stantly be tending to suppose the favour of God reserved for those qualities which are most successful in the world that he can observe-but the promises of Christianity are definite and specific in favour of the disinterested; of those who, by a voJuntary transmigration, put themselves in their neighbour's place, when determining their own actions, and "do unto others as they would be done unto;" and to these is promised, in the Christian scriptures, a select resurrection, when the just are to enjoy supreme and eternal felicity.

It is not the matter only of this catechism of the theists that is objectionable: its form also is the work of inferior skill. A contempt for the evidence of its dogmata disfigures the whole production. P. 1.

• *The Theophilanthropists believe in the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul.

The spectacle of the universe attests the existence of the First Being.

The faculty which we possess of thinking assures us that we have, within ourselves, a principle which is superior to matter, and which survives the dissolution of the body.

The existence of God, and the immortality of the soul, do not need long demonstrations: they are sentimental truths, which every one may find written in his heart, if he consult it with sincerity.'

Thus a sort of religious instinct is set up as the sole foundation of piety, which every one has as much right to disavow as another to assert: and the obligations of which, therefore, can in no way be shewn to be incumbent on those to whom this novel illumination is not vouchsafed. Society, under such a system, gains no means of influencing the conduct of refractory members.

The morality of the Theophilanthropists is founded on one single precept: Worship God, cherish your kind, render yourselves useful to the country.'

Those who have no specific instructions how to worship God are certainly at liberty to worship as they please it is satisfactory to observe how nearly the Theophilanthropists agree with the more thinking Christians.

Among the duties comprehended under the denomination of cherishing our kind, we find that of not lending for usury: the others are chiefly extracted from the gospels, and do not interfere with the province of the civil magistrate. The question of monogamy is not discussed.

* We copy from an English translation of this work, which has just appeared, and of which an account is given in the Review for January 1798, published with this Appendix.

Among

. Among the duties to our country, are placed those of fighting in its defence, and of paying the taxes. It is certainly prudent in the statesman to slide these duties into the catalogue of his established maxims of morality; and he runs thereby little risk of provoking heretical animadversions on his creed in France, where the superfluous state of courage and the lenient state of taxation are equally notorious.

The following inscriptions are ordered to be placed above the altars in the several temples or synagogues :

P. 15. First Inscription. We believe in the Existence of God, in the Immortality of the Soul.

Second Inscription. Worship God, cherish your Kind, render yourselves useful to the Country.

P. 16. Third Inscription. Good is every Thing which tends to the Preservation or the Perfection of Man.-Evil is every Thing which tends to destroy, or to deteriorate him.

Fourth Inscription. Children, honour your Fathers and Mothers. Obey them with Affection. Comfort their old Age.-Fathers and Mothers, instruct your Children.

Fifth Inscription. Wives, regard in your Husbands the Chiefs of your Houses-Husbands, love your Wives, and render yourselves recipro cally happy.

This pentalogue is chiefly objectionable on account of the vague drift of the fifth commandment: the whole has too general a turn for obvious practical application: but the Jewish decalogue has also its faults.

P. 27. The introduction of ceremonies, of sculpture, of painting, and of engraving, is forbidden. If poetry and music may concur to render the worship impressive, why not the other fine arts? The fine arts have never illustrated a country which excluded them from the public temples: are they to be extinguished in France by theophilanthropic iconoclasts?

At p. 28. this surprising maxim occurs: Avoid innovations. A sect fifteen months old grown as tetchy as the church of Rome! They acknowlege that perhaps better inscriptions may be found yet they forbid the exchange. They prefer mumpsimus to sumpsimus. How superior is the spirit of progressive improvement which characterizes our northern Christian protestantism!

On the whole, we think it a very decisive victory won over the spirit of irreligion lately so prevalent in France, when we behold a sect, so nearly moulded on the tenets of the Christian Nehemiah scriptures, patronized by the people of Paris.

brought out of Persia into Palestine a similar deistical religion, and employed the Pharisean or Persian priests to inculcate the immortality of the soul, in opposition to the Sadducean mortalism of the national philosophers. His institutions were

preserved

preserved for a time, and they at length became the vehicles of superinducing Christianity on the antient world. Lareveillere Lepaux appears disposed to try, once more, that which the experience and the wisdom of antiquity flung aside as insufficient. We may, then, perhaps, be allowed to anticipate a similar result; and to expect, in the theophilanthropic synagogues, the gradual evolution of a pure and primæval Christianity.

ART. XXII. Théorie de la Terre, &c. i. e. The Theory of the Earth. By J. C. DELAMETHERIE.

[Article concluded from the last Appendix, p. 546-551.]

A FTER the long preamble of which we have spoken in our last Appendix, M. DELAMETHERIE gives, in the fourth and fifth volumes, an account of his own opinions on the great points of geology, with a review of former theories of the earth. Of these the catalogue or enumeration is the most complete that we have seen, but they are far from being sufficiently developed. To the exposition of the system of Dr. Hutton, for example, only one page is allotted; and to its refutation not so much :-yet the author calls it un bel ouvrage ; but he gives his reader no idea of the premises on which Dr. Hutton, or any other author, has founded his conclusions,

The sentiments espoused by the present writer are nearly the following: the exterior crust of the globe, according to him, was formed in the bosom of the waters; from which it emerged in a state not very different from its present appearance. The crust, after its formation, underwent petty alterations from a variety of local causes.

waters.

The waters sur

passed the highest mountains: that is, they were at least 3000 toises above their present level. All mountains, all valleys, and all plains, were formed by crystallization amid the The materials that compose them were truly dissolved (this is a circumstance of which it is necessary to seek the explanation:) but how have they been dissolved? every one of these substances requires much water of solution. The small quantity of existing water would be absolutely inadequate; since, if it were spred over the whole surface of the globe, it would only make a stratum of 700 or 800 feet in thickness a new proof that most of the waters of the primitive scas has disappeared.

If there may have existed an exterior stratum of water of 3000 toises or 18,000 feet, and there remains now but 700 feet, or about one twenty-fifth part, what is become of the twentyfour parts that have disappeared? The solution of this great question is attended with many difficulties. The different

changes

changes of the axis of the globe, which have been supposed in order to account for this phænomenon, are contrary to the laws of statics and to the astronomical theories at present prevailing.

There remain but two hypotheses. Either the waters have passed totally or in part to other spheres; or they have been buried in interior caverns of the earth.

M. DELAMETHERIE does not consider the passage of the waters to other spheres as impossible. The cold of the superior regions of the atmosphere would not prevent it: evapora tion takes place in the most intense cold; nor would the small density of these upper regions be an obstacle; for evaporation takes place even in the vacuum of the air-pump. Moreover, the solar atmosphere, which envelopes the terrestrial, would favour such evaporation.

Nevertheless, this cause ought not, according to analogy, to produce any great diminution of waters on the surface of the globe. It remains, then, that they must have taken refuge in its interior-but how did this happen? In all systems, internal cavities are supposed. Their existence is not hypothetical. It rests on facts. They must be under all volcanoes. From the great extent to which earthquakes are felt, there are evidently fissures and caverns, that reach to immense distances. They must pass under the sea; and the water of the sea finds its way into them. There are instances of this water having penetrated into the interior of volcanoes. They will therefore precipitate themselves into the deep abysses, and be buried there. Now, our author thinks that these cavities are large enough to absorb the mass of water that has disappeared from the surface of the earth.-As to the formation of these cavities, he observes that it was effected at the time of the crystallization of the globe. They were filled at first with elastic fluids, which were gradually dissipated by different causes. Afterward, the waters took their place.

Some caverns have been formed by subterraneous fires:but the most powerful cause has been the refrigeration of the globe. The author thinks. (vol. v. p. 332) that, though the surface of the globe has been brought to its present state by the action of water, it may, at the first moment of its formation, have undergone a very great degree of heat, as happens to a comet passing near the sun.

The aqueous crystallization of strata, if we remember tightly, has been strongly maintained by M. Voigt:-but we do not feel inclined to receive it as a solution of the various contortions of strata, and of the curious position of the steeps and slopes of mountains. The whole theory of the present writer

appears

appears to us unsatisfactory. Instead of a comprehensive plan, derived from an accurate survey of nature, he has form ed a mosaic work, composed of pieces picked from different theorists. Had he observed for himself, it is, in our opinion, impoffible that he could have believed the causes of confusion, in the strata of the earth, to have been so confined in their operation. He must also have perceived that their irregu larity is not for the most part original, nor derived from crystallization, but the work of agents that have broken and disturbed what was once continuous and uniform.

ART. XXIII. Discours Preliminaire, &c. i. e. Preliminary Dis course to a New Dictionary of the French Language. By A. C. DE RIVAROL. 4to. pp. 240. Hamburgh. 1797. Imported by Dulau and Co. and De Boffe, London.

TH

HE more cultivated languages of Europe have recently undergone a nearly fundamental revolution. The spirit of curiosity and sympathy has patronized a multiplicity of translations, which have almost naturalized in each of the polished nations the characteristic beauties and peculiar energies of the several leading idioms. The increasing discoveries in geography, and in the arts, have imported and familiarized a crowd of terms, which the narrower memories of our forefathers would have despaired to retain. The methodizing taste of our botanists, mineralogists, chemists, and metaphysicians, has contrived for science a copious and novel dictionary, the phrases of which are gradually evulgating, and are giving a new dress to the whole dialect of philosophy. The late institutions of practical innovators have also contributed, not less than the speculations of the closet, to transplant a new species of words into the soil of conversation and of literature. This invasion of neologisms, unfavourable as it may be to the perpetual reputation of our antient classics, has shaken the stubborn preju dices of grammarians, and has diverted their assiduity from a froward retention of custom, to the discriminating hospitality which welcomes only improvement. It begins to be perceived that what is usual is not always most convenient; that it is often possible to be more precise, and more concise, in the new than in the old diction; that anomaly is a deformity, and analogy a beauty; and that, when a noun is once current in a language, it is no fresh burden to the memory to pursue its Proteus-nature through all the regular inflections which bestow on it a privative, an adjectival, or a verbal form. In this revolutionary state of speech, it is natural to expect that new philologists and new lexicographers should appear, to sytema