give, just as I received it, since it may give the reader some idea of the present Greeks, shew their propensity for the marvellous, and the facility with which, from a few given circumstances, they can make out a wonderful story. This building they call Goetria the Incantada, and affirm it to have been the work of magic art. On being asked when, and on what occasion, this extraordinary fact was performed, they answered, "the fact was undoubted; every body knew that their great king, Alexander, conquered Persia; when he was preparing to invade that empire, he solicited the assistance of a king of Thrace, who accordingly united his forces to those of his Macedonían neighbour, attending in person, with his family, at the court of Alexander, where they were royally entertained, and lodged in a sumptuous palace, near his own, communicating with it by means of a magnificent gallery, of which these columns are the remains. The Thracian queen, a lady of transcendant beauty, accompanied her husband on this visit. Alexander, young, and unaccustomed to control his passions, ardent in the pursuits of love as of glory, dazzled with such excess of charms, determined to violate the rights of hospitality and seduce the queen of Thrace. He contrived, by means of this gallery, to pay her frequent visits, though not so privily as to escape the notice of her husband, who, having verified his suspicions, resolved to take a dreadful revenge on the deluder. He had, in his train, a skilful necro. mancer from Pontus, who, discover. ing by his art the instant that Alexander was to pass to the queen's apartment, scattered his spells and charms throughout this gallery; they were of such marvellous power, that whoever should, at a certain hour, attempt to pass, would inevitably be converted into stone. Aristotle, a conjuror, attached to Alexander, and of skill greatly superior to the man of Pontus, discovered his dan◄ ger time enough to prevent it: by his advice and entreaties, Alexan der was prevailed on to forbear for once his intended visit. The impatient queen, tired with expecta tion, sent one of her confidential servants to see if her lover was come ing, and she herself soon followed. At this instant, the king, supposing the magic had worked all its effect, issued forth, attended by his conjuror, to feast his eyes with a sight of the revenge he had taken; when, strange to relate, both companies, those with the king, as well as those with the queen, were instantly changed to stone, and remain to this hour a monument of vengeance on a jealous husband and an unfaithful wife." The architecture of this building is very indifferent in point of taste, and is probably much. posterior to the other specimens described in this work. MISCELLANEOUS MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. the Instability of the Greek and Roman Republics; from Whita. ker's real Origin of Government. HEN rose republics. The first that made its appearance in e world was at Athens. The en genius of Attica, wanting to an experiment upon the univerpolity of man, to substitute a eature of its own reason for the brication of God's wisdom, and violate the primogenial law of iture in favour of a fantastical eory took advantage of the death a self-devoted monarch, and, in pretended fear of never having good a monarch again, most unatefully deprived his family of the own, by venturing upon the bold novation of erecting a republic. bey thus inverted the pyramid of зvernment, made it to stand upon s point, and reared its base in he air. The example, however, as afterwards followed by all the tates of Greece. They all gave ree scope to their fancies, in moelling their governments. They ut them to this form, they carved hem to that. But they still reduced hem nearer and nearer to an infficient simplicity of power. They hen considered them as more or ess perfect in their republican naure. Yet they could find none hat would give them the promised happiness. They were wretched under all. The grand principle of all, in supposing the power of government to be originally in the people, in believing the subjects to be virtually the sovereigns, in affirming the servants to be vitally the masters; propositions surely, however familiar to our ears at present, calculated only for the meridian of St. Luke's Hospital; this precluded all possibility of settlement; changes succeeded to changes, all was distraction, confusion, and misery. Having thrown their little world of society off from that central pin of authority, upon which it had been founded by God himself, they could never find a rest for it again. The divine equipoise had been rashly destroyed by the hand of man, and man felt his folly in his sufferings. The imputed power of the people was like the water of the ocean, now breaking through all its bounds as the balance of the globe was gone, and now sweeping in an irresistible deluge over the land. Yet, with something like the infatuation of the Jews in receiving their false Messiahs, they still welcomed every pretender to the cause of liberty, still hailed every factious man as a friend, and attached themselves to every reformer as a deliverer. These "declared," says Plutarch himself at a particular pe riod of their Sicilian history, "that the end of their coming was to introduce liberty, and depose monarchs; but they did so tyrannize themselves, that the reign of the tyrants seemed a golden age, compared with the rule of these deliverers; which made the Sicilians to esteem those more happy who had expired in slavery, than they who survived to see such a freedom." Nay, their feelings had been so severely wounded by this popular kind of tyranny, that when Timoleon had recovered their capital from its oppressions, he found the market-place rankly overgrown with grass, horses actually feeding upon it, and the groom lying upon the ground to attend them, that he therefore invited the emigrants to come back, and reinhabit their desolated city; that few however came, "so much," adds the historian in a strain remarkably apposite to modern times, "did they dread and abhor the very name of those communities, and municipalities, and tribunals, which bad produced the greatest part of their tyrants." The power which had created the first revolution in Rome, was perpetually called upon to create others. Consuls, dictators, plebeian tribunes, military tribunes, or decemvirs, were successively and interchangeably appointed. The scale of power in the state under all, was continually sinking towards the people, till it touched the very ground at last. It sunk, therefore, loaded more and more with misery to them. They became the dupes of ambitious men, enlisted as partizans in their pursuits, and engaged as champions in their contests; were embarrassed with seditions, scourged with rebellions, and racked with W WHOEVER admits an original plan in the universe, whoever rejects the words fatality and chance, and surveys with an attentive eye the empires of ancient and modern times, will perceive an order of de marcation upon the surface of our globe, and will not fail to recognize the hand that traced the limits and erected the ramparts. He will behold nations mutually contending till they are confined within the geogra phical circle drawn by nature; in that enclosure they enjoy the repose which was denied them when they overleaped the bounds. When in the height of metaphysics, we feel something that resists, that repels us forcibly, that defeats us in spite of our efforts, it is a decisive mark that we go beyond our limits, and strain to surpass our na tural capacity: it is a secret admonition which reminds us of our frailty, and corrects a presumptuous weakness. But, in the material world, when an evident principle enlightens reason at the commencement of its researches, it is a certain token that the mind possesses a fund of resources which will enable it to draw draw infallible conclusions. Let us first be natural philosophers: I have thought I could discern on the globe a decided intention of nature to separate states without too much disjoining them, to delineate geome❤ trically the form of empires, and to domiciliate kingdoms; I have thought I could perceive that the globe was so configured, as that navigation would one day be the tie to bind together the human race. These ideas will no doubt please those who, struck with the harmonious immensity, believe, that the government of the universe presides majestically and necessarily over all other governments. We need only use our eyes, perhaps, to be convinced of these new truths: an attentive survey of geographical charts determines, in some measure, the positive extent of states; for the mountains, the rivers, and the lakes, are the unquestionable boundaries and guardians which kind nature has placed for the preservation and tranquillity of human associations. But if the order of nature have visibly separated empires, it has on another hand decreed, that they shall have a mutual commerce of knowledge; its design in this respect is not concealed. When I hold in my hand a fragment of loadstone, and reflect that this stone, which appears in no way remarkable, informs us constantly of the direction of the north, and renders possible and easy the navigation of the most unknown seas, I have about me a convincing proof that nature in tended a social life for man. All these indications of design seem, therefore, to evince that her views tend simply to unite men, and make them share in common the good things disseminated over the globe. VOL. XXXVII. of Whenever, for the preservation of the whole, a great crisis of nature occasions the disruption of a small portion of the globe, you suddenly perceive seas arise where islands were swallowed up. Never has a gulf, never has a large gap, invincibly separated the different parts the globe; on the contrary, the soft girdle of the waters every where invites man, every where presents to him roads more dangerous than difficult, and which his courage and genius have surmounted. The ce lebrated English navigator, who discovered the inhabited islands in the Pacific Ocean, sailed from the Thames, passed the Antipodes of London, and performed the circuit of the earth. Lastly, since it has latterly been discovered, by a never-erring experience, that winds, which blow constantly during a certain season of the year, waft our ships to India, and that contrary winds, prevailing during another season, convey them back again to our ports it is impossible not to recognize certain admirable guides, calculated to approximate and unite the most remote nations, If man has learned to construct a vessel, a bridge upon the ocean, if this frail machine nevertheless braves the angry elements; it is because the primary intention of nature was that men of all climates should not be strangers to each other: A dark cloud conceals from us the nations which inhabit the northern extremity of America; but a slight convulsion of the globe may suddenly form a sea, to conduct our vessels among these new nations; and, in a similar way, although the interior parts of Africa be nearly as much unknown as the centre of the earth, it requires only a happy occurrence [*I ] to open for us the route. The great views of nature will sooner or later be accomplished. For the same reason that she gives mountains a gentle slope, to allow a free access to them, and facilitate the entrance into the vallies, she has distributed in all directions a profusion of rivers and seas; every thing announces a circulation similar to that in the human body. She therefore wills, that all the people of the earth should be knit by the bonds of union, but without clashing suddenly, and being too readily blended. Thus, by extending and connecting our various branches of knowledge, we shall find that they all tend to the improvement of the human species; and in this view art is nature. On Didactic Poetry; from a critical DIDA IDACTIC or preceptive poetry seems to include a solecism, for the end of poetry is to please, and of didactic precept the object is instruction. It is however a species of poetry which has been cultivated from the earliest stages of society; at first, probably, for the simple purpose of retaining, by means of the regularity of measure, and the charms of harmony, the precepts of agricultural wisdom, and the aphorisms of economical experience. When poetry came to be cultivated for its own sake, it was natural to esteem the didactic, as in that view it certainly is, as a species of inferior merit, compared with those which are more peculiarly the work of imagination; and accordingly in the more splendid era of our own poetry it has been much less cultivated than many others. Afterwards, when poetry was become an art, and the more obvious sources of description and adventure were in some measure exhausted, the didactic was resorted to, as affording that novelty and variety which began to be the great desideratum in works of fancy. This species of writing is likewise favoured by the diffusion of knowledge, by which many subjects become proper for general reading which, in a less informed state of society, would have savoured of pedantry and abstruse speculation for poetry cannot descend to teach the elements of any art or science, or confine itself to that regular arrangement and clear brevity which suit the communication of unknown truths. In fact, the muse would make a very indifferent school mistress. Whoever, therefore, reads a didactic poem ought to come to it with a previous knowledge of his subject; and whoever writes one, ought to suppose such a knowledge in his readers. If he is obliged to explain technical terms, to refer continually to critical notes, and to follow a system step by step with the patient exactness of a teacher, his poem, however laboured, will be a bad poem. His office is rather to throw a lustre on such prominent parts of his system as are most susceptible of poetical ornament, and to kindle the enthusiasm of those feelings which the truths he is conversant with are fitted to inspire. In that beautiful poem, the Essay on Man, the system of the author, if in reality he had any system, is little attended to, but those passages which breathe the |