with ten plagues, to be the perfect copy of Moses.

Vossius is, I think, the first who has extended this parallel. The Bishop of Avranches, Huet, has pushed it quite as far; but he adds, in his Evangelical Demonstrations, that not only Moses is Bacchus, but that he is also Osiris and Typhon. He does not halt in this fine path. Moses, according to him, is Esculapius, Amphion, Apollo, Adonis, and even Priapus. It is pleasant enough that

pher, and will explain the thing to you. I do not know why it is said, in Genesis, that Babel signifies confusion; for, as I have already observed, ba answers to father in the eastern languages, and bel signifies God. Babel means the city of God, the holy city. But it is incontestible that Babel meant confusion, possibly because the architects were confounded after having raised their work to eighty-one thousand feet; perhaps, because the languages were then confounded, as from that time the Germans no longer under-Huet founds his proof, that Moses is stood the Chinese; although, according Adonis, in their both keeping sheep:to the learned Bochart, it is clear that the Chinese is originally the same language as the High German.

BACCHUS.

Of all the true or fabulous personages of profane antiquity, Bacchus is to us the most important. I do not mean for the fine invention which is attributed to him by all the world except the Jews, but for the prodigious resemblance of his fabulous history to the true adventures of Moses.

The ancient poets have placed the birth of Bacchus in Egypt; he is exposed on the Nile, and it is from that event that he is named Mises by the first Orpheus, which, in Egyptian, signifies" saved from the waters," according to those who pretend to understand the ancient Egyptian tongue, which is no longer known. He is brought up near a mountain of Arabia, called Nisa, which is believed to be Mount Sinai. It is pretended that a goddess ordered him to go and destroy a barbarous nation, and that he passed through the Red Sea on foot, with a multitude of men, women, and children. Another time, the river Orontes suspended its waters right and left to let him pass, and the Hydaspes did the same. He commanded the sun to stand still; two luminous rays proceeded from his head. He made a fountain of wine spout up by striking the ground with his thyrsis, and engraved his laws on two tables of marble. He wanted only to have afflicted Egypt

Et formosus oves, ad flumina pavit Adonis. He contends that he is Priapus, because Priapus is sometimes painted with an ass, and the Jews were supposed, among the Gentiles, to adore an ass. He gives another proof, not very canonical, which is, that the rod of Moses might be compared to the sceptre of Priapus."Sceptrum tribuitur Priapo, virga Mosi." Neither is this demonstration in the manner of Euclid.

We will not here speak of the more modern Bacchuses, such as he who lived two hundred years before the Trojan war, and whom the Greeks celebrated as a son of Jupiter, shut up in his thigh. We will pause at him who was supposed to be born on the confines of Egypt, and to have performed so many prodigies. Our respect for the sacred Jewish books will not permit us to doubt that the Egyptians, the Arabs, and even the Greeks, have imitated the history of Moses. The difficulty consists solely in not knowing how they could be instructed in this incontrovertible history. With respect to the Egyptians, it is very likely that they never recorded these miracles of Moses, which would have covered them with shame. If they had said a word of it, the historians Josephus and Philo would not have failed to have taken advantage of it. Josephus, in his answer to Appion, made a point of citing all the Egyptian authors who have mentioned Moses, and he finds none which relate one of these miracles. No Jew has ever quoted any

wards adopted and embellished by the Greeks. But how came the stories of the Arabs and Greeks to agree so well with those of the Jews? It is known that the Hebrews never communicated their books to any one, till the time of the Ptolemies; they regarded such communication as a

Egyptian author who has said a word of the ten plagues of Egypt, of the miraculous passage through the Red Sea, &c. &c. It could not be among the Egyptians, therefore, that this scandalous parallel was formed between the divine Moses and the profane Bacchus. It is very clear that, if a single Egyp-sacrilege: and Josephus, to justify their tian author had said a word of the great miracles of Moses, all the synagogue of Alexandria, all the disputatious church of that famous town, would have quoted such word, and have triumphed at it, every one after his manner. Athenagorus, Clement, Origen, who have said so many useless things, would have related this important passage a thousand times, and it would have been the strongest argument of all the fathers. The whole have kept a profound silence; they had, therefore, nothing to say. But how was it possible for any Egyptian to speak of the exploits of a man who caused all the first-born of the families of Egypt to be killed; who turned the Nile to blood, and who drowned in the Red Sea their king and all his army?

All our historians agree that one Clodowick, a Sicambrian, subjugated Gaul with a handful of barbarians. The English are the first to say that the Saxons, the Danes, and the Normans, came by turns to exterminate a part of their nation. If they had not avowed this truth, all Europe would have exclaimed against its concealment. The universe ought to exclaim in the same manner at the amazing prodigies of Moses, of Joshua, of Gideon, Sampson, and of so many leaders and prophets. The universe is silent notwithstanding. Amazing mystery! On one side it is palpable that all is true, since it is found in the holy writings, which are approved by the church; on the other, it is evident that no people have ever mentioned it. Let us worship Providence, and submit ourselves in all things.

The Arabs, who have always loved the marvellous, were probably the first authors of the fables invented of Bacchus, after

obstinacy in concealing the Pentateuch from the rest of the world, says, that God punished all foreigners who dared to speak of the Jewish histories. If we are to believe him, the historian Theopompus, for only designing to mention then in his work, became deranged for thirty days; and the tragic poet Theodectes was struck blind for having introduced the name of the Jews into one of his tragedies. Such are the excuses that Flavius Josephus gives in his answer to Appion, for the history of the Jews being so long unknown.

These books were of such prodigious scarcity, that we only hear of one copy under King Josiah, and this copy had been lost for a long time, and was found in the bottom of a chest, on the report of Shaphan, scribe to the Pontiff Hilkiah, who carried it to the King.

This circumstance happened, according to the second book of Kings, six hundred and twenty-four years before our vulgar era; four hundred years after Homer; and in the most flourishing times of Greece. The Greeks then scarcely knew that there were any Hebrews in the world. The captivity of the Jews at Babylon still more augmented their ignorance of their own books. Esdras must have restored them at the end of seventy years, and it was already more than five hundred years that the fable of Bacchus had been current among the Greeks.

If the Greeks had founded their fables on the Jewish history, they would have chosen facts more interesting to mankind; such as the adventures of Abraham, those of Noah, of Methusalem, of Seth, Enoch, Cain, and Eve; of the fatal serpent and of the tree of knowledge; all

Of what consequence is it that the Arabs and Greeks have said the same things as the Jews? We only read the Old Testament to prepare ourselves for the New; and in neither the one nor the other do we seek anything but lessons of benevolence, moderation, gentleness, and true charity.

which names have ever been unknown to conclude: God has permitted it—a truth them. There was only a slight know-which ought to suffice. ledge of the Jewish people, until a long time after the revolution that Alexander produced in Asia and in Europe; the historian Josephus avows it in formal terms. This is the manner in which he expresses himself in the commencement of his reply to Appion, who (by way of parenthesis) was dead when he answered him; for Appion died under the Emperor Claudius, and Josephus wrote under Vespasian.

"As the country we inhabit is distant from the sea, we do not apply ourselves to commerce, and have no communication with other nations. We content ourselves with cultivating our lands, which are very fertile, and we labour chiefly to bring up our children properly, because nothing appears to us so necessary as to instruct them in the knowledge of our holy laws, and in true piety, which inspires them with the desire of observing them. The above reasons, added to others already mentioned, and this manner of life which is peculiar to us, show why we have had no communication with the Greeks, like the Egyptians and Phoenicians. Is it astonishing that our nation, so distant from the sea, not affect ing to write anything, and living in the way which I have related, has been little known ?"

BACON (ROGER):

Ir is generally thought that Roger Bacon, the famous monk of the thirteenth century, was a very great man, and that he possessed true knowledge, because he was persecuted and condemned to prison by a set of ignoramuses. It is a great prejudice in his favour, I own. But does it not happen every day, that quacks gravely condemn other quacks, and that fools make other fools pay the penalty of folly? This, our world, has for a long time resembled the compact edifices, in which he who believes in the eternal Father anathematizes him who believes in the Holy Ghost; circumstances which are not very rare even in these days. Among the things which render Friar Bacon commendable, we must first reckon his imprisonment, and then the noble boldness with which he declared that all the books of Aristotle were fit only to be burnt, and that at a time when the learned After such an authentic avowal from a respected Aristotle much more than the Jew, the most tenacious of the honour of Jansenists respect St. Augustine. Has his nation that has ever written, it will be Roger Bacon, however, done anything seen that it is impossible for the ancient better than the Poetics, the Rhetoric, Greeks to have taken the fable of Bac- and the Logic of Aristotle? These three chus from the holy books of the He-immortal works clearly prove that Arisbrews; any more than the sacrifice of Iphigenia, that of the son of Idomeneus, { the labours of Hercules, the adventure of Eurydice, and others. The quantity of ancient tales which resemble each other is prodigious. How is it that the Greeks have put into fables what the Hebrews have put into histories? Was it by the gift of invention; was it by a facility of imitation; or in consequence of the accordance of fine minds? To

totle was a very great and fine geniuspenetrating, profound, and methodical; and that he was only a bad natural phi losopher, because it was impossible to penetrate into the depths of physical science without the aid of instruments.

Does Roger Bacon, in his best work, in which he treats of light and vision, express himself much more clearly than Aristotle, when he says, light is created by means of multiplying its luminous

species, which action is called univocal and conformable to the agent? He also mentions another equivocal multiplication, by which light engenders heat, and heat, putrefaction.

you will ask,-that of feudal government, and of the schoolmen. Figure to yourself Samoieds and Ostiacs, who read Aristotle. Such were we at that time.

Roger Bacon knew a little of geometry and optics, which made him pass for a sorcerer at Rome and Paris. He was, however, really acquainted with the matter contained in the Arabian Alhazen; for in those days little was known, except through the Arabs. They were the physicians and astrologers of all the Christian kings. The king's fool was always a native,-his doctor, an Arab or a Jew.

Roger Bacon likewise tells us, that life may be prolonged by means of spermaceti, aloes, and dragons' flesh, and that the philosopher's stone would render us immortal. It is thought that besides these fine secrets, he possessed all those of judicial astrology, without exception; as he affirms very positively in his "Opus Majus," that the head of man is subject to the influences of the Ram, his neck to those of the Bull, and his arms to the power of the Twins. He even demonstrates these fine things from experience, and highly praises a great astrologer at Paris, who says, that he hindered a surgeon from putting a plaister on the leg of an invalid, because the sun was then in Poor creatures that we are! How many the sign of Aquarius, and Aquarius isages have passed away in acquiring a fatal to legs to which plaisters are applied. little reason!

It is an opinion pretty generally received, that Roger was the inventor of gunpowder. It is certain that it was in his time that important discovery was made; for I always remark that the spirit of invention is of all times, and that the doctors, or sages, who govern both mind and body, are generally profoundly ignorant, foolishly prejudiced, or at war with common sense. It is usually among obscure men, that artists are found animated with a superior instinct, who invent admirable things on which the learned afterwards reason.

*

Transport this Bacon to the times in which we live, and he would be, no doubt, a very great man. He was gold, encrusted with the rust of the times in which he lived: this gold would now be quickly purified.

BACON (FRANCIS)

SECTION 1.

THE greatest service, perhaps, rendered to philosophy by Francis Bacon, has been that of suggesting attraction.

He says, on the close of the sixteenth century, in his "Novum Organum Scientiarum :"

"It should be inquired whether there be not a kind of magnetic force, which operates between the earth and heavy bodies; between the moon and the ocean, and between the planets respectively. It must either be, that weighty substances are forced towards the earth, or that they are mutually attracted; and in this last case it is evident, that the nearer falling bodies approach to the earth the more strongly they are attracted. It might be tried, whether a pendulum of the same in{weight would go quicker on the top of a mountain than at the bottom of a mine.

One thing surprises me much, which is, that Friar Bacon knew not the direction of the magnetic needle, which, in his time, began to be understood in Italy; but in lieu thereof, he was acquainted with the secret of the hazel rod, and many such things, of which he treats his Dignity of the Experimental Art. Yet, notwithstanding this pitiable num-If the force of the weight diminishes on ber of absurdities and chimeras, it must the mountain, and increases in the mine, be confessed that Roger Bacon was an it would appear that the earth has a true admirable man for his age. What age? attraction."

About a hundred years afterwards this; attraction, this gravitation, this universal property of matter, this cause which retains the planets in their orbits, which, acts in the sun, and which directs an iron bar towards the centre of the earth, has been discovered, calculated, and demonstrated by the great Newton. But what sagacity in Bacon to have imagined what no one else had ever thought of!

SECTION II.

It is not long since the following use less and frivolous question was agitated in a celebrated company :-" Which was the greatest man, Cæsar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or Cromwell?" Some one replied, without contradiction, that the greatest man was Sir Isaac Newton. This person was right, for if true greatness consists in having received a powerful genius from heaven, and in making use of it to enlighten ourselves and others, such a man as Sir Isaac Newton, who is scarcely found in six centuries, is truly the great man; and politicians and conquerors, in which no age has been deficient, are generally nothing more than illustrious evils. It is to him who pre

This is a very different notion from the subtle matter produced by tubular atoms, which sometimes turn about themselves, although in a plenum, or from the globular matter formed of such particles. These ridiculous opinions were received for some time among the curious. They formed a very bad romance; but not only succeeded, like Cyrus and Phara-vails over minds by the force of truth, and mond, but were embraced as a truth by people who endeavoured to think. If we except Bacon, Galileo, Toricelli, and a very small number of sages, the world was then quite blind on the subject of physics.

not to them who make slaves by violence; it is to him who knew the universe, rather than to those who disfigure it; that we owe respect.

The great Bacon was the son of a keeper of the seals, and for a long time chancellor himself under King James the First. Thus, in the midst of the intrigues of the court, and the duties of his situation, which required a man quite devoted to them, he found time to be a great philosopher, a good historian, and an ele

These blind philosophers quitted Greek chimeras for chimeras of vortices and tubular atoms, and when at last attraction and gravitation are discovered and demonstrated, they declaim about occult qualities. Alas! are not all the primary principles of nature occult qualities to us?gant writer. What is still more astonishThe causes of motion, repulsion, generation; the immutability of the various species of sentiment, memory, and thought -are they not all profoundly concealed? Bacon suspected, and Newton demonstrated, the existence of a principle, until then unknown. Men must abide by it until they become gods. Newton was wise enough in demonstrating the laws of attraction to say, that he was ignorant of the cause of it. He added, that it was perhaps an impulse, perhaps a light substance, prodigiously elastic, spread throughout nature. He apparently endeavours, by these perhapses, to reconcile minds which are scared at the word attraction, and at a property of matter which acts throughout the universe without apparent contact.

{ing, he lived in an age in which the art of good writing was still less known than sound philosophy. He has been, as it is the custom among men, more esteemed since his death than he was during his life. His enemies were in the court of London, his admirers were foreigners. When the Marquis d'Effiat carried the Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry the Great, over to England to become the wife of King Charles I., that minister visited Bacon, who, being ill in bed, received him with the curtains drawn. "You resemble the angels," said d'Effiat to him, "whom we always hear spoken of, and believe to be superior to men, but never have the consolation of seeing them."

It is known that Bacon was accused of