Ambition. A little of my vigour would do you good. Idleness. Some of my tranquillity would do you no harm.

Ambition. I am afraid what you call tranquillity is merely sluggishness.

Idleness. And your vigour, I conjecture, is downright rashness.

Ambition. Of what benefit are waters that never flow. Idleness. Or torrents and rivers that exhaust themselves by their rapidity.

Ambition. I hate that dead calm which prevents the vessel from proceeding on her voyage.

Idleness. And I the tempest which sends it to the bot

tom.

Ambition. Heaven preserve me from that numbness of the nerves which threatens a paralysis.

Idleness. And me from that convulsion of the limbs which precedes a violent death.

MORE OF KOTZEBUE'S PLAGIARISMS DETECTED.

MR. CONDUCTOR,

You have pointed out the source from whence two of the novelettes of Kotzebue lately translated, have been derived, viz. The Little Lie, and Shun even the Appearance of Vice, from the Adventurer. [See Vol. I. p. 321, and p. 72 of the present volume.] I have now to remark a third instance of theft. The Enthusiast (perhaps the best story in his volume) is merely a translation of Marmontel's Happy Divorce.

I hope for the credit of Kotzebue, certainly a writer of powerful genius, that in the original German publication, he named the authorities from which he borrowed these novels; and that the omission of such acknowledgment is to be attributed to the English translator, or to the bookseller, who may have chosen to palm the work upon us as an original production of Kotzebue, from mercenary motives,

Yours,

A READER.

ON SCANDAL.

"THE right the public has to judge of every thing, has produced many virtues, and checked many vices. Without the dread of the public decision, how many heroes*would have degenerated from that character; how many peaceful warriors should we have; how little would the virtues be amiable; how terrible would the wicked be! The exhortation of fathers, the natural affection of children, the fidelity of husbands, the virtue of wives, all these would be of little force if it were not for this short sentence, what will the world say?' which keeps every one in awe."

In fact, for one instance where scandal originates in malice and inveteracy, in a thousand it proceeds from a desire of flattering the company present in an indirect manner, as no man is heard with so little complacency, as he who is always trumpeting the praises of an absent person, which is often an oblique censure on the hearers. The effect of the reverse needs no comment.

To exemplify this, let us suppose an ill-bred and a well-bred man making a visit to a friend in the country after leaving the house of a man of superior opulence. The first will be continually extolling the place he has left, and speaking in raptures of the fine wines, beautiful gardens, and splendid establishment of his former host. The other will take every opportunity of hinting how much he prefers the genteel elegance of a moderate, yet frank hospitality, to scenes of expensive ostentation, It is obvious here, that the conversation of one will be considered as censure, hardly concealed beneath the common forms of civility, the other as the most refined plause. This shews itself in commoner things. Every vulgar person has a kind of demi-god, a Mr. Jones, or a Mr. Smith, whom he brings forward on all occasions as a model of perfection, which is always received with disgust by the company, and indeed frequently draws on the object of the panegyric that kind of satire which is derived from more malignant principles.

ap

* Alexander, in one of his most perilous enterprises, exclaimed, O Athenians! what do I undergo for the sake of being celebrated by you!"

What the poet says of the ladies is not confined to them alone:

"Who praises Cælia's form and feature

"Must call her sister awkward creature.”

This mode of flattery, however, must be used with great caution; for the habitual exercise of it is apt to degenerate into general defamation, especially among those who have few other means of making their conversation interesting, and recommending themselves to society; and such a habit, though not first founded on malevolence, is in its consequence extremely dangerous. But it is material that our preachers and moral writers should take this very cominon source of defamation more into their consideration than they usually do. How can a physician prescribe a remedy, if he has mistaken the cause of the disease? It is in vain to dissuade people from a practice, by imputing it to envy and ill-nature, when they are conscious from their own feelings that it proceeds from a motive directly opposite, a species of good-nature, sometimes indeed extravagant and misplaced, and of pernicious tendency, but arising from a desire of conciliating the favour of others, and putting them in good-humour with themselves.

*

ANTIQUITY OF THE ROUND ROBIN.

THE ancients, not to give the preference to any,. either among their gods or their friends, or even their servants, wrote their names in a circle, in such a manner that it was impossible to say which was first, second, or last in their estimation: all were equal, and the honour was equally divided. The Romans wrote the names of their slaves in a circle, that it might not appear to which they meant to give their liberty, and who were their favourites.

* A polite behaviour can never be long maintained, without a real wish to please; and such a wish is a proof of good-nature. No ill-natured man can be long well-bred. No good-natured man, however unpolished in his manners, can ever be essentially ill-bred. From an absurd prejudice with regard to good-nature, some people affect to substitute good temper for it; but no qualities can be more distinct many good-tempered people, as well as many fools, are very ill-natured; and many men of first-rate genius, with which perhaps entire good temper is incompatible, are perfectly good-natured.

REVIEW OF BOOKS.

PROBATQUE CULPATQUE.

A New Spanish and English Grammar, divided into two parts: the first part containing all the Spanish words abstractedly considered, and inflected under their respective heads; the second containing the Spanish Syntax, illustrated by a selection of elegant and entertaining extracts from some of the best Spanish Authors. By Thomas Planquais, Grammarian, Teacher of the Spanish, Italian, and French Languages. 8vo. p. 494. London, 1807.

To render languages in composition as intelligible to the understanding, and by pronunciation to the hearing, as by types they are expressive to the eye; they must, for the illustration of their elementary principles, letters, syllables, words, and sentences, be reduced to graminatical rules. To explain these rules, as they apply to the Spanish language, is the object of this grammar, which is divided into two parts.

The first treats of the rules of pronunciation (taken from the Acad. Esp. Ortog. 6 ed.) with the position of the accent upon the proper syllable of each word; and afterwards distributes all the Spanish words into the nine parts of speech, each of which is explained in a separate chapter.

The second treats of the construction of sentences, explains the general syntax common to all languages, and the particular one proper to the Castilian tongue, founded upon the government of its nouns, pronouns, and verbs, the effect of its prepositions, and upon its directing these nouns and pronouns into either of the six cases, which have each been invented, and called by a proper name, the better to determine and harmonize the language.

As this explanation of the Spanish words and sentences is to impart useful knowledge, instruct the mind and agreeably divert it, the third chapter of the first part is illustrated with a copious and entertaining vocabulary of select Spanish words of almost every class; and all

the chapters of the second part with a variety of elegant extracts from some of the best Spanish authors. In these, to keep up the attention of the learner through the dryness of the syntactical rules, stimulate his understanding, and incite him to compare the grammatical construction authorised by those writers, the Castilian syntax is pointed out by Italic letters upon every separate part of speech, in the appropriate part of the sentence, that he may correctly learn how to express himself either in speech, or composition.

Glory of the Heavens. By the Rev. T. Bazely, A. M. Chaplain to the Right_Rev. the Lord Bishop of Lincoln. 12mo, pp. 169. Longman. 1807.

The present is an attempt, and a very successful one, to convey an adequate idea of the heavens to those who have made no proficiency in astronomical science, and to impress their minds with a proper notion of the magnificent works of creation; referring to the celestial phenomena, not as articles of science, but as an incentive to virtue. We shall select one chapter (the shortest) as a specimen of the author's manner:

"Of all planets primary and secondary which roll about the same centre and derive the same virtues from the same sun, the moon is most in our view, nearest our earth, and in closest connection with it. Her phenomenon is mutability. In this, and in nothing but this, she is invariable and a perfect index to all within her orbit. To her we ascribe the ebbing and flowing of our tides, the vicissitudes of our climate, and even sometimes such inequalities in our animal frame and mental derangement as cannot be otherwise explained! But how her influence is communicated, whether it extends to our bodies or our minds, or to both, or in what degree to either, is, at least not easily comprehended. But an idea of this lunar agency has so generally prevailed, that even Milton the most philosophical of all our poets talks of "moon-struck madness."

"As we construed the signs in the sun into that debasement or obloquy which sullies the glory of revealed truth in these last days ; may we not in like manner consider the signs in the moon as having no indirect reference to the convulsions of society in times of anarchy and distraction? The incessant risings, fallings. changes, and chances of the one, emphatically represent the instabilities or vicissitudes of the other.

"The church militant in Christendom who in former ages was observed to appear fair as the moon, clear as the sun hath of late years become terrible as an avmy with banners. Have we not all lived to see the christian world or the present moon-struck generation reddened with the madness of ambition? God forgive the authors, abettors, and agents of those sanguinary scenes, the ruthless actors of such tragedies, as closed the eighteenth century; which made co-temporaries shudder and must stagger the belief of posterity!