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nor have our doctors any more knowledge had in view. Cicero, in his Orator, says, of what a soul is.

His Morals.

that "no one had more science, sagacity, invention, or judgment." Quintilian goes so far as to praise, not only the extent of his knowledge, but also the suavity of his elocution-suavitatem eloquendi.

Aristotle would have an orator wellinformed respecting laws, finances, treaties, fortresses, garrisons, provisions, and merchandise. The orators in the parlia

Aristotle's morals, like all others, are very good; for there are not two systems of morality. Those of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Pythagoras, of Aristotle, of Epictetus, of Antoninus, are absolutely the same. God has placed in every breast the knowledge of good, with some incli-ments of England, the diets of Poland, nation for evil. the states of Sweeden, the pregadi of Aristotle says, that to be virtuous, three Venice, &c. would not find these lessons things are necessary-nature, reason, and of Aristotle unprofitable; to other nahabit; and nothing is more true. With-tions, perhaps, they would be so. out a good disposition, virtue is too difficult reason strengthens it; and habit renders good actions as familiar as a daily exercise to which one is accustomed.

He would have his orator know the passions and manners of men, and the humours of everv condition.

I do not think there is a single nicety of the art which has escaped him. He particularly recommends the citing of instances where public affairs are spoken of; nothing has so great an effect on the

What he says on this subject proves that he wrote his Rhetoric long before Alexander was appointed captain-general of the Greeks against the Great King.

He enumerates all the virtues, and does not fail to place friendship among them. He distinguishes friendship between equals, between relatives, between guests, and between lovers. Friendship spring-minds of men. ing from the rights of hospitality is no longer known amongst us. That which among the ancients was the sacred bond of society, is, with us, nothing but an innkeeper's reckoning; and as for lovers, it is very rarely now-a-days that virtue has anything to do with love. We think we owe nothing to a woman to whom we have a thousand times promised every thing.

It is a melancholy reflection, that our first doctors have never ranked friendship among the virtues-have scarcely ever recommended friendship; but, on the contrary, have often seemed to breathe enmity, like tyrants, who dread all associations.

It is, moreover, with very good reason that Aristotle fixes all the virtues between the two extremes. He was, perhaps, the first who assigned them this place.

He expressly says, that piety is the medium between atheism and superstition.

His Rhetoric.

If, says he, any one had to prove to the Greeks that it is their interest to oppose the enterprises of the King of Persia, and to prevent him from making himself mas ter of Egypt, he should first remind them, that Darius Ochus would not attack Greece until Egypt was in his power; he should remark that Xerxes had pursued the same course; he should add, that it was not to be doubted that Darius Codomannus would do the same; and that, therefore, they must not suffer him to take possession of Egypt.

He even permits, in speeches delivered to great assemblies, the introduction of parables and fables: they always strike the multitude. He relates some very ingenious ones, which are of the highest antiquity, as the horse that implored the assistance of man to revenge himself on the stag, and became a slave through hav

It was probably, his rules for rhetoricing sought a protector. and poetry that Cicero and Quintilian

It may be remarked that, in the second

book, where he treats of arguing from the greater to the less, he gives an example which plainly shows what was the opinion of Greece, and probably of Asia, respecting the extent of the power of the gods.

make verses, and still more in considera{tion of his morality, in which he infinitely surpasses Homer, who has none at all. But he owed his popularity chiefly to the criticism on the pride of Louis XIV. and the harshness of Louvois, which, it was thought, were discoverable in Telema

Be this as it may, nothing can be a better proof of Aristotle's good sense and good taste, than his having assigned to everything its proper place.

"If," says he, "it be true that the gods themselves, enlightened as they are, can-chus. not know every thing, much less can men." This passage clearly proves, that omniscience was not then attributed to the Divinity. It was conceived that the gods could not know what was not; the future was not; therefore, it seemed impossible 'that they should know it. This is the opinion of the Socinians at the present day.

But to return to Aristotle's Rhetoric.What I shall chiefly remark on in his book on Elocution and Diction is, the good sense with which he condemns those who would be poets in prose. He would have pathos; but he banishes bombast, and proscribes useless epithets. Indeed, Demosthenes and Cicero, who followed his precepts, never affected the poetic style in their speeches. The style, says Aristotle, must always be conformable to the subject.

Nothing can be more misplaced than to speak of physics poetically, and lavish figure and ornament where there should be only method, clearness, and truth: it { is the quackery of a man who would pass off false systems under cover of an empty noise of words. Weak minds are caught by the bait, and strong minds disdain it.

Amongst us, the funeral oration has taken possession of the poetic style in prose; but this branch of oratory consisting almost entirely of exaggeration, it seems privileged to borrow the ornaments of poetry.

Aristotle on Poetry.

Where, in our modern nations, shall we find a natural philosopher, a geometrician, a metaphysician, or even a moralist, who has spoken well on the subject of poetry? They teem with the names of Homer, Virgil, Sophocles, Ariosto, Tasso, and so many others, who have charmed the world by the harmonious productions of their genius, but they feel not their beauties; or if they feel them they would annihilate them.

How ridiculous is it in Pascal, to say

"As we say poetical beauty, we should likewise say geometrical beauty, and medicinal beauty. Yet we do not say so; and the reason is, that we well know what is the object of geometry, and what is the object of medicine, but we do not know in what the peculiar charm, which is the object of poetry, consists. We know not what that natural model is, which must be imitated; and for want of this knowledge we have invented certain fantastic terms, as age of gold, wonder of the age, fatal wreath, fair star, &c. And this jar gon we call poetic beauty."

The pitifulness of this passage is suf ficiently obvious. We know that there is nothing beautiful in a medicine nor in The writers of romances have some-the properties of a triangle; and that we times taken this licence. La Calprenède apply the term beautiful only to that was, I think, the first who thus transposed which raises admiration in our minds and the limits of the arts, and abused this faci- gives pleasure to our senses. Thus reality. The author of Telemachus was par-sons Aristotle; and Pascal here reasons doned through consideration for Homer, very ill. Fatal wreath, fair star, have whom he imitated, though he could not never been poetic beauties. If he wished

to know what is poetic beauty, he had only to read.

Nicole wrote against the stage, about which he had not a single idea; and was seconded by one Dubois, who was as ignorant of the belles-lettres as himself.

Even Montesquieu, in his amusing Persian Letters, has the petty vanity to think that Homer and Virgil are nothing in comparison with one who imitates with spirit and success Dufréni's Siamois, and fills his book with bold assertions, without which it would not have been read. "What," says he, "are epic poems? I know them not. I despise the lyric as much as I esteem the tragic poets." He should not, however, have despised Pindar and Horace quite so much. Aristotle did not despise Pindar.

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Descartes did, it is true, write for Queen Christina a little divertissement in verse, which was quite worthy of his matière cannelée.

Mallebranche could not distinguish Corneille's "Qu'il mourût," from a line of Jodèle's or Garnier's.

What a man, then, was Aristotle, who traced the rules of tragedy with the same hand with which he had laid down those of dialectics, of morals, of politics, and lifted, as far as he found it possible, the great veil of nature!

To his fourth chapter on poetry, Boilean is indebted for these fine lines

Il n'est point de serpent, ni de monstre odieux
Qui, par l'art imité, ne puisse plaire aux yeux.
D'un pinceau délicat l'artifice agréable
Du plus affreux object fait un objet aimable;
Ainsi, pour nous charmer, la tragédie eue pleurs
D'Edipe tout-sanglant fit parler les douleurs.

Each horrid shape, each object of aflright,
Nice imitation teaches to delight:
So does the skilful painter's pleasing art
Attractions to the darkest form impart;
So does the tragic Muse, dissolved in tears,
With tales of woe and sorrow charm our ears.

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This fourth chapter of Aristotle's reappears almost entire in Horace and Boileau. The laws which he gives in the following chapters are at this day those of our good writers, excepting only what relates to the choruses and music. His idea that tragedy was instituted to purify the passions, has been warmly combated; but if he meant, as I believe he did, that an incestuous love might be subdued by witnessing the misfortune of Phædra, or anger be repressed by beholding the melancholy example of Ajax, there is no longer any difficulty.

This philosopher expressly commands that there be always the heroic in tragedy, and the ridiculous in comedy. This is a rule from which it is, perhaps, now becoming too customary to depart.

ARMS-ARMIES.

Ir is worthy of consideration that there have been, and still are upon the earth, societies without armies. The Brahmins, who long governed nearly all the great Indian Chersonesus; the primitives called Quakers, who governed Pennsylvania; some American tribes, some in the centre of Africa, the Samoyeds, the Laplanders, the Kamschadales, have never marched with colours flying to destroy their neighbours.

The Brahmins were the most considerable of all these pacific nations; their caste, which is so ancient, which is still existing, and compared with which all other institutions are quite recent, is a prodigy which cannot be sufficiently admired. Their religion and their policy always concurred in abstaining from the shedding of blood, even of that of the meanest animal. Where such is the regime, subjugation is easy: they have been subjugated, but have not changed.

The Pennsylvanians never had an army; they always held war in abhor rence.

Aristotle says "Imitation and harmony have produced poetry. We see terrible animals, dead or dying men, in a picture, with pleasure-objects, which in nature would inspire us only with fear Several of the American tribes did not and sorrow. The better they are imi- know what an army was, until the Spatated, the more complete is our satis-niards came to exterminate them all. The faction." people on the borders of the Icy Sea are

ignorant alike of armies, of the God of armies, of battalions, and of squadrons.

Besides these populations, the priests and monks do not bear arms in any country—at least when they observe the laws of their institution.

It is only among Christians that there have been religious societies established for the purpose of fighting-as the Knights Templars, the Knights of St. John, the Knights of the Teutonic order, the Knights Sword bearers. These religious orders were instituted in imitation of the Levites, who fought like the rest of the Jewish tribes.

Neither armies nor arms were the same in antiquity as at present. The Egyptians hardly ever had cavalry. It would have been of little use in a country intersected by canals, inundated during five months of the year, and miry during five more. The inhabitants of a great part of Asia used chariots of war.

They are mentioned in the Annals of China. Confucius says, that in his time each governor of a province furnished to the Emperor a thousand war chariots, drawn by four horses. The Greeks and Trojans fought in chariots drawn by two horses.

Cavalry and chariots were unknown to the Jews, in a mountainous tract, where their first king, when he was elected, had nothing but she-asses. Thirty sons of Jair, princes of thirty cities, according to the text (Judges, chapter x, v. 4), rode each upon an ass. Saul, afterwards King of Judah, had only she-asses; and the sons of David all fled upon mules, when Absalom had slain his brother Amnon. Absalom was mounted only on a mule, in the battle which he fought against his father's troops; which proves, according to the Jewish historians, either that mares were beginning to be used in Palestine, or that they were already rich enough there to buy mules from the neighbouring country.

The Greeks made but little use of cavalry. It was chiefly with the Mace

the battles which laid Persia at his feet.

It was the Roman infantry that subjugated the greater part of the world. At the battle of Pharsalia, Cæsar had but one thousand horse.

It is not known at what time the Indians and the Africans first began to march elephants at the head of their armies. We cannot read without surprise of Hannibal's elephants crossing the Alps, which were much harder to pass then than they are now.

There have long been disputes about the disposition of the Greek and Roman armies, their arms, and their evolutions.

Each one has given his plan of the battles of Zama and Pharsalia.

The commentator Calmet, a Benedictine, has printed three great volumes of his Dictionary of the Bible, in which, the better to explain God's commandments, are inserted a hundred engravings, where you see plans of battles and sieges in copper-plate. The god of the Jews was the god of armies, but Calmet was not his secretary; he cannot have known, but by revelation, how the armies of the Amalekites, the Moabites, the Syrians, and the Philistines, were arranged on the days of general murder. These plates of carnage, designed at a venture, made his book five or six louis dearer, but made it no better.

It is a great question whether the Franks, whom the Jesuit Daniel calls French by anticipation, used bows and arrows in their armies, and whether they had helmets and cuirasses.

Supposing that they went to combat almost naked, and armed, as they are said to have been, with only a small carpenter's axe, a sword, and a knife, we must infer that the Romans, masters of Gaul, so easily conquered by Clovis, had lost all their ancient valour, and that the Gauls were as willing to be subject to a small number of Franks as to a small number of Romans.

Warlike accoutrements have since donian phalanx that Alexander gained changed, as everything else changes.

In the days of knights, squires, and Greek fire, of which the Moors still made varlets, the armed force of Germany, { use. In fine, you are the depositary of France, Italy, England, and Spain, con- an art, which not only imitates the thunsisted almost entirely of horsemen, who, der, but is also much more terrible.” as well as their horses, were covered with There is, however, nothing but truth in steel. The infantry performed the func-this speech. Two monks have, in reality, tions rather of pioneers than of soldiers. changed the face of the earth. But the English had always good archers among their foot, which contributed, in a great measure, to their gaining almost every battle.

Who would believe that armies, nowa-days do but make experiments in natural philosophy? A soldier would be much astonished, if some learned man were to say to him

Before cannon were known, the northern nations had subjugated nearly the whole hemisphere, and could come again, like famishing wolves, to seize upon the lands as their ancestors had done.

In all armies, the victory, and consequently the fate of kingdoms, was decided by bodily strength and agility-a sort of sanguinary fury a desperate My friend, you are a better machinist struggle, man to man. Intrepid men than Archimedes. Five parts of saltpetre, took towns by scaling their walls. There one of sulphur, and one of carbo ligneus, was hardly more discipline in the armies have been separately prepared. Your of the North, during the decline of the saltpetre dissolved, well filtered, well eva-Roman Empire, than among carnivorous porated, well crystallized, well turned, well beasts rushing on their prey. dried, has been incorporated with the Now, a single frontier fortress would yellow purified sulphur. These two in- suffice to stop the armies of Genghis or gredients, mixed with powdered charcoal, { Attila. have, by means of a little vinegar, or solution of sal-ammoniac, or urine, formed large balls, which balls have been reduced in pulverem pyrium by a mill. The effect of this mixture is a dilatation, which is nearly as four thousand to unity; and the lead in your barrel exhibits another effect, which is the product of its bulk multiplied by its velocity.

It is not long since a victorious army of Russians were unavailably consumed before Custrin, which is nothing more than a little fortress in a marsh.

In battle, men the weakest in body may, with well-directed artillery, prevail against the stoutest. At the battle of Fontenoi, a few cannon were sufficient to compel the retreat of the whole English column, though it had been master of the

"The first who discovered a part of this mathematical secret, was a Benedic-field. tine named Roger Bacon. He who per- The combatants no longer close. Th fected the invention, was another Bene-soldier has no longer that ardour-tha dictine, in Germany, in the fourteenth impetuosity, which is redoubled in the century, named Schwartz. So that you heat of action, when the fight is hand to owe to two monks the art of being an ex-hand. cellent murderer, when you aim well, and your powder is good.

"Du Cange has in vain pretended that, in 1338, the registers of the Chambre des Comptes, at Paris, mention a bill paid for gunpowder. Do not believe it. is artillery which is there spoken of name attached to ancient as well as to modern warlike machines.

It

a

"Gunpowder entirely superseded the

Strength, skill, and even the temper of the weapons, are useless. A charge with the bayonet is made scarcely once in the course of a war, though the bayonet is the most terrible of weapons.

In a plain, frequently surrounded by redoubts furnished with heavy artillery, two armies advance in silence, each division taking with it flying artillery, The first lines fire at one another and after one another: they are victims presented in

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