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bered the passage, and could have supplied his memory with the words; but Henry being present, and the recollection of what had passed on the subject of poetry rushing on my mind, at the same time that I thought I saw him glance a significant look at me, threw me into such embarrassment on the sudden, that in vain endeavouring to evade the subject, and being pressed a little unseasonably by the vicar, my spirits being also greatly fluttered by the events of the morning, I could no longer command myself, but burst into tears, and very narrowly escaped falling into a second hysteric. Nothing ever equalled the tenderness of Henry on this occasion; nay, I thought I could discover that he was secretly pleased with the event, as it betrayed a consciousness of former vanities, and seemed to prove that I repented of them: whatever interpretation he might put upon it, still I could not bring myself to repeat the verses; and I believe I shall never utter another couplet whilst I live; I am certain I shall never make one.

'I enclose you a copy of my father's letter to Henry; and am, Sir, your sincere friend, And most obliged servant, ANNE

Though the letter of which my amiable correspondent has inclosed a copy, is hastily written in the bustle and hurry of service, yet, as it breathes the sentiments of the friend, the father, and the hero, and as every relic of so venerable a character is, in my opinion at least, too precious not to be preserved, I shall take permission of the reader to subjoin it.

DEAR HARRY,

This perverse wind has at last taken shame at confining so many brave fellows in port, and come

about to the east, so that we are all in high spirits getting under weigh: the commissioners' yacht is alongside, and I drop these few lines by way of farewell, to assure my brave lad, that whether we meet again or not, you shall not hear a bad account of your old shipmate, nor, with God's blessing, of his crew. I think we shall soon come into action, and that being the case, d'ye see, few words and fair dealing are best between friends: you tell me, if you get a prize you mean to marry Nancy; that is honest, for the girl is cruelly in love with you, and I like her the better for it; a seaman's daughter should be a seaman's friend, and without flattery, I don't believe a braver lad ever trod a plank in the king's service than yourself-so enough of that, you have my consent, and with it all the fortune I have to bestow, which is little more than my blessing.

There is one thing, however, I must warn you of, which is, that the girl, though of a good nature in the main, has got a romantic turn in her head, and is terribly given to reading and making verses, and such land-lubber's trash, as women and sailors have nothing to do with; now, I would not have you make a fool of yourself, Harry, and marry a learned wife, though she was of my own begetting. If, therefore, Nancy and you come to an understanding together, when my old carcass shall be feeding the fishes, remember it is on this express condition only, which I charge you on your honour to observe, that you will burn her books, as I will do if ever I get at them, and never yoke with her till she has renounced these vagaries of poetry, which, if you cure her of, you have my free leave to make her as good a husband as you can, and God bless you with her; and this you will observe and obey as the last will and testament of him who is yours till death,

P. S. Remember I tell you, Harry, this old ship is damn'd crank and leewardly; but our wiseacres would not take her down, so they must stand by the consequences; she is a fine man of war at the worst, and if she comes alongside of the Monsieurs, will give their first-rates a warming. Hurrah! we are under sail !'

NUMBER VIII.

UPON revising what I wrote for Calliope, in answer to Dr. Mac-Infidel's discourse against Christ's miracles, I find the argument so connected with certain passages in the life of the great heathen philosopher Pythagoras, which the adversaries of Christianity have set up against the scriptural records of the Messias, that I have been tempted to enlarge upon what I gave to that young lady, by prefacing it with an account of what I find curious in the relations of the sophists and biographers touching that extraordinary man.

The variety of fictions, which the writers, who treat of Pythagoras, have interspersed in their accounts, makes it difficult to trace out any consistent story of his life his biographers agree scarcely in any one fact or date: Porphyry says he was born at Tyre; Jamblichus will have it to be at Sidon, probably as being the more ancient city; Josephus says it is as hard to fix the place of his nativity as Homer's, or to ascertain the year of his birth. Jamblichus, glancing at the gospel account of the birth of Christ, says, that when the mother of Pythagoras was with child of him, her husband being ignorant of

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her pregnancy, brought her to the oracle at Delphi, and there the prophetess told him the first news of his wife's having conceived, and also that the child she then went with should prove the greatest blessing to mankind; that her husband thereupon changed her name from Parthenis to Pythais, and when the child was born, named him Pythagoras, as being foretold by Apollo Pythius, for so, says he, the name signifies and adds, that there can be no doubt but that the soul of the child was one of Apollo's companions in heaven, and came down by commission from him. When this and many other fables are cast out of the account, it is most probable that Pythagoras was born at Samos in the third year of Olymp. XLVIII., 586 years before Christ, being the son of Mnesarchus, an engraver of seals, which Mnesarchus was descended from Hippasus of Phlius, and his mother Pythais from Ancæus, one of the planters of Samos.

Nature bestowed upon Pythagoras a form and person more than ordinarily comely: he gave early indications of a mind capable of great exertions, and ambitious of excelling in knowledge: the Greeks had now begun to open schools for the public instruction of youth; the rudiments of science were taught in these seminaries to a degree sufficient for the common purposes of liberal education; but the last finishing for such as aspired to be adepts in the superior learning of the times was only to be obtained amongst the Egyptian and Chaldean sages : to them was the great resort of literary travellers; from their source, Greece had derived her systems of theology and natural philosophy. The Egyptians were in possession of many ancient traditions of Mosaical origin, though disguised by emblems and hieroglyphics, which Greece in adopting was never able to develope, and of which it is probable the

Egyptians themselves had lost the clue: the Greeks, ever since the time of Cecrops, had been progressively erecting a fabulous and idolatrous system of theology upon this foundation. The Egyptians in very early time, under certain types and symbols, had shadowed out the attributes of the Deity, the great events of the deluge, and repeopling of the earth; and these being received by the Greeks in a literal sense, generated in the end a multitudinous race of deities, with a thousand chimerical rites and ceremonies, which altogether formed so puzzling a compound of absurdity, that no two thinking heathens agreed in the same creed: still they went on accumulating error upon error; every philosopher who returned from Egypt, imported some addition to the stock, till Olympus was crowded with divinities. If the heathens had ever defined their religion, and established it upon system, they would have destroyed it; but whilst every man might think for himself, and every man who thought at all got rid of his difficulties by supposing there was some mystery in the case, which he either did not trouble himself to interpret, or interpreted as he saw fit, the imposing fabric stood, and, magnified through the mist of error, appeared to have a dignity and substance, which, upon examination and scrutiny, would have vanished.

The parents of Pythagoras put him first under the tuition of Pherecydes of Syrus: Pherecydes did not die till Olymp. LXVI., so that Diogenes Laertius must be flagrantly mistaken in saying that Pythagoras studied under this philosopher till his death: he was very young when he went into Syria for this purpose, for he returned to Samos to his parents, and after studying some time under Hermodamas there, set out upon his travels into Egypt at the age of eighteen. At this early age he had acquired all

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