of victims, and the time of the year when they were offered to the Cretan. monfter, called the Minotaur. Whatever might be the origin of this fable, it is more than probable, from many circumstances, that human facrifices were ufed in Crete as well as in other countries. Sanchoniathon, quoted by Eufebius in his Gospel Preparation, fays, that this religious act had fubfifted time immemorial. Now, Sanchoniathon flourished long before the epocha at which we place Mofes, and eight hundred years after Thot, one of the legiflators of Egypt, whom the Greeks afterwards called Mercury. Vide Monde Primitif, &c. par M. Court de Gebelin. The paffage from Sanchoniathon, tranflated by Philo, is as follows: 66 Amongst the ancients it was ufual, in great public calamities, to purchase the general fafety, by facrificing to the avenging deities the dearest of their children. Ilous (or, according to the Greeks, Chronus, or Saturn, whom the Phoenicians called Ifraël, and afterwards deified) facrificed his own fon in a cafe of public danger. This fon was named Jeud, which fignifies the first born." This is the first offering to the Supreme Being on human record, and this offering was parricide. It is difficult to afcertain precisely whether the Bramins had this cuftom prior to the Phoenicians and Syrians. But it is unhappily true that, in India, thefe facrifices are of the highest antiquity, and that they are not even now abolished, notwithftanding all the efforts of the Mahometans. The English, the Dutch, the French, who go to traffic and cut their throats in thefe precious climates, have frequently feen rich, hand fome young widows throw themselves headlong into the funeral piles of their hufbands, regardless of the imploring hands and cries of their children entreating them to live for their protection. It is not long fince the lady of Admiral Ruffel was a fpectator of this horrid scene on the banks of the Ganges. Tantum relligio potuit fuadere malorum. The Egyptians would very ceremoniously throw a daughter into the Nile, if they were apprehenfive that the river would not rife to the requifite height. This execrable cuftom continued till the reign of Ptolemy Lagus, and it was, probably, as ancient as their religion and their temples. We mention not these customs of antiquity for the parade of learning; we figh to think that they appear fomething like instinct in human nature, and fee the indispensable neceffity of the exercife and interpofition of reafon. Lycaon and Tantalus, who ferved up their children to the gods, were two fuperftitious fathers, who committed parricide out of picty; and the doctrine of the mythologists, that the gods, gods, instead of being pleased with the oblation, punished them for their crime, did honour to their reafon. If there be any real dependence to be placed on ancient hiftory, the Jews were not altogether exempt from this crime. Adopting the language, the customs and ceremonies of their neighbours, they not only facrificed their enemies to the different divinities whom they worshipped, even fo low down as their return from Babylon, but even their children. And this may be believed, for, to fay the truth, they themselves acknowledge it. In the Effai fur l'Hiftoire de l'Efprit, et des Moeurs des Nations, we find that the Gauls and Teutons, thofe Teutons of whofe native honefty and fimplicity Tacitus fpeaks fo tenderly, had thefe execrable facrifices very common. This deteftable fuperftition of offering up human victims, feems to be so natural to the favage part of our fpecies, that Procopius tells us, one Theodebert, grandfon of Clovis, offered human facrifices for his fuccefs upon a marauding expedition into Lombardy. Thefe facrifices of Theodebert were, probably, a remnant of the ancient fuperftition of the Franks, his ancestors. We know but too well to what a pitch this execrable cuftom prevailed amongst the ancient Welchis, whom we call Gauls, when the Druids offered their diabolical infant facrifices. The favages on the banks of the Rhine had a kind of Druideffes, religious hags, whofe devotion confifted in folemnly cutting the throats of little boys and girls in large bafons of ftone, fome of which are in being at this day, and drawings of which may be feen in Profeffor Scheftin's Alfatia Illuftrata. Such are the monuments of this part of the world! fuch are our antiquities! A Phidias, a Praxiteles, a Scopas, and a Miron, have left us monuments of a different kind. When Julius Cæfar had conquered thefe favages, he fought to civilize them. He forbade the Druids to exercise their acts of devotion upon pain of being burnt themselves, and cut down the forefts where thefe religious murders had been perpetrated. But the priests perfifted in their rites. They facrificed children in private, faying, that it was better to obey God than men; that Cæfar was high pricft no where but at Rome; that Druidifm was the only true religion, and that there was no fuch thing as falvation without burning or cutting the throats. of children. Our favage ancestors having left in these regions the remembrance of fuch cuftoms, the Inquifition found the lefs difficulty in renewing them. The piles it lighted were for real human facrifices. The moft magnificent ceremonies of religion, pro M m 4 ceffions, ceffions, altars, benedictions, incenfe, prayers, choral hymns, all were employed on the occafion. The last mentioned facrifice had no connection with human jurifprudence. For, certainly, to eat a lamb in your own house, dreffed with bitter herbs, the doors being firft ritually made faft, on the 14th day of March, could be no offence against civil fociety. No man could be hurt by it; but then it were a fin against God, who, by the new Covenant, had abolished that ancient ceremony. It was to revenge the caufe of God, then, that the Jews were publicly burnt before the altar of the Inquifition! Surely Spain will have reason to blefs, through all pofterity, the man who fnatched the knife from the hands of the holy ruffians! But poffibly the time may come, when fhe will hardly believe that fuch an institution as the Inquifition ever existed! Most of the moralifts have confidered the lives of John Hufs, and Jerome of Prague, as the most magnificent and folemn of all human facrifices. The two victims were conducted to the awful pile by an Elector Palatine, and by an Elector of Brandenburgh; twentyfour princes or lords of the empire affifted. The Emperor Sigifmund fhone in the midst of them, according to the expreffion of a learned German prelate, like the fun in the midst of the ftars. The cardinals clad in their long trained robes of purple and ermin, covered with an immenfe hat of purple likewise, from which hung fifteen toffels of gold, fat in the fame line with the Emperor, above all the Princes. A crowd of Bishops and Abbots fat below, in lofty mitres fparkling with precious ftones. Four hundred Doctors on a lower bench fat with books in their hands. Oppofite were feventeen Ambassadors from all the courts in Europe, with their retinue. The places appointed for the reception of the curious of all denominations, were filled with fixteen thousand gentlemen. In the area of this vaft circus were placed five hundred muficians, who alternately played and fung pfalms. Eighteen thoufand priests from all the countries in Europe were present at the concert; and feven hundred and eighteen, fome fay eighteen hundred, courtezans, magnificently dreffed, and placed among the reft, formed one of the fineft fpectacles that it is poffible to imagine. It was in the midst of this auguft affembly that John and Jerome were burnt in honour of Jefus Chrift; that Jefus who brought back the loft sheep upon his fhoulders: and the flames, as they afcended, fays an author of those days, made the vault of heaven rejoice! It It must be owned, after fuch a fpectacle, that when the Picard, John Calvin, burnt the Spaniard Michael Servetus upon a pile of green faggots, it was only like a puppet fhew after a play. All those who have thus facrificed others for a difference of opinions, could certainly mean only to facrifice them to God. When Polieuctus and Nearchus, impelled by indiscreet zeal, disturbed the feaft that was celebrated for the prosperity of the Emperor; when they broke the altars and the ftatues, and women and children were crushed by the ruins, their offence was of a civil nature. It was a breach of the laws of fociety, of the laws of men, who might therefore juftly pass fentence upon them, and put them to death. This was an act of human juftice: but when for erroneous doctrines, or ill grounded propofitions, when the humour hits to punish for these, it is a facrifice to God. The maffacre of St. Bartholomew, the anniverfary of which was lately celebrated in the centurial year 1772, might have been deemed a facrifice, had it been conducted in better order, and with more form and dignity in the execution. Was not the death of Anne Dubourg, prieft and counsellor of parliament, and equally well refpected in those capacities, a genuine facrifice? Have not the hearts of half the fenfible and intelligent people in Europe fwelled with indignation against other and even more atrocious barbarities? Have not we feen two children, who deferved only paternal correction, exposed to the most cruel death and torture? If the perpetrators of this horrid deed had children, if they allowed themselves a moment for reflection, if the reproaches which from every quarter affailed their ears were able to reach their hearts, poffibly they might fhed a tear while they looked upon this page. The curfes of mankind, however, are due to them, and the curfes of mankind be upon their heads! Vide note after the tragedy. This tragedy, which may now be efteemed one of Voltaire's beft and most useful dramas, has the fineft moral tendency that can be conceived. It ends happily with the abolition of human facrifices in Crete, and with the prefervation of Afteria, the King's daughter, who, by the laws, was to have been facrificed. To give the story a greater intereft, fhe has a lover, in whose arms the poet leaves her. The tragedy is followed by feveral poems, of which that called La Loi Naturelle, the Law of Nature, written about twenty years ago, and addreffed to the King of Pruffia, seems to be the best. It has wit, fenfe, and fpirit, and is much in the manner of Pope's Effay on Man. We are next presented with a feu-d'Efprit on the Crufades, occafioned by a late panegyric on St. Lewis, read before the Academy at Paris • On On reading the panegyric of St. Lewis, fays the Author, delivered by M. Mauri before our illuftrious Academy, I expected under the article Crufades to have found Peter the Hermit metamorphofed into a Demofthenes, or a Cicero. It really makes one envy the Crufade. I own I fhould not be forry to fee one fet on foot again ft the Turk. I love the Greek church, because it is the mother of the Latis church. I dare fay there are princes who, on occafion, would unite to fet up not on high, but on his legs, at leaft] the patriarch of Conftantinople, who was demolished by the Mufti. I fhould like much to fee fair Greece, the country of Alcibiades and Anacreon, rescued from its long flavery. It would be an high entertainment to fup in the free city of Athens with Afpafia and Pericles, after coming from one of the plays of Sophocles.. But to go and bear arms in the neighbourhood of Imaüs and Chorazim, I own, I do not much relish that. All the former hiftorians of the Crufades, feem to have been bit by the fame tarantulas with the Crufeés themselves. For, in their opinion, men were effentially ferving God in abandoning the cultiva tion of the moft fertile lands in the Weft, in carrying gold and filver into a region of fterility, in vifiting the Holy Land with their miftreffes on horfeback behind them, and in having their throats cat by the Turks and Saracens, eighteen hundred leagues from their own country. As to right, they had no pretence. What then could be the Occafion of this epidemic madness, which lafted above two centuries, and which was fignalized by every fpecies of cruelty, every degree of perfidy, debauchery, and outrage, which could difgrace human nature? -L'Arme pietofe el capitano, Che grand fepulchro liberó di Chrifto, may do very well in an epic poem ; but is by no means conformable to the genius of history, fuch as the Senno of this day expects to find it, I would venture to fay with fubmiffion, and, poffibly, I may be deceived, that the Popes conceived this bold and hardy enterprize of carrying the arms of Europe into Afia. Pilgrimages were much in fashion. They began at Mecca, where the wife men of the Eat pretended that Abraham and Ishmael were interred. These temporary emigrations were imitated in Europe. People went to Rome to vifit the fepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul, whofe bodies were buried in that city, according to the wife men of the Weft, But the opinion propagated a long time amongst Chriftians, that the world drew near to its diffolution, had for near a century turned the faithful from pilgrimages to Rome to pilgrimages to Jerufalem. The tomb of Jefus Chrift was naturally more an object of their devotion than the tombs of his difciples. Though, after all, there was no more demonftrative proof of the identical fpot where he was buried, than of the precife place where Abraham was interred, The world not coming to an end, as was expected, and the Turks, mafters of Jerufalem, treating the pilgrims with extortion, thofe of the Latin church complained not only of their being obliged to pay too dear for their devotion, but also of the depredation of the Arabs, |