To the Editor.

Dear sir,-Perhaps you may esteem the Enclosed as a curiosity worthy of a place in the Table Book. It is a genuine specimen of the assignats used in lieu of money during the French revolution. I believe there are very few now to be had. It was given to me by a French gentleman, whose father (a native of Normandy) had lost considerable sums by them. He had unfortunately converted most of his property into assignats, as a precaution during those times, which, although eventually of so much benefit to the French nation, were so distressing while they lasted. But when the use of coin was resumed, he found his intention frustrated, and himself deprived of all his fortune.

This gentleman had been the means of assisting the duke and duchess of Chartres in their escape to England, after having concealed them for some time in his own house. They left him with reiterated assruances of liberal recompense and future patronage, should they ever be so fortunate as to return to their native country:-they did return-but their Norman benefactor was forgotten-he never heard any thing more of them.-" Telle est la récompense de loyauté !" was the concluding remark of his son, who related the story to me.

He was a pleasant specimen of a Frenchman-light, kind-hearted, and extremely enthusiastic; but his enthusiasm was equally bestowed on the most important or the most trivial occasion. I have seen him rise from his seat, stretch his clasped hands out at full length, and utter with rapturous ecstasy through his clenched teeth, "Ah, Dieu! que c'étoit beau !" when perhaps the subject of his eulogy was the extraordinary leap of some rope-dancer, or the exaggerated shout of some opera-singer, whose greatest recommendation was, that she possessed" une voix à enlever le toit." He had a habit of telling immensely long stories, and always forgot that you had heard him relate them often and often before. He used to tack his sentences together by an awful" alors," which was the sure sign of his being in the humour (although by the by he never was otherwise) for telling one of his pet anecdotes, or, more properly interminable narratives, for such he made them by his peculiar tact at spinning them out. He had three special favourites ;-the one above related of aristocratic ingratitude;-another about Buonaparte's going incognito every morning, while he was a Boulogne sur Mer, to drink new milk a the cottage of an old woman, with whom he used to take snuff, and talk quite familiarly;-and the last and best-beloved, an

account of his own good fortune in having once actually spoken with the emperor Napoleon Buonaparte himself! He had been an officer on board one of the ships belonging to the flotille destined for the invasion of England, and almost adored Buonaparte as a sort of God. He was perhaps as affectionate-hearted a human being as could possibly exist, and I never heard him speak bitterly against any one, excepting Messieurs les Clergés.

I have digressed considerably, but the assignat is merely a matter of curiosity to look at, and does not admit of much com

seeds of the vicious kind may shoot forth in the mind, they are carefully watched and nipped in the bud, that they may never blossom into action.

Having stated the accounts between morality and trade, I shall leave the reader to draw the balance, and only ask, " Whether the people in trade are more corrupt than those out?" If the curious reader will lend an attentive ear to a pair of farmers in the market, bartering for a cow, he will find as much dissimulation as at St. James's, or at any other saint's, but couched in more homely phrase. The man of well-bred deceit is "infinitely your friend—it would give him immense pleasure to serve you!" while the man in the frock" will be if he tells you a word of a lie!”

Having occasion for a horse, in 1759, I mentioned it to an acquaintance, and informed him of the uses the animal was wanted for; he assured me he had one that

rong; and an huckster shall not be freed from sin.

As a nail sticketh fast between the joinings of the stones; so doth sin stick close between buying and selling. Ecclesiasticus.

It has been observed in the House of Commons, "That commerce tends to corrupt the morals of a people." If we examine the expression, we shall find it true, in a certain degree.

Perhaps every tradesman can furnish out numberless instances of small deceit. His conduct is marked with a littleness, which though allowed by general consent, is not strictly just. A person with whom I have long been connected in business, asked if I had dealt with his relation whom he had brought up, and who had lately entered into commercial life. I answered in the affirmative. He replied, "He is a very honest fellow." I told him I saw all the finesse of a tradesman about him. "Oh, rejoined my friend, a man has a right to say all he can in favour of his own goods." Nor is the seller alone culpable. The buyer takes an equal share in the deception. Though neither of them speak their sentiments, they well understand each other. Whilst a treaty is agitating, the buyer pronounces against the article; but when finished, the seller whispers to his friend, "It is well sold," and the buyer smiles at the bargain. The commercial track is a line of minute deceits.

But, on the other hand, it does not seem possible for a man in trade to pass this line, without wrecking his reputation; which, if once broken, can never be made whole. The character of a tradesman is valuable; it is his all; therefore, whatever

the stable, and held the candle pretty high, "for fear of affecting the straw." I told him it was needless to examine him, for I should rely upon his word, being conscious he was too much my friend to deceive me; I therefore bargained, and caused him to be sent home. But by the light of the sun which next morning illumined the heavens, I perceived the horse was "greased” on all fours. I therefore, in gentle terms, upbraided my friend with duplicity, when he replied with some warmth, "I would cheat my own brother in a horse." Had this honourable friend stood a chance of selling me a horse once a week, his own interest would have prevented himfrom deceiving me.

A man enters into business with a view of acquiring a fortune—a laudable motive! That property which arises from honest industry is an honour to its owner; the repose of his age, the reward of a life of attention; but great as the advantage seems, yet, being of a private nature, it is one of the least in the mercantile walk. For the intercourse occasioned by traffic gives a man a view of the world, and of himself; removes the narrow limits that confine his judgment, expands the mind, opens his understanding, removes his prejudices, and polishes his manners. Civility and humanity are ever the companions of trade; the man of business is the man of liberal sentiment: if he be not the philosopher of nature he is the friend of his country. A barbarous and commercial people is a contradiction.*

Hutton's History of Birmingham.

who affirm that atoms, similar parts, particles, or those bodies which only are to be apprehended by the intellect itself, are the primary elements of all things, in one respect say true, in another not. In so far as they acknowledge for principles, only such things as fall not under our senses, they are right; but they are wrong in apprehending those to be corporeal princi ples for as those bodies which fall not under our senses, precede those which do, they themselves are preceded also by what is of another nature: and as the letters are not a discourse, though they go into the composition of it, neither are the elements of body, body: but since they must be either corporeal or incorporeal, it follows, that they are incorporeal. To this end he argues, that "bodies are composed of incorporeal principles, not to be comprehended but by the mind itself."

To the same effect, Scipio Aquilianus, treating of the opinion of Alcmæon, the Pythagorean, concerning the principles of things, reduces it to a syllogism. "What precedes body in the order of nature, is the principle of body; number is such a thing; therefore number is the principle of body. The second of these propositions is proved thus-Of two things, that is the first, which may be conceived independent of the other, whilst that other cannot of it. Now number may be conceived independently of body, but not body of number; wherefore number is antecedent to body in the order of nature."

Marcilius Ficinus imputes to Plato the same notion, and gives us the substance of that philosopher's thoughts. "The different species of all sorts of compounds may be traced out to something which in itself is uncompounded; as the boundaries of body to a point, which has no boundary; numbers to a unit, which consists not of numbers; and elements to what has nothing in it mixt or elementary." Marcilius Ficinus expresses the system in a few words. "Compounds are reducible into things uncompounded, and these again into what is still more simple." One sees here those compounds of Leibnitz, which, when reduced to their simple parts, terminate in the Deity for their cause and source.

Plotinus also a:firms, that "there must be in bodies some principle, or substratum, entirely different from any thing corporeal.

These quotations accord with passages in Plutarch concerning Heraclitus. There are passages in Stobæus, from Epicurus, Xenocrates, and Diodorus, to a similar purport; and a remarkable one in Hebrews

xi. 3. "Through faith we understand tha the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

It every where appears that Leibnitz drew many of his notions from Plato; and he defines his "monads," just as Plato does his ideas, rà vras övra, "things really existing." An erudite German says, “I am assured by one of my friends, who was himself informed of it by a learned Italian, who went to Hanover to satisfy an ardent desire he had of being acquainted with Mr. Leibnitz, and spent three weeks with him, that this great man, at parting, said to him: Sir you have often been so good as to insinuate, that you looked upon me as a man of some knowledge. Now, sir, I'll show you the sources whence I drew it all; and immediately taking him by the hand, led him into his study, showing him all the books he had; which were Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Sextus Empiricus, Euclid, Archimedes, Pliny, Seneca, and Cicero."

Leibnitz and Parmenides agree in these particulars :—

1. The existence and essence of things are different.

2. The essence of things existent, is without the things themselves.

3. There are, in nature, similar and dissimilar things.

4. The similar are conceived, as in existence essentially the same.

5. Whatever exists is reducible to certain classes, and specific forms.

6. All those forms have their existence in the unity; that is, in God; and hence the whole is one.

7. Science consists in the knowledge, not of individuals, but of kinds or species.

8. This knowledge differs from that of things existing externally.

9. Forms or ideas, as they exist in God, escape the observation of men.

10. Hence men perceive nothing perfectly.

11. Our mental notions are but the shades or resemblances of ideas.

OF ANIMATED NATURE.-BUFFON,

Buffon's theory respecting universal matter, generation, and nutrition, so much resembles what was taught by some of the ancients, that it is difficult not to think that his ideas drew their origin from that first school. It appears indeed, that he had

• Perhaps this principle derives further illustration from scripture. "In the beginning was the Herd." John 1. 1. ED.

attentively read the ancients, and knew how to value them. He says himself, that "the ancients understood much better, and made a greater progress in the natural history of animals and minerals, than we have done. They abounded more in real observations; and we ought to have made much better advantage of their illustrations and -emarks." Yet Buffon does not seem to nave perceived the analogy which every where reigns between his system and that of the ancients.

Anaxagoras thought that bodies were composed of small, similar, or homogeneous particles; that those bodies, however, admitted a certain quantity of small particles that were heterogene, or of another kind; but that constitute any body to be of a particular species, it sufficed, that it was composed of a great number of small particles, similar and constitutive of that species. Different bodies were masses of particles similar among themselves; dissimilar, however, relatively to those of any other body, or to the mass of small particles belonging to a different species. Thus, the ancients taught, that blood was formed of many drops or particles, each of which had blood in it; that a bone was formed of many small bones, which from their extreme littleness evaded our view; and these similar parts they called poμguas similaritates. Likewise, that nothing was properly liable to generation, or corruption, to birth, or to death; generations of every kind, being no other than an assemblage of small particles constituent of the kind; and the destruction of a body being no other than the disunion of many small bodies of the same sort, which always preserving a natural tendency to reunite, produce again, by their conjunction with other similar particles, other bodies of the same species. Vegetation and nutrition were but means employed by nature for the continuation of beings; thus, the different juices of the earth being composed of a collection of innumerable small particles intermixed, constituting the dif ferent parts of a tree or flower for example, take, according to the law of nature, different arrangements; and by the motion originally impressed upon them, proceed till, arriving at the places destined and proper for them, they collect themselves and halt, to form all the different parts of that tree or flower; in the same manner as many small imperceptible leaves go to the formation of the leaves we see, many little parts of the fruits of different kinds to the composition of those which we eat; and so of the rest. The same, with respect to the nutrition of

animals. The bread we eat, and the other aliments we take, turn themselves, according to the ancients, into hair, veins, arteries, nerves, and all the other parts of our body; because there are, in those aliments, the constituent parts of blood, nerves, bones, hair, &c. which, uniting with one another, make themselves by their coalition perceptible, which they were not before, because of their infinite littleness.

Empedocles believed, that matter had in it a living principle, a subtile active fire, which put all in motion; and this Buffon calls, by another name, "organized matter, always active; or animated organic matter." According to Empedocles, "this matter was distributed through the four elements, among which it had an uniting force to bind them, and a separating to put them asunder; for the small parts either mutually embraced, or repelled one another; whence nothing in reality perished, but every thing was in perpetual vicissitude."

Empedocles had a sentiment, which Buffon follows, in the same terms; where he says, that "the sexes contain all the small parts analogous to the body of an animal, and necessary to its production."

Plotinus, investigating what might be the reason of this sympathy and attraction in nature, discovered it to proceed from such a 66 harmony and assimilation of the parts, as bound them together when they met," or repelled them when they were dissimilar; he says, that it is the variety of these assimilations that concurs to the form ation of an animal; and calls this binding, or dissolving force," the magic of the universe."

Anaxagoras thought as Buffon does, that there is no preexistent seed, involving infinite numbers of the same kind one within another; but an ever active organic matter, always ready so to adapt itself, as to assimilate, and render other things conformable to that wherein it resides. The species of animals and vegetables can never therefore exhaust themselves; but as long as an individual subsists, the species will be always new. It is as extensive now as it was at the beginning, and all will subsist of themselves, till they are annihilated by the Creator.

It would be easy to show, that in moral、 and politics, as in physics, the most em nent moderns have said nothing new Hobbes has advanced nothing, but what he found in the writings of the Grecian and Latin philosophers; and above all, in those of Epicurus. Montesquieu also assumes from the ancients the principles of his