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But, whatever objection might be made to the retired and devotional habits of a foreign college, in respect to persons destined to the world, none could be made to them in respect to persons destined to the church. The fruits of their pious education always appeared in the conduct of the catholic priests serving on the English mission. In describing the general body of the clergy of Amiens, the biographer of the celebrated bishop of that city, says, that “ they were all "decent, and many exemplary." Higher praise belongs to the English catholic clergy. Who of them is not punctual in his attendance at the altar? or assiduous in his confessional? Who, not ready at the call of every poor man, to afford him spiritual succour? or to instruct his poor child? Where is the hospital, the workhouse, or the prison, into which, if it have a catholic inmate, the catholic priest does not cheerfully carry the comforts of religion?

With few exceptions, these servants of God, and benefactors of man,-for these honourable appellations they certainly deserve,-subsist by privations. Still-scanty as is their revenue, the poor generally have some share of it. Wherever he is, the English catholic priest is the poor man's friend.

It should be mentioned, that, notwithstanding their exile and persecutions, the hearts of the English scholars educated in these foreign colleges remained truly English. This was frequently observed by those, among whom they

were domiciliated. During the war, which was closed by the peace of Paris, every victory which the English gained over the French, was a triumph to the English boys: their superiors were more than once admonished by the magistrates and their friends not to make their joy on these occasions too noisy. The salutary and incontrovertible truth, that one Englishman can, any day, beat two Frenchmen, was as firmly believed, and as ably demonstrated at Douay and St. Omer's, as it could be at Eton or Winchester.

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CLASSICAL literature was, for some years after he quitted Douay college, the delight of the Reminiscent; such it had been even before that time. He distinctly recollects his almost infant admiration of Tasso in Fairfax's translation, and of Homer in Pope's; and that, even then, he felt the splendid invocation, with which Homer introduces his catalogue of the ships, and the noble speech of Sarpédon to Glaucus. At Douay he read the two great epic poems of antiquity in their original language, and then preferred the Roman to the Grecian bard. At a subsequent time he renewed his Greek education under

the late Dr. Harwood*, and then he began to be sensible of the transcendent beauties of the latter.

Homer has since been his favourite author. The sublime conceptions, vivid figures, interesting narratives, but more than all, the exquisite style and perfect common sense of the Mæonian bard, are far above any praise which they can receive in these pages. His work is a prodigy :

-we must suppose either that he was preceded by other writers, who had brought poetry to the perfection, or nearly to the perfection, in which we find it in his writings; or that he himself created the poetry of his own immortal work.

It is observable that Herodotus † seems to declare for the latter opinion. "As for the gods,"

these are his words, "whence each of them was "descended, or whether they were always in being, or under what shape or form they ex

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isted, the Greeks knew nothing till very lately. "Hesiod and Homer were, I believe, about four "hundred years older than myself, and no more; "and these are the men who made a theogony "for the Greeks; who gave the gods their ap

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pellations, defined their qualities, appointed "their honours, and described their forms. "for the poets, who are said to have lived be

* The Greek language appeared to be as familiar to this learned man as the English. An eminent Greek scholar once said," I don't know why it is so, but I read no Greek author as familiarly as I do a newspaper."-Did even the Stevenses read Greek as familiarly as we read newspapers?

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† Ευτέρπη,

"fore these men, I am of opinion they came after "them." In this passage, Herodotus expresses an opinion that the Grecian theogony was the invention of Homer and Hesiod; but, whoever reflects on its nature, its complication and contrivance, its countless but coherent relations and dependencies, must be sensible that this was impossible.

Even if this opinion were admitted, a further difficulty would press upon us. The poetry of Homer is complete; the structure of the hexameter is equalled by no other mode of versification in any language; the formation of the phrases, the collocation of the words, the figurative diction, the animation of inanimate nature, whatever else distinguishes poetry from prose, is introduced, in its most perfect mode, into the poems of Homer. The universal opinion of all ages has acknowledged these to constitute the true poetical character, and no succeeding age has improved on any of them. Was he, then, the inventor of them?-This exceeds human power. Was he preceded by other bards, upon whom he refined, and whom he transcendently excelled? Then,-what has become of these antecedent poets?

To solve these difficulties, the Reminiscent begs leave to suggest a conjecture, in which he has sometimes indulged himself;-that there existed in central Asia a civilized and powerful nation, in which the Sanscrit language was spoken, and the religion of Brama prevailed; this, the

initiated might reconcile, by emblematical explanation, with philosophy; but, in the sense in which it was received by the people at large, it was the rankest idolatry ;—that, comparing what the writers on India, and the Siamese, Chinese and Japanese writers, relate of a celebrated man, whom they severally call Budda, Sommonocoddom, Fohi and Xaha, we have reason to suppose that he was the same person, and a re- . former of the Sanscrit creed and ceremonial; that his reformed system may be called Buddism that this still prevails in Tartary, China, and numerous islands in the Indian Archipelago; but that Sanscritism still exists in Hindustan; that either before or after the Buddistic schism, and not far from the era usually assigned to the fabulous ages, the Sanscritans spread their doctrines and languages over the countries, which lay to their west, so that, in the course of time, they became the religious creed and language both of Greece and Italy; that civilization and the arts and sciences flourished at this period among them; that those, who introduced them into Greece, were called the Pelasgi; that those, who introduced them into Italy, acquired the appellation of Hetruscans; that, by degrees, the Sanscrit was moulded into the Greek language; that from the Greek it degenerated, in Italy, into the Latin; that this state of things continued in Greece, till the irruption of the Dorians and Heraclidæ into Peloponnesus, about eighty years after the Trojan war; and in Italy, until the period

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