a transcript of the tablet of my mind imprest with these images as they pass before it. You will see that I have noth. ing to do with the unbelievers, who have attacked the christian system either before the French revolution, or during or since that monumental period. I am not one of them. You say I resemble them not in any thing =else; you will now add that I resemble them not in this. So far as you have discovered a cause of the failure of that revolution in the renunciation of the christian faith by those who held, in stormy quick succession, the reins of your government, I thank you for the discovery. I was in want of more causes than I had yet perceived, to account for the unhappy catastrophe of that gigantic struggle of all the virtues against all the vices that political society has known. You have discovered a cause; but there is such a thing in logic as the cause of a cause. I have thought, but perhaps it is an error, that the reason why the minds of the French people took the turn they did, on the breaking out of the revolution, was to be found in the complicated ceremonials of their worship, and what you yourself would term the non-essentials of their relig. with the vital principles of faith and practice; and these exteriors were overloaded with abuses to such a degree, that to discriminate and take them down, with out injuring the system, requir ed a nicer eye than the people can possess, a steadier hand than can comport with the hurried movement of a great revolution. The scaffolding of your church, permit me to say it, had so enclosed, perforated, overlooked and underpropt the building, that we could not be surprised, though sorely grieved, to see the reformer lay his hand, like a blind Samson, to the great substantial pillars, heave and overturn the whole encumbered edifice together, and bury him. self in the ruins. Why did they make a goddess of reason? Why erect a statue of liberty? a mass of dead matter for a living energetic principle! Have the courage, my good friend, to answer these questions. You know it was for the same cause that the people of Moses, made their gol. den calf. The calf Apis had from time immemorial become a god in Egypt. The people were in the habit of seeing their divine protector in that substantial boval form, with two horns, four legs and a tail; and this habit was so interwoven in the texture of The reasonable limits of a let their mind as to become a part ter will not allow me to do jus- of the intellectual man. The tice to this idea. To give it the privations incident to a whole proper development would re- moving nation subjected them to quire five times the volume that many calamities. No human I shall give to the present comhand could relieve them; they munication. The innumerable felt a necessity of seeking aid varieties of pomp and circum- from a supernatural agent, but stance which the discipline of the no satisfaction in praying to church had inculcated and en- an invisible God. They had joined, became so incorporated never thought of such a being; ion. and they could not bring themselves at once to the habit of forming conceptions of him with sufficient clearness and confidence to make him an object of adoration, to which they could address their supplications in the day of great affliction. Forty years of migration were judged necessary to suppress the habit of using idols in their wor. ship; during which time their continual marches would ren. der it at once inconvenient for the people to move their heavy gods, and to conceal them in their baggage; while the severity of military discipline must expose their tents and their effects to the frequent inspection of their officers. Shall I apply this principle to the French nation in her revolution? No, my friend, it is too delicate a task for a foreigner who has received her hospitality; I will leave it to your own compassionate and philanthropic mind. You will recollect how often I partook of your grief dur. ing that scene of moral degrada. tion. No sooner did you and the other virtuous leaders in the revolution begin to speak of august liberty, holy reason, and the divine rights of man, than the artizans took up the hammer, the chisel and the plaister of Paris. They must reduce these gods to form before they could present them to the people with any chance of their being understood; they must create before they could adore. Trace this principle through five years of your history, and you will find why the catholic religion was overturned, morality laid asleep, and the object of the revolution irretrievably lost, at least for our day. My dear Gregoire, I am glad you have written me this letter, though at first it gave me pain. I was sorry to find myself so entirely misconceived by a friend so highly valued; but I see your attack is easily repelled, a thing which I know will give you pleasure, and it furnishes me an occasion at the same time to ren. der a piece of justice to myself in relation to my fellow citizens. You must know I have enemies in this country. Not personal ones; I never had a personal enemy, to my knowledge, in any country. But they are political enemies, the enemies of republi can liberty, and a few of their followers who never read my writings; that is my writings that I wrote, but only those that I did not write; such as were forged and published for me in my absence; many of which I never have seen, and some of which I did not hear of till ten years after they had been printed in the American gazettes. It has even been said and pub. lished by these christian editors, (I never heard of it till lately) that I went to the bar of your conven. tion, when it was the fashion so to do, and made a solemn recantation ofmy christian faith, declaring my. self an Atheist or Deist, or some other anti-christian apostate; I know not what, for I never yet have seen the piece. Now, as an active member of that convention, a steady attendant at their sittings, and my most intimate friend, you know that such a thing could not be done without your knowledge; you know therefore that it was not done; you know I never went but once to the bar of that convention, which was on the occasion to which you allude in the letter now before me, to present an address from the constitutional society in London, of which I was a member. You know I always sympathized in your grief and partook of all your resentment while such horrors and blasphe, mies were passing, of which these typographical cannibals of reputation have made me a participant. These calumnies you see could not be refuted by me while I did not know of their existence. But there is another reason which you will not conceive of till I inform you. newspapers, you know, ought to be considered as exercising a sacred function; they are the high priests of public opinion, which is the high court of character, the guardian of public morals. Now I am ashamed to inform you that there are editors in this country who will publish the grossest calumny against a citizen, and refuse to publish its refutation. This is an immorality unknown in France since the death of Marat. The editors of A private letter of mine, written from Paris, was mutilated in this country, made to say things that I never wrote nor thought, and published in all our anti-republican papers. I saw it a year after the date and immediately wrote an explanatory letter, which re-established my first intention. This last I then pub. lished in Paris, London, and Philadelphia. Not one editor who printed the original mutila ted letter has, to this day, printed my answer; though it was VOL. II. New Series. published in all those places ten years ago. And perhaps not one person in twenty who read the first has ever seen the second, or yet knows of its existence, except these editors who refused to publish it. You must not suppose from this statement of facts that I am angry with these people. Оп the contrary, I pity and forgive them. And there is no great merit in this, for they are not my enemies. They only do the work they are set about by their pat rons and supporters, the monar chists of America. Their object is not to injure me, but to destroy the effect of my republican writings. They now publish your letter with great avidity because they think it will tend to decry my poem. It may have this effect in a small degree; but I still thank them for multiplying your publication. There is no work of yours that I do not wish to see universally read in America; and I hope soon to find in our language and in the hands of all our readers your last very curious and interesting treatise de la literature des negres. It is a work of indefatigable research, and brings to light many facts unknown in this country; where the cause of humanity is most interested in propagating that species of knowledge. I hope the manuscript copy of Mr. Warden's translation is not lost; or if it is, that he will be able to furnish our booksellers with another. If I had renounced christian. ity, as your letter seems to suppose, that letter and my reflections on your life and conversa, tion would certainly bring me 2L back. For you judge me right when you say I am not ashamed to own myself possibly in the wrong; or in other words to confess myself a man. The gos. pel has surely done great good in the world; and if, as you imagine, I am indebted in any measure to that for the many excellent qualities of my wife, I owe it much indeed. I must now terminate my letter; or I shall be obliged to turn from you to the public, with an apology for making it so long ; since I must offer it to the public in my country, and trust to your sense of justice to do the same in yours and in your language, in order to give it a chance of meeting your letter in the hands of all its readers. If, thus united, they serve no other purpose, they will be at least a short liv. ed monument of our friendship, and furnish one example of the calmness and candor with which a dispute may be conducted, even on the subject of religion. Your affectionate friend, JOEL BARLOW. KALORAMA, 13th Sept. 1809. REVIEW. GENTLEMEN, To the Editors of the Panoplist. I have seen with much pleasure a Review of Fellowes' Religion without Cant repub lished in your third No. As this gentleman is fairly introduced to the Ameri can public, it is probable, that your readers will wish for a further acquaintance with ts merits as a writer. I request you, therefore, to publish another Review, from the same excellent periodical work, of another volume, written by Mr. Fellowes. This production, or rather this collection, is entitled "Poems, chiefly de scriptive of the softer and more delicate sensations, and emotions, of the heart,&c." You will find this Review in vol. 5 of the Christian Observer, page 755. From the specimens of Mr. Fellowes' sentiments, here given out of this Collection of Poems, the people of this country will easily discern what must be the divinity, which they are to expect from his pen. Those, who have originated, or knowingly encourag ed, the republication of Religion without Cant, are, it is to be presumed, pleased with the sentiments of Mr. Fellowes. But it is doubted whether the sober and decent, not to say religious, inhabitants of New-England will feel any disposition to receive their instruction from such a divine. I am, gentlemen, yours, &c. Y. Poems chiefly descriptive of the softer and more delicate sensations and entotions of the heart; original, and translated; or, imitated from the Works of Gesner. By ROBERT FELLOWES, Oxon. London, Mawman, 1806. 12mo. pp. 151. A.M. and was apparently unconscious of those merits, which were ob- ' vious to all the world besides. Our readers will naturally con clude that we do not moralize thus for nothing, and that, strange as it may seem, these reflections are in some way or oth er applicable to Mr. Fellowes. That they are not advanced with. out a cause, will be evident from the very first sentence in his book. "The author of the following pages, though he has often appeared before the public in the habit of a theologian, has never yet been seen in the character of a poet." This is modesty in an extreme. Dress is a thing, which varies with the fashion; and in this new habit we scarcely know how to recognize the divine; but Mr. F. has, long before this publication, been entitled to a distinguished place in the annals of poetry. For what are the qualifications, which constitute a poet? Without entering into that minuteness of description, by which Imlac endeavored to exalt his profession to the Prince of Abyssinia, we will venture in brief to assert, with the greatest critics of antiquity, that certain strength of diction and boldness of imagination are essential to his very name and character. And whereever we discover this, there, as if by common feeling and unanimous suffrage, we acknowledge the spirit of poetry. And there are few persons, we are persuaded, in the present dearth of gen. ius and degeneracy of times, who have indulged in such daring flights, as are to be found in the earlier publications of Mr. Fel. lowes. It is recorded of Milton, that he preferred the Paradise Regained to that great poem, which has rendered his name immortal. Other writers of eminence have fallen into a similar error with respect to the relative merit of their own productions; nor is Mr. Fellowes absolutely exempt from the charge. He would have given a much more appropriate description of his works, had it occurred to him to transpose their titles. His earlier productions ought in justice to be considered as poetry, if a grand style and bold fictions can confer that dignity without the aid of metre; and the work before us, instead of bearing the title of "Poems, chiefly descriptive of the softer and more delicate sensations, &c." would be more correctly designated by the character of "Essays on Love, morally, philosophically, and practically considered." It is in fact a plain, practical treatise, more particularly descriptive of that species of salutation, which children of a tender age are general. ly taught to practise. We are ready to admit, that opinions so widely different from those of the ingenious author himself on the quality of his own works, viz. which are the poems and which the essays, ought in no case to be advanced without solid and substantial reasons. Our wishes on this point do most perfectly correspond with our duty. It will be proper therefore to introduce the subject by a few quotations from his poetical compositions, before we descend to the analysis of the essays before us. In a work erroneously enti. tled, "Religion without Cant,"* whilst speaking of certain persons, whom Mr. Fellowes, in his nervous and energetic manner, distinguishes by the name of fanatics, he sublimely sings, "They make the delirium of sensation a substitute for integrity of char |