tion to enter into the refined inquiries, the subtile distinctions and elaborate investigations, which a court of law demands.

May we suppose that these ordeals owe their origin to that one of Moses, called the Waters of Jealousy?' The Greeks likewise had ordeals, for in the Antigonus of Sophocles, the soldiers offer to prove their innocence by handling red-hot iron, and walking between fires. One cannot but smile at the whimsical ordeals of the Siamese. Among other practices to discover the justice of a cause, civil or criminal, they are particularly attached to using certain consecrated purgative pills, which they make the contending parties swallow. He who retains them longest gains his cause! The practice of giving Indians a consecrated grain of rice to swallow is know to discover the thief, in any company, by the contortions and dismay evident on the countenance of the real thief.

But to return to the middle ages. They were acquainted in those times with secrets to pass unhurt these singular trials. Voltaire mentions one for undergoing the ordeal of boiling water. Our late travellers in the east have confirmed this statement. The Mevleheh dervises can hold red hot iron between their teeth. Such artifices have been often publicly exhibited at Paris and London. Mr Sharon Turner observes on the ordeals of the Anglo Saxons, that the band was not to be immediately inspected, and was left to Se chance of a good constitution to be so far healed during three days (the time they required it to be bound up and sealed, before it was examined) as to discover those appearances when inspected, which were allowed to be satisfactory. There was likewise much preparatory training suggested by the more experienced; besides, the accused had an opportunity of going alone into the church, and making terms with the priests. The few spectators were al ways distant; and cold iron, &c, might be substituted, and the fire diminished at the moment, &c.

Doubtless they possessed these secrets and medicaments, which they had at hand, to pass through these trials in perfect security. Camerarius, in his 'Hora Subscecivæ,' gives an anecdote of these times which may serve to show their readiness. A rivalship existed between the Austin friars and the Jesuits. The father general of the Austin friars was dining with the Jesuits; and when the table was removed, he entered into a formal discourse of the superiority of the monastic order, and charged the Jesuits in unqualified terms, with assuming the title of 'fratres, while they held not the three vows, which other monks were obliged to consider as sacred and binding. The general of the Austin friars was very eloquent and very authoritative;-and the superior of the Jesuits was very unlearned, but not half a fool.

He did not care to enter the list of controversy with the Austin friar, but arrested his triumph by asking him if he would see one of his friars, who pretended to be nothing more than a Jesuit, and one of the Austin friars who religiously performed the aforesaid three vows, show instantly which of them would be the readier to obey his superiors? The Austin friar consented. The Jesuit then turning to one of his brothers, the holy friar Mark, who was waiting on them, said, 'Brother Mark, our companions are cold. I command you, in virtue of the holy obedience you have sworn to me, to bring here instantly out of the kitchen fire, and in your hands, some burning coals, that they may warm themselves over your hands.' Father Mark instantly obeys, and to the astonishment of the Austin friars, brought in his hand a supply of red burning coals, and held them to whoever chose to warm himself; and at the command of his superior returned them to the kitchen hearth. The general of the Austin friars, with the rest of his brotherhood, stood amazed; he looked wistfully on one of his monks, as if he wished to command him to do the like.But the Austin monk, who perfectly understood him, and saw this was not a time to hesitate, observed,-'Reverend father, forbear, and do not command me to tempt God! I am ready to fetch you fire in a chafing dish, but not in my bare hands.' The triumph of the Jesuits was complete; and it is not necessary to add, that the miracle was noised about, and that the Austin friars could never account for it, notwithstanding their strict performance of the three VOWS!

INQUISITION.

Innocent the Third, a pope as enterprising as he was successful in his enterprises, having sent Dominic with some missionaries into Languedoc, these men so irritated

the heretics they were sent to convert, that most of them were assasinated at Toulouse in the year 1200. He called in the aid of temporal arms, and published aginst them a crusade, granting, as was usual with the popes on similar occasions, all kind of indulgences and pardous to those who should arm against the Mahometans, so he styled these unfortunate men. Once all were Turks when they were not catholics! Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was constrained to submit. The inhabitants were passed on the edge of the sword, without distinction of age or sex. It was then he established that scourge of Europe. The Inquisition for having considered that though all might be compelled to submit by arms, numbers might remain who would profess particular dogmas, he established this sanguinary tribunal solely to inspect into all families, and inquire concerning all persons who they imagined were unfriendly to the interests of Rome. Dominic did so much by his persecuting inquiries, that he firmly established the inquisition at Toulouse.

Not before the year 1484 it became known in Spain.To another Dominican, John de Torquemada, the court of Rome owed this obligation. As he was the confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquer. ed Granada, and had expelled from the Spanish realm multitudes of unfortunate Moors. A few remained, whom, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they, at least assumed the name; but it was well known that both these nations naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christian. This race was afterwards distinguished as Christianos Novos: and in forming marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by mingling with such a suspicious source.

Torquemada pretended that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the interests of the holy religion. The queen listened with respectful diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to consent to the establishment of this unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in his zeal for the holy seat, in the space of fourteen years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prosecuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were condemned to the flames!

Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal horror such proceedings spread. A general jeal ousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people : friendship and sociability were at an end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children.

The situations and the feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself in the cell of the inquisition. Inclosed in this dungeon I could not even find space enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I felt my brain disordered. 1 frequently asked myself, am I really Don Bathazaar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so much enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that all my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in this dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical dis putations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and præses!

In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six pillars surrounded his tomb, to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to his being burnt. On this St Foix ingeniously observes, 'If ever the Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model.'

The inquisition, as Bayle informs us, punished heretics by fire, to elude the maxim, Ecclesia non novit sanguinem: for, burning a man, say they, does not shed his blood! Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the tapestry worked by Matilda the queen of William the Conqueror, is represented with a mace in his hand, for the purpose, that when he despatched his antagonist, he might not spill blood, but only break his bones! Religion has had her quibbles as well as law

The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France; but it may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder of London in a speech urged the necessity of sit ting up an inquisition in England! It was on the trial of Penn the quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury

which seems highly to have provoked the said recorder, Magna Charta,' writes the prefacer to the trial,' with the recorder of London, is nothing more than Magna F—" It appears that the jury after being kept two days and two nights to change their verdict, were in the end both fined and imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder, said, 'Till now I never understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in suffering the inquisition among them; and certainly it will not be well with us, till something like unto the Spanish inquisition be in England.'Thus it will ever be, while both parties struggling for the pre-eminence, rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the trembling balance of the constitution. But the adopted motto of Lord Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, Trial by Jury.'

So late as the year 1761, Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of seventy was burnt by these evangelical executioners.His trial was printed at Amsterdam, 1762, from the Lisbon copy. And for what was this unhappy Jesuit condemned? Not,as some have imagined, for his having been concerned in a conspiracy against the king of Portugal. No other charge is laid to him in this trial, but that of having indulged certain heretical notions, which any other tribunal but that of the inquisition would have looked upon as the delirious fancies of an old fanatic. Will posterity believe that in the eighteenth century an aged visionary was led to the stake for having said, amongst other extravagances, that The Holy Virgin having commanded him to write the life of Anti-Christ, told him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John the Evangelist: that there were to be three Anti-Christs, and that the last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; and that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies?'

For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt in recent times. Granger assures us that in his remembrance a horse that had been taught to tell the spots upon cards, the hour of the day, &c, by significant tokens, was, together with his owner, put into the inquisi tion for both of them dealing with the devil! A man of letters declared that, having fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so much as the ignorance of the inquisitor and his council; and it seemed very doubtful whether they had read even the scriptures.

One of the most interesting anecdotes relating to the terrible inquisition, exemplifying how the use of the diabolical engines of torture force men to confess crimes they have not been guilty of, is related by a Portuguese gentleman.

A nobleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and friend was imprisoned by the inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism, addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a christian as himself. The physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the torture; and, as was usually the case, at the height of his sufferings confessed every thing they wished. This en raged the nobleman, and feigning a dangerous illness, he begged the inquisitor would come to give him his last spiritual aid.

As soon as the Dominican arrived, the lord, who had prepared his confidential servants, commanded the inquisitor in their presence to acknowledge himself a Jew, to write his confession, and to sign it. On the refusal of the inquisitor the nobleman ordered his people to put on the inquisitor's head a red hot helmet,which to his astonishment in drawing aside a screen, he beheld glowing in a small furnace. At the sight of this new instrument of torture, 'Luke's iron crown,' the monk wrote and subscribed the abhorred confession. The nobleman then observed, 'See now the enormity of your manner of proceeding with unhappy men! My poor physician, like you, has confessed Judaism; but with this difference, only torments have forced that from him, which fear alone has drawn from you!'

terest is apt to prevail over our conscience,-Macedo praised the Inquisition up to heaven, while he sank the pope to nothing!

Among the great revolutions of this age, and since the last edition of these volumes, the inquisition in Spain and Portugal is abolished-but its history enters into that of the human mind; and the history of the inquisition by Limborch, translated by Chandler, with a very curious Intro duction,' loses none of its value with the philosophical mind. This monstrous tribunal of human opinions aimed at the sovereignty of the intellectual world without intellect.

SINGULARITIES OBSERVED BY

VARIOUS NATIONS

The Maldivian islanders eat alone. They retire into the most hidden parts of their houses; and they draw down the cloths that serve as blinds to their windows, that they may eat unobserved. This custom probably arises from the savage, in the early periods of society, concealing himself to eat he fears that another with as sharp an appetite, but more strong than himself, should come and ravish his meal from him. The ideas of witchcraft are also widely spread among barbarians; and they are not a little fearful that some incantation may be thrown among their victuals.

In noticing the solitary meal of the Maldivian islander, another reason may be alleged for this misanthropical repast. They never will eat with any one who is inferior to them in birth, in riches, or in dignity; and as it is a difficult matter to settle this equality, they are condemned to lead this unsociable life.

On the contrary, the islanders of the Philippines are remarkably sociable. Whenever one of them finds himselt without a companion to partake of his meal, he runs till he meets with one; and we are assured that, however keen his appetite may be, he ventures not to satisfy it without a guest.

Savages, (say Montaigne) when they eat, S'essuyent les doigts aux cuisses, à la bourse des génitoires, et à la plante des pieds.' We cannot forbear exulting in the polished convenience of napkins!

The tables of the rich Chinese shine with a beautiful varnish, and are covered with silk carpets very elegantly worked. They do not make use of plates, knives, and forks: every guest has two little ivory or ebony sucks, which he handles very adroitly.

The Otaheitans, who are naturally sociable, and very gentle in their manners, feed separately from each other.At the hour of repast, the members of each family divide; two brothers, two sisters, and even husband and wife, father and mother, have each their respective basket. They place themselves at the distance of two or three yards from each other; they turn their backs, and take their meal in profound silence.

It

The custom of drinking at different hours from those assigned for eating, is to be met with amongst many savage nations. It was originally begun from necessit became a habit, which subsisted even when the fountain was near to them. A people transplanted, observes our ingenious philosopher, preserve in another climate modes of living which relate to those from whence they originally came. It is thus the Indians of Brazil scrupulously abstain from eating when they drink, and from drinking when they

eat.

When neither decency nor politeness are known, the man who invites his friends to a repast is greatly embar raged to testify his esteem for his guests, and to present them with some amusement; for the savage guest imposes on him this obligation. Amongst the greater part of the American Indians, the host is continually on the watch to solicit them to eat, but touches nothing himself. In New France he wearies himself with singing, to divert the company while they eat.

When civilization advances, men wish to show their confidence to their friends: they treat their guests as re

house to give a mark of his politeness, absents himself while his guests regale themselves at his table with undisturbed revelry.

The demonstrations of friendship in a rude state have a savage and gross character, which it is not a little curious to observe. The Tartars pull a man by the ear to press

him to drink, and they continue tormenting him till he opens his mouth, then they clap their hands and dance before him.

No customs seem more ridiculous than those practised by a Kamschatkan, when he wishes to make another his friend. He first invites him to eat. The host and his guest strip themselves in a cabin which is heated to an uncommon degree. While the guest devours the food with which they serve him, the other continually stirs the fire. The stranger must bear the excess of the heat as well as of the repast. He vomits ten times before he will yield; but, at length obliged to acknowledge himself overcome, he begins to compound matters. He purchases a moment's respite by a present of clothes or dogs; for his host threatens to beat the cabin, and to oblige him to eat till he dies. The stranger has the right of retaliation allowed to him: he treats in the same manner, and exacts the same presents. Should his host not accept the invitation of him whom he had handsomely regaled, in that case the guest would take possession of his cabin, till he had the presents returned to him which the other had in so singular a manner obtained.

For this extravagant custom a curious reason has been alleged. It is meant to put the person to a trial, whose friendship is sought. The Kamschatdale, who is at the expense of the fires, and the repast, is desirous to know if the stranger has the strength to support pain with him, and if he is generous enough to share with him some part of his property. While the guest is employed on his meal, he continues heating the cabin to an insupportable degree; and for a last proof of the stranger's constancy and attachment he exacts more clothes and more dogs. The host passes through the same ceremonies in the cabin of the stranger; and he shows, in his turn, with what degree of fortitude he can defend his friend. The most singular customs would appear simple, if it were possible for the philosopher to understand them on the spot.

As a distinguishing mark of their esteem, the negroes of Ardra drink out of one cup at the same time. The king of Loango eats in one house, and drinks in another. A Kamschatkan kneels before his guest; he cuts an enormous slice from a sea-calf; he crams it entire into the mouth of his friend, furiously crying out Tana -There! and cutting away what hangs about his lips, snatches and swallows it with avidity.

A barbarous magnificence attended the feasts of the ancient monarchs of France. After their coronation or consecration, when they sat at table, the nobility served them on horseback.

MONARCHS.

Saint Chrysostom has this very acute observation on kings: many monarchs are infected with the strange wish that their successors may turn out bad princes. Good kings, desire it, as they imagine, continues this pious poliucian, that their glory will appear the more splendid by the contrast: and the bad desire it, as they consider such kings will serve to countenance their own misdemeanors. Princes, says Gracian, are willing to be aided, but not surpassed; which maxim is thus illustrated.

A Spanish lord having frequently played at chess with Philip II, and won all the games, perceived, when his majesty rose from play, that he was much ruffled with chagrin. The lord when he returned home, said to his family,- My children, we have nothing more to do at court; there we must expect no favour; for the king is offended at my having won of him every game of chess.'-As chess entirely depends on the genius of the players, and not on fortune, King Philip the chess player conceived he ought to suffer no rival.

This appears still clearer by the anecdote told of the Earl of Sunderland, minister to George I, who was partial lo the game of chess. He once played with the Laird of Cluny, and the learned Cunningham the editor of Horace. Cunningham with too much skill and too much sincerity, beat his lordship. The Earl was so fretted at his superiority and surliness, that he dismissed him without any reward. Cluny allowed himself sometimes to be beaten; and by that means got his pardon, with something handsome besides.'

In the criticon of Gracian, there is a singular anecdote relative to kings.

A great Polish monarch having quitted nis companions when he was hunting, his courtiers found him, a few days after, in a market-place, disguised as a porter, and lending

out the use of his shoulders for a few pence. At this they were as much surprised, as they were doubtful at first whether the porter could be his majesty. At length they ventured to express their complaints, that so great a personage should debase himself by so vile an employ. His majesty having heard, answered them,- Upon my honour, gentlemen, the load which I quitted is by far heavier than the one you see me carry here: the weightiest is but a straw, when compared to that world under which I laboured. I have slept more in four nights than I have during all my reign. I begin to live, and to be king of myself. Elect whom you choose. For me, who am so well, it were madness to return to court.' Another Polish king, who succeeded this philosophic monarch and porter, when they placed the sceptre in his hand, exclaimed,- 1 had rather manage an oar! The vacillating fortunes of the Polish monarchy present several of these anecdotes; their mo narchs appear to have frequently been philosophers; and as the world is made, an excellent philosopher proves but an indifferent king.

Two observations on kings were made to a courtier with great naiveté by that experienced politician the Duke of Alva.- Kings who affect to be familiar with their com panions make use of men as they do of oranges they take oranges to extract their juice; and when they are well sucked they throw them away. Take care the king does not do the same to you; be careful that he does not read all your thoughts; otherwise he will throw you aside to the back of his chest, as a book of which he has read enough. The squeezed orange,' the king of Prussia applied in his dispute with Voltaire.

When it was suggested to Dr Johnson that kings must be unhappy because they are deprived of the greatest of all satisfactions, easy and unreserved society, he observed that this was an ill-founded notion. Being a king does not exclude a man from such society. Great kings have always been social. The king of Prussia, the only great king at present, (this was the great Frederic) is very so cial. Charles the Second, the last king of England who was a man of parts, was social; our Henrys and Edwards were all social.'

The Marquis of Halifax in his character of Charles II, has exhibited a trait in the Royal character of a goodnatured monarch; that trait, is sauntering. I transcribe this curious observation, which introduces us into a levee.

'There was as much of laziness as of love in all those hours which he passed amongst his mistresses, who served only to fill up his seraglio, while a bewitching kind of pleasure, called Sauntering, was the sultana queen he delight. ed in.

The thing called sauntering is a stronger temptation to princes than it is to others. The being galled with importunities, pursued from one room to another with asking faces; the dismal sound of unreasonable complaints and ill-grounded pretences; the deformity of fraud ill-disguised-all those would make any man run away from them, and I used to think it was the motive for making him walk so fast,'

OF THE TITLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS, HIGHNESS, AND EXCELLENCE.

The title of illustrious was never given, till the reign of Constantine, but to those whose reputation was splendid in arms or in letters. Adulation had not yet adopted this noble word into her vocabulary. Suetonius composed a book to record those who had possessed this title; and, as、 it was then bestowed, a moderate volume was sufficient to contain their names.

In the time of Constantine, the title of illustrious was given more particularly to those princes who had distinguished themselves in war; but it was not continued to their descendants. At length, it became very common; and every son of a prince was illustrious. It is now a convenient epithet for the poet.

There is a very proper distinction to be made between the epithets of illustrious, and famous.

Niceron has entitled his celebrated work, Memoirs pour servir a l'histoire des hommes illustres dans la Republique des Lettres. The epithet illustrious is always received in an honourable sense; yet in those Memoirs are inserted many authors who have only written with the design of combating religion and morality. Such writers as Vanini, Spinosa, Woolston, Toland, &c, had been better charac terised under the more general epithet of famous; for it may be said, that the illustrious are famous but that he

famous are not always illustrious. In the rage for titles the ancient lawyers in Italy were not satisfied by calling kings illustres; they went a step higher, and would have emperors to be super-illustres, a barbarous coinage of their

own.

In Spain, they published a book of titles for their kings, as well as for the Portuguese; but Selden tells us, that 'their Cortesias and giving of titles grew at length, through the affectation of heaping great attributes on their princes, to such an insufferable forme, that a remedie was provided against it.' This remedy was an act published by Philip III, which ordained that all the Cortesias, as they termed these strange phrases, they had so servilely and ridiculously invented, should be reduced to a simple subscription, To the king our lord,' leaving out those fantastical attri outes which every secretary had vied with his predecessors in increasing their number.

It would fill three columns of the present pages to transcribe the titles and attributes of the Grand Signior, which he assumes in a letter to Henry IV. Selden, in his Titles of Honour, first part, p. 140, has preserved it, This emperor of victorious emperors,' as he styles himself, at length condescended to agree with the emperor of Germany, in 1606, that in all their letters and instruments they should be only styled father and son: the emperor calling the sultan his son; and the sultan the emperor, in regard, of his years, his father.

Formerly, says Houssaie, the title of highness was only given to kings; but now it has become so common, that all the great houses assume it. All the great, says a modern, are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already come to highness. The pride of our descendants, I suspect will usurp that of majesty.

Ferdinand, king of Arragon, and his queen Isabella, of Castile, were only treated with the title of highness, Charles was the first who took that of majesty: not in his quality of king of Spain, but as emperor. St Foix informs us, that kings were usually addressed by the titles of most illustrious, or your serenity, or your grace; but that the custom of giving them that of majesty, was only established by Louis XI, a prince the least majestic in all his actions, his manners, and his exterior-a severe monarch, but no ordinary man, the Tiberius of France; whose manners were of the most sordid nature:-in public audiences he dressed like the meanest of the people, and affected to sit on an old broken chair, with a filthy dog on his knees. In an account found of his household, this majestic prince has a charge made him, for two new sleeves sewed on one of his old doublets.

Formerly kings were apostrophized by the title of your grace. Henry VIII was the first, says Houssaie, who assumed the title of highness; and at length majesty. It was Francis I, who saluted him with his last title, in their interview in the year 1520, though he called himself only the first gentleman in his kingdom!

So distinct were once the titles of highness and excellence, that, when Don Juan, the brother of Philip II, was permitted to take up the latter title, and the city of Granada saluted him by the title of highness, it occasioned such serious jealousies at court, that had he persisted in it, he would have been condemned for treason.

The usual title of cardinals, about 1600, was seignoria illustrissima; the Duke of Lerma, the Spanish minister and cardinal in his old age, assumed the title of excellencia reverendissima. The church of Rome was in its glory, and to be called reverend was then accounted a higher honour than to be styled the illustrious. But by use illustrious grew familiar, and reverend vulgar, and at last the cardinals were distinguished by the title of eminent.

After all these historical notices respecting these titles, the reader will smile when he is acquainted with the reason of an honest curate, of Montserrat, who refused to bestow the title of highness on the duke of Mantua, because he found in his breviary these words, Tu solus Dominus, tu solus Altissimus; from all which he concluded, that none but the Lord was to be honoured with the title of highness, The Titles of Honour' of Selden is a very curious volume, and as the learned Usher told Evelyn, the most valuable work of this great scholar. The best edition is a folio of about 1000 pages. Selden vindicates the right of a king of England to the title of emperor.

And never yet was title did not move : And never eke a mind, that title did not love.'

TITLES OF SOVEREIGNS. In countries where despotism exists in all its force, and is gratified in all its caprices, either the intoxication of pow er has occasioned sovereigns to assume the most solemn and the most fantastic titles; or the royal duties and func tions were considered of so high and extensive a nature, that the people expressed their notion of the pure monarchical state, by the most energetic descriptions of oriental fancy.

The chiefs of the Natches are regarded by their people as the children of the sun, and they bear the name of their father.

The titles which some chiefs assume are not always honourable in themselves; it is sufficient if the people respect them. The king of Quiterva calls himself the great lion ; and for this reason lions are there so much respected, that they are not allowed to kill them, but at certain royal huntings.

The king of Monomotapa is surrounded by musicians and poets, who adulate him by such refined flatteries as lord of the sun and moon; great magician; and great thief!

The Asiatics have bestowed what to us appear as ridiculous titles of honour on their princes. The king of Arracan assumes the following ones; Emperor of Arracan, possessor of the white elephant, and the two ear-rings, and in virtue of this possession legitimate heir of Pegu and Brama; lord of the twelve provinces of Bengal, and the twelve kings who place their heads under his feet.

His majesty of Ava is called God; when he writes to a foreign sovereign he calls himself the king of kings, whom all others should obey, as he is the cause of the preservation of all animals; the regulator of the seasons, the absolute master of the ebb and flow of the sea, brother to the sun, and king of the four and twenty umbrellas! These umbrellas are always carried before him as a mark of his dignity.

The titles of the king of Achem are singular though vo luminous. The most striking ones are sovereign of the universe, whose body is as luminous as the sun: whom God created to be as accomplished as the moon at her plenitude; whose eye glitters like the northern star; a king as spiritual as a ball is round; who when he rises shades all his people; from under whose feet a sweet odour is wafted, &c, &c.

Dr Davy, in his recent history of Ceylon, has added to this collection the authentic title of the Kandryan sovereign. He too is called Dewo (God.) In a deed of gift he proclaims his extraordinary attributes. The protector of religion, whose fame is infinite, and of surpassing excelbuds, the stars, &c; whose feet are as fragrant to the lence, exceeding the moon, the unexpanded jessaminenoses of other kings as flowers to bees; our most noble patron and god by custom, &c.'

After a long enumeration of the countries possessed by the king of Persia, they give him some poetical distinc tions; the branch of honour; the mirror of virtue; and the rose of delight.

ROYAL DIVINITIES.

There is a curious dissertation in the 'Memoires de l'Academie des inscriptions et Belles Lettres, by the Abbé Mongault, on the divine honours which were paid to the governors of provinces during the Roman republic;' during their life-time these originally began in gratitude, and at length degenerated into flattery. These facts curiously show how far the human mind can advance, when led on by customs that operate invisibly on it, and blind us in our absurdities. One of these ceremonies was exquisitely ridiculous. When they voted a statue to a proconsul, they placed it among the statues of the gods in the festival called Lectia ternium; from the ridiculous circumstances of this solemn festival. On that day the gods were invited to a repast, which was however spread in various quarters of the city, to satiate mouths more mortal. The gods were however taken down from their pedestals, laid on beds ornamented in their temples; pillows were placed under their marble heads; and while they reposed in this easy posture they were served with a magnificent repast. When Cæsar had conquered Rome, the servile senate put him to dine with the gods! Fatigued by, and ashamed of these honours, he desired the senate to erase from his statue in the capítol, the title they had given him of a demi-god!

We know that the first Roman emperors did not want flatterers, and that the adulations they sometimes lavished were extravagant. But perhaps few know that they wore