204 
the evening at Meffina; and at all, the 
moft obliging welcome to Englifhmen car- 
rying the flighteft introduction. 
We dined on Sunday, the rath, with a 
large party of the principal inhabitants at 
the governor’s, and found no reafon to 
regret the abfence of Englith tables. We 
made a little voyage one evening, by the 
favour of an Englith captain, over Cha- 
rybdis to the Calabrian coaft.—The old 
whirlpool is no longer formidable ; but, 
on its fcite, fome currents, troublefome to 
fmall craft, do ftill play. 
Scylla lies feven or eight miles above 
the point of Italy on which we landed. 
‘The breadth of the ftraight here is about 
feven miles. We found vineyards almoft 
to the water’s-edge, on the Italian border. 
We heard much of robbers in the interior, 
as we had done of Sicily; yet the inha- 
bitants of the villages we ftrolled among 
for an hour or two, not far from Old 
Rhegium, were cheerful, civil, and in- 
duftrious. Here I firft faw the aloe in 
bloffom, in the wild ftate. 
June 15th, by moonlight, at evening, 
we left Meffina in a {paronaro, a {mall 
vefle! without a deck, and a moveable 
maft. We had a crew of eight civil Mal- 
tefe, who, with ourfelves, had juft room 
enough to lie down for repofe in the even- 
ing, We coafted along Sicily to Cape 
Paffaro, paffing near enough to Augufta, 
a town of about 12,000 inhabitants, 
lying between Catania and Syracule, to 
diftinguifh plainly the refpectability of the 
buildings in it.. At the Cape, we went 
on fhore to procure a cafk of freth water. 
I took the opportunity of ftrolling half a 
mile from the coaft to an eminence, whence 
I could difcern little other vegetation than 
the fan-paim, on the rocky furface of this 
little defert. I foon returned to the fpa- 
ronaro; and the next day at noon, after 
being fqueezed for two days and three 
nights in our little boat, had the happi- 
nefs of arriving once again fafe at La 
Valetta. 
a 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
On the prefent STATE of PHILOSOPHY 
2a GERMANY ; by M. G. SCHWEIG- 
HAUSER. 
s¢ YN philofophical matters,” fays Mal- 
r lebranche, “‘ we ought to love novel- 
ty, for the fame reafon that we ought al- 
ways to love and fearch for truth, and in- 
ceflantly cherifh a curiofity for it.” Un- 
fortunately philofophy is not always truth, 
as a late writer has defined it, but rather, 
according to the confeffion of an ancient 
On the prefent State of Philofphy in Germany. [O& ty 
author, a fcience in which man fixes thé 
meafure of every thing. We ought, there- 
fore, to examine new fyftems, and, at thé 
fame time to beware how we give credit 
to them. 
We fhould, above all things, guard a- 
gainft the idea that any particular philo, 
fopher, or fchool, has invariably deter- 
mined the track which the mind ought to 
follow, in the ftudy of man and thofe 
things conneéted with him; or has fixed 
its limits. This ftudy, as vaft as that of 
nature, is ftil] more affe€ted in its refults 
by the weaknefs and inability of thofe, 
who devote their attention to it. It can- 
not, therefore, be furprizing that no fyf{- 
tem has yet reconciled every opinion, and 
that, for infance, the fchool cf Locke, 
which appears to prevail exclufively in 
France, has not preferved in England the 
fame reputaticn of infallibility. 
Hume long ago proved that the prin- 
ciples of his illufrious countryman, taken 
inthe ftricteft fenfe, led to univerfal {cep- 
ticifm; that they called in queltion the 
connection, which the mind fuppofes.to exift 
between caule and effe& ; that they took 
away all certainty from our ideas of num- 
ber, magnitude, quantity, in a word, from 
all the relations which man difcovers in na- 
ture, or rather which his underftanding 
introduces as neceflary fignals and limits 
for recognizing and taking poffeffion of it. 
We know that Hume’s writings induced 
Kant to attempt a reformation in philofo- 
phy, and that this bold and profound 
thinker maintsined, that the relations 
above alluded to, and to which he gave 
the appellation of categories, arethe primi- 
tive laws of thought, and, as it were, the 
form with which every being endowed with 
reafon clothes the real or fuppofed univerfe 
that prefents itfelf to his obfervation. I 
cannot fpeak of this illuftrious man but 
with refpect; but I think he ought rather 
to have fuited himf{lf to human imbe- 
cility, and to have been contented to fol- 
low, with the eye of an obferver, that kind 
of re-aéticn, which the underitanding pro- 
duces on the fenfations, to convert them 
into ideas, inftead of foaring beyond it in 
a manner which appears to me to have 
led his fucceffors aftray. The works of 
Kant are fo wel! known as to render a de- 
tailed review of them unneceffary. It is 
known that his vaft genius endeavoured to 
embrace every part of human knowledge, 
that the mathematical fciences and the ge. 
neral philofophy of nature firft engaged his 
attention ; that he made ingenious re- 
fearches into the principles of tafte and the 
fine 
