Yet red with gore, whofe fury hath confign'd me The fight of you and heav'n: a king myself, For refpite from your toils, or how affuage Driv'n with difgrace, your virgin bloom to waste The name of father. Ye muft never tafte Alfo the conclufion of the tragedy, being the address of the chorus to the inhabitants of Thebes: Inhabitants of Thebes, behold your prince, Till death decide, and ftamp the name of "happy." This pleafing collection contains feveral other (smaller) pieces, which have their merit. The Roman critic's maxim, ubi plura nitent, &c. we hope always to have in view, in our decifions; but candidly to point out fmaller faults is fometimes an office of kindnefs. Mr. Maurice feems to pay confiderable attention to correctness; we would wish him to be quite correct. He will, we hope, excufe the hint, that he might derive advantage from avoiding a recurrence of the fame thought in different expreffions. An inftance of this we obferved in his verses to the Marquis of Blandford, (p. 13.) where, if the two lines, But lo! attended by her infant train, had had been omitted, the circumftance defcribed would have been But who are thefe, that flush'd with all the glow-&c.' Defcending torrents, mix'd with ruddy flame, Roar'd to the howling blast in loud acclaim. The later part of the laft line is an impropriety committed for the fake of rhyme. The laft line of our first quotation from Hinda, we could with the Author to reconfider. Perhaps the idea of indulging grief is not the moft claffically expreffed by -Sorrow cherish'd an eternal wound. In the fame poem, p. 28, 1. 10, there is an elipfis of the prepofition to, which does not please, While unremitting forrow points the tomb.' Had the epithet, unremitting, been fuppreffed, SORROW Would We must not take leave of this publication, without doing H FOREIGN LITERATURE. (By our CORRESPONDENTS.) FRANCE. ART. XVI. ISTOIRE Naturelle, generale, & particuliere; contenant les Appendix to the last volume of our Review [the 61st] p. 543. dous 盒 ! dous tablature, are deep lakes,-rapid currents, and whirlpools, -earthquakes occafioned by the finking of rocks, the falling in of caverns, and the explofions of volcanos,-general and particular hurricanes-vortices of fmoke,-tempefts produced by these violent convulfions of earth and fea,-inundations, and impetuous floods and torrents, occafioned by these earthquakes and commotions,-rivers of melted glafs, and of bitumen and fulphur, ravaging the mountains, rolling their peftilential ftreams along the plains, and infecting their waters,-the fun himself darkened, not only by thick, watry clouds, but alfo by enormous maffes of afhes and ftones, ejected from the volcanos: fuch are the materials that enter into this dreadful difplay; which is concluded by an unusual strain of piety, and thanks to the Creator, that he did not render man the fpectator of these terrible and tumultuous fcenes that preceded the birth of intelligent and fenfitive natures. We come now to the fifth EPOCHA, during which elephants, and other animals of the fouthern climates, inhabited the northern regions. When the earth was still burning-hot toward the fouth, it was cooling toward the Poles, which enjoyed, during a long space of time, the temperature adapted to the prefervation and fubfiftence of the plants and animals that can only live, now, in the fouthern regions. Animal or living nature may have commenced its exiftence on our globe about 36,000 years from its formation, or expulfion from the fun, as its polar regions, at least, were then fo far cooled, that the curious examiner might touch them without burning his fingers. To this living nature the author gives a long leafe of existence, (for as the bufinefs is all ideal, liberality is eafy) even 93,000 years, at the end of which the globe will be colder than ice. But, between these terms, there are intermediate ones, as between the extremities of the thermometer. In the first degrees of refrigeration, when the waters ceafed to boil, animals and vegetables may have exifted, which were afterwards deftroyed (both individuals and fpecies) by the increasing refrigeration of fucceeding ages, and we find only their remains in calcareous. fubftances: but the claffes of organized and animal beings, that, by their nature, are more affected by intenfe heat, could only exift and multiply in periods nearer that in which we live. It is about 15,000 years backwards from our time that our Author places, in the North, elephants and other kinds of animals, who, at prefent, can only live and multiply in the torrid zone. According to him, the quantity of ivory difcovered. in the northern regions, proves that they once really contained a great number of elephants; but there are many more plaufible. accounts given of the existence of these animals in the North, than the wild romance of the epochas. M. DE BUFFON ob fervcs, ferves, that while the bones of elephants have been found in North America, no records announce the fame discovery in the fouthern parts of that continent;-that the fame kind of elephant, which actually exifts in the ancient continent, is no more to be found in the other,—and that not only the fouthern parts of the new world exhibit no elephants of this kind, nor any fpecies of the other terreftrial animals which inhabit, at prefent, the fouthern regions of our continent, but, moreover, that these animals never exifted but in the northern parts of the American continent, and that while they inhabited the parts. of ours that lie in the fame latitude. From hence our Author concludes that the old and the new continent were not then se parated towards the North, and that their feparation has been pofterior to the existence of elephants in North America, where that species was probably extinguished. He thinks ic also probable that this extinction happened pretty much about the time of the feparation of the continents, and that it was occafioned by the impaffable mountains, which hindered the elephants from travelling up towards the equator in queft of warmth, as their brethren and relations had done in Afia and Africa:-fo they had a cold death, on our Author's hypothefis. However, it would coft us but little pains to find out an-hypothefis, by which we could hoift them over into Africa, when the refrigeration, was taking them by the tail: for that there was a continent in times of yore that joined Africa with Ame rica, or at least a cluster of ifles, that might ferve as steppingftones to the half-reasoning elephants, is, we think, as capable of proof, as that a comet gave the fun a flap in the face, and thus, by a random-blow, formed the folar fyftem.-But let us proceed with our Author to the Sixth epocha-which contains the feparation of the continents. This feparation of Europe from America was effectuated, as our Author imagines, in two places, by two great currents, or ridges of fea, that extend from the northern regions to the moft fouthern parts of the globe. He thinks alfo, that it happened about ten thousand years ago, much about the time that England was separated from France, Ireland from England, Sicily from Italy, Sardinia from Corfica, and both thefe latter, from the continent of Africa. The difcuffions of our Author, on these objects, are pleasant reading for a young student of philofophical geography; for fuch are peculiarly fond of invention and conjecture. The falling in of lands, in confequence of volcanos or other causes, has probably feparated not only the countries now mentioned from each other, but also Greenland from Scotland and Norway, as, fays he, the Orkneys, Shetland, Ferro, Iceland, and Hola, exhibit nothing to our view but the fummits of lands that have been fubmerged. Our Author Author thinks farther, that Canada may have been joined to Spain by the banks of Newfoundland, the Azores, and the other iflands that are fcattered between these two countries. The hiftory of the Atlantis, related by Plato and Diodorus Siculus, can only be applied (fays our Author, though his admirer M. Bailli be of a quite different opinion) to a vast district of land, that extended itself far to the west of Spain, and that was inhabited by powerful princes and warlike legions. He thinks, however, that the junction of America with Afia in the days of old (of which we have neither records nor traces) is ftill more probable than its junction with Europe ;-the facts and obfervations on which he grounds this opinion, are like all the rest of his proofs, vague, forced, and entirely inconclufive; but the detail into which he enters, is, in itself, neither uninftructive nor difagreeable, though it does not amount to evidence. Neverthelefs, we cannot comprehend the pleasure which this genius takes in wandering always in the clouds, fnuffing up the air of poffibilities and hypothefes, and that in matters in which it is of little, often of no confequence, whether we come to a determination or not upon the point in queftion. After obfervations and reafonings of great length on this feparation of the continents,-on the ftate of the Mediterranean, Euxine, and other feas, before that period, which preceded long, according to our Author, the deluges of Deucalion and Ogyges, and all the other inundations, the memory of which has been preferved among men, M. de BUFFON returns to his hobby-horse, the hypothefis of refrigeration. Among other curious things on this fubject, he tells us, that the northern regions, which were formerly warm enough for the propagation of elephants, being now fo far cooled as to be only able to provide for the fubfiftence and nourishment of white bears and rein-deers, will, in fome thousands of years, become entirely defert and deftitute of inhabitants, by the influence of the cold or refrigeration alone. There are even, in his opinion, strong reafons for thinking that our polar region, which is yet unknown, will always remain inacceffible; fince it appears that a glacial refrigeration has taken place at the Pole, and extends even to seven or eight degrees; all which district is mere ice,perhaps, or probably, as our Author fays; and if it be fo, then the circumference, and extent of that ice will increase with the refrigeration of the earth. Suppofing now that a thousand years have paffed fince permanent ice has begun to exift under the very point or extremity of the Pole, our Author calculates, conjectures, and decides, that ninety-nine thousand years muft pafs before this ice can reign at the Equator, fuppofing the progreffion of glacial or icy cold as uniform as that of the earth's refrigeration. This calculation agrees pretty well with the dura |