who has long resided on the spot, the character and other particulars relative to a people with whom our intercourse is already an object of great mercantile importance, and of whom we know at present little more from correct information than we do of the inhabitants of Japan. Rural Economy-We are happy to announce that I. Riley & Co. have just published in 1 vol. 8vo. a very valuable work upon a method of building, much employed in Italy and France, known by the name of Pisè, the materials of which are earth, which promises to be of great utility in the country, more particularly as applied to farm houses, cottages and out buildings. It is the production of S. W. Johnson, Esq. of Brunswick, New Jersey, a gentleman who has long devoted his attention to improvements in husbandry and rural economy. This mode of building has received the sanction of the Board of agriculture in Great Britain by whom it is highly recommended to the government both for its cheapness, healthiness, and security from fire. The author who appears to have paid all that attention to the subject which its importance demands, has suggested some very material improvements upon the plan recommended by the Board of agriculture, together with such alterations as the difference of climate in this country may require. This publication contains also some general instructions relative to the site and arrangement of buildings appertaining to the farm, strictures on the cultivation of the vine, and an essay on the manner of making Turnpike Roads, with the advantages arising from them, accompanied with scales of elevation and depression for convex and concave roads, and a number of plates explanatory of the different subjects. From the cursory examination which we have been able to bestow upon this work, we hesitate not to recommend it which has fallen is almost without par. allel, in the same space of time. The winds have been principally from the N.E. and S.W. quarters. It is well to remark, that the furious storm from the north-east, which committed such havock among the shipping along the whole coast of the United States, was first felt in the southern latitudes. In Carolina, it commenced on the 21st of August. Along the coast of the middle states, it raged on the 22d and 23d. In Boston, it was not noticed till the 24th, although there was some rain on the day previous. This interesting fact confirms an observation, respecting the storms of this country, first made by Franklin, and after him by Williams and Volney. Phenomena of this nature should be carefully noted, in order to assist in explaining the peculiarities of the climate of the United States. The weather has been cooler than common during great part of the month. The cholera of children has probably been the most common disease. It has not been so frequent nor so fatal, as it usually is at this season. Nearly the same remark may be applied to the common disease of adults, the autumnal fever. This has generally been of a mild character, and rarely fatal. There have not been many cases of cow-pock during the past month. Editors' Notes. IN our present number we have the pleasure of presenting for the perufal of our patrons the Poem of Mr. Whitwell, which afforded fo much delight to those who heard it and conferred honour on the Society of which he is a member. The poem abounds with beautiful verfes and pungent fatire. We congratulate the author that, amid the buftle of the bar and the jargon of clients, he can fweetly tune the lyre; and that, after repeating the diffonant accents of NormanFrench and Leonine Latin, he can fing harmenious ftrains. We hope the author will occafion to the publick as one that will probably ally decorate our columns with wild flowers from prove of the greatest utility particularly to the agricultural interest-Herald. STATEMENT OF DISEASES, From Aug. 20 to Sept. 20. ON the 22d of August, the spell, which seemed to have bound the heavens, was broken; the rain fell in torrents, and since that time the quantity the banks of Kennebeck, and, in the words of "Though form'd for courts, vouchsafe to rove We regret that, in the hurry of copying, "Who spread Delufion like a mift around." THE MONTHLY ANTHOLOGY. OCTOBER, 1806. For the Anthology. A DISQUISITION UPON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ANCIENTS. PRONOUNCED BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF B K, AT THEIR BY THOMAS BOYLSTON ADAMS. THIS anniversary festival again invites the Brethren of the BK to renew their vows of friendship and fraternity; to revive the memory of former intimacies, and consecrate to futurity habits of affection more recently begun. Greetings of cordiality await the attending members of our social institution, mingled with regret for those unavoidably absent. We offer no incense to propitiate, and immolate no victim to appease heathen Divinities. In our Fasti this day is sacred to Candour and Philanthropy. Our only sacrifice is, of the worst to the best feelings of the heart; and the fragments gathered at our feast, which custom enjoins it as a duty to carry hence, are, the grateful remembrance of a mental repast, seasoned with the salt of Charity. Thus, in the principles of your Association, is found an excuse for the imperfections of the speaker, who, yielding to a sense of duty and your partial suffrage, rather than the consciousness of his insufficiency, for the task he has this day assumed, anticipates only gra3Q Vol. III. No. 10. ANNIVERSARY tuitous applause for well-meant endeavours. By the mystery of our calling, my brethren, we are naturally attracted toward the fountains of Science, and to ramble without re serve in the pleasant fields of Philosophy. Philosophy! which ages of superstition idolized as a Divinity, and which, though stripped of attributes and attractions, worthy the homage, and challenging those false trappings, still retains the love and admiration of man in every age. The prolifick parent of the social virtues and moral graces, it has been usual to personify Philosophy as a female, and in that character has she been honoured with " the glorious epithets of the Mistress of Manners, the Directress of Life, the Inventress of Laws and Culture, the Guide to Virtue and Happiness." If these be her appropriate titles, no wonder that Socrates, her great high priest, "who diverted the attention of his followers from abstruse speculations concerning the material world to the practice of virtue and the uniform observance of the duties of life," is represented by Cicero as having brought philosophy down from heaven. Thus descended, Pythagoras had already given her" a name, whereby she might be known among men." having defined those to be philosophers, "who made light of all other pursuits.and assiduously applied themselves to the study of nature, and the search after wisdom." The history of philosophy and that of letters are so intimately blended, that it is impossible to distinguish between those causes, which have retarded the progress of the one, without involving the fate of the other. One event, indeed, seems to have happened to them both. Like the Ben factors of mankind, in all ages they have shared largely of ingratitude; by turns the sport of wantonness and the victims of savage cruelty; sometimes in perils, like St. Paul, from false brethren, and sometimes suffocated by the smoke or reduced to cinders by the flames, which casualty or design have enkindled in the midst of their dwelling places. The errours of the human mind deserve consideration, not on their own account, but because we may use them as beacons to admonish us of danger, and as they point out the shoals, upon which others have made shipwreck. Shall we think with Hume* and Priestley, who concur in sentiment that "the devastations of barbarians and the destruction of records, with other monuments of antiquity, have been rather favourable, than adverse to the arts and sciences, by breaking the progress of authority"? Then, indeed, may consolation spring from some e * Hume's Essays. † Priestley. Lec. Gen. Policy. vents, which other eyes have viewed, and history records, as the consummation of calamity. The soldiers of Julius Cæsar and the Saracen caliph Omar, in league with the elements, tried by this test, were the first philanthropists. The progress of authority could not have been more effectually checked, than by the burning of those almost innumerable volumes, which the wealth of the Egyptian Ptolemies had amassed in the Alexandrian libraries. "An amazing repository of ancient science," the annihilation of which the accomplished author of the Observer‡ deplores, as the loss of the most valuable treasure upon earth. "It was buried in ashes," says this animated writer, "by the wellknown quibbling edict of a barbarous fanatick." "If, said the em perour, these volumes contain "doctrines conformable to the Ko<< ran, then is the Koran alone suf"ficient, without these volumes; "but if what they teach be repug"nant to God's book, then is it "fitting they were destroyed." "Thus, with false reason for their judge, and false religion for their executioner, perished an innumerable company of Poets, Philosophers, and Historians, with almost every thing elegant in Art and edifying in Science, which the most illuminated people on earth had, in the luxuriance of their genius, produced. In vain did the philosopher John, (surnamed the Grammarian) intercede to save them. Universal condemnation to the flames was the sentence, ignorance denounced against these literary martyrs. The flow of wit, the flights of fancy, and the labours of learning, alike contributed to feed the fires of those baths, in Cumberland's Observer, No. 19. which the savage conquerors recreated themselves after the toils of the siege." "Need we inquire, when art and science were extinct, if darkness overspread the nations? It is a period too melancholy to reflect upon and too vacant to record. History passes over it, as over the chart of an ocean without a shore, with this cutting recollection accompanying it, that in this ocean are buried many of the brightest monuments of an cient genius." The furious zeal of this Mahometan prince in favour of his religion, which thus laid science in ruins, has unhappily found a parallel in the annals of the Christian Church. At a period, when philosophy had incurred disgrace, by the perverseness and treachery of some unworthy professors, a Roman emperour waged war against the whole race of philosophers. Instigated by an inveterate aversion to those, who still practised pagan idolatry, Justinian shut up the schools, which still remained at Athens, and deprived the teachers of their revenues; and a Roman pontiff, inflamed by a similar hatred, under the pretext of confining the attention of the clergy to the sacred scriptures, at another time, consigned to the flames the valuable collections of books, formed by the Roman emperours. That learning should have survived these accumulated disasters is scarcely credible. As an epoch in the history of Philosophy, may it not be ranked with the general deluge of the world? And as the genealogy of princes, after the flood, could be traced no higher than the head of a single family, by whom the world was renewed, so, for a genealogy of letters, are we not compelled to look up to the solitary and scattered remnants, which escaped these general conflagrations? These, together with the Scriptures of Truth, have rebuilt and repeopled the desolate places of wisdom; and, if we listen to the self complacency of the present age, the light of Science now shines with brighter lustre and more expanded rays, than at any former period. As one proof, among many, of the prevalence of this opinion, an appeal to French authority may not be deemed unpardonable. A distinguished member of the French Academy,' contrasting the merits of ancient and modern researches into the arcana of nature, indulges in the following strain," No sooner had the first Philosophers looked about them, than they believed at once that they knew every thing. Their first impressions seem to have been-we see all things, and we are at no loss to account for the cause of all things. As in a dream, they beheld the universe rising to view; they dreamt of the principles, the properties, and the origin of things, and they never awoke from their slumbers." "Thus the ancients, in other words, those who deserve precedence in ignorance, believed themselves wise. Unfortunately, because they believed it themselves, nobody else doubted it. "Profess ing themselves to be wise they be came fools;" but this fact was not discovered for some ages. Seniority was, in their estimation, the best title to knowledge, and supplied all scientifick deficiences. The Egyptians are a law to the Greeks, the Greeks to the Romans; and in our day both Greeks and Romans are a law to us." "Empires are subverted, and nations are buried under their ruins, but opinions endure; they survive all ages, and never grow old. An ostensible change in modes of thinking is often less a proof of novelty, than of an old fashion in disguise." "Formerly philosophers undertook to explain every thing, without previous experiment; raising doubts, without knowing whether they were susceptible of solution; flattering themselves with hopes of new discoveries, without possessing the means of investigation, and even when they knew not what they sought. Alone inquisitive respecting things above their reach or comprehension, they associated vague ideas, obscure or fallacious. They framed hypotheses, and because they took no note of them, they were constantly reproducing the same opinions. in a new shape; so that nobody need be surprised at the information, that all the opinions of the ancient philosophers are comprized in a small compass of ideas, where in they are confounded with each other. No one has ever adventured beyond it, and, as to a common centre, all are attracted thither by ignorance, their guide." "True philosophy is but of yesterday, and it is because expe. riment has lent her aid to genius, that the sphere of knowledge is enlarged. Whatever may be the extent of this sphere, it is nevertheless bounded, and we cannot overleap its limits. Being "children of darkness rather than light," we are perpetually seeking that port, whence we departed on the voyage of discovery. But, if many things are impenetrably hid from our view, it is, at least, in our power to avoid many errours. Let us habituate ourselves to passing judgment upon things, of which we can attain true knowledge-let us be ignorant of the rest, and without fear avow it." In the same spirit, though more highly seasoned, is the opinion which the Baron Montesquieu* has left behind him, of the small advances, made by the ancients, in several branches of learning. At the close of a preface to one of his sallies of levity (called the Temple of Gnidus) he remarks, that, "if grave people should desire of him a less frivolous work, he is ready to satisfy the demand; having laboured thirty years upon a book of twelve pages, which will contain all our knowledge of metaphysicks, politicks, and morals, and every thing which the greatest authors have forgotten, in the volumes they have written upon those respective sciences." The term philosophy admits and has received a very large interpretation. "At some periods its sig. nification has been extended so far, as to include, not only all speculative science, but also skill in municipal law; the knowledge of medicine; the art of criticism and the whole circle of polite literature. The Christian religion was called sacred philosophy, and ecclesiastical doctors and monks were styled philosophers." "The history of philosophy, according to Dr. Enfield, is the history of the human understanding; clearly shewing the extent of its capacity, the causes of its perversion, and the means, by which it may be recalled from its unprofitable wanderings, and suc * Le Temple de Gnide, par le Baron Montesquieu. † Enfield's History of Philosophy. |