FORCE (PHYSICAL).-FORCE-STRength.

Augustus even while he was dating "de
Ponto."

The perfection of the ridiculous might be found in the compliments which preachers address to kings, when they have the happiness of exhibiting before their majesties. "To the reverend Father Gaillard, preacher to the king.". Ah! most reverend father, dost thou preach only for the king? Art thou like the monkey at the fair, which leaps "only for the king."

FORCE (PHYSICAL).

WHAT IS 'force?' where does it reside? { whence does it come? does it perish? or is it ever the same?

511

Why does a body in motion communicate its force to another body with which it comes in contact?

These are questions which neither geometry, nor mechanics, nor metaphysics can answer. Would you arrive at the first principle of the force of bodies, and of motion, you must ascend to a still superior principle. Why is there "anything?"

FORCE-STRENGTH.

THESE words have been transplanted from simple to figurative speech. They are applied to all the parts of a body that are in motion, in action ;—the force of the heart, which some have made four hundred pounds, and some three ounces; the force of the viscera, the lungs, the voice; the force of the arm.

It has pleased us to denominate 'force' that weight which one body exercises upon another. Here is a ball of two hundred pounds weight on this floor: it The metaphor which has transported presses the floor, you say, with a 'force' these words into morals, has made them of two hundred pounds. And this you express a cardinal virtue. Strength, in call a dead force.' But are not these this sense, is the courage to support adwords 'dead' and 'force' a little contra-versity, and to undertake virtuous and dictory? Might we not as well say 'dead { difficult actions; it is the "animi fortialive'-yes and no at once? tudo."

This ball weighs.' Whence comes this 'weight?' and is this weight a 'force?' If the ball were not impeded, would it go directly to the centre of the earth? Whence has it this incomprehensible property?

It is supported by my floor; and you freely give to my floor the "vis inertia," -" inertia" signifying 'inactivity,' 'impotence.' Now is it not singular that impotence' should be denominated { 'force?'

The strength of the mind is penetration and depth-ingenii vis." Nature gives it as she gives that of the body: moderate labour increases, and excessive labour diminishes it.

The force of an argument consists in a clear exposition of clearly-exhibited proofs, and a just conclusion: with ma{thematical theorems it has nothing to do; because the evidence of a demonstration can be made neither more nor less; only it may be arrived at by a longer or a What is the living force which acts in shorter path-a simpler or more compliyour arm and your leg? What is the cated method. It is in doubtful quessource of it? How can it be supposed{tions that the force of reasoning is truly that this force exists when you are dead? { applicable. Does it go and take up its abode elsewhere, as a man goes to another house when his own is in ruins?

How can it have been said that there is always the same force in nature? There must, then, have been always the same number of men, or of active beings equivalent to men.

The force of eloquence is not merely a train of just and vigorous reasoning, which is not incompatible with dryness; this force requires floridity, striking images, and energetic expressions. Thus it has been said, that the sermons of Bourdaloue have most force, those of Massillon more elegance. Verses may have strength,

and want every other beauty. The strength of a line in our language consists principally in saying something in each hemistich.

Strength in painting is the expression of the muscles, which, by feeling touches, are made to appear under the flesh that covers them. There is too much strength when the muscles are too strongly articulated. The attitudes of the combatants have great strength in the battles of Constantine, drawn by Raphael and Julio Romano; and in those of Cæsar, painted by Le Brun. Inordinate strength is harsh in painting and bombastic in poetry.

Some philosophers have asserted that force is a property inherent in matter; that each invisible particle, or rather monad, is endowed with an active force; but it would be as difficult to demonstrate this assertion as it would be to prove that whiteness is a quality inherent in matter, as the Trevoux Dictionary says in the article INHERENT.

on his accession, to guard their liberties.

This name, which has been given generally to the rights of the people, to immunities, and to sanctuaries or asylums, has been more particularly applied to the quarters of the ambassadors of the court of Rome. It was a piece of ground around their palaces, which was larger or smaller according to the will of the ambassador. The ground was an asylum for criminals, who could not be there pursued. This franchise was restricted under Innocent XI. to the inside of their palaces. Churches and convents had the same privileges in Italy, but not in other states. There are in Paris several places of sanctuary, in which debtors cannot be seized for their debts by common justice, and where mechanics can pursue their trades without being freemen. Mechanics have this privilege in the Faubourg St. Antoine, but it is not an asylum like the Temple.

The word franchise, which usually exThe strength of every animal has arrived presses the liberties of a nation, city, or at the highest when the animal has at-person, is sometimes used to signify litained its full growth. It decreases when berty of speech, of counsel, or of a law the muscles no longer receive the same proceeding; but there is a great differquantity of nourishment: and this quan-ence between speaking with frankness tity ceases to be the same when the ani- and speaking with liberty. In a speech mal spirits no longer communicate to the to a superior, liberty is a studied or too muscles their accustomed motion. It great boldness-frankness outstepping is probable that the animal spirits are of its just bounds. To speak with liberty, fire, inasmuch as that old men want mo- is to speak without fear; to speak with tion and strength in proportion as they frankness, is to conduct yourself openly want warmth. and nobly. To speak with too much liberty, is to become audacious; to speak with too much frankness, is to be too open-hearted.

FRANCHISE,

A WORD which always gives an idea of liberty in whatever sense it is taken; a word derived from the Franks, who were always free it is so ancient, that when the Cid besieged and took Toledo, in the eleventh century, franchies or franchises were given to all the French who went on this expedition, and who established themselves at Toledo. All walled cities had franchises, liberties, and privileges, even in the greatest anarchy of feudal power. In all countries possessing as semblies or states, the sovereign swore,

FRANCIS XAVIER.

Ir would not be amiss to know something true concerning the celebrated Francis Xavero, whom we call Xavier, surnamed the Apostle of the Indies. Many people still imagine that he established Christianity along the whole southern coast of India, in a score of islands, and above all in Japan. But thirty years ago, even a doubt on the subject was hardly to be tolerated in Europe.

The Jesuits have not hesitated to compare him to St. Paul. His travels and miracles had been written in part by Tursellius and Orlandino, by Levena, and by Partoli, all Jesuits, but very little known in France; and the less people were acquainted with the details the greater was his reputation.

When the Jesuit Bouhours composed his history, he (Bouhours) was considered as a man of very enlightened mind, and was living in the best company in Paris; I do not mean the company of Jesus, but that of men of the world the most distinguished for intellect and knowledge. No one wrote in a purer or more unaffected style; it was even proposed in the French Academy that it should trespass against the rules of its institution, by receiving father Bouhours into its body.

this picture, the reverend father La Chaise, confessor to the king, would infallibly have had the sacrilegious scoffer honoured with a lettre-de-cachet.

It cannot be denied that Francis Xavier is comparable to Alexander, inasmuch as they both went to India,-so is Ignatius to Cæsar, both having been in Gaul. But Xavier, the vanquisher of the devil, went far beyond Alexander, the conqueror of Darius. How gratifying it is to see him going, in the capacity of a volunteer converter, from Spain into France, from France to Rome, from Rome to Lisbon, and from Lisbon to Mozambique, after making the tour of Africa. He stays a long time at Mozambique, where he receives from God the gift of prophecy : he then proceeds to Melinda, where he disputes on the Koran with the Mahometans, who doubtless understand his language as well as he understands theirs,

He had another great advantage in the influence of his order, which then, by anand where he even finds caciques, alalmost inconceivable illusion, governed all catholic princes.

Sound criticism was, it is true, beginning to rear its head; but its progress was slow men were, in general, more anxious to write ably than to write what

was true.

Bouhours wrote the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier almost without encountering a single objection. Even his comparison of St Ignatius to Cæsar, and Xavier to Alexander, passed without animadversion; it was tolerated as a flower of rhetoric.

though they are to be found nowhere but in America. The Portuguese vessel arrives at the island of Zocotora, which is unquestionably that of the Amazons: there he converts all the islanders, and builds a church. From thence he reaches Goa, where he finds a pillar, on which St. Thomas had engraven, that one day St. Xavier should come and re-establish the Christian religion, which had flourished of old in India. Xavier has no difficulty whatever in perusing the ancient characters, whether Indian or Hebrew, in which this prophecy is expressed. He forthwith takes up a hand-bell, assembles all the little boys around him, explains to them the creed, and baptises them ;— but his greatest delight was, to marry the Indians to their mistresses.

I have seen in the Jesuit's college, rue St. Jacques, a picture twelve feet long and twelve high, representing Ignatius and Xavier ascending to heaven, each in a magnificent chariot drawn by four milk-white horses; and above, the eternal From Goa he speeds to Cape CoFather, adorned with a fine white beardmorin, to the fishing coast, to the kingdescending to his waist, with Jesus and dom of Travancore. the Virgin beside him; the Holy Ghost His greatest anxiety, on arriving in beneath them, in the form of a dove; any country, is to quit it. He embarks and angels joining their hands, and bend-in the first Portuguese ship he finds, ing down to receive father Ignatius and } whithersoever it is bound, it matters not father Xavier. to Xavier; provided only that he is traHad any one publicly made a jest of velling somewhere, he is content. He is

He must have been perfectly acquainted with all the languages of the East; for he made songs in them of the Paternoster, Ave-Maria, and Credo, for the instruction of the little boys and girls.

received through charity, and returns two or three times to Goa, to Cochin, to Cori, to Negapatam, to Meliapour. A vessel is departing for Malacca, and Xavier accordingly takes his passage for Malacca, in great despair that he has not yet had But the best of all is, that this man, an opportunity of seeing Siam, Pegu, who had occasion for a dragoman, spoke and Tonquin. We find him in the island every tongue at once, like the apostles; of Sumatra, at Borneo, at Macassar, in § and when he spoke Portuguese, in which the Moluccas, and especially at Ternate language Bouhours acknowledges that and Amboyna. The King of Ternate the saint explained himself very ill, the had, in his immense seraglio, a hundred Indians, the Chinese, the Japanese, the women in the capacity of wives, and inhabitants of Ceylon and of Sumatra, seven or eight hundred in that of concu- all understood him perfectly. bines. The first thing Xavier does, is to turn them all out. Please to observe, that the island of Ternate is two leagues across. From thence, finding another Portuguese vessel bound for Ceylon, he returns to Ceylon, where he makes various ex-tory, he made himself understood by cursions to Goa and to Cochin. The twenty persons of different nations. Portuguese were already trading to Japan. A ship sails for that country: Xavier takes care to embark in it, and visits all { the Japan islands.

In short (says the Jesuit Bouhours), the whole length of Xavier's routes, joined together, would reach several times round the globe.

Be it observed, that he set out on his travels in 1542, and died in 1552. If he had time to learn the languages of all the nations he visited, it was no trifling miracle: if he had the gift of tongues, it? was a greater miracle still. But unfortunately, in several of his letters, he says that he is obliged to employ an interpreter; and in others, he acknowledges that he finds extreme difficulty in learning the Japanese language, which he cannot pronounce.

The Jesuit Bouhours, in giving some of his letters, has no doubt that "St. Francis Xavier had the gift of tongues;" but he acknowledges that "he had it not always." "He had it," says he, "on several occasions; for, without having learned the Chinese tongue, he preached to the Chinese every morning at Amanguchi," which is the capital of a province in Japan."

One day in particular, when he was preaching on the immateriality of the soul, the motion of the planets, the eclipses of the sun and moon, the rainbow, sin and grace, paradise and purga

Is it asked how such a man could make so many converts in Japan? The simple answer is, that he did not make any; but other Jesuits, who staid a long time in the country, by favour of the treaties between the kings of Portugal and the emperors of Japan, converted so many people, that a civil war ensued, which is said to have cost the lives of nearly four hundred thousand men. This is the most noted prodigy that the missionaries have worked in Japan.

But those of Francis Xavier are not without their merit.

Among his host of miracles, we find no fewer than eight children raised from the dead.

"Xavier's greatest miracle," says the Jesuit Bouhours, "was not his raising so many of the dead to life, but his not himself dying of fatigue."

But the pleasantest of his miracles is, that having dropped his crucifix into the sea, near the island of Baranura, which I am inclined to think was the island of Barataria, a crab came, four-and-twenty hours after, and brought it him between its claws.

The most brilliant of all, and after which no other deserves to be related, is

that in a storm which lasted three days, he was constantly in two ships, a hundred and fifty leagues apart, and served one of them as a pilot. The truth of this miracle was attested by all the passengers, who could neither deceive nor be deceived.

Yet all this was written seriously and with success in the age of Louis XIV. in the age of the Provincial Letters, of Racine's tragedies, of Bayle's Dictionary, and of so many other, learned works.

FRANKS-FRANCE-FRENCH. ITALY has always preserved its name, notwithstanding the pretended establishment of Æneas; which should have left some traces of the language, characters, and manners of Phrygia, if he ever came with Achates and so many others, into the province of Rome, then almost desert. The Goths, Lombards, Franks, Allemans, or Germans, who have by turns invaded Italy, have at least left it

its name.

It would appear to be a sort of mira- The Tyrians, Africans, Romans, Vancle that a man of sense, like Bouhours,dals, Visigoths, and Saracens have, one should have committed such a mass of after the other, been masters of Spain, extravagance to the press, if we did not yet the name of Spain exists. Germany know to what excesses men can be car-has also always preserved its own name; ried by the corporate spirit in general, it has merely joined that of Allemagne to and the monachal spirit in particularit, which appellation it did not receive We have more than two hundred volumes from any conqueror. entirely in this taste, compiled by monks; but what is most to be lamented is, that the enemies of the monks also compile. They compile more agreeably, and are read. It is most deplorable that, in nineteen twentieths of Europe, there is no longer that profound respect and just veneration for the monks, which is still felt for them in some of the villages of Arragon and Calabria.

The miracles of St. Francis Xavier, the achievements of Don Quixote, the Comic Romance, and the convulsionaries of St. Medard, have an equal claim on our admiration and reverence.

After speaking of Francis Xavier, it would be useless to discuss the history of the other Francises. If you would be instructed thoroughly, consult the conformities of St. Francis of Assisi.

Since the fine history of St. Francis Xavier by the Jesuit Bouhours, we have had the history of St. Francis Régis by the Jesuit D'Aubenton, confessor to Philip V. of Spain: but this is smallbeer after brandy. In the history of the blessed Régis, there is not even a single resuscitation.

The Gauls are almost the only people of the west who have lost their name. This name was originally Walch or Welch; the Romans always substituted a G. for the W, which is barbarous: of "Weich" they made Galli, Gallia. They distinguished the Celtic, the Belgic, and the Aquitanic Gaul, each of which spoke a different jargon.

Who were, and whence came these Franks, who in such a small number and little time possessed themselves of all the Gauls, which in ten years Cæsar could not entirely reduce? I am reading an author who commences by these words: "The Franks from whom we descend..." Ha! my friend, who has told you that you descend in a right line from a Frank? Clodowick, whom we call Clovis, probably had not more than twenty thousand men, badly clothed and armed, when he subjugated about eight or ten millions of Welch or Gauls, held in servitude by three or four Roman legions. We have not a single family in France which can furnish, I do not say the least proof, but the least probability, that it had its origin from a Frank.

When the pirates of the Baltic sea came, to the number of seven or eight