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' CHAPTER XIV: 
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MISCELLANIES. 
s e 
“THE most important article in this department of our work, is the series of 
British Essayists from the Tatler to the Mirror, edited by Mr.Chalmers. The 
periodical essays, which under various names, and with various degrees of merits 
have issued from the British press during the last century, form too striking a 
feature in our national literature to be ever forgotten or neglected ; and the publics 
we doubt not, will be sensible of its obligations to Mr. C. for his convenient and 
correct edition of these esteemed writings, which though it cannot be considered 
as perfect, is unquestionably the best that has hitherto been published. The Prize 
Essays of the College of Calcutta will excite an interest, exclusive of their intrinsic 
merit, as the first fruits of an institution most truly honourable to its noble 
founder, and more indicative of a great mind than the most splendid conquests. 
The ‘only remaining works that require to be noticed are those under the name of 
Selections, Beauties, or Anas ; the compilers of which contrive to gain a disho- 
nourable livelihood, by basely stealing the most attractive, passages from our 
standard authors, in order to pamper the idleness and imbecility of those to whom 
the labour of thinking for themselves is an intolerable burthen. 
Art. I. An Accurate Historical Account of all the Orders of Knighthood, at present 
existing in Europe. To which are prefixed a Critical Dissertation upon the Ancient and 
Present State of those Equestrian Iustiutions, and a Prefatory Discourse on the Origin.of 
Knighthood in general ; the whole interspersed with Illustrations and Explanatory Notes. 
By an Officer of 
Joachim. 8vo. 2 vols. pp. 555. 
MR. BURKE was in an error when he 
stated the age of chivalry as gone! Up- 
wards of twenty orders of knighthood 
Rave been created within the Jast cen- 
tury ; two of them owe their origin to 
the gallant achievements of the British 
arms within the last four years. The 
Sicilian Order of St. Ferdinand and of 
Merit was instituted in the year 1800, 
in honour of ‘Lerd Nelson, who safely 
‘conducted the royal family of Naples 
from a, merciless enemy to the shores of 
Sicily. The other to which we allude 
was also created in honour of the same 
hero : this is the Imperial Order of the 
Turkish Crescent, instituted in the year 
1799 by Sultan Selim III. It is a re- 
mark which could not escape the com- 
piler of these volumes, that this event 
forms a memorable era in the annals of 
the eighteenth century ; for itis singular 
the Chancery of the Equestrian, Secular, and Chapteral Order of Saint 
enough that the Ottomans, against whom 
the first order of knighthood, that 
Malta, was 
and a hero, and expressly to commemo- 
rate a victory gained on their own coasts, 
and upon which depended their existence 
as a nation. 
If the age of chivalry had really ex- 
pired, such a work as the present would 
have been interesting to the historian, as 
concentrating in a small compass many 
authentic documents respecting the ori- 
gin and constitution of those establish- 
ments, which have produced so sensible 
an effect on the state of society in Eu-. 
rope ; if on the contrary the age of chi- 
valry is actually reviving, a double in- 
terest must be excited: institutions of. 
this sort, indeed, are not likely to 
hal 
professedly = 
should have instituted a military one. to — 
recompense the bravery of a christian — 
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