ART. I.-Histoire des Sectes Religieuses qui depuis le Commencement du Siècle dernier jusqu'à l'Epoque actuelle, sont nées, se sont modifiées, se sont éteintes dans les quatre parties du Monde. Par M. Grégoire, ancien Evêque de Blois, Membre de l'Institut, &c. &c. 2 tom. 8vo. Paris.
THIS work is characteristic of its author. It bears ample proofs
of his frankness and benevolence, as well as of his inconsistency and enormous prejudices, political and religious, of his weak judgment and warm heart. M. Gregoire was not in favour with Buonaparte, though he published some remarks upon the state of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, (the Slavery of the Whites he called it,) which were hardly exceeded in falsehood and effrontery by any diatribe from the Imperial, or Radical, or Whig press. The present volumes were seized by the police (like Madame de Staël's Germany') and suppressed; in both cases the suppression seems to have proceeded more from personal ill-will than the apprehension of any possible injury to the imperial government from such books. They were returned to the author after the restoration of the Bourbons.
A Protestant called Langius, M. Gregoire tells us, published a geographical sketch of the Empire of Orthodoxy, which, according to him, is bounded on the east by Fanaticism, and on the west by Pseudo-Orthodoxy. The empire is composed of three confederated kingdoms, called Illumination, Justification and Renovation, and the author enters into a detailed statistic account of each. The river of Orthodoxy, which runs through the three kingdoms, rises from different sources in Sinai, Thabor, and the Mount of Olives, and discharges itself into the Pacific Sea, opposite to the Island of the Blessed. This reminds us of a map of the Land of Tender, so called in the translation of Clelia, (an excellent new romance' one hundred and fifty years ago,) written by the exquisite pen of Monsieur de Scudery, with the Lake of Indif ference, the Sea of Enmity, and the three cities of Tender upon Inclination, Tender upon Esteem, and Tender upon Gratitude.' John Bunyan should have designed maps of this kind to illustrate his Pilgrim's Progress and his Holy War. These are devices which would explain nothing so clearly as the prejudices of the designer. But there are parts both of literary and ecclesiastical history which