many of whom give no theological instruction to their children. I have remarked it in the Negroes of the coast of Guinea, of Madagascar, of Cafrerie, and Mosambique, among the Tartars, and the Indians of the Malabar coast; in a word, among men of every quarter of the World. I never saw a single one who, under the extraordinary emotions of surprise or of admiration, did not make, in his own language, the same exclamation which we do, and who did not lift up his hands and his eyes to Heaven.

Of the Marvellous.

The sentiment of admiration is the source of the instinct which men have in every age discovered for the marvellous. We are hunting after it continually, and every where, and we diffuse it principally over the commencement and the close of human life: hence it is that the cradles and the tombs of so great a part of Mankind have been enveloped in fiction. It is the perennial source of our curiosity; it discloses itself from early infancy, and is long the companion of innocence. Whence could children derive the taste for the marvellous? They must have Fairy-tales; and men must have epic poems and operas. It is the marvellous which constitutes one of the grand charms of the antique. statues of Greece and Rome, representing heroes or gods, and which contributes more than is generally imagined to our delight, in the perusal of the ancient History of those Countries. It is one of the natural reasons which may be produced to the President Henault, who expresses his astonishF 2

ment

ment that we should be more enamoured of ancient History than of modern, especially than that of our own country. The truth is, independently of the patriotic sentiments which serve at least as a pretext to the intrigues of the great men of Greece. and Rome, and which were so entirely unknown: to ours, that they frequently embroiled their country in maintaining the interests of a particular house, and sometimes in asserting the honour of precedency, or of sitting on a joint-stool; there is. a marvellous in the religion of the Ancients, which consoles and elevates human nature, whereas that of the Gauls terrifies and debases it. The gods of the Greeks and the Romans were patriots, like their great men. Minerva had given them the olive, Neptune the horse. Those deities protected the city and the people. But those of the ancient Gauls were tyrants, like their Barons; they afforded protection only to the Druids. They must be glutted with human sacrifices. In a word, this religion was so inhuman, that two successive Roman Emperors, according to the testimony of Suetonius and Pliny, commanded it to be abolished. I say nothing of the modern interests of our History; but sure I am that the relations of our politicks will never replace in it, to the heart of Man, those of the Divinity.

I must observe that as admiration is an involuntary movement of the soul toward Deity, and is of consequence sublime, several modern Authors have strained to multiply this kind of beauty in their productions, by an accumulation of surprising incidents; but Nature employs them sparingly in

her's,

her's, because Man is incapable of frequently undergoing concussions so violent. She discloses to us by little and little the light of the Sun, the expansion of flowers, the formation of fruits. She gradually introduces our enjoyments by a long series of harmonies; she treats us as human beings; that is as machines feeble and easily deranged; she veils Deity from our view that we may be able to support his approach.

The Pleasure of Mystery.

This is the reason that mystery possesses so many charms. Pictures placed in the full glare of light, avenues in straight lines, roses fully blown, women in gaudy apparel, are far from being the objects which please us most. But shady valleys, paths winding about through the forests, flowers scarcely half-opened, and timid shepherdesses, excite in us the sweetest and the most lasting emotions. The loveliness and respectability of objects are increased by their mysteriousness. Sometimes it is that of antiquity which renders so many monuments venerable in our eyes; sometimes it is that of distance, which diffuses so many charms over objects in the Horizon; sometimes it is that of names. Hence the Sciences which retain the Greek names, though they frequently denote only the most ordinary things, have a more imposing air of respect than those which have only modern names, though these may in many cases be more ingenious and more useful. Hence, for example, the construction of ships, and the art of navigation, are more lightly prized by our modern literati, than several

other physical sciences of the most frivolous nature, but which are dignified by Greek names. Admiration, accordingly, is not a relation of the understanding, or a perception of our reason, but a sentiment of the soul, which arises in us from a certain undescribable instinct of Deity, at sight of extraordinary objects, and from the very mysteriousness in which they are involved. This is so indubitably certain, that admiration is destroyed by the science which enlightens us. If I exhibit to a savage an eolipile darting out a stream of inflamed spirit of wine, I throw him into an ecstasy of admiration; he feels himself disposed to fall down and worship the machine; he venerates me as the God of Fire, as long as he comprehends it not; but no sooner do I explain to him the nature of the process, than his admiration ceases and he looks upon me as a cheat.*

The Pleasures of Ignorance.

From an effect of these ineffable sentiments, and of those universal instincts of Deity, it is, that ignorance is become the inexhaustible source of de

* For this reason it is that we admire only that which is uncommon. Were there to appear over the horizon of Paris one of those parbelia which are so common at Spitsbergen, the whole inhabitants of the city would be in the streets to gaze at it, and wonder. It is nothing more however than a reflection of the Sun's disk in the clouds; and no one stands still to contemplate the Sun himself, because the Sun is an object too well known to be admired

It is mystery which constitutes one of the charms of Religion. Those who insist upon a geometrical demonstration on this subject, betray a profound ignorance at once of the Laws of Nature, and of the demands af the human heart.

light to Man. We must take care not to confound, as all our Moralists do, ignorance and error. Ignorance is the work of Nature, and in many cases a. blessing to man; whereas error is frequently the fruit of our pretended human Sciences, and is always an evil. Let our political Writers say what they will, while they boast of our wonderful progress in knowledge, and oppose it to the barbarism of past ages, it was not ignorance which then set all Europe on fire, and inundated it with blood, in settling religious disputations. A race of ignorants would have kept themselves quiet. The mischief was done by persons who were under the power of error, who at that time vaunted as much. perhaps of their superior illumination, as we nowa-days do of ours, and into each of whom the European spirit of education had instilled this error of early infancy, Be the First.

How many evils does ignorance conceal from us, which we are doomed one day to encounter in the course of human life, beyond the possibility of escaping the inconstancy of friends, the revolutions of fortune, calumnies, and the hour of death itself so tremendous to most men. The knowledge of ills like these would mar all the comfort of living. How many blessings does ignorance render sublime! the illusions of friendship, and those of love, the perspectives of hope, and the very treasures which Science unfolds. The sciences inspire delight only when we enter upon the study of them, at the period when the mind, in a state of ignorance, plunges into the great career. It is the point of contact between light and darkness