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must be principally regulated by what they have said, not by the language in which they have expressed their thoughts; just as we esteem a man for the sterling worth of his character, and not for the beauty of his dress. The ancients certainly have written on the most important subjects, and treated them in the most masterly manner. By no means there fore would I discontinue the study of the Greek and the Roman Classics; but, instead of directing the attention, as is done at present, almost exclusively to the manner, I would confine it chiefly to the matter; in short, they should be studied in our native tongue. There should be classical masters in schools as well as at present, but they should be employed in teaching their pupils their own language thoroughly, in instilling into them the knowledge of things, the knowledge of men and manners, instead of the knowledge of antiquated languages. They should instruct them to examine the reasonings, to comprehend the sense, to trace the connection and the plan, to treasure up the useful observations, of the ancient authors; whereas, in the present system, they are obliged to make these secondary considerations, or perhaps to overlook them entirely, while they are loading their scholars with the unprofit able burden of the dead languages. For the fact is, that the generality of those who study Latin and Greek labour for seven or eight years, perhaps longer, in acquiring a stock of expressions, whose signification infallibly escapes their memory after they have been for a few years engaged in the active duties of life. What can be more preposterous? If the plan that I wish to recommend were to be adopted, young men would amass for themselves, during the same number of years, an inexhaustible treasure. They would form, during the season of educa tion, valuable habits, and feel their be neficial effects in every succeeding trausaction of their lives. They would carry away with them from the academy, a habit of investigation, and of patient attention; they would be able from their enlarged study of the English language, to express their thoughts on all subjects with conciseness and elegance; they would not be liable to be imposed upon by the fallacies of reasoning; nor would their conversation be composed of the frivolity and anility which abound in most companies. Instead of learning so many passages by heart from Latin authors,

the memories of youths should be exercised in recapitulating, at stated times, whatever was valuable in their preceding studies; and their imaginations would be abundantly cultivated by repeatedly reading, with attention, the excellent English translations of the Greek and Roman poets, and the no less beautiful productions of our native bards. In the present system, the memory and imagi nation arrive at maturity while the more important powers of the mind are yet struggling in the weakness of childhood. If people assent to the justness of these observations, yet ask, after all, how can the time of children be employed at school, if the study of the ancient languages be laid aside? I answer, teach them thoroughly the universal language, viz. the French, and any of the other modern languages you think proper : ground them well in grammar, geography, history, and chronology; then conduct them to the English classical school; make them compose daily in English; study the most approved authors of ancient or modern times, that are suited to their age, in their own language; and, instead of making Romans and Grecians of you children, you will make them what they were intended to be, rational sensible creatures. You educate your children according to the present mode, and when they come home you abuse them for being blockheads; when, at the same time, they have not had a fair chance given them, when the most valuable powers of their minds have not been developed by proper cultivation. One great evil and prominent defect in the present is, that children learn nothing thoroughly; and the reason is that they have not leisure, because the learned languages occupy so much of their time. Reviews and repetitions are the only means of fixing what has been learned firmly in the memory. But I shall pursue this speculation no farther. Greek and Roman languages must, of course, be studied by those youths who are intended for professions, in which a knowledge of them is required. Yet I should wish to see no more time employed on them than is barely necessary for making such an acquaintance with them as the practice of the profession demands. Future generations, I am inclined to think, will not impose the tyrannical task of learning Greek and Latin on the other youthful classes of the community. Sept. 12, 1811.

The

C. S.

For

For the Monthly Magazine. OBSERVATIONS ON BRITISH MUNICIPAL

GOVERNMENT.

HE original end or design of muni

Still their existence, even under these disadvantages, could not be dispensed with. The too-generally unenlightened state of society demanded their conti

Tcipal corporate bodies, considering nuance, and every man who was umbi

the general ignorance and rudeness of the times, when their institution was thought necessary, was founded in reason and sound policy. No better medium, at the period, could possibly have been devised, to protect and cherish weak and timid commerce, when men, emerging from the gloomy ages of Gothic barbarism and feudal anarchy, begun to form extensive societies, and live in mutual confidence and security. The ferocious and sanguinary satellites of the hostile and tyrannic castle, sated with a life of continual seclusion and precarious plunder, and encouraged by the less tumultuous and guilty modes of life, presented to them in cultivating the arts of peace, assisted in the great work of raising towns where before was solitude, of establishing

order where before were havoc and con

fusion, of diffusing plenty where formerly
reigned devastation and misery. The
universal tendency of man to promote
his own in preference to the general in-
terest, it was justly apprehended, would,
however, in the course of time overwhelm
this dawning happiness, and involve so-
ciety again, in all the wretchedness and
anarchy from which it had been but just
rescued. That no individual, or combi-
nation of persons, should, by an arro-›
gated or self-created power, arbitrarily,
rule or govern the society thus formed;
the most wise, just, and respectable, of
the inhabitants were selected, by mutual
consent, and invested, by the national
or supreme government, with the local
or municipal one of such city, town, or
district, subject to the control or revi
sion of the higher power, either from its
own just discretion, or the general wish
of the people. Hence amongst a rude,
a credulous, and ignorant, community,
necessary asylums were raised for the in-
Jured and oppressed, and honest guardians
appointed to preserve the peace, and
rights, and comforts, of all classes. As
the history of man is a motley register
of crimes, absurdities, and inconsistencies,
here and there ornamented with a slender
Lowery margin of virtues, we are assured,
the original design of these, as well as of
all human institutions, was too early
abused, and perverted to the very worst
of purposes,that of enriching the privi-
ledged few by the plunder of the many.
MONTHLY MAG. No. 223.

tious of promoting his interest, sought to enrol himself in their body. Hence corporations became too numerous and powerful for suppression, even after their inutility and scandalous abuses of power were but too manifest. Cowper, in his excellent philosophical poem, “The Task," has given us a picture, in the beginning of the fourth book, of the many evils and gross abuses almost unavoidably attendant on chartered or corporate bodies, delineated in so masterly and finished a style, that I cannot resist giving it here at its full length.

use.

"Man in society is like a flower
Blown in its native bed: 'tis there alone
His faculties, expanded in full bloom,
Shine out;-there only reach their proper
But man confedrated and leagued with man
By regal warrant, or self-join'd by bond,
Beneath one head, for purposes of war,
For int'rest sake, or swarming into clans
Like flow'rs selected from the rest, and bound
And huddled close to fill some crowded vase,

Fades rapidly, and, by compression marr'd,

Contracts defilement not to be endur'd.
Hence charter'd boroughs are such public
plagues;

And burghers, men immaculate perhaps
In all their private functions, once combin'd,
Become a loathsome body, only fit
For dissolution, hurtful to the main.
Hence merchants, unimpeachable of sin
Against the charities of domestic life,
Incorporated, seem at once to lose
For mercy and the common rights of man ;
Their nature; and disclaiming all regard
Build factories with blood, conducting trade
At the sword's point, and dying the white
robe

Of innocent commercial justice red.
Hence, too, the field of glory, as the world
Misdeems it, dazzled by its bright array;
With all its majesty of thund'ring pomp,
Enchanting music and immortal wreaths,
Is but a school where thoughtlessness is taught
On principle, where foppery atones
For folly, gallantry for every vice."

From considerations such as these, in many places, the pretensions of corporate bodies to authority and consequence are so ineffably despised at this illumined epoch, that very few gentlemen of refined education, or liberal principles, are to be found amongst them; and we are convinced their mouldy and cumbrous charters, in such situations, are only pre

C

served

served from the respect that attaches to all ancient establishments, however ridiculous in the present day.

Municipal bodies are no longer the most wise, just, and respectable, inha bitants of most provincial towns; and we dare venture to assert that, the great majority of those members who constitute the right worshipful and worshipful corporations of the United Empire, are more ignorant, weak, and prejudiced, than their less-favored and dignified neighbours, whose circumstances and opportunities are equally unembarrassed, and open to acquire improvement. The spirited, independent, and patriotic, exertions of the corporation of London, on all trying and momentous occasions, to the safety and welfare of their country, are the very best reproofs that can possibly be given to the frozen and disgraceful apathy, too generally, evinced by those wretched phantoms of misplaced power and chartered authority; and we conceive it a higher dignity, and more reputable character, under the free and equal constitution of Great Britain, to be an honest, cheerful, and in dependent cobler, in an humble bulk of London, than hold the first distinction amongst such paltry, bungling, jugglers, and 'be daily pelted with the filth and rotter eggs of public execration. Away then with all such unmeaning puppet-shows! they are really too absurd to be amusing, and too expensive to be longer endured with any degree of complaisance. But the genius of inquiry into public abuses and impositions begins to awaken the too-long deluded and slumbering people of these countries. Princes, peers, commoners, shrink from his keen and scrutinising eye. A gangrene hath seized the wide sheltering oak of the state, and from the trunk hath spread the contagion through all its ramifications. That these little branches of municipal government should have caught the infection, is no way surprising; the wonder would have been if they had not. The pruning knife of correction is become absolutely necessary, to lop off the fun. guses and excrescencies, which slothful negligence and childish indulgence have suffered to grow offensive to the eye, and disgraceful to themselves.

and

An inquiry into the nature and extent of the evil should, with all due expediency, be en, tered upon by the grand inquest of the nation. If municipal government be found necessary at all, let it in every place where it appears loaded with ab

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surdities, monopoly, and injustice, t radical defects with which corpora charters are universally allowed to abo be adapted to the improved reason, toms, and manners, of the present Men of refined and enlightened mi will then be encouraged, to take on occasions active situations in it; and i hicipal government receive a due prop tion of that respect, veneration, and a from the populace; divested of whi the most legitimate, constitutional, a indispensable, power, sinks into c tempt, or, what perhaps is equally jurious to the many, degenerates in tyranny. L. S.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazi

SIR,

N giving to the public early last ye

IN

a short account of a dietetic expe ment, now of four years standing, in small pamphlet, entitled "The Return Nature," I attempted to explain th fable of Prometheus. Towards the co clusion of that story, we are told, th men laid Jupiter's gift of health and lo gevity on the back of an ass, to bring home from Mount Olympus; that the a was seized with thirst, and, despising th blessing conferred by the Father of th Gods, parted with it for a draught of wa ter, to a serpent which guarded the four tain where the ass stopped to drink My conception of this part of the fabl was, that Prometheus first taught the ap plication of fire to the concoction of ani mal food, and that, thirst being the con sequence of that diet, man was at once assailed by the two deleterious principles. animal food and water; by which means his health was impaired and his existence curtailed.* I have very lately met with a strong and unexpected confirmation of the import which I had attributed to the fable in question. It happened to me one day last summer, as I was walking in Pope's Wood, near my cottage at Binfield, to be forcibly struck with a convic

*See "The Return to Nature," p. 9. The diet there recommended consists of fruits and vegetables, the more strictly thebetter, without drinking at all. If from our general state of disease, or if merely from habit, the use of some portion of liquid be other, as having the noxious ingredients sub requisite, distilled water is preferred to any tracted. The following plain observation is, I think, calculated to make an impression, In illness the appetite, natural to us in health, becomes prostrate; the thirst, which I con tend is not natural, increases!

tion that the Eleusinian mysteries must necessarily have been connected with the important truth, that vegetables are the proper food of man, In making re searches upon this subject I lately found the following passage in Josephus's book against Apion. Αυτο (Πυθαγόρας) μεν εν είδεν ομολογείται σύγγραμμα, πολλοί δε τα περί αυτόν ισοραχασι, και το των επισημότατος εσιν Έρμιππος, ανήρ περί πασαν ισοριαν επιμελής. λέγει το ινυν εν τωα των περί Πυθαγορεί βιβλιαν, οτι Πυθαγορας, ενός αυτό των συνεσία αζων τελευτησαντος, τουνομα Καλλιφώντος, το γένος Κροτονίατα, την εκείνη ψυχην, ελέγε, διατρίβεις αυτώ και νυκτωρ και μεθ' ημέραν· και ότι παρεκελεύετο μη διερχεσθαι τόπον εφ' ον αν στις άκλαση, και των δίψεων υδάτων απέχεσθαι, και πάσης απέχειν βλασφημίας. "There remains no acknowledged work of Pythagoras, but many writers have left memorials of him, the most celebrated of whom is Hermippus, remarkable for historical accuracy. He tells us, in his first book concerning Pythagoras, that the philosopher, having lost Calliphon, of Crotona, one of his intimate associates, declared that the spirit of Calliphon accompanied him day and night; and that it warned him never to pass near the spot where the ass had committed his error, to beware of thirstcreating waters, and to refrain from ill language (irreverential conduct I suppose) towards the gods." Had the option been granted to me I could not have interpolated into any ancient author a passage more directly to my purpose.

I shall not at present go into the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries, but will confine myself to the fable of Ceres and Proserpine, as related in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which I conceive to have been invented to signify the transition of mankind from the use of vegetable food alone to our present mixed diet, together with the effects of that contempt of nature's ordinances.

Tis not vain or fabulous
(Though so esteem'd by shallow ignorance)
What the sage poets, taught by th' heavenly
Muse,

Storied of old in high immortal verse.
Comus, v. 513.

Monsieur Bailly wrote a volume to prove that the ancient Brahmins were the depositaries, not the inventors, of their knowledge, and that they were indebted for it to certain nations in the northern hemisphere, residing at the 50th or 55th degree of latitude. In discussing that obscure question he has shewn so much ability and erudition that few of my readers would willingly have it in charge to controvert his arguments. Leaving to their perusal this pleasing book of Bailly, I shall regard the mystic theology of the Brahmins as the source of the Greek mythology. Of the former, the whole was one system of descents, (avataras) or incarnations of the supreme power.

The first emanation from Brahm*, the uncreated soul of the universe, was the triple power, the creative, the preservative, the destructive, in the personages of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, from whom were derived the Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, of the Greeks, It was an opinion of the greatest antiquity that all things originated from water, operated upon by the supreme power. In Sacontala, the ancient Indian drama, we are told that water was the first work of the eternal mind. This incorporation of the Eternal Spirit with chaotic matter was worshipped by the Greeks under the title of Pan, the Epwe poryvos, of Orpheus and Hesiod. This idea is finely glanced at in one of the choruses in the Ajax of Sophocles, (1. 695, ed. Brunck) ο Παν, σαν αλιπλαγκτίθεων xpo' avag. "O Pan, thou wanderer of the deep-thou leader of the celestial dance." In the 2d verse of the first chapter of Genesis, Moses denominates chaos the waters and the deep. The sea is not gathered together until afterwards, as we find in the ninth and tenth verses. It was formed out of the pre-existing mase of chaotic waters. The symbols of water and of inert matter are equally the ship, the lotus, the crab, &c.

Damater, or Ceres, is another personification, representing our earth and its productions. She is the same as Proserpine, the fabulist having occasion for this personage both on earth and in the

* See the index to Josephus, article Py- lower regions at the same time. Where

thagoras.

It is well known that many waters excite thirst instead of allaying it. The Hindoos mix rain water and alum with the well water of the country, the one to purify the other to soften it. The Ganges is turbid higher up than Benares for a considerable part of the year..

fore Cicero addresses them together in the singular number; Teque Ceres et Libera, quarum sacra," &c. marking their distinction by the plural pronoun. In the Orphic hymn to Proserpine several

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epithets, such as rodas, naprosor Cpuera, and others, identify her with her mother. The beautiful Proserpine, the virgin daughter of Ceres, typifies the human race, subsisting in full vigour and beauty on the food provided for them by the general parent.† As the consort of Pluto, she represents the degraded state of man consequent on his change of food, and contempt of the divine laws. It is upon this account that, while she always preserves the appellation of Tapevos, the Virgin, to designate the early and innocent state of mankind, (although if we were to attend to the whimsical Bryant we should believe that the Greeks seldom knew what they were about) while poetry labours to find words sufficiently glowing to describe her beauty, her gentleness, and her purity, before she was carried off from the fields of Enna; still Proserpine, once lost, is stated to be an infernal inquisitor, the maddening sword-bearer, the instigatrix of the furies; is worshipped, in the character of Ceres§, as Axia, from axeos, grief; and in Arcadia

*Isis, the Ceres of Egypt, was also Juno, Venus, and Diana, being under these several titles, the passive principle of production. Hence the Roman goddess Libitina, who presided over funerals, was worshipped both as Venus and as Proserpine. Isis is the zodiacal constellation Virgo, with a branch of a tree, or with ears of corn, in her hand. The torch of Ceres is the emblem of the sun, as the cornucopia is that of fructification, which is the result of his energies.

She who bestows health and opulence. Και πλετον πολυολβιν ομε δ' υγιειαν ανάσσαν. Orphic Hymn to Geres.

The period of this fable is the expiration of the golden age at the deluge of Deucalion, and the commencement of the age which succeeded. Proserpine seems to become the principal agent in the affairs of the infernal regions.

Ceres has her archetype in the mytho logy of the Hindoos. Lakshmi, the wife of Vishnu, is crowned with ears of corn, and encircled in a branch laden with fruit. For this and many other such analogies I refer the reader to the works of Sir William Jones. In Italy the ministers of Ceres were Feronia for the trees, Flora for the flowers, and Pomona for the fruits. Their votaries, we are told by Strabo, could walk bare-foot on burning coals uninjured, a strong manner of signifying the effect of vegetable juices on the human frame. Is not a garden the place of residence of the just, the final object of their hopes, in all religions? In the last chapter of the Revelation of St. John, fruits and pure water are expressly connected with man's beatitude: "And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations,”

and elsewhere as the fury Erynnis herself. So grieved indeed and infuriated did Ceres become after her production of the centaur Arion, that her temples were more dreaded than those of the Cyclops. In consequence of that monstrous birth she concealed herself in a cave, until her return was obtained by supplication, mankind having become diseased during her absence. Let me enquire how it can be explained in any other way than that for which I am arguing, that the rural and innocent Ceres, the friend and benefactress of mankind, by whom the initia vita, atque victus, legum, morum, mansuetudinis, humanitatis exempla hominibus et civitatibus data ac dispertita esse. dicantur, could possibly so change her nature as to resemble the very principle of evil, and become the horror of mankind.

I will now refer the reader to the fifth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses for the fable of Ceres and Proserpine. He will there find the principal events of the fable to be, that Proserpine, being seized upon and carried off by Pluto, passes in his car to the infernal regions through the fountain Cyane, and through the body of Typhoeus, or Typhon, the principle of evil, whose limbs the poet sublimely stretches under Sicily: that Ceres searches for her daughter every-where; and, learning her ruin, applies to Jupiter to interpose his irresistible power and effect her liberation. Jupiter, after having dispatched Mercury to ascertain whether she had yet tasted of the infernal food, decides that Proserpine shall pass a part of her time with Ceres and a part with Pluto. The point which it is my object to prove is, that the lapse of the goddess and her consequent descent to the realm of darkness, were connected with the use of animal food and water.

I must first premise that I consider nothing more puerile or contemptible in literature than fanciful attempts, by the interchange and transposition of syllables and letters, to conquer the difficulties with which those are encompassed who occupy themselves in expounding the riddles of antiquity. The art of sifting out and compelling meanings from the insecure and fortuitous analogy of sounds is indeed an humble occupation. They are the events or incidents of a poetical story which ought to attract our atten tion, for these rest on a different and a firmer basis. It is acknowledged on all sides that, in the theogony of the early ages, some hidden import or other was continually veiled. The question then is, what

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