jectors, Papists, Protestants. In six volumes. Volume first."

It is addressed, in an ironical dedication, to Frederick, Prince of Wales. Of the six promised volumes, only one appeared; which was hurried through the press with marvellous rapidity (Boyer, Woodfall, and Roberts, having been all simultaneously employed in bringing it out), and suppressed almost as soon as it was completed. One thousand copies were printed, of which Dr. Madden received, and it is supposed destroyed, nine hundred. What became of the remainder does not appear; any more than the motives which could have induced the ingenious author first to take such pains in maturing his work, and passing it, at so much expense, through the press; and then consigning it to oblivion. All that is certain is, that it is now extremely scarce. Mark Cephas Tutet, Esq., who had a copy of it, never heard but of one other, though he frequently inquired after it. A second copy of it (marked only at 10s. 6d.) appeared in the catalogue of H. Chapman, in January, 1782, and was bought by Mr. Blundly.

We are, however, at present, more interested by the substance than by the history of this remarkable production.

In the following passage, which we extract from his preface, the reader will be reminded of Swift, whom this writer frequently resembles, in the sportive wit, the solemn irony, and the caustic vivacity, by which that extraordinary man was distinguished :

"Another motive I had for making these papers public, was, that by magnifying the glory of succeeding ministers, I might sink and lessen the reputation of those that at present sit at the helm, since they have been so regardless of all true merit as to do little or nothing for me or my family. I saw it in vain to attempt their ruin by downright railing, throwing dirt at random, calling them, at all adventures, rogues and knaves in print; for they have so deluded the world by their cursed administration, that they will not listen any longer to general declamations, to witty insinuations, or the boldest satires, without some real facts to vouch them, and prove they are well-founded. Now as I found this an insuperable difficulty, since they manage with such vile art to keep all proofs of that sort from our

knowledge, so I know no better method to nullify their measures, and serve his Majesty and my country, than shewing the world that, notwithstanding the po pular cry of prosperity in our affairs, there will, some ages hence, be much greater and more successful ministers than they are, and who, by-the-bye, may then remember to their posterity the little respect these gentlemen pay one of their ancestors now, whom (out of that modesty so natural to all great spirits) I shall not mention here.'

Our author's motto is

σε Μάντις άριστος όστις εικάζει καλώς.”

-EURIP.

And undoubtedly his sagacity was not at fault, when he saw, in distinct perspective, the decadence of the Turkish, and the aggrandisement of the Russian empires. When he wrote, the dominions of the sultan stretched from the northern coast of Africa to the Caspian Sea, embracing almost every variety of soil and climate, while his army was in a most flourishing condition; and, wielded as it was by an energetic des potism, founded on fatalism, seemed the very sword of fate for deciding the controversies of nations. That Europe would be overrun by the Turks, was an apprehension not uncommonly entertained; and that they should suffer any serious reverses, so as to be reduced to a comparatively insignificant power, was, we believe, not regarded, by any of the leading statesmen and politicians of the earlier portion of the eighteenth century, as a contingency to be reasonably apprehended. But Dr. Madden, even then, saw in that vast empire the germs of decay. He foresaw the effects which an intercourse with European states, and the progress of civilisation, must have, in abating the fervour of fanaticism, which gave an almost superhuman energy to their arms; and as he knew that what was got by the sword, could only be maintained by the sword, he hesitates not to give expression to his full belief, that the decline of their military power would be rapidly followed by the loss of their territories, and the contraction of their empire. He even states the stages of this process, in the corruption of the janissaries, who are no longer trained or recruited after the old fashion, and whose faith in the prophet has been undermined, until it

has become a mere hollow profession, utterly incapable of stimulating to the deeds of daring by which they were formerly immortalised. This, observes Dr. Madden, in his anticipative history, is not to be ascribed to any contests with European powers, in which they were unsuccessful. "It is plain

that these were not the causes, but the effects, of their decayed valour and discipline, by which they have, by degrees, lost all their conquests in Persia, and their territories round the Black Sea, together with the greatest part of Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia, and almost to the gates of Adrianople."

Now, we do regard this as a singularly sagacious anticipation of events; as a progress of affairs seen in its causes, and estimated and calculated with a correctness and confidence that is almost akin to the prophetic vision. Let us now see what he says of Russia, which was, when he was engaged in the composition of his work, between 1720 and 1730, little better, as compared with its present enormous magnitude, than a barren and frozen desert. Our ambassador at Moscow is thus supposed to write to the prime minis. ter of England:

"Your lordship, who is so well acquainted with the vast encroachments this powerful empire has made on all her neighbours around her, both on the side of Turkey, Poland, Sweden, and Persia, and how dangerous an enemy and useful a friend she may prove to the affairs of Germany, can never want inclination to tie the czar to our interests, by all the ways and means that, in good policy, we can make use of."

In Turkey, the causes were not latent, to a sagacity like Dr. Madden's, which would eventuate in the changes which he foresaw and predicted. But in Russia, at that period, the antecedents were but few upon which he could base any calculations respecting the future. Peter the Great died in the year 1725, and had done no more than laid the rude, but strong foundations of the colossal empire which has since been realized; and the hordes of undisciplined savages, who acclaimed him as their lord and master, were but inapt instruments to work out the stupendous projects upon which he had resolved. But the central power of

a vigorous despotism, controlling and directing the energies of a hardy and devoted people-guided by a never-tiring circumspection, and an ever-watchful vigilance, and always prepared to take instant advantage of such opportunities as were presented in the chances and changes of human affairs, were, he clearly saw, in a long lapse of time, amply sufficient to extend and to consolidate the conquests and the acquisitions of the czar. A people in a low stage of civilisation-numerous, but scattered, and therefore not likely to combine for any popular object-and each identifying himself with the glory and the greatness of their common Father-must in time, under wise and steady guidance, become a preponderating power; and, what is most extraordinary, the very course of policy which Russia has invariably pursued towards this country, with one or two exceptions, is clearly marked out in the following curious extract:

"The court has not, indeed, forgot the blow we gave to their naval power formerly in the Baltic, and the great restraint we kept them under ever since -yet, as they see there is no hope of bettering their affairs, by living on illterms with us, they seem determined to try to gain upon us by all the friendship and favour they can shew us in our commerce here. I shall omit no opportunity to improve their inclination towards us, according to my former instructions, and your lordship's commands; and, as this people are vastly improved in every way, have made great advances in all polite arts, as well as the learned sciences, and are grown considerable in the world, by their arms, conquests, and riches, I doubt not we shall find our account in keeping up a constant intercourse of friendship and amity with them. The great caravan for China went off yesterday, with near twenty British merchants in their company, all provided with sufficient passports, and allowed the same privileges as the czar's subjects; and I hope to see this branch of our commerce turned to greater account than it has been represented to the commissioners of trade in London."

Here we have presented to us, by anticipation, a progress of Russian aggrandisement which has since been fully realised. She has arisen, since the date of the publication of this record, from what was scarcely a fourth, to a first-rate power in Europe. The

great augmentation of her navy is distinctly intimated--and the check given to it by British victories in the Baltic, plainly declared; an event which may, surely, be regarded as having been ve rified, when the battle of Copenhagen, and the capture of the Danish vessels, gave an effectual blow to the northern coalition, which so seriously menaced our maritime independence-all this, nearly eighty years before it took place! The sagacity could not have been blind, or aimless, by which events thus in the womb of time were so confidently predicted.

But this is not all. In another passage the prime minister directs the ambassador at Moscow to send by the next caravan to China for a fresh supply of hands skilled in the pottery bu siness, stating that those previously im ported had done very well; and that the manufacture of our earthenware was vastly improved; and that there was every ground for hoping that we should soon become an exporting nation; rivalling the Chinese themselves, and even excelling them, in the baking and the painting.

Now, Dr. Madden's work was published in 1730, when our pottery was of a very poor description indeed. All the better sort of that ware was imported from France, in which some very flourishing establishments for its production existed. In 1763, Wedgwood turned his attention to the subject; and under that ingenious and enterprising man, the manufacture in England continued to improve, until the sagacious anticipations of the Dr. were realised, and in those very particulars which, thirty years before, he so confidently predicted.

The following is the passage in his extraordinary work to which we allude:

"I am sorry I had not notice early enough of the last departure of the caravan for China, because, as the Chinese we formerly brought over, and who have taught our people here to be good potters, and to make as fine vessels as any in China, are growing old and crazy, and as we would be the better to have some more skilful hands from thence, I must beg your care to have twenty or thirty of the best that can be hired at any expense, sent to me by the return of the next caravan. Our chief want is painters and bakers; though the truth is, we are already such masters in the

art, that we export vast quantities of our manufactures for real China; and it is, in my opinion, only to be distinguished from it by its being differently, and, perhaps I might say, better painted.”

Of the great improvement in machinery which would take place in England, he had a clear anticipation, although not to the extent in which it was, in our days, to be realised:

"And though in Frederick the First's and George the Third's days there were hardly forty engines for throwing silk in the nation, it is certain there are now above one hundred; and yet there are daily new ones set up by the company, which throw more silk with two or three hands, than by a vast number of workmen in our ordinary way. The demand for our goods and manufactures there, are, within the last century (as I am assured), risen to double what they were before; and I doubt not but your excellency will live to see our Thames, like the famous river of Tibiscus, of which it was said, that one-third of it was water, a second fish, and another shipping and boats."

Nor of the vast improvement which was to be made in the telescope, did the good genius leave him ignorant, to whom he confesses himself indebted for his revelations. Of that instrument he thus writes:—

"Though it be but of moderate length, yet it is altogether as good as the larger ones, and the expense of fixing it up much less; and you may discern evidently with this, not only the bills, rivers, valleys, forests, but real cities, in the moon, that seem nearly to resemble our own; and what is still more, even mountains and seas in Venus and other planets. Nay, some of our astronomers have gone so far as to aver they could distinguish the times of ploughing and harvest, by the colour of the face of the earth, and to specify those times, that others might make a judgment of their observation; and some have maintained that they have plainly seen in the moon conflagrations, and smoke arising from them."

That this sagacious man should have erred in supposing the moon inhabited by beings like ourselves, is not to be wondered at; for all analogy, in his day, favoured such a notion; but that he should have so clearly fore seen the improvements in the telescope, is, indeed, surprising-improve

ments which enable us to pronounce, with almost absolute certainty, that the moon is not inhabited; and which would enable us to see its cities, if there were any to be seen.

The following observations upon the changes which he anticipated in the Roman states, will, at the present day, have an especial interest for the thoughtful reader :—

"There is nothing more certain than that this see has resolved on new modelling their church, finding by experience the absolute necessity there is for it. For although the power of the Roman vatican has vastly increased, it is evident their interest with all Catholic princes is greatly sunk; indeed, they are almost on the wing to depart from her, if the vast height of that deluge of strength and interest were once so far abated, that, like Noah's dove, they could find a safe place for even the sole of their foot to retreat to, when they have taken their flight from it. The only

hold this see has of them, is very different from that they had in ancient times; for then she was revered as the real head of the Christian church, armed with Divine authority. Whereas, she is now regarded as a temporal tyrant, who makes religion but the stalkinghorse to universal empire. How greatly this has shaken her authority among the princes of Europe, and alarmed their jealousies, is perfectly well known to your lordship; as well as the vast increase of credit and reputation the Protestant faith hath hereby obtained in the world. And though reasons of state and their jealousies of our trade keep them too much estranged from us, yet such a crisis of affairs may come, as may unite them with us, so far as to renounce the papal authority, and as probably reform the faith, as alter the government of their church."

Dr. Madden relied upon the power and the influence of the Jesuits for the upholding and aggrandisement of the court and Church of Rome; and he did not foresee the reaction to which their machinations would give rise, and which would occasion their expulsion from so many of the states of Europe. But he did clearly foresee the corruption of faith and morals which was the consequence of too great an influx of worldly prosperity. "Religio peperit divitias, et filia devoravit matrem," was abundantly exemplied in the profligacy and the abomi

nations, which had long begun to manifest themselves in the once sacred city-until the " omnia Romæ venalia" was not more true of Pagan than of Christian Rome, and the outward formalism of an ostensible Christianity became, as exemplified by the high and the low of the Romish communion, either the nurse of superstition, or the mere incrustation of infidelity. "For," observes this keen and far-sighted observer

"Where men of sense and figure evidently see such flagitious wickedness daily practised by them, under such sanctified professions, they enter into a distrust of their religion, as some do of physic, when they behold many die by it; and as these last think the shortest way to health is by plain, constant temperance, so the others think the best and surest way to please God is, by a plain, honest, and moral conduct, without regarding particular systems of revelation or rules of faith."

The following exhibits both a deep insight into human nature, and a thorough knowledge of the working of the Church of Rome:

"And indeed, it must be confessed, there is no religion upon earth, where believing or doing so little will so effectually serve their turn (if men will be silent and obedient), as that of the Church of Rome, and these good fathers, with their distinctious and absolutions."

We are again reminded of Swift, by the following catalogue of relics, which he describes as having been put up for sale, to supply the exigencies of the papal treasury:—

"The ark of the covenant; the cross of the good thief; Judas's lanthorn, a little scorched: the dice the soldiers played with, when they cast lots for our Saviour's garment; the tail of Balaam's ass, that spake when she saw the angel; St. Joseph's axe, saw, and hammer, and a few nails that he had not driven; St. Christopher's stone boat; and St. Anthony's mill-stone, on which he sailed to Muscovy; the loaves of bread turned into stone by St. Boniface, on a soldier's denying him a piece of them when he was starving, for which he was burned for a sorcerer; crumbs of the bread that fed the five thousand; a bough of the tree carried by Christ entering Jerusalem in triumph, the leaves

almost fresh still; the towel with which he wiped his disciple's feet, very rotten; part of the money paid to Judas; twelve combs of the twelve aposties, all of them very little used; the head of St. Denys, which he carried two miles after it was cut off, under his arm, praising God the whole way; a piece of the rope that Judas hanged himself with; four crucifixes, whose beards grow regularly; seven that have spoke on divers proper occasions."

And so on, for several pages, this shrewd observer proceeds to exhibit to scorn and ridicule "the lying wonders" of the papal system.

There is, we believe, this moment being carried into effect, a project for changing the present bed of the Tiber, with a view to the discovery of the remains of antiquity which are supposed to lie there in concealment. It is a new mode of accomplishing the design which originated in the zeal and the enterprise of the munificent Duchess of Devonshire, and which she hoped to have carried out by means of the diving-bell. Hear how it was anticipated by Dr. Madden, considerably more than a century before it entered into the heads of any of the modern projectors :

"The study of antiquity, which is the reigning passion of this court, has put his Holiness on an extraordinary project, which is to be executed early next summer; and that is, to cut a new bed for the Tiber, by a vast canal from its old channel, through a deep valley, hard by the Ponte Molle. As it is expected (besides the convenience of raising the banks of the river, and securing it from inundation) that prodigious quantities of antiquities of all kinds will be found by this method, and much more than will answer the charge, they propose to spare no expence in executing the design with care and expedition, before the great heats endanger the health of the inhabitants, from the stench of the filth and slime of the river."

How much pregnant truth is conveyed in the following pithy observation upon France, whose conquests have been so great and so unenduring; and whose history exhibits so many striking vicissitudes of aggrandisement and humiliation :

"The truth is, this nation does not seem formed for conquest; and though

they've often made mighty efforts and great conquests, they never preserve them. They seem to traffic for provinces, as Busbequius tells us the Turks do for birds, to take them, and buy them, just to let them go again, and that they may thank them for their li berty."

The judicious reader of the history of France, during the whole period from the publication of this work, down to the commencement of the nineteenth century, will recognise the substantial correctness of the following extract. Having described the miseries occasioned by weak and vainglorious sovereigns, and corrupt and profligate ministers, Dr. Madden thus proceeds:

"In the meantime, this unhappy king. dom has been paying severely for these mismanagements; though every minis. try, in their turn, have been applauding their own conduct, and on every little occasion, crying up their happy times, and striking medals to the glory of their king. And, certainly, if future historians were to plan out their chronicles of these days from such vouchers, they would represent this monarch as considerable a hero, as the present writers (if they impartially represent the distractions of the country, the defeat of his troops, the loss of his provinces, and the cries and sufferings of his distressed subjects) must paint him a weak, unfortunate, and contemptible tyrant.

"It is true, indeed, Mr. Meneville, who is a wise and able, though corrupt minister, and those who are at present at the helm (and depend on Mrs. Duvall, the reigning mistress), as they seem to have an absolute ascendant over him, and are likely to keep it, have managed him and his affairs, these three or four last years, somewhat better than their predecessors, and are endeavouring to bring things into tolerable order. However, after all, they have chiefly aimed at keeping the clergy a little humbler, and calming the parties and factions in the kingdom, and, by stopping the mouths of the boldest and most seditious leaders by preferments, making every one pay more submission to the king's authority.

quieted the provinces, yet at court they Though this has not sufficiently have taught them all to speak entirely the king's language and sentiments, where (as in Copenhagen, everybody's clock and watch is set to go exactly with the king's great clock at the pa lace) all are ready to answer his Ma