should be glad to recover my first effay on the truth of the miracle which stopped the re-building of the Temple of Jerufalem. 3. In Giannone's Civil History of Naples, I observed with a critical eye the progress and abuse of facerdotal power, and the revolutions of Italy in the darker ages. This various reading, which I now conducted with difcretion, was digested, according to the precept and model of Mr. Locke, into a large common-place book; a practice, however, which I do not strenuoufly recommend. The action of the pen will doubtless imprint an idea on the mind as well as on the paper: but I much question whether the benefits of this laborious method are adequate to the waste of time; and I must agree with Dr. Johnfon, (Idler, No. 74,)' that what is twice read, is commonly better remembered, than what is transcribed." Account of Solomon Geffner, Author of the Death of Abel, Sc. tion for the change of his character. After a two year's refidence at Berg, he returned home to his father, who was a bookseller at Zurich, and whose shop was resorted to by such men of genius as were then in that city; here his poetical talents in some flight degree difplayed themselves, though not in fuch a manner as to prevent his father from fending him to Berlin, in the year 1749, to qualify him for his own business. Here he was employed in the business of the shop; but he foon became dissatisfied with his mode of life; he eloped from his master and hired a chamber for himself. To reduce him to order, his parents, according to the usual mode in such cafes, withheld every supply of money. He refolved, however, to be independent; shut himself up in his chamber; and, after some weeks, went to his friend Hempel, a celebrated artist, whom he requested to return with him to his lodgings. There he shewed his apartments covered with fresh landscapes, which our poet had painted with sweet oil, and by which he hoped to make his fortune: The shrugging up of the shoulders of his friend concluded with an affurance, that though his works were not likely to be held in high estimation in their present state, some expectations might be raised from them, if he continued the fame application for ten years. THIS very pleasing writer was born at Zurich, on the ift of April, 1730. In his youth, little expectations could be formed of him, as he then displayed none of the talents for which he was afterwards diftinguished. His parents faw nothing to afford them much hope, though Simlar, a man of fome learning, affured his father, that the boy had talents which, though now hid, would fooner or later shew themselves, and elevate him far above his school-fellows. As he had made so little progress at Zurich, he was fent to Berg, and put under the care of a clergyman, where retirement and the picturesque scenery around him laid the founda I Luckily for our young artist his parents relented, and he was permitted to spend his time as he liked at Berlin. Here he formed acquaintance with artists and men of letters; Krause, Hempel, Ramler, Sulzer, were his companions; Ramler was his friend, from the fineness fineness of whose ear and taste he derived the greatest advantages. With much diffidence he presented to Ramler some of his compositions; but every verse and every word were criticised, and very few could pafs through the fiery trial. The Swiss dialect, he found at last, was the obstacle in his way, and the exertions requifite to fatisfy the delicacy of a German ear would be exceffive. Ramler advised him to clothe his thoughts in harmonious profe; this counsel he followed, and the anecdote may be of use in Britain, where many a would-be poet is probably hammering at a verse, which, from the circumstances of his birth and education, he can never make agreeable to the ear of taste. From Berlin, Geffner went to Hamburgh, with letters of recommendation to Hagedorn, but he chose to make himself acquainted with him at a coffee-house before the letters were delivered. A close intimacy followed, and he had the advantages of a literary fociety which Hamburgh at that time afforded. Thence he returned home, with his tafte much refined; and, fortunately for him he came back when his countrymen were in fome degree capable of enjoying his future works. Had he produced them twenty years before, his Daphnis would have been hissed at as immoral; his Abel would have been preached against as propha nation. This period may be called the Augustan age of Germany; Klopstock, Ramler, Kleist, Gleim, Utz, Leffing, Wieland, Rabener, were refcuing their country from the farcasms of the great Frederic. Klopstock, paid about this time a vifit 1 to Zurich, and fired every breaft with poetical ardour. He had fcarce left the place when Wieland came, and by both our poet was well received. After a few anonymous compositions, he tried his genius on a fubject which was started by the accidental perufal of the tranflations of Longus; and his Daphnis was improved by the remarks of his friend Hirzel, the author of the Ruftic Socrates. Daphnis appeared first without a name in the year 1754, it was followed in 1756, by Inkle and Yarico; and Gefner's reputation was spread in the fame year, over Germany and Switzerland, by his Paftorals, a tranflation of which into English, in 1762, was published by Dr. Kenrick. His brother poets acknowledged the merit of these light compofitions, as they were pleased to call them; but conceived their author to be incapable of forming a grander plan, or aiming at the dignity of heroic poetry. To these critics he foon after opposed his death of Abel. In 1762, he collected his poems in four volumes; in which were some new pieces that had never before made their appearance in public. In 1772, he produced his second volume of paftorals with some letters on landscape painting. These met with the most favourable reception in France, where they were tranflated and imitated; as they were alfo, though with less success, in Italy and England. We shall now confider Geffner as an artift: till his thirtieth year, painting was only an accidental amusement; but at that time he became acquainted with Heidegger, a man of tafte, whose collection of paintings and engravings Z2 ings was thus thrown open to him. The daughter made an impression on him, but the circumstances of the lovers were not favourable to an union, 'till through the activity and friendship of the burgomafters Heidegger and Hirzel, he was enabled to accomplish his withes. The question then became, how the married couple were to live? The pen is but a flender dependence any where, and ftill less in Switzerland. The poet had too much spirit to be dependent on others; and he determined to purfue the arts no longer as an amufement, but as a means of procuring a livelihood. Painting and engraving alternately filled that time which was not occupied with poetry; and in these arts, if he did not arrive at the greatest eminence, he was diftinguished by that fimplicity, that elegance, that fingularity, which are the characteriftics of his poetry. His wife was not idle; befides the care of his house and the education of his children, for which no one was better qualified, the whole burthen of the shop (for our poet was bookfeller as well as poet, engraver, and painter) was laid upon her fhoulders. In his manners, Gefiner was chearful, lively, and at times playful; fond of his wife; fond of his children. Ile had small pretentions to learning, yet he could read the latin poets in the original; and of the Greek, he preferred the latin tranflations to the French. In his early years, he led either a folitary life, or confined himself to men of tafte and literature: as he grew older, he accustomed himself to general conversation; and in his later years, his house was the centre point of the men of the first rank for talents or fortune in Zurich. Here they met twice a week, and formed a conversazione of a kind seldom, if ever, to be met with in great cities, and very rarely in any place; the politics of England destroy such meetings in London. Geffner with his friends enjoyed that fimplicity of manners which makes society agreeable; and in his rural refidence, in the fummer, a little way out of town, they brought back the memory almost of the Golden Age. He died of an apoplexy on the 2d of March, 1788; leaving a widow, three children, and a fifter behind. His youngest son was married to a daughter of his father's friend Wieland. His fellow citizens have erected a statue in memory of him on the banks of the Limmot, where it meets the Sihl. Some particulars of the Death of Condorcet, from Bottiger on the state of Letters, &c. in France. AMONG the Girondifts profcribed by Robespierre on the 31st of of May, Condorcet was the very first on the lift, and was obliged to skulk in the most hidden corners to elude the perfecutions of the furious Jacobins. A lady, to whom he was known only by name, became, at the inftance of a common friend, his generous protectress; concealing him in her house at Paris, at the most imminent hazard, till the latter end of April 1794; when the apprehenfion of general domiciliary vifits fo much increased, and the risk of expofing both himself and his patronefs became fo preff. ing on the mind of Condorcet, that he resolved to quit Paris. Without L Without either passport or civic foregoing all caution, which feemed to have become habitual to him, he entered an inn at Clamars and called for an ommelette. His at tire, his dirty cap and long beard, his pale meagre countenance, and the ravenous appetite with which he devoured the victuals, could not fail to excite the curiofity and fufpicion of the company. A member of the revolutionary committee, who happened to be present, taking it for granted that his woebegone figure could be no other than fome runaway from the Bicètre, addressed and questioned him whence he came, whether he could produce a pafsport, &c. which inquiries, Condorcet having loft all felf-command, were so unfatisfactorily answered, that he was taken to the house of the committee as a suspected person. Thence, having undergone a second interrogatory, during which he acquitted himself equally ill, he was conducted to Bourg-la-Reine; and, as he gave very inconfiftent anfwers to the questions put to him by the municipality, it was inferred that this unknown person muft have fome very important reasons for wishing to continue undifcovered. Being sent to a temporary confinement till the matter should be cleared up, on the next morning he was found fenfelefs on the ground, without any marks of violence on his body; whence it was conjectured that he must have poifoned himself. Indeed, Condorcet had, for fome time past, carried about him the most deadly poifon; and, not long before his fatal exit, he owned to a friend that he had more than twenty times been tempted to make use of it, card, he contrived, under the difguise of a provencal countrywoman, with a white cap on his head, to fteal through the barriers of Paris, and reached the plains of Mont Rouge in the district of Bourg-la-Reine; where he hoped to have found an asylum in the country-house of a gentleman with whom he had once been intimate. This friend having, unfortunately, at that very time, gone to Paris, Condorcet was under the dreadful neceflity of wandering about in the fields and woods for three fuccessive days and nights, not venturing to enter any inn, unprovided with a civic card. Exhaufted by hunger, fatigue, and anguish, with a wound in his foot, he was scarcely able to drag himself into a deserted quarry, where he purposed to await the return of his friend. At length, ha, ving advanced towards the road fide, Condorcet faw him approach, was recognized, and received with open arms:-but, as they both feared left Condorcet's frequent inquiries at his friend's house should have raised fufpicions; and as, at any rate, it was not advisable for them to make their entrance together in the day time, they agreed that Condorcet should stay in the fields till dusk, and then be let in by a back door. It was then, however, that imprudence threw him off his guard. The forlorn exile, after having patiently borne hunger and thirst for three days together, without so much as approaching an inn, now finds himself incapable of waiting a few hours longer, at the end of which all his fufferings were to subside in the bosom of friendship. Transported with this happy profpect, and 'but was checked by motives of affection Z3 fe&ion for his wife and daughter. It was during his concealment of ten months at Paris that he wrote his excellent hiftory of the progress of human understanding. Thus perished one of the most illustrious of the French literati that the prefent age had produced. Biographical Anecdotes of the Count de Buffon, extracted from a ManuScript Journey to Montbart in 1785, by Herault de Sechelles. I beheld a fine figure, noble and placid. Notwithstanding he is 78 years old, one would not attribute to him above 60 years; and although he had spent fixteen fleepless nights, in consequence of being afflicted with the ftone, he looked as fresh as a child, and as calm as if in health. His bust, by Houdon, appears to me very like; although the effect of the black eyes and brows is loft. His white hair was accurately drest: this was one of his whims, and he owns it. He has it papered at night, and curled with irons sometimes twice a day, in the morning and before fupper. He had five small curls on each fide. His bed-gown was a yellow and white stripe, flowered with blue. His voice is strong for his age, and very pleasant: in general, when he speaks, his looks are fixed on nothing, but roll unguardedly about. His favourite words are tout ça and pardieu, which recur perpetually. His vanity is undisguifed and prominent; here are a few inftances. I told him I read much in his works. "What are you reading?" faid he. I answered, the Vues für "There are passages of the highest eloquence in them:" replied he instantly. la Nature. His fon has erected a monument to the father in the gardens of Montbart. It is a fimple column near a lofty tower, and it is inscribed Excelsæ turri humilis columna Parenti fuo filius BUFFON, 1785. The father burst into tears on feeing this monument, and said to the young man, "Son this will do you honour." The fon shewed me about the grounds. We came to the clofet in which this great man laboured; it is in a pavillion called the tower of Saint Louis, and it is up ftairs. The entrance is by a green folding door. The fimplicity of the laboratory aftonishes. The ceiling is vaulted, the walls are green, the floor is in squares: it contains an ordinary wooden desk, and an arm chair; but not a book nor a paper. Thisnakedness has its effect. The imagination clothes it with the splendid pages of Buffon. There is another sanctuary in which he was wont to compose; "The cradle of natural hiftory," as prince Henry called it, when he went thither. It was there that Rouffeau proftrated himself and kiffed the threshold. I mentioned this circumstance to Buffon. Yes, faid he, Rousseau bowed down to me. This cabinet is wainscoted, furnished with screens, a fofa, and with drawings of birds and beafis. The chairs are covered with black leather, and the desk is near the chimney, and of walnut-tree. A treatise on the loadstone, on which he was then employed, lay on it. His example and his difcourse convin ceme that he, who patlionately defires glory, is fure in the end to obtain it. The with muft not be a momentary but an every day emotion. Buffon faid to me on |