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ment, criticise, neglect, forget, and above all, despise an author, who is an author only.

and bands, never seek to emp joy authority where nothing is concerned but reason, or consent to be reviled in all ages as the most impertinent of men, as well as to endure public hatred as the most unjust.

You have been told a hundred times of the insolent absurdity with which you condemned Galileo, and I speak to you of it for the hundred and first. I would have you keep the anniversary of it for ever. I would have it inscribed over the door of your holy office.

Seven cardinals, assisted by certain minorite friars, threw into prison the master of thinking in Italy at the age of seventy; and made him live upon bread and water because he instructed mankind in that of which they were ignorant.

Apropos of citing an author: I must amuse myself with relating a singular mistake of the reverend Father Viret, cordeber and professor of theology. He read in the Philosophy of History" of the good Abbé Bazin, that no author ever cited a passage of Moses before Longinus, who lived and died in the time of the Emperor Aurelian. Forthwith, the zeal of St. Francis was kindled in him. Viret cries out that it is not true, for that several writers have said that there had been a Moses, that even Josephus has spoken at length upon him, and that the Abbé Bazin is a wretch, who would destroy the seven sacraments. But, dear Father Viret, you ought to inform yourself of the meaning of the word, to cite. There is a great deal of difference between mentioning an author and citing him. To speak, to make mention of an author, is to say, that he has lived that he has written in such a time; to cite, is to give one of his passages-as Moses says in his Exodus-as Moses has written in his Genesis. Now the Abbé Bazin affirms, that no foreign writers that none even of the Jewish prophets, have ever quoted a single passage of Moses, though he was a divine author. Truly, Father Viret, you are very mali-ings cious, but we shall know at least, by this little paragraph, that you have been an author.

Having passed a decree in favour of the categories of Aristotle, the above junto learnedly and equitably doomed to the penalty of the gallies whoever should dare to be of another opinion from the Stagyrite, of whom two councils had burnt the books.

Further, a Faculty, which possessed very small faculties, made a decree against innate ideas, and afterwards another for them, without the said Faculty being informed, except by its beadles, of what an idea was.

In neighbouring schools, legal proceedwere commenced against the circulation of the blood.

A process was issued against inoculation, and the parties cited by summons. The most voluminous authors that we One and twenty volumes of thoughts in have had in France, are the comptrollers-folio have been seized, in which it was general of the finances. Ten great vo- wickedly and falsely said that triangles umes might be made of their declarations, have always three angles; that a father since the reign of Louis XIV. Parlia-was older than his son; that Rhea Silvia ments have been sometimes the critics of lost her virginity before her accouchethese works, and have found erroneousment; and that farina differs from oak propositions and contradictions in them. {leaves. isai where are the good authors, who have not been censured?

AUTHORITY.

In another year, the following question was decided:-"Utrum chimæra bombinans in vacuo possit comedere secundas intentiones?" and decided in the affirma

MISERABLE human beings, whether intive. green robes, or in turbans-whether in

These judges, of course, considered

black gowns or surplices, or in mantles themselves much superior to Archimedes,

Euclid, Cicero, or Pliny, and strutted about the Universities accordingly.

AXIS.

jugglers who have had so much reputa tion. The tale should be classed with those of the satyrs, who sang and danced in the train of Osiris; with the little boys, whom they would not feed till after they had run eight leagues, to teach them to conquer the world; with the two children who cried bec in asking for bread, and who by that means discovered that the

How is it that the axis of the earth is not perpendicular to the equator? Why is it raised towards the north and inclined towards the south pole, in a position which does not appear natural, and which seems the consequence of some derange-Phrygian was the original language; with ment, or the result of a period of a prodigious number of years?

Is it true, that the ecliptic continually inclines by an insensible movement towards the equator, and that the angle formed by these two lines has a little diminished in two thousand years?

Is it true that the ecliptic has been formerly perpendicular to the equator, that the Egyptians have said so, and that Herodotus has related it? This motion of the ecliptic would form a period of about two millions of years. It is not that which astounds us; for the axis of the earth has an imperceptible movement in about twenty-six thousand years, which occasions the precession of the equinoxes. It is as easy for nature to produce a rotation of twenty thousand, as of two hundred and sixty ages.

We are deceived when we are told that the Egyptians had, according to Herodotus, a tradition that the ecliptic had { been formerly perpendicular to the equaThe tradition of which Herodotus speaks has no relation to the coincidence of the equinoxial and ecliptic lines; that is quite another affair.

tor.

King Psammeticus, who gave his daughter to a thief who had dexterously stolen his money, &c. &c.

Ancient history, ancient astronomy, ancient physics, ancient medicine (up to Hippocrates), ancient geography, ancient metaphysics, all are nothing but ancient absurdities, which ought to make us feel the happiness of being born in later times.

There is, no doubt, more truth in two pages of the French Encyclopedia in relation to physics, than in all the library of Alexandria, the loss of which is so much regretted.

BABEL.

SECTION I.

BABEL signifies among the Orientals, God the Father, the power of God, the gate of God, according to the way in which the word is pronounced. It appears, therefore, that Babylon was the city of God, the holy city. Every capital of a state was a city of God, the sacred city. The Greeks called them all Hieropolis, and there were more than thirty of this name. The tower of Babel, then, signifies the tower of God the Father. The pretended scholars of Egypt said Josephus says truly, that Babel signithat the sun, in the space of eleven thou-fies confusion; Calmet says, with others, sand years, had set twice in the east, and that Bilba, in Chaldean, signifies conrisen twice in the west. When the equa-founded; but all the Orientals have been tor and the ecliptic coincided, and when the days were everywhere equal to the nights, the sun did not on that account change its setting and rising; but the earth turned on its axis from west to east, as at this day. This idea of making the sun set in the east is a chimera only worthy of the brains of the priests of Egypt, and shows the profound ignorance of those

of a contrary opinion. The word confusion would be a strange etymon for the capital of a vast empire. I very much like the opinion of Rabelais, who pretends that Paris was formerly called Lutetia, on account of the ladies' white legs.

Be that as it may, commentators have tormented themselves to know to what height men had raised this famous tower

of Babel. St. Jerome gives it twenty thousand feet. The ancient Jewish book, entitled, "Jacult," gave it eighty-one thousand. Paul Lucas has seen the remains of it, and it is a fine thing to be as keen-sighted as Paul Lucas: but these dimensions are not the only difficulties which have exercised the learned.

People have wished to know how the children of Noah, after having divided among themselves the islands of the nations and established themselves in divers lands, with each one his particular language, families, and people, should all find themselves in the plain of Shinaar, to build there a tower, saying, "Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." The book of Genesis speaks of the states which the sons of Noah founded. It has related how the people of Europe, Africa, and Asia, all came to Shinaar speaking one language only, and purposing the same thing.

The Vulgate places the Deluge in the year of the world 1656, and the construction of the tower of Babel 1771; that is to say, one hundred and fifteen years after the destruction of mankind, and even during the life of Noah.

Men then must have multiplied with prodigious celerity; all the arts revived in a very little time. When we reflect on the great number of trades which must have been employed to raise a tower so high, we are amazed at so stupendous a work.

The Patriarch Abraham was born, according to the Bible, about four hundred years after the Deluge, and already we e a line of powerful kings in Egypt and Asia. Bochart, and other sages, have peasantly filled their great books with

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after several ages, has given us sacred books to render us better men, and not to make us geographers, chronologists, or etymologists.

Babel is Babylon: it was founded, according to the Persian historians, by a prince named Tamurath. The only knowledge we have of its antiquities, consists in the astronomical observations of nineteen hundred and three years, sent by Callisthenes, by order of Alexander, to his preceptor Aristotle. To this certainty is joined the extreme probability, that a nation which had made a series of celestial observations for nearly two thousand years, had congregated and formed a considerable power several ages before the first of these observations.

It is a pity, that none of the calcula{tions of the ancient profane authors agree with our sacred ones; and that none of the names of the princes who reigned after the different epochs assigned to the Deluge, have been known by either Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, or Greeks.

It is no less a pity, that there remains not on the earth, among the profane authors, one vestige of the famous tower of Babel: nothing of this story of the confusion of tongues is found in any book. This memorable adventure was as unknown to the whole universe, as the names of Noah, Methusalem, Cain, and Adam and Eve.

This difficulty tantalises our curiosity. Herodotus, who travelled so much, speaks neither of Noah, or Shem, Reu, Salah, or Nimrod. The name of Nimrod is unknown to all profane antiquity; there are only a few Arabs, and some modern Persians, who have made mention of Nimrod, in falsifying the books of the Jews.

Nothing remains to conduct us through these ancient ruins, unknown to all the

nician and Chaldean words and ystems which they do not understand.nations of the universe during so many hey have learnedly taken Thrace for ages, but faith in the Bible; and happily, Cappadocia, Greece for Crete, and the that is an infallible guide. and of Cyprus for Tyre; they sport in ocean of ignorance, which has neither rom nor shore. It would have been orter for them to have avowed that God,

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Herodotus, who has mingled many fables with some truths, pretends that in his time, which was that of greatest power of the Persian sovereigns of Babylon, all

the women of the immense city were obliged to go once in their lives to the temple of Mylitta, a goddess which was thought to be the same as Aphrodite, or Venus, in order to prostitute themselves to strangers; and that the law commanded them to receive money as a sacred tribute, which was paid over to the priesthood of the goddess.

not, then, a duty for them to prostitute themselves to the first comer, nor was Babylon, the city of God, a vast brothel, as it has been pretended.

These tales of Herodotus, as well as all others in the same taste, are now so decried by all people of sense-reason has made so great a progress, that even old women and children will no longer believe such extravagancies-"Non est vetula quæ credat nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur."

There is in our days only one man who, not partaking of the spirit of the age in which he lives, would justify the fable of Herodotus. The infamy appears to him a very simple affair. He would prove, that the Babylonian princesses prostituted themselves through piety to the first passengers, because it is said in the holy writing, that the Ammonites made their children pass through the fire in presenting them to Moloch. But what relation has this custom of some barbarous hordes

But even this Arabian tale is more likely than that which the same author tells of Cyrus dividing the Indus into three hundred and sixty canals, which all discharged themselves into the Caspian Sea! What should we say of Mezerai, if he had } told us that Charlemagne divided the Rhine into three hundred and sixty canals, which fell into the Mediterranean; and that all the ladies of his court were obliged once in their lives to present themselves at the church of St. Genevieve, to prostitute themselves to all comers for money? It must be remarked, that such a fable is still more absurd in relation to the time—this superstition of passing their childof Xerxes, in which Herodotus lived, than ren through the flames, or even of burnit would be in that of Charlemagne. The ing them on piles, in honour of I know Orientals were a thousand times more not who-of Moloch; these Iroquois jealous than the Franks and Gauls. The horrors of a petty infamous people, to a wives of all the great lords were carefully prostitution so incredible, in a nation guarded by eunuchs. This custom sub-known to be the most jealous and orderly sisted from time immemorial. It is seen even in the Jewish history, that when that little nation wished like the others to have a king, Samuel, to dissuade them from it, and to retain his authority, said, “that a He also brings, in further proof, the king would tyrannise over them, and that Lupercal feast among the Romans, durhe would take the tenths of their vinesing which, he says, that the young people and corn to give to his eunuchs." The of quality, and respectable magistrates, kings accomplished this prediction; forran naked through the city with whips in it is written in the first book of kings, that their hands, with which they struck the King Ahab had eunuchs, and in the se- pregnant women of quality, who unblushcond that Joram, Jehu, Jehoiakim, and ingly presented themselves to them, in Zedekias, had them also. the hope of thereby obtaining a happy deliverance.

The eunuchs of Pharoah are spoken of a long time previously, in the book of Genesis; and it is said that Potiphar, to whom Joseph was sold, was one of the king's eunuchs. It is clear, therefore, that there were great numbers of eunuchs at Babylon to guard the women. It was

of the East? Would what passes among the Iroquois be among us a proof of the customs of the Courts of France and of Spain?

Now, in the first place, it is not said that these Romans of quality ran quite naked; on the contrary, Plutarch expressly observes, in his remarks on the custom, that they were covered from the waist downwards.

Secondly, it seems by the manner in which this defender of infamous customs expresses himself, that the Roman ladies stripped naked to receive these blows of the whip, which is absolutely false.

the Greek served for amusement, whilst the barbarous jargon of each province was only for the populace. They pleaded in Latin, at once in the tribunals of Africa and of Rome. An inhabitant of Corn

Thirdly, the Lupercal feast has no re-wall departed for Asia Minor, sure of lation whatever to the pretended law of Babylon, which commands the wives and daughters of the king, the satraps, and the magi, to sell and prostitute themselves to strangers out of pure devotion.

When an author, without knowing either the human mind or the manners of nations, has the misfortune to be obliged to compile from passages of old authors, who are almost all contradictory, he should advance his opinions with modesty, and know how to doubt, and to shake off the dust of the college. Above all, he should never express himself with outrageous insolence.

Herodotus, or Cetesias, or Diodorus of Sicily, relate a fact: you have read it in Greek, therefore this fact is true. This mander of reasoning, which is not that of Euclid, is surprising enough in the time in which we live; but all minds will not be instructed with equal facility; and there are always more persons who compile than people who think.

being understood everywhere in his route. It was at least one good effected by the rapacity of the Romans, that people found themselves as well understood on the Danube as on the Guadalquiver. At the present time, a Bergamask, who travels into the small Swiss cantons, from which he is only separated by a mountain, has the same need of an interpreter as if he were at China. This is one of the greatest plagues of modern life.

SECTION II.

It

Vanity has always raised stately monu ments. It was through vanity that men built the lofty tower of Babel. "Let us go and raise a tower, the summit of which shall touch the skies, and render our name celebrated before we are scattered upon the face of the earth." The enterprise was undertaken in the time of a patriarch named Phaleg, who counted the good man Noah for his fifth ancestor. will be seen that architecture, and all the We will say nothing here of the confu-arts which accompany it, had made great sion of tongues which took place during progress in five generations. St. Jerome, the construction of the tower of Babel. the same who has seen fauns and satyrs, It is a miracle, related in the Holy Scrip- has not seen the tower of Babel any more tures. We neither explain, nor even than I have, but he assures us that it was examine any miracles; and as the authors twenty thousand feet high. This is a of that great work, the Encyclopedia, be- trifle. The ancient book "Jacult," lieved them, we also believe them with a written by one of the most learned Jews, lively and sincere faith. demonstrates the height to be eighty-one We will simply affirm, that the fall of thousand Jewish feet; and every one the Roman empire has produced more knows that the Jewish foot was nearly as confusion, and a greater number of new long as the Greek. These dimensions languages than that of the tower of Ba-are still more likely than those of Jerome. bel. From the reign of Augustus to the This tower remains, but it is no longer ume of the Attilas, the Clovises, and the quite so high; several very veracious traGondiberts, during six ages, "terra erat vellers have seen it. I, who have not Laus labii,"-"the known earth was seen it, will talk as little of it as of my of one language." They spoke the same grandfather Adam, with whom I never Latin at the Euphrates as at Mount had the honour of conversing. But conAtlas. The laws which governed a hun-sult the reverend father Calmet; he is a dred nations were written in Latin, and man of fine wit, and a profound philoso

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