unto my Lord." Of this passage Mr. Reeves observes, (and he had a learned Hebrew assistant,) that My Lord is here understood by Jews as well as Christians to mean the Messiah,' it can then surely never be right to pronounce both the words alike. In the Bibles used by the French reformed churches Jehovah is rendered L'Eternel, which at least keeps nearer to the etymology of the name than the Lord. In your review of Mr. Marsh's book in the same Journal, I find it is taken for granted by him, that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew. It would take up too much of your valuable paper to enter at large into this subject, but one great objection, among many others, to this Hypothesis, is the improbability of the Gospel, which was intended for all descriptions of persons, being promulgated in a dead language, for such was the Hebrew in the time of Christ as much as the Latin is now, and even the quotation from the Psalms, Eli Eli lama Sabacthani, which our Saviour pronounced with his dying breath, is not from the original Hebrew but the Syriac version. E. Origin of the System of Public Debt. MR. EDITOR, MANNERS. The Nabob.-N° II. Scribimus indocti, doctique-passim. Horace. We write-although we scarce can read, we write. A merchant of Bagdat, as the Persian writer relates, happening to pass through the territories of the Rajah of Bundelcund, observed a peasant standing by a small lake which skirts the city of Pennah. The man held in his hand a pebble, which he continued to eye with much attention, turning it over and over in his palm, and successively examining each side and angle. The merchant who had come to Bundelcund for the purpose of trafficking for precious stones, advanced towards the peasant, and requested to look at the pebble. "For this stone," said the merchant, weighing it in his hand, "I will give you a hundred rupees.” "No, by the sacred Gauges," replied the peasant, "It is your's for a thousand, nor will I abate one rupee of the price." The merchant took a bag from his dromedary, and paid the thousand rupees into the hands of the peasant, for which in return he received the pebble." I thank your simplicity, said he, for the ten thousand rupees which I shall receive of profit for this stone." "And I, rejoined the peasant, owe your discernment a thousand. A neighbouring herdsman this morning made a pebble skim the surface of vain endeavouring to imitate his skill; and was just this lake, quite across. I have for some time been in In my letter on the Venetian commerce, in the middle ages, inserted in your second volume, page 284, I forgot to mention a circumstance which is of the highest importance in the annals of public economy and which seems to have escaped the notice of the generality of writers on the subject. The art of bank-considering whether I could accomplish my object ing is vaguely ascribed to the Italian republics, and especially to that of Florence; and the primitive introduction of national debts is attributed to the Florentines, about the year 1344, from which period it was gradually adopted in the Italian and the remainder of the European states. The only writer in my knowledge who has kept free from this mistake is the accurate, and laborious Mr. Anderson, who in his Historical Deduction, traces back the origin of this practice to the Venetians about the latter half of the 12th century. As, however, he does not seem to make a proper distinction between the art of banking and the system of public debt, and as his statement is destitute of precision in the circumstances of time and events, I am happy to have it in my power to supply this deficiency. It is a fact completely established, that under the government of Vital Michele, the 32d doge of Venice, in 1171, owing to the expensive wars in which the republic was engaged in the east and west, extraordinary contributions and stocks were raised in the state; and after the deliberations of the great Council, on the first of August, the court of loans (la camera degl' imprestiti) was erected. It was necessary to borrow from citizens, according to their respective wealth, making them creditors of the court at the rate of 4 per cent. These passages I have translated literally from Sanuto's Lives of the doges of Venice, in the 22d volume of Muratori's Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, ITALICUS. with that flat and angular stone which you hold in your hand, when you fortunately discovered to me that I possessed a treasure." I felt myself nearly in the situation of the Indian peasant, on receiving the following letter this morning, from the neighbourhood of St. Paul's: "SIR, "Mr. Nabob. You "Saw your proposals in Lit. Journ. of the 16th, and shall be glad to treat. Perceive you understand the town, from hints thrown out in proposals. The story of Mrs. L. and the Crim. con's. of the last six months may be given with much advantage. Your hint from Abbé Vaillant shews you know the art of extracting; only you must not mention names. may take all the Kengos from him, and the Jolibas from Park, without acknowledgement; and as the Waahabis are much talked of, you must be particular on them; say what you please, no one here knows any thing of them, so can't detect. I am afraid however the public will not allow of above one quarto (broad margin and plates) under your own name. I can get Dr. Hodge for a sum to father the book; and if you call it the Life of Elfi Bey, you may venture upon a couple of quartos without hazard. As Elfi Bey was here so lately, all the London news will come into his Life of course; and an account of the nations of Africa and his neighbours the Waahabis, will be exactly in point. You may perhaps prefer calling it the Life of Abdul Wechab; but this I leave to yourself. The style is very lame; has neither figures nor epithets; it must positively be brightened, or it will never go down. The grand matter of type, paper, and plates, shall be considered when we come to treat. P. S. You shall find me very liberal. I will satisfy reasonable." such a price for an author's labours as the booksellers can afford to do from interest; and the labour of writing to please the public, and that of inventing virtues for a great man or his mistress, bear no comparison. This has, however, occasioned a terrible levelling of ranks in the literary world. If his play cannot possibly be acted, nor his poems read, a noble lord has no other resource but to print them at his own expence; and, instead of having the curiosity of the public excited by his train of dedicators, he is comI never before knew the value of my life. Here Ipelled to allure, by hot-pressing and calf-skin bindings, have an opportunity of turning it at last to some account, were my industry equal to the rank which I seem to hold in the favour of fortune. It is indeed impossible to say what I may be tempted to do by the prospect of something handsome: but really Dr. Hodge has so many things on his name at present, that I heard a wag, the other day at Hatchard's, compare it to a Falmouth coach, with sixteen passengers outside and the boot full of John Dories. A vehicle so overloaded is in great danger of breaking down; and I should not altogether like to have my works carried among a crowd of fractured limbs to the hospital. Had I lived in the days of Charles II, I should certainly never have ventured on any thing, in the way of writing, beyond a billet-doux, or a rebus. The first half of an author's days, in those times, was spent in endeavouring to find a patron; and a great part of the other half in devising his praises. Dryden indeed turned his Dedications to some account; for by means of them and his Prefaces, he contrived to double his work. I am astonished that so excellent an expedient for making up a book, when one has very little to say on the main subject, should not have been recurred to by certain popular authors of our times. The contents of a dedication were in Dryden's days allowed to have as little reference to the title, as a modern piece of biography has to the name of the person which stands at the top of the page. Nor was there any more shame attached to the author's furnishing out his patron with the colours of fancy, where nature had been niggardly, than to Lady Transmarine's renewing herself with a liberal quantity of farde and rouge on a court-day. The colours employed by poor Otway in his dedications are indeed not a whit more natural than those of her ladyship; for he lavishes on Nell Gwynn all the epithets with which a Popish confessor was accustomed to address the Virgin Mary; although it is well known that Nell, with all her good qualities, was no more entitled to them, than another Mary who has lately incited her sex to assert their freedom, both by precept and example. The dangerous innovation of this last lady has however been pursued by a calamity new and hitherto unknown to her sex; for her hus band has become her historian. the kind perusal of his particular friends, who are presented with copies of his works. A critic, wellknown to the literary nobility and gentry, has however assured me that there are still some good pickings to be had among the great, in the way of amending || and preparing for the press. The present offer from the neighbourhood of St. Paul's is not the only opening by which I have had an opportunity of stepping into the literary world. My jokes over a bottle of wine at Saunders's, so pleased the proprietor of a morning paper, who happened to join me at dinner, that he became extremely anxious to engage me as his punster; and when, from my hints about the fashionable Mr. B's assortment of wigs, and some secrets of lady Louisa's domestic economy, he began to perceive that I was a man of some consequence, and knew the world, he rose a hundred pounds in his terms, provided I would engage to make up his weekly list of fashionable arrangements. I have since frequently regretted that I did not accept his offer, as I understand it would have procured me a ready admittance into all parties, on the easy terms of next day describing them at length in the paper. Nor would even this have always been required, as many are so ambitious of honest fame, as to have an account of their parties regularly transmitted to the newspaper offices, a day at least before they take place, that they may not miss insertion on the following morning. I know some people are so unfair as to give all the honour of writing these accounts to butlers and waiting-maids; but for my own part I never could discover any thing, either in the style or sentiment, which might not bave been fairly atchieved by the literary talents of even the highest circles. I might instance the gay Colonel who so punctually transmits advices of his important private galas to a fashionable morning paper. No one will deny that he displays the accomplishments of his wife and daughters in a manner so natural, and so peculiar to himself, that it is impossible it can be imitated by any one else. My talent at crambo, which I acquired from my nurse, (who was a lineal descendant of that bard of Conway so celebrated by Gray) had once nearly ac quired me very high theatrical distinction; as a celeA Peer could formerly at a trifling expence and with brated composer who had heard me rhyme over a no trouble, make a very conspicuous figure in the twelfth cake, applied to me to make a vehicle for the literary world: by receiving a dedication at a mode-music of an opera he had just completed. I liked rate price be at once became a Mecenas; and he had only to lend his name to some verses prepared for him by his dedicator, in order to be saluted as the second Virgil. Things are now very much altered. Our great men are not prompted by their vanity to pay the proposal, as I felt an inclination to make a collection of my crambo lines; and I could with little trouble adapt them to the present occasion, as the length of the verse was the only thing that required to be considered. I had actually completed the first act, and the principal performers assembled one evening for a private rehearsal of it. A bravura, however, of the most finished execution, and which was entrusted to a first rate performer, happening to fall on an elegant description of a Welsh rabbit, it suggested to my mind, a most unlucky association of ideas. I had formerly almost choaked on a Welsh rabbit, ' while applauding the orator of a certain noted club; and the gesticulations of the lady who sung the bravura, so forcibly recalled the recollection of my former agonies, that I instantly sickened; nor was I afterwards able to add a single line to the piece. I am happy however to say that the composer suffered no material delay in the representation by this accident; for by application to a first-rate maker of vehicles, in eight-and-forty hours, he had a complete one returned to him, as it has since been performed with unbounded applause. There are several other popular walks of literature in which I feel an honest consciousness that I could have excelled, had my talents been put to the test. I am particularly calculated for a reviewer, as I possess in an uncommon degree the faculty of comprehending the whole scope of a book after perusing only a few pages of it. I am such a master of German that I shall not be afraid to enter into a competition with the most fluent female translator, in fitting up the literary commodities of the fair of Leipzic for the English market. If the wit, (for so it is termed in Germany) of Kotzebue and his brother poets, should indeed continue to flow as copiously as hitherto, I would not engage for my industry holding out any considerable time. The present ready market for all manner of literary commodities naturally produces an eager enquiry after something new to write about, and a desire, as eager, to anticipate the sale when any thing new occurs. I could mention some very curious contests between rival printers, who were within half a neck during the whole beat: each carried a feather, for neither of the authors proved any hindrance. Although I was a keen sportsman in my youth, I cannot now venture on such contests; yet I might save my distance among the crowd of imitators, who immediately follow in the rear of a performance which bears any marks of novelty, in the same manner as most of our fashionable turf-meetings conclude with a hack-race for horses of all ages. I have by me some very pretty imitations of our most approved modern pieces, both in prose and verse, which I mean at no great distance of time to lay before the public. It might be imagined that any thing, however new and curious, would soon pall upon the public taste, when served up from so many quarters at once: but our modern receipts for dressing a work, are not less ingenious and varied, than those in a French system of cookery. I have known a book, in the course of half a year, assume the forms of an original work, an abridgment, elegant extracts, and anecdotes of the author and his writings; and yet for many months afterwards I could discover it, under various shapes and in fragments of different sizes, contributing its share to the manifold ingredients of some of our popular monthly repositories. VOL. III. I have been often strongly tempted to commence a writer of fashionable novels, but have as often been prevented by my extreme unwillingness to encroach on the privileges of the fair sex. One lady, who kindly admits of my morning visits, I frequently find turning this species of writing to good account. She has fortunately kept a common-place book for these last twenty years; and now when she has had a bad run at cards, or when her milliner becomes importunate, she has merely to copy out a few scores of pages, and carry them to that convenient literary receptacle in the city, where they are disposed of at the current price of five guineas the novel volume. I cannot say I feel altogether easy in this lady's company, as I know that I, as well as all her other acquaintances, are down in her book, and that every thing I say or do may one day be spread abroad, in the same manner as a sister authoress lately gave all her May-fair friends to the world. Nay, I begin to fear that I am not altogether safe in my own apartments. It is well known that a great part of the waiting-maids and valets at the west end of the town are in the pay of some one of our fashionable novelists; and I shrewdly suspect my man Timothy has been bribed into a conspiracy against the secrecy of my private transactions, for I have perceived the dog, for several days past, counting my cups of chocolate, and committing to memory my daily questions about the state of the weather. As I have got upon literary affairs, I shall conclude this paper by inserting a letter which I received two days ago, and which relates to a subject that was once supposed to be connected with the province of the "Mr. Nabob. belles-lettres : "SIR, "As you may have it in your power to give me some useful hints with regard to the costume of foreign countries, I have resolved, by way of encouragement, to communicate to you a most important piece of intelligence. If you are the first to give it to the public, it will certainly establish your reputation, as it is a common concern to every person of taste in the kingdom. I have long been astonished that no one has attempted to reform the unnatural practice which prevails on the stage, of introducing men and women without any of those attendants who are constantly found to accompany them in real life. If a sportsman were to appear attended by his dog, a countryman by his pig, and an old maid by her tabby cat, the part would immediately be distinguished, nor would mistakes so frequently arise from the exquisite sentiments, which our elegant dramatists of the present day put alike into the mouths of all their characters. I own that a very great step has lately been made towards a more natural mode of stage representation, by the introduction of a real dog, and a real piece of water at our national theatre of Drury-Lane; an improvement which does equal honour to the genius of the dramatist who imagined it, and to the taste of the manager who brought it forward. With all due deference however to these great authorities, I must observe that much still remains to be done. A play should read as well as act: but in the piece to which I allude, not a syllable is put into the dog's mouth; and how then, I H would ask, is it possible that Carlo should receive due regulations are adopted, which perplex, and do nothing more; and regulations are adopted, and actions pursued which tend to degrade the whole system, and will lead to its dissolution. At one time the combined and representative wisdom and dignity of this nation is called upon to return its thanks, a compliment of great meaning, undoubtedly, if any thing among men deserves to be so accounted, to the volunteers, for their spirited, patriotic, magnanimous, and voluntary appearance, to defend their country, its laws, and its property. Immediately after, the crown lawyer is called upon for an opinion which makes these same spirited, patriotic, magnanimous, and voluntary defenders, bound, enlisted, compulsory soldiers. The volunteers of the metropolis are honoured with a royal review, and by the most flattering testimony of the approbation of their sovereign. Nay, to such a height is respect for the volunteers carried, that when a measure of the utmost importance is proposed in parliament, the appointment of an experienced field-officer to each corps, the minister declared in his place he could not consent to the adoption of it, till he had an opportunity of consulting the inclination of gentlemen belonging to volunteer corps. Presently after one of the ministers, as colonel of a corps, wishes to impose an officer I know great exertions will be made at the other upon his corps, contrary to the strongest desire of house to anticipate me. I know that two fox-hounds that corps, and by the infringement of a right uniare in training to open across the stage in a forth-versally understood, at least by the volunteers around coming opera, and that the composer has already pre- the metropolis, to belong to them, that of electing pared the accompaniment to their voices. But I their own officers; and the king is advised, most would have him to know, that my pond-full of frogs inconsistently, to publish his approbation of this is also purchased, and that it is in vain to enter into a conduct. competition with me; for a London audience has too much taste and liberality, not to give a marked preference to one who introduces a real novelty into their public amusements. I am, Sir, your most humble Servant, POLITICS. The Volunteer System. One circumstance relating to volunteer corps, has given birth to a great many words, most expressive of ignorance, and want of consideration, that is the committees, a subject, it seems, of great odium and terror to the ministers. This subject has been laid hold of by the enemies of the ministers, and very artfully, and maliciously employed to kindle a sort of alarm among those whose old fever of apprehension is not yet altogether extinguished. They hoped another advantage from this machination. Judging meanly of the ministers, they trusted to throw them into a hurricane of terror by their exaggerated foreSO much has been said and done with regard to this bodings; and thus to hurry them into violent, offensubject, that it has at last become very interesting.sive, and absurd measures, till they should become Like many other measures which governments adopt too contemptible, and too odious to be any longer it was very little understood at the time it was had endured in their places. We are sorry that the minis recourse to, very little study has been employed to in-ters should of late have exhibited so many indications vestigate its nature since; and this ignorance is of having fallen into the snare; and seem in so fair a abundantly visible in the actions which we see. The way of justifying the expectations of their enemies. petty incidents which happen, one after another, still Those men into whose hands arms have been entrusted suggest as they appear, some new idea with regard to for the protection of their king, and of every constithe volunteers. If the incident of the day is gratify- tuted authority in the state, who have been compli ing to the persons in rule, the idea formed is favour-mented in so extraordinary a manner for the admiable to the volunteers; if the incident is not gratifying, the idea of the day is against the volunteers. From such narrow, partial, trifling considerations, every thing done with regard to this business seems evidently to proceed; no general comprehensive view of the subject is possessed, from which a train of connected and systematic measures would flow; the action of one day contradicts that of another; silly rable spirit they displayed, are now, without a shadow of reason to suppose that this spirit is altered, or likely to alter, to be treated with suspicion, to be treated as if they were more ready to pull down all constituted authorities, than to shed their blood and expend their means in defence of them. Whether it be hope or fear which is naturally suggested by the existence of committees of volunteer corps, they belong to the system, they are inseparable || that fund, who form a committee exactly resembling from it, and ministers should have formed a deliberate judgment on the effects before they adopted the measure. The simplest view of the constitution of volunteer corps will shew that committees are a part of that constitution, and that the corps cannot exist without them. To attempt then to talk of the committees of volunteers, as being objects of suspicion, without the corps themselves being at the same time objects of suspicion, is too ridiculous. But Regular, and militia, and fencible regiments are paid by government; every expence incurred by the regiment is defrayed by government, and to obey orders, and receive its pay, is all its business, and all its concern. The individuals have no joint disbursement to make, and no general interest to manage; any selection of persons to manage it, therefore, is not wanted, and would be absurd to be made. the whole nature of the case is totally and absolutely changed with regard to volunteer corps, at least all that part of them which serves without pay. The expence of the regiment is not defrayed by government; the individuals of whom the corps is composed put their hands in their pockets, and defray it themselves; instead of receiving pay from government, they incur an expence; a certain sum of money is wanted annually to defray the expences of the corps, and is received by contribution from the members. Two things here are necessary to be done. It is necessary to collect the money from the individuals; and it is necessary to pay it away as the occasions of the corps require. This is a piece of business, and that not the most agreeable, which volunteer corps must transact, from which all regiments of another description are exempted. This business must be done by some person or persons in the corps. It is a business which concerns the individuals belonging to the corps, and them only. They alone therefore have the right to appoint whom they may chuse to conduct that business; and no other person or set of persons, government as little as any other, can, without open injustice pretend to dictate to them to whom to entrust the management of the money which they voluntarily take out of their pockets, and which is as much their private property, after it is deposited in the common fund, as it was while yet in their own hands. To interfere with the most absolute freedom of volunteers | in the choice of persons to conduct the pecuniary affairs of the corps, is to commit an outrage upon the right of property; and is nearly the same as to send a person into my house, to pillage and carry off, whatever government may direct him. The injury might be greater in degree, but not different in kind. If I, and any part of my fellow subjects, have joined our money together, for any joint, and lawful object, does any individual but ourselves, does government possess any authority over it more than it possessed before it was thus disposed of? What opposition would not any attempt to usurp so unjust an authority lawfully raise in this country! The members of every company of a corporation have a common fund, which entirely resembles that of a volunteer corps: they select a certain number of their body to manage the persons chosen by volunteers to manage their smaller funds. Has government ever interfered with these companies and corporations, in the right of chusing the persons whom they judge most qualified to manage their funds with advantage? Would not any such attempt be resisted as the most flagrant injustice? The Directors of the East India Company, are a committee chosen by the proprietors to manage the funds of the corps. What would these proprietors say, if government were to address them, as they have been advised to address the volunteers; "You must no longer have this committee which you call your Board of Directors. It is possible you may chuse democrats, as you have sometimes shewn inclination to do. You must henceforth have your Directors chosen by the Governor General of India, who most resembles the colonel of a volunteer corps." In fact it seems to be the childish terror of a name, which has got into the minds of the persons who raise the cry against volunteer committees. If we look at the thing, it is the officers of volunteer corps, who, if any danger can be supposed, must be the authors of it. In the first place they form what is in reality a committee in every corps, whether it goes by that name, or not; and in many corps they meet regularly and deliberate, in what they call a military committee. In the next place, they are in general neither persons of more understanding, nor better principles, nor even greater wealth or station, than the members of the pecuniary committee; and in the last place they only have the opportunity of addressing the corps when assembled together, and acquiring any influence with it, while the members of the pecuniary committee are humble privates, and never heard or seen. If government should propose, what we do not know that it means to propose, but what it can never effectuate, that the funds of corps should be entrusted to the officers, what advantage would it gain? The officers form, to all intents and purposes, a committee of the corps. Government would then only transfer the funds of the corps from one committee to another; a committee on whose loyalty not a particle more of dependence could be placed than on that of the other; and a committee possessed of much greater powers of doing mischief. In fact, by some late proceedings, government has appeared to be no less actuated by suspicion of the officers of volunteer corps, than of their committees. It wishes to replace these officers by persons chosen by the commanding officer. This may do very well where the commanding officer is a creature of government; but how will it answer when the commanding officer is in opposition to government? How will it answer in another case, known to be pretty frequent, in which the commanding officer is as much, or more inclined to democracy than the majority of the corps? We speak now of this attempt as suited to the views of the minister; we shall speak of it as consistent with justice and the public good, hereafter. How very silly then appears to be the aristocratical terror, about the persons chosen to regulate the petty accounts of a volunteer corps, merely be |