At the fame time, the epiftolary form under which M. DE Luc's work appears, muft neceffarily cause a relaxation of the rigorous rules of method; and we think the work rather gains than lofes by this circumftance. It is a feries of letters addreffed to our Queen, as the patronefs of every thing that is great, good, elegant, and humane; and it is not in the letters of a philofophical traveller (who cannot help affociating with his main object incidental views that open to him in his progrefs,) that we are to expect the fevere fymmetry of a regular fyftem.

The Work is divided into eleven parts.

FIRST PART.

The FIRST PART contains fourteen Difcourfes, which servè eminently to afcertain the connection of many difcuffions (that may appear to some digreffive and epifodical) with our Author's main defign; and thus to fhew, that the materials really constitute a complete edifice. It will not be improper to give fome account of these Difcourfes.

The first announces the great point of natural history and phyfical chronology, which is the main foundation of the whole work, viz. That our continents are not of a very ancient date. M. De Luc contends, throughout the course and progress of this work, that ALL the phenomena of our globe, as also the history of man, concur to perfuade us, that, by a fudden, though not a violent revolution, the SEA changed its bed,-that the CONTINENTS, which are now inhabited, are the bed, which IT formerly occupied, and that the number of ages which have elapfed, fince this great revolution, and fince the retreat of the waters of the ocean from the prefent continents, is not very great. His method of proving thele propofitions in the courte of his work, is here indicated before hand, to fhew the Reader where he is to employ his principal attention. It is from the records of NATURE, and not from thofe of hiftory, that he has deduced the chronology of our continents and that of human nature; and as arguments have been drawn from the flow progress of the ferences, to prove the high antiquity of the human race, he obviates thefe by a curious difcuffion of this interefting subject, -in which he fhews, that the fciences, which depend upon genius, may have acquired their prefent degree of improvement in a fhort time, while thofe which depend on experience are yet but in a very imperfect ftate.

In the fecond Difcourfe M. DE LUC fhews the connection fubfifting between the great point of natural hiftory, now mentioned, and the truth and authenticity of divine revelation, and particularly of the Mofaic hiftory, whose principal lines are confirmed, and of whose relations none are contradicted, by an attentive ftudy of our globe. This leads our Author

into a series of remarks on the connection of the fciences with the felicity of man, and their infufficiency to promote it without religion, which alone can prescribe a certain rule of conduct.The reflections on the foundation of morality, which terminate this difcourfe, are curious and interefting. Our Author condescends to refute the nonfenfe that runs through the book of Helvetius, concerning man and his eaucation : but indeed, as this book more particularly feems to have been composed in a delirious ftate of mind, we do not think it deferved the notice which M. DE LUC has thought proper to beftow upon it. What can be faid to a man, who, reafoning concerning the influence of religion on fociety, confounds religion perpetually, either with fuperftition and fanaticifm, or with the conduct of those who use the mask of religion to accomplish perfidious and ambitious views? What can be faid to a man, who, to give the people a certain obligatory and efficacious rule of life and manners, would have religion and its minifters fuppreffed,—and morality preached-by whom? by philofophers and statesmen'forfooth! by the Diderots and Maupeous-by the Richlieus and Voltaires, and fo on! Even were these names ever fo refpectable,-what change do names make in the business?In short, fuch a reafoner as Helvetius requires no answer; but however contemptible this antagonist may be, he furnishes our Author with an occafion of faying many excellent things on the subject of religion, in its connection with the true interefis of man.

The third, fourth, and fifth Difcourfes are relative to the history of man, and exhibit a variety of objects that deferve the attention of the man and the citizen. The improvement of lands as yet uncultivated, (the furprifing quantity of which feems to furnish an argument of the recent emerfion of our continents from the ocean)—the advantages to humanity resulting from commons-the happiness resulting to the villager from fimplicity, which wifdom would chufe as the true fource of happiness to all men, the effects of agriculture, manufactures, commerce, fciences, and civil polity, confidered in their relation to the 'method of bettering the ftate of the human fpecies by the cultivation of deferts ;-all these objects furnish important details in the body and progrefs of M. DE Luc's work, and matter for many judicious reflections in the Difcourfes now mentioned.

The fixth and feventh Difcourfes contain reflections on final causes, and remarks on the natural difpofitions of man, who is the final caufe, in which the greatest part of the productions and arrangements of this terreftrial globe feem to terminate. The natural propensity of man to benignity and goodness, though fometimes rendered imperceptible by foreign impreffions,

is ingeniously proved in the feventh Difcourfe, and the existence of final caufes, is maintained against the Atheist in the discourse preceding. If gravitation (fays our Author) does not cease to operate in a bomb, when it mounts in the air, though it operates invifibly, fo neither does good nefs ceafe to be the natural propensity of man, though it be often counteracted by accidental impreffions.

The fubject of the eighth Difcourfe is, the epistolary form under which the work before us appears ;-but this has been already confidered. The ninth treats of toleration, to which fubject our Author was led, by confidering the adverfaries his book and fyftem might fet in array against him, and the fpirit of candour, decency, and forbearance, that ought to guide those who are engaged in controverfy, whatever may be its object, or the points in difpute. This is an excellent piece. The tenth treats of the nature of man, and the knowledge acquired by the firft men who studied themselves. The eleventh, of the properties of fubftances, and more efpecially, of the properties of matter. In the twelfth, our Author returns to the nature of man, and ascertains particularly the difference between perception and its inftruments, or, in his own words, between the being, which perceives, and its organs. This difcourfe, which contains 114 pages, is a very ingenious refutation of materialism in general; and the difcourfe, which follows, is a very full and mafterly answer to the materialism of Dr. PRIESTLEY in particular. He endeavours to fhew, that the reafonings of the Doctor have no fort of force, unless it be against those fcholaftic Spiritualifts of former times, and their followers, who maintain, that the foul and the body have no property in common, no reciprocal point of conformity, or concurrence, and that, nevertheless, they are capable of an intimate communication with, and a reciprocal action on each other: he fhews, that the more rational fpiritualists (who do not difdain matter, but acknowledge that it must have an immediate relation to SPIRIT, though in confequence of properties, in these two fubftances, as yet unknown to us) have palpable advantages over Dr. Priestley. He obferves, that (notwithstanding the profeffion the Doctor makes of his attachment to the philofophy of Newton) nothing can be more anti Newtonian, than his idea of matter, and (what is more to the point) that no idea of matter is fo palpably infufficient to account for fenfation and intelligence, as that which reduces it to a mere unfubftantial power of attraction and repulfion. The purest logic of reafon and common fenfe, undefiled by fcholaftic jargon, reigns in this and the two preceding Difcourfes. Our Author coincides with the ideas of Dr PRICE, on this fubject, more than once; but thefe difcourfes, as he tells us himself, were compofed before the publication of Dr. Price's Conference.

The

The fourteenth Difcourfe, which concludes the first part of M. DE Luc's work, may be confidered by fome as a hors d'œuvre; but it is a very interefting one. Indeed, as thefe Difcourfes are preliminary in part, and partake more or lefs of the nature of a preface, it comes in with propriety in that point of view. Its object is of the utmost importance, but also, of the moft nice and delicate nature; for it treats of the liberty of writing on philofophical fubjects, and thus places an author between a Scylla and Charybdis of a momentous fort. Here again M. DE LUC has, in view, Dr. PRIESTLEY, who lays it down as a principle, that every man ought to publish with the utmost freedom, bis fentiments (whatever they may be) on the most important fubjects, and refute, with the fame freedom, whatever he may think falfe and erroneous in the opinions of the public. M. DE LUC is of opinion, that a wife and good man ought to be cautious and prudent in the use of this liberty, as truth may, and public felicity muft, lofe much by the indifcriminate employment of it on all forts of fubjects. Whether our Author be in the right or in the wrong, we fhall leave it to the candid and judicious reader to determine ;-but this we can affirm, without difficulty, that he deferves to be heard, and that the confiderations he offers on the fubject, are important and refpectable: they have, moreover, one undoubted title to an attentive hearing, which is, that they come from an ardent friend both to civil and religious liberty, who treats the fubject with the fpirit of a philofopher, and of a friend to man, and not with the narrow spirit of any kind of party.

That the reader may be fenfible of the importance of the objects that are prefented to him in this work, M. DE Luc advifes him to pafs from the firft to the eleventh part; as he will find in this latter, all the facts and principles that the Author defigns to afcertain by the materials, obfervations, and reafonings, contained in the intervening parts. We, however, shall proceed in the ftraight line.

The fecond part of this great work contains, in eight letters, an examination of all the fyftems of cofmology, in which the prefent ftate of the furface of the earth is confidered, as the effect of the general deluge. This examination leads our Author into prodigious details, as the fcience of cofmology comprehends not only the principles of phyfics, and requires all the materials of geography and natural hiftory to form its ftupendous edifice, or to overturn those that have been erroneously raised under its nime, but also extends to the hiftory of man, of his origin, nature, and destination, as connected with the ftate and revolutions of the globe, which he inhabits. For (according to our Author's excellent and truly philofophical principle) all things in nature concur in the accomplishment of one great end, and that end is

bappiness;

happiness; and the universe is the work of an intelligent Being, who has not left MAN in a total ignorance, either of his origin or of his end. Accordingly, in the clofe and circumftantial examination of the systems of Burnet, Whifton, Woodward, Leibnitz, Scheuchzer, Pluche, and Engel, which we meet with in this second part, there is a rich treasure of observations and phyfical knowledge. The natural hiftorian will find here, among other things, curious difcuffions relative to the cohesion of bodies, their fall or defcent in water, the mechanism of petrification, the formation of gritts, and chryftallizations in the cavities of foffils, the state of the beds or frata at the earth's furface, confidered with respect to the fpecific gravities of the fubftances which, they contain, the vitrefcible, but not vitrified fubftances, that compose the earth, and the existence of inhabited continents, while the marine bodies depofited themfelves on those continents (formerly covered with water) which we now inhabit. After a refutation of the fyftems of the learned men already mentioned, M. DE LUC fhews, that, in general, all the fyftems, that derive the present form of the earth from a violent change or revolution, are contradicted by the regularity of the dry furface of our globe. He acknowledges, that the confufed heaps of terreftrial and marine bodies, that are almost every where buried in the bowels of mountains, prove that our globe did not proceed, in the ftate in which it now is, from the hands of the Creator; but he obferves juftly, that it is only the heterogeneous nature of these bodies, or their incongruity with the places where they are found, that can lead us to deduce from them the fuppofition of a general revolution in our globe: fuch a revolution having no veftiges or proofs but to the eye of reafon. Nothing certainly can be more ingenious, than the arguments by which M. DE Luc proves the regularity of the prefent continents, in the letter that terminates this fecond part.

In the third part, our Author treats of the cofmological fyftems, in which the prefent ftate of the furface of our globe is fuppofed to have been produced by SLOW OPERATIONS, or the gradual influence of the WATERS. He fhews particularly, that the motion of the waters from east to west, to which M. BUFFON, and others, have attributed the change of land into fea, and fea into land, and the prefent form of our continents, has not produced fuch effects, and could not produce them, in the nature of things.

In the fourth part, with which the SECOND VOLUME COMmences, M. DE LUC, examines the hypothefis of thofe, who confider the rivers as the caufe of the prefent fate of the earth's furface; and he proves, with the utmolt perfpicuity and evidence, that the actual form of our continents is in direct oppofition to this fyftem. The abettors of this hypothefis, which is become a favourite one, allege, in its fupport, the following fact;

that