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"fhould infpect his flocks, make a fale, fell the fuperfluous oil, wine, and corn, if they are giving a proper price; fell the old oxen, the refufe of the cattle and fheep, wool, hides, the old "carts, old iron tools, and old and difeafed flaves. Whatever "is fuperfluous he ought to fell; a farmer fhould be a feller, "not a buyer."- -Cato, cap. xi.

The ftate of fociety for which thefe precepts are adapted is fufficiently obvious; and all the other directions are of a milar complexion. When we confider that the fame mode of farming prevailed from before the days of Cato till the age of Pliny, it will not appear furprifing to any perfon who confiders the great alteration that took place in the ftate of fociety during that period, the increase of luxury, and the confequent inatten tion of proprietors to their landed eftates, with the great influx of corn from Egypt and Sicily, if the produce of the fields in Italy itself, and their confequent value, thould have greatly diminished. These were inevitable confequences of this injudicious policy and laxity of manners. Yet, none of the latter rei ruftica fcriptores were able to account for the diterioration of which they complained; nor has our author entered into the explanation. But this and other imperfections would have been remedied had Mr. Dickfon lived to publish the work himfelf.

The editor, in a fhort account of the author prefixed to the present work, gives the following very just account of the nature of this performance:

The following work,' fays he, is the produce of Mr. Dickfon's matureft years: and, as he confeffes himself in the preface, coft him a great deal of application and labour. The public will judge of the execution. To the editor it appears to do much honour to the author, and to be a very valuable prefent to all who are converfant in the first and most useful of all the neceffary arts. Farmers, in general, are entirely ignorant of the language in which the books of ancient husbandry are written; and there are but few of thofe lovers of the art, who are mafters of the language, that will take the trouble to felect out of the ancient authors, in fome of which there is no fmall degree of obfcurity, all the experiments and rules that fuit the modern practice.

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This they will find done to their hands by the author, who has collected, under proper heads, from the ancient writers, whatever is material to the moderns; has compared the facts and rules together, and has fet them in one view before his readers, both in a tranflation, and in the original Latin. His perfect knowledge of the fubject has enabled him to clear up many difficulties, which the learned commentators on the Rei ruftica fcriptores, being entirely ignorant of husbandry, had rendered them more obfcure; while his fkill in modern agriculture enabled him to make a judicious comparifon between that and the practice of the ancients." Mr. Dickfon

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Mr. Dickson is well known to agricultural readers as the author of a plain and judicious treatife on agriculture, publithed by him, in two volumes octavo, many years before the commencement of our Review. In the work before us, like most tranflators and commentators, he has viewed his authors with great veneration, and is fometimes difpofed to give them more applause than others will perhaps approve of; and recommends, from their example, practices that do not perhaps deserve the particular attention of modern husbandmen. Making allowance for this fault, and for fome Scottish idioms, the work is entitled to praise for the ind ftry exerted in compiling it, and the accuracy and fidelity of the tranflation. We look upon The Hufbandry of the Ancients, however, rather as a work of curiofity than utility; for very few practical farmers in Britain can be much benefited by the information it contains, or instructed by the precepts with which it abounds.

ART, XII. Thoughts of Jean-Jaques Rouffeau, Citizen of Geneva. Selected from his Writings by an anonymous Editor, and tranflated by Mifs Henrietta Colebrooke. 12mo. 2 vols. 7s. 6d. fewed. Debrett. London, 1788.

JE

EAN-JACQUES Rouffeau may be justly confidered as an ingenious, eccentric, agreeable, but fometimes a dangerous writer. Endowed by nature with great fenfibility of temper, and ardour of imagination, his mind was peculiarly adapted to the conception of the tendereft fentiments; and he invariably conveys with energy, what he felt with enthusiasm. Accuftomed, in the fearch of moral truth, to explore the recesses of the heart more frequently than thofe of the understanding, he feems fometimes to have confounded the fuggeftions of paffion with the dictates of reafon; and to have mistaken at one time the decifion of the will, and at another a phantom of the imagination, for the light of philofophy. Amidst all his errors, however, he purfues his investigation, in general, with a fyftematical confiftency. In the knowledge of human nature he is fagacious and penetrating; and even while we difapprove of his peculiar opinions, we admire the ingenuity that fuggefted them.

That what is excellent and ufeful in the works of Rouffeau might not be loft, by an intermixture of any thing improper and offenfive, a collection in French has lately been made from his writings of what is beft adapted to the formation of rational views, found moral principles, juft tafte, and proper manners; and of this work the two volumes now before us are a tranflation.

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They contain fpeculations on a great variety of fubjects, religious, moral, political, and mifcellaneous. The following may Terve as a specimen of the first of these claffes:

What

Of how many comforts is the man deprived who has no religion? What fentiment can comfort him under his misfortunes? What fecret motive can incite him to do a good action? voice can fpeak to him from the bottom of his foul? What recompence can he expect from his virtues? How can he face death? The laft refource to be employed against an unbeliever is to touch his heart, and to fhew him an example to incite him, and to render religion fo amiable that he cannot refift her.

What an argument against the unbeliever is the life of a true Christian! Where is the man who dares to controvert this? What emotions is the picture not fitted to excite in the Chriftian's heart, when his friends, his children, his wife, all concur to inftruct and edify him? When, without conftantly preaching God in their difcourse, they always demonftrate him in the actions which he infpires; in the virtue of which he is the author; in the pleasure which they find in pleafing him. When he fees the image of heaven fhine in his houfe; when, once a day, he fhall be conftrained to lift up his eyes to heaven, and fay within himself, Man is not thus himself! fomething more than human reigns here.

A happy inftinct leads me to what is good; but the fame conflitutional inftinct fubjects me to the violence of paffion. This violence of paffion fprings from the fame root with the falutary inftinct; how hall I eradicate it? In meditating on the order of the univerfe I plainly discover the beauty and the goodness of virtue, and its fubferviency to the public good. But what avail all thefe abstracted confiderations when oppofed to my private intereft; and which in the end is likely to prevail in the conteft, my own happiness at the expence of the reft of mankind, or the happiness of others at the expence of mine? If the fear of fhame or punishment prevent me from doing wrong for my own intereft, I have only to fin in fecret; then virtue has nothing to fay to me; and if I be detected, I fhall be punished as at Sparta, not for the crime, but for the detection. Let the character and love of what is excellent be imprinted by nature in the bottom of my foul, and no time will ever efface her established precepts.

But how can I always be certain of preferving, in its purity, that interior image which has no model amongst fenfible beings to which it can be compared? Do we not know that immoderate paffions corrupt our judgments as well as our inclinations? Do we not know that confcience is infenfibly altered and modified in every age, amongit all people; and that every individual acts according to the inconftancy and variety of his prejudices? Let us then adore the Eternal Being, and with one breath we shall destroy thefe phantoms of reafon which have only a vain appearance, and fly as a thade before the light of immutable truth. The omiflion of the religious leads to the neglect of the focial duties.

• Shun

• Shun thofe who, under a pretence of explaining nature, fow in the hearts of men deftructive doctrines, of which, apparent fcep ticism is at once more affirmative and more dogmatical than all the decided arguments of their adverfaries. Under the haughty pretence that they alone are truly enlightened, they imperiously fubject us to their powerful decifions, and pretend to give us for the true principles of things thofe unintelligible fyftems which they have raifed in their own imaginations. They not only overturn, deftroy, and trample under foot, every thing which is dear to mankind, but take from the afflicted the lait confolation of their miseries; from the powerful and rich the only restraint of their paffions; and eradicate from the bottom of every heart the remorfe of crimes by extinguishing the hope of reward for virtuous actions. Yet they fill boat that they are the benefactors of mankind. Never, never, fay they," can truth be prejudicial to man." I believe it, as well as they do; and this is, in my opinion, a great proof that in what they teach there is no truth.'

The moral fubjects are numerous, and many of them inte refting. The author's fentiments refpecting honour are juft, and worthy of a philofopher. "We may distinguish," says he,

In what is called honour that which depends on public opinion, and that which is derived from self-esteem.

The first confifts of vain prejudices, more fluctuating than an agitated water. The fecond has its foundation in the eternal truths of morality. Worldly honours may be advantageous to our fortune, but they never reach the foul, and have no influence on our real happinefs. True honour, on the contrary, forms the effence of happinefs; because it is in that alone we find those permanent fenfations of an interior fatisfaction which alone can render a thinking being happy.'

The fubject of love is treated with acuteness; and the obfervations, though not original, are modified in fuch a manner as gives them an air of novelty.

The thoughts on liberty breathe the true fpirit of an uncorrupted citizen of Geneva:

It is an indifputable, as well as the fundamental maxim of all political right, that the people have elected themselves rulers to defend their rights, but not to fubject them. If we have a prince, faid Pliny to Trajan, it is, that he may preferve us from having a mafter.

To give up liberty is to give up the character of man, the rights of humanity, and even our duty. Nothing can make amends to him who renounces every thing; fuch a renunciation is incompatible with the nature of man; and to take away all freedom from his will is to deftroy all the morality of his actions.

The lawyers who have gravely pronounced that the child of a flave is born a flave, have decided only, in other terms, that a man is not born a man.'

In this work is included the description of the character of Emilius, accompanied with that of Sophia. The whole forms an ufeful collection, particularly well fuited to the entertainment and instruction of youth,

ART, XIII. An Effay on the Epidemic Difeafe of Lying-in Women of the Years 1787 and 1788. By John Clarke, Licentiate in Midwifery, of the Royal College of Phyficians, and Teacher of Midwifery in London. 4to. 2s. 6d, ftitched. Johnson. London, 1788.

Tow

OWARDS the conclufion of the laft, and the beginning of the present year, a disease has prevailed among parturient women in London, which has proved fatal to many, and is faid to differ materially from the common puerperal fever. The author's description of this disease is chiefly as follows:

• Generally at the very outfet of this difeafe the countenance has a particular appearance, long before we can conceive the abfolute ftrength of the patient to be exhausted; the visage becomes pale, and rather ghaftly, and there is the appearance of general relaxation of all the mufcles of the face; the lips and the angles of the eyes lofe their florid red colour, the cheeks and the rest of the face acquire a cadaverous hue, and there is that general caft of features which is fo well known in patients who have been worn out by fome long difeafe; a clammy dew, or moisture, commonly appears upon the face, not amounting to fweating; the pupil of the eyes is ufually much dilated, but contracts upon expofure to a ftrong light; the eyes themselves, in a very short time, lose their luftre and quicknefs, and acquire a glaffy appearance; they feem vacant, and are inattentively turned towards any object, and not long confined to it, but in a little time wander to fome other.

In the courfe of this complaint the tongue undergoes many changes; nor is the appearance of it by any means uniform in all cafes; most frequently in the beginning it is quite pale, but not dry; and this ftate of it often continues through the whole progress; but is more common for it to become dry afterwards and white, and, in fome inftances, very rough. When the difcafe is in a more malignant form, and has lafted fome days, it not unfrequently becomes brown; whenfoever this happens, the furface of the teeth will, for the most part, be found to be incrusted with a fur of the fame colour.

The skin of the reft of the body, like that of the face, is not hard or tenfe, but frequently appears to the feeling more relaxed than it is found even in a natural state, and is fometimes covered with the fame fort of clamminefs which has been mentioned as obfervable on the face.

• The heat of the patient is feldom increased, either to her own fenfations, or those of her attendants; even in thofe cafes where it

has

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