of indigence among modern nations which the form of our governments has not been able to preclude. Modern Rome has almost as many charitable institutions as ancient Rome had triumphal arches and other monu{ments of conquest. The most considerable of them all is a bank, which lends money at two per cent. upon pledge, and sells the property if the borrower does not redeem it by an appointed time. This establishment is called the Archiospedale, or chief hospital. It is said always to contain within its walls nearly two thousand sick, which would be about the The word hospital, which recals that of hospitality, reminds us of a virtue in high estimation among the Greeks, now no longer existing but it also expresses a virtue far superior. There is a mighty difference between lodging, maintaining, and providing in sickness for all afflicted applicants whatever, and entertaining at your own house two or three travellers by whom you might claim a right to be en-fiftieth part of the population of Rome tertained in return. Hospitality, after all, was but an exchange. Hospitals are monuments of beneficence. It is true that the Greeks were acquainted with charitable institutions, under the name of Xenodokia, for strangers, Nosocomeia, for the sick, and Ptokia for the indigent. In Diogenes Laertius, concerning Bion, we find this passage :— " he suffered inuch from the indigence of those who were charged with the care of the sick." Hospitality among friends was called Idiozenia, and among strangers Proxenia. Hence, the person who received and entertained strangers at his house, in the name of the whole city, was called Prorenos. But this institution appears to have been exceedingly rare. At the present day, there is scarcely a city in Europe without its hospitals. The Turks have them even for beasts; which seems to be carrying charity rather too far: it would be better to forget the beasts, and think more about men. for this one house alone, without includ{ing the children brought up, and the pilgrims lodged, there. Where are the computations which do not require abatement? Has it not been actually published at Rome, that the hospital of the Trinity had lodged and maintained, for three days, four hundred and forty thousand five hundred male, and twenty-five thousand female pilgrims, at the jubilee in 1600 ? Has not Misson himself told us, that the hospital of the Annunciation at Naples possesses a rental of two millions in our money? (About £80,000.) However, to return; perhaps a charitable establishment for pilgrims, who are generally mere vagabonds, is rather an encouragement to idleness than an act of humanity. It is, however, a decisive { evidence of humanity, that Rome contains fifty charitable establishments, including all descriptions. These beneficent institutions are quite as useful and respectable as the riches of some monasteries and chapels are useless and ridiculous. This prodigious multitude of charitable establishments clearly proves a truth de- To dispense food, clothing, medicine, serving of all our attention—that man is and aid of every kind, to our brethren, is not so depraved as he is stated to be; and truly meritorious; but what need can a that, notwithstanding all his absurd opi-saint have of gold and diamonds? What Bions, notwithstanding all the horrors of war, which transform him into a ferocious beast, we have reason to consider him as creature naturally well disposed and kind, and who, like other animals, becomes vicious only in proportion as he is stung by provocation. The misfortune is, that he is provoked too often. benefit results to mankind from " Our Lady of Loretto" possessing more gorgeous treasures than the Turkish sultan? Loretto is a house of vanity, and not of charity. London, reckoning its charity-schools, has as many beneficent establishments as Rome. CHARITY. The most beautiful monument of beneficence ever erected, is the Hôtel des Invalides, founded by Louis XIV. Of all hospitals, that in which the greatest number of indigent sick are daily received, is the Hôtel Dieu of Paris. It frequently contains four or five thousand inmates at a time. It is at once the receptacle of all the dreadful ills to which mankind are subject, and the temple of true virtue, which consists in relieving them. It is impossible to avoid frequently drawing a contrast between a fête at Versailles or an opera at Paris, in which all the pleasures and all the splendours of life are combined with the most exquisite art, and an Hôtel Dieu, where all that is painful, all that is loathsome, and even death itself, are accumulated in one mass of horror. Such is the composition of great cities! By an admirable policy, pleasures and luxury are rendered subservient to misery and pain. The theatres of Paris pay on an average the yearly sum of a hundred thousand crowns to the hospital. Charity, a ninth in the London hospitals, and a thirtieth in those of Versailles. In the great and celebrated hospital of Lyons, which has long been one of the best conducted in Europe, the average mortality has been found to be only one fifteenth. It has been often proposed to divide the Hótel Dieu of Paris into smaller establishments, better situated, more airy, and salubrious, but money has been wanting to carry the plan into execution. Curtae nescio quid semper abest rei. Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers, to be destroyed; but when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so. Yet the Hôtel Dieu of Paris has a revenue amounting to more than a million, {(£40,000,) and every day increasing; and the Parisians have rivalled each other in their endowments of it. We cannot help remarking in this place, that Germain Brice, in his Description of Paris, speaking of some legacies bequeathed by the first President It often happens in these charitable in- Bellievre to the hall of the Hôtel Dieu, stitutions, that the inconveniences count-named St. Charles, says :-" Every one erbalance the advantages. One proof of the abuses attached to them is, that patients dread the very idea of being removed to them. The Hôtel Dieu, for example, was formerly well situated, in the middle of the city, near the bishop's palace. The situation, now, is very bad; for the city is become overgrown; four or five patients are crowded into every bed, the victim of the scurvy communicates it to his neighbour, and in return receives from him the small-pox; and a pestilential atmosphere spreads incurable disease, and death, not only through the building destined to restore men to healthful life, but through a great part of the city which surrounds it. M. de Chamousset, one of the most valuable and active of citizens, has computed, from accurate authorities, that, in the Hôtel Dieu, a fourth part of the patients die, an eighth in the hospital of{ ought to read the beautiful inscription, engraven in letters of gold on a grand marble tablet, and composed by Oliver Patru, one of the choicest spirits of his time, some of whose pleadings are extant, and in very high esteem." "Whoever thou art that enterest this sacred place, thou wilt almost everywhere behold traces of the charity of the great Pomponne. The gold and silver tapestry and the exquisite furniture which formerly adorned his apartments, are now, by a happy metamorphosis, made to minister to the necessities of the sick. That divine man, who was the ornament and delight of his age, even in his conflict with death, considered how he might relieve the afflicted. The blood of Bellievre was manifested in every action of his life. The glory of his embassies is full well known," &c. The useful Chamousset did better than Germain Brice, or than Oliver Patru, "one of the choicest spirits of his time." He offered to undertake at his own expence, backed by a responsible company, the following contract: subjects, as if they had been a covey of partridges. Is it not impossible for a good poet to be a barbarian? I am persuaded it is. These lines, addressed in his name to Te soumets les esprits dont je n'ai que les corps; The administrators of the Hôtel Dieu, estimated the cost of every patient, whether killed or cured, at fifty livres. M. Chamousset and the company offered to undertake the business, on receiving fifty livres on recovery only. The deaths were to be thrown out of the account, of which the expences were to be borne by himself. The proposal was so very advantage-his? Are they not his preceptor's? Here ous, that it was not accepted. It was feared that he would not be able to accomplish it. Every abuse attempted to be reformed is the patrimony of those who have more influence than the reformers. A circumstance no less singular is, that the Hôtel Dieu alone has the privilege of selling meat in Lent, for its own advantage; and it loses money thereby. M. Chamousset proposed to enter into a contract by which the establishment would gain; his offer was rejected; and the butcher, who was thought to have gested it to him, was dismissed. Ainsi chez les humains, par un abus fatal, CHARLES IX. are some of his royal imaginings, which Il faut suivre ton roi qui t'aimes par sur tous These are worthy the author of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Cæsar's lines on Terence are written with rather more spirit and taste; they breathe Rosug-man urbanity. In those of Francis 1. CHARLES IX., King of France, was (we are told) a good poet. It is quite certain that while he lived his verses were admired. Brantôme does not, indeed, tell us that this king was the best poet in Europe; but he assures us that "he made very genteel quatrains impromptu, without thinking (for he had seen several of them); and when it was wet or gloomy weather, or very hot, he would send for the poets into his cabinet, and pass his ume there with them." Had he always passed his time thus, and, above all, had he made good verses, we should not have had a St. Bartholomew: he would not have fired with a carbine through his window upon his own and Charles IX. we find the barbarism of the Celts. Would to God that Charles IX. had written more verses, even though bad ones! For constant application to the fine arts softens the manners and dispels ferocity : Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros. Besides, the French language scarcely began to take any form until long after Charles IX. See such of Francis I.'s letters as have been preserved-"Tout est perdu hors l'honneur"-" All is lost save honour"-was worthy of a chevalier. But the following is neither in the style of Cicero nor in that of Cæsar "Tout a fleure ynsi que je me volois mettre o lit est arrivé Laval qui m'a aporté la serteneté du lévement du siège." "All was going so well that, when I was going to bed Laval arrived, and brought me the certainty of the siege being raised." We have letters from the hand of Louis XIII., which are no better written. It is not required of a king to write let-{ ters like Pliny, or verses like Virgil; but no one can be excused from expressing himself with propriety in his own tongue. Every prince that writes like a lady's maid has been ill educated. CHINA. SECTION I. some to assert, that the Chinese were only an Egyptian, or rather perhaps a Phenician colony. It was attempted to prove, in the same way as a thousand other things have been proved, that a king of Egypt, called Menes by the Greeks, was the Chinese king Yu; and that Atoes was Ki, by the change of certain letters. In addition to which, the following is a specimen of the reasoning applied to the subject: The Egyptians sometimes lighted We have frequently observed else- torches at night. The Chinese light where, how rash and injudicious it is to lanterns: the Chinese are, therefore, evicontrovert with any nation, such as the dently a colony from Egypt. The Jesuit Chinese, its authentic pretensions. There Parennin who had, at the time, resided is no house in Europe, the antiquity of five and twenty years in China, and was which is so well proved as that of the master both of its language and its sciempire of China. Let us figure to our- ences, has rejected all these fancies with a selves a learned Maronite of Mount happy mixture of elegance and sarcasm. Athos questioning the nobility of the All the missionaries, and all the Chinese, Morozini, the Tiepolo, and other ancient on receiving the intelligence that a counhouses of Venice; of the princes of try in the extremity of the west was deGermany, of the Montmorencys, the veloping a new formation of the Chinese Chatillons, or the Talleyrands, of France, empire, treated it with a contemptuous under the pretence that they are not men- ridicule. Father Perennin replied with tioned in St. Thomas, or St. Bonaventure. somewhat more seriousness :-"Your We must impeach either his sense or his Egyptians," said he, "when going to sincerity. people China, must evidently have passed Many of the learned of our northern through India." Was India at that time climes have felt confounded at the anti-peopled or not? If it was, would it quity claimed by the Chinese. The permit a foreign army to pass through it? question, however, is not one of learning. If it was not, would not the Egyptians Leaving all the Chinese literati, all the have stopped in India? Would they mandarins, all the emperors, to acknow- have continued their journey through ledge Fohi as one of the first who gave barren deserts, and over almost impractilaws to China, about two thousand five cable mountains, till they reached China, hundred years before our vulgar æra; ad-in order to form colonies there, when mit that there must be people before there are kings. Allow that a long period of time is necessary before a numerous people, having discovered the ne- The compilers of a universal history, cessary arts of life, unite in the choice of printed in England, have also shown a a common governor. But if you do not disposition to divest the Chinese of their make these admissions, it is not of the antiquity, because the Jesuits were the slightest consequence. Whether you first who made the world acquainted with agree with us or not, we shall always be-China. This is unquestionably a very lieve that two and two make four. satisfactory reason for saying to a whole they might so easily have established them on the fertile banks of the Indus or the Ganges? In a western province, formerly called {nation-"You are liars." Celtica, the love of singularity and para- It appears to me a very important redox has been carried so far as to induceflection, which may be made on the testi mony given by Confutzé, called by us so often made, that this reverential reConfucius, to the antiquity of his nation; spect has in no small degree impeded, and which is, that Confucius had no in- among this people, the progress of natuterest in falsehood: he did not pretend toral philosophy, geometry, and astronomy. be a prophet; he claimed no inspiration; It is sufficiently known, that they are, he taught no new religion; he used no at the present day, what we all were three delusions; flattered not the emperor un-hundred years ago, very ignorant reader whom he lived: he did not even soners. The most learned Chinese is mention him. In short, he is the only founder of institutions among mankind who was not followed by a train of women. I knew a philosopher who had no other portrait than that of Confucius in his study. At the bottom of it were written the following lines : Without assumption he explor'd the mind, Yet, strange to say, his country held him dear. I have read his books with attention; I have made extracts from them; I have found in them nothing but the purest morality, without the slightest tinge of charlatanism. He lived six hundred } years before our vulgar æra. His works were commented on by the most learned men of the nation. If he had falsified, if he had introduced a false chronology, if he had written of emperors who never existed, would not some one have been found, in a learned nation, who would have reformed his chronology? One Chinese only has chosen to contradict him, and he met with universal execra tion. like one of the learned of Europe in the fifteenth century, in possession of his Aristotle. But it is possible to be a very bad natural philosopher, and at the same time an excellent moralist. It is, in fact, in morality, in political economy, in agriculture, in the necessary arts of life, that the Chinese have made such advances towards perfection. All the rest they have been taught by us: in these we might well submit to become their disciples. Of the Expulsion of the Missionaries from China. Humanly speaking, independently of the service which the Jesuits might confer on the Christian religion, are they not to be regarded as an ill-fated class of men, in having travelled from so remote a distance to introduce trouble and discord into one of the most extended and best-governed kingdoms of the world? {And does not their conduct involve a dreadful abuse of the liberality and indulgence shewn by the orientals, more particularly after the torrents of blood shed, through their means, in the empire of Japan? A scene of horror, to prevent the consequence of which the government believed it absolutely indispensable to shut their ports against all foreigners. Were it worth our while, we might here compare the great wall of China with the monuments of other nations, which have never even approached it; and remark, that, in comparison with this The Jesuits had obtained permission of extensive work, the pyramids of Egypt the emperor of China, Cam-hi, to teach are only puerile and useless masses. We the Catholic religion. They made use of might dwell on the thirty-two eclipses it, to instil into the small portion of the calculated in the ancient chronology of people under their direction, that it was China, twenty-eight of which have been incumbent upon them to serve no other verified by the mathematicians of Eu-master than him who was the vicegerent rope. We might show, that the respect entertained by the Chinese for their ancestors is an evidence that such ancestors have existed; and repeat the observation, of God on earth, and who dwelt in Italy on the banks of a small river called the Tiber; that every other religious opinion, every other worship, was an abomination |