leaders to foreign intrigue, by destroying their chance for do mestic advancement. The advocates of these tenets indulge, at the present time, an unrelenting spirit of proselytism; and, not contented to withhold, they are active in denying, the rights of the people. Instead of merely refusing the boon of novel franchises, they treat questions of change or reform as seditious; and the concerted pursuit of redress as treasonable conspiracy. Possessed of ecclesiastical zeal, they would employ every estab lished government as a political inquisition.

This needless addition of irritation to power, and of persecution to authority, provokes extremely all the excluded classes: for it is in human nature to bear with much oppression if flattered by its governors, and to feel angry at small oppressions if reviled by them. The adoption, therefore, of the furious Antijacobin creed, by the rulers of any country, tends to produce an alienation of the multitudinous class; who, from anger rather than reflection, are prone to desert governors who affect to despise them, in favor of governors who affect to regard them, even when the probability is great that the latter will be less mild so that, wherever an invasion from the Jacobin power is practicable, it finds adherents in proportion to the violent Anti-Jacobinism of the government attacked. The Ochs and the Laharpes would no where have been able to deliver over their countrymen, were the nominal increase of popular power an habitual occupation of the constituted authorities. So much for the general causes of a revolution which we deeply and decidedly lament.

The author of the pamphlet before us rather pronounces the elegy than details the fall of the independence of Switzerfand; and he writes with eloquent bitterness. He pays a tri bute of applause to the firmness of the virtuous Steiguer, (p. 47,) who, in the final deliberation of the senate of Berne, when it determined to accede to the demands of the revolu tionists, resigned the insignia of his dignity, and refused to take part in the debate. It is not easy to infer from the narrative, (p. 53,) whether the soldiers of d'Erlach *, who, after their defeat, sacrilegiously murdered this General, were led to battle under a persuasion that they were contending for the antient or for the reformed government of their country.→→→ The writer suggests (p. 55) that Switzerland might have been saved by appointing Steiguer a dictator, or (as our constitution calls an extraordinary magistrate of this kind) a protector, with a temporary supreme command-but it is not easy to conceive how a dictator could have been created in Switzerland, To

The Erlacht are one of the fix families privileged at Berne.

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appoint by a convention of deputies would have been acted ing at once to the claims of the democrats; and surely this author will not admit that a domestic Jacobinization was the only defence against foreign subjection,-the only mode of recovering the public allegiance,-the only price which would have purchased that omnipotent zeal of the whole nation, which could alone have coped with French energy. We ought not, however, to talk of Jacobins in Switzerland: the Swiss, like our roundheads of the last age, are religious republicans. Tay

ART. XVI. Memorias da Acad. R. das Sciencias de Lisboa, &c. i. Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Lisbon, Vol. the 1st. Small Folio. 577 pages. Lisbon. 1797.

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"HE institution of philosophical societies is, perhaps, to be reckoned among the principal causes of the superiority of the moderns over the antients, in respect to natural and ma thematical knowlege. Besides the emulation usually arising from an establifhed intercourse between ingenious men, who are employed in the same pursuits, their transactions serve to keep in store for future ages a vast number of observations and ideas, which might otherwise fall into oblivion; and they disseminate, in the mean time, a taste for science, and a tendency to increase its cultivation. In regard to national utility, their good effects are numberless, and have been felt by all the states that have in any degree encouraged them; even by that northern empire in which the academy of sciences, recruited from foreign countries, bears more the appearance of a col lection of exotics, which luxury nourishes in a hot-house, than of an article of indigenous culture. We therefore congratu late our antient allies on the happy, though tardy, establishment of a Royal Society in their country; and we most cordially hail this first publication of the transactions of that learned body.

At the opening of this volume appears a short and simple but dignified dedication to the Prince Regent of Portugal, from the Duke de Lafoens, the president, and, as is well known to the literary world, the original founder of this society. A preface follows, written, we suppose, by one of the secretaries of the academy, and apologizing for the non-appearance of the history of the society, in the present volume. Had this aca demy been long established, no apology, we believe, would have been thought necessary; the works of literary societies being their proper history. Insertions of that nature have long been discountenanced by the English Royal Society; and the Pa risian Academy of Sciences discontinued it in the latter vo

lumes

lumes of their collection. On the first appearance, however, of a respectable body, which bids fair to raise the literary reputation of Portugal, and to establish an useful co-operation with other European societies in the general culture of science, the curiosity of foreign nations has a right to be indulged with some information concerning its origin and constitution. We shall therefore endeavour to gratify our readers with such authentic intelligence as the book before us, the Lisbon Court Calendar, and public notoriety, confirmed by respectable persons who have resided in that country, have enabled us to collect.

This Royal Academy was founded in the year 1779, by the Duke de Lafoens, uncle to the present Queen; and by his fostering care it has been brought to its present state. The Sovereign is the immediate patron, and the founder is President. Twenty-four effective members' are equally divided into three classes, 1st, Natural Sciences; 28, Mathematics; 3d, National Li terature: these form, as it seems, the main body of the society: the remainder of which is composed of thirty-six (called free) members; a small number of foreign literary characters, and a larger one of great personages of the nation, as honorary members; soine veteran members; and a considerable proportion of extra correspondents. Government allows them a revenue; by means of which they have established an observatory, a museum, a library, and a printing-office,

From the catalogue of works published by order of the Academy, which we find printed at the end of this volume, and from some of their proposals for prize dissertations, we observe that this society has directed its attention to, and has encouraged the advancement of, many objects, which do not generally, in other countries, require the care of an academy of sciences. In all probability, they found these useful pursuits too much disregarded in Portugal; and we have been on this occasion reminded of the many different arts, which industrious settlers in a new country are obliged to exercise. The more, however, we lament the baneful effects of protracted darkness, the more we are disposed to praise the enlightened and enlightening zeal of this new institution,

Two memoirs on Portuguese Literature, twelve on Natural Philosophy and Natural History, six on Astronomy, and four on pure Mathematics, followed by an Eulogium of M. d'Alembert, who was one of the foreign members of the academy, compose the present volume.

I. PORTUGUESE LITERATUre.

These papers on the national literature of Portugal have much excited our curiosity. From the Portuguese books

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which a long intercourse between the two nations has brought to England, we had entertained rather an unfavourable opinion of their present literary taste: but we have been agreeably surprised on seeing the memoirs before us rise superior to our expectation.

On the State of Lusitania, till it became a Roman Province, by M. A. C. DO AMARAL.

This writer discards, with a critical judgment, every notion respecting this subject which is not supported by the only com. petent authority, that of Greek and Roman writers. He endeavours, from scattered passages in those authors, to give a view of Lusitania, and of its state in those remote ages; and considering the scanty information which the antient writers afford on this subject, he has executed his task with success. He directs his attention to the different nations which in, habited the country, their original state, their forms of government, laws, trade, and occupations; examines the resemblances (in our opinion, very faint,) which some of these nations bore to the Greeks, whose descendants they were supposed to be; and concludes his paper with pertinent reflections on the warlike character of the Lusitanians, their obstinate resistance, and their final subjection, to the Romans.

The form of this memoir evinces the taste of its author; the narrative part is free from the tediousness of multiplied quotations; the authorities which support it, and the critical disquisitions which they occasion, being thrown into the numerous annotations that accompany the paper. In regard to language, however, we remark a flowery style, more adapted to a rhetorical than an historical composition; one instance of which is the continual use of verbs in the present tense, and which, though it may be on particular occasions properly adopted in speaking of past circumstances, is tiresome and improper when employed to recount the events of a long period. Bossuet writes thus in the first part of his discourse on universal history, (if our memory does not fail us,) but resumes the common mode throughout the rest of the work. That elegant writer was well aware of its impropriety, and employed it only to enliven the dulness of a dry recapitulation of epochs, for the French Dauphin, On the whole, we must praise this memoir of M. D'AMARAL, but hope for improvement in the continuation: this being, as he informs us, the first of a series of papers which he intends to publish on the history of the legislation and customs of the Portuguese. On the Bucolic Poetry of the Portuguese. By M. J. DE Foyos. We presume that this discourse is also the first of a series of dissertations, on the subject which it treats; as we have

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not found in it any thing particularly relating to Portuguese Bucolic poetry, but a bare enumeration of seven Portuguese. poets who have written eclogas with distinguished applause among their countrymen, viz. Sà de Miranda, Ferreira, Ca moens, Bernardes, Rodrigues Lobo, Alvares do Oriente, and Veiga, who all lived in the xvith and xvIIth centuries. M. DE

FoYos tells us that their compositions may cope with the best eclogues which either Greece or Latium have left, and mo destly asserts that they are superior to any similar productions of English or French poets: we wait for the proofs on which he grounds this confident decision, and which he will doubtless produce in the following memoirs. In the mean time, though this paper does not afford any information on Portuguese Bucolic poetry, it deserves praise as a dissertation on Bucolics in general. It contains sound though trite doctrines, and shews that the author is well acquainted with classic writers, and with the judges and legislators of poetry, from Aristotle down to Marmontel.

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY and NATURAL HISTORY.

DOMINICI VANDELLI Flora et Fauna Lusitanica specimen. Some years ago, Professor VANDELLI published a Specimen Flora Lusitanica et Brasiliensis, which excited general dissatis faction in the botanic world. A dry list of names of plants, like the catalogues of our nurserymen, without observations, without habitats, and without characters, (except of a few, which he supposed to be new plants,) very inadequately fulfilled the promises of the title. These supposed new plants were soon found to be already well known to botanists; or were given by the Professor in such terms, that even the industry of a Wildenow could not make any thing of them. From the title of the memoir before us, we were induced to believe that, at least in what concerns Portugal, Professor V. intended to open a larger store of botanical information, in order to make some amends for former deficiencies: but we were soon mortified by disappointment. The paper is a bare catalogue of about thirteen hundred plants, of which many more than two hundred are marked with asterisks as foreign to the country. What right, therefore, they could have to be named here, cannot be easily guessed; nor will botanists be satisfied with the remaining number as a specimen of a Flora so rich in subjects as that of Portugal. Even in this meagre list, on close inspection, a reader may doubt the accuracy of the information: for example, the Olea Europea, the Chamarops humilis, the Nerium Oleander, and the Buxus sempervirens, are marked

* Spec. Plant. t. 1. p. vi.