it had never failed of curing that disease; which at that time was very common at Paris, and baffled the skill of all the physicians.

Transported with joy, he caused a hand-bill to be printed, in which he stated, " that the Dutch physician, after long search and profound meditation, had at length found an infallible cure for the dysentery, and the exact method of preparing the medicine, which was of the utmost importance; he informed the public of his place of abode, where he sold his medicine at a reasonable price."

Every one read this hand-bill; and the account of this new discovery spread all over the city, and at length the king heard of it. His Majesty sent for Helvetius, and ordered D'Aquin, his first physician, to examine him, relative to his pretended remedy. D'Aquin, according to the very illiberal custom of the faculty, when they fear a rival, treated Helvetius as an impostor; but he defended himself in so masterly a manner, that the king, fully convinced of his abilities, gave him twenty-four thousand livres for his secret, and granted him the privilege of practising at the hotel Dieu-a privilege which was confined to the faculty of Paris only.

The reputation of Helvetius increased with his fortune, and the public imagined he possessed specifics for every disorder. Every one spoke high in praise of the Dutch doctor; and at the age of thirty-two years he found himself possessed of a fortune of one hundred thousand crowns, obtained amidst the enmity and invectives of D'Aforti and all the other physicians in Paris.

A REMARKABLE INSTANCE

OF THE

INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON A GENTOO.

ACCORDING to the religious customs and superstitions of the Gentoos, they are liable to lose irrecoverably their right of communion, not only for voluntary breaches of, or derogations from them, but even for involuntary ones, and such as extreme force or necessity might justify. They will even on these occasions impose on themselves martyrdom, rather than forfeit what they call their cast.

In order to exemplify the unaccountable severity of this strange people, in regard to the difficulty of rejoining that communion which they had once forfeited, I have drawn the present anecdote from Mr. Grose's Voyage to the East-Indies. It may be necessary to observe, that I have not exactly followed his mode of narration.

"A rich Gentoo, residing on the banks of the Ganges, had a wife of great beauty, with whom he enjoyed all the delights of reciprocal affection. One morning early, as she was filling a vessel with water at the river, a Mogul nobleman happening to

pass by, was so struck with her beauty at first sight, that he spurred the horse towards the place she was standing, seized her, and laying her across his saddle-box, rode off with her, regardless of her cries, and overpowering her struggles. Whether she was alone, or accompanied, no one it seems could inform her unfortunate husband who was the ravisher, that he might have implored justice against a violence, certainly not tolerated under the Mogul government; neither could he learn what road they had taken, that by his research he might find her, and reclaim her.

"Under these circumstances life became a burthen to the disconsolate husband; he quitted his habitation, and became a wandering Geoghi, with the double intention of favouring his inclination for solitude, and of searching the country round for her. But while he was thus employed, the Mogul nobleman had accomplished his designs. At first he was very cautious of allowing her the least liberty, fearful of a discovery; but after having two children, he became inattentive of restraining her, even more than the Mahometans commonly are, thinking perhaps to conciliate her love by this indulgence-a mode of proceeding not uncustomary among the Gentoos.

"After two years search, her husband, disguised as a Geoghi, came by chance to a garden-door at which she was standing, and begged alms of her. It is not said whether he knew her or not, but at the first sight, and from the sound of his voice, she recognized him, notwithstanding the dress which he had assumed. She embraced him with the most rapturous joy, related to him all her adventures, how unwillingly she had suffered the nobleman's treatment, and concluded with expressing her detestation of her present condition, with an offer of immediately making her escape, and returning to his bosom. To this affectionate deciaration the Gentoo only answered, by representing to her the inviolable rule of their religion in such a case, which did not admit of his receiving her again as his wife, or having any intercourse with her whatever.

"However, after jointly bewailing the cruelty of their separation, and the law which prohibited that re-union for which they both ardently sighed, they consulted about what measures should be taken to effect it, and they determined that he should repair to the great temple of Jaggernaut, near the sea side, in the kingdom of Orixa, near the mouth of the Ganges, there to consult the high-priest, and his chief assistants, whether any thing could be done to restore her, at least, to her religion.

"Accordingly he went, and returned to her with a countenance portentous of the most horrid intelligence. He told her, he came to bid her an eternal adieu, for that she could not be exonerated from the excommunication she had, however, innocently incurred, but on such conditions as he could neither expect, or advise her to comply with. They were these--she should destroy the children she had by her ravisher, so as to leave no traces of her pollution by his profane embraces; then fly with

her

her husband to the temple of Jaggernaut, and there to have melted lead poured down her throat, by which means only she might be permitted to die in her cast, if she could not live in it.

"The wife, on hearing these terms, accepted them, hard as they were, notwithstanding her husband's most tender dissuasions. Stimulated then by the strong incentives of zeal for her religion, love for her husband, and hatred for her ravisher, that made her see in her children nothing but his part of them, all conspiring to steel her heart against the dictates of nature, she perpetrated the first part of the injunction, and found means to escape undiscovered with her husband, who did not even dare to renew with her the privilege of one; as her person was still polluted, he would become equally culpable with her, had they enjoyed the connubial intercourse.

"Arrived at the temple, she presented herself with the utmost firmness and intrepidity to the priests, of whom she demanded the fulfilment of the rest of her sentence. After a sequestration of a few days, and other preparatory ceremonies, she was led to the appointed place of execution in the area before the temple; an innumerable concourse of people were present; she did not discover the least symptom of fear at the dreadful solemnity and apparatus of the fire, and other instruments for her sufferings. After a short prayer she was blindfolded, and extended on the ground with her mouth open, ready to receive her death with the melted lead.

"Instead of which, some cold water was poured down her throat; she was then ordered to rise, and assured that the sincerity of her intention having thus been proved, it was accepted by the Deity, and that she was then at liberty to live with her hus band as before, being reinstated in all her rights, divine and social."

OF THE OPINIONS ENTERTAINED BY RUDE AND UNCIVILIZED NATIONS CONCERNING

THE ORIGIN OF MANKIND.

WHEN we read that the most celebrated nations of antiquity

disputed concerning which was the eldest son of earth, or which of them first arose from fat slime; when we read that some of them believed that they sprung from the gods, others from the teeth of a serpent; nay, that such numbers of the most respectable of the Grecian philosophers held men and beasts to be merely the offspring of chance, or of blindly acting nature, and called the fish the parents and nurses of mankind, we find it as difficult, as it hitherto has been to the greatest antiquarians, to admit that such monstrous assertions and opinions could be believed and maintained in their strict and literal sense. But, on proceeding

to

to trace the sentiments of other nations who still continue in an uncivilized state, on the origin of mankind, we find that the most unexceptionable witnesses and observers unanimously concur in imputing to these nations the very same opinions as appear to us so strange and incredible in the traditions and systems of the nations and philosophers of the ancient world, we at length, if of a candid and unbiassed mind, find it impossible any longer to withstand the testimony of the whole tenor of history: that all unenlightened men, in all times, and in all parts of the globe, have either derived themselves from gods or from animals, or even from dead inanimate objects.

Several nations agree in the belief, or in the report, that there was a time when gods or superhuman natures bore rule upon the earth, and peopled the world; or that at least the sons and daughters of gods produced the human race. Thus thought, not only the antient Phoenicians, Chaldæans,* and all the Celtic nations, † but also the old Peruvians, who held their incas for sons of the sun; and children of the sun and of the moon, for the creators of men and beasts. Thus think at present the Bramins, and all the nations of southern and eastern Asia, who have received their religions from Hindostan, as far as the Japanese. § Of a like divine origin the Otaheitans boast to this very day, and other nations of the south sea, nay even the dull Kamtshadales and Negroes, whose doctrine of the gods is as characteristic as their manners, their tempers, and their modes of life. There have been many nations who relate as infamous actions of their gods as the Kamtshadales and Negroes; but, as far as my knowledge reaches, there never was a nation besides these, that acknowledged the infamous actions they related of their gods, as such, and made their deities so much the objects of scorn and derision, and the authors of such silly and contradictory tricks as could only proceed from the distorted fancy of Kamtshadales and Negroes, and to these alone could appear credible and entertaining. The Kamtshadales ** give the name of Kutka to the creator of Kamtshatka and the primitive father of their race. They know not indeed from whence this Kutka was derived, and whether he was originally a god or a man; but this they know for certain, that he formerly lived, fed, dressed, and employed himself as one of their progenitors: that he was frequently ill-treated by his wife, his children, and relations, and even by the most contemptible animals: in short, was duped and derided like a base and abject wretch; which ill-treatment and mockery, extravagant beyond conception, form the main contents of their diverting tales. They impute it to the stupidity of Kutka that their country was not more fine and fertile than it is, that it is deformed by so many

*See Historia doctr. de vero deo, in the sections that treat of the religions of these nations. + Pelloutier, vol. ii, p. 109.

Acosta, p. 284, 285. Zarate, vol. i. p. 49.

His or doctr. de vero deo. **Steller, p. 253, & seq.

Preville, vol. i. p. 453-455.

lofty

lofty mountains and inaccessible rocks, and that they have ever to contend with rushing streams, and with vehement rains and storms; but it never occurred to them to reflect how heaven and earth are so wisely made, and so wonderfully preserved and governed.—The traditions of the negroes concerning their Nanni, have the same resemblance with the reports of the Kamtshadales, as the two nations have in general in regard to the dispositions of their mind. A large black spider, say the negroes,* created by divine command the original men; or rather it furnished the matter out of which a Fetis formed mankind. When at last she had spun herself out, and all the men she had thus produced ungrate fully left her, she used the little matter that still remained in the formation of one more man that was smaller than all the rest. Him she herself brought up, and gave him her own name Nanni. This Nanni is the subject of all their merry stories, or, as Reaumur very properly says, is the buffoon of the negroes, as Kutka is that of the Ramtshadales. His mother instructed him how he might live in the world without work, by dextrously imposing on men and gods. She taught him to eat the flesh of poultry and to suck eggs, and then so to stuff them up again, or to repair them so well in appearance, that the Fetis suspected nothing of the cheat. Nanni, in playing one of his roguish tricks, lost both his arms; but this prevented him not from chopping wood, and doing other businesses, to which hands and arms are indispensably necessary. These and the like contradictions do not at all strike the negroes; and it only serves to make them angry if one asks them for a little explanation of the subject, without ever convincing them of the absurdity or inconceivableness of their stories.

Great, however, as the number of the nations is who derive their race from deities, yet the number of those who believe themselves sprung either from animals or lifeless substances, is far greater; and this latter opinion must be more proportionate or more natural to the puerile intellect of rude nations, than the opinion of the divine origin of mankind.

In the first place, the Kalmucs+ say, there was a monstrous space or chaos; of the origin of which they know nothing, but the width and depth of it they estimate at six millions, one hundred and sixteen thousand of their miles. In this expanse goldcoloured clouds collected themselves together, which poured down such a continual rain, that an immense ocean arose. On this ocean a scum was formed by degrees, on which all living beings, and among them man, began to crawl; and from the middle of it the burchans or the gods were produced.

To the Kalmucs the inhabitants of the Moluccas and other isles

in the East Indian ocean approach the nearest. Almost all of these believe themselves to be derived from inanimate substances; whereas the American tribes, one and all, agree that the beasts

*Reaumur, p. 43.

+ Pallas's travels, vol. i. p. 334. Lepechin's travels, vol. i. p. 281.

were