dent can display such an infinite variety, and, like a well-discerning connoisseur, can treat each subject with a graceful learning. Now to conclude, I can with safety declare, that my happiness is truly great this day. One circumstance alone, I must except, stands in the way to make it quite complete: I fear my apprehensions may prove true, that this high honour is greater than my merit. This medal I will treasure up with care, which will be ever dear to my remembrance."

[The above communication has just been received by the Editor, in a letter from Mr. Churchman, dated London, October 27, 1804.]

For the Literary Magazine.

ON SUDDEN DEATH.

A

I WAS lately in a company where the conversation turned upon the most eligible mode of dying. Various were the sentiments expressed upon this interesting subject. lingering and natural death was generally preferred, because such a one afforded opportunity of penitence and reformation, and of arranging all our private affairs. A violent death, if foreseen, possessed, indeed, most of these advantages, but then such a death is likely to be regarded with extreme reluctance; whereas it is the quality of disease to slacken the hold which the appetites and passions have of life, and to disrobe the terrestrial scene of most of its ordinary attractions.

This conclusion was not without objections, but these objections were overruled by superior arguments, and the debate appeared to end, for once, in unanimity. At length an old gentleman, who had hitherto been silent, was asked to give his opinion. He modestly observed, that the conclusion generally acquiesced in implied a life not conformable to reason or religion. As lite was at best precarious, it was the duty of

every one, in relation to his own safety hereafter, the benefit of his survivors, and the honour of his name, to be always prepared to die. We ought so to live, that our sudden death can produce no mischief to ourselves or our sur vivors, but that which is inseparable from death in any form..... These conditions being granted, he begged leave to relate the death of Leonard Euler, one of the best and wisest men which the present age has produced, and one whom it was his most fervent wish to resemble both in life and death.

The company eagerly assenting to this proposal, he related it in these terms:

"Leonard Euler had retained all his facility of thought to the age of seventy-six, and, apparently, all his mental vigour : no decay seemed to threaten the sciences with the sudden loss of their greatest ornament. One day, after amusing himself with calculating, on a slate, the laws of the ascending motion of air-balloons, the recent discovery of which was then making a noise all over Europe, he dined with a friend and his family, talked of Herschell's planet, and of the calculations which determined its orbit. A little after, he called his grandchild to his knee, and fell a playing with him as he drank tea, when suddenly the cup, which he held in his hand, dropped from it, and he ceased to calculate and to breathe."

bute to exasperate those evils which they are designed to lessen or remove.

One of the means of keeping up and heightening inequality of fortune is the custom of marrying wealth to wealth. To make the object of our affection happy, by relieving his poverty, seems to be the most natural expression of love. A heart, imbued with that passion, must naturally wish the power of conferring obligation on its object. To raise from poverty to affluence, from labour to ease, from hardship and privation to enjoyment and honour, must unspeakably gratify a mind, which values another's good before its own. Such are the conclusions of one who should judge without experience.

Experience teaches a very different lesson. We find that the poverty of one party is the most insuperable obstacle to his pretensions. In the eyes of parents and guardiars, marriage is a kind of bargain, in which each party is supposed to invest the other with all their property. Where the property is unequal, the bargain is, of course, unequal. The worth of the ward or child is the fortune she is to carry with her. If the suitor (or suitress) has less, he is rejected of course, just with the same feelings that men reject five dollars in silver, when offered in exchange for a bank note of ten.

Among the various expedients for producing an equality of condi tions, I never, till lately, met with any thing like a law prohibiting the rich from marrying the rich. We have often seen it recommended, by speculative visionaries, to divide the property of deceased persons among all his children, or to give it to those among the children who need it or deserve it most. This rule of distribution has actually taken place among some nations. The Romans endeavoured to equalise property, by prohibiting any man from acquiring, either by purchase, gift, or inheritance, beyond a fixed quantity of land. We are

told that all these agrarian regulations were ineffectual among that people; but the Prussian Frederick seems to have succeeded in enforcing the same rule, within certain limitations. He raised the predial slaves, in some of his Silesian lordships, to the rank of freemen and proprietors, but he tied each one down to the property of one farın, of a fixed number of acres, and we are told that his regulations were observed.

It is somewhat remarkable, that though no system maker has adopted the rule restricting the rich from marrying the rich, that this rule should be actually in force in Spain. Baretti, a traveller in Spain, tells us, that the heir or heiress of a grandee cannot marry the heir or heiress of another grandee. If an heir fall in love with an heiress, he must forego his passion or his inheritance. He must resign his fortune to a younger brother, or a coilateral relation.

Some such rule as this must, indeed, be expressly or tacitly adopt ed in every agrarian system. Frederick's peasants must have had their marriages restrained by some such conditions.

There are several particulars recorded of Spanish manners, which accord but little with the austerity and seclusion which it has been the custom of play-wrights and novelwrights to ascribe to them. For example, we are told that if a girl give a ring, or any other token, to a man, as a pledge that she will marry him, the law, after some delay, will enforce the execution of the contract, whether the parents consent or not. From this rule the nobility only are exempted.

There is another circumstance, by which the crime of seduction is rendered nearly impossible to be committed in Spain, and, when committed, is divested of almost all its mischievous consequences. If a single woman happen to be pregnant, the man whom she affirms to be the father is compelled to be her husband.

Letters from London, written in 1802 and 1803, by William Austin.

MR. AUSTIN is a politician. He is one of those who annex great importance to forms of government, and suppose most of the vices and virtues, evils and felicities of mankind to arise from their political condition. He is a friend to the democratic system, and thinks the American constitution not only best in itself, but to be best administered by those who hold the public offices, and bear legislative sway, at present.

The author's acknowledged pur pose is to compare the state of England with that of the United States, in order to evince the superior happiness and dignity of his native country. What renders this work chiefly curious or original, is the representation of impressions such as manners and appearances in Eng land would make upon a native of New England. The inferences drawn by the writer are frequently indeed peculiar to that part of the United States, and he would sometimes lead a foreigner into errors, by speaking of New England and its institutions, as if they were common to all parts of the union. It is well known, that in every thing which can distinguish one civilised community from another, there is a far wider difference between the east

ern and the southern states of America, than can be found between America and England.

The great and fundamental error in this work will be thought by many to consist in the influence ascribed to government over the habits and manners of the people. What others would trace to the state of population and the arts, he is too apt to attribute to the prevalence of monarchy and aristocracy or democracy. He is tinctured with the principles of what has been sometimes called the new philosophy, and which represents the whole structure of society to depend entirely in the manner which design or accident has distributed political power. Almost ever page exhibits some example of this way of thinking.

The following is new to us: "Most of those magnificent houses round London, which, proudly retiring from the city for the benefit of air and prospect, seem built as much with a view to external grandeur as to domestic convenience, are so completely guarded with high brick walls, that you might imagine the baron's wars had not yet terminated, for his house, in a double sense, is the owner's castle. Nor can you look into their gardens by reason of the fortifications; though you frequently see an elevated sign at the corner, requesting yon to take notice that "man traps" are placed there.

"The houses in the city, even if they enjoy ten feet of rear ground, suffer the inconvenience of dark, confined air, by reason of high walls, the tops of which are usually cemented with broken glass bottles: I do not say to guard against their neighbours.

The security of the house in which I reside is guarantied in the following manner. The door has a double lock, a chain, and two bolts, beside an alarum bell, which is carefully fixed to the pannel every night. A watchman, if he does his duty, passes by the door once in thirty minutes. Another watchman

is stationed in the yard, and doomed to perpetual imprisonment with a chain round his neck."

The following reflections on the Jews are highly honourable to Mr. Austin's judgment and sagacity:

"I have bestowed not a little street reflection on this miserable race, and feel disposed to speak a word in their favour. If we contemplate their situation, even in England, where they are less persecuted than in any other country, except the United States, we shall find them indirectly driven to prey on the public, and compelled, by their disabilities, to a continual counteraction. Eligible to no office, incapable of holding land, or even of possessing a house, with the additional hardship of being despised, they are a sort of Indian Parias, and are absolutely proscribed from the social compact, and reduced to a state worse than that of simple nature, for, in opening their eyes to their condition, they find nothing on which to rest but the canopy of heaven. Now, I would appeal to Tully's Of fices, or even to Dr. Johnson, if a man thus situated by force, insidiously legalised under the sanction of law, ought to be honest; and whether a man thus circumstanced, would not have a moral right to countervail, by every means in his power. Under such restrictions, can a Jew be expected to philanthropise, or, in the moment of benevolence, can his heart wander out of the precincts of his own nation, when early sentiments have necessarily been contaminated by all the arts of low commerce to which his nation is reduced? A benevolent Hebrew would be a monster. Hence, a Jew's passion cannot be reputation of any kind, but must concentre in money. Therefore, Shakespeare's imaginary Shylock is not exactly true to nature: a Jew, in such a case, would have accepted all the money he could have extorted, and have foregone his revenge. Yet this imaginary Shylock has prejudiced thousands of christians, who never saw a Jew, against the whole

tribe of Israel: while those very christains, who read the story of a certain duke, who demanded a large sum of money from a Jew, and extorted four of his teeth before he could extort the money, are greatly surprised at the Jew's obstinacy. In short, the Jews owe the christians nothing but hatred and revenge, whether they revert back to former times, or regard the present.

"The operation of those disabilities and restrictions, which the christian imposes on the Jew, is just what ought to be expected. Is a house on fire, he is happy to see it, the old nails afford a speculation. Crimes, for aught he cares, may multiply with impunity, he is the last to inform: who ever heard of a Jew informer? The more thieves, the more distress, the more boundless extravagance, the fairer the prospect; to him private vices are public benefits. Is the nation ruined, he has nothing to lament, having no tie, no amor patriæ, no attachment; but he is not quite ready to leave the country; a nation in ruins is a Jew fair. "If the Jews were more disposed to agriculture, they might find, in the United States, a resting place, and, notwithstanding their religion, they might flourish as well there as at Jerusalem, or on the more favourite banks of the Jordan."

This work abounds with amusing and instructive passages. Some eminent persons are described with considerable eloquence. The great luminaries of the English bar, Erskine, Gibbs, and Garrow, are pourtrayed with much force.

The cast of politics with which this work is overspread, will recommend it to some, and depreciate its usefulness and merit to others; but all will probably be pleased, and that in no small degree, with the moral and descriptive portions of the work. Much information, in detail, must not be expected from it. It is a moral and political descant, in which characters, scenes, and incidents are introduced by way of illustration. These, though few,

are entertaining and judicious. The following portrait of the quakers is entitled to no small praise:

"There is no class of people, in England, holden in less respect than the quakers; yet I have seen no sect, in this country, with whom I have been more pleased. With respect to the rest of the world, the quakers certainly are a hopeless and barren set of people. They hate equally kings and priests. Their consciences revoltat tythes in any shape, therefore the clergy hate them...... Their own meditations serve them instead of preaching, therefore the religious of most other denominations dislike them. Their temperance laughs at the physician, and their honesty starves the lawyer, while their prudence and foresight exalt them above the active, injurious hatred of the world, and elevate them above those who despise them.

"Their decency of carriage, their unassuming manners, their habitual economy, and general spirit of equity, have long, and will, perhaps, for ever, connect them together in a body, co-existent with their present maxims.

"There is one characteristic which distinguishes the quakers from all other sects: they discover nothing of the spirit of proselytism; their favourite sentiments partake nothing of enthusiasm; they hurl no damnation on the rest of the world; tolerant to every body, they consider all honest men their brethren. There is not a single trait in their character incentive to illwill, nor a movement in their conduct which has ever courted persecution. Their humility has never resisted even oppression; in suffering patient, they are active only in support of their principles. Remote from all hypocrisy, they have never sought after temporal power, nor has their own system ever operated to the prejudice of others. Yet this sect has been persecuted, and its members been put to death!* the

In New England.