than the author's, we consider to be about two millions greater than the reality. Much is said of the populousness of the Italian states; but the late ingenious Fontana has shewn, so late as 1798, that many parts of the country now occupied by the French are extremely unwholesome, and that th of the inhabitants die annually. Indeed the number of inhabitants in all parts of Italy has been decreasing for several years past. But, were the French government conscious of such an enormous population, why has it not published a general census, the same as the English and Spanish governments have done? In the latter, not only the number of houses is given, but their inhabitants are classed, and the precise number of males and females devoted to each trade, arranged in opposite columns, in such a manner that in every province and large town the number of mechanics, merchants, nobles, monks, nuns, and soldiers, may be precisely known. Our author's account of the French territorial productions, like the Statistique generale' before alluded to, is chiefly compiled from Lavoisier and Arthur Young's Tour. He confesses indeed that many of Mr. Young's estimates of the productive fertility of France, are much greater than facts will warrant. Had Mr. Young travelled deliberately over France as a naturalist, in pursuit of minerals, or botanical studies, instead of a visionary agricultural theorist, he would not have so far deceived the world with an idea of the extreme fertility of that country. The chapter on the product of labour, offers nothing new except the duty called the patents. This is a direct tax on every kind of industry, and may be considered as one of the poll-taxes, which vary from about 6 francs to several hun dreds. Every artisan and mechanic is obliged to pay for his patente, that is, a legal privilege to follow his trade, in proportion to the money he can earn; and the most industrious, of course, pay the heaviest duty according to this mode of estimation. The Constituent Assembly proposed this tax, and calculated that it would produce above 23 millions of livres but, such is the state of that country with its boasted increase of population, that, except during the period of the Jate truce, this tax has gradually diminished to less than one fourth of its original amount. The loss of the French fisheries, which employed $6,668 See his excellent Dissertazione di arithmetica politica, soprà il modo di calę colare la vita media dell'uomo, s soprà l'errore degli scrittori d aritmetien politica, &c. tons of shipping, and produced 6 millions of livres annually, is feelingly lamented by our author. We pity the writer who is obliged to furnish a pompous statistical account of the actual commerce of France! M. Peuchet, however, like his predecessors, has given us pretty ample extracts from Necker, and bas wisely declined saying any thing of the commerce of modern France, which he well knows has had no existence for some years past. In the financial details, it appears that Buonaparte has adopted the English term budget, for the amount of the different receipts of revenues and the disbursements of the government. The estimate, or rather the budget for the 13th year, supposes the amount of the receipts to be 18+ millions sterling, of which 916,6661. are from what Sir Francis d'lvernois calls Recettes exterieures, and 833,335). from the sale of national domains. A sum nearly equal to this has been annually produced from the same source; but the national domains must one day or other be all sold, when the deficit may be irremediable. We perceive also that above a million of this revenue arises from deposits of money and its interest, given as pledges of honesty by those appointed to offices of trust or emolument. Such securities anay be, and no doubt are, indispensible in France; but they will unquestionably superinduce a mode of reasoning but too common in that country, and which always seeks for indemnification without regard to the means. Peculation indeed is not deemed unjust by most officers of that description. It is a truth applicable to all classes and situations in life, that whatever is done from no other motive than the mere pecuniary recompence attached to it, will never either benefit Society or do credit to the individual. The concluding chapter on the national forces of the French empire is thus introduced: The most numerous military corps is the infantry; that of France is at the same time the bravest in Europe; an honour which has long been the portion of the Spanish infantry, and which it retained till the battle of Rocroi, in 1643. The Russian infantry at present appears to hold the second rank in Europe; that of Prussia no longer rates but after the Austrian troops, and after them the English infantry, the worst of all. This abuse of the English soldiers has been industriously propagated in France as a national creed which it was necessary and politic to inculcate, and has become nearly as general as a similar opinion in this country, that one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen. Although we hold all national prejudices to be in the highest degree contemptible, yet we believe we may with safety assert, that on confronting some of these gasconading warriors with facts, they could not produce one instance from the days of Edward I. to the present bour, where a French army had either taken or forced an English one of equal numbers to re treat. We have extended our remarks on this unworthy compilation to a considerable length, because circumstances have ren dered us perhaps better acquainted with the general design of these statistical works, than many of our contemporaries. Two or three similar works are announced as nearly ready for publication. These form a part, and that a very important one, of Buonaparte's means of re-establishing, first the empire of Charlemagne, and finally that of ancient Rome; they display the countries under his dominion as populous, rich, and hap py; while those under the neighbouring governments are represented as miserable, tired of their rulers, and solicitous of participating in the blessings of his imperial protection. Treachery, bribery, ignorance and vulgar credulity, have moreover given effect to these false representations on the continent; in this country they will be believed with caution. ART. VII.-Aelteste erdkunde des Morgenlaenders, Ein biblisch-philologischer versuch von Philipp Buttman. Berlin. 1806. An Essay on the Knowledge of the Earth in the East in AN enquiry into the ideas of the ancients on the form of the earth, has been prosecuted with great industry in Germany; but it has been chiefly confined to the knowledge which we derive from the Greeks. Heyne, Maunert, Noss, Gosselin, have all laboured with various degrees of success in this field of enquiry; and, if Rennell has not attained his wish in the representation of the earth according to the ideas of Herodotus, yet the plan was well devised, and he deserves great credit for the attempt. What, however, these writers have attempted for the geographical representations of the Greeks and Romans, has been left untried in general for the Hebrews, and this treatise, from a man of Jearning, of a comprehensive turn of mind, and clearness of conception, is therefore the more worthy of our attention. Its object is to discover the meaning of the old tradition of Eden, with the four streams flowing out of it, of which the first chapter of Genesis contains only a concise account. According to our author, Eden could not have been on this side of the Euphrates, and we must look to some part of the earth, where are four great rivers, by which we may form an idea of the district in question. The inspired au thor represents the four rivers as if they flowed from one source, from one single district; this source however was unknown to him. It existed on those heights out of whose paradisaical gardens the original sinners were driven, and to which all future access was barred by angels with flaming swords. These heights are probably the chain of mountains called Imaus and Paropamisus, which to the inhabitants of the southern countries were the limits of their geographical knowledge. On this chain of mountains lived the original father of the human race in a delicious garden. On offending the divine command he was driven from the garden, and soon after, Cain, the first murderer, was driven for his crimes to the east of this country, to a land of wretchedness, and a curse or sentence was passed on him, that he should with his posterity live a wandering life. Directly to the east of Cashmire, near which our author places Paradise, live the wandering Tartars, whose roving life must to the settled inhabitants of the southern countries appear most wretched, and as arising only from some calamitous state, which they interpreted into a curse. If from Cashmire we proceed southwards towards India, four great rivers present themselves to our notice. Pison or Pisong, the Besynga of Ptolemy, and the present Irabatti, the most remote from the western Asiatics and least known to them, is therefore more fully described. It flows through the celebrated Chavila, where are gold and precious stones, and this country was called by the Greeks, xpuren xpx. The author here uses the words' flows through,' but in the origi nal it is, which rather means surrounds.' It was, we should therefore imagine, the eastern limit of the country in question; as in early times it was most natural that rivers should be boundaries of districts. Gihon is probably the Ganges, a stream of high honour in all times; Chin, the Hind or Indus; Dekel, or as in later times Dekl, Dikla, the Tigris; but, as the knowledge of these rivers was lost to the western Asiatics, the two rivers were confounded in one, and called by one name Hiddekel. As the Euphrates was universally known to the Hebrews, it required no farther explanation. These conjectures are established upon much reading, and in general we feel much inclined to adopt them. We can not, however, approve of the frequent use of the word bes when applied to any part of the scriptures; but this is a prevalent fashion among one class of the learned in Germany, and they affect to treat the knowledge we derive from the inspired writers in the same manner as they would the fables of the Greeks and Romans. That our author belongs to this class, is evident, not only from this treatise, but from another, in which much learning is displayed on the two first as of the Mosaical original history. These ubo, according to him, took their rise from a people living in the south-eastern part of Asia, and he grounds this conjecture on the circumstance, that Jehovah allowed to man food from the vegetable world alone, to which also the animal world was limited. This seems to have been originally the fiction of a nation and religious sect, that abhorred animal food, and they endeavoured to establish the prohibition of such food, by the tradition of an original command from the creator, and of a golden age, in which even the animals did not deyour each other. As this was not the case with the Hebrews, we are not to look to their race for the origin of this tradition, but to the south of Asia, where at the present day the greater part of the inhabitants hold animal food in detesta tion. ART. VIII. Des cultes qui ont precedés et amenés l'Idolatrie, &c. A Treatise on the different Forms of Worship which pre ceded and introduced Idolatry, or the Worshipping of kuman Figures, By J. A. Dulaure. Paris. 1805. Import ed by Deconchy. THE origin of idolatry is lost in the obscurest recesses of history. We know only that it began very early after the flood, and of all the writers upon the subject, the author of the book of Wisdom, whoever he was, seems to have assigned the most probable causes for this perversion of human rea son. The moment that the great truth was lost, that there was only one being to whoin diviue adoration was due, and that men could persuade themselves that more persons than one had divine command over human affairs, the door was open to every absurdity; each age would increase the stupidity of its predecessors, and the poems of Homer would naturally be disgraced by the condescension of the poet to the vile taste of his countrymen. In the history of idolatry, Homer's poems date far from its source; Hesiod, Orpheus, and Linus, are equally incapable of rendering us any assistance. Egypt with her population of gods might aid our researches if her hieroglyphics were understood; but to the Chaldeans most probably our attention ought to be |