devil. This is not surprising, when we consider the irresistible inclination that most men have for the marvellous, connected with superstitious ideas, suggested by education, and fortified by habit. Under this predicament, the most extravagant and absurd fictions take the shape of the clearest facts. This is generally the case with the people of Tinos: from their earliest infancy they have heard talk of Satan, who they have been given to understand takes almost as great a part in the affairs of this world as God himself; and, in fact, that God makes use of him as the executioner of his wrath.

Hence these prejudices enter into the treatment of diseases; and in some cases a physician would be driven out of the house, should he dare to make his appearance: in his place, a priest is sent for, who attends with a great book, out of which he reads a number of prayers; and, resting the book upon the head of the sick person, conjures the devil to come out of him. These exorcising priests enjoy various degrees of reputation: those who are so fortunate as to be called in just at the crisis or turn of a disease, of course rank higher than others, and are better paid.

As they bury their dead in the principal village churches, it sometimes happens that an argillaceous and dry earth found in the ground retards the putrefaction of the bodies by absorbing their humidity. When this is perceived, upon opening the tombs for a fresh burial, the bodies are taken

up; but, as soon as the heart is taken out and burnt, they are replaced as before, the relatives being then persuaded that nothing can retard the process of decomposition.

A case of this kind, however, never occurs without causing great vexation to the family of the deceased; as the former persuade themselves that he is rejected both by heaven and hell, and hence it is that the earth refuses an asylum to his remains. Marvellous stories are sure to follow a circumstance of this kind. One has seen the deceased in the night; another at noon-day; a third has been awakened by him at midnight; and a fourth has heard his chains rattle. These rumours, little or nothing at first, are at length received as indubitable truth; and the simple people believe that, to expiate his sins, the dead appears to

frighten the living: that he pulls some by the toes whilst in their beds, and runs away with victuals; and is often seen going through thorns, hedges, and bushes, in the shape of a dog, or some other animal. Instead of opposing these errors, the priests encourage them, by ordering the families to repeat a requiem and an ave every day, for the repose of these perturbed spirits. They are also enjoined to be very careful in shutting up all the apartments every night, and put a cross of wax upon each of the doors; besides paying for masses, &c.

Lovers however, who it seems are not so superstitious as the rest, avail themselves of this universal panic to forward their nocturnal meetings. When they appear in the villages, &c. dragging chains after them, every one not in the secret shuns their approach; besides, the houses being closely shut, according to the priests' orders, these fleshy phantoms easily mount the terraces, or slip in at the windows, to meet their partners,-who on these occasions are actuated by a passion very different from fear.

This kind of superstition is not peculiar to Tinos, but is common to all the islands of the Levant; where the people firmly believe in spectres and phantoms, which they distinguish by various denominations.

basins

glimpse of its numerous arguments. It was originally intended to disprove the doctrine of necessity; but the classical learning of the author led him to treat his subject more like a schoolman than a philosopher, and few will be found in the present day to follow him, or even his reviewer, through the dogmas of hylozoic and atomic Atheism, and the hypothesis of a plastic nature. It is singular enough that the learned doctor, who applied his great talents and erudition to disprove the theories of Atheism, and to support the Christian religion, was himself charged with being a Deist, and even an Atheist; a fate which he, however, shares in common with other pious men, who have fairly investigated the grounds of natural religion. Such is the blind rage of bigotry and intolerance, that by merely venturing to state the question as to the being and attributes of the Deity, for the very purpose of affirming them, the unfortunate philosopher incurs the obloquy of adopting the doctrines which he denies. In the eyes of genuine orthodoxy, even argument, however sound and favourable, is an offence; and an enquirer, however devout, is an enemy.

Much commendation is bestowed in the fourth paper upon the Poems of Thomas Randolph, which unquestionably possess great merit, and are fully entitled to the prominent station which the good taste of the reviewer assigns to them. The least exceptionable of his pieces, in point of decorum, (for in this virtue he was sometimes deficient,) and by far the most vigorous and original, is the " Muses' Looking-glass," on which alone he may rest his fame. The extremes of all the passions are contrasted, in a dramatic form, with their opposites, and are touched upon with a degree of force and humour which have not been often surpassed. In the argument of the Epicyre, we are reminded of one of the finest passages in Comus, to which it may probably have afforded some hints, and with which it will bear a comparison.

Nature has been bountiful

To provide pleasures, and shall we be niggards
At plenteous boards? He's a discourteous guest
That will observe a diet at a feast:
When Nature thought the earth alone too little
To find us meat, and therefore stor❜d the air
With winged creatures; not contented yet,
She made the water fruitful, to delight us.-
Did she do this to have us eat with temperance?
Or when she gave so many different odours
Of spices, unguents, and all sorts of flowers,
She cry'd not, "Stop your noses:" would she give us
So sweet a choir of wing'd musicians,

2

To have us deaf? Or when she plac'd us here,
Here in a paradise, where such pleasing prospects,
So many ravishing colours, entice the eye,

Was it to have us wink? When she bestow'd
So powerful faces, such commanding beauties,
On many glorious nymphs, was it to say,
Be chaste and continent? Not to enjoy
All pleasures, and at full, were to make Nature
Guilty of that she ne'er was guilty of,—
A vanity in her works.

Milton must have been acquainted with these lines; and we are rather surprised the coincidence escaped the reviewer. It is enough to say, that the whole composition is supported with the same spirit, and abounds with entertainment and instruction. It deserves to be re-edited, and to be generally known.

The works of Milton, whether in prose or verse, have long since passed the ordeal of criticism, and can receive no accession to their publicity and fame. But his History of Britain, continued to the Norman Conquest, which supplies the subject of the fifth article, being merely a fragment, and treating for the most part of a fabulous era, neither has been nor will be frequently referred to. It is chiefly valuable for the vigour of its style, and the manly and characteristic sentiments which flow from the noble mind of its author on every suitable occasion. It cannot be sufficiently lamented that his genius was not employed on some more important period of history, and, above all, of his own times; which, however, he appears obliquely to decline in a striking passage, where he remarks, "with a just loathing and disdain,"-not altogether inapplicable to more modern circumstances,-"not only how unworthy, how perverse, how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all history, the persons and the actions were, who either by fortune, or some rude election, had attained, as a sore judgment and ignominy upon the land, to have chief sway in managing the commonwealth." Milton was proud, and knew well that he "had laid his just hands on that golden key," which opens the portals of fame; and he was unwilling, by any act of his, to make them more accessible to men and deeds only deserving of contempt and oblivion. The historian of the commonwealth he could not be; and he would never have stooped to be that of Charles the Second.

A very entertaining account ensues of Mr. AMORY's Memoirs, containing the Lives of several Ladies of Great Britain; and we cordially concur in

all

all the admiration which the writer by no means sparingly expresses, both of the author and his very original and curious work. Mr. Amory stood forth as the champion of Unitarianism, at a time when its professors were few and inconsiderable; but his prolific fancy created a host of fair proselytes in this work, and its companion, the Life of John Buncle, upon whom he lavished all gifts and accomplishments, endowing them plentifully with his own principles, and enabling them "to give reasons for the faith which was in them." The main distinction between these volumes and John Buncle is, that the latter fortunate hero successively marries the beautiful disputants with whom he so miraculously meets. He was an Abelard with twenty Heloisas. Replete with able and ingenious argument, with true piety and warm benevolence, and enriched with vivid descriptions and agreeable fictions, these two works may be truly recorded, in the words of the reviewer, who has in every respect done justice to his subject, as "two of the most extraordinary productions of British intellect." The Plays of JOHN MARSTON, to which the seventh article is devoted, met with temporary success on the stage, to sink into speedy and lasting neglect. We think the reviewer is inclined, with all the reservations he makes, to estimate them too highly. His plots are improbable, his characters overstrained, and his sentiments hyperbolical. To nature and true passion he could never attain. These must, "unsought, be won;" and all Marston's efforts, though he showed a vigorous intellect in the attempt, were ansuccessful.

Of all the fanciful and positive theorists who have discussed the origin of the world, Dr. BURNET stands at the head. His Sacred Theory of the Earth; containing an account of the original of the earth, and of all the general changes which it hath already undergone, or is to undergo, till the consummation of all things, is one of the boldest undertakings ever conceived; and the doctor has stretched his imagination "to the crack of doom" to perform it. But the cosmogony or creation of the world has puzzled philosophers of all ages. What a medley of opinions have they not broached upon the creation of the world! Sanconiathon, MaBetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus, MONTHLY MAG. No. 373.

have all attempted it in vain. The latter has these words, Anarchon ara kai atelutaion to pan, which imply that all things have neither beginning nor end. Manetho also, who lived about the time of Nebuchadon-Asser, Asser being a Syriac word usually applied as a sirname to the kings of that country, as Teglat Phael-Åsser, NabonAsser,-he, I say, formed a conjecture equally absurd. But, with the erudite Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson, the want of whose full opinion on this point is an irreparable loss to science-we must beg pardon; we are straying from the question. We gather from another authority, of more modern date than Sanconiathon, that the world was created on the 6th of September, on a Friday, a little after four o'clock in the afternoon. When a system is to be built, the more precise it is rendered the better; and Burnet was quite right in laying the foundations of the earth, and afterwards striking them from under it, with all the "pomp, pride, and circumstance, of glorious" ruin that he could conceive. Nor did he once stoop to qualify his narrations with the words which so often add an air of candour to Daniel Defoe's tales,-" if the story be true." We may stand excused for not treating this well-known Theory with seriousness, as it is purely "a gay creature of the element" of fancy, and wholly destitute of any scientific support; but, as a natural romance, full of sublime imagery and eloquent reasoning, we hold it in the highest respect, and acquiesce in all the observations of the reviewer.

The number concludes with an addition to the series of excellent papers on the works of Lord Bacon, in which we are presented, from his Letters, with copious extracts, illustrative of his fortunes and feelings, from the restless ambition of his youth to the despair and degradation of his old age. It is, indeed, "a sight for pity to peruse," to see so lofty an intellect lie groveling at the feet of power. But we would fain hope, for the honour of human nature, that there is much truth in Bacon's insinuation, that "these things were vitia temporis, and not vitia hominis;" and that his sycophancy and venality, like the grosser freedoms of Shakspeare, must not be weighed without some allowance against the nicer manners and more liberal opiG g

nions