Marfurius enter it an unaccustomed hour. She glided into the corner of an obscure passage, which led to her father's chamber. There she stopped, and heard Marfurius relate every particular of the conversation that had passed between her and Savinien in the morning.

"How?

Sylvanus was quite furious at the discovery. Foaming with rage, he was unable to speak. He could only utter a few inarticulate words. "Savinien! the wretch! cross the moat! ravish from me my child! Monster !"-" It will be easy enough to prevent him, and to punish him at the same time," said Marfurius. how?" eagerly interrupted the old man. "After having passed the arch, he will proceed to slide down upon the scaffolding: it is only to remove a few boards, and the scaffold is taken away; and, instead of fixing his foot upon a solid bridge, as he is led to expect, he will instantly be hurried down, and dashed to pieces-nothing can possibly prevent it."

At these words Priscilla fainted away. When she returned to her senses, her father and Marfurius were not to be found. She tried to go into Sylvanus's garden. The doors of communication were locked. A chilly horror crept through her veins. The sun

was set.

The hour fast approached when her lover was to arrive at the appointed spot. She ran over the palace, which was now to her a prison, but she was almost insensible to the surrounding objects; she knew not what she did, nor what she should do.

The only spot which commanded a view of the garden, was a terrace, planted with divers shrubs, and situated beneath the roof of the great hall of the public baths*. From this elevated terrace, she could see her father's gardens, those of the emperor, and also the fosse, or rather precipice, which her lover was to leap. Thither she hastened. The day, though on its last decline, just enabled her to perceive that the scaffolding which she had pointed out to Savinien was no longer in its place.

She descended from the terrace; called wildly for her aunt and slaves. They thought she was mad. She ran out; returned; pronounced the name of her lover; threw herself at their feet, and conjured them to suffer her to quit the palace. They referred her to her father. Him she instantly went in search of: called, in a tone of desperation, upon his name. No one answered. Time flew.

The

* This hall and the terrace still remain; it is well known that the empe rors had halls to their baths, the use of which they appropriated to the public.

fatal moment was at hand.

"O Savinien !" cried the unhappy

girl, “instead of me thou wilt embrace thy death; and it is I, I that have conducted thee to thy fate." She again ascended the terrace, as being the only situation from whence she could discern the place of rendezvous. She flattered herself that, notwithstanding the distance, her feeble voice might apprize her lover of the danger with which he was momentarily threatened.

By the time that Priscilla had mounted the terrace, it was almost night. Pale as death, she was in want of the highest exertion of her voice, and her voice, stifled by the violence of her emotion, could scarcely make itself heard. In the course of a few seconds, she thought she heard the sound of some footsteps on the planks that covered the arch upon which Savinien was to tread; but still she could see nothing. All is again still as death. Suddenly the noise without is repeated. A plank falls, and the precipice presents itself. "Gods! it is he! it is my beloved !"-Then summoning all her strength, and exerting her feeble voice to its utmost extent, she raves out Savinien, advance no further." The lover imagines that his mistress calls out to him to animate his courage; he slides down from the arch, and not feeling the scaffolding, utters a scream of horror, and falls headlong to the bottom of the moat.

Here the manuscript stops short. I have never been able to discover whether the Greek author proceeded any further, or whether the conclusion has been by any accident lost; so that it is impossi ble to know what became either of Priscilla, or the old Sylvanus, or what was done by the emperor, when he heard of the dreadful catastrophe that happened in his palace, and almost under his very eyes. I have turned over the pages of Ammianus Marcellinus, Zo. zimus, St. Gregory Nazianzen, Libanus, and the writings of Julien himself, without discovering any thing further upon the subject.

REVIEW OF LITTERATURE.

FLECTERE NON ODIUM COGIT, NON GRATIA SUADET,

MISCELLANEOUS.

A Comparison of the Institutions of Moses with those of the Hindoos, &c. c. &c. By Joseph Priestley, L. L. D. Continued from Page 387.

V. INDIAN INCARNATIONS.

"We see, by the Hindoos, that accounts of divine interpositions do not neeessarily, or naturally, appear incredible to men. According to them, their God Vichnu has appeared in various forms, to suit himself to the exigencies of the world, and he is still to appear in others."

In one of those forms Vichnu is said to have assumed the name of Chrishna; and his history is evidently copied from that of Christ, with the usual exaggerations of Asiatic fiction. With the name CHRIST they could scarcely have become acquainted, otherwise than by the Greek version of Daniel, chap. ix. 25. Nor is it conceivable how that volume could reach India before the propagation of the gospel there, in the first century. But had the Bramins perused that volume alone, they could collect nothing from it, but the name only. The character, with so many striking instances of similarity, could not be copied from any other record but that of the Evangelists. Here then is a decisive proof, that the memoirs of the Indian Chrisna were fabricated some time after the four gospels had been circulated in India. The mystery of God manifest in the flesh, was too sublime to originate from experience, or vigour of imagination. Either the tradition of that event expected, or the history of it already past, must have suggested the idea; and history must have been the source, whence a train of so many marvellous incidents was crowded into the history of one singular personage.

"Dupuis's origin of all religions is certainly the most extraordinary production of the present, or of any former, age, and the ne plus ultra of infidelity. For after giving his opinion, that the Five Books of Moses are a mere Arabian tale, a fictitious story ;-that the whole Evangelical history is another fiction ;that no such persons as Jacob and his twelve sons, or Christ and his twelve apostles, ever existed, but were intended to denote the sun, and the twelve signs of the Zodiac; nothing more contrary to the opinion of all mankind, hitherto, can be asserted."

It seems the articles of the modern sophistical creed are not uniform. Strange it is, that atheists have reason to criminate their

brethren, as Heretics. This volume opens with Langley's persuasion, that Moses pilfered his pentateuch from the archives of India and Egypt, and Dupuis shuts it with the declaration of his faith, that the same pentateuch is an Arabian tale, which character it might have deserved, had its contents been borrowed from the fables of Asiatic paganism.

A farther account of this infamous treatise, with the remaining articles of the volume, we supersede.

This being the first performance of Dr. Priestley, submitted to our cognisance, as periodical critics, we prefix, to our sentiments of this publication, a few general reflexions on his character, as an author.

His works in number and size are, in the strict sense of the term, voluminous. Those published in Britain, of which a catalogue is subjoined to this volume, are 53 publications, from the slender pamphlet to the massy quarto, comprehending 63 tomes. Seven volumes have issued from the press since his migration, and two are yet in manuscript. Including the piece now reviewed his works extend to 72 tomes at least. Of these compositions various are the subjects; philosophy, experimental and speculative, critical and epistolary, historical, theological, political, and miscellaneous. Writing much and writing well indicate vigorous abilities. Whether this author has the merit of original genius, and useful discoveries, his learned contemporaries may dispute; but posterity will decide. As to some of his philosophical productions, it is strongly suspected, and confidently affirmed, that he ploughed with borrowed heifers. From some of the students, who had attended Dr. Black's classes at Glasgow, and taken down his lectures in short-hand, it is said, that he purchased their notes, and inserted the substance of them in his own work, relating to vision, light, and colours.

By the like means he procured Dr. Macquer of Dublin's Lectures, and transposed their contents into his own Treatise on Experimental Philosophy, including Chymistry. These things we report, on the testimony of gentlemen who attended these learned professors, and afterwards perused Dr. Priestley's publications. We would more willingly believe, that this author consulted the two professors, and obtained liberty to publish their communications, A now eminent prelate charged him with falsifying the History of the Primitive Church, in his Biographical Charts, in order to authenticate the early introduction and extensive prevalence of Arianism. Only a few months have elapsed since the Rev. Mr. Jones,

late of Nayland, informed the public, that Dr. Priestley sent, to the philosophers and politicians of France, letters, containing Mr. C. Lesley's Four Rules for authenticating the Truth of Ancient Facts, as if these Rules had been written by himself, originally; and that it soon was discovered that they had previously been printed in the works of St. Real.

The writer of this article read, at the time of their publication, Dr. Priestley's Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, and, together with them, three duodecimo French volumes, by Mons. Olivet, and found, that this author's capital arguments for the materiality of human souls are retailed in the Doctor's Disquisitions. His character would have suffered nothing, if he had totally abstained from all his theological publications. To conjecture, and much more to affirm, that even the Deity is invested with a material vehi cle, and that all the operations of thought, judgment, invention, design, and ratiocination, are the result of attraction and repulsion, ill befits a Christian philosopher. These positions, considered in their ultimate tendency, seem to be no less profane than the dogmata of the French school. His notions of Christ's person seem to be any thing rather than scriptural. Fluctuating from Arian to Semiarian, and thence to Socinian principles, and uncertain where he should end, at last, is the mark of a wavering spirit. We trust he has renounced some of these opinions, for all cannot consistently be retained, and charitably hope that he will publicly retract the most offensive.

In this work we admit that he has judi ciously vindicated the public character of Moses, as a theist, a moralist, a law-giver, and a politician; but has never once hit upon the main points in debate, -the recent era of civil history among the Pagan tribes,-the late origin of alphabetical composition,—and the total want of a regular chronological series, from the source of measured time. These considerations we, with deference, recommend to the heedful attention of the Asiatic Society.

Select Sermons and Funeral Orations, translated from the French of Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. To which is prefixed an Essay, considerably augmented, on the Eloquence of the Pulpit in England. Third Edition. Clarke, New Bond-Street, 1801.

THESE Sermons and Funeral Orations, which first appeared separately, are now collected into one volume, and the Preliminary Essay has received so many additions, that it might almost be estimated as a new performance. The author has delineated, in this