de l'Academie Royale des Inferiptions et Belles Lettres, &c.History of the Royal Academy of Infcriptions, &c. Together with the Memoirs of Literature taken from the Registers of that Academy, from the Year 1770, to 1772 inclufive. Vol. XXXVIII. 4to, Paris, 1777.

HE hiftorical part of this volume, which comprehend

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extracts from, or fummaries of, the more voluminous productions of the members of the Academy, confifts of fifteen articles; and the memoirs amount to the fame number. In giving an account of thefe articles, we shall follow our ufual method.

HISTORICAL PART.

Refearches concerning the Exercife of Swimming, among the Ancients, and the Advantage they derived from it. There are a great many ftories about fwimming in this piece; but they are rather entertaining than inftructive-for all we learn here is, that fwimming is a wholefome exercife-that it may keep people from drowning-that it was practifed univerfally by the ancients, the Perfians excepted,-that it has been abused to the purposes of impudicity, &c.

Hiftorical Inquiries concerning the Nemean Games. The fubject of this piece is curious and interefting, as it may tend to throw fome light upon the genius, character, paffions, and fentiments of a famous people; but it is involved in obfcurity. To remove this, as far as is poffible, M. d'ANSSE DE VILLOISON enquires here into the fituation of the country, where these games were celebrated, the origin of their name,-the perfons who contributed to their eftablishment,-the prizes that were diftributed to the victors, the judges who prefided at them,-the qualities required in the competitors,-the three claffes of agonistic exercifes that were introduced into thefe games, at different times, -the time of their celebration, and entire ceffation,-the relation of the Nemeades to the Olympiades and Pythiades. Such are the principal objects, that are learnedly difcuffed by M. DE VILLOISON.

Obfervations on a Paffage of Strabo, which feems to place between Genoa and Placentia, two other Cities, named DIACUISTA and JELLEIA. By M. de BREQUIGNY.

An Effay, defigned as a Supplement to the Treatife of Henry Stephens, concerning the Conformity between the French Language and the Greek. By M. DACIER: as feeble and hypothetical as the treatife of Henry Stephens.

Critical Refearches concerning the vulgar (or modern) Greek. By M. DE VILLOISON. It is not on the changes that the Greek language has undergone, nor on the various periods of its alte

ration and decline, that this learned Academician enlarges : he fixes his attention only upon the drofs of the metal, upon the ruins of the edifice. He fhews firft, the utility of the vulgar Greek, not only to travellers and merchants, but alfo to theological philologifts, and critics. He afterwards takes notice of the remote antiquity of the vulgar Greek, of the three kinds of Greek spoken at this day by the learned in that country, even the literal, which is ufed in celebrating mafs, and in divine worfhip, the ecclefiaftical which is employed in fermons, homilies, and the letters of the patriarchs, which resembles the literal, but is inferior to it in purity, and the vulgar, which is divided into seventy-two dialects,-the confideration of which is reserved for a fubfequent volume.

Memoir concerning the Superftition of different Nations with respect to Dreams. By M. DE BURIGNY.

Critical Obfervations on the miffive Letters of the Ancients. By the fame. There are more words than wisdom in these two Memoirs. Obfervations on the History and Remains of the City of Cæfarea in Mauritania,-Theffalonica-and Pergamus. Thefe three cities, whofe history and remains are contained in three diftinct Differtations, gave the late learned Abbé Belley occafion to regale the antiquaries with three prodigious Fercula of erudition. This laborious Academician is no longer an inhabitant of the prefent world.

Memoir concerning Appion-Memoir relating to Demetrius the Cynic.-Thefe two by the fame.

Obfervations concerning the Hiftory and fome Medals of DRUSUS CESAR, Son of the Emperor Tiberius,-defigned as a Defence of feveral Writers of Roman Hiftory. Here we have the last academical words of the Abbé BELLEY.

Memoir relating to the Caufes, which abolished Slavery in France, and to the Origin of Municipal Government. By M. DUPUY.

These pieces are followed by the Eulogies of eight Members of the Academy, who died between 1770 and 1772 inclufive; viz, the President Henault, and Meff. Bonamy, Schoepflin, Gibert, Vatry, Mignot, Belley, and Mazocchi.

MEMOIRS.

Memoir XII. XIII. XIV. XV. and XVI. Concerning the Phenicians. In thefe Memoirs the Phenician worship, and the religious ceremonies of that people, as also the constitution of their civil government, and the various revolutions it underwent, are difcuffed with a great profufion of learning, unaccountable repetitions, and a palpable neglect of precifion and order. But a good deal of inftruction, though not always of the fresheft kind, may be picked up here and there from these papers, which, indeed, contain as circumftantial an account of the religious prac

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2 tices of the Egyptians and other ancient nations, as of thofe of the Phenicians. Our Academician fhews the tranfition from facrifices of milk and vegetables; to bloody oblations and human victims among the Phenicians; defcribes the places of their worfhip, the nature of their temples, and obferves among other things, that their chufing the mountains and high places for their worship, may have been occafioned by two reafons, that of the high places having been naturally the firft habitation of fuch as had escaped from the general flood, and confequently, the firft fcene of their religious oblations, which must have made a deep and lafting impreffion on their minds; and also the folitude and filence that render these places fit for the exercises of devotion. His account of the portable temples of the Phenicians is curious, and is well compiled from Diodorus, Plutarch, Euftathius, and Apuleius; and the imitation of the fymbolic reprefentations of the Deity, contained in these temples, by the Kings of Judah, is well inveftigated: but there is nothing very new in all this. What he fays of the priests and myfteries of the Phenicians, is replete with facts, but the Critical and Philofophical fpirit of combination, is greatly defective in thefe narra tions; we may fay the fame thing of his accounts of divination and circumcifion.

The political part of thefe Memoirs is a collection (or rather' a rude indigested heap) of all the facts and fables that enter into the Phenician Hiftory.-But the Author of thefe Papers is lately dead: De mortuis nil nifi bonum:

A Memoir, in which it is proved that the Books, called ZENDA, which were depofited in the (French) King's Library, the 15th of March 1762, are the Works of Zoroafter, or, at leaft, are as ancient as that Lawgiver. By M. ANQUETIL DU PERRON. First Part.-This Paper was published in 1769 in the Journal des Savans (for May and June): but as the Zendavefta has appeared fince that time, together with fome Memoirs of M. DU PERRON, relative to that Work, it is republished here with the additions and corrections which became neceffary on that account. The learned Academician, endeavours to prove in this Memoir, that Zoroafter's writings are ftill extant,-that they neither belong to the productions of the Gnoftics nor to thofe of the Helleniftical Jews; that they are comprehended in the Zend, and carry undoubted marks of authenticity; and that the arguments of Brucker, and other learned men in favour of a contrary hypothefis, are entirely inconclufive. This Memoir, which is a prodigious pile of erudition, contains 200 pages, including a curious lift of xxi Nofks or portions of the AVESTA.

An Hiftorical Efay concerning the Study of Philofophy among the ancient Inhabitants of China. By M. DE GUIGNES. We have not, as yet, found out the cradle of Philofophy, to which for

many.

many nations pretend, nor the precife time, when this precious child of wisdom was firft rocked by the fages of antiquity. The Chinese, as is well known, bear very high their pretenfions in this matter, and carry fo far back the date of their Philofophical knowledge in the records of an Hiftory fo obfcure and uncertain, that, what they say on this head ought not to be admitted without examination, and will not perhaps ftand the teft of it. M. DE GUIGNES thinks, that the Miffionaries have given us very little information on this point, having almost entirely confined their accounts of the Chinese Philofophy to Confucius and his doctrines; he therefore propofes, in this Effay, to collect every thing that he has met with, in his refearches, relative to the Philofophers, who preceded that Sage, and to give a circumftantial account of Lao-tfe, of whom the Miffionaries have only mentioned the name, and with refpect to whose time the learned, among the Chinese, are far from being agreed, though the writers above mentioned reprefent him as the cotemporary of Confucius. The refearches of our Academician into the Hiftory of the first Chinese Philofophers are comprehended in two Memoirs. In the first he treats concerning The School of the Learned, which the Chinese call Ju-kia; and in the fecond, of the School of Lao-tfe, which they call Tao-kia: Tao and Lao-tfe being the fame perfon.

MEMOIR I.

The Chinese Literati, in all the periods of that monarchy, have applied themselves lefs to the study of Nature and to the refearches of Natural Philofophy, than to moral inquiries, the practical science of life and internal polity and manners. And as the number of their Philofophers was too great to render a uniformity of opinion poffible, fo China, like Greece, faw a variety of schools arifing from time to time, of which the oppofite fentiments were (as is ufual) accompanied with a spirit of perfecution and this fpirit acquired a peculiar degree of afperity from this circumftance, that fome of these schools, whofe original object was only Philofophy, affumed gradually, in process of time, the afpect of religious fects.

The Ju-kia or School of the Learned (which is the fubject of this Memoir), maintains ftill its high credit: the religion of the empire makes a part of its doctrine; which our Author proves (by a long ftring of authorities with hard names) to be the fame religion, that took place from the very origin of the monarchy. This fchool, however, in the lapfe of time, was fubjected to various revolutions.-It fuffered an almoft total eclipfe during the wars that distracted the empire, fome ages after the reign of Vou-vang; it was restored to its luftre in the 6th century before the Chriftian æra, by Confucius; it fuffered again under the emperor Chi-hoang-ti, whofe zeal for the School of Lao-tfe, in

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which the Books King (which are the Gofpel of the School of the Learned), are not held as facred, engaged him to order all thefe books to be burnt, and all thofe, who attempted to conceal or preserve them to be put to death.-The first Princes of the Dynafty of Han, who fucceeded this incendiary, made diligent search after all the copies of the King, which efcaped this conflagration, and the ftudy of morality was again revived. But natural knowledge ftill remained uncultivated; and it was not before the Dynafty of the Song, in the tenth and eleventh centuries after Chrift, that the Chinese Philofophers formed hypothefes concerning the natural fyftem of the Universe, and entered into difcuffions of a fcholaftic kind, in confequence, perhaps, of the intercourfe they had long kept up with the Ara bians, who ftudied, with ardor, the works of Ariftotle.

It is not, however, the defign of our Academician to treat of the state of natural philofophy, morals and religion, in the modern periods of the Chinese hiftory: he confines himself to the ancient literati, who lived before Confucius, or were the Contemporaries of that great man, and to the writings which were compofed by his firft difciples. He gives a large lift of the literary productions of these fages, which we pafs over in filence; as also his accounts of the life and doctrines of Confucius, which are well known. He dwells with complacence upon fome ancient remains of the fchool of the learned, which feem to contain the doctrines of the Pythagorean philofophy, and thus lend a prop to his favourite hypothefis of the derivation of the Chinese from the Egyptians, from whom Pythagoras is faid to have taken his philofophical fyftem. A chapter of the Chou-king, entitled Hong-fan, or the Sublime Rule, of which the miffionaries fpeak with a certain degree of contempt, on account of its fuppofed obfcurity, is alleged by M. DE GUIGNES as a demonftration of the conformity between the doctrine of the ancient Chinese, and that of the Egyptians and the fchool of Pythagoras. The conformity is, indeed, ftriking: the chapter in queftion mentions the Chinese table or chart, in which the whole fyftem of the universe, and the harmony fubfifting between the natural and moral world, were illuftrated by a certain arrangement of numbers. These are learnedly explained in the Memoir before us, and the fympathy of mufic and numbers with the different parts of the univerfe is circumftantially unfolded. We refer the Reader to the Memoir for farther information with refpect to this cabalistical difcuffion, in which all the elements and powers of nature are expreffed by numbers; in which the tones of mufic correfpond with the feafons, and months, with the duties of morality, and the different and refpective ceremonies that the ancient Chinese used in the worship of heaven, earth, their ancestors, the fpirits, &c. and in which mufic is the bafis of all the fciences, and more efpecially of the fciences APP. Rev. Vol. Iviii.

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