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the God of Jacob; now God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." In the ordinary sense, these words might signify, I am the same God that was worshipped by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; as the earth, which bore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, likewise bears their descendants; the sun which shines to-day is the sun that shone on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the law of their children was their law. This does not, however, signify that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still living. But when the Messiah speaks, there is no longer any ambiguity; the sense is as clear as it is divine. It is evident that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are not among the dead, but live in glory, since this oracle is pronounced by the Messiah: but it was necessary that he and no one else should utter it.

The discourses of the Jewish prophets might seem equivocal to men of gross intellects, who could not perceive their meaning; but they were not so to minds illumined by the light of faith.

All the oracles of antiquity were equivocal. It was foretold to Croesus that a powerful empire was to fall; but was it to be his own? or that of Cyrus? It was also foretold to Pyrrhus that the Romans might conquer him, and that he might conquer the Romans. It was impossible that this oracle should lie.

When Septimius Severus, Pescennius Niger, and Clodius Albinus, were contending for the empire, the oracle of Delphos, being consulted, (notwithstanding the assertion of the Jesuit Baltus, that oracles had ceased) answered, that the brown was very good, the white good for nothing, and the African tolerable. It is plain that there are more ways than one of explaining such an oracle.

When Aurelian consulted the God of Palmyra, (still in spite of Baltus), the God said that the doves fear the falcon. Whatever might happen, the God would not be embarrassed: the falcon would be the conqueror, and the doves the conquered."

Sovereigns, as well as gods, have sometimes made use of equivocation. Some tyrant, whose name I for

get, having sworn to one of his captives, that he would not kill him, ordered that he should have nothing to eat, saying that he had promised not to put him to death, but he had not promised to keep him alive.*

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AMERICA.

SINCE framers of systems are continually conjecturing on the manner in which America can have been peopled, we will be equally constant in saying that He who caused flies to exist in those regions, caused men to exist there also. However pleasant it may be to dispute, it cannot be denied that the Supreme Being who lives in all nature, has created, about the forty-eighth degree, two-legged animals without feathers, the colour of whose skin is a mixture of white and carnation, with long beards approaching to red; about the line, in Africa and its islands, negroes without beards; and in the same latitude, other negroes with beards, some of them having wool and some hair on their heads; and among them other animals quite white, having neither hair nor wool, but a kind of white silk. It does not very clearly appear what should have prevented God from placing on another continent animals of the same species, of a copper colour, in the same latitude in which, in Africa and Asia, they are found black; or even from making them without beards in the very same latitude in which others possess them.

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To what lengths are we carried by the rage for systems joined with the tyranny of prejudice! see these animals; it is agreed that God has had the power to place them where they are; yet it is not agreed that he has so placed them. The same persons who readily admit that the beavers of Canada are of Canadian origin, assert that the men must have come there in boats, and that Mexico must have been peopled by some of the descendants of Magog. As well might it be said, that if there be men in the moon,

* See ABUSE of Words.

they must have been taken thither by Astolpho on his hippogriff, when he went to fetch Roland's senses, which were corked up in a bottle. If America had been discovered in his time, and there had then been men in Europe systematic enough to have advanced, with the Jesuit Lafitau, that the Caribbees descended from the inhabitants of Caria, and the Hurons from the Jews, he would have done well to have brought back the bottle containing the wits of these reasoners, which he would doubtless have found in the moon, along with those of Angelica's lover.

The first thing done when an inhabited island is discovered in the Indian Ocean, or in the South Sea, is to enquire whence came these people? but as for the trees and the tortoises, they are, without any hesitation, pronounced to be indigenous; as if it was more difficult for Nature to make men than to make tortoises. One thing, however, which tends to countenance this system is, that there is scarcely an island in the Eastern or in the Western Ocean, which does not contain jugglers, quacks, knaves, and fools. This, it is probable, gave rise to the opinion, that these animals are of the same race with ourselves.

AMPLIFICATION.

It is pretended that amplification is a fine figure of rhetoric; perhaps, however, it would be more reasonable to call it a defect. In saying all that we ought to say, we do not amplify; and if after saying this we amplify, we say too much. To place a good or bad action in every light, is not to amplify; but to go further than this, is to exaggerate and become weari

some.

Prizes were formerly given in colleges for amplification. This was indeed teaching the art of being diffuse. It would, perhaps, have been better to have given prizes to those who should express their thoughts in the fewest words, and thus teach the art of speaking with greater force and energy. But while we avoid amplification, let us beware of dryness.

I have heard professors teach that certain passages in Virgil are amplifications, as for instance the following:

Nox erat, et placidum carpebant fessa soporem
Corpora per terras, silvæque et sæva quiêrunt
Æquora; quùm medio volvuntur sidera lapsu;
Quùm tacet omnis ager, pecudes, pietæque volucres ;
Quæque lacus latè liquidos, quæque aspera dumis
Rura tenent, somno positæ sub nocte silenti
Lenibant curas, et corda oblita laborum :
At non infelix animi Phoenissa.

"Twas dead of night, when weary bodies close
Their eyes in balmy sleep and soft repose:

The winds no longer whisper through the woods,
Nor murmuring tides disturb the gentle floods;

The stars in silent order moved around,

And peace, with downy wings, was brooding on the ground.
The flocks and herds, and parti-coloured fowl,

Which haunt the woods, and swim the weedy pool,
Stretched on the quiet earth securely lay,
Forgetting the past labours of the day:
All else of Nature's common gift partake;
Unhappy Dido was alone awake.-

-DRYDEN.

If the long description of the reign of Sleep throughout all nature did not form an admirable contrast with the cruel inquietude of Dido, these lines would be no other than a puerile amplification; it is the words At non infelix animi Phænissa-" Unhappy Dido," &c.— which give them their charm.

That beautiful ode of Sappho's which paints all the symptoms of love, and which has been happily translated into every cultivated language, would, doubtless, have been less touching had Sappho been speaking of any other than herself; it might then have been considered as an amplification.

The description of the tempest, in the first book of the Eneid, is not an amplification; it is a true picture of all that happens in a tempest; there is no idea repeated, and repetition is the vice of all which is merely amplification.

The finest part on the stage in any language is that of Phédre (Phædra.) Nearly all that she says would be tiresome amplification, if any other were speaking of Phædra's passion.

Athènes me montra mon superbe ennemi ;
Je le vis, je rougis, je pâlis, à sa vue;

Un trouble s'éleva dans mon ame éperdue;
Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler;
Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;
Je reconnus Venus et ses traits rédoutables,
D'un sang qu'elle poursuit tourmens inévitables!
Yes; Athens showed me my proud enemy;
I saw him-blushed-turned pale ;—

A sudden trouble came upon my soul,

My eyes grew dim-my tongue refused its office,-
I burned and shivered ;-through my trembling frame
Venus in all her dreadful power I felt,

Shooting through every vein a separate pang!

It is quite clear that, since Athens showed her her proud enemy Hippolytus, she saw Hippolytus; if she blushed and turned pale, she was doubtless troubled. It would have been a pleonasm-a redundancy, if a stranger had been made to relate the loves of Phædra; but it is Phædra, enamoured and ashamed of her passion-her heart is full-everything escapes her ;

Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error.
Je le vis, je rougis, je pâlis, à sa vue.

I saw him-blushed-turned pale.

What can be a better imitation of Virgil ?

Mes yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler;
Je sentis tout mon corps et transir et brûler;
My eyes grew dim-my tongue refused its office;
I burned and shivered;-

What can be a finer imitation of Sappho?

These lines, though imitated, flow as from their first source; each word moves and penetrates the feeling heart: this is not amplification, it is the perfection of nature and of art.

The following is, in my opinion, an instance of amplification, in a modern tragedy, which nevertheless has great beauties. Tydeus is at the court of Argos; he is in love with a sister of Electra; he laments the fall of his friend Orestes and of his father; he is divided betwixt his passion for Electra and his desire of vengeance: while in this state of care and perplexity, he gives one of his followers a long description of a

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