Cæsar. He was besieging Alexia, in the Auxois, The besieged, being resolved to defend themselves to the last extremity, and wanting provisions, a great council was assembled, in which one of the chiefs, named Critognatus, proposed that the children should be eaten one after another, to sustain the strength of the combatants. His proposal was carried by a majority of voices. Nor is this all: Critognatus, in his harangue, tells them that their ancestors had had recourse to the same kind of sustenance, in the war with the Cimbri and Teutones.

ก

We will conclude with the testimony of Montagne. Speaking of what was told him by the..companions of Villegagnon, returned from Brazil, and of what he had seen in France, he certifies that the Brazilians ate their enemies killed in war; but mark what follows-" Is it more barbarous to eat a man when dead than to have him roasted by a slow fire, or torn to pieces by dogs and swine, as is yet fresh in our memories, and that not between ancient enemies, but among neighbours and fellow-citizens, and, which is worse, on pretence of piety and religion?" What a question, for a philosopher like Montagne! Then, if Anacreon and Tibullus had been Iroquois, they would have eaten men! Alas! alas!

SECTION III. 1

Well; two Englishmen have sailed round the world. They have discovered that New Holland is an island larger than Europe, and that men still eat one another there, as in New Zealand. Whence come this race? supposing that they exist. Are they descended from the ancient Egyptians, from the ancient people of Ethiopia, from the Africans, from the Indians?-or from the vultures, or the wolves? What a contrast, between Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus and the cannibals of New Zealand! Yet they have the same organs, they are alike human beings. We have already treated

Bell. Gall. lib. vii.

on this property of the human race; it may not be amiss to add another paragraph.

The following are St. Jerome's own words in one of his letters Quid loquar de cæteris nationibus, quùm ipse adolescentulus in Gallià viderim Scotos, gentem Britannnicam, humanis vesci carnibus, et quùm per silvas porcorum greges pecudumque reperiant, tamen pastorum nates et fæminarum papillas solere abscindere et has solas ciborum delicias arbitrari?What shall I say of other nations? when I myself, when young, have seen Scotchmen in Gaul, who, though they might have fed on swine and other animals in the forests, chose rather to cut off the posteriors of the youths and the breasts of the young women, considered them as the most delicious food."

and

Pelloutier, who sought for everything that might do honour to the Celts, took the pains to contradict Je rome, and to maintain that his credulity had been imposed on. But Jerome speaks very gravely, and of what he saw. We may, with reverence, dispute with a father of the church about what he has heard; but to doubt of what he has seen, is going very far. After all, the safest way is to doubt of everything, even of what we have seen ourselves.

One word more on cannibalism. In a book which has had considerable success among the well-disposed, we find the following, or words to the same effect→→→

"In Cromwell's time, a woman who kept a tallowchandler's shop in Dublin, sold excellent candles, made of the fat of Englishmen. After some time, one of her customers complained that the candles were not so good. Sir,' said the woman, it is because we are short of Englishmen.'"

!

I ask which were the most guilty-those who assassinated the English, or the poor woman who made

*It is reasonable to presume that the Sawney Bean of a later day was a lineal descendant from the aboriginal tribe, so choice a feeding portion of which was seen by St. Jerome. The aversion to pork is not quite eradicated in Scotland at this day; but a taste for the other fare, it is to be presumed, no longer exists; at least, nothing is mentioned of these dishes in the Noctes Ambrosiana.-T.

candles of their fat? And further, I ask, which was the greatest crime-to have Englishmen cooked for dinner, or to use their tallow to give light at supper? It appears to me that the great evil is, the being killed; it matters little to us whether, after death, we are roasted on the spit, or are made into candles. Indeed, no well-disposed man can be unwilling to be useful when he is dead.

CASTING (IN METAL).

THERE is not an ancient fable, not an old absurdity, which some simpleton will not revive, and that in a magisterial tone, if it be but authorised by some classical or theological writer.

Lycophron (if I remember right) relates that a horde of robbers, who had been justly condemned in Ethiopia, by king Actisanes, to lose their ears and noses, fled to the cataracts of the Nile, and from thence penetrated into the Sandy Desart, where they at length built the temple of Jupiter Ammon.

Lycophron, and after him Theopompus, tells us that these banditti, reduced to extreme want, having neither shoes, nor clothes, nor utensils, nor bread, bethought themselves of raising a statue of gold to an Egyptian god. This statue was ordered one evening, and made in the course of the night. A member of the university, much attached to Lycophron and the Ethiopian robbers, asserts that nothing was more common, in the venerable ages of antiquity, than to cast a statue of gold in one night, and afterwards throw it into a fire, to reduce it to an impalpable powder, in order to be swallowed by a whole people.

But where did these poor devils, without breeches, find so much gold? "What! sir," says the man of learning," do you forget that they had stolen enough to buy all Africa, and that their daughters' ear-rings alone were worth nine millions five hundred thousand livres of our currency?"

Be it so. But for casting a statue, a little prepara

tion is necessary. M. Le Moine employed nearly two years in casting that of Louis XV.

"Oh! but this Jupiter Ammon was at most but three feet high. Go to any pewterer; will he not make you half-a-dozen plates in a day?"

Sir, a statue of Jupiter is harder to make than pewter-plates; and I even doubt whether your thieves had wherewith to make plates so quickly, clever as they might be at pilfering. It is not very likely that they had the necessary apparatus; they had more need to provide themselves with meal. I respect Lycophron much; but this profound Greek, and his yet more profound commentators, know so little of the artsthey are so learned in all that is useless, and so ignorant in all that concerns the necessaries and conveniences of life, professions, trades, and daily occupations-that we will take this opportunity of informing them how a metal figure is cast. This is an operation which they will find neither in Lycophron, nor in Manetho, nor even in St. Thomas's Dream.*

I omit many other preparations which the Encyclopedists, especially M. Diderot, have explained much better than I could do, in the work which must immortalize their glory as well as all the arts. But to form a clear idea of the process of this art, the artist must be seen at work. No one can ever learn in a book to weave stockings, nor to polish diamonds, nor to work tapestry. Arts and trades are learned only by example and practice.

CATO.

ON SUICIDE, AND THE ABBE DE ST. CYRAN'S BOOK LEGITIMATING SUICIDE.

THE ingenious La Motte says of Cato, in one of his philosophical rather than poetical odes

* Here follows, in the original, an account of the manner of casting statues in France, in Voltaire's time, which, for obvious reasons, is omitted. Enough is retained to exhibit the folly and absurdity of an obstinate determination to adore all that was done, and believe all that was said, by the ancients.-T.

Caton, d'une âme plus égale,
Sous l'heureux vainqueur de Pharsale,
Eût souffert que Rome pliât;
Mais, incapable de se rendre,
Il n'eut pas la force d'attendre
Un pardon qui l'humiliât.

Stern Cato, with more equal soul,
Had bowed to Cæsar's wide control-
With Rome had to the conqueror bowed-
But that his spirit, rough and proud,
Had not the courage to await

A pardoned foe's too humbling fate.

It was, I believe, because Cato's soul was always equal, and retained to the last its love for his country and her laws, that he chose rather to perish with her than to crouch to the tyrant. He died as he had

lived.

Incapable of surrendering! And to whom? To the enemy of Rome-to the man who had forcibly robbed the public treasury, in order to make war upon his fellow-citizens and enslave them by means of their own money.

A pardoned foe! It seems as if La Motte-Houdart were speaking of some revolted subject, who might have obtained his majesty's pardon, by letters in chancery.

It seems rather absurd to say that Cato slew himself through weakness. None but a strong mind can thus surmount the most powerful instinct of nature. This strength is sometimes that of frenzy; but a frantic man is not weak.

Suicide is forbidden amongst us by the canon law. But the decretals, which form the jurisprudence of a part of Europe, were unknown to Cato, to Brutus, to Cassius, to the sublime Arria, to the emperor Otho, to Mark Antony, and the rest of the heroes of true Rome, who preferred a voluntary death to a life which they believed to be ignominious.

We, too, kill ourselves; but it is when we have lost our money, or in the very rare excess of a foolish passion for an unworthy object. I have known women kill themselves for the most stupid meu imaginable. And sometimes we kill ourselves when we are in bad health, which action is a real weakness.