Jews, were at liberty to marry two sisters; Mahomet was the first who forbade these marriages. Where, then, is the grossness? says, that the sense of hearing will enjoy the pleasures of singing and of speech. One of our great Italian theologians, named Piazza, in his Dissertation on ParaAnd with regard to the celestial brides, dise, informs us that the elect will for ever where is the impurity? Certes, there is sing and play the guitar: they will have, nothing impure in marriage, which is ac- says he, three nobilities-three advantknowledged to have been ordained on ages, viz.-desire without excitement, earth, and blessed by God himself. The caresses without wantonness, and volupincomprehensible mystery of generation istuousness without excess :-" tres nobili the seal of the Eternal Being. It is the clearest mark of his power, that he has created pleasure, and through that very pleasure perpetuated all sensible be ings. tates; illecebra sine titillatione, blanditia sine mollitudine, et voluptas sine exuberantià." St. Thomas assures us that the smell of the glorified bodies will be perfect, and will not be diminished by perspiration."Corporibus gloriosi serit odor ultima perfectione, nullo modo per humîdum repressus." This question has been profoundly treated by a great many other doctors. If we consult our reason alone, it will tell us that it is very likely that the Eternal Being, who does nothing in vain, will not cause us to rise again with our organs to no purpose. It will not be unworthy of the Divine Majesty to feed us with delicious fruits, if he cause us to rise again Suarez, in his Wisdom, thus expresses with stomachs to receive them. The Holy himself concerning taste:-" It is not difScriptures inform us that, in the begin- ficult for God purposely to make some ning, God placed the first man and the sapid humour act on the organ of taste." first woman in a paradise of delights.- "Non est Deo difficile facere ut sapiThey were then in a state of innocence dus humor sit intra organum gustus, qui and glory, incapable of experiencing dis-sensum illum intentionaliter afficere." ease or death. This is nearly the state in which the just will be when, after their resurrection, they shall be for all eternity what our first parents were for a few days. Those, then, must be pardoned, who have thought that, having a body, that body will be constantly satisfied. Our Fathers It is not then so much to be wondered of the Church had no other idea of theat, that the Mahometans have admitted the heavenly Jerusalem. St. Irenæus says, use of the five senses in their paradise. "that there each vine shall bear ten thou-They say that the first beatitude will be sand branches, each branch ten thousand the union with God; but this does not clusters, and each cluster ten thousand exclude the rest. grapes," &c. Several Fathers of the Church have, indeed, thought that the blessed in heaven would enjoy all their senses. St. Thomas says, that the sense of seeing will be infinitely perfect; that the elements will be so too; that the surface of the earth will be transparent as glass, the water like crystal, the air like the heavens, and the fire like the stars. St. Augustin, in his Christian Doctrine, And, to conclude, St. Prosper, recapitulating the whole, pronounces that the blessed shall find gratification without satiety, and enjoy health without disease:" -"Saturitas sine fastidio, et tota sanitas sine morbo." Mahomet's paradise is a fable; but once more be it observed, there is in it neither contradiction nor impurity. Philosophy requires clear and precise ideas, which Grotius had not. He quotes a great deal, and makes a show of reason{ing, which will not bear a close examination. The unjust imputations cast on the Mahometans would suffice to make a very large book. They have subjugated one of the largest and most beautiful countries upon earth; to drive them from it would have been a finer exploit than to abuse them. The Empress of Russia supplies a great example. She takes from them Azoph and Tangarok, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Georgia; she pushes her conquests to the ramparts of Erzerum; she sends against them fleets from the remotest parts of the Baltic, and others covering the Euxine: but she does not say in her manifestos, that a pigeon whispered in Mahomet's ear. ART OF POETRY. because he always says true and useful things in a pleasing manner, because he always gives both precept and example, and because he is varied, passing with perfect ease, and without ever failing in purity of language, From grave to gay, from lively to severe. His reputation among men of taste is proved by the fact, that his verses are known by heart; and to philosophers it must be pleasing to find that he is almost always in the right. As we have spoken of the preference which may sometimes be given to the moderns over the ancients, we will here venture to presume that Boileau's Art of A MAN of almost universal learning-Poetry is superior to that of Horace. Mea man even of genius, who joins philoso-thod is certainly a beauty in a didactic phy with imagination, uses, in his excel-poem; and Horace has no method. We lent article ENCYCLOPEDIA, these remark-do not mention this as a reproach; for his able words :-" If we except this Perrault, poem is a familiar epistle to the Pisos, and some others, whose merits the versi- and not a regular work like the Georgics: fier Boileau was not capable of appreciat-but there is this additional merit in Boiing," &c. leau, a merit for which philosophers should give him credit. This philosopher is right in doing justice to Claude Perrault, the learned translator of Vitruvius, a man useful in more arts than one, and to whom we are indebted for the fine front of the Louvre and for other great monuments; but justice should also be rendered to Boileau. Had he been only a versifier, he would scarcely have been known; he would not have been one of the few great men who will hand down the age of Louis XIV. to posterity. His tart Satires, his fine Epistles, and, above all, his Art of Poetry, are masterpieces of reasoning as well as poetry :sapere est principium et fons." The art of versifying is, indeed, prodigiously difficult, especially in our language, where alexandrines follow one another two by two; where it is rare to avoid monotony; where it is absolutely necessary to rhyme; where noble and pleasing rhymes are too limited in number; and where a word out of its place, or a harsh syllable, is sufficient to spoil a happy thought. It is like dancing on a rope in fetters; the greatest success is of itself nothing. : Boileau's Art of Poetry is to be admired, } The Latin Art of Poetry does not seem near so finely laboured as the French. Horace expresses himself, almost throughout, in the free and familiar tone of his other epistles. He displays an extreme clearness of understanding and a refined taste, in verses which are happy and spirited, but often without connection, and sometimes destitute of harmony; he has not the elegance and correctness of Virgil. His work is very good, but Boileau's appears to be still better: and, if we except the tragedies of Racine, which have the superior merit of treating the passions and surmounting all the difficulties of the stage, Despréaux's Art of Poetry is, indisputably, the poem which does most honour to the French language. It is lamentable when philosophers are enemies to poetry. Literature should be like the house of Mæcenas-"est locus unicuique suus." The author of the Persian Letters-so easy to write, and among which some are very pretty, others very bold, others indifferent, and others frivolous-this au thor, I say, though otherwise much to be do to himself, did good to other princes recommended, yet having never been able { against his will: this is proved by what to make verses, although he possesses you have said in your history of Brandenimagination and often superiority of style, burgh. makes himself amends, by saying that If that monarch were known only from contempt is heaped upon poetry," that { his banishment of six or seven hundred "lyric poetry is harmonious extrava-thousand useful citizens-from his irrupgance," &c. Thus do men often seek totion into Holland, whence he was soon depreciate the talents which they cannot attain. “We cannot reach it," says Montaigne; "let us revenge ourselves by speaking ill of it." But Montaigne, Montesquieu's predecessor and master in imagination and philosophy, thought very differently of poetry. obliged to retreat-from his greatness, which stayed him at the bank, while his troops were swimming across the Rhine; if there were no other monuments of his glory than the prologues to his operas, followed by the battle of Hochstet, his person and his reign would go down to posterity with but little eclat. But the encouragement of all the fine arts by his taste and munificence; the conferring of so many benefits on the literary men of Had Montesquien been as just as he was witty, he could not but have felt that several of our fine odes and good operas are worth infinitely more than the plea-other countries; the rise of his kingdom's santries of Rica to Usbeck, imitated from Dufréni's Siamois, and the details of what passed in Usbeck's seraglio at Ispahan. commerce at his voice; the establishment of so many manufactories; the building of so many fine citadels; the construction of so many admirable ports; the union of the two seas by immense labour, &c., still We shall speak more fully of this too frequent injustice, in the article CRITI-oblige Europe to regard Louis XIV. and CISM. ARTS-FINE ARTS. [ARTICLE DEDICATED TO THE KING OF PRUSSIA.] his age with respect. And, above all, those great men, unique in every branch of art and science, whom nature then produced at one time, will render his reign eternally memorable. The age was greater than Louis XIV., but it shed its glory upon him. Emulation in art has changed the face of the continent, from the Pyrenees to the Icy Sea. There is hardly a prince in Germany who has not made useful and glo SIRE,-The small society of amateurs, a part of whom are labouring at these rhapsodies at Mount Krapak, will say nothing to your majesty on the art of war. It is an heroic, or it may be-an abominable art. If there were anything finerious establishments. in it, we would tell your majesty, without fear of contradiction, that you are the finest man in Europe. You know, Sire, the four ages of the arts. Almost everything sprung up and was brought to perfection under Louis XIV.; after which many of these arts, banished from France, went to embellish and enrich the rest of Europe, at the fatal period of the destruction of the celebrated edict of Henry IV.-pronounced irrevorable, yet so easily revoked. Thus, the greatest injury which Louis XIV. could What have the Turks done for glory? Nothing. They have ravaged three empires and twenty kingdoms; but any one city of ancient Greece will always have a greater reputation than all the Ottoman together. See what has been done in the course of a few years at Petersburgh, which was a bog at the beginning of the seventeenth century. All the arts are there assembled, while in the country of Orpheus, Linus, and Homer, they are annihilated." thought that Paul Lucas's theory may be, then greater than that of the body of a joined with that of the vampires, in the next compilation of the Abbé Guyon. ASPHALTUS. ASPHALTIC LAKE.-SODOM. A CHALDEE word, signifying a species of bitumen. There is a great deal of it in the countries watered by the Euphrates: it is also to be found in Europe, but of a bad quality. An experiment was made by covering the tops of the watch-houses on each side of one of the gates of Geneva: the covering did not last a year, and the mine has been abandoned. However, when mixed with rosin, it may be used for lining cisterns: perhaps it will some day be applied to a more useful purpose. The real asphaltus is that which was obtained in the vicinity of Babylon, and with which it is said that the Greek fire was composed. Several lakes are full of asphaltus, or a bitumen resembling it, as others are strongly impregnated with nitre. There is a great lake of nitre in the desart of Egypt, which extends from lake Moris to the entrance of the Delta; and it has no other name than the Nitre Lake. man or a beast, might force it to float. Josephus's error consists in assigning a false cause to a phenomenon which may be perfectly true. As for the want of fish, it is not incredible. It is, however likely, that this lake, which is fifty or sixty miles long, is not all asphaltic, and that while receiving the waters of the Jordan it also receives the fishes of that river: but perhaps the Jordan too is without fish, and they are to be found only in the upper lake of Tiberias. Josephus adds, that the trees which grow on the borders of the Dead Sea, bear fruits of the most beautiful appear{ance, but which fall into dust if you attempt to taste them. This is less probable; and disposes one to believe that Josephus either had not been on the spot, or has exaggerated according to his own and his countrymen's custom. No soil seems more calculated to produce good as well as beautiful fruits than a salt and sulphureous one, like that of Naples, of Catania, and of Sodom. The Holy Scriptures speak of five cities being destroyed by fire from heaven. On this occasion, natural philosophy bears The Lake Asphaltites, known by the testimony in favour of the Old Testament name of Sodom, was long famed for its-although the latter has no need of it, bitumen; but the Turks now make no use and they are sometimes at variance. We of it, either because the mine under the have instances of earthquakes, accompawater is diminished, or because its qua- nied by thunder and lightning, which lity is altered, or because there is too have destroyed much more considerable much difficulty in drawing it from under towns than Sodom and Gomorrahı. the water. Oily particles of it, and sometimes large masses separate, and float on the surface; these are gathered together, mixed up, and sold for balm of Mecca. Flavius Josephus, who was of that country, says that, in his time, there were no fish in the lake of Sodom, and the water was so light that the heaviest bodies would not go to the bottom. It seems that he meant to say so heavy instead of so light. It would appear that he had not made the experiment. After all, a stagnant water, impregnated with salts and compact matter, its specific matter being But the river Jordan necessarily discharging itself into this lake without an outlet, this Dead Sea, in the same manner as the Caspian, must have existed as long as there has been a river Jordan; therefore, these towns could never stand on the spot now occupied by the lake of Sodom. The Scripture, too, says nothing at all about this ground's being changed into a lake; it says quite the contrary;"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire, from the Lord out of heaven. And Abraham got up early in the morning, and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld; and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace." people who colonised these villages prepared the asphaltus, and carried on a useful trade in it. The arid and burning desart, extending from Segor to the territory of Jerusalem, produces balm and aromatic herbs, for the same reason that it supplies naptha, cor rosive salt and sulphur These five towns, Sodom, Gomorrah, Zeboin, Adamah, and Segor, must then have been situated on the borders of the Dead Sea. How, it will be asked, in a desart so uninhabitable as it now is, where there are to be found only a few hordes of plundering Arabs, could there be five cities, so opulent as to be immersed in luxury, and even in those shameful pleasures which are the last effect of the refinement of the debauchery attached to wealth? It may be answered, that theThis, then, was not a natural petrifaction, country was then much better. Other critics will say-how could five towns exist at the extremities of a lake, the water of which, before their destruc tion, was not potable? The Scripture itself informs us, that all this land was asphaltic before the burning of Sodom; "And the vale of Sodom was full of slime-pits: ; and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, and fell there.” Another objection is also started. Isaiah and Jeremiah say, that Sodom and Gomorrah shall never be rebuilt: but Stephen, the geographer, speaks of Sodom and Gomorrah on the coast of the Dead Sea; and the History of the Councils mentions bishops of Sodom and Segor. To this it may be answered, that God filled these towns, when rebuilt, with less guilty inhabitants; for at that time there was no bishop in partibus. It is said that petrifaction takes place in this desart with astonishing rapidity; and this, according to some natural philosophers, makes the petrifaction of Lot's wife Edith a very plausible story. But it is said that this woman, "having looked back, became a pillar of salt." operated by asphaltus and salt, but an evident miracle. Flavius Josephus says, that he saw this pillar. St. Justin and St. Irenæus speak of it as a prodigy, which in their time was still existing. These testimonies have been looked upon as ridiculous fables. It would, however, be very natural for some Jews to amuse themselves with cutting a heap of asphaltus into a rude figure, and calling it Lot's wife. I have seen cisterns of asphaltus, very well made, which may last a long time. But it must be owned that St. Irenæus goes a little too far when he says, that Lot's wife remained in the country of Sodom no longer in corruptible flesh, but as a permanent statue of salt, her feminine nature still producing the ordinary effects :-"Uxor remansit in Sodomis, jam non caro corruptibilis sed statua salis semper manens, et per naturalia ea quæ sunt consuetudinis hominis ostendens." But, it will be said, with what water could these new inhabitants quench their St. Irenæus does not seem to express thirst? all the wells are brackish; you himself with all the precision of a good find asphaltus and corrosive salt on first naturalist, when he says, Lot's wife is no striking a spade into the ground. longer of corruptible flesh, but still reIt will be answered that some Arabstains her feminine nature. still subsist there, and may be habituated to drinking very bad water; that the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Eastern Empire were wretched hamlets; and that at that time there were many bishops whose whole diocese consisted in a poor village. It may also be said, that the In the poem of Sodom, attributed to Tertullian, this is expressed with still greater energy Dicitur et vivens alio sub corpore sexûs, |