chiming, the four tenors kept repeating the same notes to which Handel has set the words "All flesh shall see it together."

After an excellent dinner at the Croix d'Or, and a bottle of capital white Champagne (the wine which this part of France produces), we proceeded towards Rheims. Passed through the village of Braine, where there is au old ruined Castle, and an old Gothic Church. We had beautifully wooded hills on both sides the road. It was striking ten at night by the Cathedral clock when we arrived at Rheims, passing through an old street like Walmgate. Our Inn, the Post, is at the West end of the Cathedral, and nearer to it, than the Chapter Coffee House to York Minster. My lodging-room looks directly to the Cathedral. The Inn was shut up, and all the inmates, except two, were gone to bed. They have stirred themselves to make us supper. We have, by great exertion, travelled 72 miles to-day. X.

(To be continued.)

Mr. URBAN,

WIT

Aug. 3.

ITHIN the domestic part of your Miscellany, you include business questions, which are more useful in nine instances out of ten, than elaborate displays of projects, which previously require, as to the ascertainment of their value, experiment, coincident circumstances, and public discussion. Men, however, live among things, as to their comforts, which have no manner of bearing upon grand interests; nor can there be a doubt but that chimneys are just as essential to the comforts of private life, as courts of justice are to the public well-being.

You have lately invited discussion concerning Church Pews, and though it is a just opinion that we may legis. late too much, I conceive that this opinion has a particular relation to points of personal liberty. Questions of property cannot possibly be too definitely exhibited. At least, it is certain that, voluminous as are our Laws, Magistrates can bear testimony that cases of perplexity perpetually occur, because every one here expects exceptions to have the force of general rules.

The two points upon which I now wish to address you, are, 1. Composi

tions for Tythes. 2 Informal Marriages.

As to the first, Compositions for Tythes, it appears that the agreement made between A. a Tythe proprietor, and B. a compounder, is personal; and has no relation to the latter, in view of law, as occupier. So that, if B. leaves a farm, he may, if he chooses, gather the Tythes from the incoming tenants, for a twelvemonth, and the latter must give six months' notice, precisely from Lady Day (Tythes being an annual taking and due at Michaelmas) to prevent the continuance of such a claim; which claim, by the way, continues just so long as the Tythe proprietor withholds notice of the cessation of his agreement to compound, and so to transfer it to the occupier of the land. In some parishes it is customary to put at the foot of the Tythe receipts the following memorandum: "No person is to consider himself as holding the Tythes any longer than be occupies the lands." The legality, or at least the validity of such a clause has been doubted; and Farmers have said that if they engage their Tythes for seven years, they prevent persons taking their farms over their heads, by offering higher rents; and that the personal agreement is therefore most eligible of the two. It is further said, that six months notice for privy Tythes may be given at any one of the four quarter-days and be valid, because, unlike great Tythes, the products are not æstival or au tumnal, but perpetual.

The second point is the frequency of Informal Marriages, by which I mean weddings out of their parishes of various loving couples. I have never heard that Constables or Sheriffs' officers were obliged to make actual peregrinations, upon uncertainties, in search of unfortunate Debtors, but I have heard that earthstopping is the duty of a Clergyman, whereon a he and she human fox choose to run from cover to cover. To me it appears a defect of legisla tion. When there was a war against covered buttons, it was usual for the Clergy to administer a sixpenny affidavil, that corpses were buried in woollen; and a similar provision, as to the actual residence of marrying parties, upon putting up the banus, would remove the evil in question. I

should

should be glad to have these subjects properly discussed, and am

Your constant Reader,

A BUSINESSIAN.

resemble the portrait on coins of Caracalla, who had the foolish vanity of appearing terrible, and wished to imitate Alexander the Great in his manner of carrying his head. (Vis

TURES IN THE ROYAL MUSEUM AT
PARIS; WITH REMARKS BY MR.
FOSBROOKE. No. VI.

(Continued from Part i. p. 587.)

UTERPE. A Statue.

XLV. This gure, to which the two flutes give the character of the Muse who presides over Musicians, is remarkable for the cast and uncommon adjustment of the drapery. (Visconti, p. 19.) She holds flutes upon the Sarcophagus of the Capitol and the Villa Albani, as well as in the Apotheosis of Homer. She commonly wears the dress of tragic actors, because they were always accompanied by flutes.

XLVI. BACCHANTE. A Bust. Remarkable for an uncommon arrange ment of the hair. Visconti, p. 20.

XLVII. MUSE. A Bust. Plumes torn from the Sirens ornament the head of this Muse, whose mouth seems to open in order to sing her victory. Visconti, p. 20. Gori (Inscr. Etrur. l. iii. pl. 33.) ascribes the plumes to the victory over the daughters of Pierus, who were changed into birds; but the appropriation of Visconti is better supported, as it occurs in Pausanias; and the Muses rending off the wings of the Sirens in punishment, forms part of a bas-relief. XLVIII. EURIPIDES. A seated Statue, by a marble table. This is the small Statue of the Villa Albani, published by Winckelman, Monum. İned. No. 168. (Visconti, p. 21.) It is to be observed, that as the head of this Statue could not be found, Cardinal Albani caused one to be supplied, a copy of the bust of Euripides at the Farnesini.

XLIX. UNKNOWN PORTRAIT or A WOMAN. A Bust. Subject unknown, but once called a Plautilla, with little foundation. Visconti, p. 21. L. A GODDESS. A Bust. This Bust, d'un style grandiose, seems to have been executed on purpose to represent a Goddess, who is characterized by no attribute. Visconti,p. 31.

LI. CARACALLA. A Bust. The fierce look, and the inclination of the head towards the left side, perfectly

inon. At Rome there are double Busts, Alexander's head and Caracalla's back to back.

LII. SEAT OF A BATH, ornamented with Sculpture, in excellent taste. The three heroes on the pedestal are

thought to represent Achilles, seated with Patroclus and Automedon, who is bringing his war-chariot. Visconti,

p. 22.

LIII. DEDALUS AND PASIPHAE. A Bas-relief in three compartments; 1. Pasiphae seated and melancholy, with Cupid at her knees. The heroine seems conversing concerning her fatal passion with one of the shepherds of her husband Minos. 2. A wooden Bull upon wheels, made by Dedalus and his workmen. 3. Cupid leads her towards the Bull, the interior of which is accessible by a stool, of several steps. (Visconti, p. 22.) See too, Monum. Ined. No. 93.-Pasiphae is the name of one of the Pleiades, a groupe of stars upon the back of the Bull, and hence, without doubt, came the fable. Query, if this groupe is not formed from the basso-relievoS of the Borghese and Spada Palaces, united?

LIV. VITELLIUS. A Bust. The en bon point seems to announce the gluttonous life of this Prince. It is doubtful whether this Bust, executed in a fine style, does not belong to some excellent Sculptor of the sixteenth century. (Visconti, p. 23.) His Busts are very rare. That of the Giustiniani Palace is modern. There are two antient; one is at the Capitol; the other at the Florentine Mu

seum.

LV. A NYMPH. A Statue. She is in the altitude of approaching a spring to draw water from it. With her right hand she raises her tunick in order not to wet it, while her foot advanced towards the brink, appears to lean upon a bowl. The left arm elevated supports the uro, which she is going to fill. Similar Statues exist in many collections, and prove the celebrity of their common original. There is one of them in the villa d'Este at Tivoli, which has written on the plinth the name of the Nymph Ancirrhoè.

Ancirrhoè. The bowl in this French Statue is singular. It may be supposed to allude to the play of the Nymphs," whom Greek Poetry always represents sporting upon the banks of rivers and springs. Visconti, p. 23.

Eckhel says, that the foot placed upon any thing, denotes a property in it. This was certainly a Nymph of a spring or fountain.

LVI. BACCHUS. A Statue. The god half-reclined upon a panther's skin, and characterized by his crown of ivy, and a horn full of grapes, which he holds in his left hand, seems to caress an infant, probably one of his Genii, if it does not rather represent the soul of the person whose tomb had this groupe for its courronement. (Visconti, p. 24.) Bacchus often leans upon his Genius Ampelus, as some writers denominate Acratus.

LVII. THE NEREIDS. A Sarcophagus. The bas-reliefs of excellent sculpture which ornament the face of this Sarcophagus, represent a Choir of four Nereids carried upon tritons and marine monsters, and escorting across the waves of the ocean Genii, symbols of human souls, who are taking their route towards the For tunate Isles, the residence of the blessed. This monument is engraved in the Admiranda, Montfaucon, and the French Museum. Visconti, p. 24.

LVIII. JULIA, daughter of Augustus, represented as a Çeres. A Statue. The Goddess of Agriculture, having upon her head a crown, and in her hand a bouquet of those precious wheat-ears which she presented to mankind, is here represented, draped in an ample cloak, adorned with fringes, which entirely covers her; an allusion, perhaps, to the mysteries which they celebrated in her honour, and of which the secret was impenetrable. The head appears to be the portrait of Julia, daughter of Augustus. (Visconti, p. 24.) It is very dubious whether this Statue is correctly appropriated. It may be an Isis or Spes, of the Roman kind. We know, from Pococke, that the Eleusinian Ceres bore upon her head the modius, or a round tower. The garment ornamented with fringes, was an Egyptian vestment, and named Guusupe. The Roman ladies used it, as soon as it was known at Rome. (See Maillot, Costumes, &c. III. 31.)

The fringes probably implied no more than a fashion.

LIX. MITHRAS. A Bas-relief. This Mithriac bas-relief is the most considerable of all the monuments which remain to us of those superstitions derived from the East. The Cave of Mithras is open in the middle of the composition. We see this Genius of the Sun in a Persian habit, perform the mystical sacrifice of the bull. According to the opinion of many Literati, it is a cosmological allegory. The immolated Bull is the symbol of the Moon. The wound whence the blood flows, denotes the influences of that planet. The Serpent is the emblem of Sabazius, a divinity, which Paganism has confounded with Bacchus, and who was thought to preside over what was called the moist element. This Serpent seems desirous of licking the wound of the Bull. The Dog is the symbol of the Dog-star; the Scorpion of Autumn; the Owl at the top of the Grotto is consecrated to Minerva, a divinity of whom the most pure air was the domain. The two figures in the same costume, of whom one raises, the other inverts a torch, are the genii of Day and Night. Above the Cave is the Earth, clothed with its productions, and illuminated by the Sun and the Moon, running upon their opposite cars. This monument, which antique inscriptions render more remarkable, and has been engraved in many works, was found in the subterranean road which connected the Campus Martius with the Forum, across the bill of the Capitol. (Visconti, p. 26.) The mysterious worship of Mithras did not take place at Rome before the reign of Trajan, about A.D. 101, and there are two explanations of the Mithriaca, one astronomical, that of Dupius, &c. and that of Porphyry, which makes the Metempsychosis or future state of souls, the real base. The former appears the most probable; nor does there appear one other satisfactory result of much mythological nonsense of the oriental superstition, which has simple mystical conjuration, and monstrous disgusting bizarreries, than that the mistakes of learned men show the folly of studying it. In the basreliefs and mythology of Greece, there is often much of history, art, and the picturesque;

POEMS OF LUCRETIUS, POPE,, &c.

WITH CRITICAL REMARKS.
(Continued from p. 20.)

LUCRETIUS has been censured for employing or adopting the Epicurean philosophy as the basis of his creed and his argumentative discussions."That such a genius should appear among the number of its warmest converts and admirers," says Melmoth," is a remarkable instance that reason has sometimes proved the dupe of imagination, even in the finest understandings." " Indeed," he continues," the wildest reveries of fancy never conceived a more absurd and extravagant romance than that great Poet has delivered as a sober system of physics, in one of the noblest didactic poems extant." If the system, however, promulgated by this firm disciple and admirer of the doctrines of Epicurus and Democritus, has been since exploded in many of its postulates, and wears, to modern eyes and apprehensions, a very different aspect from what it once did, this proscription seems too general and sweeping.

Lucretius, like a faithful follower, has embodied the opinions of his master in nervous and sublime verse, -and here it must be observed, that his ideas in many instances, especially when connected with the moral condition of man-bis aims and end, and the proportion of happiness which he seeks and positively enjoys,-appear elevated and just, and it seems, on the other band, somewhat unfair to affix the epithet of extravagant, and rhapsody-to a system of opinions conceived after a cool and deliberate research into the nature of things, because many of its postulates have been proved to be fallacious by

the increase of light which has broken in upon succeeding ages. Lucretius often argues his point well,-he displays acuteness of perception, and a logical precision of reasoning and of inference in the progress of his survey; but these high endowments of a philosophical poet cannot, on the other hand, be deemed a sufficient extenuation of the numerous and palpable errors which certainly attach to the Epicurean philosophy.

A learned and ingenious Commentator of the present age has vindicated this philosophy with eloquence, and occasionally with suc 'cess. So far as his arguments go to refute the charge of Atheism (which perhaps has been too hastily brought

against him, and which clearly, as it

regards him, only extended to the disownment of the wretched system of cosmogony then in established be lief)-not to the negation of an Allpowerful First Cause, and to prove that, when Epicurus and after him Lucretius,-teaches that the highest happiness to which mortals can attain consists in the enjoyment of pleasure,

he means not the repletion of mere sensual enjoyments, but rather the more elevated delights of mental speculation, in rectitude of principle, and the contemplation and exercise of virtue, he has accomplished his design. But there are various other points of speculation upon which his eulogist does not appear to have so successfully exonerated him from sliding too easily into the monstrous errors and fables which defaced the philosophical and theological creed of his days. When, also, he asserts the eternity of matter, although he confesses that it received its first fashion and impulse from the hand of Omnipotence, and denies the immortality of the soul and a future existence, although he is countenanced in the first by the Stagyrite himself, and he only perpetuates in the latter the doctrines of the sect of which he is. a professed follower, he sometimes, it must be owned, deals more liberally in assertion than in argument. If, then, upon a proper and fair estimate of the subjects which Lucretius selected for speculation and song, they must be admitted to be universally momentous and great,-it may perhaps with truth be said, that as far as light and knowledge could,

from

from the period of his existence and of his writing, be afforded him, be bas executed his plan with that compass, vigour, and dignity, which may on the whole be deemed not unworthy of its original conception.

Nor are the subjects upon which Pope has employed his thoughts in the Essay on Man subordinate in their range or importance to those which caught the attention and invigorated the sentiments and the numBers of Lucretius. Although the prevailing sentiment with the best judges has been that the acquirements and the thinking of this eminent and wellknown Poet were of too superficial an order to yield much that can be termed new, original, or singularly striking in Metaphysics, and the higher branches of Morals, in Physics, or in Theology,-still it must be ever maintained that, for the points of speculation in which he has professedly engaged, if he has not intrin sically added dignity and weight to them, he has not, by his method of disposition and general treatment, or the introduction of mean or unwor thy views, contributed to throw from their high sphere those investigations which involve in their discussion the higher energies of mankind. His sub jects have a comprehensive relation to man in his various conditions and contingencies, and he views the earth which he inhabits with the whole scene of nature as particular links in the vast, universal, and indefinite plan, which under one Great Cause, rules and pervades all being. The outlines here obscurely traced,-obscurely from the amazing extent of the ground to which it has a reference, involves, it is true, abilities of very superior philosophical acute ness and capacity, such as it may be contended Pope was not master of ;but it will be admitted, that even if his postulates and his conclusions are often trite and hackneyed, and who is there, whilst reasoning on known subjects, that does not often incur this charge, the expansive energy which marks the progress of his enquiries, and the animation and swell of his numbers, speak to the breast of the individual who studies, and carries him insensibly into the regions of Philosophy, although he had been before too careless or even too superficial to search these matters.

The Essay on Man, it is well known,-amongst other topics of disquisitions, expatiates much upon the blindness and weakness of man in his intellectual capacities when contemplating some things in relation to himself or those about him. "Presumptuous man! the reason would'st thou find,

Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind," &c.

This has appeared to some critics to be only the repetition of an universally received axiom, and if indeed it be considered with reference alone to a comparison with his Creator, the sentiment becomes so trite and obvious that it is hardly worthy of a place among precepts taught from the lips of Philosophy. It assuredly argues no depth of thinking, and, as Johnson says, bespeaks the commonest and most superficial and puerile views.

But if the latitude in which this idea may be thought to expand, be considered in its inuumerable and possible relations-relations in which no evidence appears to prove that such was not the intention of its author,-the sentiment rises to a beautiful and indefinitely grand idea, It must be then understood as contemplating man, in all his varieties and characters as they prevail under the general name and form of hu manity; as a race isolated in one particular sphere of the universe,surrounded by immeasurable regions of space, where all objects beyond are utterly inacessible to his knowledge and ardent aspirings. It recognizes the station we occupy amidst myriads of intellectual beings of another and a probably far higher order of intelligence, and opens regions of legitimate speculation which the Poet might greatly have amplified.

The field of enquiry which busy thought suggests, ascends the gra duated scale which, according to the beautiful theory of the Poet, prevails through all the subordinate modes and degrees of animate existence; and admires with him, the consummate wisdom, contrivance, and skill, which seems, even if not philosophically demonstrated, to follow a chain of being from the lowest rank of animalculi or creatures which are found to discover signs of sensation, up to the standard of a rational soul. (To be continued.)