confession, is, with much reluctance, delivered to the secular power to be punished according to his demerits; and this writing they give to the seven Judges who attend at the right side of the altar, who immediately pass sentence."

ACT OF FAITH.-In the Romish Church, is a solemn day held by the Inquisition for the punishment of heretics, and the absolution of the innocent accused. They usually contrive the Auto to fall on some great festival, that the execution may pass with the more awe and regard; at least it is always on a Sunday. The Auto da Fé, or Act of Faith, may be called the last act of the Inquisitorial tragedy: it is a kind of gaol-delivery, appointed as often as a competent number of prisoners in the Inquisition are convicted of heresy, either by their own voluntary or extorted, confession, or on the evidence of certain witnesses. The process is thus: In the morning they are brought into a great hal!, where they have certain habits put on, which they are to wear in the procession. The procession is led up by Dominican Friars; after which come the penitents, some with san-benitos, and some without, according to the nature of the crimes; being all in black coats without sleeves, and bare footed, with a wax candle in their hands. These are followed by the penitents who have narrowly escaped being burnt, who, over their black coats, have flames painted with their points turned downwards. Fuego revolto. Next come the negative and relapsed, who are to be burnt, having flames on their habits pointing upwards. After these come such as profess doctrines contrary to the faith of Rome, who, besides flames pointing upwards, have their picture painted on their breasts, with dogs, serpents, and devils, all open-mouthed about it. Each prisoner is attended with a familiar of the Inquisition; and those to be burnt have also a Jesuit on each hand, who is continually preaching to them to abjure. After the prisoners come a troop of familiars on horseback, and after them the Inquisitors, and other officers of the Court, on mules; last of all, the Inquisitor-General, on a white horse, led by two men with black hats and green hat bands. A scaffold is erected in the Teniero de Pacs, big enough for two or three thousand people; at one end of which are the prisoners, at the other the Inquisitors. After a sermon made up of encomiums of the Inquisition, and invectives against heretics, a priest ascends a desk near the middle of the scaffold, and having taken the abjuration of the penitents, recites the final sentence of those who are to be put to death; and delivers them to the secular arm, earnestly beseeching at the same time the secular power not to touch their blood, or put their lives in danger. The prisoners being thus in the hands of the civil Magistrate, are presently loaded with chains, and carried first to the secular gaol, and from

thence in an hour or two brought before the civil Judge; who, after asking in what religion they intend to die, pronounces sentence on such as declare they die in the communion of Rome, that they shall be first strangled, and then burnt to ashes; on such as die in any other faith, that they be burnt alive. Both are immediately carried to the Ribera, the place of execution; where there are as many stakes set-up as there are prisoners to be burnt, with a quantity of dry furze about them. The stakes of the professed, that is, such as persist in their heresy, are about four yards high, having a small board towards the top for the prisoner to be seated on. The negatived and relapsed being first strangled and burnt, the professed mount their stakes by a ladder; and the Jesuits, after several repeated exhortations to be reconciled to the church, part with them, telling them they leave them to the devil who is standing at their elbow to receive their souls, and carry them with him into the flames of hell. On this a great shout is raised, and the cry is, let the dogs' beards be made ; which is done by thrusting flaming furzes fastened to long poles against their faces, 'till their faces are burnt to a coal, which is accompanied with the loudest acclamations of joy.-At last fire is set to the furze at the bottom of the stake, over which the professed are chained so high, that the top of the flame seldom reaches higher than the board they sit on; so that they rather seem roasted than burnt.-There cannot be a more lamentable spectacle; the sufferers continually cry out, while they are able, Misericordia per amoi de Dois. Pity for the love of God!" yet it is beheld by all sexes and ages with transports of joy and satisfaction.

FEMALE HEROISM.

MAMMY HOPKINS.

TO THE RIGHT HON. THE SECRETARY AT WAR, &c.

The Memorial of Elizabeth Hopkins, wife of Jeremiah Hopkins, Serjeant of the 104th (New Brunswick) Regiment of Foot;

Most humbly showeth, That she was born of British parents at Philadelphia, in the year 1741; has her husband, six sons, and a son-in-law, viz. Jeremiah Hopkins (husband), Samuel Woodward, Timothy Woodward, Robert Woodward, Nathaniel Woodward, Archibald Woodward, Nicholas Hopkins (sons), James McDonough (son-in-law), serving his Majesty in the 104th; and during the course of her life, from her zeal and attachment to her King and country, she has encountered more hardships than commonly fall to the lot of her sex. That in the year 1770, being with her first husband (John Jasper), a serjeant

of marines on board the brig Stanley, tender to the Roebuck, she was wounded in her left leg in an engagement with three French vessels, when she was actually working at the guns.

That the marines having been landed at Cape May, in America, her husband was taken prisoner by a Captain Plinket, of the rebel army, near Mud Fort Nied, and sentenced to suffer death: that by her means he was enabled to escape, with 22 American deserters, to whom she served arms and ammunition, and, on their way to join the army, their party was attacked by the enemy's light horse; she was fired at and wounded in her left arm; but, undismayed, took a loaded firelock, shot the rebel, and brought his horse to Philadelphia (the head-quarters of the army), which she was permitted to sell to one of General Sir Wm. Howe's Aides-de-Camp. That after many fatigues and campaigns her husband died, and she married Samuel Woodward, a soldier in Colonel Chambers's corps; was with the troops under General Campbell taken at Pensacola, having, however, during the seige, served at the guns, and tore her clothes for wadding.

That having been exchanged at the peace of 1783, from attachment to the Royal cause, she embarked on board a transport, with part of Delancey's and Chambers's corps, was shipwrecked on Seal Island, in the Bay of Fundy, when near 300 men, and numbers of women and children, were lost-that she suffered unparalelled distress, being pregnant, and with a child in her arms; remained three days on the wreck, was taken up with her husband and child by fishermen, off Marble-head, and shortly after being landed delivered of three sons, two of whom are in the 104th, the other dead lastly, that she has had the honour of being mother of 22 children, viz. 18 sons and 4 daughters, 7 of the former being alive, and 3 of the latter; that your memorialist humbly prays, that you may consider her as a fit object for some allowance from the Compassionate Fund towards her maintenance in her old age, having lost all her property, and as a reward for her long and faithful services to her King; and as in duty bound shall ever pray.

Frederickton, New Brunswick, April 12, 1816.

The subject of this memorial is a wonderful old woman, much above 70, and was well and hearty, at Quebec, two months ago. In consequence of her memorial, she obtained a pension of 1001. a year. The following is another instance of her strength of mind:-At Fort Erie, the pride of her heart, her twins, fell; also M'Donough, her son-in-law. On hearing the news, she called her children round her, made them an animated speech, charged them to be revenged on the Yankees for their loss; and next time they went into action they were cheered and encouraged by Mammy Hopkins, the name she goes by in the regiment.

OF ANTIENT HISTORY.

The disorder and confusion which reigned for 2 or 300 years after the flood, proves a great misfortune to people who apply themselves to the study of history. Few authors wrote in those distant times, and those few came not to our hands. What scraps and fragments have been seen, serve only by their variety and ambiguity to raise disputes among the learned, which are so much more difficult to clear up, as they propose rather their own conjectures, than afford any real lights.

The knowledge of the actions of men in the first ages is a vast and unknown sea, on which we sail without chart or compass. The Genesis and the sacred books that Moses left us, are not sufficient to enlighten us; if they speak of the creation of man, of the formation or establishment of a people, it is always in relation to the Jews; they make mention of what serves only to illustrate that nation. There were then, no doubt, other people, and the fragments that remain of the history of the first Egyptians, Ethiopians, Scythians, and moreover the Chinese, are convincing proofs of it. If we go higher, and approach the time of the deluge, we find a thousand insurmountable difficulties. It is impossible for us to discover any trace of the origin of considerable states and empires which we see formed, as it were in an instant. We read, that 2 or 300 years after the flood, Egypt was excessively peopled, so that 20,000 towns could hardly contain its inhabitants. China, Scythia and Tartary were also in as flourishing condition. I think, without sticking at these difficulties, if one intends to make a progress in the history of our sacred books, we must simply attend to the historical truth, and leave all vain disputes to the philosophers and doctors.

A certain monk who entered into a discussion of these matters, could find no better method to clear up the facts, than by making men with some strokes of a pen. He computes to a nicety how many sons, grandsons, great grandsons, &c. four men may have in 250 years, and produces a sum total of 26871,900,000 persons, which are many more than sufficient to people five or six such worlds as ours. But his arithmetic did not persuade his adversaries; they say, that men were not made with a goose-quil, and could casily perceive that the reverend father was not over expert at the trade. They objected, that according to the holy scriptures men begot children but very late, and it did not appear that the numVOL. II.

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ber was great, so that these colonies, so easy to produce upon paper, were impossible in the nature of the thing.

These insurmountable difficulties have thrown some people into an error. They thought, that the deluge was not universal, and that God intending only to punish the sins of that ungrateful race, which he had chosen, drowned the country they inhabited. Scaliger testifies, that there were many monarchies before the deluge, and does not differ from this sentiment, which several have supported by physical and experimental reasons. They pretend, that it is impossible, according to the present state of the earth, that a defuge could overflow the tops of the highest mountains 15 cubits. The sea taken in general, say they, is scarce above 3000 feet in depth. The high mountains, like that of Mount Gordian, or Mount Ararat, do not surpass 3000 feet from the surface of the sea; so that without reckoning that the capacity of the globe enlarges itself in proportion as it rises, there must be 12 times as much water as earth, according to the quantity mentioned in history. Other authors have maintained, that it was impossible that the rain could have been abundant enough to cause such an effect. They support their argument by the opinion of a famous philosopher, who shews, that the most violent rains rise but an inch and a half of water in half an hour, which is after the rate of six feet a day, and the flood holding out no more than 40 times 24 hours, by computing the highest mountain at 2000 feet elevation (a third less than the real height) the heavens must shower down 125 foot of water, instead of six, in 24 hours, even to rise to a level with the mountains: which quantity exceeds all the forces of nature.

What signifies then all these vain disputes of the learned, which clear up nothing, but leave things as they find them; and to uphold the argument, that the deluge was not universal, is idle and ridiculous; it is bringing proofs of the designs of God against the word of God left us in the sacred books. Such a chaos is the history of those remote times, that it is absurd to think of unravelling it, or to bring it into any kind of order. Let it suffice to know then, that the children of Noah are the common source of humanity, but we are utterly at a loss in comprehending the beginning of the first monarchies formed by their descendants. A man of understanding ought not to search after these things in an age where he can gather no light or certainty from historians.

To study history with advantage, the original authors should be well consulted. Who can better know the manners of a state, than an author born and bred in it? I think, gene