learned author of the Flower of the Saints. For our own part, we have no opinion on the subject. he is supported by Ribadeneira, the {all the astronomers. Hodgson, Whiston Gale, Maurice, and the famous Halley demonstrated that there was no eclips of the sun in this first year: but that the 24th of November, in the year of the hundred and second olympiad, an eclips took place which obscured the sun fo two minutes, at a quarter past one, s Seventeen works are attributed to him, six of which we have unfortunately lost; the eleven which remain to us have been translated from the Greek by Duns Scotus, Hugh de St. Victor, Albert Mag-Jerusalem. nus, and several other illustrious scholars. It is true, that since wholesome criticism has been introduced into the world, it has been discovered that all the books attributed to Dionysius were written by an impostor in the year 362 of our era, so that there no longer remains any difficulty on that head. Of the great Eclipse noticed by Dionysius. A fact related by one of the unknown authors of the life of Dionysius has, above all, caused great dissension among the learned. It is pretended that this first Bishop of Paris being in Egypt, in the town of Diospolis, or No-Ammon, at the age of twenty-five years, before he was a Christian, he was there, with one of his friends, witness of the famous eclipse of the sun which happened at the full moon, at the death of Jesus Christ, and that he cried, in Greek, "Either God suffers, or is afflicted at the sufferings of the criminal." It has been carried still farther: Jesuit, named Greslon, pretended the the Chinese preserved in their annals th account of an eclipse which happene near that time, contrary to the order nature. They desired the mathematician of Europe to make a calculation of it it was pleasant enough to desire the astro nomists to calculate an eclipse whic was not natural. Finally it was disco vered, that these Chinese annals do no in any way speak of this eclipse. It appears from the history of St. Di nysius the Areopagite, the passage from Phlegon, and from the letter of the Jesu Greslon, that men like to impose upo one another. But this prodigious malt tude of lies, far from harming the Christ ian religion, only serves, on the contrary to show its divinity, since it is more com firmed every day in spite of them. DIODORUS OF SICILY, AND WE will commence with Herodotu as the most ancient. These words have been differently related by different authors; but in the time of Eusebius of Cæsarea, it is pretended When Henry Stephens entitled h that two historians-the one named Phle- comic rhapsody "The Apology of H gon, and the other Thallus-had made rodotus," we know that his design w mention of this miraculous eclipse. Eu- not to justify the tales of this father sebius of Cæsarea quotes Phlegon, but history; he only sports with us, an we have none of his works now existing. shows that the enormities of his ow He said, (at least it is pretended so), that times were worse than those of the Egy this eclipse happened in the fourth year tians and Persians. He made use of u of the two hundredth olympiad, which liberty which the protestants assume would be the eighteenth year of Tiberius's against those of the catholic, apostoli reign. There are several versions of this and Roman churches. He sharply r anecdote; we distrust them all and muchproaches them with their debaucherie more so, if it were possible to know their avarice, their crimes expiated whether they reckoned by olympiads in the money, their indulgences publicly so time of Phlegon, which is very doubtful. in the taverns, and the false relics TO This important calculation interested 'nufactured by their own monks, calli DIODORUS OF SICILY, AND HERODOTUS. them idolaters. He ventures to say, that if the Egyptians adored cats and onions, the eatholics adore the bones of the dead. He dares to call them in his preliminary discourses, theophages, and even theokeses. We have fourteen editions of this book, for we relish general abuse, just as much as we resent that which we deem special and personal. 397 4th. Then follows the history of Arion, carried on the back of a dolphin across the sea from the skirts of Calabria to Cape Matapan, an extraordinary voyage of about a hundred leagues. 5th. From tale to tale (and who dislikes tales ?) we arrive at the infallible oracle of Delphos, which somehow foretold that Croesus would cook a quarter of lamb and a tortoise in a copper pan, and that he would be dethroned by a mullet. Henry Stephens only made use of Herodotus to render us hateful and ridiculous; we have quite a contrary design. We pretend to show that the modern 6th. Among the inconceivable absurdhistories of our good authors since Guic-ities with which ancient history abounds, ciardini are, in general, as wise and true is there anything approaching the famine as those of Herodotus and Diodorus are with which the Lydians were tormented foolish and fabulous. for twenty-eight years? This people whom Herodotus describes as being richer in gold than the Peruvians, instead of buying food from foreigners, found no better expedient than that of amusing 1st. What does the father of history mean, by saying in the beginning of his work, "the Persian historians relate that the Phenicians were the authors of all the wars. From the Red Sea they en-themselves, every other day, with the tered ours," &c.? It would seem that ladies, without eating for eight-and-twenty the Phenicians having embarked at the successive years. isthmus of Suez, arrived at the straits of Babel-Mandel; coasted along Ethiopia, passed the line, doubled the Cape of Tempests, since called the Cape of Good Hope; returned between Africa and America; repassed the line, and entered from the ocean into the Mediterranean by the Pillars of Hercules, a voyage of more than four thousand of our long marine leagues, at a time when navigation was in its infancy. 2d. The first exploit of the Phenicians was to go towards Argos to carry off the daughter of King Inachus; after which the Greeks, in their turn, carried off Europa, the daughter of the King of Tyre. 7th. Is there anything more marvellous than the history of Cyrus? His grandfather, the Mede Astyages, with a Greek name, dreamed that his daughter Mandane (another Greek name) inundated all Asia; at another time, that she produced a vine, of which all Asia eat the grapes; and thereupon the good man Astyages ordered one Harpagon, another Greek, to murder his grandson Cyrus,for what grandfather would not kill his posterity after dreams of this nature? 8th. Herodotus, no less a good naturalist than an exact historian, does not fail to tell us that near Babylon the earth produced three hundred ears of wheat 3d. Immediately afterwards comes for one. I know a small country which Candaules, King of Lydia, who, meeting yields three for one. I should like to with one of his guards named Gyges, said have been transported to Diabek when to him, "Thou must see my wife quite the Turks were driven from it by Cathenaked; it is absolutely essential." Therine II. It has fine corn also, but re queen, learning that she had been thus turns not three hundred ears for one. exposed, said to the soldier, "You shall either die, or assassinate my husband and reign with me." He chose the latter alternative, and the assassination was accomplished without difficulty. 9th. What has always seemed to me decent and edifying in Herodotus, is the fine religious custom established in Babylon, of which we have already spoken -that of all the married women going A certain Abbé Bazin, with his simple common sense, doubts another tale of Diodorus. It is, of a king of Egypt, Sesostris, who probably existed no more than the island of Panchaica. The fa to prostitute themselves in the temple of} Mylitta, for money, to the first stranger who presented himself. We reckon two millions of inhabitants in this city ;the devotion must have been ardent. This law is very probable among the ori-ther of Sesostris, who is not named, deentals, who have always shut up their termined, on the day that he was born, women, and who, more than six ages that he would make him the conqueror before Herodotus, instituted enuchs, to of all the earth as soon as he was of age. answer to them for the chastity of their It was a notable project. For this purwives. I must no longer proceed nume- pose, he brought up with him all the rically; we should very soon indeed ar- boys who were born on the same day in rive at a hundred. Egypt; and, to make them conquerors, he did not suffer them to have their breakfasts until they had run a hundred and eighty stadia, which is about eight of our long leagues. All that Diodorus of Sicily says, seven centuries after Herodotus, is of the same value, in all that regards antiquities and physics. The Abbé Terasson said, "I translate the text of Diodorus in all its coarseness." He sometimes read us part of it at the house of de la Faye, and when we laughed, he said, "You are resolved to misconstrue; it was quite the contrary with Dacier." When Sesostris was of age, he departed with his racers to conquer the world. They were then about seventeen hundred, and probably half were dead, according to the ordinary course of nature and, above all, of the nature of Egypt, which was desolated by a de{structive plague at least once in ten years. The finest part of Diodorus is the charming description of the island of Panchaica-(" Panchaica Tellus," cele- There must have been three thousand brated by Virgil:) "There were groves four hundred boys born in Egypt on the of odoriferous trees as far as the eye same day as Sesostris; and as nature could see; myrrh and frankincense to produces almost as many girls as boys, furnish the whole world, without exhaust-there must have been six thousand pering it; fountains, which formed an in- sons, at least, born on that day. But finity of canals, bordered with flowers; women were confined every day; and besides unknown birds, which sang un-six thousand births a-day produce, at der the eternal shades; a temple of marble, four thousand feet long, ornamented with columns, colossal statues," &c. the end of the year, two millions one hundred and ninety thousand children. If you multiply by thirty-four, accordThis puts one in mind of the duke de ing to the rule of Kerseboom, you would la Ferté, who, to flatter the taste of the have in Egypt more than seventy-four Abbé Servien, said to him one day, “Ah, millions of inhabitants in a country if you had seen my son who died at fif-which is not so large as Spain or France. teen years of age! What eyes! what All this appeared monstrous to the freshness of complexion; what an ad- Abbé Bazin, who had seen a little of the mirable stature! the Antinous of Bel-world, and who judged only by what be videre, compared to him, was only like a had seen. Chinese baboon: and as to sweetness of manners, he had the most engaging I ever met with." The Abbé Servien melted; the Duke of Ferté, warmed by his own words, melted also; both began to weep; after which he acknowledged that he never had a son. But one Larcher, who was never outside of the college of Mazarine, arrayed himself with great animation on the side of Sesostris and his runners. He pretends, that Herodotus, in speaking of the Greeks, does not reckon by the stadin of Greece, and that the heroes of Sesostris only ran four leagues before breakfast. ¿ his island, others in Phrygia, and afterHe overwhelms poor Abbé Bazin with wards in Macedonia and Italy; the injurious names, such as no scholar in us? number of children which he had by his or es had ever before employed. He sister Juno and his favourites, are not does not hold with the seventeen hun- & omitted. dred boys; but endeavours to prove, by the prophets, that the wives, daughters, and nieces, of the king of Babylon, of the satraps, and the magi, resorted, out of pure devotion, to sleep for money in the aisles of the temple of Babylon with all the camel-drivers and muleteers of Asia. He treats all those who defend the honour of the ladies of Babylon as bad Christians, condemned souls, and enemies to the state. He also takes the part of the goat, so much in the good graces of the young female Egyptians. It is said that his great reason was, that he was allied, by the female side, to a relation of the Bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, the author of an eloquent discourse on Universal History; but this is not a peremptory reason. Take care of extraordinary stories of all kinds. He describes how he afterwards became a god, and the supreme god. It is thus that all the ancient histories have been written. What is more remarkable, they were sacred; if they had not been sacred, they would never have been read. It is well to observe, that though they were sacred, they were all different; and from province to province, and island to island, each had a different history of the gods, demi-gods, and heroes, from that of their neighbours. But it should also be observed, that the people never fought for this mythology. The respectable history of Thucydides, which has several glimmerings of truth, begins at Xerxes; but, before that epoch, how much time was wasted? DIRECTOR. Diodorus of Sicily was the greatest IT is neither of a director of finances, compiler of these tales. This Sicilian a director of hospitals, nor a director of had not a grain of the temper of his the royal buildings, &c. &c., that I precountryman Archimedes, who sought tend to speak, but of a director of conand found so many mathematical truths. science, for that directs all the others: it Diodorus seriously examines the his-is the preceptor of human kind; it knows tory of the Amazons and their queen and teaches all that should be done or Theaestris; the history of the Gorgons, omitted in all possible cases. who fought against the Amazons; that of It is clear that it would be very useful, the Titans, and that of all the gods. He if in all courts there was one conscientious searches into the history of Priapus and man whom the monarch secretly conHermaphroditus. No one could give a sulted on most occasions, and who would better account of Hercules: this hero boldly say, "Non licet." Louis the Just wandered through half the earth, some- would not then have begun his mistimes on foot and alone like a pilgrim,chievous and unhappy reign by assassiand sometimes like a general at the head nating his first minister and imprisoning of a great army, and all his labours are his mother. How many wars, unjust as faithfully discussed; but this is no-fatal, a few good dictators would have thing, in comparison with the gods of spared! How many cruelties they would Crete. have prevented! Diodorus justifies Jupiter from the reproach which other grave historians have passed upon him, of having dethroned and mutilated his father. He shows how Jupiter fought the giants, some in But often, while intending to consult a lamb, we consult a fox. Tartuffe was the director of Orgon. I should like to know who was the conscientious director of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. The gospel speaks no more of directors; than of confessors. Among the people whom our ordinary courtesy calls Pagans, we do not see that Scipio, Fabricius, Cato, Titus, Trajan, or the Antonines, had directors. It is well to have a scrupulous friend to remind you of your duty. But your conscience ought to be the chief of your council. A Huguenot was much surprised when a Catholic lady told him that she had a confessor to absolve her from her sins, and a director to prevent her committing them. "How can your vessel so often go astray, madam," said he, " having two such good pilots?" The learned observe, that it is not the privilege of every one to have a director. It is like having an equerry; it only belongs to ladies of quality. The Abbé Gobelin, a litigious and covetous man, directed Madame de Maintenon only. The directors of Paris often serve four or five devotees at once: they embroil them with their husbands, sometimes with their lovers, and occasionally fill the vacant places. violent quarrels about whether the whole is greater than a part; whether a body can be in several places at the same time; whether the whiteness of snow can exist without snow, or the sweetness of sugar without sugar; whether there can be thinking without a head, &c. I doubt not, that as soon as a Jansenist shall have written a book to demonstrate that one and two are three, a Molinist will start up, and demonstrate that two and one are five. We hope to please and instruct the reader, by laying before him the following verses on Disputation. They are well known to every man of taste in Paris; but they are less familiar to those among the learned, who still dispute on gratuitous predestination, concomitant grace, and that momentous questionwhether the mountains were produced by the sea. ON DISPUTATION. Each brain its thought, each season has its mode; Why have the women directors, and To mortal insight never can be given. "Quite full of errors was the world before." St. Jerome, and Rufinus his antagonist, were great directors of women and girls. They did not find a Roman senator or a military tribune to govern. These people profited by the devout facility of the feminine gender. The men had too much beard on their chins, and often too much strength of mind for them. Boileau has given the portrait of a director, in his Satire on Women, but might have said something much more to the purpose. DISPUTES. THERE have been disputes at all times, on all subjects:-" Mundum tradidit disputationi eorum." There have been Behold the mufti, dervish, iman, bonze, If you are disputants, my friends, pray travel- That wild Ambition should lay waste the earth, Should hang in doubt till rain is the fruit; To see a benefice he'd toought his own Say, wherefore-in what way-can you design But chiefly I detest those tiresome elves, Maintain against you what yourself have said; |