armies; colonel of the Préobagenskoy guards; chef-du-corps of the horse-guards; colonel of the regiment of cuirassiers of that name, of the dragoons of Petersburg, and the grenadiers of Ekatarinoslauf; chief of all the workshops of arms and founderies of cannon; grand hettman of the Kosaks, &c." 17,000,000 rubles. A statement still more curious is that of the sums of money which the lovers of Catharine received from her during her reign, or rather from the poor peasantry, her subjects: The five brothers Orloff received in lands, palaces, jewels, plate, and money Vissensky, two months in favour Vassilschikoff, twenty-two months in favour Prince Potemkin, a fortune estimated at Zavadoffsky, eighteen months favourite Zoritch, one year 300,000 1,110,000 50,000,000 1,380,000 920,000 3,260,000 Korzakoff, sixteen months Lanskoi, about four years Yermolauf, fixteen months 550,000 Momonoff, twenty-six months 880,000 Plato Zouboff, in place at the death of the Empress 2,700,000 800,000 8,500,000 Valerian Zouboff, his brother Farther, an annual sum of 250,000 rubles for the expences of the favourite, which, for a term of 34 years, makes Sum total 88,820,000 It was not only in money, jewels, and lands, that they received their rewards; to each estate were attached thousands of boors and their families. It is generally computed that of these were given : To the family of Orloff To Vassilschikoff To Zavadoffsky To Yermolauf 45,000 7,000 9,800 4,000 3,000 68,000 bpors. This statement does not include those given to Potemkin, to Lanskoi, nor to Zouboff, the three favourites whom Catharine loved the best, and to whom she gave the most, We shall conclude this account with a circumstance that will best shew to what a degree of humiliation the courtiers were reduced by this system of favouritism. Plato Zouboff enjoyed all the influence and patronage that Orloff I anskoi, and Potemkin had possessed: the ministers, the generals, the ambassadors, held it a great favour to be admitted to his toilette, and humbly to pay their court to him. Plato kept a little monkey, of that species commonly called the Sapayou, a lively, skipping, troublesome creature, teizing and disgusting every body, but caressed by every one as a means of pleasing his master. One day this animal, having jumped on the head of a general officer, highly dressed and powdered, pulling and towzling all his hair, at length voided his excrement on the officer's head." This work is generally supposed to have been written by the younger Segur, from the papers of the several ambassadors from France to the court of St. Petersburg; which the French revolution has brought to light, and which, but for that event, might for ever have remained concealed. It is doubtless strongly tinctured throughout with a wicked republican severity: but people who have travelled into Russia tell us that, in general, they see no reason for doubting the authenticity of the whole. ART. XX. KURT SPRENGELS Handbuch der Pathologie: i. e. SPRENGEL'S Manual of Pathology. 8vo. 3 Vols. about 600 Pages in each. 1795-7. IN N this very elaborate performance, Dr. SPRENGEL has endeavoured to steer in the midway between an obstinate attachment to old theories, and the rashness of innovation. It has been his particular aim to collect and digest all modern discoveries in the natural history of man. Vol. I. treats of pathology in general; Vol. II. of febrile or acute diseases; Vol. III. of chronic complaints. In the general observations there has appeared to us much useless and even puerile subtlety. The second and third volume, though various objections might be made to the arrangement, contain useful matter in abundance, To shew how far our author is advanced beyond the old continental theories, we shall give the substance of his remarks on fever. The proximate cause of fever, says he, is probably nothing more than an internal state, by which a re-action of the solids, whose powers were before suppressed, is produced. This appears from the essential symptoms: for the cold stage consists in a relative sensation of the suppression of the powers-the hot stage in that of increased exertion-and shivering in the sensation of the limitation of exertion. During the hot fit, all the symptoms of increased exertion are present-quick pulse, redness of the body, deep-coloured urine, &c. The suppression of the powers during the cold stage is the means of enhancing the subsequent exertion. The precursors of the dis case ease (as weariness, nausea, &c.) consist in the consequences of the irregular action and suppression of the powers, which are general at the onset of the cold fit.. The more delicate or mobile the solids are, the more easily can their activity be suppressed or preternaturally raised,-in other words, a fever be excited. This theory is confirmed by the effect of remedies at the dif ferent periods. In the cold fit, those things are proper which rouse the powers and render the action of the vital principle uniform. In the hot fit, we can do nothing but subdue the too great energy, relax the tense solids, and thus expedite the approaching evacuations. At the onset, we cannot act against the fever itself, since neither the time of torpor nor of excite ment will permit the use of adapted means. The similarity of fever to inflammation concurs in proof of this doctrine :-inflammation being a local re-action of the vascular system; fever, a re-action of all the living parts, The present work may deserve the attention of British stu dents, the rather, as some curious diseases are described, which are not to be found in our compends: of these, the pellas gra of Italy is an example. The author, who is well known as possessing exemplary and singular medical erudition, does not here make any unseasonable display of his reading. It is, however, evidently advantageous to the present manual, that its writer had a more exact and comprehensive knowlege of former systems than any of his predecessors. The work in which Dr. SPRENGEL's learning is displayed, and perhaps lavishly displayed, is his history of medicine. It is in three vols. 8vo. Halle, 1792-4, a heavy, tasteless, illarranged compilation, in which interesting and uninteresting things are detailed in nearly the same tone. It stops just before the discovery of the circulation of the blood, and it is uncertain whether it will be continued. The author's industrious researches will greatly assist a writer of better taste and more philosophy: but they by no means answer to the title of an essay towards a pragmatic history of medicine. ART. XXI. Manuel des Theophilanthropes: i. e. Manual of the Theophilanthropists. Second Edition. 12mo. Paris. 1797. IN N September 1796 the deistic social worshippers of Paris first published a sort of catechism, under the title Manuel des Theanthrophiles. This religious breviary found favour: the congregation became numerous; and in the second edition of their manual they assumed the less harsh denomination of Pp 4 Theophilan Theophilanthropes, i. e. lovers of God and man. A book of hymns, a liturgy for every decad of the French year, and an homiletical selection of moral lessons, are announced, or published, by their unknown synod. Thus they possess a system of pious services adapted to all occasions, which some one of the individuals who attend reads aloud: for they object to the employment of a regular lecturer, in consequence of their hostility to priests. This novel sect is countenanced by Lareveillere Lepaux, one of the Directory, and has already opened temples of its own in Dijon and in other provincial towns. They have declamations, in the spirit of sermons, which abound with such phrases as Peternel geometre, and the like, and which have long since been familiar to those who frequent the lodges of free masonry, The first publication of this ritual was ridiculed in a pamphlet intitled Lettre de Polichinelle à ses comperes, de la commission des Cultes, which the curious will consult: but, at present, we have not a copy at hand. Catholicism having been found to operate in France adversely to the Revolution, most of the friends to religion and to liberty seem likely to throw themselves into this new sect;-and as it is known to possess numerous adherents in the lodges hitherto so mysterious, it will probably produce a very extensive schism, and become of great importance in ecclesiastical history. The French philosophers, however equivocal their personal creed may be, have very generally declared in favour of theism, as the exoteric or popular religion for their countrymen: the English philosophers, on the contrary, (Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, &c.) have as uniformly declared in favour of Christianity. It is worth while to consider which of the two schools. is most entitled to the confidence of the magistrate. In the present state of continental opinion, it would be wholly superfluous to talk of the relative evidence of the two systems: it is their relative utility alone which we mean to discuss. On the grand outlines of moral duty, not much difference of opinion is supposed to prevail between the advocates of natural religion and the rational interpreters of the gospel. Still, with the theist, morals are but the means of happiness to individuals and to societies, and may be violated when it is on the whole useful to violate them; when more good is to result from the breach of general rules than from the observance: but with the Christian, morals are the end, without which personal happiness is utterly unattainable; and, if that of each individual, that of whole communities also. Hence a stronger propensity for great purposes to break through the general rules of right-has ever prevailed among the pupils of philoso phy than among those of Christianity. It would be more easy to prove this propensity injurious in the affairs of private life, than in those of whole nations. Among the less actions of more frequent recurrence, those which interfere with social felicity chiefly result from the excessive prevalence of three passions: 1. Cupidity (as the French conveniently term the love of lucre in all its forms): whence avarice, breach of trust, extortion, robbery, &c. and the selfish application of property due to the claims of distress, of relationship, or of the commonwealth. 2. Vindictiveness? whence almost all acts of calumny, violence, cruelty, duels, and murders. 3. Lewdness: whence premature, excessive, promiscuous, and adulterous intercourse; and the consequent injuries to the health, domestic quiet, and education of the species. These three passions, according to philosophy, are only prejudicial in their excess: they are natural, and in a moderate degree expedient. Cupidity is supposed to operate as a preventive of idleness and improvidence; vindictiveness as a check on insolence and oppression; and lewdness as opposing celibacy and privation. Christianity, however, seems to pursue the utter extinction of these passions, forbidding cupidity by the command (Matthew, xii. 25.) to take no thought for the goods of life; vindictiveness, by the command (v. 39.) when the right cheek is smitten to turn the left cheek also; and leadness, by the command (v. 28.) not even to indulge loose desires-as if the great founder of Christianity, aware that these are the weak sides of human nature, had been willing to erect against them an artificial barrier; and, also aware that all moral advice is obeyed with qualification, had chosen (in order to produce the effect, right conduct,) to bend the bow of precept too tight in the direction which most thwarts the vicious tendency of men. This ought to be: for it is certain that the schools of philosophy, which teach justice, generate only selfishness; and that to teach disinterestedness, as is done in the Christian school, wil seldom generate more than justice. Nor is it merely as a system of moral precept, but also of practice, that Christianity answers its purposes best: Greece, Syria, Egypt, and France, since their apostacy, have become seats of rapine, insecurity, and licentiousness. There is a third point of view, and infinitely the most important, in which the transcendant superiority of the Christian revelation to that of human reason is especially conspicuous: namely, in the sanction of its behests; in the motive which it supplies for a cheerful discharge of the most arduous duties. The mere philosopher, reduced to infer the attributes of the Deity from the phænomena of nature, must for ever found his hopes of retribution on yery obscure analogies; and must con stantly |
