without prejudice by the contending parties, has been drawn in colours, more or lefs fallacious by his friends and by his adverfaries. He had, indeed, fuch diftinguished merit, that it was not easy for his friends (the Janfenifts) to fay too much in his behalf; they praifed him, however, without judgment or tafte: they celebrated only his theological learning and zeal, and the aufterity of his manners, which he carried to a length that was, in our opinion, reprehenfible; and they faid little of his wit, his genius, and that philofophical fpirit (if we may ufe that expreffion) which fo eminently raifed him above the fpirit of the time. On the other hand, the Jefuits and Molinifts would scarcely allow him virtues or talents: they viewed him always with an eye of jealoufy and refentment, on account of his attachment to the literati of Port-Royal, and the pointed logic, feafoned with Attic falt, that he had levelled against their ways and means. In a word, Infidels regarded him as an auftere enthufiaft; believers as an unparalleled genius and as there was no party of which he was not either the defender or the adverfary, his merit has been feldom eftimated with impartiality. The ingenious Editor of his works has here drawn him to the life; and the portrait has a truly noble and interesting afpect.

We are firft prefented, in this collection, with the famous Provincial Letters, occafioned by the contefts between the Jefuits and Janfenifts. Voltaire, who was rather the detractor than admirer of PASCAL, acknowledges that the best comedies of Moliere were lefs witty than one part of these letters, and the most masterly compofitions of Baffuet lefs fublime than the other. Though they were written on fubjects of a theological kind, and particularly upon the religious difputes concerning the efficacy of Divine Grace, they were read by people of all ranks and orders, and were the fubject of converfation and applause in all the gay and fashionable circles throughout the kingdom. The Jefuits were overwhelmed with ridicule, in these incomparable letters, which have furvived that order; and though their object exifts no more, they are ftill fresh in the esteem and admiration of the Public. It is very remarkable, that the ftyle and the tone of pleasantry and eloquence, that animate them, bear all the marks of a modern production, notwithftanding the changes that the French language has undergone fince that time. This, fays the Editor, is the first work of genius, that we have in profe: its publication fixed the standard of the French language: there is not one word in them, which, during the courfe of a century, has loft its ground, by the alterations that fo often affect living languages.'

6

These letters are immediately followed in this collection by the Penfees, or Thoughts of PASCAL.-It is well known that this great

great man, towards the end of his life, had formed the defign of compofing a large work on the fubject of religion. With this view he threw upon paper, from time to time, the ideas that oc curred to him on this important subject; but an untimely death prevented the execution of his defign. The fcattered thoughts were collected by Meffieurs de Port-Royal, who published fuch of them as fuited their tafte, and feemed adapted to serve the caufe of religion; rejecting, at the time, a great number that were nevertheless worthy of being preferved from oblivion. It happened luckily that the original manufcripts remained in the hands of the Abbé Perier, PASCAL's nephew; and it is from an exact copy of thefe, that the Thoughts are published complete, and without any retrenchments in this edition. Some of thefe thoughts may appear exceptionable; but fuch of them were certainly committed to writing, in order to be refuted as objections that entered into the plan of his work: for several of them are taken from Montaigne and other authors. They are here divided into two parts. The firft contains those that are relative to philofophy, morality, and literature: the second, those that relate to religion: they were all defigned to enter into the conftruction of PASCAL's great work, the plan of which feems to have been bold and extenfive. The Provincial Letters and the Thoughts occupy the two first volumes of this work; and the third is taken up with controverfial pieces relative to Janfenifm and Molinifm, which we pass over.

The two laft volumes of this collection contain the mathematical works of PASCAL, which are the least known to the Public, and the most efteemed by the learned. They, indeed, bear evident fignatures of his aftonishing genius. The firft production we meet with in the fourth volume is his Treatife of Conic Sections, which he compofed at the age of fixteen. At the age of nineteen he invented that admirable machine, which furnishes an eafy and expeditious method of making all forts of arithme tical calculations, without any other affiftance than the eye and the hand this machine has been accurately described in the first volume of the French ENCYCLOPEDIE, and this defcription is inferted in the prefent collection. This is followed by the New Experiments on the Vacuum, which PASCAL made, after having repeated thofe of Torricelli, which led him to fuch dif coveries with refpect to the weight of the air and its influence in the fufpenfion of water in pumps, and mercury in tubes, as excited the envy of his cotemporaries, and even of Defcartes himself. We fee in thefe inquiries, obferves our learned Editor, a remarkable inftance of the flow procedure of the human mind in the pursuit of truth, and the improvement of knowledge. Galilei had proved the weight or gravity of the air: Terricelli had conjectured that this weight, by its preffure, occa

fioned the fufpenfion of water in pumps and of mercury in tubes; but it was PASCAL who changed this conjecture into demonftration: his experiments on the weight of the air led him to examine the general laws, to which the equilibrium of fluids is fubjected.

These researches are all that remain of the labours of PASCAL in natural philofophy.

PASCAL'S arithmetical triangle is a truly original invention, of which the honour belongs to him alone. This treatife, together with his inquiries into the properties of numbers, and other pieces relative to this fubject, were found printed among his papers after his death, but had never been pubiished before now, that they make a part of the fifth volume.

The treatise De la Roulette, and a history of the researches and discoveries it occafioned, are the laft productions of PASCAL; to these are fubjoined all the pieces, relative to that fubject, that could be found, and which confift of feveral letters written by him and other learned men. PASCAL'S inquiries on this fubject are, even at this day, ranked among the nobleft efforts of the human understanding; and he had only one step to make to arrive at a differential and an integral calculus. He died in the 39th of his age. year

At the age of 18, PASCAL felt the first attacks of that disorder, which was the occafion of his death. He was heard to fay, that during the course of 20 years he had not paffed a fingle day without pain; yet this perpetual ftate of fuffering neither diminished his refignation and patience, nor relaxed his zeal for the advancement of fcience, to which he confecrated every moment that the temporary ceflation of his pains allowed him to employ in ftudy.

ART. VI.

Nouveaux Memoires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences & Belles-Lettres, 1776.-New Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Belles-Lettres of Berlin (Continued from our laft Appendix). Berlin. 4to. 1779.

HE laft Memoir in the clafs of Speculative Philofophy is that of the late DOM PERNETY, Concerning the Influence of natural Caufes on the Mind of Man. This piece is curious and entertaining for though Dom PERNETY was not a deep philofopher, nor a rigorous dialectician, yet he was an attentive obferver of men and things; and as he poffeffed a lively fancy, his combinations are almoft always entertaining, and fometimes inftructive. The fubject before us has been often treated in a general point of view; and no thinking man doubts of the influence which the connection of human nature with a material world must give to phyfical caufes and objects upon the conftitution

ftitution of the human body, and the character, at least the ac cidental character, of the human mind, i. e. its prefent fenfations, impreffions, paffions, and habits: but the particular effects of this connection between phyfics and morals have not been often circumftantially pointed out, as they are, with more or less accuracy and truth, in the Memoir before us. The Author fhews, by examples taken from the characters and manners of all the nations that compofe our globe, the effects of climate, diet, and the conftitution they form, upon mind, genius, fentiments, and morals. He even reckons education among phyfical caufes, becaufe, according to him, its fecret fprings are fet in motion. by them; he, however, acknowledges, that every mind has a fundamental character, bent, nature, or propenfity, which phyfical caufes affect, modify, and influence, but can never entirely destroy; and thus he keeps clear of the bottomless pit of materialifm; he even acknowledges, that phyfical caufes are often counteracted by moral ones, and thus explains the many exceptions that prove a fufpenfion of the general influence of climate, diet, and other material agents. His defcription of the influence of cold and warm climates on the northern and fouthern inhabitants of the globe, though not new, is circumftantial, and fometimes ingenious; exhibiting to the reader a curious mixture of fancy, philofophy, and geographical morality.

MEMOIR I. Concerning the Influence of the Sciences on Poetry. First Part-III. MEMOIR. By M. MERIAN.

It is with particular pleasure that we continue to follow this elegant scholar and philofopher in his poetical journey through Greece. After the days of Homer, he finds a great chafm in the hiftory of Grecian poetry, at the end of which, the Lyric Bards, his admirers, arofe, and finding his heroic verfe too fublime for their vein, ftruck out other numbers, that were more fuitable to the fubjects they treated. Archilochus, Alcmanus, Tyrteus, Stefichorus, Sappho, and Aicens, are mentioned by our Author, as the best known of that clafs, by the fragments of their writings, that have come down to our times; but none of thefe had any pretenfions to fcience and philofophy: wine, love, and the pleasures of the table, were their chief purfuit,-to celebrate thefe, they ftrung their lyres, and, to judge by their trains, they feemed to be as much intoxicated by Venus and Bacchus as they were infpired by the Mufes. Tyrtæus, fays our Academician, was a poor lame schoolmafter, who was looked upon, at Athens, as a ftupid fellow, was fent in derifion to the Spartans, to command their army against the Meflenians, though, in the event, he aftonished them by his valour, and the prodigies he performed by his verfes: Archilochus and Alceus were foldiers and runaways: Alcmanus gives himself

out for a great eater, mohußparos, and Bacchus and Venus were the gods of Anacreon. Pindar has left behind him no veftige of his acquaintance with philofophy, but the fimple mention of the Three Tranfmigrations of Pythagoras in his fecond Olympic, which may have been an old tale or tradition, or the expreffion of fome ceremony in the myfteries of Eleulis, which both poets and philofophers have made a part of their domain all his accounts of a future ftate, of the happiness of the juft, and the pains of the wicked in a Palingenefia, are poetical doctrines; he fpeaks of wisdom; but his wifdom was poetry, and his fages were poets;-the graces are his darling goddeffes-and his piety, which was remarkable, was of the poetical kind. M. MERIAN proves all this in a long feries of difcuffions and examples; he defcribes, with all the powers of fine colouring and bold expreffion, the fpirit and genius of this immortal bard: and these colours and expreffions are often borrowed from the poet himself.

Dramatic Poetry of the Greeks.

While Pindar (fays our Author) was finging the praises of his gods and heroes, refcuing from oblivion the virtues of the golden age, and raifing immortal monuments of fame to the Olympic victors, the dramatic ftage rifes at Athens, the waggon of Thefpis is changed into a splendid fcene, adorned with statues, colonades, temples, and palaces, and Efchylus comes covered with glory from the plains of Marathon, the battle of Salamis, and the field of Platea, to tranfport the Athenians with this new entertainment, and to twine around his head the mixed laurels of Mars and Melpomene. Efchylus appeared in his tragedies, as he had appeared in his battles, always elevated and fublime, always full of bold ideas, daring figures, and exalted images.'Such is the tone, and al noft fuch alfo are the terms of our Author, who returns to his main object, and obferves, that a genius of this kind, whofe auftere mufe breathes nothing but terror, could receive little or no nourishment from the subtilties of philofophy, and that it was neither from the academy of Athens, nor from the fchools of the philofophers, nor from abstract reflections on the nature and effence of the drama, that tragedy derived either its origin or its perfection. The defire of transforming a recital into a scene of action, and the illuftrious models of dramatic action that are exhibited in the Iliad, gave, undoubtedly, the first notion of tragedy, of which the philofopher Polemon called Sophocles the Homer.

Neither the tragic art, nor any of the fine arts are the offfpring of fcience, according to M. Merian: they are the fruits of paffion and genius. Science, after they come forth from the bofom of nature, may examine and criticize them, reduce them to method, and exalt them into theories, but it can never

create