ship, on the point of perishing in a storm. The first effect of calamity, says a celebrated Writer, is to strengthen the soul, and the second is to melt it down. It is because the first emotion in Man, under the pressure of calamity, is to rise up toward the DEITY; and the second to fall back into physical wants. This last effect is that of reflection; but the moral and sublime sentiment, almost always, takes possession of the heart at sight of a magnificent destruction.

Ruins of Nature.

When the predictions of the approaching dissolution of the World spread over Europe, some ages ago, a very great number of persons divested themselves of their property; and there is no reason to doubt that the very same thing would happen at this day, should similar opinions be propagated with effect. But such sudden and total ruins are not to be apprehended in the infinitely sage plans of Nature: under them nothing is destroyed but what is by them repaired.

The apparent ruins of the Globe, such as the rocks which roughen's it's surface in so many places have their utility. Rocks have the appearance of ruins in our eyes only because they are neither square nor polished, like the stones of our monuments; but their anfractuosities are necessary to the vegetables and animals which are destined to find in them nourishment and shelter. It is only for beings vegitative and sensative that Nature has created the fossil kingdom; and as soon as man raises useless masses out of it to these

objects

objects on the surface of the Earth, she hastens to apply her chisel to them, in order to employ them in the general harmony.

If we attend to the origin and the end of her Works, those of the most renowned Nations will

appear perfectly frivolous. It was not necessary that mighty Potentates should rear such enormous masses of stone, in order one day to inspire me with respect from their antiquity. A little flinty pebble in one of our brooks is more ancient than the pyramids of Egypt. A multitude of cities have been destroyed since it was created. If I feel myself disposed to blend some moral sentiment with the monuments of Nature, I can say to myself, on seeing a rock: "It was on this place, per'haps that the good Fenelon reposed, while medi"tating the plan of his divine Telemachus; per"haps the day will come when there shall be en

66

graved on it, that he had produced a revolution "in Europe, by instructing Kings that their glory "consisted in rendering Mankind happy: and that "the happiness of Mankind depends on the labours

of agriculture: posterity will gaze with delight "on the very stone on which my eyes are at this "moment fixed." It is thus that I embrace at once the past and the future, at sight of an insensible rock, and which, in consecrating it to virtue, by a simple inscription, I render infinitely more venerable than by decorating it with the five orders of Architecture.

of

Of the Pleasure of Solitude.

Once more, it is melancholy which renders solitude so attractive. Solitude flatters our animal instinct by inviting us to a retreat so much more tranquil as the agitations of our life have been more restless; and it extends our divine instinct, by opening to us perspectives in which natural and moral beauties present themselves with all the attraction of sentiment. From the effect of these contrasts, and of this double harmony, it comes to pass, that there is no solitude more soothing than that which is adjoining to a great city; and no popular festivity more agreeable than that which is enjoyed in the bosom of solitude.

OF THE SENTIMENT OF LOVE.

It's principal sentiment of No Nation

Were love nothing superior to a physical sensation, I would wish for nothing more than to leave two lovers to reason and to act, conformably to the physical laws of the motion of the blood, of the filtration of the chyle, and of the other humours of the body, were it my object to give the grossest libertine a disgust for it. act itself is accompanied with the shame, in the men of all countries. permits public prostitution; and though enlightened Navigators may have advanced that the inhabitants of Otaheité conformed to this infamous practice, observers more attentive have since adduced proof that, as to the island in question it was chargeable only on young women in the lowest rank of Society, but that the other classes there preserved the sense of modesty common to all Mankind.

I am

I am incapable of discovering in Nature any direct cause of shame. If it be alleged that Man is ashamed of the venereal act because it renders him similar to the animal, the reason will be found insufficient; for sleep, drinking, and eating, bring him still more frequently to the similitude of the animal, and yet no shame attaches to these. There is in truth a cause of shame in the physical act: but whence proceeds that which occasions the moral sentiment of it? Not only is the act carefully kept out of sight, but even the recollection of it. Woman considers it as a proof of her weakness: she opposes long resistance to the solicitations of Man. How comes it that Nature has planted this obstacle in her heart, which in many cases actually triumphs over the most powerful of propensities, and the most headstrong of pas-. sions?

Independantly of the particular causes of shame, which are unknown to me, I think I discern one in the two powers of which Man is constituted. The sense of love being, if I may so express myself, the centre toward which all the physical sensations converge, as those of perfumes, of music, of agreeable colours and forms, of the touch, of delicate temperatures and savours; there results from these a very powerful opposition to that other intellectual power from which are derived the sentiments of divinity and immortality. Their contrast is so much the more collisive, that the act of the first is in itself animal and blind, and that the moral sentiment which usually accompanies love, is more expansive and more sublime. The lover accordingly, in order to render his mistress propitious, never fails

to

to make this take the lead, and to employ every ef fort to amalgamate it with the other sensation. Thus shame, arises in my opinion, from the combat of these two powers; and this is the reason that children naturally have it not, because the sense of love is not yet unfolded in them; that young persons have a great deal of it, because these two powers are acting in them with all their energy; and that most old people have none at all, because they are past the sense of love from a decay of Nature in them, or have lost it's moral sentiment from the corruption of society; or which is a common case, from the effect of both together, by the concurrence of these two causes.

As Nature has assigned to the province of this passion, which is designed to be the means of reperpetuating human life, all the animal sensations, she has likewise united in it all the sentiments of the soul; so that love presents to two lovers not only the sentiments which blend with our wants, and with the instinct of our misery, such as those of protection, of assistance, of confidence, of support, of repose, but all the sublime instincts besides which elevate Man above humanity. In this sense it is that Plato defined love to be, an interposition of the Gods in behalf of young people.*

Whoever

*It was by means of the sublime influence of this passion that the Thebaus formed a battalion of heroes, called the sacred band; they all fell toge ther in the battle of Cheronea. They were found extended on the ground, all in the same straight line, transfixed with ghastly wounds before, and with their faces turned toward the enemy. This spectacle drew tears from the eyes of Philip himself, their conqueror. Lycurgus had likewise employed the

power