tions of civil government which has ever been formed." Our limits will not permit us to enter into discussions on the theory of government; but recent and awful experience has demonstrated, that the bulk of mankind, unenlightened by science, and uninfluenced by religion and virtue, are neither civilly nor morally fit for the enjoyment of that political liberty, which, on the principles of abstract reasoning, may appear plausible and just. The same system of government, which may have been attended with "happy consequences," to the virtuous settlers of Connecticut, and their well-taught posterity, would probably be productive of anarchy and blood, if it were suddenly adopted in a populous, ignorant, and vitiated nation.

The first printing press in North America was in 1639 set up at Cam bridge. By the year 1642" there were settled in New England seventy seven ministers, fifty towns and villages had been planted, thirty or forty churches erected, and five ships, built in the country, were already at sea. A union of the colonies in New England was formed, in 1643, for their common defence, on account of the hostile disposition of the Indians, the vicinity of the Dutch, French, and Swiss, and the distracted state of the parent country, which afforded little prospect of assistance from England on any emergency. Many interesting details are given, concerning the progress of these colonies, and the state of religion in them, during the period of the civil war and interregnum in England. Dr. H.'s impartiality is conspicuous in relating the intemperate conduct of the Quakers, with the penal laws enacted and enforced against them. He justly reminds us, that persecution for opinion was not at that time thought unchristian or impolitic. At the restoration of Charles II. the whole of the English colonies on the American continent, contained 80,000 inhabitants, of whom 30,000 were in Virginia, 12,000 in Maryland, and the remainder in the different settlements of New England.

The immense territory lying southward of Virginia, between the 31° and 36° N. Lat. was granted by charter from Charles II. in 1663, to Lord Clarendon, and several associates. In 1664, the king gave a patent to his brother, the Duke of York, for various and extensive tracts of land in America, part of which was conveyed soon after by the Duke to Lord Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret, by the name of Nova Cæsarea, or New Jersey. An armament, fitted out from England, proceeded against the Dutch at Manhattan, who surrendered upon condition of enjoying their "estates and modes of worship;" and in honour of the Duke of York, New Amsterdam, built in 1623, took the name of New York.

In 1665, John Yeamans, a respectable planter in Barbadoes, conducted a body of emigrants, from that island, to the southern bank of Cape Fear river in Carolina. They cherished the good will of the natives, and insured a seven years peace. The first assembly for Carolina was convened, in 1669, in Albemarle county.

An early and laudable zeal had been manifested, by the settlers in New England, to extend the knowledge of Christianity to the Indians. The labours of the venerable Elliot, who obtained the title of the Indian apostle, began in 1646. His translation of the bible into the Indian tongue, was printed at Cambridge in 1664: the pious attempts of other missionaries had not been without success. In 1674 there were, within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, fourteen towns of "praying Indians, and about 1,100 souls yielding obedience to the gospel," In Plymouth

colony there were 497 praying Indians, of whom 142 could read the In dian, and 9 the English language.

The memorable war between the king of the Wampanoags, who had taken the name of Philip, and the New England colonies, commenced in 1675. In its short, but tremendous progress, 600 of the inhabitants were either killed in battle, or murdered by the enemy; twelve towns were destroyed; and about 600 buildings, chiefly dwelling houses, were burnt. The war terminated with the death of Philip, in August, 1676, The author's reflections on this event are honourable to his feelings and impartiality*.

In 1680, the foundation of Charles Town, the capital of Carolina, was laid on the Oyster Point, formed by the confluence of the rivers Ashley and Cooper. The celebrated William Penn, in 1681, obtained a charter from Charles II. constituting him and his heirs proprietors of a large tract of territory, lying between the Delaware and Maryland, to which he gave the name of Pennsylvania. A small colony removed to America the same year, and began a settlement above the confluence of the Schuylkill with the Delaware. Bur lington in Jersey, on the opposite shore of the Delaware, had been previously settled by a company of Quakers. Penn published in 1682 a body of laws, agreed on, in England, between himself and those who had pur, chased under him. In October he arrived in his province, with 100 pass sengers, chiefly Quakers. The banks of the Delaware were already inha bited by 3000 persons, Swedes, Dutch, Finlanders, and English. At an assembly held at Chester, the foreigners were naturalized, and the body of laws passed in form. They secured "liberty of conscience and civil freedoms." Having purchased, of the natives, as much land as the circumstances of the colony required, Penn proceeded to lay out his projected city, to which he assigned the name of Philadelphia. The first assembly of Penn sylvania was held at this city, in March, 1683.

"The death of Philip, in retrospect, makes different impressions from what were made at the time of the event. It was then considered as the extinction of a virulent and implacable enemy: it is now viewed as the fall of a great warrior, a penetrating statesman, and a mighty prince. It then excited universal joy and congratulation, as a prelude to the close of a merciless war; it now awakens sober reflections on the instability of empire, the peculiar destiny of the aboriginal race, and the inscrutable decrees of Heaven. The patriotism of the man was then overlooked in the cruelty of the savage; and little allowance was made for the natural jealousy of the sovereign, on account of the barbarities of the warrior. Philip, in the progress of the English settlements, foresaw the loss of his territory, and the extinction of his tribe; and made one mighty effort to prevent those calamities. Our pity for his misfortunes would be still heightened, if we could entirely rely on the tradition (mentioned by Callender, 73.)—that Philip and his chief old men were at first averse to the war; that Philip wept with grief, at the news of the first English who were killed; and that he was pressed into his measures by the irresistible importunity of his young warriors. The assurance, on the other hand, of the equity of our ancestors, in giving the natives an equivalent for their lands, is highly con soling." pp. 435.

James II. pursued arbitrary measures toward the colonies, deprived se veral of their charters, and endeavoured to abolish the freedom of the press. In 1687, he appointed Sir Edmund Andros governor of New England, New York, and New Jersey. The form of Government, now established, was a legislative and executive governor and council, appointed by the king, without the consent of the people. It did not long continue, for upon intelligence of the revolution in England, the inhabitants of Boston deposed. the existing government, and reinstated the old magistrates. Similar mea sures were adopted at New York.-The volume closes with the year 1691, in which Virginia obtained a charter, for the establishment of a college in that colony, toward which the king and queen contributed about 20001. In grateful acknowledgment of the royal patronage and benefaction, it was called the college of William and Mary.

Want of room has obliged us to pass, without notice, many curious and interesting particulars, in these Annals, relative to the constitutions, government, jurisprudence, and commerce of the English colonies, during the eventful period that elapsed between their first settlement, and the revolution in Great Britain. We consider the work as a valuable acquisition to the stores of historical knowledge. The general reader will find in it much information and entertainment; the student of history, desirous of farther details, may use it as a copious index to the authors who have written largely on the distinct parts of American history; and the Christian philosopher may trace in it the interesting concatenation of causes and effects, in the moral government of the world. The thirst of gain, aided by the invention of the compass, led to the discovery of America; persecution peopled it with some of its most flourishing and powerful colonies, whose litical principles and struggles have had an important influence in effecting those revolutions which now agitate Europe, and the consequences of which are incalculable. While, therefore, in such a series of occurrences, we behold feeble men acting from interested motives, and pursuing their own narrow views and purposes, we may also contemplate the great Governor of the Universe, controuling and combining the multifarious efforts of his Creatures, to the production of events which they never anticipated, and the accomplishment of designs founded in infinite wisdom and righteousness. History, properly viewed, may lead nations to tremble at the holy dispensations of Providence, and determine them to regulate their political conduct, by the immutable principles of justice, in the pursuit of which alone, they may reasonably hope for national security and prosperity.

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Art. XXIV. RETROSPECT OF FRENCH LITERATURE. (Concluded from p. 318)

HE conclusion of our retrospect has been delayed by a variety of circumstances; but principally, by an anxiety to present our readers with new and important information. We are sorry to say, that our expectations have been, in a great measure, disappointed; we shall therefore pass hastily through the remainder of our task, and, having in our last volume given a descriptive catalogue of the principal publications during the progress of the Revolution, we shall now conclude with some general and summary criticisms on the literature and principal authors of modern France.

We do not find, in the present day, men who stand so completely for ward from the general mass, as to claim the interest we have hitherto taken in the progress of French Literature. There are, certainly, living authors of talent, but the age of the Pascals and Montesquieus is gone by, and there seems no prospect of its return.

The gloomy calm of despotism, and the turbulence of party conflict, are .alike unfavourable to the advancement of learning. Nearly all the men of talent and literature, who adorned the commencement of the French Revolution, perished in the successive proscriptions of the various parties, which for a time acquired the ascendancy, and then fell to be succeeded by others who obtained the same power, and shared the same fate. Bailly, Lally, Lavoisier, André Chenier, Pastoret, Suard, and many more, were, at different periods, either led to the scaffold, compelled to emigrate, or exiled to the dreary swamps of Cayenne.

Political struggles afford a favourable opportunity for the exertions of oratorical talents, and France, undoubtedly, was never so prolific of orators as in the early part of the Revolution: coffee-houses, clubs, tea-gardens, churches, and night-cellars, resounded with the rant of these disciples of Thersites. The senseless bawlings of the hired emissaries of sedition, served, however, only to enhance the splendid effusions of real genius; the eloquence of Mirabeau, Maury, Barnave, Lazales, Vergniaud, Por talis, surpassed any thing which had before been heard in France, if we except the eloquence of the pulpit. We regret that we are prevented from inserting a few characteristic traits of their respective manners, but it must be obvious, that, to do this with any kind of effect, we must extend our Retrospect to an unwarrantable length.

We have already had occasion to direct the attention of our readers to a brief account of a conspiracy against Christianity, and we are again called upon to hold up, to their contempt and detestation, the same malignant spirit directed against the same object, but armed with different weapons, and varying the method of attack.

The infidels of a former era, aware of the strength of the historical evidences of Christianity, contented themselves with assailing its doctrines; satisfied, that if they could succeed in placing them in a ridiculous or odious light, the rest of their task would be easy. But in our day an anti-christian sect has appeared, with far bolder pretensions, though, fortunately, with far inferior talents. Christianity, with all its evidences, internal and external, is, by the doughty champions of the school of Volney and Dupuis, involved in one comprehensive sentence of proscription: according to these worthies, the Mosaic records are an Arabian tale, our blessed Saviour a personification of the sun rising in Virgo, the twelve Apostles are the twelve Zodiacal signs, and the name Jesus, is derived from YES, the ancient cabalistical name of Bacchus. We cannot persuade ourselves that it is necessary to expose the folly and futility of such contemptible trash; it is not thus that the venerable edifice of our holy faith is to be overthrown. Messrs. Volney and Dupuis may trace accidental resemblances, and frame whimsical hypotheses, as long and as often as they please, but until they can disprove the concurrent and recorded testimony of eighteen centuries, they will not have advanced a single step towards the execution of their absurd and impious project.

It would be really amusing to mark the childish extravagancies of the ene

mies of Revelation, if we could forget that they are our fellow creatures, and that they are playing their fooleries within the sphere of that vortex which soon shall swallow them. M. Volney, for instance, inculcates, in his "Lectures on History," the most complete scepticism with respect to historical evidence; he even condescends to lay down rules for our belief, and to inform us, where to assent, where to doubt, and where to deny. But we shall still take the liberty of examining for ourselves, and we shall be the more cautious in receiving his doctrines, as we refer his dislike of systems, and his declamation against prejudice, to a systematic and prejudiced hatred of Christianity. Of his "Ruins" we only think it necessary to say, that we never read a book more completely overcharged with ignorance, folly, and impiety.

We proceed to notice some of the principal writers who have flourished during the period under review.

Laharpe is principally known as a critic; his dramas met with little success, and we shall not attempt to drag them from the obscurity into which they have fallen. His Lyceum, or Course of Literature ancient and modern, is a work of unquestionable merit, and considerable value. It must, however, be read with caution; its author pronounces his decisions with a positiveness and arrogance which frequently defeat his object, and he betrays partialities highly reprehensible in a man who assumes the office of a critic. Voltaire is his hero, and he bestows on him praises, which, if merited, would elevate him above all authors of present, or former times. M. Laharpe is, moreover, so blinded by his national prejudices, as to exclude nearly all, excepting his countrymen, from the temple of fame; he does, it is true, accord to the English, the pre eminence in matters of judgement; Bacon, Locke, Robertson, and Hume, are held up as worthy of admiration, but as for Shakespeare and Milton, they are consigned without mercy to perpetual contempt and oblivion. It would be well, if this despicable affectation were confined to M. Laharpe; but (although there are some Frenchmen sufficiently divested of this narrow spirit, to appreciate the merits of our unrivalled countrymen) every coxcomb in France now thinks it necessary to have an opinion of his own, to puff Racine and the Henriade, and to ring everlasting changes on the buffoonery of Shakespeare, and the grossierete and absurdities of Milton. The 15th and 16th vols. of the Lycée are employed rather unsuitably in refuting the sophisms of Boulanger, Helvetius, and Diderot; and indeed the whole work too often assumes a gossiping declamatory character.

Laharpe has left several works which he had commenced :—a poem on religion, the first six cantos of the Gierusalemme Liberata translated into French verse, and particularly a Commentary on the tragedies of Raçine. The style of M. Laharpe is singularly pure and elegant, free from the inflation and innovations of the modern school; with some exceptions, his judgement is sound, and his taste correct. It is well known, that this able writer was formerly a Philosophe, and that, some time before his death, he changed his sentiments, and became, as it appears from his own confession, a sincere and penitent Christian.

The eloquent and fascinating" Studies of Nature," by St. Pierre, are too well known to the greater part of our readers, to need a detailed criticism; we shall, however, venture to observe, that if St. Pierre had kept in mind the maxim of Boileau, " rien n'est beau que le Vrai,” truth