among the reformers of Europe and in British America. In others, wax-tapers must be lighted at noon, although in the primitive ages they were held in abomination. A convent of nuns, if deprived of their tapers, would cry out that the light of the faith was extinguished, and the world would shortly be at an end. The Church of England holds a middle course between the pompous ceremonies of the Church of Rome and the plainness of the Calvinists. Throughout the East, songs, dances, and torches, formed part of the ceremonies essential in all sacred feasts. No sacerdotal institution existed among the Greeks without songs and dances. The Hebrews borrowed this custom from their neighbours; for David sang and danced { before the Ark. which would only serve to render them irreconcilable. One only God being adored throughout the known world, shall those who acknowledge him as their father never cease to present to him the revolting spectacle of his children detesting, anathematising, persecuting, and massacreing one another by way of argument? It is hard to determine precisely what the Greeks and Romans understood by adoring, or whether they adored Fauns, Sylvans, Dryads, and Naiads, as they adored the twelve superior Gods. It is not likely that Adrian's minion, Antinous, was adored by the Egyptians of later times with the same worship which they paid to Serapis; and it is sufficiently proved that the ancient Egyptians did not adore onions and crocodiles as they did Isis and Osiris. Ambiguity abounds everywhere and confounds everything; we are obliged, at every word, to exclaim, What do you mean? constantly repeat-Define your terms. we must Is it quite true that Simon, called the Magician, was adored among the Romans? It is not more true that he was utterly unknown to them. St. Matthew speaks of a canticle sung by Jesus Christ himself, and by his apostles, after their Passover. This canticle, which is not admitted into the authorised books, is to be found in fragments in the 237th letter of St. Augustine to bishop Chretius; and, whatever disputes there may have been about its authenticity, it is certain that singing was employed in all religious ceremonies. Mahomet found St. Justin, in his Apology, which was this a settled mode of worship among the as little known at Rome as Simon was, Arabs; it is also established in India; tells us that this God had a statue erected but does not appear to be in use among on the Tyber, or rather near the Tyber, the lettered men of China. The ceremo- between the two bridges, with this innies of all places have some resemblancescription--Simoni deo sancto. St. Irenæus and some difference: but God is wor-and Tertullian attest the same thing; but shipped throughout the earth. Woe, to whom do they attest it? To people assuredly, unto them who do not adore him as we do! whether erring in their tenets or in their rites? They sit in the shadow of death; but the greater their misfortune, the more are they to be pitied and supported. who had never seen Rome-to Africans, to Allobroges, to Syrians, and to some of the inhabitants of Sichem. They had certainly not seen this statue, the real inscription on which was Semo sancho deo fidio, and not Simoni sancto deo. They It is indeed a great consolation for us, should at least have consulted Dionysius that the Mahometans, the Indians, the of Halicarnassus, who gives this incripChinese, the Tartars, all adore one only tion in his fourth book. Semo sunco was God; for so far they are our kindred. {an old Sabine word, signifying half God Their fatal ignorance of our sacred mys-and half man; we find in Livy, Bona teries can only inspire us with tender Semoni sanco censuerunt consecranda. compassion for our wandering brethren. This god was one of the most ancient in Far from us be all spirit of persecution Roman worship, having been consecrated by Tarquin the Proud; and was considered as the God of alliances and good faith. It was the custom to sacrifice an ox to him, and to write any treaty made with a neighbouring people upon the skin. He had a temple near that of Quirinus; offerings were sometimes presented to him under the name of Semo the father, and sometimes under that of Sancus fidius; whence Ovid says in his Fasti Quærebam nonas Sanco, Fidove referrem, Such was the Roman divinity, which, for so many ages was taken for Simon the Magician. St. Cyril of Jerusalem had no doubts on the subject; and St. Augustin, in his first book of Heresies, tells us that Simon the Magician himself procured the erection of this statue, together with that of his Helena, by order of the emperor and senate. This strange fable, the falsehood of which might so easily have been discovered, was constantly connected with another fable, which relates that Simon and St. Peter both appeared before Nero, and challenged each other which of them should soonest bring to life the corpse of a near relative of Nero's, and also raise himself highest in the air; that Simon caused himself to be carried up by devils in a fiery chariot; that St. Peter and St. Paul brought him down by their prayers; that he broke his legs, and in consequence died; and that Nero, being enraged, put both St. Peter and St. Paul to death. Abdias, Marcellinus, and Hegisippus, have each related this story, with a little difference in the details. Arnobius, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Sulpicius Severus, Philaster, St. Epiphanius, Isidorus of Damietta, Maximus of Turin, and several other authors, successively gave currency to this error, and it was generally adopted; until, at length, there was found at Rome a statue of Semo sancus deus fidius, and the learned father Mabillon dug up an ancient monument with the inscription Semoni sanco deo fidio. It is nevertheless certain, that there was a Simon, whom the Jews believed to be a magician, as it is certain, that there was an Apollonius of Tyana. It it is also true that this Simon who was born in the little country of Samaria, gathered together some vagabonds, whom he persuaded that he was one sent by God; he baptized, indeed, as well as the Apostles, and raised altar against altar. The Jews of Samaria, always hostile to those of Jerusalem, ventured to oppose this Simon to Jesus Christ, acknowledged by the Apostles and Disciples, all of whom were of the tribe of Benjamin or that of Judah, He baptized like them; but to the baptism of water he added fire, saying, that he had been foretold by John the Baptist in these words -"He that cometh after me is mightier than I; he shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Simon lighted a lambent flame over the baptismal font with naptha, from the Asphaltic lake. His party was very strong: but it is very doubtful whether his disciples adored him; St. Justin is the only one who believes it. Menander, like Simon, said he was sent by God to be the saviour of men. All the false Messiahs, Barcochebas especially, called themselves sent by God; but not even Barcochebas demanded to be adored. Men are not often erected into divinities while they live; unless, indeed, they be Alexanders, or Roman emperors, who expressly order their slaves so to do. But this is not, strictly speaking, adoration; it is an extraordinary homage, an anticipated apotheosis, a flattery as ridiculous as those which are lavished on Octavius by Virgil and Horace. ADULTERY. WE are not indebted for this expression to the Greeks; they called adultery moicheia, from which came the latin machus, which we have not adopted. We owe it neither to the Syriac tongue nor to the Hebrew, a jargon of the Syriac, in which adultery is called niuph. In Latin, adulteratio signified alteration-adulter The women of Lacedæmon, we are ation, one thing put for another—a { counterfeit, as false keys, false bargains, told, knew neither confession nor adul false signatures; thus he, who took posession of another's bed, was called adulter. In a similar way, by antiphrasis, the name of coccyx, a cuckoo, was given to the poor husband into whose nest a stranger intruded. Pliny, the naturalist, says," Coccyx ova subdit in nidis aliensis; ita plerique alienas uxores faciunt matres" "the cuckoo deposits its eggs in the nest of other birds; so the Romans not unfrequently made mothers of the wives of their friends." The comparison is not over just. Coccyr signifying a cuckoo, we have made of it cuckold. What a number of things do we owe to the Romans! But as the sense of all words is subject to change, the term applied to cuckold, which, according to good grammar, should be the gallant, is appropriated to the husband. Some of the learned assert, that it is to the Greeks we owe the It is the greatest wrong, the greatest emblem of the horns, and that they be-injury, to give a poor fellow children stowed the appellation of goat upon a husband, the disposition of whose wife resembled that of a female of the same species. Indeed, they used the epithet son of a goat in the same way as the modern vulgar do an appellation which is tery. It is true that Menelaus had ex{perienced the intractability of Helen; but Lycurgus set all right by making the women common, when the husbands were willing to lend them, and the wives consented. Every one might dispose of his own. In this case a husband had not to apprehend that he should foster in his house the offspring of a stranger; all children belonged to the republic, and not to any particular family, so that no one was injured. Adultery is an evil only in as much as it is a theft; but we do not steal that which is given to us. The Lacedæmonians, therefore, had good reason for saying that adultery was impossible among them. much more literal. It is otherwise in our modern nations, where every law is founded on the principle of meum and tuum. which do not belong to him and lay upon him a burden which he ought not to bear. Races of heroes have thus been utterly bastardised. The wives of the Astolphos and the Jocondas, through a depraved appetite, a momentary weakness, have become pregnant by some deformed dwarf-some little page, devoid alike of heart and mind and both the bodies and souls of the offspring have borne testimony to the fact. In some These vile terms are no longer made use of in good company. Even the word adultery is never pronounced. We do not now say, Madame la Duchesse lives in adultery with Monsieur le Che-countries of Europe, the heirs to the valier-Madame la Marquise has a greatest names are little insignificant apes, criminal intimacy with Monsieur l'Abbé;" who have in their halls the portraits of but we say, "Monsieur l'Abbé is this their pretended fathers, six feet high, week the lover of Madame la Marquise." handsome, well-made, and carrying a When ladies talk of their adulteries to broad-sword which their successors of their female friends, they say, "I confess the present day would scarcely be able to I have some inclination for him." They lift. Important offices are thus held by used formerly to confess that they felt men who have no right to them, and some esteem; but since the time when a whose hearts, heads, and arms, are uncertain citizen's wife accused herself to qual to the burden. her confessor of having esteem for a counsellor, and the confessor enquired as to the number of proofs of esteem afforded, ladies of quality have esteemed no one, and gone but little to confession. In some provinces of Europe, the girls make love, without their afterwards becoming less prudent wives. In France, it is quite the contrary; the girls are shut up in convents, where, hitherto, they have received a most ridiculous education. Their mothers, in order to console them, teach them to look for liberty in marriage. Scarcely have they lived a year with their husbands when they become impatient to ascertain the force of their attractions. A young wife neither sits, nor eats, nor walks, nor goes to the play, but in company with women who have each their regular intrigue. If she has not her lover like the rest, she is to be unpaired; and ashamed of being so, she is afraid to show herself. The Orientals proceed quite in another way. Girls are brought to them and warranted virgins on the words of a Circassian. They marry them, and shut them up as a measure of precaution, as we shut up our maids. No jokes there upon ladies and their husbands! no songs-nothing resembling our quodlibets about horns and cuckoldom! We pity the great ladies of Turkey, Persia, and India; but they are a thousand times happier in their seraglios than our young women in their con vents. {even fears to contract an illicit intimacy with a maid or a widow. In this state of sorrow and perplexity, he addresses the following complaints to the Church, of which he is a member : My wife is criminal; and I suffer the punishment. A female is necessary to the comfort of my life-nay, even to the preservation of my virtue; yet she is refused me by the Church, which forbids me to marry an honest woman. The civil law of the present day, which is, unhappily, founded on the canon law, deprives me of the rights of humanity. The Church compels me to seek either pleasures which she reprobates, or shameful consolations which she condemns; she forces me to be criminal. "If I look round among the nations of the earth, I see no religion except the Roman Catholic, which does not recognise divorce and second marriage as a natural right. What inversion of order, then, has made it a virtue in Catholics to suffer adultery, and a duty to live without wives when their wives have thus shamefully injured them? Why is a cankered tie indissoluble, notwithstanding the great maxim adopted by the Code, { Quicquid ligatur dissolubile est? A secon-paration of person and property is granted me, but not a divorce. The law takes from me my wife, and leaves me the word sacrament! I no longer enjoy matrimony, but still I am married! What contradiction! What slavery! It sometimes happens amongst us, that a dissatisfied husband, not choosing to institute a criminal process against his wife for adultery, which would subject him to the imputation of barbarity, tents himself with obtaining a separation of person and property. And here we must insert an abstract of a memorial, drawn up by a good man who finds himself in this situation. These are his complaints; are they just or not?— A Memorial, written by a Magistrate, about the year 1764. A principal magistrate of a town in France is so unfortunate as to have a wife who was debauched by a priest before her marriage, and has since brought herself to public shame; he has, however, contented himself with a private separation. This man, who is forty years old, healthy, and of a pleasing figure, has need of female society. He is too scrupulous to seek to seduce the wife of another; he "Nor is it less strange that this law of the Church is directly contrary to the words which she believes to have been pronounced by Jesus Christ: Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery.' "I have no wish here to inquire whether the pontiffs of Rome have a right to violate at pleasure the law of him whom they regard as their master: whether when a kingdom wants an heir, it is allowable to repudiate the woman who is incapable of giving one; nor whether a turbulent wife, one attacked by lunacy, or one guilty of murder, should not be divorced as well as an adultress: I confine myself to what concerns my own sad situation. God permits me to marry again; but the bishop of Rome forbids me? "Divorce was customary among Catholics under all the Emperors, as well as in all the disjointed members of the Roman Empire. Almost all those kings of France who are called of the first ruce, repudiated their wives and took fresh ones. At length came one Gregory IX. an enemy to emperors and kings, who, by a decree, made the bonds of marriage indissoluble; and his decretal became the law of Europe. Hence, when a king wished to repudiate an adulterous wife, according to the law of Jesus Christ, he could not do so without seeking some ridiculous pretext. Saint Louis was obliged, in order to effect his unfortunate divorce from Eleanora of Guienne, to allege a relationship which did not exist; and Henry IV., to repudiate Margaret of Valois brought forward a still more unfounded pretence-a want of consent. Thus a lawful divorce was to be obtained by falsehood. Joseph was married; and I wish to be married. If I, an Alsatian, am dependent on a priest who lives at Rome, and has the barbarous power to deprive me of a wife, he may as well make me an eunuch to sing Miserere in his chapel." A plea for Wives. Equity requires that, after giving this memorial in favour of husbands we should also lay before the public the plea on behalf of wives presented to the junta of Portugal, by one Countess D'Arcira. It is in substance as follows: "The Gospel has forbidden adultery to my husband as well as to me; we shall be damned alike; nothing is more certain. Although he has been guilty of fifty infidelities-though he has given my necklace to one of my rivals, and my ear-rings to another, I have not called upon the judges to order his head to be shaved, himself to be shut up with monks, and his property to be given to me: yet I, for having but once imitated him-for having done that with the handsomest young man in Lisbon, which he is allowed to do every day with the homeliest and most stupid creatures of the court and the city, must be placed on a stool to answer the questions of a set of licentiates, every one of whom would be at my feet were he "What! may a sovereign abdicate his Crown, and shall he not without the Pope's permission, abdicate his faithless wife? And is it possible that men, en-alone with me in my closet; must have lightened in other things, have so long submitted to this absurd and abject slavery? the finest hair in the world cut from my head; be confined with nuns who have not common sense; be deprived of my portion and marriage settlement, and see my property given to my fool of a husband, to assist him in seducing other women, and committing fresh adulteries. I ask if the thing is just? if it is not evident that the cuckolds are the lawmakers? "Let our priests and our monks abstain from women, if it must be so; they have my consent. It is detrimental to the progress of population, and a misfortune for them; but they deserve that misfortune which they have contrived for themselves. They are the victims of the Popes, who in them wish to possess slaves "The answer to my complaint is, that -soldiers without family or country, { I am but too fortunate in not being stoned living for the Church; but I, a magistrate, at the city gate by the canons and the who serve the state the whole day long, people, as was the custom with the first have occasion for a woman at night; nation of the earth-the cherished nation and the Church has no right to deprive-the chosen people-the only one which me of a possession allowed me by the was right when all others were wrong. Deity. The Apostles were married; "To these barbarians I reply, that |