left hand; the salutations of the master before the chair where the stranger is to be seated, for he salutes it most profoundly, and wipes the dust away with the skirts of his robe; all these and other things are noticed, even to the silent gestures by which you are entreated to enter the house. The lower class of people are equally nice in these punctilios; and ambassadors pass forty days in practising them before they are enabled to appear at court. A tribunal of ceremonies has been erected; and every day very odd decrees are issued, to which the Chinese most religiously submit.

The marks of honour are frequently arbitrary; to be seated with us is a mark of repose and familiarity: to stand up, that of respect. There are countries, however, in which princes will only be addressed by persons who are seated, and it is considered as a favour to be permitted to stand in their presence. This custom prevails in despotic countries: a despot cannot suffer without disgust the elevated figure of his subjects; he is pleased to bend their bodies with their genius; his presence must lay those who behold him prostrate on the earth; he desires no eagerness, no attention; he would only inspire

terror.

SINGULARITIES OF WAR.

WAR kindles enthusiasm, and therefore occasions strange laws and customs. We may observe in it whatever is most noble and heroic, mixed with what is most strange and wild. We collect facts, and the reader must draw his own conclusions.

They frequently condemned at Carthage their generals to die after an unfortunate campaign, although they were accused of no other fault. We read in Du Halde that Captain Mancheou, a Chinese, was convicted of giving battle without obtaining a complete victory, and he was punished. With such a perspective at the conclusion of a battle, generals will become intrepid, and exert themselves as much as possible, and this is all that is wanted.

When the savages of New France take flight, they pile the wounded in baskets, where they are bound and corded down as we do children in swaddling-clothes.If they should happen to fall into the hands of the conquerors, they would expire in the midst of torments. It is better therefore that the vanquished should carry them away any manner, though frequently even at the risk of their lives.

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The Spartans were not allowed to combat often with the same enemy. They wished not to inure these to battle; and if their enemies revolted frequently, they were accustomed to exterminate them.

The governors of the Scythian provinces gave annually a feast to those who had valiantly, with their own hands, despatched their enemies. The skulls of the vanquished served for their cups; and the quantity of wine they were allowed to drink was proportioned to the number of skulls they possessed. The youth, who could not yet boast of such martial exploits, contemplated distantly the solemn feast, without being admitted to approach it. This institution formed courageous

warriors.

War has corrupted the morals of the people, and has occasioned them to form horrible ideas of virtue. When the Portuguese attacked Madrid, in the reign of Philip V., the courtesans of that city were desirous of displaying their patriotic zeal: those who were most convinced of the envenomed state of their body perfumed themselves, and went by night to the camp of the enemy; the consequence was that in less than three weeks there were more than six thousand Portuguese disabled with venereal maladies, and the greater part died.

Men have frequently fallen into unpardonable contradictions, in attempting to make principles and laws meet which could never agree with each other. The Jews suffered themselves to be attacked without defending themselves on the Sabbath-day, and the Romans profited by these pious scruples. The council of Trent ordered the body of the constable of Bourbon, who had fought against the Pope, to be dug up, as if the head of the church was not as much subjected to war as others, since he is a temporal prince.

Pope Nicholas, in his answer to the Bulgarians, forbids them to make war in Lent, unless, he prudently adds, there be an urgent necessity.

FIRE, AND THE ORIGIN OF FIRE-WORKS.

In the Memoirs of the French Academy, a little essay on this subject is sufficiently curious; the following contains the facts:

FIRE-WORKS were not known to antiquity.-It is

certainly a modern invention. If ever the ancients employed fires at their festivals, it was only for religious purposes.

Fire, in primeval ages, was a symbol of respect, or an instrument of terror. In both these ways God manifested himself to man. In the holy writings he compares himself sometimes to an ardent fire, to display his holiness and his purity; sometimes he renders himself visible under the form of a burning bush, to express himself to be as formidable as a devouring fire: again, he rains sulphur; and often, before he speaks, he attracts the attention of the multitude by flashes of lightning.

Fire was worshipped as a divinity by several idolaters: the Platonists confounded it with the heavens, and considered it as the divine intelligence. Sometimes it is a symbol of majesty.-God walked (if we may so express ourselves) with his people, preceded by a pillar of fire; and the monarchs of Asia, according to Herodotus, commanded that such ensigns of their majesty should be carried before them. These fires, according to Quintus Curtius, were considered as holy and eternal, and were carried at the head of their armies on little altars of silver, in the midst of the magi who accompanied them and sang their hymns.

Fire was also a symbol of majesty amongst the Romans; and if it was used by them in their festivals, it was rather employed for the ceremonies of religion than for a peculiar mark of their rejoicings. Fire was always held to be most proper and holy for sacrifices; in this the Pagans imitated the Hebrews. The fire so

carefully preserved by the Vestals was probably an imitation of that which fell from heaven on the victim offered by Aaron, and long afterwards religiously kept up by the priests. Servius, one of the seven kings of Rome, commanded a great fire of straw to be kindled in the public place of every town in Italy to consecrate for repose a certain day in seed-time, or sowing.

The Greeks lighted lamps at a certain feast held in honour of Minerva, who gave them oil; of Vulcan, who was the inventor of lamps; and of Prometheus, who had rendered them service by the fire which he had stolen from heaven. Another feast to Bacchus was celebrated by a grand nocturnal illumination, in which wine was poured forth profusely to all passengers. A feast in memory of Ceres, who sought so long in the darkness of hell for her daughter, was kept by burning a number of torches.

Great illuminations were made in various other meetings; particularly in the Secular Games, which lasted three whole nights; and so carefully were they kept up, that these nights had no darkness.

In all their rejoicings the ancients indeed used fires ; but they were intended merely to burn their sacrifices, and which, as the generality of them were performed at night, the illuminations served to give light to the ceremonies.

Artificial fires were indeed frequently used by them, but not in public rejoicings; like us, they employed them for military purposes; but we use them likewise successfully for our decorations and amusement.