Page:The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register - Volume 011.djvu/156

142 neration for labour, and he offered to take a bet he would preach half an hour upon any verse, or section of a verse, in the Old or New Testament. Mr. Morison took the bet, and pointed out, And the ass opened his mouth and he spoke. The officer declined employing his eloquence on that text. Mr. Morison won the wager, and silenced the scorner.

It has been justly observed that several modern historians who have pretended to write in a philosophical spirit, have been very indifferent as to the truth or falsehood of the facts on which their philosophy rested. The celebrated Abbé Raynal was a writer of this class, as appears from the following anecdote:—Towards the end of the year 1777, the Abbé Raynal calling one evening on Dr. Franklin at his longs in Paris, found, in company with the Doctor, their common friend Silas Deane. "Ah! Monsieur l'Abbé," said Deane, "we were just talking of you and your works. Do you know that you have been very ill served by some of those people who have undertaken to give you information on American affairs?" The Abbé resisted this attack with some warmth; and Deane supported it by citing a variety of passages from Raynal's works, which he alleged to be incorrect. At last they came to the anecdote of Polly Baker, on which the Abbé had displayed a great deal of pathos and sentiment. "Now, here," says Deane, "is a tale in which there is not one word of truth." Raynal fired at this, and asserted he had taken it from an authentic memoir received from America. Franklin who had amused himself hitherto with listening to the dispute of his friends at length interposed. "My dear Abbé," said he, "shall I tell you the truth?—When I was a young man, and rather more thoughtless than is becoming at our present time of life, I was employed in writing for a newspaper; and, as it sometimes happened that I wanted genuine materials to fill up my page, I occasionally drew on the stores of my imagination for a tale which might pass current as a reality; now this very anecdote of Polly Baker was one of my inventions." "And upon my word," cried Raynal, quitting at once the tone of dispute for that of flattery, "I would much rather insert your fictions in my works than the truths of many other people."—Such is the way in which modern philosophers write history!

, a celebrated artist, painted by order of Pope Innocent VII the four cardinal virtues, with their opposite vices. The Pope not rewarding him as he expected, he said, "Holy father, shall I paint one more vice, called Ingratitude?" "Yes," answered the Pope, ‘if you add another virtue, which is entitled Patience.

Goldsmith was always plain in his appearance; but when a boy, and immediately after suffering heavily from the small pox, he was particularly ugly. When he was about seven years als fiddler who reckoned himself a wit, happened to be playing to some company in Mrs. Goldsmith's house. During a pause between two sets of country dances, little Oliver suprised the party by jumping up suddenly and dancing round the room. Struck with the grotesque appearance of the ill-favoured child, the Ridler exclaimed "Æsop,” and the company burst into laughter; when Oliver turned to them with a smile, and repeated the following couplet:—

The high born, liberally educated, and elegantly polished classes afford a very doubtful criterion of a national character, as refinement introduces a similarity of habits, and, it may be added, that occasions for displaying the discriminating shades seldom occur, It is in the humbler walks of life we must seek for the genuine disposition of a people. Sailors, more especially, are least tinctured by l'esprit de societié, and volumes might be filled with authenticated records of the humanity, the disinterested greatness of mind, inartificially exhibited by British tars. As your Miscellany is so extensively circulated on the continent, permit me to observe, that anecdotes of our seamen would be highly gratifying to Britons residing in foreign parts; and I believe the following is little known, though it deserves universal attention, as an evidence of undaunted intrepidity and exalted gratitude for mild treatment, when a prisoner, and manly religious confidence.—The hero, Daniel Bryan, was a few years ago a pensioner in the Royal Hospital at Greenwich; when far advanced in years, and captain of the foretop, he was turned over from the Blanche frigate to Sir Sidney Smith's ship, Le Tigre. During the siege of Acre, he made frequent applications to