they would pervert is broken in their hands; for among that race always frivolous and with. out character, that is called Frenchmen, there is not one, even to the servant girl, who, in robbing her master, does not repeat that religion is necessary for the people, on condition that she may be dispensed from hav. ing it herself.

Religion, necessary to every individual, is still more so to those magistrates who are the regulators of states. Fatal experience of the misfortunes occasioned by an abandonment of christianity has not yet opened our eyes. We have recourse to a palliative to cure the wounds which have been made by irreligion, and its offspring immorality; they have loosened the bonds of society to such a degree, that they menace it with a decompo. sition, which will be common to many neighboring nations. If ever decrepid Europe makes a step towards moral order, it will be less from love of that, than from lassitude of crime; but it will be under the escort of christianity, and in consequence of inevitable catastrophes. In spite of the clouds that cover the future, this epoch may be perceived, though we are unable to predict it in a precise manner, though unable to calculate its term, or its disasters.

If the bounds of this letter permitted me, I would oppose to the evils engendered by infi. delity the benefits profusely spread by the christian religion; its introduction was the most vast of all revolutions, and the most beautiful, because the most use ful to the human race. The cross and the gospel, in prepar

ing us for the happiness of eternity, have civilized the world; virtue and knowledge have every where marched in their train; every region has been abandoned by virtue and knowledge, which has lost christianity; those regions have returned to barbarism; witness the church of Africa, il. lustrious for so many learned men, and which was once one of the most brilliant portions of christendom. Witness Algiers, where you resided two years; such would be the lot which the United States would feel, if ever they should cease to be Christians.

And is not this equivalent to what you propose in some lines, and by an engraving, which a disciple of the gospel repels with horror? The attributes of pure christianity are classed among the emblems of prejudices. Where are your proofs ? It is in the nature of things, that what is invariably useful should be essentially true; instead of proofs, you give up to derision objects revered by many hundred millions of men, who will not believe you on your word; they will see that your antichristian sentence wants justness; that it is a consequence without premises; that, without reasoning at all, you decide that all the disciples of the gospel reason falsely.

Virtuous minds would sigh to behold calumny, impiety, and lubricity display themselves with effrontery, protected by the liberty of the press; but as we do not know where to place the limits, if we attempt to establish by law repressive measures, this evil would be counterbalanced by others, if our mouths were locked, and our pens crushed by tyranny. The press is free in

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your country; thus you are not reprehensible by the law, but condemnable at the tribunal of opinion, the supreme judge of all crimes that offend propriety and justice. Yours offend both. It offends justice, because it is a gratuitous outrage, that resembles that of the Jesumy at Japan. What would you say, if the attributes of liberty, which are so dear to you, were trampled under foot before your eyes? It offends propriety, because, in holding out as prejudices the emblems of the christian religion, it is saying to all those who profess it, that they are fools; this compliment addresses itself to the disciples of the gospel in every part of the globe; it addresses itself to the estimable descendants of those catholics, who, flying from British persecution, established in Maryland a state belonging to your confederation; it addresses itself to the venerable Carroll, bishop of Baltimore; you trample on the attributes of his pastoral character. In France, it is true, the nonconformists outrage in this way episcopacy in the person of those pastors, who, faithful to the voice of their consciences, have committed the unpardonable crime of submit. ting to the laws of their country; this is a sad example to cite, not a model to imitate. Your presbyterian countrymen will perhaps ask, if you have abjured the principles, that you professed when you were the chaplain of a regiment in the war of indepen

dence.

If to believe in the gospel be a prejudice, permit us to partake of it with the feeble minds of Addison, Abbadie, Arbuthnot, Bacon,

Berkeley, Barrow, Beattie, Bentley, Boerhave, Bonnet, Boyle, Blackstone, Clarke, Cullen, Dod. dridge, Ditton, Forbes, Fother. gill, Ferguson, Grotius, Gray, Hervey, Hanway, Hartley, Harrington, Hyde, Haller, Jones, Johnson, Locke, Lardner, Leib. nitz, Littleton, De Luc, Milton, Newton, Puffendorf, Paley, Prior, Pringle, Priestly, Price, Ray, Rabener, Roustan, Robertson, Sherlock,Spenser, Steele, Thomp. son, Wolfe, Washington, Usher, Woodward, Young, ect. and with those madmen, worthy of pity, Bossuet, Bourdaloue, la Bruyere, Copernicus, Corneille, d'Aguesseau, Descartes, Despréaux, Fénélon, Galileo, Gassendi, Houbigant, Mallebranche, Massillon, Nicole, Pope, Pascal, Racine, Winslow, Winkelman, &c. all sincere catholics: but to speak seriously, it is pleasant to lose ourselves in such a bril liant company.

I must add, that, in wishing to undeceive us in regard to what you call prejudices, you err in the choice of means; for con viction can only be the effect of reasoning; man cannot detach his affection from the object most dear to him, unless the motives that support it are destroyed. But if injuries that revolt are substituted for arguments that convince, we are sure to strength. en the adhesion to principles which are rooted in the mind and the heart. If to convert a Mussulman, instead of proving to him that Mahomet was an impostor, I should commence by plac ing before his eyes a picture, in which the Coran and the Crescent were trampled under foot, his heart, embittered, would cloud his anderstanding, and prevent

all access to my attempts. Apply these reflections to the true religion, and see if you have not failed entirely in a deplorable design.

Persecution, my dear Barlow, does not consist only in exiling, in. carcerating, and assassinating men; Julian invented more cunning, and not less cruel vexations. They have been refined among us, at the end of the eighteenth century, in harassing and lacerating the catholics without cessation, by repeated invectives, by a multitude of those little means, whose application was continual torture: impious ver. ses, songs, epigrams, caricatures, every thing was made use of. You are very different from such men; but why resemble them in any thing? Your engraving is an offence against the freedom of religion; a sort of persecution which your heart disavows; reflection will bring on regret. Believe me, my friend, that these injured catholics will not make use of reprisals; true piety opens her bosom to erring brethren, without opening it to error; to enlighten them, she places the torch of truth in the hand of charity. Having but a moment to exist in this world, we should love our fellow men, be benevolent towards all, whatever may be their religion, their color, or their country. Jesus Christ has given us both precept and example in their turn; he displayed alternately firmness and goodness towards the pharisees; his parable of the Samaritan is a perpetual judgment against per

secutors.

If you should say further, that France offers examples worthy of condemnation, and that previ

ous to censuring an American, my zeal should be exercised to convert my countrymen; far from weakening the objection, I would fortify it. I would say, that, in a country where so many truths have returned to their wells, we see printed and circulated freely the obscene poetry of a member of the national institute, and the rhapsodies of romance writers, who serve up afresh impieties so many times refuted. I would say too, that, without respect to the first body of the state, which ought to give an example of decency, immorality is authorized, by peopling the garden of the palace with licentious statues, to such a degree that virtuous moth. ers dare not conduct their chil. dren thither.

You see that I am far from avoiding objections; but by my disapprobation of an offence, in which I have no share, and against which my colleague, Lanjuinais, protested vainly in full senate, though with the general assent of the senators, I have reserved to myself the right of telling you, that to recriminate is not to answer; and that what might be alleged as an example to follow, cannot be but as an abuse to reform. Gorani observes that the licentiousness of painting and sculpture had exercised a disastrous influence over Italy; that the master pieces of the arts had drawn away sound minds from useful and necessary studies, had depraved their manners, enervated their courage, and fomented the most hateful vices.* When

public shame is extinct, do not

* See the preface to the Memoires nans, des moeurs des principaux etats de secrets et critiques des cours des gouverl'Italie, by Gorani. Paris, 1793.

expect to preserve the private virtues; and when religion is publicly insulted, it is a wound to morality, a national calamity. Many times I have repented having employed so many efforts to defend the arts and those who oultivate them against Vandalism; not that those arts, which are called fine, and which are not always good, are bad in their very nature; but, almost always, they are flatterers, and corrupters, which, by an inconceivable fatality, precede, bring on, escort, and follow depravation. Even in his time the illustrious Ger. son* complained of it, to whom France owes a monument, and whom she has almost forgotten; he was grieved to see scandalous pictures, and a libidinous work, the Romance of the Rose, exposed to the eyes of youth. At the moment I am writing, we are menaced with a new edition of it.

What will be the fruit of my remonstrance? You are not one of those men who are afraid to acknowledge that you are wrong. A man is always honored in doing an act of reparation. I appeal to your loyalty, to your delicacy; this is to put you at strife with yourself.

My soul is oppressed in finding cause of blame in a man in whom I see so much to praise. Your character is not degraded by meanness, like that of the greater part of your brethren the poets; you have not prostituted your talents to adulation; do not tarnish them by incredulity, nor by a sort of persecution. Placed at the summit of the American Parnassus, a creditor of glory, you have sung in beautiful

* Vide his works, edit, Dupin. v. ☀ p. 291, &c.

verses that liberty you defended with your arms; you came to render her homage at the bar of the national convention, where, as president, I answered in a man. ner that accorded with the principles you proclaimed. Our hearts were in unison.

The true foundation of politi cal liberty is in the gospel, for it perpetually reminds men, that, having all proceeded from the same stock, they compose only one family; that there exists among them, not a species of relationship, as has been said in a well known work, but a real consanguinity, whose bond is indestructible. The gospel unceasingly inculcates on men a spirit of charity and fraternal sentiments. The christian religion would be perverted and disguised, if it were subordinate to the caprices of rulers and the pas sions; but well understood and rightly practised, it is the most certain guarantee of the purity of public and private manners. Un. der its wings, my friend, your state of society was raised, and consolidated, and the domestic virtues hereditarily transmitted; it is to that, without doubt, that you owe, among other advantages, that of having a wife gifted with so many rare qualities and inestimable virtues. Ingratitude alone could mistake the benefits of this august, and divine religion; it would be like despising the bo som of our mother.

I have discharged, my dear Barlow, a very painful task in censuring, without human res pect, what in your poem, offends christianity. The work being public, I give the same publicity to my remonstrance; thus satisfying what is prescribed to me

H. GREGOIRE,

Paris, 15th March, 1809.

An American Biographical and Historical Dictionary, containing an account of the Lives, Characters, and writings of the most eminent Persons in North Amerion from its first discovery to the present time, and a Summary of the History of the several Col. onies and of the United States. By William Allen, A. M. Cambridge, Hilliard and Metcalf, 1809. 8vo. pp. 632. Price $ 3.

No species of composition so happily unites, what

was SO

much insisted on by the ancients, the useful and the agreeable, as biography. Useful it can scarcely fail to be, if written with truth and fidelity, be the merit of the execution, in other respects, what it may; because it presents to the reader that kind of history, which is, in the most literal sense, Philosophy teaching by Example. The lessons of wisdom, derived from experience, impart real knowledge, as distinguished from those theories, which, however pleasant to the individual who frames them, impart no benefit to the world. Such knowledge can no better be obtained from the imaginary characters of the novelist, thau from the Utopian speculations of the theorist. In a novel, or romance, characters appear, not as they exist in real life, but as the writer may chance VOL. II. New Series.

to portray them. Hence not unfre quently they have no shape nor proportion, no justness of coloring, and no semblance of the original. How can such unreal beings teach man wisdom? Biography comes home to men's business and bosoms. It shows what kind of beings we are; what are the trials of human life; by what means difficulties may be most advantageously met, dangers averted or encountered, and whatever contributes to the perfection of the human character attained. It furnishes, at the same time, the most powerful motives to shun the contamina. tion of vice and profligacy, to copy the fairest models of virtue and greatness, and to aspire to eminence in the present period of existence, and to future glory, and honor, and immortality.Nor can it fail, without an essential fault in the writer, to be as agreeable, as it is useful. introduces us to an acquaintance with men, whose names have awakened our curiosity, attracted our esteem, or excited our admiration. It shows us those finer traits of their character, which could not be discerned at a distance. It acquaints us with their private history; it makes us companions of their various fortunes, and spectators of their exit. It points us to that world, where the virtues are

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