for Lejay was also his master. The public buildings he designed are numerous, and highly valued; and, among other proofs of his taste, we ought not to omit his very admirable monument to the memory of our own countryman, sir Isaac Newton. The plan is a mausoleum placed on the centre of a sphere: immensity surrounds it; and the genius of the philosopher seems still to hover through his own empire. Boullée died, Pluviose 17, year VII, chiefly of the infirmities of age, be queathing his works, and a valuable MS. entitled 'Essay on Art,' to the national library.

The last biography is by the same author, and consists of a notice on the life and works of Jean Dusaulx.-Dusaulx was born at Chartres, Nov. 28, 1728; and his father was a magistrate of singular virtue and integrity. The son commenced the world as commissary in the gendarmerie; in which capacity he married a lady, who has survived him, and to whom he appears to have been attached with a fidelity and unremitted affection beyond what are exhibited by his countrymen in general. He declared, towards the close of his life, that she had been his first and his last love; and it was to her he was indebted for nearly the whole of his literary reputation. Madame Dusaulx, from the casual effusions of his pen, conceived him to be capable of spirited as well as elegant versification, and proposed to him to translate particular passages of Juvenal. These he executed with so much success, that he was incited by degrees to make a complete version of the whole of his satires, and thereby produced a performance which secured to him a very large acquaintance and friendship with the literary world. He became successively a member of the Academy of Belles Lettres, of the Legislative Assembly, and of the National Convention. The intrepid honesty with which he delivered his sentiments--sentiments uniformly in favour of peace and humanity-exposed him to no small severity of suffering during the turbulence of the revolution, and disrobed him of the greater part of his property. He died, Ventose 26, year VII, at the age of 61. Independently of his justly-admired version of Juvenal, he wrote several other works; particularly one, which excited much attention, entitled On the Passion of Gaming, from the Times of the Ancients to our own Days.' His biographer adds, that he left behind him a reputation untinctured with a blot.

The prize questions proposed by the present class do not appear to have excited much interest in the nation: several of them have been addressed a second time, and even in a varied form, and still remain unanswered: the latter are now, therefore, withdrawn altogether. The republic appears, like every other nation indeed, to possess more rhymesters than poets. The subject of LIBERTY, proposed as a poetic prize in the year VI, has produced not less than twenty-five attempts, in the forms APP. Vol. 35. 2 M

of odes, poems, and epistles in verse. Of these, three only are reported to be worthy of any degree of attention, and not one entitled to the prize announced. The questions- What are the means of exciting among ourselves a new activity in the study of the Greek and Latin languages?' and 'What were the causes of the perfection of ancient sculpture, and what may be the means of re-acquiring such perfection?' have been more fortunate. M. Veau de Launy, professor of natural history in the central school of the department of Indre-et-Loire, at Tours, has obtained the prize in the former instance, and M. Emeric David in the latter. The class seems tired of proposing prize questions, which have provoked so little emulation among its countrymen; while, therefore, several are withdrawn, we have no addition of new ones. The names of the artists follow, who, in the judgement of the Institute, have deserved the prizes of painting, sculpture, and architecture for the year VI. These appear to be all pupils of respectable masters. The three who have obtained the capital prize under each of the above heads are to be sent to Italy, to prosecute their studies at the national expense.

We have next a notice on the books and writings presented to the class. They consist of about a hundred articles, almost all of them in modern French. Of the few foreign books presented, the most valuable by far is a copy of Wakefield's edition of Lucretius, in three volumes quarto. Of the vernacular publications, the most splendid in the catalogue are Didot's editions of Malherbe and Virgil, both in superb folio.

We proceed to the Memoirs-of which the first is a report (compte rendu) by M. Camus, of the works undertaken by the National Institute, or executed under its direction. The labours to which the Institute is called are unbounded; for, independently of those which relate more immediately to itself as a body, the government seems to have demanded from it a sort of general superintendence over the universality of arts and sciences. It is to this demand of the French government that M. Camus directs his attention in the memoir before us. The first order of labours to which its notice is thus officially pointed, is a collection of the historians of France, a collection of charters and diplomas, and of ordonnances-some advance toward the whole of which we have remarked in a prior number. We have now to add, from the paper before us, that each of these truly valuable objects is proceeding with a rapid step. The Institute has obtained from the government a sufficiency of funds to assist the undertaking. In a few months from the date of the report, and consequently anterior to the present period, we are told that a volume of the collection of the historians of France, prepared by the joint labours of MM.

Briac and Drulhon, will be in a state fit for delivery to the press; and that a volume of charters and diplomas is preparing in the mean time, under the superintendence of M. du Theil.

The projected collection of the historians of the croisades, of which also we gave some intimation in the same article—that is to say, of monuments of the history of Europe, and of the East, from the termination of the eleventh to the beginning of the fourteenth century-is in a state of advance, and occupies the next notice of M. Camus. It is to be drawn up equally from Greek, Latin, and oriental writers; from documents of the invaders and invaded; as, from such a comparison alone, the positive truth can be deduced. Independently of these earlier labours, an express law of Germinal 15, year IV, obliges the institute to continue the Description of Arts begun by the Academy of Sciences, and the Extract of Manuscripts from the national libraries, commenced by the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. In the public sitting of the preceding Messidor, the programma for the continuation of the latter was published: it has not however made its appearance among the papers of the National Institute appertaining to the present or any other class. A great number of notices, we are told, were even then prepared; that the directory had issued orders for their imprinting; and that the publication of the first volume (constituting the fifth of the entire collection) is now in a state of great for

wardness.

The programma of the continuation of the Description of Arts is appended to the present memoir; and it points out very explicitly, under eight distinct heads, the mode by which those artists and men of letters who may be disposed to contribute toward this very laudable and national publication may best promote the general object in view. The intention is to compose one enormous whole, in a duly digested form, of all the arts now cultivated in the known world; to exemplify the relations and harmonies of theory and practice, of elements and` combinations, of the speculator and the artist, and hence to ascertain what is deficient in either, and to advance the general sum of human science and of human happiness. Two alphabetic tables are subjoined the first pointing out what arts have been already described by the old Academy of Sciencesand the second, those which yet remain to be detailed in the National Institute. The memoir closes in the following terms.

In other times, among other nations, under other governments, sciences and arts have waited for peace in order to flourish; but, when the public agitation has for its object to conquer liberty, this very elevation of soul, which excites us to flee from slavery, to abhor dependence, excites us with an equal ardor toward the sciences and the arts. The free, the sagacious

Minerva, the protecting deity of Athens, introduced the Muses amidst the companions of Mars. Those divinities marched in conjunction ;-in conjunction they still braid the wreath of republican soldiers: at the sound of the name of their chief, they intertwine the double title of favourite of the sciences and conqueror of tyrants. The people exult in this happy concert, and celebrate in their solemnities the triumph of corruscations, which produce liberty, and the triumph of liberty, which relu

mines the torch of sciences and arts.'

The object of this memoir is good, and we wish success to it; but its language is far from being strictly logical or correct. In the passage we have now quoted-and similar examples might be added-liberty is stated first to be conquered, and shortly afterward to triumph; and each is supposed to afford to the French people an equal cause of exultation! We will not enter into a discussion whether the former or the latter proposition be chiefly realised; we only wish that the latter were true to a greater extent than, we are fearful, it will be soberly allowed by any party.

(To be continued.)

ART. II.-L'Univers; Poëme en Prose, en douze Chants: suivi de Notes et d'Observations sur le Système de Newton et la Théorie physique de la Terre. Orné de Figures d'après Raphael, Le Poussin, Fuesly, Le Barbier; avec Vignettes d'après Monnet et Lejeune. Paris. 1801.

The Universe; a Poem in Prose, in twelve Books: to which are subjoined Notes and Observations on the Newtonian System, and the natural Theory of the Earth. Embellished with Plates, c. Imported by De Boffe.

'MY design' (says our author in his preface) has been to paint the universe, considered under its four grand points of view-natural, moral, political, and religious; and, consequently, to develop the four principal systems relative to each of these divisions; and linked together by the general system of the opposition of good and evil, on which the action of the poem depends.

In delineating the universe in a natural point of view, I have described the chief phænomena of nature, and entered into a variety of details concerning them whenever occasion has offered. With respect to morals, the precepts of Confucius and of Christ have served me for a basis. On the subject of politics, I have freely delivered my own sentiments; and having but lately possessed a sufficient degree of liberty for this purpose, I have been obliged till now to postpone the publication of this work. On the point of religion, to avoid the two

rocks of atheism and superstition, I have adopted theism, as the belief most general, most useful, and most poetical. I have admitted a hierarchy of beings superior to ourselves, from the Supreme Intelligence, whom I have denominated God, Eternal, Omnipotent, Creator, Being of Beings, to those intelligences who preside over different parts of the universe, and the earth. Thus, after the Eternal, I have supposed the existence of a secondary being, whom I call Nature, and who is particularly occupied with the earth and its inhabitants. I have supposed the existence of a being who directs the day-star, and whom I have alternately denominated Sun, Star, God of Day, or Genius of Fire:-of an intelligence who sways the waters, and who is, in like manner, alternately, Amphitrite, the Divinity of the Waters, the Sovereign of the Seas. I place in opposition to the Eternal, or Genius of Good, the Supreme Intelligence, and all the inferior Genii who assist him-the Genius of Evil or of Destruction, and his hateful retinue. Without this opinion of theism, without this conception of an order of intelligences, the poem could not have existed.'

Such is a part of the author's introduction, and such his machinery. He boasts considerably of his reading; and he has certainly brought together most of the shreds and absurdities of the old cosmologic systems. We have the ideal beauty, the soul of the world, and indestructibility of the material system of Plato; the atomic philosophy, the dissolution of substances into their primitive elements, and their recombination into other forms, of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius; and the existence of two coëternal principles of good and evil, of Zoroaster and the Manichæans. And whatever antagonism or opposition of theory may subsist, and radically and essentially does subsist, between these various hypotheses, without troubling himself upon this subject, or being very solicitous with respect to order and congruity,-our author (for the first time, we will venture to affirm, since their birth) has brought them all together, and boldly attempted an alliance between them. There is no necessity for the date of this publication, to inform us it was printed prior to the current year: for such is the mutation of sentiment, or at least of profession, that the expression Confucius and Christ would have been Christ and Confucius, had it been published within the last two or three months; or rather, perhaps, the name of Confucius would have been entirely suppressed from the prevailing fashion for Christianity. For the same reason, the author's theory would not have been that of simple theism; nor would he have conceived either that this constituted the most predominant creed among his countrymen, or that Christianity and superstition were synonymous terins.