presentiments, omens, dreams, the reference of events fortunate and unfortunate to the same epoch, and the like. Their effects are attested among Nations polished and savage, by writers profane and sacred, and by every man who pays attention to the Laws of Nature. These communications of the soul with an order of things invisible, are rejected by the learned of modern times, because they come not within the province of their systems and of their almanacs; but how many things exist, which are not reducible to the plans of our reason, and which have not been so much as perceived by it!

There are particular laws which demonstrate the immediate action of Providence on the Human Race, and which are opposite to the general Laws of Physics. For example, the principles of reason, of passion, and of sentiment, as well as the organs of speech and of hearing, are the same in men of all countries; nevertheless the language of Nations differs all the world over. How comes it that the art of speech is so various among beings who all have the same wants, and that it should be constantly changing in the transmission from father to son, to such a degree that we modern French no longer understand the language of the Gauls, and that the day is coming when our posterity will be unable to comprehend ours? The ox of Bengal bellows like that of the Ukraine, and the nightingale pours out the same melodious strains to this day in our climates, as those which charmed the ear of the Bard of Mantua by the banks of the Po. It is impossible to maintain, though it has been alleged

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alleged by certain Writers of high reputation, that anguages are characterized by climates; for if they were subjected to influence of this kind, they would never vary in any country in which the climate is invariable. The language of the Romans was at first barbarous, afterwards majestic, and is become at last soft and effeminate. They are not rough to the North, and soft to the South, as J. J. Rosseau pretends, who in treating this point has given far too great extension to physical Laws. The language of the Russias, in the North of Europe, is very soft, being a dialect of the Greek; and the jargon of the southern provinces of France is harsh and coarse. The Laplanders, who inhabit the shores of the Frozen Ocean, speak a language which is very grateful to the ear; and the Hotenttots, who inhabit the very temperate climate of the Cape of Good-Hope, cluck like India cocks. The language of the Indians of Peru is loaded with strong aspirations, and consonants of difficult pronunciation. Any one, without going out of his closet, may distinguish the different characters of the language of each Nation, by the names presented on the geographical charts of the country, and may satisfy himself that their harshness, or softness, has no relation whatever to those of Latitude.

Other observers have asserted that the languages of Nations have been determined and fixed by their great Writers. But the great Writers of the age of Augustus did not secure the Latin language from corruption, previously to the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Those of the age of Louis XIV. already begin to be antiquated among ourselves. If posterity

fixes the character of a language to the age which was productive of great Writers, it is not because, as they allege, it is then at its greatest purity; for you find in them as many of those inversions of phraseology, of those decompositions of words, and of those embarrassed syntaxes, which render all the metaphysical study of Grammar tiresome and barbarous; but it is because the Writings of those great men sparkle with maxims of virtue, and present us with a thousand perspectives of the DEITY. I have no doubt that the sublime sentiments which inspire them illuminate them still in the order and disposition of their Works, seeing they are the sources of all harmony. From this, if I am not mistaken, results the unalterable charm which renders the perusal of them so delicious, at all times, and to the men of all Nations. Hence it is that Plutarch has eclipsed most of the Writers of Greece, though he was of the age neither of Pericles, nor of Alexander; and that the translation of his Works into old French by the good Amyot, will be more generally read by posterity than most of the original Works produced even in the age of Louis XIV. It is the moral goodness of a period which characterizes a language, and which transmits it unaltered to the generation following. This is the reason that the languages, the customs, and even the form of dresses are in Asia transmitted inviolably from generation to generation, because fathers, all over that Continent, make themselves beloved by their children. But these reasons do not explain the diversity of language which sub

sists between one Nation and another. It must ever appear to me altogether supernatural that men who enjoy the same elements, and are subjected to the same wants, should not employ the same words in expressing them. There is but one Sun to illuminate the whole Earth, and he bears a different name in every different land.

I beg leave to suggest a farther effect of a Law to which little attention has been paid; it is this, that there never arises any one man eminently distinguished, in whatever line, but there appears at the same time, either in his own Country, or in some neighbouring Nation, an antagonist possessing talents, and a reputation, in complete opposition; such were Democritus and Heraclitus, Alexander and Diogenes, Descartes and Newton, Corneille and Racine, Bossuet and Fenelon, Voltaire and J. J. Rousseau. I had collected on the subject of the two extraordinary men last mentioned, who were contempora→ ries, and who died the same year, a great number of strictures, which demonstrate that through the whole course of life they presented a striking contrast in respect of talents, of manners, and of fortune: but I have relinquished this parallel, in order to devote my attention to a pursuit which I deemed much more useful.

This balancing of illustrious characters will not appear extmordinary, if we consider that it is a consequence from the general law of contraries which governs the world, and from which all the harmonies of Nature result: it must therefore particularly manifest itself in the Human Race, which is the centre of the whole; and it actually does dis

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cover itself in the wonderful equilibrium, conformably to which the two sexes are born in equal numbers. It does not fix on individuals in particular, for we see families consisting wholly of daugh ters; and others all sons; but it embraces the aggregate of a whole city, and of a Nation, the male and female children of which are always produced very nearly equal in number. Whatever inequality of sex there may exist in the variety of births in families, the equality is constantly restored in the aggregate of a people.

But there is another equilibrium, no less wonderful, which has not I believe become an object of attention. As there are a great many men who perish in war, in sea-voyages, and by painful and dangerous employments, it would thence follow, that, at the long run, the number of women would daily go on in an increasing proportion. On the supposition that there perishes annually one-tenth part more of men than of women, the balancing of the sexes must become more and more unequal. Social ruin must increase from the very regularity of the natural order. This however does not take place; the two sexes are always very nearly equally numerous: their occupations are different, but their destiny is the same. The women, who frequently impel men to engage in hazardous enterprizes to support their Juxury, or who foment animosities and even kindle wars among them to gratify their vanity, are carried off in the security of pleasure and indulgence, by maladies to which men are not subject; but which frequently result from the moral, physical, and political pains which the men undergo in consequence

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