api, &c. In the autumn, 1804, rainettes, weighing more than a pound, and of excellent flavour, were brought from Tressancourt, two leagues beyond St. Germaine. The chesnuts of Lyons are large and celebrated. Almonds ripen at Paris, and are highly beneficial to the stomach, by diminishing acrimony from bile or other causes. In the form of orgeat they become a febrifuge. Figs and melons, as already observed, never appear at the desert, but accompany the boiled beef. The Wednesday club consists of lovers of good cheer, who assemble at Le Gacques's, in the garden of the Tuilleries. The perpetual pot of the street Grands-Augustins, is said to have been in activity for more than a century, and is always well replenished with capons. Green pease are preserved in salt; when boiled they are thrown into cold water, which restores their freshness and colour; they are then warmed with butter and sugar. Sugar also is often used with spi nach. The best oysters come from Dieppe, Cancale, Marrêne, Etretat, and Grandville. Cahors is cele brated for partridges, wine, truffles, eels, cheese, and fine bread; and is thus of singular eminence in Apician geography. Gluttony is of all ages. A little boy, in the middle of a great re. past, having no longer any appetite, began to cry; being asked the cause, "Oh (says he) I can eat no more;""But put some in your pockets."-"Alas, they are full," replied the child A little girl bearing a conversation, whether gluttony or liquorishness gave the most pleasure, said, "I prefer being liquorish, because it does not take away the appetite" Children, and even women will pocket sweetmeats from the table, while in other countries such a practice would sa vour of very bad breeding. Alter eating eggs it is usual to break th: shells, a fragment of ancient superstition, as it was thought that witches made use of them to procure shipwrecks. The bustard, and the cock of the woods, or in French, of the heats, about the size of a peacock, are net unusual in the shops of eatables as Paris. The latter is chiefly from the mountains of Vosges. So much for the luxury of the ta ble; the luxury of the houses is often extreme, particularly in the boudoir. Windows over the fire place were invented for a farmergeneral, who was confined by the gout, and wished to enjoy the pro spect of his garden The luxury of equipages is on the increase, that of beautiful jockies must be passed in silence, though know even by advertisements in the new~ papers. The worshippers of Vents. or, as they are here called amctcates may at Paris gratify every taste ald caprice with females of all countries and complexions; moral liberty being complete, and aberrations only reprobated by ridicule, whie civil liberty does not find the c mate so favourable. Nor must the luxury of the theatres be forgotte particularly the grand and exper sive opera: so that, in this respect, Paris probably rivals ancient Reve. or any other luxurious metropolis. ancient or modern. Account Account of Joanna Southcott, from Letters from England, by Don M. A. Espriella. Translated from the Spanish. Vol. III.* In the early part of the thirteenth century there appeared an English virgin in Italy, beautiful and eloquent, who affirmed that the Holy Ghost was incarnate in her for the redemption of women, and she bap. tized women in the name of the Fa. ther, and of the Son, and of herself. Her body was carried to Milan and burnt there. An arch-heretic of the same sex and country is now establishing a sect in England, found ed upon a not dissimilar and equally porten ous blasphemy. The name of this woman is Joanna Southcott; she neither boasts of the charms of her forerunner, nor needs them. Instead of having an eye which can fascinate, and a tongue which can persuade to error by glossing it with sweet discourse, she is old, vulgar, and illiterate. In all the innumerable volumes which she has sent into the world, there are not three connected sentences in sequence, and the language alike violates common sense and common syntax. Yet she has her followers among the educated classes, and even among the beneficed clergy. "If Adam," she says, "had refused listening to a foolish ignorant woman at first, then man might refuse listening to a foolish ignorant woman at last :"-and the argument is admitted by her adhe. rents. When we read in romance of enchanted fountains, they are described as flowing with such clear and sparkling waters as tempt the traveller to thirst; here, there may be a magic in the draught, but he who can taste of so foul a stream must previously have lost his senses. The filth and the abominations of de. moniacal witchcraft are emblematical of such delusions; not the golden goblet and bewitching allurements of Circe and Armida. The patient and resolute obe. dience with which I have collected for you some account of this woman and her system, from a pile of pamphlets half a yard high, will, I hope, be imputed to me as a merit. Had the heretic of old been half as voluminous, and half as dull, St. Epiphanius would never have persevered through his task. She was born in Devonshire about the middle of the last century, and seems to have passed forty years of her life in honest industry, sometimes as a servant, at others work. ing at the upholsterers' business, without any other symptom of a disordered intellect than that she was zealously attached to the methodists. These people were equally well qualified to teach her the arts of imposture, or to drive her mad; or to produce in her a happy mixture of craziness and knavery, ingredients which in such cases are usually found in combination. She mentions in her books a preacher who frequented her master's house, and, according to her account, lived in habits of adultery with the wife, trying at the same time to debauch the daughter, while the husband vainly attempted to seduce Joanna herself. This preacher used to terrify all who heard him in prayer, and make them shriek out convul sively. He said that he had sometimes, at a meeting, made the whole congregation lie stiff upon the floor These letters are supposed to be written, in fact, by an English author of some reputation, till he had got the evil spirits out of them; that there never was a man so highly favoured of God as himself; that he would not thank God to make him any thing, unless he made him greater than any man upon earth, and gave him power above all men; and he boasted, upon hearing the death of one who had censured him, that he had fasted and prayed three days and three nights, beseeching God to take vengeance upon that man and send him to eternity. Where such impious bedlamites as this are allowed to walk abroad, it is not to be wondered at that mad. ness should become epidemic. Joanna Southcott lived in a house which this man frequented, and where, not. withstanding his infamous life, his pretensions to supernatural gifts were acknowledged, and he was accustomed to preach and pray. The servants all stood in fear of him. She says, he had no power over her, but she used to think the room was full of spirits when he was in prayer; and he was so haunted that he never could sleep in a room by himself, for he said his wife came every night to trouble him: she was perplexed about him, fully believing that he wrought miracles, and wondering by what spirit he wrought them. After she became a prophetess herself, she discovered that this Sanderson was the false prophet in the Revelations, who is to be taken with the Beast, and cast alive with him into a lake of burning brim stone. Four persons have written to Joanna upon the subject of her pretended mission, each calling himself Christ! One Mr. Leach, a methodist preacher, told her to go to the Lord. in his name, and tell the Lord that he said her writings were inspired by the devil. These circumstances show how commonly delusion, blas phemy, and madness are to be found in this country, and may lessen our wonder at the phrensy of Joanna and her tollowers. Her own ca. reer began humbly, with prophecies concerning the weather, such as the popular English almanacks contain, and threats concerning the fate of Europe, and the successes of the French, which were at that time the speculations of every newspaper, and of every alehouse politician, Some of these guesses having chanced to be right, the women of the family in which she then worked at the p holstering business. began to lend car to her, and she ventured to submit her papers to the judgment of one Mr. Pomeroy, the clergyman whose church she attended in Excter. He listened to her with timid curiosity, rather wanting courage than credulity to become her dis ciple; received from her certain sealed prophecies which were at some future time to be opened, when, as it would be seen that they had been accomplished, they would prove the truth of her inspiration; and sanctioned, or seemed to sanc tion, her design of publishing ber call to the world. But in this publication his own name appeared, and that in such a manner as plainly to imply, that if he had not encou raged her to print, he had not endeavoured to prevent her from so doing. His eyes were immediately opened to his own imprudence, whatever they may have been to the nature of her call, and he obtained her consent to insert an advertisement in the newspaper with her sig nature, stating that he had said it was the work of the devil. But here the parties are at issue: as the advertise his care advertisement was worded, it signi ies that Mr. Pomeroy always said her calling was from the devil; on he other hand, Joanna and her witesses protest that what she had signed was merely an acknowledgnent that Mr. Pomeroy had said, after her book was printed, the deil had instigated her to print his name in it. This would not be worthy of mention, if it were not or the very extraordinary situation nto which this gentleman has brought himself. Wishing to be clear of the connection in which he had so unuckily engaged, he burnt the sealed papers which had been intrusted to From that time all the Joannians, who are now no inconsiderable number, regard him as the arch-apostate. He is the Jehoiakim who burnt Jeremiah's roll of prophecies, he is their Judas Iscariot, a second Lucifer, son of the Morn. ing. They call upon him to produce these prophecies, which she boldly asserts, and they implicitly believe, have all been fulfilled, and therefore would convince the world of the truth of her mission. In vain does Mr. Pomeroy answer that he has burnt these unhappy papers :in an unhappy hour for himself did he burn them! day after day long letters are dispatched to him, sometimes from Joanna herself, some times from her brother, sometimes from one of her four-and-twenty elders, filled with exhortation, in vective, texts of scripture, and denunciations of the law in this world, and the devil in the next; and these letters the prophetess prints, for this very sufficient reason that all her believers purchase them. Mr. Pomeroy sometimes treats them with contempt, at other times he appeals to their compassion, and beseeches them, if they have any bowels of Christian charity, to have compassion on him and let him rest, and no longer add to the inconceivable and irreparable injuries which they have already occasioned him. If he is silent, no matter, on they go, printing copies of all which they write, and when he is worried into replying, his answers also serve to swell Joanna's books. In this manner is this poor man, because he has recovered his senses, persecuted by a crazy prophetess, and her fourand-twenty crazy elders, who seem determined not to desist, till, one way or other, they have made him as ripe for Bedlam as they are themselves. The books which she sends into the world are written partly in prose, partly in rhyme, all the verse and the greater part of the prose being delivered in the character of the Almighty! It is not possible to convey an adequate idea of this unparalleled and unimaginable nonsense by any other means than literal transcript.* Her hand-writing was illegibly bad, so that at last she found it convenient to receive orders to throw away the pen and deliver her oracles orally; and the words flow from her faster than her scribes can write them down. This may be well believed, for they are words and nothing else: a mere rhapsody of texts, vulgar dreams. and vulgar interpretations, vulgar types and vulgar applications :the vilest string of words in the vilest doggerel verse, which has no other connection than what the vilest rhymes have suggested, she See the end of the letter. vents vents, and her followers receive, as the dictates of immediate inspiration. A herd, however, was ready to devour this garbage as the bread of life. Credulity and Vanity are foul feeders. them abroad, it is not to be wor dered at if she went on more boldly; the gainfulness of the trade sooni silencing all doubts of the truth of her inspiration. Some of her foremost adherents were veterans in credulity; they had been initiated in the mysteries of animal magnetism, had received spi ritual circumcision from Brothers, and were thus doubly qualified for the part they were to act in this new drama of delusion. To accommo date them, Joanna confirmed the authenticity of this last fanatic's mission, and acknowledged him a King of the Hebrews,-but she dropt his whole mythology. Her heresy in its main part is not new. The opinion that redemption er tended to men only and not to wo men, had been held by a Nor in the sixteenth century, as well as by the fair English heretic already mentioned. This man, in a book called Virgo Veneta, maintained that a female Redeemer was necessary for the daughters of Eve, and al nounced an old woman of Venice of his acquaintance as the Saviour of her sex. Bordonius, a century ago, broached even a worse heresy. I a work upon miracles, printed Parma, he taught that women not participate in the atonement, because they were of a different sp cies from man, and were incapable of eternal life. Joanna and her fol lowers are too ignorant to be quainted with these her proto in blasphemy, and the whole ment of originality in her system must be allowed her, as indeed she has el ceeded her forerunners in the dacity of her pretensions. She boldly asserts that she is the Woman in the Revelations, who has the moon under feet, and on her head The clergy in her own neighbourhood were invited by her, by private letters, to examine her claims, but they treated her invitation with contempt: the bishop also did not choose to interfere;-of what avail, indeed, would it have been to have examined her, when they had no power to silence her blasphemies! She found believers at a distance. Seven men came from different parts of the country to examine-that is -to believe in her; these were her seven stars; and when at another time seven more arrived upon the same wise errand, she observed, in allusion to one of those vulgar sayings from which all her allusions are drawn, that her seven stars were come to fourteen. Among these early believers were three clergymen, one of them a man of fashion, fortune, and noble family. It is not unlikely that the woman at first suspected the state of her own intellects her letters appear to indicate this; they express a humble submission to wiser judgments than her own; and could she bave breathed the first thoughts of delusion into the car of some pious confessor, it is more than probable that she would have soon acknowledged her error at his feet, and the phrensy which has now infected thousands would have been cut off on its first appear ance. But when she found that persons into whose society nothing else could have elevated her, listened to her with reverence, be lieved all her ravings, and supplied her with means and money to spread a crowa |