at Rome, the assertion of his right of precedence, and the idea of having a port near Algiers to curb the pirates, were likewise of this class. To this latter attempt he was moreover excited by Pope Alexander VII. and by Cardinal Mazarin before his death. He had for some time debated with himself whether he should go on this expedition in person, like Charles the Fifth; but he had not vessels to execute so great an enterprise, whether in person or by his generals. The attempt was therefore fruitless: and it could not be otherwise. It was, however, of service in exercising the French marine, and prepared the world to expect some of those noble and heroic actions which are out of the ordinary line of policy, such as the disinterested aid lent to the Venetians besieged in Candia, and to the Germans pressed by the Ottoman arms at St. Gothard. twenty guns, and infest all our seas like vultures seeking their prey. When they see a man-of-war, they Ay; when they see a merchant vessel they seize it. Our friends and our relatives, men and women, are made slaves; and we must humbly supplicate the barbarians to deign to receive our money for restoring to us their captives. "Some Christian states have had the shameful prudence to treat with them, and send them arms wherewith to attack others, bargaining with them as merchants, while they negociate as warriors. "Nothing would be more easy than to put down these marauders; yet it is not done. But how many other useful and easy things are entirely neglected! The necessity of reducing these pirates is acknowledged in every prince's cabinet; yet no one undertakes their reduction. When the ministers of different courts accidentally talk the matter over, they do but illustrate the fable of tying the bell The details of the African expedition are lost in the number of successful or unsuccessful wars, waged justly or un-round the cat's neck. justly, with god or bad policy. We shall merely give the following letter, which was written some years ago on the subject of the Algerine piracies: "It is to be lamented, Sire, that the proposals of the order of Malta were not acceded to, when they offered, on consideration of a moderate subsidy from each Christian power, to free the seas from the pirates of Algiers, Morocco, and Tunis. The knights of Malta would then have been truly the defenders of Christianity. The actual force of the Algerines is but two fifty-gun ships, five of about forty, and four of thirty guns; the rest are not worth mentioning. "It is shameful to see their little barks seizing our merchant vessels every day throughout the Mediterranean. They even cruise as far as the Canaries and the Azores. "The order of the Redemption of Captives is the finest of all monastic institutions, but it is a sad reproach to us. The kingdoms of Fez, Algiers, and Tunis, have no marabous of the Redemption of Captives; because, though they take many Christians from us, we take scarcely any Mussulmen from them. "Nevertheless, they are more attached to their religion than we are to ours; for no Turk or Arab ever turns Christian, while they have hundreds of renegadoes amongst them, who even serve in their expeditions. An Italian, named Pelegini, was, in 1712, captain-general of the Algerine galleys. The miramolin, the bey, the dey, all have Christian females in their seraglios, but there are only two Turkish girls who have found lovers in Paris. "The Algerine land force consists of twelve thousand regular soldiers only; "Their soldiery, composed of a variety but all the rest of the men are trained to of nations-ancient Mauritanians, ancient arms; and it is this that renders the conNumidians, Arabs, Turks, and even Ne-quest of the country so difficult. The groes, set sail, almost without provisions, Vandals, however, easily subdued it; yet in tight vessels carrying from eighteen to we dare not attack it." this method of Plato's. They have, indeed, been reproached with having carried this taste for allegories and allusions a little too far. St. Justin, in his Apology, says, that the sign of the cross is marked in the limbs and features of man ;-that, when he extends his arms there is a perfect cross; and that his nose and eyes form a cross upon his face. ALLEGORIES. JUPITER, Neptune, and Mercury, travelling one day in Thrace, called on a certain king named Hyreus, who entertated them very handsomely. After eatng a good dinner, they asked him if they would render him any service. The good man, who was past the age at which it is usual for men to have children, told them he should be very much obliged to them if they would make him a boy. The According to Origen's explanation of three gods then urined on the skin of a Leviticus, the fat of the victims signifies new flayed ox; and from these sprang { the Church, and the tail is a symbol of Orion, who became one of the constella- perseverance. tions known to the most remote antiquity. This constellation was named Orion by the ancient Chaldeans; it is spoken of in the Book of Job. It would be hard to discover a rational allegory in this pretty story, unless we are to infer from it that nothing was impossible to the gods St. Augustin, in his sermon on the difference and agreement of the two genealogies of Christ, explains to his auditors why St. Matthew, although he reckons forty-two generations, enumerates_only forty-one. It is, says he, because Jechonias must be reckoned twice, Jechonias having gone from Jerusalem to Babylon. This journey is to be considered as the corner-stone: and if the corner-stone is the first of one side of a building, it is also the first of the other side; consequently this stone must be reckoned twice; and therefore Jechonias must be There were in Greece two young rakes, who were told by the oracle to be beware of the melampygos or sable posteriors. One day Hercules took them, and tied them by the feet to the end of his club, so that they hung down his back with their heads downwards like a couple of rabbits, having a full view of his person.reckoned twice. He adds that, in the Ah! said they, the oracle is accomplished; this is the melampygos. Hercules fell a laughing, and let them go. Here again it would be rather difficult to divine the moral sense. Among the fathers of mythology, there were some who had only imagination; but the greater part of them possessed understandings of no mean order. Not all our academies, not all our makers of devices, not even they who compose the legends for the counters of the royal treasury, will ever invent allegories more trae, more pleasing, or more ingenious, than those of the Nine Muses, of Venus, the Graces, the God of Love, and so many others, which will be the delight and instruction of all ages. The ancients, it must be confessed, almost always spoke in allegories. The earher fathers of the church, the greater part of whom were Platonists, imitated forty-two generations, we must dwell on the number forty, because that number signifies life. The number ten denotes blessedness, and ten multiplied by four, which represents the four elements and the four seasons, produces forty. In his fifty-third sermon, the dimensions of matter have astonishing proper{ties. Breadth is the dilation of the heart, length is long-suffering, height is hope, and depth is fuith. So that, besides the allegory, we have four dimensions of matter instead of three. It is clear and indubitable (says he in his sermon on the 6th psalm) that the number four denotes the human body, because of the four elements, and the four qualities of hot, cold, moist, and dry; and as four relates to the body, so three relates to the soul; for we must love God with a triple love-with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. Four also relates to the Old Testament, and three to the New. Four and three make up the number of seven days, and the eight is the day of judgment. One cannot but feel that there is in these allegories an affectation but little compatible with true eloquence. The Fathers, who sometimes made use of these figures, wrote in times and countries in which nearly all the arts were degenerating. Their learning and fine genius were warped by the imperfections of the age in which they lived. St. Augustin is not to be respected the less for having paid this tribute to the bad taste of Africa and the fourth century. devils. All these church possessi must pass through the three links of Ave Maria; for benedicta tu stands fat abbeys of Benedictines, in mulier. for monsieur and madame, and fru ventris for banquets and gormandisers The sermons of Barlet and Maill are all framed after this model, and w delivered half in bad Latin, and half bad French. The Italian sermons w in the same taste; and the German w still worse. This monstrous medley g birth to the macaroni style, the very max of barbarism. The species of o tory, worthy only of the Indians on banks of the Missouri, prevailed even lately as the reign of Louis XIII. Τ jesuit Garasse, one of the most dist guished enemies of common sense, ne preached in any other style. He liken the celebrated Theophile to a calf, t cause Theophile's family name was Via something resembling veau (a cali "But," said he, "the flesh of a calf good to roast and to boil, whereas thi is good for nothing but to burn.” All these allegories, used by our ba The discourses of our modern preachers are not disfigured by similar faults. Not that we dare prefer them to the Fathers; but the present age is to be preferred to the ages in which they wrote. "Eloquence which became more and more corrupted, and was not revived until later times, fell, after them, into still greater extravagances; and the languages of all barbarous nations were alike ridiculous until the age of Louis XIV. Look at all the old collections of sermons; they are farbarians, fall infinitely short of those en below the dramatic pieces on the Passion, which used to be played at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. But the spirit of allegory, which has never been lost, may be traced throughout these barbarous discourses. The celebrated Ménot, who lived in the reign of Francis I. did more honour, perhaps, than any other to the allegorical style. "The worthy administrators of justice," said he, "are like a cat set to take care of a cheese, lest it should be gnawed by the mice. One bite of the cat does more damage to the cheese than twenty mice can do." ployed by Homer, Virgil, and Ovi which proves, that if there be still son Goths and Vandals who despise ancie fable, they are not altogether in the righ ALMANACK. It is of little moment to know whethe we have the word almanack from the an cient Saxons, who could not write, o from the Arabs, who are known to hav been astronomers, and to have had som acquaintance with the courses of th planets, while the western nations wer still wrapped in an ignorance as great a their barbarism. I shall here confine my self to one short observation. Here is another very curious passage · "The woodmen, in a forest, cut large and small branches, and bind them in Let an Indian philosopher, who ha faggots; just so do our ecclesiastics, with embarked at Meliapour, come to Ba dispensations from Rome, heap together yonne. I shall suppose this philosophe great and small benefices. The cardinal's to be a man of sense; which, you hat is garnished with bishoprics, the say, is rare among the learned of India bishoprics are garnished with abbeys and to be divested of all scholastic prejudice priories, and the whole is garnished with a thing which was rare everywhere no wil bag; and I shall suppose him to ship. The accounts which they sent to Europe were extremely curious. Every statue was a devil; every assembly, a sabbath; every symbolical figure, a talisOur blockhead, in order to make him man; every Brahmin a sorcerer; and mersant with our arts and sciences, these are made the subject of never-endnts him with a Liege almanack, ing lamentations. They hope that the posed by Matthew Lansberg, and harvest will be abundant; and add, by a Lame Messenger (Messager boiteur) rather incongruous metaphor, that they Anthony Souci, astrologer and histo-will labour effectually in the vineyard of printed every year at Basle, and sold the Lord, in a country where wine has the number of 20,000 copies in eight always been unknown. Thus, or nearly There you behold the fine figure thus, have every people judged, not only man, surrounded by the signs of of distant nations, but of their neighbours. the Zodiac, with certain indications most tay demonstrating that the scales preover the posteriors, the ram over the bed, the fishes over the feet, &c. Each day of the moon informs you When you must take Le Lievre's balm of or Keiser's pills; when you must be We have your nails cut, wean your children, plant, sow, go a journey, or put pair of new shoes. The Indian, when he hears these lessons, will do well to say to his guide, that he will have none} of his almanacks. The Chinese are said to be the most ancient almanack-makers. The finest of their emperor's privileges is that of sending his Calendar to his vassals and neighbours; their refusal of which would be considered as a bravado, and war would forthwith be made upon them, as it used to be made in Europe on feudal lords who refused their homage. If we have only twelve constellations, the Chinese have twenty-eight, the names of which have not the least affinity with ours -a sufficient proof that they have taken So soon as our simpleton shall have nothing from the Chaldean Zodiac, which shown the philosopher a few of our cere- we have adopted. But though they have which every wise man disap-had a complete system of astrology for prove, but which are tolerated in order more than four thousand years, they reto use the populace, through pure con- semble Matthew Lansberg and Anthony tempt for that populace, the traveller, Souci in the fine predictions and secrets of seeing these mummeries, followed by a health, with which they stuff their Impetamborine dance, will not fail to pity usrial Almanack. They divide the day and take us for madmen, who are, never-into ten thousand minutes, and know, theless, very amusing and not absolutely with the greatest precision, what minute cruel. He will write home to the Presi-is favourable or otherwise. When the dent of the Grand College of Benares, emperor Kam-hi wished to employ the that we have not common sense; but Jesuit missionaries in making the almathat if His Paternity will send enlightened nack, they are said to have excused themand discreet persons among us, some-selves, at first, on account of the extravathing may, with the blessing of God, begant superstitions with which it must be made of us. filled. "I have much less faith than you It was precisely in this way that our in the superstitions," replied the Empefirst missionaries, especially St. Francis ror; "only make me a good calendar, and Xavier, spoke of the people inhabiting the leave it for my learned men to fill up the peninsula of India. They even fell into book with their foolery." still grosser mistakes respecting the cus The ingenious author of the Plurality tons of the Indians, their sciences, their of Worlds ridicules the Chinese, because, opinions, their manners, and their wor- says he, they see a thousand stars fall at once into the sea. It is very likely that year at a time when it does not begin, the emperor Kam-hi ridiculed this notion that is, eight days after the winter solstice. as well as Fontenelle. Some Chinese al- All the nations composing the Roman manack-maker had, it should seem, been empire submitted to this innovation ; even good-natured enough to speak of these the Egyptians, who had until then given meteors after the manner of the people, the law in all that related to almanacks, and to take them for stars. Every received it; but none of these differen country has its foolish notions. All the nations altered anything in the distribu nations of antiquity made the sun lietion of their feasts. The Jews, like the down in the sea, where for a long time we rest, celebrated their new moons; thei sent the stars. We have believed that phase or pascha, the fourteenth day of the the clouds touched the firmament, that the moon of March, called the red-haire firmament was a hard substance, and that moon, which day often fell in April it supported a reservoir of water. It has their Penticost, fifty days after the pascha not long been known in our towns that the feast of horns or trumpets, the fir the Virgin-thread (fil de la vierge) so day of July; that of tabernacles on th often found in the country, is nothing fifteenth of the same month, an more than the thread spun by a spider.that of the great sabbath, seven days afte Let us not laugh at any people. Let us reflect that the Chinese had astrolabes and spheres before we could read, and 1⁄2 that if they have made no great progress { in astronomy, it is through that same respect for the ancients which we have had for Aristotle. It is consoling to know that the Roman people, populus latè rer, were, in this particular, far behind Matthew Lansberg, and the Lame Messenger, and the astrologers of China, until the period when Julius Cæsar reformed the Roman year, which we have received from him, and still call by his name-the Julian Calendar, although we have no calends, and he was obliged to reform it himself. wards. The first Christians followed the com putation of the Empire, and reckoned t calends, nones, and ides, like their masters they likewise received the Bissextil which we have still, although it wa found necessary to correct it in the fi teenth century, and it must some day t corrected again; but they conformed the Jewish methods in the celebration their great feasts. They fixed their Ea ter for the fourteenth day of the red moo until the council of Nice determined th it should be the Sunday following Those who celebrated it on the fou teenth were declared heretics; and bo were mistaken in their calculation. The primitive Romans had, at first, The feasts of the Blessed Virgin wer a year of ten months, making three hun-as far as possible, substituted for the ne dred and four days; this was neither moons. The author of the Roman Ca solar nor lunar, nor anything except bar-lendar (le Calendrier Romain) says, th barous. The Roman year was after-the reason of this is drawn from the ver wards composed of three hundred and fifty-five days-another mistake, which was corrected so imperfectly that, in Cæsar's time, the summer festivals were held in winter. The Roman generals always triumphed, but never knew on what day they triumphed. Cæsar reformed everything: he seemed to rule both heaven and earth. I know not through what complaisance for the Roman customs it was that he began the of the Canticle, pulchra ut luna, "fair the moon ;" but, by the same rule, the feasts should be held on a Sunday, for the same verse we find electa ut s “ chosen like the sun." The Christia also kept the feast of Pentecost; it w fixed, like that of the Jews, precisely fit days after Easter. The same author a serts that saint-days took the place of t feasts of tabernacles. He adds, that S John's day was fixed for the 24th of Jun |