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equal danger from their biographers,.. a race of Resurrection-men against whom neither laws nor patent comus afford any protection. No sooner is the lion dead than these hungry flesh-flies swarm about him, verifying a part only of Sampson's riddle,.. they find meat, but they produce no sweetness. First come

the news-waters, then the magazines, with what Sir Richard Phillips calls "a good death for the month." The sharking booksellers, ever on the watch to tempt and delude the curiosity of the lower public, then set their Ghouls at work;.. and lastly comes the over-zealous admirer, like the Roman Catholics, who rob the body of their saint of his teeth and his nails,.. to collect, enshrine, and hold out to public view all that ought to have been laid with him in the grave.

228. Greek Erudition.

Colarbasius, a heretic of right hereti

cal name, who lived in the second century, taught that the fulness of Christian perfection consisted in completely under standing the Greek alphabet*. The sect of the Colarbasians still exists in literature, and from the inordinate applause which is bestowed upon their branch of erudition, we might suppose that the perfection of human learning consisted in an accurate knowledge of the minutia of Greek prosody.

229. Tinder from Wormwood. The Japanese use the woolly part of the leaves of wormwood (artemisia vul garis,) for tinder; it is so prepared as to form a brownish coloured wool, and it easily catches firet.

230. Propagation of Sound. Those optical phenomena which passed

*St. Irenæus, L 1, C. 11, quoted by Bernius, + Thunberg, Vol. 3, P. 71.

in former ages for enchantment, and which have so often been practised as miracles, have been explained by modern science. I have met with a phenomenon in acousties which is not so easily explicable. It is said that the firing at the sieges of Rosas and Gerona in the succession war was heard distinctly at Rieux in Languedoc, a town built where the little river Rise falls into the Ga ronne, forty-five French leagues from the nearest of those fortresses, in a straight line, and with the Pyrences between. "But, (says the editor of the Journal de Hambourg,) though these mountains might be considered as an obstacle, the curious of that country conjecture that the sound of the cannon acquired a new force when it was confined between the openings of the mountains; and that the vallies through which the Rise runs were better adapted than the others to preserve this sound, which was not heard either at Foix or

at Pamiers, although those towns are less distant from Catalonia, and more towards the opening of the Pyrenees.

231. Opinions of the Edinburgh Review concerning War.

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During the Peace of Amiens the world was favoured with a new and pleasant description of war, by one of the Wise Men of the North A species of pecuniary commutation, he told us, had been contrived, by which it's operations were rendered very harmless; they were performed by some hundreds of sailors fighing harmlessly on the barren plains of the ocean, and some thousands of soldiers carrying on a scientific and regular and quiet system of warfare, in countries set apurt for the purpose, and resorted to as the arena where the dis. putes of nations may be determined. The prudent policy had been adopted of purchasing defeat at a distance rather than victory at home: in this manner

we paid our allies for being vanquished ; a few useless millions, and a few still more useless lives were sacrificed, and the result was, that we were amply rewarded by safety, increased resources, and real addition of power*.These opinions were delivered by the Caledonian Oracle during the breathing time which Mr. Addington's experimental truce afforded to Europe. When it is remembered how shortly afterwards that war recom、 menced, to which no human wisdom can foresee a termination, the sagacity of the writer will be sufficiently apparent:

* Edinburgh Review, No. II. Politique de tous les Cabinets de l'Europe, p. 359 and 348. The reader who may entertain a reasonable doubt whether any man can have been at once folish enough and brutal enough to have written seriously in such language, is requested to verify the quotation. And if he wishes to see in what manner an impure mind can find food for its obscene imaginations in any subject, he is referred to pp. 452 and 498 of the same number, first edition.

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