4 meanings if by the truths of Chriftianity he means the incarnation, the atonement, and the other myfterious doctrines which Gud has thought proper to reveal to us by the miniftration of Jefus Chrift, it is true, but not to the purpose: if he includes, under the general term truths, every doctrine contained in the gofpel, it is to his purpofe, but not true for the moral duties inculcated by the great Author of our religion are cafy, plain, and intelligible; and fo far are they from being contrary, that they are ftrictly conformable, to uncorrupted reafon, and coniequently must be approved by every unprejudiced mind. We must therefore differ from Mr. Owen, and declare it as our opinion that human reafon, when properly cultivated and judiciously di-rected, is at leaft equal to the task of enforcing with good effect thofe great and important truths which are revealed to us in the gospel, and which involve in them our prefent comfort and future happiness. Through the whole of this difcourfe, the author feems to be infected with a gloomy and melancholy caft of devotion; and, in the fad picture which he draws of human corruption, he appears not fufficiently to have confidered that, in too many inftances, the vices of men and their confequent mifery proceed rather from the perverseness of the will than from the error of the understanding. Most of us know and feel the force of moral and religious truths; and we should act conformably to their dictates, were not that conviction too frequently overpowered by our appetites and irregular paffions. Art. 70. A Word of Comfort to the Poor in their present Neceffity: preached in the Parish Church of Wanflead, Effex, July 19, 1795. By the Rev. Samuel Glaffe, D. D. F.R. S. &c. Rivingtons. 8vo. 6d. In every calamity, the human mind naturally flies to religion for relief; and it is feldom, if ever, difappointed. As it is, therefore, the duty of the parochial clergy, in times of fcarcity and distress, to adminifter to the people committed to their care every confolation in their power, we are not furprised that fuch a man as Dr. Glaffe, refpectable for his learning and for his piety, fhould addrefs his parishioners on fo interefting a fubject. The fermon before us is plain, fenfible, and calculated to do good: but it is not embellished with any peculiar elegancies of language, and the duties which it inculcates are not enforced by any uncommon ftrength of argument or powers of genius. Indeed they were not to be expected on the occasion. Art. 71. Preached in the Church at Falmouth, Nova-Scotia, 10th of May 1793. Being the Day appointed by Proclamation for a General Faft and Humiliation before Almighty God. By the Rev. Wm. Cochran, Prefident of the King's College, Windfor. Svo. pp. 15. Printed at Halifax. The author of this difcourfe, proceeding on the general doctrine of faft-fermons that God vifits nations for their fins, afcribes to the crimes of the French the miferies which they experienced, and exhorts us to take warning and repent, left we should fall under fimilar vifitations. The text is Jer. v. 9. We wish that all who read his fermon, whether in Nova-Scotia or England, may liften to fuch good advice: but we fear that many of us are more inclined to reprobate French infidelity and immorality than to practise Christian virtue. Art. Art. 72. The Age of Unbelief, a fecond Part to The Man of Sin. Preached in Spring Garden Chapel, Feb. 8, 1795. By William Jones, M. A. F. R. S. 8vo. IS. Rivingtons, &c. Of the first part of Mr. Jones's very orthodox opinions on the above-mentioned fubjects, we gave an account in the M. R. for Those who admired that difcourfe will, without doubt, be no lefs pleafed with this kindred compofition, which is equally rational and edifying. May 1794. Art. 73. The Lofs of the Righteous lamented and improved. Preached Aug. 10, 1794, to a Congregation of Proteltant Diffenters, at Ebenezer Chapel, Leeds, on the Death of the Rev. William Price, their late Minister. By Edward Parfons. 8vo. 6d. Matthews. Though the author of this fermon has not suffered the pillars of his orthodoxy to be fhaken by philofophy, he has ventured to decorate the antient edifice with a few modern ornaments. Old puritanical fentiments he expreffes in a neat and pointed ftyle, not taught in the fchools of his ancestors; and he fometimes embellishes his difcourfe with a poetical quotation, as modern taste often patches an old Gothic church with an elegant altar-piece, executed by fome fashionable artist. CORRESPONDENCE. To the MONTHLY REVIEWERS. < GENTLEMEN, IN your laft Review, p. 247, the mistake you notice in the old French quotation is evidently a typographical error. Inftead of fils and pere, it has been in the original fils and frere; Thomas of Lancaster having been fon of Henry the IVth, and brother to Henry the Vth, ftyled alfo the King of France. The author, though writing in French, feems to have been too good an English courtier to allow Charles VI. or Charles VII. any notice or title in their native domain. The combat, which in that and the fucceeding pages yon describe, did not perhaps take place till after the fucceffion of Richard II. This is probable not only from Edward the IIId's last sickness being mentioned as fome time preceding that combat, but from the concourse of people being compared to that of the coronation. If Richard was on the throne, the coronation would be an appofite and feasonable allufion; which it could scarcely be at the end of Edward's long reign. For instance, if in the prefent day we compare any crowd to a coronation, it will feem far fetched, and many will not be able to appreciate the fimile: but fome of you may remember that, thirty odd years ago, the coronation was a familiar comparison for every numerous or fplendid affemblage of people. " A BORDERER.' GENTLEMEN, IN reviewing Mr. Parfons's Work on Monuments, (Nov. p. 267.) you quote two Latin Lines as "curious and pretty." They are by no means new; I have met with them three times; they are taken from a Latin profopopaian dialogue between Atimetus and Homonxa, the last stanza of which is correctly as follows: Immatura peri: fed tu felicior annos Quodque Quodque mihi eripuit for fimmatura juventa, GENTLEMEN, 'A. FRESTON.' THE editor of Curiofities of Literature, obferving your article refpecing his criticifins on Virgil, (Rev. Nov. p. 355-6,) is defirous of informing you, that they are merely gathered from the various Ana; with as much faithfulness and as little difcernment, as fome verbal commesta. tors have lately fhewn. He acknowledges the remark refpecting Virgil's Simile of the Nightingale; but that objectionable paffage is literally taken from Huet; and he conteffes that he was led away, at a juvenile period of life, by the ftriques of this great scholar, who he now perceives had more eru lition than tafte. As for fome of the observations he deems them to be juft. But was it ever fuppofed that Virgil's reputation was in the least endangered by fuch obfervations, by any one, but the ar onymous author who has contrived to form an apology, by heaping annotations upon annotations?' ++ F. V. will excufe our not printing his polite letter, as we have read fo many different accounts of the point in difpute, that we cannot agree with him in thinking that it is decided. St§ We fhould be glad to oblige J. C. but his request leads to a matter that is really quite out of our province. The Gentleman's Magazine might be a proper repofitory for his quære. IIS Were we to ftate and to answer the arguments of A Friend to the Parr, on a speculative point in politics, we fhould be led into a difcuffion for which we cannot afford the requifite time and space. To W. D.--Mental Improvement is, we hope, in a progreffive flate: Leifure Hours have not yet fallen to our lot. 494 Mr. Williams's letter is unavoidably poftponed. ttt Mr. Prefon's letter arrived too late for infertion in this No. In the last Review, p. 275. 1. 13. from bottom, for dogs read Sops ugyos. P. 278. 1. 6. from bottom, for ruxam read yxasın P. 279. 1. 3. for aynuow read aɣiwsw. P. 319. 1. 8. from bottom, and as an,' &c. dele as.' We understand that thofe readers of the Review, who live in the country, are fometimes mis-informed that the Appendix to each volume is not published at the end of the first month after the commencement of a new volume, with the number for that month, but in the middle of the enfuing month. We therefore think it neceffary to fay that an Appendix is invariably published on the 1ft day of February, with th Review for January, on the 1ft of June, with the No. for May,--and on the aft of October, with the Review for September: fo that, if any of our readers do not receive the Appendix regularly at these times, the fault lies with the bookfeller by whom they are fapplied. ART. I. Aux Assemblées Primaires de France-To the Primary Af femblies of France. 8vo. pp. 187. Hamburgh. July 1, 1795. Imported by Johníon, London. Price 2s. 6d." THIS work is a continuation of the famous General DuMOURIEZ's political Coup d'Oeil*, or view of the future ftate of France. It is divided under different heads. In the firft, he fpeaks of the primary affemblies of France, which he calls the organs of the fovereignty of the French people,' and which, he says, muft decide the fate of France.' He, lays it down as a principle which no one will difpute, that' there can be no legal government without a conftitution to fettle the powers that are to balance each other, and to prevent oppreffion. The conftitution, he obferves, muft be either monarchical, (he ufes the word in an unlimited fenfe,) or republican. Thofe who are to determine the great question, which of the two it ought to be, fhould, before they pronounce definitively, weigh well the true character of the nation and its manners, the extent of its territory, its topographical fituation, its means of fubfiftence, its foreign relations, the nature of its trade, and its external communications. The people (he fays,) had chofen reprefentatives who led them on from crime to crime till they plunged them into the abyss of anarchy. Famine, civil war, and bankruptcy, cannot be averted, nor ceafe, until a general union of minds fhall take place. The revolution has hitherto been productive only of factions and public calami. Vide Appendix to our xviith vol. p. 525. APP, REV. VOL. XVIII. L1 ties; ties; it is time to put an end to it, and to make the victories gaine& by the French arms the means of restoring peace to Europe and happinefs to France. The primary affemblies alone have the right, and they alone are able, to bring about this great change, by repairing the errors, the exceffes, and the crimes of their representatives.' The General fondly imagined that thofe affemblies would have had to make an option between the conftitution of 1791 and that of 1793: but he was mistaken in two respects; first, the Convention did not prefent either to the nation for its ac. ceptance; fecondly, it prefented one effentially differing from both. The fecond divifion of the work treats of the National Convention.' It is now dead: but in July laft, when the General wrote, it was alive, and in the full exercife of fovereign power. The Convention, he tells us, forfeited all right to decide the great question whether France ought to be a limited monarchy or a republic, by having prejudged it in its famous decree for the abolition of royalty and the adoption of a republican form of government. It pledged itself to give to France a conftitution, and performed that engagement by framing the conftitution of 1793, without being fure that the people called for it or would accept it, and without ever having difcuffed, or fuffered to be difcuffed, the queftion whether a monarchy was not better fuited than a republic to the genius and circumftances of the country. When it pledged itself to this meafure, it was not in a state of freedom; it was on the 21st of May, when it lay at the mercy of murderers, that the engagement was extorted by force, dictated by fear, and confequently was in the eye of reafon null and void. The members trembled left they fhould be pronounced to be royalifts, and be butchered as fuch, were they fo much as to propofe that it should be open to difcuffion whether monarchy in any fhape was admifible. Their fears converted them into paffive inftruments, the tools of a faction. Many who thus fhut the door againft such a difcuffion, he contends, were in their hearts friends to royalty under proper limitations: but the majority were under the inAluence of a double fear; they dreaded not only the rage and fury of the Jacobins, but the refentment of the prince who might be placed on the throne, if monarchy fhould be restored; their hands were still reeking with the blood of a murdered king, they feared that the difcuffion fhould lead to confequences perfonal to themselves, and that they fhould be called to account for having condemned him to death; they therefore felt that the extinction of royalty was neceffary to their own fecurity." Such, fays our author, was their real motive for the precipisare establishment of a republic, without having confulted the people |