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cuttle-fish, which was celebrated for its productiveness.

mankind from those in her own nook and neighbourhood.

Apuleius clearly explains the real This idea of the end of our little world, philtre, or charm, which had excited and its renovation, strongly possessed the Pudentilla's affection for him. He un-imagination of the nations under subjec doubtedly admits, in his defence, that histion to the Roman empire, amidst the wife had called him a magician. "But what," says he, "if she had called me a consul, would that have made me one?" The plant satyrion was considered, both among the Greeks and Romans, as the most powerful of philtres. It was called plantà aphrodisia, the plant of Venus. That called by the Latins eruca, is now often added to the former.

Et venerem revocans eruca morantem.

A little essence of amber is frequently used. Mandragora has gone out of fashion. Some exhausted debauchees have employed cantharides, which strongly affect the susceptible parts of the frame, and often produce severe and painful consequences.

Youth and health are the only genuine philtres.

Chocolate was for a long time in great celebrity with our debilitated petit-maîtres. But a man may take twenty cups of chocolate without inspiring any attachment to his person.

ut amoris amabilis esto.
Ovid,, A. A. ii. 107.

Wouldst thou be loved, ¿¬ amiable.

END OF THE WORLD.

horrors of the civil wars between Cæsar
and Pompey. Virgil, in his Georgics
(book i., v. 468), alludes to the general
apprehension which filled the minds of
the common people from this cause:-

Impiaque eternam timuerunt secula noctem.
And impious men now dread eternal night,
Lucan, in the following lines, expresses
himself much more explicitly :-

Hos Caesar populos, si nunc non usserit ignis
Uret cum terris, uret cum gurgite ponti.
Communis mundo superest rogus...

Pars. book vii. v. 812, 14,

Though now thy cruelty denies a grave,
These and the world one common lot shall have;
One last appointed flame, by fate's decree,
Shall waste yon azure heavens, the earth and ma

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And Ovid, following up the observations of Lucan, says:—

Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur affore tempus,
Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regia coeli,
Ardent et mundi moles operosa laboret.
Met. 1. r. 236, 38.
For thus the stern unyielding fates decree,
That earth, air, heaven, with the capacious sea,
All shall fall victims to consuming fire,

And in fierce flames the blazing world expire.

Consult Cicero himself, the philosophic Cicero. He tells us, in his book concerning the Nature of the Gods, the best work perhaps of all antiquity, unless we make an exception in favour of his treatise on human duties, called "The Offices;" THE greater part of the Greek philo-in that book, I say, he remarks :— sophers held the universe to be eternal both with respect to commencement and duration. But as to this petty portion of the world or universe, this globe of stone and earth and water, of minerals and vapours, which we inhabit, it was somewhat difficult to form an opinion: it was, however, deemed very destructible. It was even said that it had been destroyed more than once, and would be destroyed again. Every one judged of the whole world from his own particular country, as an old woman judges of all

"Ex quo eventurum nostri putant id, de quo Pancetium addubitare dicebaut; ut ad extremum onmis mundus ignesceret, cum, humore consumpto, neque terra ali posset, neque remearet aër cujus ortus, aqua omni exhausta, esse non posset; ita relinqui nihil præter ignem, a quo { rursum animante ac Deo renovatio mundi fieret; atque idem ornatus oriretur.”

"According to the Stoics, the whole world will eventually consist only of fire; the water being then exhausted will leave no nourishment for the earth; and the

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St. Luke, in much greater detail, predicts the end of the world and the last judgment. These are his words :—

This natural philosophy of the Stoics, like that indeed of all antiquity, is not a "There shall be signs in the moon and little absurd; it shows, however, that the in the stars, roarings of the sea and the expectation of a general conflagration was waves; men's hearts failing them for fear, universal. shall look with trembling to the events Prepare, however, for greater astonish-about to happen. The powers of heaven ment than the errors of antiquity can ex-shall be shaken; and then shall they see cite. The great Newton held the same the son of man coming in a cloud, with opinion as Cicero. Deceived by an in- great power and majesty. Verily I say correct experiment of Boyle, he thought unto you, the present generation shall not that the moisture of the globe would at pass away till all this be fulfilled" length be dried up, and that it would be necessary for God to apply his reforming hand "manum emandatricem." Thus we have the two greatest men of ancient Rome and modern England precisely of the same opinion, that at some future period fire will completely prevail over

water

We do not dissemble that unbelievers upbraid us with this very prediction; they want to make us blush for our faith, when we consider that the world is still in existence. The generation, they say, is passed away, and yet nothing at all of this is fulfilled. Luke, therefore, ascribes language to our Saviour which he never This idea of a perishing and subse- uttered, or we must conclude that Jesus quently to be renewed world, was deeply Christ himself was mistaken, which would rooted in the minds of the inhabitants of í be blasphemy. But we close the mouth Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, from the of these impious cavillers by observing, time of the civil wars of the successors of that this prediction, which appears so Alexander. Those of the Romans aug-false in its literal meaning, is true in its mented the terror, upon this subject, of spirit; that the whole world meant Juthe various nations which became the vic-dea, and that the end of the world signitims of them. They expected the de-fied the reign of Titus and his successtruction of the world, and hoped for a new one. The Jews, who are slaves in Syria, and scattered through every other land, partook of this universal terror.

Accordingly, it does not appear that the Jews were at all astonished when Jesus said to them, according to St. Matthew and St. Luke:-" Heaven and earth shall pass away." He often said to them: The kingdom of God is at hand." He preached the gospel of the kingdom of God.

St. Peter announces that the gospel was preached to them that were dead, and that the end of the world drew near. "We expect," says he, "new heavens and a new earth."

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sors.

St. Paul expresses himself very strongly on the subject of the end of the world in his epistle to the Thessalonians :-" We who survive, and who now address you, shall be taken up into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air."

According to these very words of Jesus and St. Paul, the whole world was to have an end under Tiberius, or at latest under Nero. St. Paul's prediction was fulfilled no more than St. Luke's.

These allegorical predictions were undoubtedly not meant to apply to the times of the evangelists and apostles, but to some future time, which God conceals from all mankind.

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It is still perfectly certain that all nations then known entertained the expec

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relating to them to God, the master of those three divisions of time and of eter nity.

ENTHUSIASM.

THIS Greek word signifies "emotion of the bowels, internal agitation." Was the word invented by the Greeks to express the vibrations experienced by the nerves, the dilation and shrinking of the intestines, the violent contractions of the heart, the precipitous course of those fiery spirits which mount from the viscera to the brain whenever we are strongly and vividly affected?

tation of the end of the world, of a new earth and a new heaven. For more than sixteenth centuries, we see that donations to monkish institutions have commenced with these words:-"Adventante mundi vespere,' &c. "The end of the world being at hand, I, for the good of my soul, Or was the term enthusiasm, after painand to avoid being one of the number of ful affection of the bowels, first applied the goats on the left hand, &c., leave such to the contortions of the Pythia, who, on and such lands to such a convent." Fear the Delphian tripod, admitted the inspi influenced the weak to enrich the cun-ration of Apollo in a place apparently ning. intended for the receptacle of body rather than of spirit?

The Egyptians fixed this grand epoch at the end of thirty-six thousand five hundred years: Orpheus is stated to have fixed it at the distance of a hundred and twenty thonsand years.

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What do we understand by enthusiasm? How many shades are there in our affections! Approbation, sensibility, emotion, distress, impulse, passion, transport, insanity, rage, fury. Such are the stages through which the miserable soul of man is liable to pass.

The historian Flavius Josephus asserts, that Adam having predicted that the world would be twice destroyed, once by water and next by fire, the children of A geometrician attends at the repreSeth were desirous of announcing to the sentation of an affecting tragedy. He future race of men the disastrous catas-merely remarks that it is a judicious trophe. They engraved astronomical observations on two columns, one made of bricks, which should resist the fire that was to consume the world; the other of stones, which would remain uninjured by the water that was to drown it. But what thought the Romans, when a few slaves talked to them about an Adam and a Seth unknown to all the world besides? They smiled.

Josephus adds, that the column of stones was to be seen in his own time, in Syria.

well-written performance. A young man who sits next to him is so interested by the performance that he makes no remark at all; a lady sheds tears over it; anether young man is so transported by the exhibition, that to his great misfortune be goes home determined to compose a tragedy himself. He has caught the disease of enthusiasm.

The centurion or military tribune, who considers war simply as a profession by which he is to make his fortune, goes to battle coolly, like a tiler ascending the roof of a house. Cæsar wept at seeing the statue of Alexander.

From all that has been said, we may couclude that we know exceedingly little of past events-that we are but ill ac- Ovid speaks of love only like one who quainted with those present-that we understood it. Sappho expressed the know nothing at all about the future-genuine enthusiasm of the passion; and and that we ought to refer everything if it be true that she sacrificed her life to

it, her enthusiasm must have advanced to madness.

The spirit of party tends astonishingly to excite enthusiasm ; there is no faction that has not its "energumens," its devoted and possessed partisans. An animated speaker, who employs gesture in his addresses, has in his eyes, his voice, his movements, a subtle poison which passes with an arrow's speed into the ears and hearts of his partial hearers. It was on this ground that Queen Elizabeth forbade any one to preach, during six months, without an express license under her sign manual, that the peace of her kingdom might be undisturbed.

St. Ignatius, who possessed very warm and susceptible feelings, read the lives of the fathers of the desert after being deeply read in romances. He becomes, in consequence, actuated by a double enthusiasm. He constitutes himself knight to the Virgin Mary; he performed the vigil of arms; he is eager to fight for his lady patroness; he is favoured with visions; the virgin appears, and recommends to him her son, and she enjoins him to give no other name to his society than that of the "Society of Jesus."

Ignatius communicates his enthusiasm to another Spaniard, of the name of Xavier. Xavier hastens away to the Indies, of the language of which he is utterly ignorant; thence to Japan, without knowing a word of Japanese. That, however, is of no consequence; the flame of his enthusiasm catches the imagination of some young Jesuits, who, at length, make themselves masters of that language. These disciples, after Xavier's death, entertain not the shadow of a doubt that he performed more miracles than ever the apostles did, and that he resuscitated seven or eight persons at the very least. In short, so epidemical and powerful becomes the enthusiasm, that they form in Japan what they denominate a Christendom (une Chretientè). This Christendom ends in a civil war, in which a hundred thousand persons are slaugh

tered: the enthusiasm then is at its highest point, fanaticism; and fanaticism has become madness.

The young fakir, who fixes his eye on the tip of his noise when saying his prayers, gradually kindles in devotional ardour, until he at length believes that if he burdens himself with chains of fifty pounds weight, the Supreme Being will be obliged and grateful to him. He goes to sleep with an imagination totally absorbed by Bramah, and is sure to have a sight of him in a dream. Occasionally, even in the intermediate state between sleeping and waking, sparks radiate from his eyes; he beholds Bramah resplendent with light; he falls into extacies, and the disease frequently becomes incurable.

What is most rarely to be met with, is the combination of reason with enthusiasm. Reason consists in constantly perceiving things as they really are. He, who under the influence of intoxication, sees objects double, is at the time deprived of reason.

Enthusiasm is precisely like wine, it has the power to excite such a ferment in the blood vessels, and such strong vibrations in the nerves, that reason is completely destroyed by it. But it may also occasion only slight agitations, so as not to convulse the brain, but merely to render it more active, as is the cause in grand bursts of eloquence, and more especially in sublime poetry. Reasonable enthusiasm is the patrimony of great poets.

This reasonable enthusiasm is the perfection of their art. It is this which formerly occasioned the belief that poets were inspired by the gods; a notion which was never applied to other artists.

How is reasoning to controul enthusiasm? A poet should, in the first instance, make a sketch of his design. Reason then holds the crayon. But when he is desirous to animate his characters, to communicate to them the different and just expressions of the passions, then his imagination kindles, enthusiasm is in full operation, and urges him on like a fiery courser in his career. But his

course has been previously traced with coolness and judgment.

Enthusiasm is admissible into every species of poetry which admits of sentiment we occasionally find it even in the eclogue; witness the following lines of Virgil (Eclogue x. v. 58.)

Jam mihi per rupes videor lucosque sonautes
Ire: libet Partho torquere cydonia cornu
Spicula; tanquam haec sint nostri medicina furois,
Aut deus ille malis hominum mitescere discati
Nor cold shall hinder me, with horns and hounds
To thrid the thickets, or to leap the mounds.
And now, methinks, through steepy rocks I go,
And rush through sounding woods and bend the Parthian

bow:

As if with sports my sufferings I could ease,
Or by my pains the god of Love appease.

The style of epistles and satires represses enthusiasm; we accordingly see little or nothing of it in the works of Boileau and Pope.

Our odes, it is said by some, are genuine lyrical enthusiasm; but as they are not sung with us, they are, in fact, rather collections of verses, adorned with ingenious reflections, than odes.

Of all modern odes, that which abounds with the noblest enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that never abates, that never falls into the bombastic or the ridiculous, is Timotheus, or Alexander's Feast, by Dryden. It is still considered in England as an inimitable masterpiece, which Pope, when attempting the same stile and the same subject, could not even approach. This ode was sung, set to music; and if the musician had been worthy of the poet, it would have been the masterpiece of lyric poesy.

The most dangerous tendency of enthusiasm in this connection is that of urging on the poet to bombast, rant, and burlesque. A striking example of this occurs in an ode on the birth of a prince of the blood royal:

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Here we find the poet's senses enchanted and alarmed at the appearance of a prodigy-a vast and magnificent spectacle-a new birth, which is to reform the universe, and redeem it from a state of chaos, &c., all which means simply that a male child is born to the house of Bourbon. This is as bad as, "Je chante les vainqueurs, des vainqueurs de la terre."

We will avail ourselves of the present opportunity to observe, that there is a very small portion of enthusiasm in the Ode on the Taking of Namur.

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I believe Mandeville, the author of the Fable of the Bees, is the first who has endeavoured to prove that envy is a very good thing, a very useful passion. His first reason is, that envy was natural to man as hunger and thirst; that it may be observed in all children, as well as in horses and dogs. If you wish your children should hate one another, caress one more than the other; the prescription is infallible.

He asserts, that the first thing two young women do when they meet together, is to discover matter for ridicule, and the second to flatter each other.

He thinks that without envy the arts would be only moderately cultivated, and that Raphael would never have been a great painter if he had not been jealous of Michael Angelo.

Mandeville, perhaps, mistook emulation for envy; perhaps, also, emulation

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