he is supported by Ribadeneira, the learned author of the Flower of the Saints. For our own part, we have no opinion on the subject.

all the astronomers. Hodgson, Whiston, Gale, Maurice, and the famous Halley, demonstrated that there was no eclipse of the sun in this first year: but that on the 24th of November, in the year of the hundred and second olympiad, an eclipse took place which obscured the sun for two minutes, at a quarter past one, at

Seventeen works are attributed to him, six of which we have unfortunately lost; the eleven which remain to us have been translated from the Greek by Duns Scotus, Hugh de St. Victor, Albert Mag-Jerusalem. nus, and several other illustrious scholars. It is true, that since wholesome criticism has been introduced into the world, it has been discovered that all the books attributed to Dionysius were written by an impostor in the year 362 of our era, so that there no longer remains any difficulty on that head.

Of the great Eclipse noticed by Dionysius. A fact related by one of the unknown authors of the life of Dionysius has, above all, caused great dissension among the learned. It is pretended that this first Bishop of Paris being in Egypt, in the town of Diospolis, or No-Ammon, at the age of twenty-five years, before he was a Christian, he was there, with one of his friends, witness of the famous eclipse of the sun which happened at the full moon, at the death of Jesus Christ, and that he cried, in Greek, "Either God suffers, or is afflicted at the sufferings of the criminal."

It has been carried still farther: a Jesuit, named Greslon, pretended that the Chinese preserved in their annals the account of an eclipse which happened near that time, contrary to the order of nature. They desired the mathematicians of Europe to make a calculation of it; it was pleasant enough to desire the astronomists to calculate an eclipse which was not natural. Finally it was discovered, that these Chinese annals do not in any way speak of this eclipse.

It appears from the history of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, the passage from Phlegon, and from the letter of the Jesuit Gresion, that men like to impose upon one another. But this prodigious multitude of lies, far from harming the Christian religion, only serves, on the contrary, to show its divinity, since it is more con firmed every day in spite of them.

DIODORUS OF SICILY, AND
HERODOTUS.

WE will commence with Herodotus, as the most ancient.

These words have been differently related by different authors; but in the time of Eusebius of Cæsarea, it is pretended When Henry Stephens entitled his that two historians-the one named Phle-comic rhapsody "The Apology of Hegon, and the other Thallus-had made rodotus," we know that his design was mention of this miraculous eclipse. Eu-not to justify the tales of this father of sebius of Cæsarea quotes Phlegon, but we have none of his works now existing. He said, (at least it is pretended so), that this eclipse happened in the fourth year of the two hundredth olympiad, which would be the eighteenth year of Tiberius's reign. There are several versions of this anecdote; we distrust them all and much more so, if it were possible to know whether they reckoned by olympiads in the time of Phlegon, which is very doubtful.

This important calculation interested

history; he only sports with us, and shows that the enormities of his own times were worse than those of the Egyptians and Persians. He made use of the liberty which the protestants assumed against those of the catholic, apostolic, and Roman churches. He sharply re{proaches them with their debaucheries, their avarice, their crimes expiated by money, their indulgences publicly sold in the taverns, and the false relics ma'nufactured by their own monks, calling

DIODORUS OF SICILY, AND HERODOTUS.

them idolaters. He ventures to say, that if the Egyptians adored cats and onions, the catholics adore the bones of the dead. He dares to call them in his preliminary discourses, theophages, and even theo keses. We have fourteen editions of this book, for we relish general abuse, just as much as we resent that which we deem special and personal.

Henry Stephens only made use of Herodotus to render us hateful and ridiculous; we have quite a contrary design. We pretend to show that the modern histories of our good authors since Guicciardini are, in general, as wise and true as those of Herodotus and Diodorus are foolish and fabulous.

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4th. Then follows the history of Arion, carried on the back of a dolphin across the sea from the skirts of Calabria to Cape Matapan, an extraordinary voyage of about a hundred leagues.

5th. From tale to tale (and who dislikes tales?) we arrive at the infallible oracle of Delphos, which somehow foretold that Croesus would cook a quarter of lamb and a tortoise in a copper pan, { and that he would be dethroned by a mullet.

6th. Among the inconceivable absurd{ities with which ancient history abounds, is there anything approaching the famine with which the Lydians were tormented for twenty-eight years? This people, 1st. What does the father of history whom Herodotus describes as being mean, by saying in the beginning of his richer in gold than the Peruvians, instead work, "the Persian historians relate that { of buying food from foreigners, found no the Phenicians were the authors of all better expedient than that of amusing the wars. From the Red Sea they en- themselves, every other day, with the tered ours," &c.? It would seem that ladies, without eating for eight-and-twenty the Phenicians having embarked at the successive years. isthmus of Suez, arrived at the straits of 7th. Is there anything more marvelBabel-Mandel; coasted along Ethiopia, lous than the history of Cyrus? His passed the line, doubled the Cape of grandfather, the Mede Astyages, with a Tempests, since called the Cape of Good Greek name, dreamed that his daughter Hope; returned between Africa and { Mandane (another Greek name) inunAmerica; repassed the line, and entered dated all Asia; at another time, that she from the ocean into the Mediterranean produced a vine, of which all Asia eat by the Pillars of Hercules, a voyage of the grapes; and thereupon the good man more than four thousand of our long ma- Astyages ordered one Harpagon, another rine leagues, at a time when navigation Greek, to murder his grandson Cyrus,was in its infancy. for what grandfather would not kill his posterity after dreams of this nature?

2d. The first exploit of the Phenicians was to go towards Argos to carry off the daughter of King Inachus; after which the Greeks, in their turn, carried off Europa, the daughter of the King of Tyre.

8th. Herodotus, no less a good naturalist than an exact historian, does not fail to tell us that near Babylon the earth produced three hundred ears of wheat 3d. Immediately afterwards comes for one. I know a small country which Candaules, King of Lydia, who, meeting yields three for one. I should like to with one of his guards named Gyges, said have been transported to Diabek when to him, "Thou must see my wife quite the Turks were driven from it by Cathenaked; it is absolutely essential." Therine II. It has fine corn also, but requeen, learning that she had been thus turns not three hundred ears for one. exposed, said to the soldier, "You shall either die, or assassinate my husband and reign with me." He chose the latter alternative, and the assassination was accomplished without difficulty.

9th. What has always seemed to me decent and edifying in Herodotus, is the fine religious custom established in Babylon, of which we have already spoken

that of all the married women going

A certain Abbé Bazin, with his simple common sense, doubts another tale of Diodorus. It is of a king of Egypt, Sesostris, who probably existed no more than the island of Panchaica. The fa

to prostitute themselves in the temple of{ Mylitta, for money, to the first stranger who presented himself. We reckon two millions of inhabitants in this city;the devotion must have been ardent. This law is very probable among the ori-ther of Sesostris, who is not named, deentals, who have always shut up their termined, on the day that he was born, women, and who, more than six ages that he would make him the conqueror before Herodotus, instituted enuchs, to of all the earth as soon as he was of age. answer to them for the chastity of their It was a notable project. For this purwives. I must no longer proceed nume- pose, he brought up with him all the rically; we should very soon indeed ar- boys who were born on the same day in rive at a hundred. Egypt; and, to make them conquerors, All that Diodorus of Sicily says, seven he did not suffer them to have their breakcenturies after Herodotus, is of the same { fasts until they had run a hundred and value, in all that regards antiquities and eighty stadia, which is about eight of our physics. The Abbé Terasson said, “I { long leagues. translate the text of Diodorus in all its coarseness." He sometimes read us part of it at the house of de la Faye, and when we laughed, he said, "You are resolved to misconstrue; it was quite the contrary with Dacier."

When Sesostris was of age, he departed with his racers to conquer the world. They were then about seventeen hundred, and probably half were dead, according to the ordinary course of nature and, above all, of the nature of Egypt, which was desolated by a destructive plague at least once in ten years.

There must have been three thousand four hundred boys born in Egypt on the same day as Sesostris; and as nature produces almost as many girls as boys,

The finest part of Diodorus is the charming description of the island of Panchaica-(" Panchaica Tellus," celebrated by Virgil:) "There were groves of odoriferous trees as far as the eye could see; myrrh and frankincense to furnish the whole world, without exhaust-there must have been six thousand pering it; fountains, which formed an in- sons, at least, born on that day. But finity of canals, bordered with flowers; women were confined every day; and besides unknown birds, which sang un- six thousand births a-day produce, at der the eternal shades; a temple of mar- the end of the year, two millions oneble, four thousand feet long, ornamented hundred and ninety thousand children. with columns, colossal statues," &c. If you multiply by thirty-four, accordThis puts one in mind of the duke deing to the rule of Kerseboom, you would la Ferté, who, to flatter the taste of the Abbé Servien, said to him one day, "Ah, if you had seen my son who died at fifteen years of age !-What eyes! what All this appeared monstrous to the freshness of complexion; what an ad- Abbé Bazin, who had seen a little of the mirable stature! the Antinous of Bel-world, and who judged only by what he videre, compared to him, was only like a had seen. Chinese baboon: and as to sweetness of But one Larcher, who was never outmanners, he had the most engaging Iside of the college of Mazarine, arrayed ever met with." The Abbé Servien himself with great animation on the side melted; the Duke of Ferté, warmed by of Sesostris and his runners. He prehis own words, melted also; both began tends, that Herodotus, in speaking of the to weep; after which he acknowledged Greeks, does not reckon by the stadia of that he never had a son. Greece, and that the heroes of Sesostris

have in Egypt more than seventy-four millions of inhabitants in a country which is not so large as Spain or France.

only ran four leagues before breakfast. ¿ He overwhelms poor Abbé Bazin with injurious names, such as no scholar in us or es had ever before employed. He does not hold with the seventeen hundred boys; but endeavours to prove, by the prophets, that the wives, daughters, and nieces, of the king of Babylon, of the satraps, and the magi, resorted, out of pure devotion, to sleep for money in the aisles of the temple of Babylon with all the camel-drivers and muleteers of Asia. He treats all those who defend the honour of the ladies of Babylon as bad Christians, condemned souls, and enemies to the state.

his island, others in Phrygia, and afterwards in Macedonia and Italy; the number of children which he had by his sister Juno and his favourites, are not omitted.

He describes how he afterwards became a god, and the supreme god. It is thus that all the ancient histories have been written. What is more remarkable, they were sacred; if they had not been sacred, they would never have been read.

It is well to observe, that though they were sacred, they were all different; and from province to province, and island to island, each had a different history of the gods, demi-gods, and heroes, from that of their neighbours. But it should also be observed, that the people never fought

He also takes the part of the goat, so much in the good graces of the young female Egyptians. It is said that his great reason was, that he was allied, by the fe-for this mythology. male side, to a relation of the Bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, the author of an eloquent discourse on Universal History; but this is not a peremptory reason. Take care of extraordinary stories of all kinds.

The respectable history of Thucydides, which has several glimmerings of truth, begins at Xerxes; but, before that epoch, how much time was wasted?

DIRECTOR.

Diodorus of Sicily was the greatest Ir is neither of a director of finances, compiler of these tales. This Sicilian a director of hospitals, nor a director of had not a grain of the temper of his the royal buildings, &c. &c., that I precountryman Archimedes, who sought tend to speak, but of a director of conand found so many mathematical truths. science, for that directs all the others: it Diodorus seriously examines the his-is the preceptor of human kind; it knows tory of the Amazons and their queen and teaches all that should be done or Theaestris; the history of the Gorgons, omitted in all possible cases. who fought against the Amazons; that of the Titans, and that of all the gods. He searches into the history of Priapus and Hermaphroditus. No one could give a better account of Hercules: this hero wandered through half the earth, sometimes on foot and alone like a pilgrim, and sometimes like a general at the head of a great army, and all his labours are faithfully discussed; but this is nothing, in comparison with the gods of Crete.

Diodorus justifies Jupiter from the reproach which other grave historians have passed upon him, of having dethroned and mutilated his father. He shows how Jupiter fought the giants, some in

It is clear that it would be very useful, if in all courts there was one conscientious man whom the monarch secretly consulted on most occasions, and who would boldly say, "Non licet." Louis the Just would not then have begun his mischievous and unhappy reign by assassi nating his first minister and imprisoning his mother. How many wars, unjust as fatal, a few good dictators would have spared! How many cruelties they would have prevented!

But often, while intending to consult a lamb, we consult a fox. Tartuffe was the director of Orgon. I should like to know who was the conscientious director of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

The gospel speaks no more of directors; violent quarrels about whether the whole than of confessors. Among the people is greater than a part; whether a body whom our ordinary courtesy calls Pagans, can be in several places at the same time; we do not see that Scipio, Fabricius, whether the whiteness of snow can exist Cato, Titus, Trajan, or the Antonines, had without snow, or the sweetness of sugar directors. It is well to have a scrupulous without sugar; whether there can be friend to remind you of your duty. But thinking without a head, &c. your conscience ought to be the chief of your council.