< Having had the felicity yesterday of taking the holy viaticum, I consider it to be my duty to make this last declaration of the senti ments which I have publicly avowed for nine years, and in which I persevere. A christian by the grace of God, and professing the catholic apostolical Roman religion, in which I had the happiness to be born and educated, and in which I am desirous to live and die, I declare that I firmly believe all that the Roman church believes and teaches, the only church founded by Jesus Christ; that I condemn from my heart and soul all that she condemns, and in the same way approve all that she approves; and in consequence 1 retract all that I have written and printed, or that has been printed under my name, that is contrary to the catholic faith and to good morals: disavowing such works, and as far as lies in my power condemning and dissuading the promulgation and the reprinting of them, and the representation of them on the stage. I equally retract and condemn every erroneous proposition which escaped me in these different writings.'

The reader will make his own comments on the bigotry and abjectness of mind which a part of these declarations displays. They savour more of the priest than of the çi-devant philosophe

Among the papers of LA HARPE, was found one which detailed the particulars of a conversation that took place in 1788, at a dinner party of the esprits forts of that day, and of whom LA HARPE was one. The discourse turned on the future triumphs of philosophy; and several of the guests were regretting that they should not live to see a consummation so desirable, and which was sure to happen. Cazette, the author of the Diable Amoureux, a well known illuminé, was of the party; and having listened to all that passed, he at length broke silence, and told them that they should all, to their dire misfortune, witness the changes which they so anxiously desired. It happened that the persons present consisted of those who afterward fell the victims of the revolution; and among others who are enumerated, were Condorcet,Vicq-d'Azyr, Nicolai, Malesberbes, Roucher, and the Duchesse de Grammont. Cazette not only apprized them all that they should die in consequence of the revolution, but particularized the manner of their deaths, predicted his own execution, and foretold the conversion of LA HARPE, the transformation of the churches into temples of Reason, the fall of the king and queen, and the circumstance of the former alone being allowed to have a priest to attend him. This paper is gravely introduced by the biographer, without any suspicion intimated in regard to its authenticity; and our readers will, from this circumstance, form a judgment of the turn and spirit of the new associates of the celebrated confessor of the revived catholicism of France. Some honors ought to be paid to his memory. Whether in due time the old associate of Voltaire and D'Alembert will receive canonization from the degraded Pope, time alone must shew.

Of

Of the works there given to the public, and which consist of his Dramas, Eloges, fugitive pieces, Epistles in verse, &c. none are new except the Apology; and we shall therefore confine our farther remarks to that performance.

In his preface, the author makes this declaration :

I am not in a condition to instruct those who know any thing; my book is addressed to those who like myself have not to this moment been desirous of knowing any thing; and i: has occurred to me that the manner in which I have been instructed might prove instructive to them. A heavenly voice, when I least thought of it, spoke to my heart, and said: Take, and read; it was not the Apologists that were put in my hands; it was the Gospels, the Psalms, the Scriptures. They were not Grotius, Abadie, Houtte ville, Crousaz, and Bergier, who enlightened me, or who were even the instruments of him who did enlighten me. They are absolutely unknown to me; not that I do not cordially believe them to merit the testimonies borne to them, but I have never for a moment felt any desire of need of reading them.'

Chapter I. of these Fragments of an Apology for Religion treats of the dignity of the soul, of final causes, of a state of probation, and of the divine dispensations down to the ara of the Christian revelation. Some fine and striking observations on the nature and high destiny of the soul, and some well turned declamation on the perishable nature of human concerns, impart interest to this head of the work. The remarks on scripture history are in a pious rather than in a critical style, and are better adapted to edify the believer than to reclaim the gainsayer; they are much in the loose manner of the Fathers, and of the Catholic Divines. On the subjects here touched, the author falls very far short of our great writers on the same topics, Addison, Clark,Baxter, Butler, and many others whom it were easy to name. He dwells much on the merit of acquiescing in what is revealed, and represents it as a duty to be contented with incomplete evidence. This is certainly rather a dangerous course, since it throws open the door to imposture; and the fathers seem only to have carried it to its fair extent in the maxim, credo quia impossibile est. Our incomparable Butler lays down the same doctrine, but treats it with great caution; and it is but justice to LA HARPE to add that, at the close of this part of his labours, he qualifies it in the same manner.

It is absurd,' he says, to suppose that God would tell us; bea lieve a revelation which your reason cannot comprehend, and the proofs of which it does not admit. He is not capable of speaking thus; it is our pride only that he beats down, and never our reason. Supreme in. telligence can take no delight in tyrannizing over that intelligence which emanates from itself. A fact important to all should be incontestible to the reason of all. Every man of good sense and good faith has a right to say to God: I am ready to believe all that you shall

be

be pleased to reveal to-me; and I am fully sensible that there may be, and that there ought to be, in this revelation, things above my actual compre hension, which I shall believe because your word cannot err. But I ought to be sure that the word proposed to my belief is in fact yours; and bere at least my reason ought to be the judge of the motives of credibility, without which I should no longer be an intelligent and free agent. It will be here seen whether I leave human reason in the possession of all its rights; it is reason that finds, in the fact of a revelation, proofs of a nature not to be disregarded without incurring the charge of the wildest Pyrrhonism, which rejects all certainty in regard to facts and the nature of human actions.'

The province of reason is here very properly defined : but, if there be sufficient evidence to satisfy reason that the scriptures contain a revelation from God, where is the necessity of that supernatural interposition to which the writer ascribes his conversion?

The facts in favour of revelation also are here in part very well argued. The apostles and first teachers of religion, he properly assumes, if not divinely commissioned, must have been either fanatics or wilful impostors; and he ably shews the absurdity of each hypothesis :-but when he comes to treat of the objections arising from the constancy in the cause of their religion shewn by Jews and heretics, his page grows most disgusting; and it is impossible not to suspect him of disingenuousness, or to refrain from regarding him as a victim of the most senseless fanaticism. He has the assurance to relate as authentic the tale of the massacre of St. Maurice and the Christian Legion; and he gravely states at this day that it was not the council of Constance which consigned to the flames John Huss and Jerome of Prague, but the Emperor Sigismund, when he could not but know that it was with extreme difficulty that the holy fathers prevailed on the Emperor to commit that atrocity in violation of his pledged word. It is,' says this zealous new convert to a religion of charity, for those versed in public and in the civil laws to determine, whether the sentence was or was not a just one intimating but too clearly that he deemed it to have been a proper and fit decision in these circumstances. This meek disciple, while he vindicates intolerance in Christian princes, would not have life generally taken away, and would not allow them to inflict any penalty beyond banishment. He reproaches the Arians of the antient church with their persecuting spirit: but surely, surely, in abominations of that kind, no church has equalled the Western, to which he professes such deference and submission. His account of the rise and progress of Protestantism discovers the rankest bigotry. Nothing can be so blind as his devotion to

the

the papal hierarchy in all its tenets, doctrines, and usages. It is less a Christian that we find in this old associate of Voltaire and D'Alembert, than a complete bigot of the Romish communion; and how far such an one is a Christian, let all true followers of the meek and lowly Jesus declare.-The miracles of the fathers are here placed on a level with the miracles of the gospel, and incredulity in regard to the one and the other is equally branded.

It is in the mysteries,' observes this writer, that we find the stumbling-block which lies in the way of unbelievers. Original sin, a world condemned for the sin of one man, the incarnation, a God who descends to be made man, the passion, a God who dies on the cross, the eucharist, a God who becomes our food,-in these things behold the obstacle to the human mind, and that which revolts reason, because nothing is more natural to man than to take pride for

reason.'

Those of our readers who have a taste for disquisitions on these high matters may consult the work itself for farther gratification. We confess that we feel no inclination to follow the author any longer.-The curiosity which his conversion some years since attracted, and the fame of the pious and edifying episodes which varied and enlivened the lectures of the Lyceum, and which were reported so deeply to affect the most fashionable audiences of Paris, induced us to look with some eagerness into this summary of the Lecturer's sacred labours. The conversion of a sceptic of the eminence and standing of this author is also no common occurrence, and we felt anxious to see how he acted in his new character. We had conceived that the spirit of inquiry, the dispassionate tone, and the modest style which philosophy affects, would have continued to distinguish the Christian Neophyte. Never were expectations, however, more completely disappointed. The meek disciple and the humble Christian appear not in these pages: which on the contrary present to our astonished view the intolerant zealot and the anathematizing devotee. On all the difficult heads of the Christian credenda, and on the most questionable tenets of the Romish faith, no professor or bishop ever decided more peremptorily and dogmatically than this proselyte from modern philosophism. Never did his old fraternity experience more contemptuous and insulting treatment than from their quondam associate; or were more unmercifully bespattered by a disciple of Ignatius, a follower of Jansenius, or a Doctor of the Sorbotine. It would seem as if their old companion thought that they were to be reviled and scolded into conversion, and as if he deemed reproaches and contumelies the most effectual means of bringing men over to the

true

true religion. If indeed such are the methods judged most effectual to propagate the faith, then was the author before us intitled to rank high among its apostles.-Taking a dispassionate review of these effusions, we are warranted in declaring that of dogmatism they display much,-of information and argument, little,-and of the spirit of genuine religion, nothing.

ART. II. Memoires Historiques, Politiques, et Militaires, &c.; i. . Historical, Political, and Military Memoirs of the Comte DE HORDT, a Native of Sweden, and a Lieutenant-General in the Prussian Army; digested by M. Borrelly, Member of various Academies. 2 Vols. 8vo. Paris. 1805. Imported by De

Conchy.

the reader who has a tolerable acquaintance with the T history of modern Europe, and who is pleased with relations which elucidate the transactions of the last century, civil and military, if composed in an agreeable and interesting manner, the present volumes will afford considerable gratification. The life which they describe was in itself eventful, and was connected with proceedings of the highest importance. It brings under our view the policy and distractions of Sweden, the successes of Marshall Saxe in the latter years of the war of Maria Theresa, the events of the seven years' war, the politics of the Court of Petersburgh, and the administra tion of the great Frederic from the peace of Hubertsburgh to that of Teschen.

The tyrannical government and brutal manners of Charles XI. of Sweden, as well as the little promise displayed during the youth of his son and successor, are familiar to those who are conversant with Northern history; and of the story of Charles XII. who can be ignorant? It has been told in a style of matchless cloquence. We are nevertheless tempted to abstract a few anecdotes of him which are related in these pages. It is well known that his indolence and indifference in his tender years had very generally excited opinions which were highly disadvantageous to him. His grandmother Edwige-Leonora of Holstein was regent during his minority; and this ambitious Princess exerted every effort to hold him at a distance from business, leaving him no resource but that of reviewing his troops or sharing in their exercises. One day, on his return from manoeuvring several regiments, the Counsellor of State, Piper, observed that he was plunged in a profound reverie. Will your Majesty, said he, permit me to ask what it is that renders you so serious, and of which you are think

II

ing?