I THE

.

MONTHLY MAGAZINE,

OR

BRITISH REGISTER

OF

LITERATURE, SCIENCES, AND THE BELLES-LETTRES.

Kefo Series, PRESENTED
— =8DEC194a

JANUARY TO JUNE.

VOL. IX.

LONDON:

PUBLISHED BY WHITTAKER, TREACHER, AND CO.,
A VE-M ARIA-LA NE.

1830.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY THOMAS DAVISOK, WHITEFUIAF.S.

PREFACE TO THE NINTH VOLUME.

AT the commencement of a new year, the Proprietors of the MONTHLY
MAGAZINE address the Public with a highly gratified feeling of the general
and effective reception which its principles have experienced throughout
the British Empire.

We shall not now more than allude to the peculiar bias of the MONTHLY
MAGAZINE under its original proprietorship. It is of higher importance to
observe, that having fallen into our hands, it has totally flung away all that
seemed erroneous in its earlier spirit, and has since been emulous only of
being distinguished among the foremost defenders of the Crown, the Constitu-
tion, and the Religion of the Empire.

This change took place at a time when there might have been strong
temptations to the contrary — when every art was adopted to mislead or fetter
the public mind — when a formidable attack on the British Constitution was
meditated, and the first object was to intimidate the public writers of the
country.

It is now unnecessary to say how far those purposes succeeded. But we
have the right to say, that we looked on the crisis only as a summons to more
active vigilance, and more vigorous exertion ; that we felt the general decay
of honour, only as an evidence of the stronger necessity for the most open
declaration of British principle \ and that the sudden apostacy even of the
highest ranks, only excited our deeper abhorrence, and more fearless appeal
to the remaining integrity of the British mind.

For the proof of this service, we 'refer to the whole of our last year's publi-
cation. From what public question did we shrink ? What official delusion
did we suffer to go undetected? What instance of tergiversation — let the
culprit be who he might — did we leave undevoted to national scorn ? What
open, prompt, and honourable hostility did we not array against the breakers-
down, and the breach, of the Constitution ?

A ruinous and hated measure was brought forward, first with the subtlest
artifice, next with the most daring scorn. We resisted it from the beginning.
We would have crushed the serpent in the egg. We as unhesitatingly assailed
it, when it had swelled into portentous venom and magnitude, and seemed
rising to wrap in its spirals the civil and religious liberties of England. What
we have done, we shall do still. We look upon the " Catholic Question"
as an enormous political folly — if it do not assume the deeper dye of an
enormous political crime. But its history is not to be terminated by its record
on the books of Parliament. Out of that measure a teeming harvest will
spring. Political treachery, popular weakness, sullen superstition, and
fierce Jacobinism, have already followed each other's footsteps, and sown
each their portion over the field : the time of ripening will rapidly come, and
with it the sternest trial that can try the stren • llof empires.

M.M. New Series— VOL. IX. No. 49. B

Preface to the Ninth Volume.

Until that time come, we shall be found at our post, determined on
doing a duty, than which none higher is reserved for the imperfect powers of
man — the great and sacred duty of struggling for the truth ; of giving a free
course to the aspirations and opinions of those men of ability, virtue, and
honour, who still love their country ; and of resisting to the death the designs
of every enemy to the hereditary rights and hallowed belief of the English
Nation.

In the more general features of the work, we have attended to the varied
tastes of our readers. London society is in a state of perpetual excitement —
London literature in a state of perpetual change. Singularities of character,
eccentricities of manner, displays of mental power, pleasantry, fantasy, and
folly, are hourly revolving before the eye, in this boundless metropolis, with
the vividness and interest of a living panorama. Of all those, we have the
adequate command. To seize and embody those phantoms in every shape of
Narrative — Papers on the leading Questions of Public Life — Tales of Man-
ners— Individual Traits — Opinions on Books — Local Descriptions, &c. are
within the means only of a publication like ours. We have already largely
availed ourselves of our direct opportunities, and propose to extend this
department.

The topics of the day have been remarked on with an exactness which
might make our Journal, to future days, among the most accurate memorials
of the habits, the topics, and the pleasantries of English life. Our " Notes
of the Month" will continue to form a permanent characteristic of the Maga-
zine. Our Theatrical intelligence has been derived from the best sources, and
we have made arrangements for giving new interest to a subject which natu-
rally excites and gratifies so large a portion of the public: the sudden revival
of the winter theatres will give us increased opportunities on this head.

A multitude of striking Tales, of foreign and domestic manners and adven-
ture, are now awaiting our publication. Poems, on subjects grave and gay ;
Anecdotes of public men and peculiar circles ; brief Biographies of cele-
brated persons ; Letters from intelligent travellers ; details of the Fine Arts,
&c. are already on our table. Reviews of all books that in any degree deserve
.public attention, shall be given immediately on their appearance ; news of
forthcoming Literature will be regularly inserted ; the usual lists and state-
ments of the Agricultural, Commercial, and Financial Affairs of the empire
will be suitably attended to ; and thus a performance offered to the Public,
which, for completeness, accuracy, and earliness of general information —
for, we shall hope, easy and various amusement— and for (we will pledge
ourselves) uncorrupt and incorruptible public principle — will have a right
to stand, at least side by side, with any publication of its kind in the annals
of national literature.

THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

OP
POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES.

VOL. IX.] JANUARY, 1830. [No. 49-

ANNUS MIRABILIS;

OR

FA11KWELL TO THE YEAR 1829-

BEGONE, them dullest of all Years !
Let Wordsworth o'er thee shake his eara ;
Let Southey, for his pipe of port,
Pay to thy majesty his court ;
Let Milman, weary of the Jews,
Fall on his nose to kiss thy shoes ;
Let pungent Crabbe, let classic Bowles,
For thee forsake the cure of souls.
Leaving in peace his northern hovels,
Let Scott abjure for once his novels ;
Let Moore leave Byron to his doze,
And give thy dying hours to prose.
Dramatic Baillie, lofty Campbell,
The host that round Parnassus ramble—
From epic bards to tiniest wits,
In albums who embalm their hits,
Whose sonnets, well entitled strains,
Give proof of every thing but brains ;—
Old Year ! let all around thee weep,
Right glad we see thee fast asleep.

But let us, like true Britons, sing
First, as in duty bound, our King.

His Majesty has left his hut,
So long the Windsor witlings' butt ;
Forsworn the eel and gudgeon slaughter,
And left in peace Virginia water :
(That water, whose deep mysteriei
Awoke such hosts of prying eyes ;
B 2

Anmis Mirabilis ; or,

That water, on whose sunny breast

Reposed the barge — a gilded nest ;

That water, by whose hidden shore

So often flashed the royal oar,

While swelled the loyal surges — proud,

Of course, to be so nobly ploughed).

His brick-and-mortar troubles past,

The King has left the Lodge at last ;

Has made his way through Windsor's wreck,

Without the hazard of his neck ;

Has lit his Castle's chilling halls,

Has hung his pictures on his walls ;

At last sent Signer Wyatville,

With bag and baggage, down the hill ;

(That Signer, with the dove-tailed name —

His first was far too short for fame ;) —

Laid up his curricle and ponies ;

Brought round him all his ancient cronies —

Sir Andrew — ever-punning Fife —

In fact, wants nothing but a wife ;

Sees Wellington but once a week ;

Leaves rogues and fools to " chew their leek ;"

Cares not a straw for all that Grey,

In all his bitter soul, can say ;

Leaves Brougham to do his worst, or best ;

Beats Lyndhurst at a ready jest ;

Asks once a month who's in or out ;

Laughs at the winter and the gout ;

And, glad to call a roof his own,

Fights off old Care with old Bourgogne.

Now, having made our bow to kings,
We turn our glance to mortal things.

With gentle look, but desperate hand,
Lord Lowther has knocked down the Strand ;
All changed ! — yet, wit of wits, Jack Russell,
(Whose muse is famous for a bustle,
Resolved, whichever wind may blow,
To have his fame, or high or low,)
Declares that though through wrecks you range,
For his part he can see no 'Change.
Alas ! its pedlars out are thrust ;
Peace to their penknives and their dust !
The lion has resigned his stall,
(Sparke sees in this the church's fall.
'Tis true the lion had no heir,
To fat and fasten on the lair ;
But if a beast can keep his station,
There's wo such vice as resignation) ;
Its wolves no longer bay the moon ;
Off goes the " grand blue-rumped baboon ;"
That smiling thing, the alligator,
(Soft emblem of a Lord Dictator !)—

1830.] Farewell to the Year 1829. : '5

All gone, by order, to the Ark —

That glory of the Regent's Park ;

(Where the young heroines of the City,

Afraid no longer of Banditti,

Trill their soft souls to Erard's harps —

Tremendous work for flats and sharps !

Or learn, from Colburn's last romance,

How Hebes of the haut ton prance ;

The price of Lady Jersey's horses ;

The new machinery for divorces,

That, like the locomotive carriage,

Makes one scarce feel the shocks of marriage).

The brutes are gone — hyaenas, tigers —

To meet their Noah, Mister Vigors ;

Prepared, as soon as summer's sky

Shall leave their miry valleys dry,

Boldly to scorn the narrow den,

And fatten on the aldermen.

Delicious morsel, in the shade

To lunch upon a nursery-maid j

Or catch a pair of human plovers,

And sup on both the moonlight-lovers !

Roar all your roars, ye Essex beeves !
Sigh all your sighs, ye London thieves !
Fleet Market, honour of the land,
Has shared the fortunes of the Strand.
The stranger pocket-picked, no more,
By my Lord Waithman's shawl-hung door,
Shall see the master of his fob
Defy him from his kindred mob ;
No more, enveloped in a tide
Of Lincoln bullocks, take his ride ;
Or, tossed up fifty feet in air,
Smile down upon the Fleet- street fair.
Fleet Market, weep ! thy fame is gone,
Lost in new-fangled Farringdon !

But, gentle Muse, increase thy speed,
And run, that ?f he who runs may read ;"
Tag as thou wilt thy rambling rhyme,
Let boobies wait for tide and time.
The march of geese once saved a state ;
But Goderich shews them out of date.

The Year commenced with wind and rain ;
A royal love-letter from Spain,
(Which made the monarch's wife his niece) ;
Another batch of " truths" from Greece,
(That land of heroes and of honey,
Which perishes without our money—-
But " one loan more" they'll ever pray —
In short, do all — but fight, or pay) ; ,

Anxus Mirabilis; or,

A poem, from that poem-showering
Master of jargons, Poet Bowring,
(Who, after having in his clutch
Grasped all the laurels of the Dutch ;
Sung all the gallant Cherokee
Discusses to his favourite she ;
Collected 011 the native spot
The raptures of the Hottentot ;
By virtue of his boundless charter,
Is gone to poetize the Tartar).

Lord Crowder has assumed the Chair,
In brain and belly a Lord Mayor ;
Charles Wynn has made a dozen speeches,
Surnamed, by courtesy, his screeches —
(The old ambition to be Speaker,
Still limited to " Mr. Squeaker ;"
Still, when he tries his nightly croak,
The House all crying out, " Squoke I Squoke !"}

Two boys from Siam, or baboons-
Human, but in their pantaloons ;
And brutes, but in their want of tails —
Came over, packed in India bales.
The wretches by the ribs are tied,
Through life to wander side by side :
Yet where' s the shew ? Ten million wretchei,
In nooses tighter than Jack Ketch's,
Pass the long drudgery of life ;
Yet no one pities man and wife.
They walk, they talk, they drink, they fight —
None gives a sixpence for the sight :
They starve, they feast, they hang, or drown —
Who hawks a placard through the town ?

The Court had packed up all for Brighton,
Till came a countermand from Knighton.
Le Sage says wisely, " Overlook
All sorts of insults in your cook,
Lest the first omelet close your supper,
In regions under ground or upper :"
So he who loves life's sunny borders,
Will take for law his doctor's orders.

The Donna Bonaparte Wyse
Flew from her macaroni skies,
Of which her kinsmen were the pillars,
To scold that handsome wretch, Stuart Villars.
Then, tarlike, having passed the line,
Took water in the Serpentine !
Ah ! Italy — as poets sing,
High mounted on the goose's wing —
Love sees no spot, from sea to sea,
So fit for love as Italy !

1830.] Farewell to the Year 1829.

No spinster sighs in vain in thee,

Land of the soul, soft Italy !

No holy friar needs sip his tea

Without a love in Italy !

There matrons rove, as zephyrs free,

And monks are blest, dear Italy !

There maids are — what maids wish to be —

Contributors to Italy !

Land of chevaliers d' Industrie,

Thief, harlot, slave — sweet Italy !

Farewell, half-dungeon, half-caffe !

Thou rascal's home, base Italy !

The Signor Bonaparte Wyse,
To raise the requisite supplies,
Bedaubs the mighty Agitator,

With ephithets of ass and !

Such language may not seem polite —
But take our oath, the birds won't fight ;
If " braggart, knave, and blockhead," pas*,
They slide from those, like rain off glass.
You'll never find the heroes tripping,
Under severest threats of whipping ;
They wisely scorn all satisfaction,
Except a handsome King's Bench action :
Long may thev live, by horsewhips awless,
Though brandished in thy paw, Jack Lawless !
Long may they keep their backs and bowels
From kicks and bullets of the Dowells ;
From Mahony keep skin and bone,
For patriots' lives are not their own ;
Their duty's to keep kings in awe,
Then calmly yield to Ketch and law.

The theatres have broke their fast,
The banyan-day is done at last ;
Miss Fanny Kemble's Belvidera
Has made what lord mayors call an hcera —
A Siddons', Crawford, Yates' revival ;
The elephant's her only rival —
That mighty fair, with every charm
The stern to soothe, the cold to warm ;
That bringing all her chattels over,
The only goods unsearched at Dover ;
Plays Mathews' mistress every night,
Though none can deem her conduct light ;
Speaks to five hundred men, though dumb ;
No reasons gives, yet brings a plum.

Three mighty club-rooms have been built,
Where the three corps of Guards might tilt ;
Three club-rooms, where you'll get a slice
Of bacon at three times the price ;
Three club-rooms, where a mob of fools
Make and unmake " eternal rules ;"

8 Annus MiraUlis ; or, Farewell to the Year 1829. [JAN.

Three club-rooms, where a twaddling group
Combine for nonsense and cheap soup ;
Three club-rooms, solely made to fill
The architect's unending bill !
Temple of Folly ! Athenaeum !
Round thee the hod-men sing Te Deum ;
Te Deum all the Burtons sing,
Thou body, without head or wing !
The plasterers triumph in thy frieze,
Worthy the " race who write with ease ;"
Legs upon legs — a donkey-pound —
An endless, puzzled, mill-horse round ;
Fit emblem for that brick Parnassus,
Where all the Pegasi are asses.

Three Juries, men of brains and Bibles,
Have given three verdicts on three labels,
Which some would term — " three paragraphs,
Just worthy of so many laughs."
For our part, in these ticklish days,
We feel no talent but for praise.
If mighty men are turned to laughter,
Who knows what Earthquake comes hereafter ?
Who knows but half-a-dozen sneers
May to the dog- star blow the Peers ?
Who knows but half an epigram
The current of the Thames may dam ?
And (through the special care of Heaven)
Swamp all thy orators, St. Stephen !
So, when we see a rascal ride,
We wisely turn our heads aside,
Well satisfied, in times so nice,
There lives no Virtue but in Vice.

The Russ has pacified the Turk
In Edinbro' fashion, a la Burke ;
While Malcolm's fleet at anchor lay,
Boldly resolved — to see fair play.

The Parliament has passed a session,
In the grand duty of confession,
Finding that mere old women's fears
Had shut their eyes three hundred years ;
The Commons scorning all requitals,
In shape of places, pensions, titles ;
The Lords, in honour quite as zealous,
With panegyric's largest bellows
Puffing the Premier's silken sail.
So ends the moral of our tale !

Farewell, thou Year of woe and shame !
Is there no scourge of tenfold flame

To lash, till every fibre wring ?

But hush, sweet Muse ! here furl thy wing ;
Keep wisely to your laughing rhyme,
But choose your man, and take your time.

1830.] C 9 ]

THE BRITISH EMBASSIES, AMBASSADORS, AND THEIR SALARIES.

THE commencement of the Duke of Wellington's administration, was
memorably distinguished by the number of its pledges — pledges for the
support of the agricultural interest; of the manufacturing interest; of
the colonial interest; for the reform of the circulation, of the tribunals,
of the laws, and principally for the maintenance of the constitution,
and for that rigid principle of strict and wise economy in the national
expenditure, without which all constitutions are but a dead letter ; an
exigent government being always either a tyrant or a slave, and a bank-
rupt country only waiting for the conqueror that comes with bread in
one hand and chains in the other ; — pledges of all kinds offered with
suspicious prodigality, and followed by niggard performance ; — lofty
promises, dying with their echo ; — and stately reforms, worth the ink that
wrote them down, and no more.

Of the constitution, we shall now say nothing. There one promise of
another kind was kept to the letter. Mr. Peel declared that it was
to be broken in upon ; and if he shall ever be impeached of an utter
want of credibility, let this act of his political life stand up in vindica-
tion, and satisfy the world that he can keep his word.

But, for the retrenchment we are to wait with an humble reliance on
ministerial good intentions, which is by no means realized by their his-
tory. Nothing has been done ; or worse than nothing ; a few clerks in
the lowest situations have been dismissed, and a few hundreds a year
saved for the government, which, in a multitude of instances, must be
paid to the workhouse. But the retrenchment that we desire to see
commenced, that we shall never see commenced under this administra-
tion of pledges ; and which is the only one capable of either light-
ening the pressures, or restoring the confidence of the country, is the
extinction altogether of those great official emoluments, which form the
trading stock of patronage in high places.

We shall for the present advert to but one branch of this trading
stock ; glaring in its waste and worthlessness, yet but little known to
the public in its details ; capable of retrenchment with at once the
greatest possible fitness and the greatest possible ease ; and yet perfectly
secure of never being curtailed to the amount of a single shilling — the
English embassies.

Ambassadors.

There are Seven Classes of Embassies. So much for the arts of sub-
division and contrivance, for the wants and wishes of political de-
pendency. Of those, the first class consists of five— Paris, St. Peters-
burg, Vienna, Madrid, and the Netherlands; and for each the salary and
allowances are the same : the salary being eleven thousand pounds ster-
ling a year ! A sum of no less than four thousand pounds being allowed
for the ambassador's outfit, and one thonsand pounds a year being
allowed for house rent. But this is not all. The ambassador thus
showily provided for in money, must be provided for in brains ; and
this costs the salary of a secretary of embassy, at the rate of one thou-
sand one hundred pounds a year, and four hundred pounds a year for a
house, &c.

In this statement, which is official, we have omitted the infinite minor
charges of all kinds, for journeys, estafettes, letters, snuff-boxes, douceurs,
the whole inferior tribes of attaches, &c. As it is not our purpose to
enter into minute matters here, we must limit ourselves to a few general
observations.

M. M. New Serial—VOL. IX. No. 49. C

10 The British Embassies, Ambassadors, QJAN.

That it may be of importance to have agents at foreign courts is un-
questionable. But that unless they are men of ability, vigilance, and
knowledge, they are useless or directly injurious, is equally unquestion-
able. Now, from what rank of mankind are the candidates for those five
great appointments chosen ? In nine instances out of ten they are peers,
or chosen from the class of noble blood, the sons or immediate relatives
of the peerage ; and in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, men
less fitted for those appointments or any others, could not be chosen.

But let us look at their enormous emoluments. A place of twelve
thousand pounds a year, would be an abuse, even in the high salaries of
English office, and would be an enormous income even in the dearness of
every article of English life. But those emoluments are not for the
scale of English, but of foreign life. To take the most expensive capital
of the continent : in Paris, though 300/. a year will scarcely support
a family better than in London, yet the proportion decreases prodigiously
as the scale of property rises. A man who spends 3,000/. a year in
Paris, will have as much luxury for it, as he could have for 6,000/. in
London ; because in Paris, though the necessaries of life may be not
much cheaper than in London, the luxuries are. The scale varies still
more with the advance, and a British functionary with an income in
Paris of 12,000/. a year, would be on the footing of an Englishman
spending in London 30,0007. a year — a sum actually equal to the vice-
royalty of Ireland, without any of the establishments of a court, and
with scarcely any necessity for keeping up an official show.

This, no man knows better than Lord Stuart, who lives on an expendi-
ture even ridiculously narrow, and whose notorious want of hospitality is
the laugh of the English in Paris. Some of his lordship's pursuits may
be costly enough, but as they are certainly not displayed in the house of
embassy, we leave them to other inquirers. This ill mannered and very
niggardly personage, may make no model for diplomatic courtesy ; but it
is certain that one fourth of the salary would be sufficient for all the
necessary hospitality, and even for all the ceremonial and show of an
English embassy in Paris.

We should mention that there is no obvious allowance for a house, the
British government having some years ago purchased a hotel in the Rue
St. Honore ; and as the ambassador has thus no rent to pay, none is
allowed ; but the house requires furniture, repairs, &c. and the repairs
are no trifle, for a short time since the bill amounted to fifteen thousand
pounds !

Thus, between outfit, secretary, and so forth ; the first year of the
English ambassador in Paris, costs 16,500/. ! and every following one
12,500/., independently of the interest and repairs of his house of em-
bassy. But we have not done with him yet. He claims a retiring pen-
sion after a term of service, and the weight of this on the country in his
person, may be estimated by the extraordinary fact, that in 1816, the
period when the last public returns were made, those retired pensions
amounted to no less a sum than fifty thousand pounds a year !

The Embassy at Vienna has the same outfit, salary, secretaryship, &c.,
but with still higher advantages in point of emolument. Austria is one
of the cheapest countries in Europe ; and in Vienna, the English pound,
even when exchange is at par, is worth very little short of four pounds in
London. This would raise the Ambassador's salary of 12,000/., to not
much less than 40,000/. But the exchange is always greatly in favour
of England ; and the English pound is often worth half as much more
from the mere depression of the Austrian money. This would raise the
salary to between 50, and 60,000/v on the lowest calculation ; and this

1830.] and their Salaries. 11

we pay for the services of the Duke of Wellington's brother, at Vienna.
His services ought to be extraordinary ! Vienna is the favourite loca-
tion of ministers' brothers, and no wonder.

The next in the list is Madrid, where the same allowances are made,
though Spain is proverbially a country of excessive cheapness, the
dollar, in Madrid, actually purchasing as much as the English pound in
London ; the habits of the court being remarkably secluded ; those of the
population, even in the higher classes, singularly frugal; the chief
luxuries of life, being sleep, fresh air, and cold water ; and the chief ex-
pense of entertainments, consisting of cigars for the gentlemen, and
lemonade for the ladies.

The Netherlands' Embassy has the 12,000/. a year and the same outfit,
Sac. The Netherlands being also proverbially cheap, as our men of
broken fortunes know, and fly to them ; the court being as Dutch in
its habits as in its origin, and the value of English gold being as highly
appreciated in Brussels, as on the counter of any usurer in Europe. At
this quiet court, for ten years, resided the Earl of Clancarty, transacting
satisfactorily all that was necessary to be done ; receiving his 12,000/. a
year, and doing his duty as well as any of his contemporaries. He was
no diplomatist, and was too honest a man to pretend to any thing of the
kind. But no diplomatist is necessary to play whist with the king of
the Netherlands, and send his compliments, on every Sunday morning,
to ask after the health of the queen. He was a much better thing ; an
Irish gentleman, without a particle of exaggerated passion, or restless
ability in his composition ; an excellent silent member of the Peers, and
a Ballinasloe sheep-feeder on the soundest principles.

St. Petersburg is expensive ; yet the chief expense is in show, &c., which
however is chiefly left to the court and the noblesse of the highest rank.
From these the Ambassador is exempted ; the principal drain on the in-
come of the nobles being from the multitude of servants, with whom an
idle national custom, and a barbarian pride, induce them to crowd their
establishments, to the amount of hundreds. But with those a stranger
is, of course, unburthened ; and the British Ambassador's contribution
to the pomps and glories of Russian life, is generally limited to a few
balls, and dressing himself and his suit in muffs and tippets, on the sight
of the first snow. Nothing could exceed the courteous manners, or the
moderate hospitality of Sir Charles Bagot, during his sojourn in the
capital of the Czar.

The second class of the Embassies contains but Constantinople, where
the salary is 8,000/., and the outfit 3,000/., with two secretaries — the
Secretary of Embassy, with 1,000/. a year, and 300/. for an outfit, and
an Oriental Secretary at 1,000/. A palace having been given by the
Sultan, after the battle of Aboukir, no allowance for house-rent is made.
But, from the rate of exchange and the cheapness of Pera, the salary
may be calculated on an average of 16,000/. a year. But the Ambassa-
dor has other profits. The sole privilege of licensing merchant vessels,
under his ambassadorial protection, is of high value ; and used to pro-
duce large sums. Whether the Russian conquests and the opening of
the Dardanelles will change the direction of those profits, in some de-
gree, is a question j but, while the Porte stands, the situation of Ambas-
sador will be commercially lucrative.

Envoys Extraordinary and Ministers Plenipotentiary.

The second order of Foreign Diplomacy are the Envoys Extraordi-
nary and Ministers Plenipotentiary. Their mission comprehends the
third, fourth, and fifth Classes.

Prussia forms the third class of embassies. The Envoy to Prussia

12 The British Embassies, Ambassadors, [JAN.

receives 7>000/. a year, with an outfit of 2,500/. ; and for house-rent
500/. a year. Attached to this appointment is a Secretary of Legation at
700/. a year, and with an allowance of 250/. for outfit.

The expense of Berlin is about a third of that of London. Entertain-
ments among the men of rank are frequent, and (for the country) costly.
But the British Envoy is generally some un titled dependent, exempted, by
his inferiority in diplomatic rank, from the necessity of giving entertain-
ments, and generally extremely willing to avail himself of his lucrative
immunity. The only man, during the last thirty years, who made him-
self in any degree conspicuous in the Prussian Embassy, was Sir George
Rose, a gentleman by habit and accomplishment. His predecessor was
a flighty person of the name of Jackson. Who the present Envoy may
be, we leave to the research of the Court Calendar.

The fourth class comprehends Portugal, The Two Sicilies, and
America. All with the same allowances. The Envoy at 5,500/. a year,
2,000/. for outfit, and 500/. for the rent of a house ; and a Secretary of
legation, at 550/.

Of those, Portugal was the most expensive, the exchange having
been sometimes against England ; though, for this, allowance has been
claimed. But since the return to cash payments this can seldom occur.
At present there is no English Envoy in Portugal ; but Mr. Macken-
zie, lately appointed Consul, may be considered as acting minister.

The fifth class comprehends Sweden, Bavaria, Denmark, and Sar-
dinia. The Envoy's salary being, in cash, 4>500/., the outfit 2,000/., and
the house-rent 400/. ; with a Secretary of Legation at 500/., and for out-
fit 200/.

Envoys Extraordinary.

The Envoys Extraordinary form the third and lowest order of
Foreign Ministers, and are appointed to the sixth and seventh classes of
Embassy.

The sixth class contains Wirtemberg, Tuscany, Switzerland, and
Saxony. The Envoy having an allowance of 3,600/. a year, 1,500/. for
outfit, and 300/. for a house ; and the Secretary of Legation having an
allowance of 500/., and 150/. for an outfit.

The seventh class is Hamburgh ; where the Envoy's allowance is
2,300/., the outfit 1,000/., and 300/. for a house; and the Secretary of
Legation has 300/. a year, and 100/. for an outfit.

On a recapitulation, the whole of this expensive machinery costs the
country, in direct salaries to the various classes of Ambassadors,
135,850/.

In house-rent, 9,100/.

In pensions to retired ministers, 52,000/.

Making the formidable sum of 196,950/. for our higher Diplomacy.

But the affair is not done with yet ; for, besides those Envoys and
Plenipotentiaries, we have a host of Consuls, whose salaries amounted at
the time at which the estimate was made (twelve years ago) to 30JOOOJ.
And since that period, Mr. Canning's poetical determination to balance
the East by the West augmented the Consular ranks. The South Ame-
rican allowances amounting to about 20,000/., and all those officials
becoming successively pensioners upon the country in their retired
allowance.

Nor have we yet exhausted our list; for the South American govern-
ments have been, within the last five years, honoured with Envoys, with

allowances of, we believe, from three to five thousand pounds a year

but of these we have yet seen no return.

The whole Diplomatic Expenditure may be, fairly calculated, about

1830.] and their Salaries. 13

300,000/. a year, which, at the rate of three per cent, for which money
can now be had, and which is nearly the rate of the government stock,
is equivalent to ten millions of pounds sterling !

That this enormous expenditure will not be curtailed for any repre-
sentation of ours, or any body else, we have the most positive conviction.
But we have a conviction equally decided — that the whole business of
England, at any court in Europe, might be transacted at a fifth part
of the expenditure ; and that, for 2,000/. a year, men might be found
adequate to the utmost vigour of Lord Cowley, or Mr. Lamb, or Lord
Stuart, or Sir Robert Gordon ; nay, men who would transact the business
with ten times the activity, ability, and knowledge, of any one of them.
As to the supposition that such men would not be found to accept of the
situations at the lowered salaries, we must laugh, and the Duke of Wel-
lington must laugh as loudly as we ; for he well knows what a troop of
applicants wait on the steps of patronage, and how reluctantly men,
even of the highest ranks, would see an office of 2,000/. a year slipping
through their hands.

The fact is, that the whole is an antiquated abuse, which cannot be
put an end to too soon. The whole , Diplomacy of England, and
of every other country, ought to be transacted by individuals little
above the rank or allowances of Consuls ; men not sent out to pro-
vide for them, but men accustomed to the country in which they are
to have their appointments; thoroughly acquainted with the habits,
the language, the prejudices, and the passions of the nation. The pre-
sent system sends out an incumbrance of the Foreign Office, who knows
no more of foreign life than he could learn from flirtation in the green-
room of the Opera ; or some dandy Peer who hangs heavy on the minis-
ter's hands, and who, if he but speak the wrorst French that ever
issued from the lips of man, and can fold a letter, looks on himself as
qualified for the conduct of affairs. The system is old, and its result has
been, that British Diplomacy has been a proverbial subject of bur-
lesque on the Continent ; that we have been admonished to our teeth,
by the fact, and that the- sneer has amounted to an established political
maxim, that whatever the English have won by the sword, they have
lost by the Ambassador.

But if we are to be told that every other country sends Ambassadors
with high appointments to England, and that we must, in decorum, do the
same to them, the answer is obvious. It was the early custom of foreign
countries to send men of rank, because, from the general slavery and ig-
norance of those countries, men of rank were almost the only men of edu-
cation, except the priesthood; and because, from the aristocratic nature of
those governments, nobles were almost the only leaders of armies, minis-
ters of state, or directors of national business. The original Embassies, too,
were temporary, brief, and occupied with little more than the immediate
object of the mission. Large expenditure was a natural concomitant of
a rank equal to that of princes, and the briefness of their stay rendered
that expenditure a matter merely temporary. Thus when the Embassies
became permanent, the system of rank had been settled. England, at all
times a much dearer country than the Continent, required a large allow-
ance ; und the English government, partly not to be outdone in liberality,
gave its Ambassador, in the cheap country, the same sum which was
sufficient for the expenditure of the foreign minister in England. What
pride sanctioned, the spirit of patronage stimulated. And on this princi-
ple we have, at this hour, an English Ambassador in the Rue St.
Honore, with an income equivalent to three times the income of the
French Ambassador in Portland- Place.

14 The British Embassies, Ambassadors, [[JAN.

But whatever may be the foreign necessity of looking to the noblesse
for Diplomatic functionaries, the necessity has long passed by in the
general information and manly ability of the middle orders of England.
America had the merit of first proving, that a man might be a Diploma-
tist without supporters to his arms; and Franklin, Silas Deane, and
Jefferson, managed their business as well as if their coats were covered
with orders, or their pedigree dated from some Imperial bastard, or
Italian desperado.

The American system, thus shown to be efficient, should be instantly
adopted. The American minister is seldom suspected of doing his
country's business ill, though he may not make the most graceful bow
at Almack's, and though he gives but few Diplomatic banquets, and
perhaps no balls. But his country consoles herself for the humiliation,
by recollecting that he costs her but 2,0001. a year.

As to our offering any offence to foreign courts by substituting plain
Mr. A. or B., for my Lord C. or Marquis D., every one who knows
what the mind of foreign courts is on the subject, knows the idea to be
an absurdity.

The fact is, that nothing would delight them, one and all, so much,
as to see a total change. However we may feel the expenditure, they
feel it ten times worse. No foreign court is rich ; scarcely any one
among them can more than pay the year ; and they groan in their
inmost souls at the idea of the enormous sums wrung from them by the
intolerable etiquette of vying with the richest, and certainly the most
wasteful, nation of Europe. Nothing would rejoice them more than to
see the whole painted and gilded system that plunders them of so many
thousands yearly, knocked into fragments ; and, instead of the lounging
coxcombs, or worn-down Lord Lumbercourts of the ministerial bench,
insolent in proportion to their imbecility, to see a succession of intelligent
English gentlemen in plain coats, unceremoniously attending to the
concerns of England and her allies.

The breaking-up of the system would be attended with the most obvious
advantages to England. In the first place, its general tendency would be
to substitute men who had no claim but their ability, for a race of men
who had no claim but their rank. Lords and lordlings would still, of
course, be found, glad to get any thing that they could get ; but the great
leviathans, the huge wallowers in court patronage, would fall off; the
country's purse at home, and character abroad, would be equally
relieved ; and for the most incapable genus of public pensioners, we
should have able and useful men.

Another ad vantage would be, the thinning of that minor swarm of at-
taches which make the scoff of the English name at every foreign residence,
and return to this country only to pervert public habits by foreign vices
and foreign foppery. It is from this export of our raw material to return
upon our hands fabricated in the foreign pattern, that we have the crowd
of miserable coxcombs, whom one meets in every public place, and whose
lisping and lounging, whose smatter of broken French and Italian, and
whose degrading effeminacy of manner and mind, make them fitter for a
coterie of French milliners, than for association with English gentlemen.
This is the cigar and moustachio generation that disfigures our streets,
and look more like the representatives of a community of baboons, than
a portion of rational mankind.

But, with the silliest exterior of the silliest part of foreign life, they
introduce evils of a more revolting nature. The idler of rank abroad has
seldom more than two resources for getting rid of the burthen of time —
gaming and intrigue. The wretched and almost universal corruption of

1830.] and their Salaries. 15

the higher orders abroad, gives all the requisite facilities for both ; and the
taste which this flower of diplomacy has learned abroad,, follows him across
the Channel. It would be only offensive to the delicacy of the English
mind, for us to enter into the results. But the perversion of manners
in the higher circles since the peace, is notorious ; and we know where
to look for the principal cause.

Abroad, the habits and acquirements of this brood of diplomatists are
proverbially puppyish, idle, and offensive. If the traveller has any diffi-
culty to encounter, let him not go to one of the English attaches— r-the
Royal Lumbertroop of ambassadorship. He will find the young official
either too busy with his friseur or his guitar, or pulling on his boots to
visit his favourite Countess of Bocca-grande ; or immersed in writing a
billet-doux to the more favourite Duquesa di Trema-mondo ; or be
received with a sneer, and, after lingering for his answer and his pass-
port a week, be consigned to a valet, who consigns him to the consul, or
his own banker — the luckiest thing that can happen to him after all.

The whole tribe of this coxcombry must be swept away like chaff.
The Lord Fredericks and Lord Alphonsos — the whole elite of that incom-
parable caste of younger brotherhood, should be cashiered, or sent back
to school, and their place supplied with. the educated and manly young
men, who are so easily to be found in the middle classes of English life.

Mr. Peel's palpable and mean neglect of the rising ability of our col-
leges ought to be exchanged for a zealous cultivation of the vigorous
minds that are there hourly rising into life, and from whom the true and
only efficient ministers and ambassadors are to be formed. The founda-
tion once laid in solid scholarship and manly English feeling, a few years'
residence abroad in the subordinate stations of diplomacy, would qualify
those young men for the most serious services to the State, whether at
home or abroad ; and the Lord Aramintas might be happily left at home
to carry the pocket-handkerchiefs of the Lady Amaranths, or hang their
legs out of the balcony of the Guards' club-room.

But the system, let its change of men be what it may, should be
reformed in point of expense. Three-fourths of the diplomatic stations
are at courts, where they are no more necessary than if they were
planted in the belfry of St. PauFs. Of what conceivable importance
can be a British ambassador at such courts as Sardinia, Tuscany, Saxony,
Switzerland, Bavaria, Denmark, and Hamburgh ? What influence have
such courts on either English or continental affairs ? or what is there
among them that could not be transacted much more efficiently by a
Consul ? Yet the embassies to those utterly unimportant courts cost,
without considering the outfit, rent, or minor charges, in the simple sala-
ries of the ambassador and the secretary, not a shilling less than 35,000/.
a-year, or a sum little short of the interest of a million.

What is the actual business of an ambassador at any of those minor
courts ? To deliver his credentials, and be asked to a ball at court ; to
give a ball in return, and thenceforward to receive the London news-
papers daily, a despatch from an under-clerk of the foreign office once a
month ; draw his salary once a quarter ; and act as master of the cere-
monies to the young English of rank, who look in upon him at his
hotel in the Jungferstrasse, or the Teufel's Platz, on the grand tour.

The solemn occupations of such diplomacy may be judged from the
state of the Tuscan legation, where Lord Burghersh finds leisure to make
an opera every three months ; see it damned in his own palace, in spite
of Italian pliancy ; and have another ready before the laugh has expired.
An ambassador thus weightily employed, naturally selects an assistant

16 The British Embassies, Ambassadors, and their Salaries. [JAN.

of similar faculties; and a few years ago the Italians were at once
delighted and astonished by seeing his lordship select for his fellow-
diplomatist, an English music-master. The thing is beyond question.
The man had been a public teacher of singing in London, had even
exhibited his faculties at Vauxhall, and was known in the concerts about
town. The situation suited the music-master : if the pen was stubborn
in his touch, the piano at least was responsive ; and he throve accord-
ingly.

It is worth while to pursue the fortunes of this lucky manipulator
of crotchets and quavers. After a few years' residence at the embassy,
a foolish Irish countess came in his way ; she was a widow, and with a
large jointure. The man of diplomacy and pianos fell desperately
in love with her at first sight, as was natural. The lady had something
of the ambassador's taste, and thought that a mastery of the keys must
comprehend all perfection. They married, and the secretary is now
master of the countess, and ten thousands a year.

This is said in no disparagement of the man : he was a very well-
behaved, well-looking, and simple performer on the piano. Nor is it
said in the slightest disparagement of my Lord Burghersh, who, though
the most luckless composer on this side of the Styx, is yet a very honest
and well-behaved man, for an ambassador, and in Italy too ; and is by no
means a contemptible performer on the piano.

But the blame is not his ; if he scribbles the most unmanageable
harmonies from morning till night, he has only to say, and with
acknowledged truth, that he has nothing else to do ; that he might have
done much worse things, and that, compared to the general life of the
ladies and gentlemen of all complexions round him, the most atrocious
discords, or the most illegitimate counter-point, may be a virtue.

The subject is exhaustless ; but we must close. Of course, no one
will deny the importance of having agents at the leading foreign courts.
But those agencies ought to be conducted exclusively by sensible men,
and at the rate which would be the fair remuneration for a sensible man,
not pampered by the ridiculous extravagance of English high life. Let
us adopt the American standard in both, and perhaps we shall have our
public business done as well as the American. We must " broom
away," as Napoleon used to say, the whole insect brood of noble second
sons, and so forth ; and if we deprive noble lords of the opportunity of
feeding their families at the public expense in this quarter, we may
safely leave it to the peerage-instinct for the national money, to take
care that they shall not starve for want of a salary in some more
•domestic shape.

But the grand evil is, the ruinous and profitless waste that pervades
every part of the system. Of the expenditure of the inordinate sum of
300,0001. a-year, two-thirds might be returned to the public, and with
no less practical advantage than financial. We should have the business
not merely done, with the relief of an enormous burthen ; but with the
change of activity for indolence, and talent for hereditary blockheadism.
The race of buffoons would be put out; and if fewer returned to us,
degrading our manners by the fopperies of the Continent, and infecting
our morals by their vices ; we might be reconciled to the loss of those
" gay creatures of the element," those diamond snuff-box-men, those
" dulcissimi rerum," by the recollection that we escaped an infinite mass
of blunders, and saved TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS A-YEAR
besides.

1830,] t 17 ]

THE PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL DISCOVERY.

WE could have wished, if our space had permitted, and if their num-
ber had been less overwhelming, to have abstracted the principal dis-
coveries in the whole field of natural philosophy; but their mass has
been growing so large, that an outline of them generally would give
but a faint idea of their magnitude, and we are compelled to confine our
observations to one branch of the material sciences, viz. the Physical
one. The knowledge of the properties of bodies seems a necessary pre-
lude to their classification, as performed by geology, zoology, &c. ; or
to their application, as in medicine. The progress of physics is conse-
quently a good index to our advances in the study of nature in general.
It is, moreover, an important element in history ; yet it belongs not to
the annals of particular nations so much as to the records of mankind.
That memorable epoch, the French Revolution, when the old fountains
of government were broken up, and a new state of society commenced,
was also the aera from which the spirit of physical inquiry, which has
since led to such brilliant results, takes its date. A peaceful revolution
in chemical principles was effected in France, whilst her cities were still
flowing with the blood of civil warfare. Those principles have been
further developed, and made the stepping stones for the discovery of
truths of still greater moment, by the philosophers ©f the rest of the
continent, and by those learned men, the memory ©f whom sheds a lustre
on our own country. It is for future ages to signalize the energies of
the human mind during the last half century with the distinction it may
merit, compared to the years that are to come; but a very slight
sketch will enable us to perceive that, with reference to past times, our
aera, in its knowledge of nature, and the consequent power of mind over
matter, stands unrivalled, and alone.

The most important and comprehensive principle known in physics
is unquestionably that of molecular attraction, upon which depend, sub-
ject to the action of heat and analogous causes, the phenomena of the
attraction of cohesion, and of chemical, affinity. By these latter are
explained the formation of minerals, and the composition of the air and
water ; and if the theory of life were revealed, they would also impart
to us the structure of living bodies. We are not indeed able to deduce
consequences from this great principle with mathematical precision ; but
in contemplating one branch of its phenomena, that of crystallization,
we seem to have arrived at a degree of certainty with regard to the
forms of homogeneous particles when united, which almost entitles this
theory to a place in the exact sciences. The difficulty experienced by
chemists, prior to 1772> in reconciling the apparent variety of form an
salts and stones, was, in some measure, relieved in that year, by Rome
de 1'Isle, who first recognised a general form belonging to each species
of crystal, from which all others might be deduced, according as their
angles were more or less deeply truncated. Gahn, a pupil of the cele-
brated Swedish chemist Bergman, soon after observed the regularity
with which secondary crystals break off their laminae, and disclose a
central nucleus, which coincides with the primitive form of all calcareous
«pars ; and the Abbe Haiiy having, without communication, made the
same remark as Ghan, published his famous Essay on Crystals in 1784,
thereby shewing that secondary crystals only differ from their nucleuses,
inasmuch as the laminae which envelope the latter diminish in size,

M.M. Nne Series.— VOL. IX. No. 49- D

18 The Progress of Physical Discovery. [JAW*

according to certain regular proportions ; and that the various crystals
of the same kind, formed upon the same nucleus, differ from each other,
because the laminae of each of them also decrease in different proportions.
This theory M. Haiiy verified by a succession of experiments, and deter-
mined, by analysis and trigonometrical measurement, the forms of the
nucleuses and elementary molecules of all known crystals. His Treatise on
Mineralogy, in 1801, may be said to have created a new science — a science
worthy of the most honourable mention, not only by reason of its own
importance, but because it affords an example within our own memory
of the happy results of the experimental or Baconian method of search-
ing after the truth. The subject has received a fresh light from
M. Haiiy's Treatise on Precious Stones, in 1817, and by the researches of
M. Budant, reported to the French Academy in 1817 and 1818. The
latter has drawn attention to the mechanical combinations which take
place in crystallization, by the interposition of heterogeneous Substances
between the molecules of the real crystal, and to the extraordinary pre-
dominance which particular substances enjoy in such combinations, by
virtue of which they compel other bodies to yield to their forms and
laws, although those bodies compose by far the greatest portion of the
combination, and have peculiar forms of their own. Sulphate of iron,
for instance, in solution with sulphate of copper, in the proportion of
one part to nine of the latter, has been found to crystallize the whole
mass, in the form peculiar to itself, viz. an acute rhomboid, though the
form of crystallization of the integrant molecule of sulphate of copper is
an irregular oblique-angled parallelipiped. The means by which the
rhomboidal molecules are enabled to range themselves to form the gene-
ral crystal, notwithstanding the interruption of a superior number of
molecules of another figure, is still a mystery which presents an exten-
sive field for inquiry. The causes which change the forms of salts
from those of their primitive molecules to secondary figures, have also
been investigated by M. Beudant. It had been ascertained by Fourcroy
and Vanquelin, that the presence of uric acid gave to sea salt an octo-
hedral form, whilst in pure water it crystallized in tubes like its con-
stituent molecules; and that upon muriate of ammonia its eifect is
exactly the reverse. This and other instances led M. Beudant to sub-
mit the crystallization of salts to the influence of all circumstances
capable of affecting it ; and he discovered that chemical precipitates and
mixtures, in the same solution, vary materially the secondary forms, and
that they depend in some degree also upon the proportions which the
crystallizing principles bear to the crystallized substances. Similar
researches have also been applied to minerals ; but here the impossi-
bility of experiment necessarily limits the extent of our knowledge. It
was however shewn by M. Mitscherlich, in 1824, that the mutual incli-
nations of the surfaces of crystal of carbonate of lime varied considerably
with the temperature: so much so, that from 3' to 100° the difference was
8^'. It appears to be established that, in general, heat, distributed uni-
formly in a crystal, diminishes its double refraction, and, in M. Mits-
cherlich's opinion, that it always tends to scatter the molecules of crystal
the most at the point where they are condensed the closest. Further
observation will probably confirm this opinion ; but experience with
regard to crystals is at present imperfect, though its fundamental prin-
ciples, as a science, have, as we stated, been laid down by the Abbe
Haiiy. The question whether the same substance must of necessity

1830.J The Progress of Physical Discovery. 19

have constantly the same primitive molecule, and the same nucleus, on
which many others depend, remains still undecided, notwithstanding the
labours of Vauquelin, Biot, and Thenard ; and it is possible that the
primitive molecules of many substances, both saline and mineral, remain
still undiscovered.

The true nature of chemical affinity, tables of which had been con-
structed by Geoffroy, in 1718, was recognized by the French chemist
Berthollet, in 1803. He first saw that there was no such thing as abso-
lute affinity, but that it was in fact a general tendency of any substance
to unite itself to others, whose force, with reference to each of the latter,
is measured by the quantity of them it can seize, and augment with its
own quantity ; that this forc« would continue to act when three or more
substances are mixed, if it were not counterbalanced by opposite forces,
such as the indissolubility of one of the resulting combinations ; that it
is these latter causes which produce separations or decompositions ; and
that heat and pressure are two causes opposed to each other, which vary
affinity in different degrees. These views, the correctness of which has
been proved by a multitude of experiments, have a natural tendency to
connect chemistry with sciences, from which it was formerly isolated, inas-
much as the chemist, who is now obliged to consider accessory circum-
stances, and calculate their forces, cannot dispense with a knowledge of
geometry and general physics. And it is a thing by no means unim-
portant to the interests of science, that the minds of investigators should
be turned occasionally into other channels than that which they have
chosen for their peculiar studies, for it is only in proportion to the
variety of his knowledge that a man can possess adequate conceptions
of the unity and harmony of nature.

Our knowledge of the phenomena of those chemical agents whose
materiality is not yet ascertained, such as light, heat, and electricity,
has, within the last forty years, been increased by scores of valuable
observations. We are especially indebted to Count Rumford for his
Inquiries, in 1799, into the Propagation of Heat by Friction, which seem
to favour the opinion that heat is a mere vibration of the molecules of
bodies. His thermoscope, and the differential thermometer of our coun-
tryman, Leslie, are of well known utility. M. Biot, by following up the
researches of Richman, Franklin, and Ingenhouz, on conductors of heat,
has established the law according to which it extends itself along the
length of bodies. The different manner in which heat is distributed in
liquids and solids, and the process by which, in liquids, the molecules
are displaced by dilatation, to make room for others which are heated in
their turn, are facts discovered also by Count Rumford, the conse-
quences of which are very great in the arts of domestic economy, build-
ing, and clothing. The sensation we call heat, indicates, in effect, that
we lose less caloric at a given moment than in that immediately pre-
ceding: thence the influence of bodies of various capacities, more or
less conductors of heat, and of different sorts of clothing. But a still
more important discovery was that of latent heat, first propounded by
Black, in his lectures delivered at Glasgow, who established the fact of
the retention, by every substance, according to its kind, of a certain por-
tion of heat which does not act upon the thermometer, and, consequently,
that bodies, whose heat might be marked by the same degree, would
differ often essentially in the caloric they contain. Black, and his dis-
ciple Irvine, Wilke, the Swede, and Delaplace, respectively laboured to

D 2

20 The Progress of Physical Discovery. \_ J ANV

remedy this inconvenience ; and the calorimeter now in use was Invented
by the latter. These researches on capacity led to the recognition, by
Lavoisier and Delaplace, of the combination of heat with bodies, in an
elastic or gaseous state, which is reproduced with violence, when the
combination is separated, as is the case with the explosion of gunpowder.
The modification of chemical affinities by heat, and the degree of
influence of pressure in such modifications, have occupied the attention
of Sir James Hall, of Lavoisier, Dalton, and Watt ; and the employ-
ment of steam as a moving force, has formed a new eera in society, and
is one of the most striking proofs that can be adduced of the influence
of science upon the prosperity of nations.

The production, transmission, and chemical action of electricity have
been the studies of Cavendish and Wollaston — names that will long live
in the annals of English chemistry — as well as of Pfaff and Van Marum.
Its production, by the contact of bodies, called Galvanism, has perhaps
excited more curiosity than any other branch of physics, whether con-
sidered in its effect upon the animal economy, as first developed by Gal-
vani ; in its nature and origin, as demonstrated by Volta ; or in its
peculiar chemical action, recognized by Rutter, Carlisle, Davy, and
Kicholson. The experiments of Sir Humphrey Davy, in particular,
ascertained in 1807, that acids combine with alkalis and metallic oxides,
in consequence of their being in opposite states of electricity; from
which results the important truth, that the simple contact of heteroge-
neous substances has the power of altering the electric equilibrium, and
that this alteration may extend to the chemical affinities of all surround-
ing bodies. Our illustrious countrymen seems by this discovery to
have opened a new source of light in natural philosophy, for it is easy
to perceive the great influence of this tranquil and continued action upon
the surface and interior of the globe, and perhaps upon the complicated
movements of life.

The theory of combustion, so important in its application to the arts,
and the uses of domestic life, as well as in its influence over the pheno-
mena of nature, was unknown to the ages preceding our own. It was
within the period of the present generation that the discovery of latent
heat, by Black; that of the disengagement of air from the ashes of
mercury, reduced without attrition, by Bayen ; and that of the produc-
tion of fixed air in the combustion of carbon, and of water in that of
inflammable air, by Cavendish, formed the ingredients from which
Lavoisier had the glory of ascertaining the true nature of combustion in
general. It was from him that we learned, in 1774, that all combustible
bodies absorb, in burning, only that portion of air that is pure or
breathable, and that, in a quantity precisely equal to the augmentation
of the weight of the alkalis or acids produced, they emit this air in
reducing themselves, and that the air returned is changed into fixed air
when they are reduced by carbon. Upon this was founded the new
system called French Chemistry, which was proclaimed not only by
Lavoisier himself, but by Fourcroy, Berthollet, and Guyton, and the
other distinguished men who, discarding all rivalry and jealousy, ranged
themselves at once under his banners, and promulgated hisr principles in
their works and their lecture rooms, in a way as honourable to them-
selves as to the annals of science. The French theory, which is now
almost universally received, was endeavoured to be modified by Winterl,
of Pesth, in 1800, who asserted the existence of two principles of acidity

1830.] The Progress of Physical Discovery. 21

and basicity, the tendency of which to unite, occasions, according to the
Hungarian chemist, all chemical combinations. These principles, how-
ever, involve the existence of a third, that of the adhesion of bodies either
to basicity or acidity, which, being of an immaterial nature, belongs to
metaphysics rather than physics; and Winter? s system, as the Baron
G. Cuvier has observed, does not consequently yet rest upon demon-
stration ; besides which, several of the experiments on which he relies
have been falsified by Berthollet.

The new nomenclature brought into use by Lavoisier and his dis-
ciples, has naturally tended in a high degree to facilitate and simplify
the study of chemical science, and to divest it of that air of mystery, and
that character of magic, which it had assumed in the hands of the quacks
of the middle ages. Nothing was more necessary than a vocabulary,
which should give to the primitive elements of substances simple names,
and should derive from these, by combination, words proper to express
the kind and proportion of the constituent elements of compound bodies.
This change of names, together with the change of system, effected by
the introduction of a mathematical spirit into physics, as exhibited in the
works of Bergman, Priestly, and Cavendish, must be classed among the
principal causes that have furthered the progress of natural philosophy.
Lavoisier's " Traite Elementaire de Chimie," of 1789, has been deservedly
accounted a masterpiece, in respect of both the importance of the new
chemical doctrines it developes, and the precision and clearness of the
reasoning by which it explains and demonstrates them.

The great physical principles thus ascertained during the first half of
the last forty years, were accompanied by very numerous discoveries in
the elements of chemistry properly so called. It will suffice to mention
here that, in 1809, the number of metals known was twenty-seven ; ten
of those were ascertained in the space of twenty years, which was the
same number as had been discovered during the whole middle ages,
the ancients knowing only seven, the identity of whose number with
that of the planets, of the notes of the gamut, and the colours of the
rainbow, had given rise to a host of absurd superstitions. Of earths,
the ancients knew no distinction, calling them all by the vague name of
Caput Mortuum. Stahl, medical professor at Halle, who died in 1734,
first divided them into calcareous, siliceous, and argilaceous; and the
discovery of magnesia by Black, and barytes by Schule and Gahn, made
the number amount to five in 1789, which in 1809 was increased to
nine. The alchemists of the middle ages had found out but three acids
-—the sulphuric, nitric, and muriatic, whilst in 1809, we were in pos-
session of at least thirty, besides what are formed by some of those
combining with different proportions of oxygen.

This period was also characterised by the discoveries of a variety of
unknown substances in organic matter, amongst which the recognition
of the three distinct gelatinous, fibrous, and albanicuous principles in
animal bodies, by Fourcroy ; of albumen in vegetables, also by Four-
crop ; of gluten in the farina of wheat, by Bechari ; of the saccharine
matter, called picromel, in bile ; that of osmazome in the taste of boiled
meat, by Thenard; and of the astringent matter, called tannin, in plants,
by Seguin, are a few out of a multitude. The doctrines of the trans-
formation of substances, of the mixed properties of organized bodies,
and of transudation, received their share of investigation by Four-

22 The Progress of Physical Discovery. [JAN.

croy, Vauquelin, Thenard, and other first-rate chemists, who paved the
way for the still more recent advances.

Of those advances, to detail the particulars with any adequate degree
of fulness and precision, would be an undertaking which appears to be
demanded at the hands of some natural philosopher, who, with ample
space, should devote himself to the honourable* task of commemorating
the advancement of modern times in physical knowledge. It is not cer-
tainly within the capacity of this review, nor can so rapid a sketch as
that we are about to offer of the progress of physical discovery for the
last twenty years, possibly do justice to the importance of this branch
of science. Yet we feel the same kind of satisfaction in paying our
individual tribute, however trifling, to the genius of the age in which
we live, as each inhabitant of Mexico had in adding one stone, as he
passed along the road, to the great pyramid, that was thus raised up in
the midst of his country,

We have already mentioned the celebrated discovery of Sir H. Davy,
of the agency of galvanism in the decomposition of salts, which was
sufficient to produce an alteration in all former ideas of chemical affinity,
by proving that the formation of all compounds may depend on the
electrical state of the materials of which they are composed. This was
of itself a revolution in physics ; but it was only a small part of the truths
which this clever man was destined to bring to light ; for, in 1809, he
announced to the Royal Society that he had succeeded in the decompo-
sition of the fixed alkalis. Sir H. Davy perceived that in this process
potash and soda experienced a disoxygenization, and that there resulted
a metallic substance, remarkable for its extreme affinity for oxygen.
This substance he named in the one case potassium, and the other
sodium ; and although the experiments of M. Gay-Lussac and Thenard
at first led them to believe that the changes of potash and soda were due
to a combination of those alkalis with hydrogen, and that they were
consequently hydrurets instead of metallic oxides, the French chemists
within a year altered their opinion, and were determined by the results
of further experiments, " a pencher," as they express it, " en faveur de
Thypothese qui consiste a regarder le potassium et le sodium comme des
corps simples."

The years 1808 and 1809 were distinguished also by the separation
of the basis of three acids, whose composition had been formerly unknown,
viz. the boracic, fluoric, and muriatic, by the voltaic pile ; and of the
oxides of barytes, strontian, lime, and magnesia, by the same powerful
agency. The observations of M. Gay-Lussac on the combinations of
gaseous substances with each other, have been highly useful ; and M.
Guyton de Morveau, for the first time, decomposed water, by the dia-
mond, at an elevated temperature, and produced carbonic acid gas.
The diamond had been shewn, in 1797> by Mr. Tennant, to be neither
more nor less than crystallized carbon ; and we presume, that few of those
who now adorn themselves with its indestructible brightness are ignorant
that it is the same substance as the basis of common charcoal. Yet man-
kind have gone on digging out of the earth, and then worshipping, this
simple carbon, with as little knowledge of its nature, as the ancient
Romans had of the nature of the sun.

The phenomena resulting from chemical observations upon organized
bodies, are far more complicated and obscure than those of inanimate

183<X] ' The Progress of Physical Discovery. 23,

matter, and hence this study, until the time of Fourcroy, had been
almost entirely neglected. We have alluded to some of the researches
of that illustrious man, which, in 1809, were followed up by Vanquelin,
in his analysis of tobacco, in which plant he discovered, among other
properties, an animal albuminous matter, and an acrid and volatile
principle, different from all yet ascertained in the vegetable kingdom,
which gives to it its peculiar qualities, and can be separated by distilla-
tion. The juice of the t>elladona, whose effects are so similar to those of
tobacco, was found to contain no such principle. In this year, also, the
Count Chaptal, whose name will long live in honour for his exertions
in the application of the sciences to industry, analysed seven specimens
of colours found at Pompeii ; one of which was a deep and rich blue,
which Mr. Chaptal showed to be owing to a combination of oxide of
copper, lime, and alumine, urging, at the same time, as it was superior
to the blue of Cobalt, or any other blue yet known, the necessity of
further researches into the method of the ancients. About this time,
also, that useful compost, called plaster of Paris, was first brought to
perfection.

The year 1810 produced the admirable treatise of Dessaignes on the
Circumstances and Causes of Phosphorescence, which is defined as a
durable or fugitive appearance of light, that is not provided sensibly
with heat, nor attended with any alteration in unorganized bodies. All
its phenomena, according to M. Dessaignes, may be classed under four
heads ; viz. Elevation of Temperature — Insolation, or Exposure to the
Sun — Collision — and Spontaneous Phosphorescence ; and their several
effects are well detailed in his essay. The phosphorescence of the sea
he attributes to the presence of phosphoric animalculse emitting a lumi-
nous matter, or of the matter itself dissolved in the water ; but there
seems still room for investigations into this phenomenon. Berard of
Montpelier, about this time, completed the researches of Wollaston and
Thomson, on the combination of oxalic acid with different bases ; and
Berthollet discovered a process for making artificial muriate of mercury,
or calomel, by the intervention of oxygenized muriatic gas. The latter
also analyzed sugar and oxalic acid, by reducing them to gas; and
Gay-Lussac and Thenard, after analyzation by the same method, framed
a rule of division of all vegetable substances into, 1st. Those in which
oxygen and hydrogen exist in the same proportions as in water (mz.
85 parts of oxygen, and 15 of hydrogen) ; 2d. Those which contain an
excess of hydrogen ; and, 3d. Those having an excess of oxygen.
Vauquelin analyzed the constituent parts of sugar of the cane, of gum,
and of milk, and ascertained that the two latter differed from the former
from containing, the first nitrogen, and the second an animal matter ;
and Guyton communicated to the French Institute some valuable obser-
vations on glass-making, and refuted, to the satisfaction of the minera-
logist Dolomien, the notion that the fire of volcanoes acted in a different
manner from that of ordinary furnaces. It is now settled that there is
no distinction of this nature.

The Swedish chemist Wilke, as well as Black, had ascertained that
evaporation never takes place without the bodies absorbing a large quan-
tity of heat, and that all evaporation cools the body from which it ema-
nates so much the more in proportion to its quickness ; that the pressure
of the atmosphere retards evaporation, and that this change of state
never takes place so quickly as in a perfect vacuum. In 1811, Mr.

24 The Progress of Physical Discovery. [JAN.

Leslie, of Edinburgh, found means of augmenting the effect of the sup-
pression of air, by placing under the receiver of an air-pump substances
having a great avidity for moisture, which, possessing themselves of the
vapour as fast as it forms, multiply the production to any extent ; and
water is thus frozen in a very few minutes. Montgolfier, with the
improvements of MM. Clement and Desormes, contrived in this year a
method of drying the sugar of plants, and especially the juice of the
grape, by the air-pump. The utility of a process of preserving in a
small compass the alimentary substances of bodies, and the fermenting
matter that will yield wine and alcohol, is obvious, particularly for long
voyages and travels. The idea of heating by steam, first imagined by
Count Rumford in 1798, was this year applied to distillation with sin-
gular success, by a distiller named Adam, of Montpelier. He first con-
ceived the process of heating the wine put into distillation by the steam
of brandy which rises from the boiler, and of making this steam pass
through a series of vessels in which it deposits its aqueous parts, so that
the pure spirit of wine alone condenses itself in the last cooler. The
beneficial effects of chemical knowledge upon manufactures was never
more strikingly exemplified than by this method of distillation. Instead
of heating first to obtain brandy of 19 degrees, from which, by succes-
sive heatings, spirit was obtained of the required strength, the spirit is
by this made at once of any strength desired* Adam's still can be
heated eight times a day, while the old one could only be heated twice ;
it extracts a sixth part more spirit from the same quantity of wine, and
saves two- fifths of combustibles, and three-fourths of manual labour.
The results have already been highly beneficial to the wine districts of
France. Count Rumford, who has enriched physical science with so
many important discoveries in light and heat, this year turned his atten-
tion to the question which had divided the chemical world for more
than a century — viz. Whether light is a substance which emanates from
luminous bodies, or a movement impressed by those bodies on a fluid
otherwise imperceptible and expanded throughout space ? Count Rum-
ford, after a variety of experiments with lamps and candles, found that
the heat disengaged in a given time was always in proportion to the
quantity of oil or wax burnt, whilst the quantity of light furnished in the
same time varied to an astonishing degree, and depended in particular
upon the greatness of the flame, which retards its cooling. Thus what-
ever can maintain the heat of the flame, contributes to augment its light ;
and Count Rumford, having constructed lamps, or flat matches placed
parallel to each other, which keep one another warm, made them pro-
duce a light equal to forty candles ; and he is of opinion that any degree
of intensity may thus be created.

The theory of chemical affinity had until this year only been applied
to the reciprocal decomposition of soluble salts, and it remained to be
ascertained whether insoluble salts are not also capable of exchanging
their principles with certain soluble ones. A memoir was now presented
to the French Institute by M. Dulong, stating that he had arrived at the
result that all insoluble salts are decomposed by carbonates of potash and
soda, but that the mutual exchange of their principles can never, in any
case, take place completely ; and, on the other hand, that all soluble salts
whose acid forms an insoluble salt with the base of insoluble carbonates,
are decomposed by them, until the decomposition has reached a certain
limit which cannot be passed ; so that, in identical circumstances, com-

1830.] The Progress of Physical Discovery. 25

binations directly opposite are produced. And these results are of great
moment, inasmuch as nothing can more strongly refute the old theory
of Bergman, or confirm the principle laid down by Berthollet, of the
influence of the mass of substances in chemical phenomena, and that
there is no such thing as absolute elective affinity.

The year 1812 was signalized by the great additions made by Count
Rumford to our knowledge of the sources of heat. His main idea was
to measure the quantity of water that passes from a fixed degree to
another, also fixed by the combustion of a given quantity of each sub-
stance. In applying this process to the determination of the quantity
of heat developed by the combustion of different kinds of wood, he
arrived at the singular result that the specific weight of the solid matter
which forms the timber of wood is nearly the same in all trees ; and that
the ligneous part in the oak in full vegetation only forms four-tenths of
the whole ; the air being one-fourth, and the root being composed of
sap. Dry wood contains, in general, water equal to one-fourth of its
weight, and even in timbers a century old there is not less than a tenth
of water. Count Rumford has concluded that the peculiar matter of
wood is identical in all trees, and that there exists round the carbonic
fibre, or the skeleton of the wood, another substance, which may be
compared to the muscles, and which he calls vegetable flesh. It is this
substance that fire first attacks, because it contains hydrogen, which
makes it inflammable, and which contributes mainly to the heat yielded
by each wood. It would be impossible to particularize the many new
facts ascertained in the course of these experiments by this great che-
mist ; but amongst them may be mentioned that of the capability of
carbon to unite with oxygen, and form with it carbonic acid of a tempe-
rature much lower than that where it burns visibly. In respect of the
greatest possible produceable intensity of heat, he has established that
the temperature of water, at the instant when it is formed by the combi-
nation of oxygen and hydrogen, is eight times higher than that of red-hot
iron, and that the capacity of steam for heat diminishes together with its
temperature.

The prize offered this year by the French Institute for the determina-
tion of the capacity of oxygen gas, carbonic acid, and hydrogen for heat,
was awarded to MM. Delaroche and Berard, whose tables are still
undoubted authority. M. de Saissy of Lyons, soon after, ascertained
that aeriform fluids have only the property of disengaging light by
compression when they contain oxygen gas free or weakly combined ; a
fact which throws additional probability on the side of the opinion, that
heat and light are distinct substances. Lampadius, in distilling martial
pyrites with carbon, had obtained a liquid and volatile substance, whose
nature had been hitherto doubtful; the German chemist, as well as
A. Berthollet, had considered it as composed of sulphur and hydrogen ;
and Clement and Desormes, as a combination of sulphur and charcoal.
M. Thenard now ascertained that it was composed of 85 per cent, of
sulphur, and 15 per cent, of carbon, without either nitrogen or hydro-
gen. Vauquelin's observations on vegetable principles are also valuable,
particularly his remark that acrid and caustic vegetable substances are
oily or resinous, and do not contain any developed acid, in which they
resemble poisonous plants ; whence he concludes that we ought to be
cautious in using any plants which do not contain acid.

In 1813 Professor Leslie brought to still greater perfection the freezing
M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 49. E

26 The Progress of Physical Discovery. £JAN.

apparatus we have already alluded to ; and Mr. Hutton, of Edinburgh,
froze the purest spirit of wine. Professor Configliacchi, of Pavia, also
froze mercury by the simple evaporation of water. The dilatation of
bodies by heat occupied the attention of M. Biot, who, taking for his
term of comparison the dilatation of mercury, found that that of other
liquids could always be given by the sum of this dilatation of its square,
and of its cube, in multiplying each of these three terms, by a particular
co-efficient to be determined for such liquids, but which, once determined,
remains the same at all degrees. M. Biot calculated the co-efficients for
eight liquids ; and it is from him we derive the benefit of the applica-
tion of mathematical formula to researches, the excessive nicety of which
would otherwise constantly deceive the observer.

Those accidental combinations, sometimes so fatal to experimentalists,
had in this year nearly deprived chemistry of Sir Humphrey Davy, in his
researches on the metallization of alkalis and earths ; as well as of Pro-
fessor Dulong, of Alfort, whose loss of one of his eyes was remunerated
by a brilliant discovery — that of a combination of nitrogen with oxymu-
riatic acid, which yields an oil that explodes violently when brought
into contact with any combustible substance. A new substance was
extracted from the brine of the soda of sea- weed, by sulphuric acid and
distillation, by a saltpetre manufacturer at Paris, which, among other
peculiar properties, has that of rising in a beautiful transparent violet
gas. It has undergone long examinations from M. Gay-Lussac and
Sir H. Davy, who gave it the name of iodium, which it still retains.

The raw platina, imported from Peru, besides pure platina, has been
found to contain iron, copper, and mercury ; and the four new metals,
which the successive researches of Wollaston, Tennant, Descostils, Four-
croy, and Vauquelin, have made known to us, under the names of pal-
ladium, rhodium, osmium, and iridium ; and the subsequent inquiries
of Vauquelin and Langier, in this year, threw additional light upon the
nature of the new metals.

The peace of 1814 added a fresh impulse to the activity of the repub-
lic of science. Another series of experiments was made, on both sides
of the Channel, on the newly-discovered iodium. M. de Saussure
reported to the French Institute the result of his examinations into
alcohol and aether ; from whence it appears that in alcohol the watery
elements form the third of the whole, and in aether they form the fifth;
so that the action of sulphuric acid upon alcohol, to produce aether, would
only consist in removing a portion of its water. M. Vauquelin made
further researches on the nature of iridium and Osmium ; and Darcet,
by his experiments upon bronze, ascertained that it does not harden,
like steel, by chill, or immersion in cold water, but obtains its hardness,
on the contrary, after having been made red hot, and left to cool slowly
in the air. M. Darcet took advantage of this property to construct
cymbals, which had hitherto only been made in Turkey, and, as was
pretended, by a single workman of Constantinople, who possessed the
secret.

We have alluded to the great chemical system of Lavoisier, which is,
however, not entirely perfect, by reason of those acids without oxygen,
or hydracids, which appear to form a distinct class. It was, in 1815,
ascertained that there yet remained another substance to be added to this
class, viz. the prussic acid, which enters into the composition of Prussian
blue. The chemical action of the solar light, so well worthy attention

1830.] The Progress of Physical Discovery. 27

on account of its influence on the phenomena of animated nature, now
occupied the studies of Vogel, who observed that ammoniac and phos-
phorus, which do not act upon each other in the dark, disengage, by the
solar light, phosphorated hydrogen gas, and deposit a black powder, com-
posed of phosphorus and ammoniac closely combined. Phosphorus does
nearly the same with potash. The action of the sun's rays is not always
alike; the red ones produce no effect upon a solution of corrosive sublimate
in gether, whilst the blue ones, as well as perfect light, effect upon it a
mutual decomposition. M. Chevreul, in his researches upon soap, found
that the action of potash produces among the elements of fat new modes
of combination : whence result substances which did not exist before in
their perfect forms ; and two of which, margarine (so called from its
resemblance to pearl), and a sort of oil or thick fluid, acquire all the pro-
perties of acids; that the same effects are produced by soda, alkaline earths,
and various metallic oxides ; that the quantity of alkali necessary to con-
Vert into soap a given quantity of fat, is precisely that which is enough
to saturate the margarine and oil produced by this fat. M. Chevreul has
indeed done for soap, what a larger share of attention had previously
done for salts ; and his inquiries are of the more importance, inasmuch
as they regard an article of such essential use for the practical purposes
of domestic economy. It was in this year, also, that our illustrious
countrymen, Sir H. Davy, made that most useful and ingenious inven-
tion of the safety lamp, for coal mines, an invention which has preserved
innumerable lives, and would of itself procure him immortality in the
annals of civilization and science. Whether we advert to his discovery
of nitrous oxide ; to his investigation of the action of light on the gases,
and on the nature of heat ; to his discrimination of proximate vegetable
elements ; or to his last invention of the safety lamp, we cannot but
lament for the great light that is now gone out.

The very different degrees in which bodies are dilated by heat was, in
1816, the subject of the investigations of M. Gay-Lussac, who, in endea-
vouring to discover some law to indicate the rule of these degrees, set
out from a point variable as to temperature, but uniform as to the cohe-
sion of molecules — viz. that where each liquid begins to boil under a
given pressure. Among the delicate questions in chemistry, was that of
the proportions in which elements can unite, so as to form combinations
of different degrees. It had been remarked that there were certain
limits marked with preference by nature, and expressed generally in
simple terms ; and M. Gay-Lussac now shewed that this was especially
the case with gaseous combinations, in respect not to their absolute
weight, but their volume under an equal pressure. The gas called
olefiant gas, which yields an oily liquid by mixture with chlorine, was
now further investigated by Robiquet and Colin, who found that it is as
chlorine, and, united directly to super-carbonated hydrogen, that chlo-
rine enters into the oily liquid.

The effects of the distribution of heat on solid bodies are referable to
three variable qualities; viz. their capacity for caloric — their internal
conductibility, or the greater or less facility with which heat distributes
itself in them — and their external conductibility, or the greater or less
facility with which they put themselves in unison of heat with the air or
surrounding bodies. The first of these qualities had been long under-
stood ; the third had been refered, by Count Rumford, in a great mea-
sure to the state of the surface; and," in 1817, M. Desprets constructed a

E 2

28 The Progress of Physical Discovery. L^A^.

table of the time taken by the principal metals to cool at the same
degree ; and, in comparing this table with that of capacities, he obtained
the external conductibility. Lead possesses the highest degree ; then
iron, tin, zinc ; and, lastly, brass. The new nomenclature had placed
what was called liver of sulphur in the general class of sulphurs ; but
since the brilliant discovery of Sir H. Davy, that fixed alkalis are nothing
else than metallic oxides, it became interesting to know if they entered
into sulphur, as oxides or metals : in other words, whether, in entering
into it, they preserve or lose the oxygen to which they were united.
M. Gay-Lussac now confirmed the former of his opinions, which had
indeed been previously adopted by Vauquelin.

The efficacy in medicine of particular roots or herbs depends fre-
quently not upon the whole of their component principles, but upon some
one in particular, which the action of the others as often weakens as it
assists. When chemistry, therefore, can discover and extract the peculiar
principle, it is of eminent service, as was exemplified by the analyzation
of ipecacuanha by Majendie and Pelletin. The root of brown ipecacu-
anha contains 16 per cent, of the emetic property, while the woody part
within the same root only possesses 1 per cent. In the bark of grey
ipecacuanha, there are 14 per cent, of emetic, and 5 per cent, in the
whole of the root of white ipecacuanha. The analyzation of opium by
Dr. Sertiirner, of Eirnbeck, in Hanover, led to the discovery of a new
alkali in it, united to a new acid ; the former of which has received the
name of morphine, the latter of meconic ; and it is in the morphine that
the soporiferous qualities of opium are found to reside, for opium divested
of it is wholly inefficacious.

(The Conclusion in our next.)

THE CLUB-ROOM.
THE CARICATURES.

A dining room,, magnificently furnished. The cloth removed.

The conversation has gone on for some time in a whisper. The bottle
before Mummy, who seems to have been drinking bumpers to himself.
The Chairman is thrown back in his chair ; he is asleep, and murmurs
a word now and then in a dream.

Mummy. I think, in the interval, we might order in a dozen more
of Burgundy. The Chairman's health ought to be drunk, now that he
is absent. For by his last words, I think his soul must be taking a
survey of the stars.

Rat. Then let me propose it. And we can make a minute of the
whole to present to him on his awaking. No man likes those little
attentions better. — Gentlemen Che rises}, I never found myself under a
more serious difficulty than at the present moment. The presence of this
Honourable House ; poh ! I meant this honourable table, the conscious-
ness of the infinite magnitude of the task imposed upon me, the inap-
proachable dignity of the subject, the inexhaustible variety of •

Pounce. Ha ! ha ! ha ! Come, my dear Rat, say something to the
purpose, unless you mean to kill us with laughing ; and there's Culverin
yawning like the gateway of Pimlico House.

Rat. Pounce, you must allow every man to know his own talent best.
Mine is for perplexity. I never could utter a straightforward sentence

1830.] The Club Room. 29

in the whole course of my life. You might as well expect our friend
Oldbuck to be on as good terms with his handsome countess, as with a
brick from the ruins of Babel, or a Venus without a nose ; our friend
Culverin to know the difference between a colony and a corporal's
guard ; or our champagne-loving friend Mummy, to think of anything
but his profits, his bottle, and his unprovided progeny. But I pledge
•— (a general laugh}.

All — confusedly. Spoke twice — spoke twice. Hang it, no pledges
here ; you know you're among friends.

Lancer. You will awake the Chair, and then you dare not call your
souls your own two minutes together. But begin ; we must have
something to tell him about when he opens his eyes. Hark, he speaks.
Silence.

The Chairman (disturbed in his dream, strikes alternately his fore-
head and the table, and seems feeling for a sword). There — there. —
Nothing short of fifty thousand men ! — Addresses from the city. Non-
sense. Magna Charta ! Ay, old Noll had a rhyme for that — the most
capital one in the language. The papist members, as staunch as any
slaves from Scilly to Siberia. Charge —

Oldbuck. Ay—

" Charge! Chester,^ charge !
On ! Stanley, on !"

I think that somebody ought to awake Marmion.

Pillage. But, who will venture the experiment? Saints defend
me from touching the whiskers of the mighty. George, you are a
soldier, and have been in the secret so long, that —

Culverin. Egad, I don't like to bell the cat a whit the more for
having felt its claws before now. But, as " we may hear more
than we ought to hear," as Lady Macbeth's doctor says, I had better
try a dose of the true cephalic, puffery, (gradually raising his voice).
Gentlemen — I propose the health of the most extraordinary combination
of talents and virtues that ever lived, (aside.) I propose the health
of the Chair.

All. Bravo ! — Hear, hear ! — Bumpers, gentlemen ! Nine times nine.

The Chairman — (starting up). Why, what the deuce ! — are you all
mad ? Yet, gentlemen, whether with the business of to-day, or the wine,
or witchcraft, I have been dreaming of all sorts of put of the way
affairs — crowns, cabinets, and criminals have been dancing before my
eyes for the last half hour. And the drama concluded with a. finale, that
makes every nerve in my body shake with the recollection. But
" Richard's himself again." It was but a dream ; and right glad am I
to find .myself at this table. But you shall hear. — I was riding

Culverin. With submission, may I hope that you will not give yourself
the pain of recapitulating. The thoughts which could disturb your
mind, must bring agonies into those of your friends. Look round the
table ; you see Mummy's nose has already lost the hue enamelled on it
by so many years of bumpers ; Oldbuck looks as yellow as the crocodile
in his own chamber ; Ringlet's favourite locks have fallen out of curl
with the distillation from his brow ; Lancer dreads to lift his eyes from
the dearly beloved triple lace of his own regulation cuffs ; Pillage and
Jonathan Wild are trying to remember a prayer ; Rat is fainting ; and
Flourish actually holds his tongue.

30 The Club-Room. [JAN.

The Chairman, (looking round him with supreme scorn.) What, Sir !
have / not said it? And who here presumes to thwart me. Here — of
all places in the world — in the midst of this set. Go, give them a glass
of water apiece, or ring for smelling bottles.

( All recover instantly, bow towards the chair, and put themselves

in attitudes oflhe most profound attention.)

I dropped asleep when Rat had got through the first three sentences of
his speech on the Caricatures. I felt the well-known narcotic of his
voice, and sank into irresistible slumber.

I thought that as I was galloping back to Town, I found myself
suddenly benighted on Runny mede, my horse ran against the column, and I
was forced to dismount, and left alone. But I was not long alone. Those
insolent Caricatures were busy in my brain ; and I thought that all their
monstrosities were embodied before me. The plain spread away further
and further, to a boundless extent ; and every spot of it was crowded
with every form of fierce ridicule, vengeance, scorn, and terror. Every
emblematic snake, spectre, and beast of fang, every wild grotesque of
the pencil, was suddenly living round me. The air was filled with
strange and horrible burlesques of the human form ; the ground teemed
with serpents, that tracked their way by poison, and curled their enor-
mous trains, glittering with venom and fire, above my head ; the roots
of the trees and weeds seemed instinct with a horrid life, and curled
and twined into monsters, that gnashed their fangs close to my eyes, and
bound me in hideous fleshly chains.

I now heard tempests rising from all quarters of the horizon ; and
soon felt the whirlwind that lifted the dust and ashes in suffocating heaps
round me. The thunder roared, and the rain burst over me in torrents
and cataracts.

Yet in the midst of the loudest rage of the elements I constantly heard
a voice, as low as a whisper, but as distinct as if it were uttered into my
ear ; and its perpetual word was " Ambition I"

At length, maddened with terror, and in the strength of madness, I
made one tremendous spring; bounded into the air to an incredible
height, and alighted in a distant country. There all was quiet. The
landscape was new to me ; mighty rivers, luxuriant forests, nature all on a
magnificent scale. I was now surrounded by human beings ; and I felt
something of the play and cheerful motion of human feelings. But the
thunder roared again ; I was wrapped in the same furious storm ; the
ground teemed, swelled, and festered again with horrid life; and at
a new roll of the thunder, up burst from its corrupted bosom the
same terrible forms of unnatural torment. The serpent again crushed
my limbs ; the dragon again stooped on his pinions above my head, and
drenched me with gore from jaws fresh stained with carnage ; the
tyger dashed against rne in his speed ; and the lion howled and tore up
the sand at my feet. Still the same fearful voice muttered in my ear
" Ambition!" Agony unspeakable ! — I once more tried to escape, and was
once more lifted into the elements. My feet now rested on the summit of a
range of mountains from which I looked down on a new land, diversified
with rich plains and ranges of mountain ; and with a sky over head
that was serenity itself. My spirit recovered its tension ; a new breath
of life seemed to penetrate my frame ; I heard martial shouts, and, like
the war horse, snuffed up the sounds of the battle afar off, and rejoiced
in the thunder of the captains and the shouting.

1830. J The Club-Room. 31

But the tempest came once more, and I was overwhelmed, my strength
was withered up; I felt that with years a subtler spirit had wound
itself into me, and the consciousness was made an instrument of added
agony. The voice now still more loudly spoke, "Ambition !"

Again I rushed upward. A long scene of strange and furious confu-
sion followed. I saw kingdoms wrenched away, thrones consumed, nations
suddenly put to flight, the precious things of earth trampled under foot
by the flyers and the pursuers ; the ground suddenly spouting up
founts and cataracts of blood ; and turbans, helmets, and diadems alter-
nately flung up and buried in the smoking tide. In the midst of this
ruin, which looked like the general upbursting of the foundations of the
earth, I shook with every rocking of the ground — I was scorched by
every arrow of the lightning — I was dyed in every gush of gore. I
in vain attempted now to fly. All nations were absorbed in this tre-
mendous encounter. Again the old horrors came, as if they were com-
missioned against me alone. The air darkened with the dragon shadow-
ing me with his whirlwind wings ; the serpent, huge as the tallest tree,
rolled his colossal bulk around my frame. The beasts of the forest, with
new instruments of destruction, talons more than of the lion or the tiger,
and blasts of flame and poison from their dilated nostrils, clustered round
me by troops of thousands. The agonies of this moment seemed to have
pushed nature to its extremity, and I cried aloud for instant extinction.
There was a deeper torture to come.

To a wild and woeful sound, that afflicted my soul with a sensation
of incurable melancholy, arose from the earth a multitude of shapes,
human only so far as to show that they had once borne the form. They
were skeletons. J saw in their hollow skulls the brain still preyed upon
by things of restless torture — in their fleshless ribs, the heart still qui-
vering with innumerable stings— in their bony fingers they still clasped
sceptres and swords, with which, from time to time, they struck their
own white and naked frames, and whose every touch brought out a
flash of keen flame from the limb, and an exclamation of agony from
the chapless skull. As they swept round me I knew their faces, and
I heard their warning words. At length, while I stood paralyzed with
a horror deeper than all that the past sufferings could have inflicted,
they all approached me; all their swords and sceptres were pointed
to me at once ; flame burst from them all ; I was enveloped in a circle
of flame ; a circle of flame hovered above my head — a footstool of flame
rose under my step — a car of singular and terrible grandeur, every
jewel of which was a mass of flame, received my form. The voice
again uttered " Ambition !" but it was now with the roar of a thousand
thunders — and I was suddenly borne up a viewless height into the air.

Talk of the scaffold or the rack, talk of years of the dungeon, with
but the reptile for our companion ; or the flames of the martyr's
pile ! — as I rose from cloud to cloud, from tempest to tempest, from
flash to flash of the lightnings that gathered rqund me in their own
kingdom, with what joy would I have exchanged my hideous loneliness
for all the concentrated deaths of man. At length, the agony subdued
my power of suffering, and I seemed to myself to die. (He sinks back in
his chair exhausted, draws his handkerchief over his face, and remains in
reverie. The rest sit with their eyes fixed on the table ; at length Cul-
verin whispers.}

Culverin. We must think nothing of this, and say as little. I have

32 The Club- Room. [JAN.

seen him in this way frequently. But no man throws his complaints off
his mind in higher style. This is merely the nervousness of along ride,
or perhaps some bad news from head-quarters. Let us revive him, if we
can.

Mummy. By all means ; do something absurd, Rat. We must not
not let him lose his spirits. Turn the subject ; you can turn any thing.
Give us a song.

Rat. I really must beg to be excused. I have not recovered my
fatigue. My exertions, night after night, required the throat of a
whipper-in : the lungs of a boatswain -would have given way. I can
scarcely swallow my wine as it is.

The Chairman. Poh ; you can swallow any thing. Do as you're bid,
without delay.

Rat. I beg a thousand pardons. Your slightest wish is with me a
command. I never felt in better voice in my life. — (He sings.}

Here's a health to the Cabinet, early and late,
The brains of the empire, the props of the State ;
Of Europe the wonder, of Britain the pride,
Who, though all still unhanged, to a man have been tried ;
Who had sworn with the country to stand or to fall,
. Until office saluted their souls with a " call !"
If Holland and Grey pine to share in their pelf,
Let them pine ; for each member's a host in himself.

Here's his Grace, the Dictator ! of Europe the lord !
Who shines with the pen, as he shone with the sword !
The Frenchman scarce mutters his mind in a squeak,
And humbly asks, what shall be done with the Greek ?
The Dutchman, before he gets drunk for the night,
Sends a courier to London to ask if " all's right ;"
The Prussian, determined to keep a whole skin,
Thanks his stars that Whitehall is so far from Berlin.

The Russian, in honest regard for his nose,
No longer depends on his ices and snows;
He knows that there's one who will trip up his heels,
So he takes special care how he butchers or steals :
If he niches a kingdom, or peppers the Turk,
'Tis plain as a pikestaff he does the Duke's work ;
That he longs at this moment to kiss his great toe —
For he knows that with him it's a word and a blow !

Then Ireland, that plagued us all worse than a wife,
By his Grace in a fortnight was settled for life ;
Little Shiel was knocked up, big O'Connell knocked down,
Doctor Curtis was dished, Doctor Doyle was done brown ;
The Papists all blush when they hear of the " Rent ;"
The towns are all trade, and the land cent, per cent. ;
All are fattening and quiet, like so many calves —
His Grace never does his sublime things by halves !

No Protestant now in his door turns the key ;
No women and children are shot at their tea ;
No parson now walks half a yard from his gatQ,
Next day to lie under a new coffin-plate ;
No magistrate now dreads the use of his tongue,
Forewarned that, ere morning, his knell will be rung ;
No man walks his fields, with his gun at half-cock,
And the priests and the Papists have cut Captain Rock.

1830.] The Club-Room. 33

Old England, that grumblers would send to the dogs,
Stands bluff to the world, like the bull 'mid the frogs ;
Her looms but too busy, her merchants too rich;
Like his Grace, all her husbands in sight of the flitch;
Her taxes a shadow, her debt but a dream,
Her Parliament matchless, her statesmen supreme :
'Twas his Highness' hand worked the miracle all,
And Great Britain is now one great Harmony Hall.

The Chairman. But what reports have you picked up in my absence
from town ? Are the public reconciled to Rowan and his blue-devils
yet, Rat?

Rat. Not an atom. The only change that has taken place is, that
instead of calling them spies, as they did at first, they now call them
paupers ; for blue devils, poor devils ; and that, instead of looking on
them as a new regiment of Guards, they give the scattered and frozen
wretches soup and sixpences, and recommend them to the next hospital.

The Chairman. A strong government must have a strong police. But
more of this anon. Apropos, Rat, have you finished your caricatures —

cursedly impudent things ! and deserving of not that any one cares

a farthing about them. Let them enjoy their holiday ; it may not be
too long. But let me see them, Rat ; what have you got there in your
hand ?

Rat. A production that I tremble to look at; — a caricature, entitled
" Take care of your Pockets ; or, a Hint for the Orthodox/'

The Chairman. Nonsense ! Hand it up to me at once. — Ha, ha, ha !
— Capital ! — the subject expressive in the first style ! — The Bishop
(Derry, I suppose) with a face full of 15,000/. a-year, besides renewal
fines to the amount of as much more, hurrying on with the step of one
who knew that his pockets were infinitely the best part of him ; ruddy
with burgundy, and rotund with venison. — Ha, ha, ha ! — And then the
pickpocket — that hooknosed fellow in the Guard's jacket — plucking out
the handkerchief behind him. Who that hooknosed fellow is, I cannot
conceive. Not myself, certainly ?

All. Certainly not. It has not the least resemblance in the world.

The Chairman. But the minor pickpocket behind him — that fellow
with every feature quivering with small rapine — the tiptoe step, the
eager visage, the fingers nervous down to their tips, the whole- shape
made upon the thieving principle ; lank as a weasel, stealthy as a cat, a
living petty larceny ! By Jupiter ! the likeness is matchless, is irresisti-
ble, unmistakeable ! — Ha, ha, ha ! But pass the bottle to Pillage, who
sits there, lost in alternate meditation on his poundage and his prayer-
meeting, with one eye turned on the skies, and the other on the pocket.
How the devil has he escaped the caricaturists ? He would make a
grand improvement on the Siamese boys ; two bodies under one coat —
Wesley and Rothschild joined together, and both working together for
the main chance in the most perfect harmony. — However, Pillage, what
news of the last quarter ?

Pillage. Your pleasantry is always of the most irresistible order, and
I shall sit for Cruikshank immediately. As to the last quarter, if it be
worse than any of the preceding, it is better than

The Chairman. Than what ? None of your side speeches here — no
mystification — no muttering — but all as plain as the drill. Better than
what, I say ?

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 49. P

34 The Club-Room. [JAN.

Pillage. Since you demand facts — better than any that are likely to
come. Yet it is not for want of public servants to collect the revenue.
We have a legion of custom-house officers and an army of excisemen.
But the one go to their offices to read the newspapers, and give a
receipt for their pay ; the others rove the country, with their hands in
their pockets, instead of thrusting them into every one-else's. Yet I
defy taxation to be pushed further by human ingenuity.

Man is taxed all over — from the crown of his head to the sole of
his foot ; in his goings in, and his comings out ; in his eating and his
drinking ; in the field he walks in ; in the bed he sleeps on ; in the
fire that warms him ; in the air that cools him ; in the water that
drowns him ; in the earth that buries him. From the first hour to the
last, the spirit of taxation pursues him ; it duns him in the^ day ; it
haunts him at midnight — the dun that no payment can pacify, and the
ghost that no exorcism can lay. It is the true embodying of the arrow
that flieth by noon, and the pestilence that wasteth in darkness ; it
seizes the wretch with the first shirt that is put upon him in the cradle,
and it fastens on him in the night-cap that is never to be exchanged for
another. As the wise man sayeth, " He that oweth money, and seeth no
hope of the payment thereof "

Rat. Must go to the Swan River.

The Chairman. They must have a budget for all that. I know nothing
about getting up things of the kind ; but, Pillage, if you are not suffi-
ciently in the secret yet, apply to your friend Wild there. Poor Lord
Goosepie gave a character of him in the newspapers, as kind as if he had
been a favourite " gentleman out of livery" — a confidential valet, too
deep in " matters of confidence" to be discharged with impunity. —
But what tax can be proposed ?

Ringlet. Any one you please, but on curling-irons and cold cream.

Flourish. Any one, but on the Clare brogue and the St. James's
Clubs.

Mummy. Any one> but on boroughs and burgundy.

Lancer. Any one, but on mustachios, and man-millinery.

Oldbuck. Any one, but on solemn bungling, broad Scotch, and Baby-
lonian broomsticks.

Pounce. Any one, but on professional bulls, and the memory of Joe
Millar.

Pillage. Any one, but on tracts, and trimming.

Rat. Any one, but on purity of pledges, and Sir Masseh Manasseh
Lopez.

The Chairman. Well, gentlemen, difficult as it is to reconcile so many
strong objections, I have thought of a measure which must gratify you
all alike. What do you think of a tax on sinecures ? — (General confu-
sion. They all rise.) — Ha, ha, ha ! I see, " there lives a patriot spirit
in you still," as the play says. But I must be spared your speeches. I
have frightened you sufficiently for one night, though there unquestion-
ably is no tax under the sun that could include all your feelings so com-
pletely.— But what paper are you speculating over so angrily, Pil-
lage ?

Pounce (aside to Wild.) Whatever it is he is poring over, no man
in England can put a worse face on the business. Ha, ha, ha !

Flourish. Very good, indeed. How I envy your memory ! — the true
example of

1830.] The Club-Room. 35

The story into every service prest —
The ready riddance of a punster's breast.

Pillage. I have a production here, on which I hope the most
colossal vengeance will be visited. It has been just transmitted to me
by my friend, the Great Architect, whose designs so strikingly recal the
days of Palladio, Wren, and Jones— the sublime embellisher of our reno-
vated metropolis — or, to sum up his merits in one word, the fabricator
of that ninth wonder of the world — the Palace of Pimlico ; a perform-
ance, which I shall make bold to say has not been equalled in the history
of royal residences, as a proof of the benefit of building on the model of
a twelfth cake — in sight of a stagnant pool, in the smoke of a whole
army of steam-engines, and in the closest contact with a suburb popula-
tion. The offence to which I beg to draw attention, is entitled, " An
appropriate Emblem for the Triumphal Arch of the New Palace.
Dedicated to the poor, penniless, priest-ridden, and paralyzed John
Bull."

Flourish.

By apt alliteration's artful aid,

Licentious libel thus on libel's laid :

Thus beggared Britain buries gold in brick ;

Soane makes us more than smile — Nash, more than sick.

Jonathan Wild. Where did you get that, Flourish ? Stolen, of course ?

Flourish. I forgive you the surmise, it is so perfectly natural to you.
But it was not from your portfolio, at least.

Pillage. The scene of this intolerable performance is the front of the
palace. On the summit of the triumphal arch stands a figure, in a
Merry Andrew's jacket, with a cap and bells over the most rueful coun-
tenance imaginable, intimating, it may be presumed, that John Bull has
been made egregiously to play the fool upon the occasion, with a
touch at the Jack-pudding style of architecture. But the costume
changes downward; his skirts are in remnants — his breeches in rags — '
his stockings are falling off his emaciated legs — his knees are turned
in through weakness, which, my friend Pounce here would say, was
a sign of his being in-need ; his meagre hands are drawing out the
linings of two huge breeches' pockets, once huge for other purposes,
with the inscription on one of " To let ;" and on the other, " Empty." A
flight of crows are gathering round him, sagacious of prey ; and, to judge
from the impoverished wretch's countenance, they are not likely to be
long disappointed. In the rear is the palace, surmounted by three figures,
" the Man wot drives the Sovereign/' " the Cad to the Man/' and,
backed by the cupola, that emblem of a Norfolk dumpling, or a bald
head, or a punch-bowl, or any other architectural monstrosity capable
of white-wash, stands a third figure, not to be mentioned without a
prostration.

The Chairman. Well, let those men of mortar sink or swim, what care
I for the contempt thrown on a generation of bricklayers ? There is
one comfort about the business, which I wish I could say about those of
their betters, that their faults are made to be forgotten. There is not a
blunder of theirs that will not be covered deep in its own dust within
a dozen years. The clay will sink into its kindred clay ; the iron be as
rusty as old Bexley's finance ; the plaster gods and goddesses have every
grimace washed away, and the whole leave a clear space for the erection

F 2

36 The Club- Room. [JAN.

of new barracks. But, Pounce, I see you busy with your tablets. We
are getting dull in this club-atmosphere. Are you conning an epitaph
or an epigram, or, in your old style, preparing an extempore ?

Pounce. In turning over some notes of the late sittings, I have found
a song, which a certain friend of your's wrote on one of the Cambridge
elections. It escaped into print in spite of all his modesty. The story
is — the electors had been applied to in the newspapers, by Bankes, to
compare his force with Goulburn' s, and give up the weaker. — (Sings)
THE CAMBRIDGE CICEBOS; OB, HOBSON'S CHOICE.

Bankes is weak, and Goulburn, too ;

No man e'er the fact denied ;
Wich is weaker of the two,

Cambridge can alone decide.

Chorus. 'Twixt the donkeys, Cambridge, pray,
Tell us which can louder bray.

Goulburn for his place afraid is,

Bankes as much afraid as he ;
Never yet did two old ladies

On one point so well agree.

Chorus. 'Twixt the donkeys, &c.

Each a different mode pursues,

Each the same conclusion reaches ;
Bankes, is silly in Reviews,

Goulburn silly in his speeches.

Chorus. 'Twixt the donkeys, &c.

Each a different foe doth d — mn,
When his own affairs have gone ill ;

Bankes he d — mn — th Buckingham,
Goulburn d — mn — th Dan O'Connell.

Chorus. 'Twixt the donkeys, &c.

Bankes, accustomed much to roam,
Plays with Truth a traveller's pranks ;

Goulburn, though he stays at home,
Travels just as much as Bankes.

Chorus. 'Twixt the donkeys, &c.

Once, we know, a horse's neigh
. Fixed th' election to a throne,
So which gives the louder bray,

Choose him, Cambridge, for thine own.

Chorus. 'Twixt the donkeys, Cambridge, pray,
Choose which first and last shall bray.

Mummy. Confound that long winded fellow ; while he screams, the
bottle stands. I propose a bumper to "The Age of Emancipation,
Renovation, and Double Salaries." But while you are filling your
glasses, let me disburthen my conscience. The work on which I have to
call down reprobation at present, is one of the most mystical insolence.
Its title is — " The Apostates and the Extinguisher, or Kissing the Pope's
Toe I" His Holiness, the present august head of the spiritual world, is
sitting in his pontifical chair, in an attitude of studied contempt. His
Morocco-slippered foot is held out to a noble suppliant in a military
coat; which suppliant bears features too stately for me to describe.

1830.] The Club-Room. 37

With one hand this suppliant presses the pontifical toe to his adoring
lips, and with the other drops a triple crown, as the Extinguisher, upon
a toy strongly resembling the one on which the Pope's legate tram-
pled in the days of John of pious and pope-kicked memory. At his
side kneels, what I am afraid was intended for the representative of one
of my friends. Beside him lies a box, with the words candid, or can-
died, orange, which perhaps alludes to some forgotten period of history.
In front of him a stove burns a bundle of records, inscribed '" William
and Mary ; James I. ; Car. II. j Exclusion Bill," &c. The portion of the
picture at the side of his holiness is peculiarly insolent and emblematic.
A heavy, black brute, with a fiery band between its horns, inscribed
" Papal Bull," is goring a British bull dog, muzzled, on the ground.
A view of the Monument, broken, is lying under the dog's paw. Above
him is a volume of the Lives of the Popish Saints, with a frontispiece of
Guy Fawkes, in the uniform of the guards ; and, filling the centre of the
foreground, is a scroll describing the several changes essential to the
improved Constitution of 1829.

The Chairman. Let them rail on. A papist can be taught the value
of a vote like any other man ; and if there are bigots among them who
think that the Pope carries the keys of heaven and hell at his girdle, or
that St. Ursula's knee-pan is good for the cholic, or that St. Agatha's os
sacrum cures mares of barrenness, and horses of the staggers, so much
the better. Your fat friars are the antipodes of your thin philosophers ;

Cr red-gilled abbots are the last men in the world to turn upon the
d that fills their rotundity ; and if the whole land were papist, from
St. James's Square to St. Kilda, though we might have dirt, laziness,
and licentiousness, a rich increase of illegitimates, and a change from the
night population of the Strand to the holy preserves of the nunnery ;
though we might have treachery in our councils, foreign gold in our
legislature, spies in our houses, and scaffolds in our streets, the country
would escape a very considerable quantity of political grumbling.

But what are you smuggling under the table there, Ringlet ?

Ringlet. Oh — nothing ; a sketch of a public character, quite unworthy
of attention.

The Chairman. Let me see it, however. (It is handed to him.) Ha !
ha ! ha ! I quite agree with you, Ringlet, in the insignificance, but cer-
tainly not of the artist's part ; that is capital. " A Cabinet Curiosity/'
Ha ! ha ! ha ! It will make the fellow's fortune. Look, Rat, how incom-
parably the cidevantjeime homme, the by-gone dandy, is touched in every
line. See the dull dignity, the grave absurdity, the dry foolery that
stiffens from top to toe. What can surpass the affected fashion of the
dress, the relay of coloured inside waistcoats, the buckramed coat, with
Stultz1 and silliness worked in every seam of it, the sliding feet, that
look as if they anticipated the slipper age, and were already basketed
in their grand climacteric, compounds of flannel and chalk stones? Then
the visage, a measureless void ; a carle blanche of diplomacy ; a sheet of
unwritten parchment, with an embroidered border of lovelocks ; Madame
La Hortense's screws, d la Cythere, drooping over the cream coloured
cheek, and the whole forming a matchless portrait of blighted sentimen-
tality. Do you know the subject, Ringlet ? Eh.

Ringlet. Not any more than yourself.

(A servant brings in a letter to Culverin.}

Culverin. I beg pardon for a moment — (opens it, and reads: the words

38 The Club-Room. [JAN.

escaping him at intervals.) " Sixteen parishes up in arms. — Governor in
Council, proclamation. — 10,000/. Reward for Quashee, dead or alive. —
Thirty-third regiment — desperate business — supposed to be all eaten.
— The whole of the Leewards. — Sugar canes blazing — Bishop roasted
whole. — American squadron, troops on board — seen at the back of the
island. — Martial law. — Missionaries drilling. — Solicit instant succour. —
Whites all flying." — (He puts the letter in his pocket.) — Only a few lines
from a friend.— Belmore, a little perplexed by the ordinary occurrences
of West India governorship. The novilas regni passes with him for the
res dura. I beg pardon for quoting Latin in this party. But the tran-
slation is, that when he is a few months more accustomed to a Jamaica
life, he will only wonder every morning he rises, that his ears are
upon his head, or his nose on his visage. — The news, on the whole, is
excellent.

Mummy. Come what will, we must not let the Americans get hold
of the Windwards and Leewards ; the price of candied ginger, potted
pines, turtle, and ten years' old rum, would be raised intolerably.

Lancer. Patronage would fall fifty per cent.; and gentlemen's sons
would be forced to die of old age at home, instead of making a hand-
some exit of it, with the yellow fever, or a negro bullet.

The Chairman. No ; neither Jonathan, nor King Quashee, nor Presi-
dent Boyer, nor the Czar Nicholas, must have a foot of sand in them.
And yet they give a confounded deal of trouble. There is something
in their rum-and-sugar-bloods that will not listen to reason. If they
are told that they must submit to orders from home, and so forth;
they answer, that the makers of those orders know no more of the
West Indies than they do of the kingdom of Prester John, and are
much fitter to sit for a Jew borough, or make a treasury bargain, than
to govern colonies three thousand miles off. If the government pro-
pose the emancipation of the negroes, they declare that the measure
would only make the planters beggars, and the negroes banditti. If
they are told that the slaves must at all events be set free, they demand
by what right their purchased property is to be meddled with, and" insist
on being paid its value. If it offer them the saints for their governors,
they have no hesitation in calling the saints sinners, except when they
make an exception in favour of those who are either dupes or enthu-
siasts, surcharged with folly or mad with fanaticism. If it soothe, they^
call out " hypocrites." If it threaten, they point their insolent fingers
westward, and talk of America. Pray, Mummy, was it not once intended
to send you out to broil there ?

Mummy. The scheme was knocked on the head, by the necessity for
keeping me at home. In the various public changes of the time, I
had gained the character of being the most useful stopgap alive ; com-
bined with all parties for the last thirty years, I was perfectly under-
stood to have no aversion to any.

Flourish (who has been talking to Ringlet.) You write a comedy !
Ha ! ha ! ha ! Though you might make a most capital figure in one,
rely upon it, you could never get beyond the first page. The opening
dialogue of the Footman and the Chambermaid would leave you as
exhausted as Hertford's hospitality ; and, after a pun or two, you would
expire.

Ringlet. But Glengall has done something that has languished even
through three nights ; is talked of in the newpapers ; and, it is said,

1830.] The Club- Room. 39

though I disbelieve the report, may bring him in upwards of fifty
pounds.

Flourish. Absurd ! He no more wrote it than you. It was, like
himself, the offspring of the Countess ; — and a delightful, clever creature
she is. I remember her in my Irish boyhood, the most brilliant and fear-
less dasher of her circle, handsome as an Houri, gay as a lark, light as
gossamer, and fantastic as a French Marquise. I have seen her in the
course of a day drive a curricle and four for one wager, and horsewhip a
posse of aids-de-camp for another ; put a mob to flight, and throw a
review into disorder ; out-look, out-talk, out-smile, and out-shine every
belle at the Castle in the. evening; break down the master of the ceremonies
in a waltz ; extinguish the official wit of the Secretary at supper ; send
the Chancellor home with every lamp double in his eyes ; and finish
the night by playing queen at a masquerade till eight in the morn-
ing.— Heigh, ho ! — (A general laugh. Mummy, who had fallen asleep,
starts up.)

Mummy. Eh ! What's the matter. The Ministry changed ! In
troubled times every man must look to himself; and it is my deter-
mination, at all hazards, to serve my country. — ( General amazement.)

The Chairman. Well said, Mummy. Gentlemen, spare yourselves
the trouble of being astonished. The maxim is a true working one,
though it may not always have the advantage of being so distinctly
expressed.

Mummy. But the bottle stands. I propose, fc May his Highness live
a thousand years." — (All rise, and drink the toast with three times three.)
But what was the source of the disturbance ?

The Chairman. The double discovery that Glengall did not write his
comedy, and that Flourish is furiously in love — both of equal import-
ance ; and which may be equally left to the decision of posterity within
the next half dozen days. As to Glengall, I must not have him laughed
at : he employs himself better even in copying Alvanley's puns, than if
he were playing Treasury tricks ; and Ringlet himself will acknowledge
that Covent Garden is as secure a place for a man's purse as Crockford's.
Culverin. Not when the new actress plays. I am told that half a
hundred of our young heirs are ready to fling themselves at her feet
already. — That St. James's is only a sort of preserve for her; and that
she may bag guardsmen, diplomatists, from fifteen to five and twenty,
and lords by courtesy, like pheasants, for the mere trouble of a shot at
them. She is certainly clever ; and for the good of the falling or fallen
stage, will, it is to be hoped, be contented to be a Tragedy Queen, with-
out being in a hurry to be a tenth-rate Countess. She has figure, voice,
and features for the theatre. All imperfect still. But she has dramatic
thought, palpable poetry of conception ; and a strong sensibility to the
grace, force, and majesty of the stage.

Lancer. Apropos; what is become of the other lordly aspirants
for the bays? The flight of callous nobles, who a season or two ago
fluttered their illustrious winglets with such a general cawing and
screaming? I felt an instinctive fear that the desperate list of " royal
and noble authors" was about to be recruited ; the world to be overrun
with the " Delia Crusca," revived ; tragedy dressed in the frippery of
the drawing-room ; comedy sicklied into the jargon of Almack's ; and
farce crammed with the manners of Newmarket, the stratagems of Tat-
tersall's, and the morality of Crockford's, until the land cast them out,

40 The Club-Room. [JAN.

and some new exhumator, born for the purpose ; some coxcomb-gatherer ;
some compiler of the labours of the idle, and the intelligence of the
ignorant, Horace- Walpoled them once more out of their dust, and gib-
betted them into a sinister fame.

Culverin. They are gone out, like the light of their own cigars ;
and, luckily for the country they leave, gone off, too. For creatures
of their supreme refinement, the manly manners of England are too
harsh ; for their responsive delicacy of frame (the appropriate case
of an instrument so exquisite as their sensitive souls) the climate is
too horrid ; their finely-tuned ears cannot abide even the sound of the
English language ; so off they go, to spend the next twenty years in
the land of soul and scoundrelism, to lisp Italian, languish to guitars,
sigh the slip-shod nonsense of the most miserable and mindless race that
burthens the globe; and be the worthy payers and prey of a herd of opera
singers, professed gamblers, and fictitious titles.

It has more than once stirred up my indignation, idle as it may be to
be moved by such things, to see a great, lubberly, seven-foot-high
Yorkshire clown, a fellow modelled on one of his own bullocks, play
the foreigner — with no more sensibility than a dumpling, or grace than a
dromedary, subduing his tally-ho throat into " Ah che gusto ;" or Idol mio
— sinking in agonies of clumsy rapture at the flourishes of a figurante, or
a prima donna ; and, in the midst of the filth, the intolerable and innu-
merable disgusts of foreign habits, with fever in every puff of wind,
foulness in every thing that he eats, drinks, or sees, pestilence in his
bed, and poison in his dish ; protesting against the country that gave
him birth, and supplied the means of his useless being ; lauding the
tainted society of a gang of fiddlers, swindlers, and buffoons ; and
surrounded by a groupe of titled harlots, and ribboned, and laced
impostors, who are picking his pockets at the moment, uttering, with
the sigh of an expiring dray horse, his homage to " Bella Italia,"
and his shuddering abhorrence of the hyperborean climate and gothic
habits of England.

The Chairman. Why, George, you seem very angry on the subject.
Have your Spanish recollections left nothing to soften your wrath
against those poor devils of Italians ?

Culverin. Quite the contrary. It is impossible to have lived among
the general population of Spain, without seeing in them the materials of
a great people : courage, constancy in arms, fidelity to their word, and
generosity to all. The Spaniard has in him still every quality that
three centuries ago made him the first soldier, the first discoverer, the
first statesman, and the first poet of Europe. That all those noble attri-
butes have been stripped of their use — have been made worse than use-
less— have been so often embittered and envenomed into fierce prejudice,
sullen bigotry, and cruel superstition, is the work, not of Nature, nor
of time, but of a government of monks. Popery has chained the limbs
of the strong man, either to rack them, or to force them to rack others.
Ignorance not passive, but malignant ; fear turned into the fury of the
coward ; arid superstition, not droning over its altars and censers, but
lighting the firebrand at them, and scattering it in civil ruin and misery
over the land, are the palpable gifts of popery to Spain.

Ringlet. Treason, George ! Egad, your description spoils one's curls ;
it makes the hair stand on end.

Culverin. I hate the name, and say so, as we are here in confidence* ;

1830.] The Club-Room. .41

But the plague which has fallen but partially on the Spanish peasant,
hidden in iiis valleys, and accessible only through mountains and tracts
of desert ; has worked its full effect on the Italian, lying open to the
thickest effluvia of monkish corruption, under the very grasp of Rome,
and incapable of escape from the eye or the extortion of popery, unless
he escape into the forests, take a leaf from the priest's book, and, like
him, live on the public. Happy country ! where the only virtues of their
ancestors live in the bosom of banditti !

Mummy. Where's Mulgrave's son now ? Writing an edition of the
Statutes at large? or a History of England during the Phipps'
dynasty ? Did he not once move an Address ?

Flourish. Yes once, before he knew whether he was Whig or Tory.
To make sure of all sides of the House — for he had the Mulgrave prin-
ciple strongly within him, green as he was — he got old Burdett to
write the sketch of the speech ; Melbourne, then a neutral, to fill it up ;
and Canning to correct it. The thing was of course applauded, for every
man recognized a piece of himself, and admired it accordingly. Mul-
grave was in raptures, for he was the farthest of any from discovering
the secret ; and his only fear was that the hope of his house would be
tempted by this success, to rushing into the arms of party, before he had
time —

Pillage. Yes. — Do you not recollect the Whig joke ? that Mulgrave
must have looked upon Normanby's exploit with the same sort of terror
and wonder that makes a hen, which has hatched a brood of ducks, flutter
and cackle, as she sees them take their first plunge into the parish pond.
Where's Normanby now ?

Flourish. I forget the person and the place, equally ; probably
somewhere on the " velvet banks of Arno ;" or gazing on the " blue
sea ;" or inhaling the " blue breeze ;" or writing sonnets to the " blue
hills ;" or enamoured of the " blue moon/'

Moon twice as big as that which deigns to smile
On the dull wretches of our swampy isle.
Moon that works sonnets in jackass's brains,
Sharing the reader's with the writer's pains ;
Moon that disdains to look on Britain's boors ;
But plays the go-between to rogues and .

Pillage. Why, Flourish, you excel yourself to-night. Is the story
aoout the champagne true ? I think I discover the laureat of that
celebrated dispenser of good things at the Opera House door.

Flourish.. No. There my muse gives way to more potent inspira-
tion, or rather to an assemblage of inspirations. Luttrell and Nugent
are presumed to be the permanent bards ; but, on extraordinary occa-
sions, Alvanley is whispered. In fact, all the Marquis's friends are
set down for contributions.

Jonathan Wild. Then, you believe the report of Hertford's casting
the sunshine of his face on the concern. I wonder what they would
ask for a share.

Pillage. Then you must lose no time ; for a fit of prudence has
seized the Marquis. The Piccadilly house has been turned into pounds
sterling. The Tuscan villa, that stare of the Sunday promenaders of
the Regent's Park, with its indescribable back-fronts, and brick um^
brellas, its gilded balls, and all its gew-gaws, is going to be shut up;

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 49. G

42 - The Clnb-Room. [JAN.

and will, of course, after a year or two's growth of cobwebs, be let for a
coffee-house, or an ormola cow-house to that very fashionable body, the
Zoological Society.

The retreat of the Marquis is occasioned by his having only lOO.OOOJ.
a year, a sum on which no marquis can support existence, and on which
any man of the true kind of feeling in these matters, ought only to starve.
So, he goes abroad, like our operatives to America, for cheap bread.
He will save some pence a day on the Continent, have macaroni at first
cost, and die as valuable to mankind as he lived.

Mummy (awaking). You were talking about champagne, were you
not ? Has a new batch arrived ? any of Hertford's ?

Lancer. No : you may lead the life of a water-drinker, and die with
no more gout than a charger, if you wait till you open a flask of his.
Have you not heard the story ? Ah, but you're of the Royal Society
and, of course, know nothing of what the world is talking about.

The Marquis's cook, who of course enjoys with him the privileges
of the most supreme authority, at one of his feasts, insisted on
stewing the venison in champagne. This extravagance was met
by something approaching to rebellion on the. part of Monseigneur
le Marquis. But Monseigneur le Casserole was too conscious of
the strength of his position to yield. As in family battles, like all
others, the victory is au plus opiniatre, as Napoleon says, the cook
triumphed, and the champagne was to be sacrificed. But my lord
had been too long about the skirts of a court to be without a
contrivance in time of need. He privately despatched a messenger to
his friend Wright, for a dozen. The dozen was sent ; the cook mysti-
fied ; the dish pronounced unique ; the Marquis's cuisine lauded to the
skies ; and all this triumph enhanced by the delight of conceiving that
he had purchased it for thirty shillings !

Jonathan Wild. There is not a man from this to Jerusalem that
brings his money to a better market than the Marquis. But how
did this drive him abroad ? it was much more likely to have kept him
at home.

Lancer. In a week after, the vintner waited on him, to thank
him for having introduced his wine into high life, and presented his bill.
My lord was electrified. It came out, that the fellow, thinking that his
ordinary commodity could not have been intended by the order, had
actually procured some first-rate champagne ; and with this the venison
was stewed. The vintner was settled with, of course ; but the Marquis
never smiled again.

Rat (talking to Flourish, aside. They are looking over a succession
of caricatures). The affair is too delicate. They might put him out of
humour. It might be thought impudent.

Flourish. Never fear the march of talent; impudence is the true
security. Impudence works its way with kings, queenS, and rabble. It
is the only faculty of nine-tenths of all the rising fellows of the day.
See how it supplies the place of education, brains, birth, and breeding.
It teaches one all that he knows of finance, and the English language ;
another, all that he knows of common law, or common sense ; to another
it is principle ; and to all profit. It catches the ear of a monarch, and
the heart of a mistress. I have known it give a dasher the reputation
of a rent-roll ; with three executions on -his tandem, and his worldly
possessions limited to his coat; and give another the reputation of

1830.] The ChA-Room. 43

saintship, with his coat so shabbily turned, that it would have been a
kindness to strip him of it altogether.

Rat. Why, what a burst of eloquence ! But I can add something
better still to your <{ in landem impudentice." I know an instance, in
which it has given a certain friend of mine four thousand pounds a year !
After that we need talk no more of its miracles/ However, "give me
the dagger," as Shakspeare says ; give me the caricatures.

(He places the caricatures before the chair.)

I have the honour to call your attention to this extraordinary series.
They form a regular gradation of burlesques on individuals, and if not
speedily extinguished, threaten to make them laughed at in all directions
by day, and frightened out of their senses at night.

The Chairman. Poh, Poh, Rat ; always talking nonsense, without
Flourish's palliative of talking it new. Ha, ha, ha ! Look here. The
Swell — the Cad — the Guard. Excellent. The vulgar tongue a little
distinguishable in their titles ; but the designs incomparable. Look
there. The Swell rvot drives when hever he likes. See the portly figure,
retaining, at sixty-six, the look of the dasher that used to make St.
James's pavement shake with his four-in-hand. The attitude how
stately, yet how characteristic. The costume complete. The green-
lined, umbrella hat; the knowing surtout, with a rose in its button-
hole ; the hands thrust into the pockets ; the face a fine compound of
joviality, conscious power, and easy scorn. The design is worthy of
Raphael.

But what comes next, Rat ?

Rat. An attempt to sketch the face and figure of one of the
cleverest fellows alive. It is entitled " The Cad to the Man wot drives
the Sovereign."

The Chairman (surveying the print). Better and better still. The
self-satisfied look ; the lips puckered into the smirk of a pickpocket
in the moment of having made a seizure ; the hat tossed on the top of
the head, as if it had been in the habit of being plucked off for
every halfpenny wrung from the passengers by clamour or cringing.
The rat-trap in one hand, and the other ready for operations on the
world. The whole is capital.

Ha ! what have we here ? " The Guard wot looks after the Sovereign,"
a petticoat ; but no longer of the fair, fat, and forty school. This is
the soft, sleek, and sixty. The hat, a supereminent slouch ; the royal
mail uniform, covering a multitude of beauties ; the plump cheek ; the
practised eye ; the person as rich as the plum-pudding, on which it is
modelled. Who, upon earth, is she, Rat ?

Rat. I am positively in the dark — unless it be the Lady Mayoress.

Jonathan Wild. Or Lady Holland. But, no — she is broken hearted.
Since the widows have taken to writing their husband's lives, she fears
that all the laurels of that style will be cropped before she has the oppor-
tunity.

Flourish. It must be Miss Wickham. But no— instead of carry-
ing a carbine, her implement, not much less hazardous, would be a
coach-whip. Her bag would probably be loaded with pheasants and
partridges, instead of papers ; and as to the inviting eye, she never cast
a tender look on any thing, in her life, but on a horse or a pack of stag^
hounds.

Mummy. She has her merits, however. From Bucellas to Burgundy,

G2

44 Tht Club-Room. ^JAN.

I know no better cellar. But I thought that the lover had carried her
off at the last Newmarket meeting.

Lancer. No : he has besieged her twice the yeard of Troy, and is
yet far enough from a capitulation. To do the poor devil justice,
nothing could be more persevering. He first made his approaches in the
regular way, talked in the tenderest style of a rational admirer,
and proposed an immediate junction of the messuages, tenements, fish-
ponds, and poultry-yards, &c., on both sides ; but this failed.

His next experiment was in the conventicle style. "He boo'ed, and
sighed, and sobbed, anc. turned up the whites o' his een ;" but the saint-
ship failed. Another experiment was in store. He kicked off the
saint, like Sterne in Languedoc, one slipper into one ditch, and ano-
ther into another, and fell to captivation as a regular Newmarket hero.
The papers give him credit for having lately exhibited on the back of a
horse, riding upwards of six miles within the hour, to the astonishment
of the whole course, with the closest possible resemblance to the grace
of a young Alexander.

Culverin. And the lady, still unmelted and unmoved ?

" Dwells such an iron heart in beauty's ribs ?"

Lancer. Aye ; hard as her own hunting-cap, and tough as her fa-
vourite leather pantaloons. The story goes, among the Newmarket
population, that the Venus told the Adonis, as her final answer, that
there were eleven things on the face of the earth to which she had a
particular aversion : — ten tall boys and girls in a house, and the papa
of the one, and the lord of the other.

" I cannot say how the truth may be,
I tell the tale as 'twas told to me/'

Rat. But we have wandered from the question before us. I conceive
the lady to be one who claims with the blood royal, and who has
given as much trouble as if she were Queen Caroline herself. It must
be the Princess Olivia of Poland, Brunswick, and Little Britain.

The Chairman. Is there any truth in the report that she is going to be
married to Harrington ; and that his resignation of the " Bedchamber"
is preparatory to his adopting the royal liveries ?

Rat. Rowan has already been ordered to send in a list of all the tailors
between Whitehall and Whitechapel, with a detailed account of every
button in their custody, to prevent the insurrection.

Culverin. Ha, ha, ha ! The colonel will do it con amore. But Har-
rington never will be entangled in the trammels of woman : he is
too busy with his patent for a new wash-ball. He has been annoyed with
the report, even to the dislocation of his whiskers ; and is said to have
retaliated in his own pleasant style by a lampoon on a certain great house
near the Kensington road. Where the report was first heard, perhaps
Flourish can tell.

The Chairman. Flourish, let us have the lampoon. Sing or say it,
which you please.

Flourish. I am only too happy in your favourable opinion. — (He
coughs.) This confoundedly foggy weather would destroy a prima don-
na. But the song is not by Harrington : he notoriously flies all spinsters
from a fear of being caught in some among their spinnings ; and the
nine ladies of Helicon, living unmarried, are of his terrors. The song

1830.] The Club-Room. 45

was written oh the occasion of a fete champetre, to which the author

was not invited. Of the authorship, I shall say no more than

The Chairman. Come, " leave your damnable faces, and begin."
Flourish. (Sings, giving himself the key-note from a musical snuff-box.)

THE FETE CHAMPETRE.

Tune— The Woodpecker.

I knew by the smoke of the flambeaux so curled,
By the belles and the blue-devils clustering near,

That if there were fools to be found in this world,
The man that loved folly might feast on it here.

For if for the bluest of nonsense you'd ask,

At Vassall's it's sure to be found — in a mask.

No more on back-benches a dumbie to pine,

Here the Whig may his passion for pension disclose;

Burdett speak his lungs out ; nay, Jack Russell shine ;
Here Tierney and Jekyll may pun nose to nose:

Here the fondest confession that party can ask

May breathe from the lips — if it breathes in a mask.

Here the radical patriot, the asinine peer,

Finds the courage of crowds, for they're all of a trade —

The same breadth of conscience, the same length of ear,
The same solemn blunder ! no more must be said.

If the wine of reform turns to lees in the cask,

Here you'll have — But my speech must be under a mask.

Here Brougham might look civil, — here Denman might pray ;

Here Lloyd (or his ghost) might look honest awhile;
Here Hume might look human — a tiger at play ;

Here men feel no shudder, though Arbuthnot smile.
All's candour and honour — But how ? you may ask ;
'Tis by pasteboard and whitewash — the spell's in the mask.

[The Chairman yawns, and they all rise. He waves his hand towards the
door, and they retire in solemn silence, as he rings the

A NIGHT ON DARTMOOR.

IN journeying through the south of Devon, especially through that
luxuriant portion of which Dawlish forms the commencement, and Tor-
quay, with its romantic air-hung terraces, the termination, the admired
of the picturesque must have often marked with astonishment, not un-
mingled with awe, the forbidding aspect of a gloomy, barren range of
hills — rising in some places to the dignity of mountains — which
abruptly bound the inland horizon. From whatever point of view
beheld, whether from the still and lofty lanes of Bishopsteignton,
the bluff cliffs of Teignmouth, or the unique villa-studded Babicombe,
this range wears the same inhospitable character; tracing its bold
outline on the sky, not gracefully, like the sylvan perspectives of
Claude, but in the fixed, massive, gigantic spirit of Michael Angelo.
While every other part of the landscape glows with varied magic, Dart-
moor— for it is of this vast deserted region I am speaking — stands sternly
out in her desolation. The very sunbeams that light up in beauty the

40 A Night on Dartmoor. [[JAN.

meadows which repose at her feet, that deck the hedges with the varied
embroidery of the seasons, and bid a thousand hill-born streamlets roll
in liquid silver along their channels, tend only to enhance her gloom.
In the serenest hour of the serenest day in summer, she wears ever a
frown on her brow, and, like Satan in Eden, seems to envy the happiness
she cannot share. Though she be the fruitful mother of half the rivers
that roll laughing through the vales of Devon, she yet feels no joy in her
maternity, but hurries them, one after another, from her presence.
Silence and Solitude stand sentinel on her borders, and within sits Ruin,
throned on some mighty Tor, coeval with the birth of time. Vast
morasses, over which, unseen of man, the shy raven sweeps like an
ill-boding fiend ; rough sombre crags, within which the wild fox nestles ;
stunted heath-broom, glooming in long and apparently endless succes-
sion on the sight ; patches of scanty verdure whereon the lizard glides,
and the red snake trails its length ; streams, sluggish or active, either
creeping along the plains, or rushing headlong from the heights, here
lonely and unsheltered, there fringed with dense forests of rushes, which
give out a sullen tone, as the fierce hurricane passes over them ; — these
varied objects complete a scene of desolation, barrenness, and sublimity,
such as no other spot in England can parallel.

It was over this appalling wilderness that I happened to be passing
some few years since in June, just as the sun was going down in a sky that
seemed to promise a fine night. I had left London a month previously, in
order to pay a visit to my cousin Harriette at Bishopsteignton, who for
weeks had been a serious invalid ; but having luckily found her so far
renovated as to be able to leave her room, and even ramble with me as
usual about the neighbourhood, I left her sooner than I had intended ;
and after making a hasty tour through the south of Devon, took up my
quarters at South .Zeal, with the intention of exploring Dartmoor, which,
I was assured, abounded in objects of interest. On the day on which
the following adventure occurred, I had been rambling the whole morn-
ing, wherever a secure footing presented itself, about the moor ; and
having satisfied my relish for the picturesque, was desirous to ensure a
safe and speedy return to my snug little village auberge. Putting,
accordingly, my best leg forward., and timing my progress by the sunset,
I calculated that I should have just sufficient glimmer to enable
me to reach South Zeal. I was in high spirits, full of health, with an
octogenarian pulse, and nerves in the finest possible condition. My
fancy, too, had been excited by the contemplation of the wild scenes over
which I had passed, and the genial influence of the twilight that dropped
like a transparent veil around me, softening the rugged features of the
moor, till they wore almost a smile, kept up the delightful stimulus.

Of all the myriad sources of enjoyment which nature unfolds to man,
I know few equal to those elicited by a balmy summer sunset. The idea is
old, but the reflections it excites are perpetually varying. There is a some-
thing, in this hour, so tender, so holy, so fraught with simple, yet
sublime associations, that it belongs rather to heaven than earth. The
curtain that drops down on the physical, descends also on the moral
world. The day, with its selfish interests, its common-place distractions.,
has gone by, and the season of intelligence — of imagination — of spiritual-
ity, is dawning. Yes, twilight unlocks the Blandusian fountain of
fancy : there, as in a mirror, reflecting all things in added loveliness, the
heart surveys the past ; the dead, the absent, the estranged, come throng-

1830.] A Night on Dartmoor. 47

ing back on memory ; the Paradise of inexperience, from which the
flaming sword of Truth has long since exiled us, rises again in all the
pristine beauty of its flowers and verdure ; the very spot where we
breathed our first vows of love ; the slender, girlish figure, that, gliding
like a sylph beside us, listened entranced to that avowal, made in the face
of Heaven, beneath the listening evening star ; the home that witnessed
her decline ; the churchyard that received her ashes ; the grave wherein
she now sleeps, dreamless and happy, deaf alike to the Syren voice of
praise, and the withering sneers of envy — such sweet but solemn
recollections sweep, in shadowy pomp, across the mind, conjured up
by the spells of Twilight, as he waves his enchanted wand over earth.

While journeying on my winding road, now pausing to mark some
crag that jutted boldly out beside me, and now looking forward to
where the distant village of South Zeal lay sleeping fearlessly at the
giant feet of Dartmoor, drenched in the golden beauty of one world,
while its little tapering church spire pointed upwards to another, I felt
the full influence of the feelings I have just described. The landscape
was indeed irresistible. The rich meadows that skirted the moor, with
their numerous rivulets winding through them, like silver threads, and
the tall hedges relieving what might otherwise have seemed monotonous
in their aspect, lay stretched in peaceful loveliness before me ; while the
tinkling of the distant sheep-bell was the only sound that broke the
Sabbath stillness of Nature, who seemed, in respectful awe, to watch the
last looks of the king of day, as he furled his blood-red banners, and, lit
by a thousand torches in the west, rushed like a conqueror to his grave.

Absorbed in this expressive sight, 1 had passed unconsciously over five
long miles of moor, and calculated, that about four more would bring me
to my desired haven. Unluckily, on passing round a projecting cone,
at the base of which ran the only accessible path- way, I abruptly lost
sight of my guide, the church-spire of South Zeal. To increase my
embarrassment, the road, forming an acute angle at the point where I
now stood, branched off in two different directions, both of which led
close beside a morass, and unrelieved by the companionship of house,
hedge, or sign-post, seemed to stretch away to an endless distance. In
this perplexity, ignorant which path was the right one, I looked round
me for assistance, but in vain ; not a soul was near, all traces of animate
nature were extinct ; on either side blackened a tremendous expanse of
wilderness, behind me the same repulsive landscape, varied here and
there by the abrupt rising of some spectral elm, which stood frowning
with outstretched arms in the distance.

Twilight meanwhile crept on : already the west looked dark, and the
inky shades of night fell thick and murky on the moor. There was
evidently not a moment to be lost ; so selecting the road which seemed
most likely to lead me into the desired track, I hummed a lively air, to
show that I was not afraid, and moved briskly forward, keeping up my
spirits by the recollection of the good dinner, the cheering wine, the
snug inn parlour, with its warm flowing curtains, and the various other
items of comfort that awaited me at my journey's end.

By this time darkness, with a giant's step, had traversed the whole
moor. My very path-way looked dim and doubtful, and so far from
leading out, seemed only to lead further into the waste. Still I kept
slowly plodding— plodding onwards ; though every step I took, became
more and more insecure from the marshy nature of the ground.

48 A Night on Dartmoor. [JAN.

My situation now began to be alarming. I knew that I was sur-
rounded by morasses, between which it was impossible to pick my way
at night-fall, and that one false step would plunge me headlong into the
midst of them. In this condition, after a moment's hesitation, I resolved
to go back a few paces towards a fragment of rock against which I had
just stumbled, and there await the rising of the moon, which, I doubted
not, would soon afford light sufficient to enable me to continue my jour-
ney. It was not without difficulty that I found even this imperfect
shelter, and when at length I had seated myself beneath the crag, what
with the chill drops that trickled down its side, and the heavy clinging
mist that wrapt me round like a mantle, my situation was little, if at all,
amended.

To sustain my cheerfulness I had recourse to the exercise of my fancy.
I endeavoured to look at my situation in the light of an uncommonly
good joke, which would tell well among my friends in town, and prove,
that a traveller may be quite as picturesquely located in an English, as
in an African desert. I then took a higher flight. I recalled the ancient
glories of Dartmoor, when the voice of the warrior Druid, as he stood
beside some gigantic Tor — that cathedral, fashioned by Nature's own
hands, in which alone the Seer would condescend to offer up his bloody
sacrifices — was heard pealing through the depths of the wilderness,
summoning the brave to battle, and breathing courage into the heart of
the coward ; when the moor itself was peopled with aboriginals, and its
old oaks, from beneath whose branching arms the elk stole timidly forth,
rung to the hunters' shout of triumph, the stag-hounds' deep-mouthed
answer, and the last faint yell of the free-born red deer.

But imagination ill accords with an empty stomach. You may blunt
grief by reflection, and passion by philosophy, but I am yet to discover
what mental specific can take the edge off a craving appetite. The
gastric juice is not to be reasoned into submission ; it is a stubborn
Catholic that knows its rights and will maintain them.

I felt this truth most acutely, and had spent upwards of an hour in
the vain endeavour to disprove it, when my attention was diverted by the
sound of the distant evening chimes from South Zeal. There is some-
thing peculiarly affecting in the tone of village bells. They are the
vocal newspapers of the parish, a species of melodious obituary, fraught
with a high moral interest from their close connection with life and
death. At any other period I should have listened to them with tran-
sport, but at this particular juncture their music was peculiarly pro-
voking. It reminded me that I was but three miles from South Zeal,
yet that, nevertheless, an impassable gulph lay between us. It was a
cuckoo song of mockery : a refinement in torture worthy of Procrustes
himself.

I have observed, that it was dark when I reached the rock, but this
does not adequately express the character of the gloom that momently
deepened on the moor. It was not mere darkness, but a frightful, ebon,
determined, unwholesome blackness, worthy to vie with the raven's wing,
or the velvet pall of death. Above, around, beneath — all was one uni-
form hue, spread over the earth like a shroud. Then, too, the silence —
the strange, solemn, unnatural silence, of the desert, which seemed to
have borrowed its intensity from the grave ; words cannot describe the
deadening weight with which it gradually sunk into my heart ! But
half an hour before, I had listened to the village chimes with impatience,

1830.] 4 Night on Dartmoor. 49

bordering upon indignation : I would now have given worlds to have
recalled their music. I would have prized even the howl of the wild
fox, as it would have convinced me that I was not wholly desolate.

Another dreary hour elapsed, and still all was gloom. The night-
mist had now deepened to a fog — a thick, clammy, substantial fog —
beneath whose paralysing influence I felt my respiration impeded, my
limbs stiffening to stone. Still I did my best to uphold my courage.
In a few minutes, I said, with a forced attempt at a laugh, I shall become
ossified, I am evidently freezing upward, and by to-morrow's dawn shall
constitute an elegant petrifaction, worthy to be visited and admired by
the most fastidious tourist. But this effort to be cheerful served only
to increase my sufferings. The fiend of despair was beside me. I felt
him tugging at my heart-strings, icing my veins, and peopling the
chambers of my brain with the wildest and most fantastic shapes of
fear.

One further attempt I yet resolved to make at my safety. Rising
accordingly, though with considerable labour, from my seat, I staggered
a few paces onwards, groping my road, as carefully as I could, through
the dark. But the effort was abortive. Each step I proceeded plunged
me still deeper in the morass. First my ankles, then my knees, were
engulphed, and God knows to what extent I should have ultimately
sunk, had I not with the little, the very little, strength that was left me,
contrived to blunder my way back towards the rock. Here I sat,
waiting hour after hour, the dispersing of the fog, and the rising of the
moon, but in vain ; the gloom continued unabated, the moon was lost irt
heaven, not a star, not even a single tiny star, glimmered in the jet-black
firmament. How drearily the time stole on ! I had no spirits to enliven,
no fancy to beguile my solitude ; both were sunk in torpor, while a.
Vague undefined apprehension of something horrible, just sufficed to keep
up a slight thrilling warmth about my heart, though without imparting
it to my extremities, which were now stone cold. In this truly dreadful
Condition, helpless, frozen, and self-abandoned; alone at the dead of
night, listening to the vulture's cry, as anticipating his carrion repast, he!
flapped his heavy wings above my head ; with little or no hope of being
able to keep life within me till the morning ; — in this alarming condition,
exhausted alike with pain, vexation, weariness, and hunger, I at length
dropped into slumber.

Yes, I slept, but how wild, how incongruous, how appalling, were the
visions of that sleep ! A distempered fancy kept watch over my thoughts,
which, deprived of the counteracting energies of health and reason,
drifted loose over a troubled sea of horror. Had my dreams merely been,
what they but too often are, grotesque, absurd, or farcical ; had I been a
bird, a fish, or a wild beast ; had I invited a flock of sheep to a musical
party, sat down to cards with a coach-horse, or taken a trip to the moon
with Mr. Sadler the aeronaut ; such extravagances would have left but
an evanescent impression on my mind ; but to realize, though only in
imagination, the most fearful horrors of Eastern romance ; to consort
with beings of another world ; to be buffeted by an ocean, and stifled by
a tornado ; to be drowned, starved, and parboiled ; to be sent to wan-
der among charnel-houses ; and, worst of all, to be compelled to survive
the loss of those I most sincerely loved ;— the idea was inexpressibly
terrific !

First, I dreamed that I was pacing', alone, by sunset, over an Arar*
M. M. New Series.—Voi.. IX. No. 49. H

50 A Night on Dartmoor. [\!AN.

bian desert. Thick leaden clouds sailed slowly above my head, a
drowsy heaviness weighed on the air, the sands scorched my feet like
fire. Spent with fatigue I looked round me for shelter. There was
none. I then prayed for but one little drop of water to moisten my
baked lips, and relieve the thirst that drunk up my blood, but my voice
half choked me in the utterance. Just at this crisis I heard a strange
hurtling in the air, and, gazing far into the distance, beheld, on the
horizon's verge, a gigantic column, whose head was hidden among the
clouds, approaching, in superhuman grandeur, towards me. It was the
tornado, the Eblis of the physical creation ! On — onwards it advanced ;
fever and famine dogged its steps, ruin stalked before it. An instant,
and I was pressed — trodden down — crushed to a mummy beneath the
weight of this Wanderer of the wilderness ; my mouth — my eyes — my
veins — every pore in my skin, pierced through and through with a mil-
lion subtle, searching, but invisible, atoms of dust. How long I lay
in this state I know not; a sound, as of the rush of mighty waters,
roused me from my torpor, and, looking up, I descried, first, the indis-
tinct heavings of a surge, then the long swell of billows, 'till gathering
power as it approached, the whole fury of the ocean broke in thunder on
the desert, sweeping me far away on its bosom, now tossed high up in
air, now plunged into an abyss, sweating and shrieking with agony, amid
the roar of the winds, the answering tumult of the waves, and the shouts
of a thousand unknown monsters.

The scene was changed, and I stood at midnight in a church-yard,
populous with graves and the pestilential luxuriance of henbane. The
moon was at the end of her first quarter, and ever, as the clouds passed
over her, a lean wolf, from the neighbouring abbey, would give out a
long howl, the graves would stir with life, and a laughing fiendish face
would glare out from between the chinks of the black cloistered arches,
where the toad spit forth her venom. As I stood spell-bound beneath
the steady gaze of those demon-lighted eyes, the clock tolled mid-
night ; a crash, such as if a multitude of coffins were burst, at one blow,
asunder, ensued ; and presently a spectre started up from every grave,
and pointed in mockery towards me. But my hour was not yet come.
While I yet reeled, like a drunkard, beneath the intensity of my fear, a
solemn strain of music, low at first, but deepening and swelling by
degrees, until it filled the hollow arch of space, broke from the forlorn
abbey, and, at the sound, the spectral forms vanished, leaving me alone
entranced beneath the moon.

A third change ensued. The scene was Bishopsteignton. It was a
fine mellow July morning : the air was brisk and elastic, the hedges
were alive with music, and the lightly-frozen dewdrops hung half-melted
on the thistle's beard. Before me, at no great distance, lay the translucent
ocean, darkened here and there by the slight shadow of a passing sail ;
beneath me, the sweet, rural town of Teignmouth put forth its glad beauty
in the sunshine ; beside me, the newly-mown meadows-— whose feet the
crystal waters of the Teign kept ever fresh and fragrant — sent up a wel-
come aroma from their spread haycocks, on which a group of boys and
girls were idly lolling ; and behind me, exulting in the sweet conscious-
ness of its attractions, rose on the summit of its little hill the richly-
wooded village of Bishopsteignton, with the smoke from its peaceful
hamlets ascending like an incense to heaven, now half-lost amid the
overshadowing elms, now scattered by the playful summer wind, and

1830.] A Night on Dartmoor. 51

now soaring in one tall spiral column high up into the cloud-abandoned
sky. But hark ! whose is that fairy step that comes lightly gliding down
the lane ? She hastens towards me, my cousin Harriette — the pride,, the
flower of Bishopsteignton. But though the maiden's step was light, her
cheek was wan ; the spirit of a premature decay looked forth from the
dark blue depths of her eye, and the whispered music of her voice
seemed to have caught its tone from the breathings of an atmosphere
beyond the grave. While I yet listened to her conversation,, as together
we rambled beside the lake-like Teign, a cloud rolled between us, the
landscape assumed an altered character, and I stood solitary in the
church-yard low down in the lane, where the elms meeting overhead
cast ever a cool shadow on the earth. But where was Harriette ? The
passing bell tolled out a sullen answer. " And is it so ? Oh, what," I
said, " has death to do with so young a form ? Why, why have I sur-
vived this hour ?" A low faint whisper at my ear replied, " Grieve not,
I am watching beside you ; we were friends in life, and in death we will
not be divided." I started — not a soul was near. I stretched out my
arms — they encountered only empty space. " Speak again, sweet spirit,"
I exclaimed ; " let me at least feel that you stand beside me, even though
I may not see you." For an instant all was still, when suddenly a soft
warm breeze lightly kissed my cheek, and the same voice returned, " I
may come to you, love ; but you cannot come to me. Worlds roll
between us. She who grew up beside you, who but one short week
since parted with you, has done with earth for ever. But mourn
not, I am happy — very happy, and in dreams will be still your
Harriette ; farewell/' and with a low, faint, melancholy sigh — so faint,
that it scarcely stirred the green leaves which overhung the churchyard
wall — the voice ceased, and all again was silence.

I called aloud on my cousin's name ; I conjured her to stay ; I tore
my hair ; I beat my breast ; and then, with one last wild convulsive
struggle, rushed forward in the direction of the voice, and — awoke.

It was some minutes, before I fully regained my recollection. My
dreams, especially the last, had left so painful an impression on my
mind, that even after I had contrived to raise myself upright, and
stretch out my stiffened limbs, I felt my heart still beat, the sigh escape
my lips, the tears fall thick and blinding from my eyes.

By this time, though the darkness was still intense, the fog had par-
tially cleared off. The excessive cold, too, had abated, but was suc-
ceeded by a sudden, oppressive, and I may add, unnatural sultriness.
But the change was scarcely for the better, and even had it been so, I
should not have noticed it, for so extreme was my dejection, so perfectly
worn out with excitement, both my mental and physical energies, that I
had scarcely heart enough left to expect the dawn of day. I was in the
condition of a sailor, who, having vainly struggled for hours against the
tempest, and exhausted the springs of horror, at length resigns all hope,
and, with a sort of sullen, stupid, idiotic lethargy, awaits the approach of
the wave that is to engulph him.

A sudden burst of light roused me from this abject torpor. At first I
mistook it for the quick glancing of a meteor across the morass, but was
soon undeceived by a prolonged clap of thunder, accompanied by a
shower, worthy in every respect to vie with the autumnal deluges in
India. It has been my luck — whether good or ill, I will not here pause
to determine — to witness many tremendous thunder-storms; I have

II 2

52 A Night on Dartmoor. QJAN.

heard them hoarsely laughing in the rocky amphitheatre of Llynn-y-Vau,
and high up among the Alpine crags of Snowdon, but never, never yet
did I hear so awful, so thrilling a sound as the thunder's voice on Dart-
moor. It was not quick — active— elastic ; but dull, and hollow, and
sepulchral, as if ten thousand funeral cars, with muffled wheels, were
together slowly and heavily rumbling along the brazen floor of heaven.
Every element of earth and air seemed ranged under the black banners
of the tempest. The ground rocked and reeled — the arrowy lightning
hissed round me — the wind howled like a demon baffled of his prey —
the rain splashed sullenly in the morasses — and, that nought might be
wanting to complete the uproar, the wild fox, the raven, and the vulture,
joined in chorus.

These horrors, coupled with the preceding dreams, were too much
for me. I felt my reason slowly giving way beneath the shock.
J looked up to heaven, there was no hope; to earth, it lay black
and frowning as a charnel-house. In an extacy of fear, remorse, and
agony, I threw myself on my knees in prayer. " Hear me, Almighty
Power," I wildly said, " my mind is fast going from me ; I have used
every effort, I have braved every danger ; but all is vain, this hot,
scorching head is on the whirl ; oh ! ere yet I am quite mad, strike —
strike me with thine avenging bolt, and crush me, a blackened corse, to
earth. Hark ! I am summoned, or is it insanity that lends me ears ?
Again ! Spirit of the tempest ! I come/' and I sunk in a sort of delirious
stupor on the ground.

The storm had continued about an hour, during which time I lay in a
condition, little, if at all, removed from absolute madness, when sud-
denly, on endeavouring to lift myself up, I fancied I heard, during a
brief interval of silence, the " halloo" of a human voice in distance.
Words cannot paint the effect that this impression made on my mind !
I listened, as if life and death hung directly on the issue. Nor was I
mistaken in my conjecture, for the noise kept evidently drawing nearer,
and presently a hundred torch-lights flickered through the gloom, all
bearing towards the rock where I stood. In a few minutes I heard the
hasty splash of footsteps, accompanied by the barking of dogs, and the
Ipud shouts of men. Oh, how my thirsty ears drank in those sounds !
No music, however exquisite — no words, however friendly — no vows,
however fervent — ever yet fell on my soul with half the sweetness of the
Lmg unheard human voice. A minute before I had given up all hopes
of life : my strength was gone, my reason shattered ; I scarce felt myself
a denizen of earth. The whole man now rushed back on my mind,
filling it with a thousand wild fears and transports. Again I felt that I
should live among my fellow creatures, again hear the sweet voices of
my friends and kindred, and in the enthusiasm excited by such recollec-
tions, despair passed off, like a cloud, from my brain, and I burst into
a passion of tears.

After another eventful pause, during which I shook from head to foot,
hardly daring to believe that succour was at hand, I contrived, though
feebly, to shout aloud for help. God of heaven, my summons was re-
turned ! " Halloo, halloo," cried out a dozen voices at once ; the torches
flashed brighter — the tramp of footsteps thickened — and presently a
noble wolf-dog, followed by nearly a hundred villagers from Stickle-
Path and South Zeal, with my kind, my generous old landlord at their
head, came bounding towards me. I was safe !

1830.] A Night on Dartmoor. 53

There was no need of words. My gaunt looks, palsied limbs, sepul-
chral voice, and wild-streaming eyes, sufficiently told my story. The
villagers meanwhile prepared to remove me. " But no," I said, ' ' one duty
yet remains to be performed," and bending on my knees beside that lone,
unsheltered rock, while my deliverers stood in a respectful group around
me, I offered up a solemn prayer of gratitude to Heaven, amid the growl
of the retreating tempest, and the flashing of a hundred torch-lights.
This task fulfilled, a sort of couch was formed of the long brass-headed
staves, covered with great-coat, of the villagers, after which the whole
cortege moved off at a brisk pace, and within something less than two
hours from the time of my quitting the rock, I was seated at supper with
my landlord at South Zeal, busily engaged in listening to the means by
which he had so opportunely accomplished my preservation.

It is now four years since this event occurred, yet it is, nevertheless,
the Hegira of my memory, from which all subsequent incidents take
their date. At times, when I look back, as a traveller to some gigantic
peak that he has left many long miles behind him, but which, from its
superior elevation, still seems close in his rear, the " Night on Dart-
moor" appears but an affair of yesterday. The voice of its thunder
booms in my ears, its lightning sears my eyes, its rock stands frowningly
out on my mind. Truly, time is but an idea, with neither space, sub-
stance> nor authority, save what it derives from the imagination. What
a minute is one year spent in calm waveless happiness ! what an eternity
is one night measured by horror and despair ! How scanty, how evan-
escent, how imperfect are the recollections of the one ! how full, lasting,
and profound the impressions of the other ! I have lived thirty years in
life, have watched beside the death-bed of friends, wandered through
many lands, encountered many strange vicissitudes, yet, strange to say,
all these combined, will not furnish one half the reminiscences that the
<f Night on Dartmoor" can singly body forth.

FAIR PLAY FOR GREECE.

VULGAR and unmeaning abuse has been poured to satiety upon the
subject of our present observations. We remember when it was other-
wise. We remember when declamation culled all the gaudiest flowers
of rhetoric in its behalf ; when enthusiasm gendered on folly, converted
frail humanity into divine perfection ; and from the revolutions that had
preceded it, singled out the revolution in Greece for a loftier note, and
a more elaborate panegyric. But truth only is permanent. It was to
be expected that they who based their applauses on a distempered fancy
should live to contemplate a reverse — should be precipitated from one
extreme to the other — should virulently vituperate when they had pre-
posterously commended.

We will steer a middle course; and founding our remarks on a per-
sonal knowledge of Greece at the commencement of 1827 — since which
but little important variation has been perceptible — we will shew what
Greece actually is, and point out the fallacy of certain arguments —
assertions rather — which have been long gaining ground. With respect
to the presidency of Capo d'Istria, little need be said. The, stamina of
government are the same ; the same defects are necessarily prominent.
Neither Capo d'Istria, nor any other human being ; neither the battle of

54 Fair Play for Greece. £ JAN.

Navarino, nor any possible occurrence, can as yet work a radical change.
Look for it in the next generation : at present the seed only is sown,
and some tares will spring up along with it.

The Greeks, as a people, are inconsiderate, imaginative, versatile, and
proud. They are inconsiderate, from not possessing sufficient expe-
rience ; they are imaginative from nature ; they are versatile, partly from
nature, and partly from circumstance ; and they are proud, with reason,
in being, or in believing themselves, the descendants of heroes and demi-
gods. We do not admit that they are more disposed to insubordination
and party- spirit than any other people would be in the same difficult
situation of affairs.

Let it be remembered, that all, from the first to the last, are, strictly
speaking, on an equality — they are all equally ignorant. The most
enlightened among them confines his attainments to the knowledge of
foreign languages — the most superficial, and the least serviceable to
Greece of all possible attainments, as they employ them. The mind is
not strengthened by a regular course of study, nor the heart expanded
by intercourse with the better part of creation. Let us take, for instance,
the three names most celebrated in Greece since the commencement of
the revolution — Ulysses, Goura,' and Colocotroni. What were the two
first, and what is the latter, that a people should confide in them?
Ulysses and Goura were valiant butchers, and Colocotroni is an insidious
and intriguing robber.* These are hard words, but they are true ; the
one metaphorically, and the other literally. Colocotroni, from being in
his best and most honourable capacity, a serjeant of an Ionian corps, a
corps known at that time only for its cowardice, was selected to lead
the armies of Greece. What has he performed since that memorable
period ? He has rebelled against the existing government, been impri-
soned, and condemned to death : been set at liberty, replaced in his
command, and has now scraped together upwards of fifty thousand
pounds sterling !

In forming their governments, from whom were the people of Greece
to select men capable of managing the new and intricate machinery
just put in motion ? From the unlettered and the inexperienced ; from
men but lately emancipated from the most odious servitude ; from mer-
chants, whose whole life had been employed in calculating the " sum
total" — the distinction between "profit and loss." Without intending
the smallest incivility to an honourable and meritorious body of men ;
without contesting the received opinion that England owes her wealth
and greatness to commercial pursuits, we must assert our moral convic-

* Niketas is one of the bravest, and most disinterested men in Greece, but he is deficient
in intellect. The same may be said of Ipsilanti. Londos is a dull man, and of no influ-
ence. Colette is a clever, talented person ; but factious and unprincipled in the attainment
of his views. To his intrigues, and jealousy of Mavrocordato, the fall of Navarino is attri-
buted. Cariscaki is brave ; but fonder of his own interest than that of his country. The
two Notaras and Sisini have similar feelings, and intrigue somewhat more. Criezioti is
reputed a man of much courage and skill ; he is just beginning to be known. Gennao
Colocotroni, with more of the openness and generosity of youth, is said to be treading in
the steps of his father. He is undoubtedly brave. Lsedoreki, the brother-in-law of Goura,
now occupies his place ; principally because he is in possession of his riches. Nothing is
yet said of his courage ; but his character is bad. The Souliote and Roumeliote cap-
tains (amongst whom are the two rivals, Gkriva and Phoutomari, at Napoli), are gene-
rally braver and better than the rest. But we repeat, what are any of these that a people
should confide in them ?

J830.] Fair Play for Greece. 55

tion, that commerce has a strong and irresistible tendency to contract
the mind, and to reduce all its best and most ennobling emotions to the
narrow sphere of self-interest. That there are some illustrious excep-
tions to this truth, is of no importance : they do but confirm the maxim.
Let the impartial observer of human nature look carefully around the
world, and take into cognizance the effects of that desire of gain which
is confessedly the ruling passion of the multitude. Let him weigh the
consequence of that engrossing principle, and then let him deny, if it
be possible, the deduction to which we would lead him. Men, perhaps,
who are " born in the purple/' who are reared in affluence, and know
not in youth the want, or the value of riches, may not be subjugated, at
a later period of their lives, to the domination of that powerful evil.
The habit of expense, and the carelessness natural to persons unrestricted
in their desires, are their preservatives. The name of virtue belongs not
to a feeling of this sort ; but still its results frequently assume the name
and the shew of virtue. But those whose boyhood has been impressed
with systems of economy — whose youth has been devoted to the acqui-
sition of the principles of gain — whose years of maturity have been passed
in the daily labour of the counting-house, in the hourly consideration of
their own interest, in schemes for its improvement, and in precautions
against the schemes of others — how can they, and such as they, come
forth on public emergencies, discard in a moment, not alone the pur-
suits, but the feelings of years, and stand aloof from all self-love, and
self-interest ? It is unnatural, and, therefore, impossible. Take a turn-
spit from his vocation, and bid him chase the deer. Instinct will lead
him to satisfy his own appetite, but not to pursue for the gratification of
others. The line of his past duty was not chalked out to him by
nature, yet it had become habitual. It might be considered degrading
or not ; but if you free him from his durance, do you suppose that you
can communicate the properties of the stag-hound ? Do you suppose
that you can change his acquired nature by changing his condition ?
The Greeks were precisely in this case. Bred and devoted to the love
of gain ; bred, also, and devoted, as in the instance of the turnspit, to be
the abject slave of a more abject master, they rise with all the load of
past servitude, of past habits, and of past degradation, to commence a
new career, a new existence !

We ask, if such a people are in a capacity to govern, not a
nation, but themselves? We ask, if the new and trying situation
of affairs, to which they are suddenly called, be not as much against
their nature, as it is against the nature of a turnspit to track the
deer? But this is not all — perhaps not the least part of the cala-
mity. The traffic to which these persons may have been accustomed
has carried them in manhood to foreign nations, and supplied a casual
intercourse with civilized Europe. Here they catch (alas ! how readily
do we catch what is evil !) the vices of civilization, without profiting, or,
indeed, without having an opportunity to profit, by its virtues.* In
those, again, few in number, who received their education in Europe,
what do we discover ? Removed far from home ; emancipated from

* There is (would that we*could impress this fact upon the minds of thousands who
forget it !) no general rule without exceptions. Miaouli is one, and Sachtouri and Cana-
ris. The two Tombasis, of whom we know more than all the rest, are strikingly so : they
are excellent men ; and, no doubt, there may be many others.

5(J Fair Play for Greece. QJAN.

parental authority ; left to the care, or rather to the neglect, of strangers,
they reap just that share of knowledge which " puffeth up/' and enables
the crafty to become craftier, and the foolish vain. They reap immo-
rality in all its various grades ; they lapse into infidels, and " glory in
their shame." They learn, in short, all the very worst parts of human
nature, and practise them with interest in a land which slavery has
debased, and ignorance brutified. It is precisely among those who have
been educated in civilized Europe, that we observe the most vicious
portion of the Greek people.

Upon a government, then, so constructed, its members, from their
very nature, necessarily at variance with one another — necessarily
addicted to petty intrigue— ^-rendered incapable by previous habits and
education of understanding the exigencies of government — of supply-
ing deficiencies and devising resources — while this incapacity is evident
even to the most illiterate Greek, how can a nation depend ? We hear
much of policy and "diplomatic relations;" and we see thousands even
in Europe, after years of intense study, unable to comprehend the mysti-
cism which they involve. To say truth, in many cases, diplomacy, like
sublimity, is often valued only .as it is most unintelligible ! But without
study, little or much, without knowledge of mankind, or of the common
usages of mankind, what avails it that the Greeks have a government ?
What rightly-conceived policy can they pursue ? " E' assolutamente
necessario per un buon politico il sapere a perfegione 1'istoria," says the
subtle Ganganelli, " e conoscere il secolo nel quale egli vive, per sapere
in qual grado di forza e di spirito sian coloro die compariscono sulla
scena del mondo ; a fine di poter incuter timore se siavi della debolezza,
far della resistenza se siavi del coraggio, e finalmente per poter impome
se siavi della temerita."* In all these requisites, it is scarcely necessary
to add, that the Greeks must be deficient.

The Capitani, also, as we have before stated, are destitute of all the
essentials called for in situations similar to the present. These men
have not, perhaps, been engaged in commerce ; and, therefore, it is not
to such occupations that we are to charge the poverty of their souls.
But what have been their habits ? Theft, or the most servile depen-
dance upon the worst of their species. Ulysses, Goura, Coletti,t Laedo-
reki, and many others, were the favourites of Ali Pacha. In his school
they were trained ; in his school they acquired the arts of treachery and
barbarity. Of him they obtained the craft which enabled them to conceal
their views till the victim trembled beneath their grasp ; and to pursue
every path, however desperate, in the attainment of their wishes. A»
they were dependent on Ali, others were dependent on them. They
would, of course, select only such men as were capacle of becoming fit
instruments ; such as had no other will than that of their master, and
who found their surest and most ample reward in proving faithful to
him. When the revolution broke out, and AH was cut off, these men
poured forth from their fastnesses to batten upon Greece. It is the mis-
fortune of every revolution to need the resolute and unscrupulous. Such
the necessities of Greece compelled her to accept ; and such, unless by
timely prevention, will be her ruin. Yet the hand of Providence seems
to mark the justice of her cause. One by one they have perished. The
traitor to his master alike falls the victim of his own servant ; and the

• Lett. 88, Vol. 1.

•j- Coletti was attached rather to Veil Pacha, the son of Ali, in the capacity of physician.

J830.] Fair Play for Greece. 57

death of Goura, though publicly given out as occurring by a Turkish
ball, has been privately said (with whatever truth) to be the result of
Greek perfidy.

The Capitani, then, habituated to plunder, and to the indulgence of
debasing passions, withal, most deplorably ignorant of all that concerns
their stations, are required to lead the Greeks against their common foe.
But these Capitani have become rich ; loaded with " barbaric pearl and
gold ;" and will they, who may lose in battle what they possess, and can
gain nothing by the exposure of their persons, will they, such as we have
described them, run much risk ?

€t I wonder, noble captain, whence the thought —
Let him take castles who has ne'er a groat."

Thus it really is. Therefore, with a government unable to protect them ;
with laws only in name ; with leaders who shrink from the contest —
for let who will fight they share in the spoil ; with leaders, we repeat,
who, if they do not desert the cause, do not uphold it ; who employ
themselves in low cabals to obtain they know not what ; who support a
party, merely because they imagine that one party they must support,
and abandon it the moment that whim, or some worthless advantage
offers the temptation — with such men, how can this people, any people,
firmly and cordially unite ? Is it possible that they can yield their con-
fidence to a system of things so constituted ? That they can stand reso-
lutely beside the tottering wall of faith at which they look ?

Take a common Greek from his fold and his mountains, and place
him before the enemy. He has exchanged his crook for a sabre, and his
staff for a musket. What is he the better ? He has quitted property
and security: for what can injure "a stoic" of the mountains, a "man
without a tear," because existing almost without an occasion that can
draw one ? He has his bread and his onion — his cave, and the stream
beside it — his dog and his goats. His chief offers him liberty in exchange
for these things— death, or a glorious freedom. But does this chief
exemplify his own belief of its value ? Does he shew him practically
how it may be obtained ? No ; he bids him fight ; but he does not
design him to gather the fruits. This disinterested leader occupies the
back-ground in the action ; but, afterwards, is the foremost in seizing
upon the prey. Then do you censure the Greek, who has quitted all he
ever knew of happiness, if he reject such conditions ? and having, at the
game time, learnt from his superior, that self-interest is paramount, can
you wonder, ignorant as he is, if he seek the means of gratifying it ?
The Turks are objects of dread and detestation — this feeling, we believe,
to be powerful in the mind of every Greek. He who does not under-
stand liberty, understands oppression, recognizes hatred, and though he
may not love public freedom, he can hate the political tyrant ; and the
mountaineer, deserted by his captain, and left at the mercy of the Otto-
mans, ^ill fight to the very last. Any of them, when " at bay," will
sell his life at a rate that surprises and perplexes his antagonist. And
we demand, if men capable of exhibiting such energies when pressed to
the uttermost, would not, if gradually inured to danger ; if led to battle
by a soldier on whom they could rely — of whose qualities, in head and
heart, they were secure ; we demand of the most inveterate oppressor, of
the Greeks, after he has had time for reflection, whether he disbelieves

M.M. New Series.—VoL. IX. No. 49. I

58 Fair Play for Greece. . [JAN.

their power to act like men, and whether they have not been misrepre-
sented in some instances, and misunderstood in others ?

The history of the siege of Missolonghi is replete with well authenti-
cated anecdotes of individual courage. The garrison consisted of num-
bers from every part of Greece — Episotes, ^Etolians, and Acarnanians,
as well as the native population of Missolonghi. How then can it be
said that men, who, in circumstances the most distressing, fought, as they
have fought, often hand to hand, do not possess courage ? The nume-
rous sorties which they made repel the accusation sometimes brought, that
they fight well only behind stone walls. And the exploits of the islanders,
as they are testified by various officers of our own ships of war, wit-
nesses of the actions, throw back the aspersions in the face of their pro-
pagators.

The small body of cavalry, whose gallantry near Tripolitza has been
often alluded to, proved the intrepidity of which the Greeks are capable,
even when combating in a manner to which they were unused, and at
which, consequently, they were inexpert. If it be urged that these are
only rare and isolated facts, we should be glad to learn, why they are
not brought forward in their behalf, as well as those which tend to their
reproach ? And let it be particularly remembered, that, although the
Greeks have fled before the Turks, or suffered them to eascape when
every appearance might have promised their total annihilation, yet when
they have fought, under almost all circumstances they have had the
better of the contest. Perhaps the results were not important ; perhaps
they knew not sufficiently how to make the most of a victory ; but still,
whenever it came to the trial of physical strength, the Greeks have been
invariably victorious. Why then should we be told that they are natu-
rally the " hares" which Turkish scorn, confident in its own might, once
designated them. What were they who defeated Dramali Pacha in the
" Valley of Death ?" and Kioutaki, in the first beleagues of Misso-
longhi ? They who took Corinth, Tripolitza, Monembasia, Napoli di
Romania, and Athens? We shall be answered, no doubt, that famine
was their auxiliary; that pestilence overcame the adversary, and not
Grecian courage. Then let them say how Missolonghi was defended
with famine fighting for the Turkish hordes • and how it was yielded !
— with every stone upturned, and literally swimming in blood ! The
Souliotes are distinguished for their valour ; the Roumeliotes have never
been reproached with the want of it. The exploits of the islanders are
the theme of every tongue ; individual acts of the most daring bravery
have been exhibited repeatedly by the inhabitants of almost every pro-
vince bearing a Greek name ; and yet Greece is held up to obloquy as
a nation of cowards and traitors ! Is this justice ?

Nothing can better evince the ignorant spleen, and paltry trifling of
the oppugners of this people, than the denial that they are the descend-
ants of the ancient Greeks ; while, almost in one breath, they assert
them to be "the same canaille that existed in the days of Themistocles."
Then, they were crafty and treacherous, mutable and factious : therefore,
.in times as diversified — under circumstances as varied as ever operated
upon thejjuman heart — they are charged with being the very sons of
supposititious parents ! But this is the age of absurdity. Theories are
constructed — fashion consecrates them, and they float awhile on the breath
of popular caprice, to fall at last into their primitive insignificance. It
is not our purpose here to become the apologist of the ancient Greeks :

1830J Fair Play for Greece. 59

but we think we could shew, that somewhat of their treachery and false-
hood were derived from a false religion ; and that what is wanted of these
qualities in the more civilized countries of modern Europe (too little,
God knows !) springs from the glorious light of Revelation— from that
transcendant volume which it was the calamity of the old world not to
know.

It is to those at the head of affairs, whether civil or military, that the
calamities of the Greeks are owing. It is solely from their misconduct
that Europe forms its ideas of Greece. But that such people should be
placed at its head, is, from the circumstances under which the present
state of things has originated and proceeded, nothing singular. What
else could be expected ? Jack Cade, at the head of his rabble, can be
no other than Jack Cade ; and men, undisciplined and uneducated, can
only conduct themselves by the lights they have received.

This statement of affairs brings us once more to the question of the
present fitness of Greece for liberty. Had we not seen the doubt urged
in print, and circulated amongst thinking men, we could not have
believed it possible that such a doubt could exist for a single moment.
What is fitness for liberty ? Are they who talk about it aware, that the
men who are in that state of " fitness," which the phrase implies, do virtu-
ally possess their freedom ? It is the moral degradation, the moral servi-
tude of the Greeks, that makes their situation so pitiable, and their free-
dom so imperative. What could enthral men whose minds were free ?
Does any one believe that the impotent Turk could fetter the body,
when the mental energies were beyond his power ? Read the history of
every nation that ever yet had existence, and observe if the slavery of
the mind was not first accomplished, before the body bowed beneath the
yoke of despotism. Upon this the authority of the popes, during the
middle ages, was founded ; upon this tyranny erected her bloody throne,
and by this she has always upheld it. Invariably, when men grew
more enlightened they grew more free ; the shackles fell from the
human frame, in the exact proportion that they fell from the human
intellect. This is not a matter to be contested ; it is a truth as apparent
as the light of day to one capable of seeing. If, therefore, it be said,
that the Greeks are unfit for liberty, and ought to wear their chains
until they become fit for emancipation, a more unintelligible paradox
cannot be conceived. The utmost that can be drawn from it is, that
they should never be free : for, remaining as they are, they never will
be fit for it. Ignorance is religion with the Turk; and it is the most
effective policy that he can pursue with relation to the Greek. The
full importance of this has long been felt and acted upon ; and the con-
sequence is the present miserable darkness that everywhere prevails in
Greece. What but oppression like that of the Sublime Porte could have
prevented a quick and sensitive people from pouring out their souls in
poetry, and in works of imagination ? And yet how few are there to
be found ! Never, then, let it be said that the Greeks are not prepared
for freedom. Were they ten times worse — were they " lower than the
lowest depths," they would be only so many more degrees entitled to it
— so much the more would their condition imperiously demand it.

The knavery of the Greeks has, like all their other vices, been pressed
far beyond the fact. In reality, human nature is everywhere the same.
Circumstances may vary the manner of its exhibition, but the quantity
of the evil will be found very nearly on a par. They are extremely

12

00 Fair Play for 'Greece. [JAN.

hospitable in proportion to their means ; and though we do not deny that
they often look for a full equivalent, yet, when we recollect the general
poverty, it is not a subject of reproach. We ourselves have no parti-
cular complaint to make of their dishonesty ; and if others have, it is a
complaint which, at times, they would be constrained to make in any
nation under the sun. We have seen much of Italy, and we will venture
to assert, that imposition there has attained its meridian. If it can be
equalled, it cannot be outdone ! The Greeks have excuses that the
Italians cannot have. If they rob, it is because their means of subsist-
ence have been destroyed — because their lands have been devastated,
and their domestic hearths subjected to desecration. They have grown
up with wild notions of religion, and with unbecoming conceptions of
the Deity. They have been trained to no order ; their minds are like
uncultivated wildernesses, rank even in their fertility ; and it is very
natural that, in their present desolate condition, they should hold to

" The simple plan,

That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."

That the present unhappy period has considerably demoralized the
female mind is very possible ; but as it has not come within the sphere
of our observation, we shall pass it with a hope that the day is not far
distant, when both their hearts and persons will be improved — the first
chastened by misfortune, and the latter, placed under the direction of a
better taste. Their frequent fasts, and the use of deleterious food, bring
on a premature old age ; and, in youth, their complexion, instead of the
fine florid glow of health, are always without colour, and more resem-
bling the sallowness of corpses than the warm suffusion of living beauty.
The faces of children are equally unearthly ; but the contour of both is
frequently very perfect

By what we have previously said, it will be seen that we do not
intend to hold up the Greeks as a people destitute of many and great
defects — as not guilty of many lamentable enormities. But we do most
conscientiously and firmly maintain, that they have been, and perhaps
will still be, most grossly calumniated. Of what description are the
generality of those who visit Greece? They are young, unthinking,
disappointed men ; men, who, unable to accomplish some visionary pro-
ject, hurl death and destruction on every thing that militates against
their ill-organized fancies. Or they are " travelling gentlemen/' whom
the first aspect of a dirty Greek town and people throws into an agony
of consternation ; who put their heads hastily within the gates, and
withdraw them as hastily ; hurry into the first ship that will receive
them, and bid an eternal adieu to Greece. Or they are the officers of a
man-of-war (let us be permitted, without intending the slightest personal
reflection, to speak freely) who seldom quit the ship for more than half
an hour, except on a shooting excursion — who rarely know a syllable of
the language — who feel little curiosity, or concern, at least, about the
people — and who possess, most commonly, all the national prejudices of
Englishmen. That the officers of a man-of-war have opportunities of
research beyond those of other men is questionable, though it is some-
times believed. But though they have, they are seldom made use of;
nor, indeed, can they be so, consistent with the duties of their vocation.
Is it from these, then (and we again disclaim the most remote feeling of

1830.] Bring me Wine ! 61

disrespect toward any individual whatever), that we are to acquire our
information relative to Greece ? from men who look at objects through
a perverted medium ; and, wholly regardless of their accuracy, believe
or disbelieve accounts, just as they fall in with their various passions or
opinions? That there are exceptions to this statement, distinguished
exceptions, cannot be contested by any who have perused the works of
Colonel Leake, and Mr. Waddington. But still our general position is
true , and however it may be carped at by those who feel themselves
touched by the censure, we are perfectly confident that the impartial and
the unprejudiced will be of our opinion.

BRING ME WINE !

[From the Persian.]
By T. W. KELLY, Author of " Myrtle Leaves.'

Go scatter Flowers, and bring me Wine,*
That while I drink, their incense sweet

May charm my soul with dreams divine
Of her my fancy joys to meet.

But ah ! her absence brings a pain,
Which ne'er can be in wine forgot ;

Then take, oh ! take the cup again —
Wine has no charms where she is not !

Oh, that I were her Robe, I'd cling
. Her fair form tenderly around ;
Or, were I that bright jewelled Ring
About her well-turned ankle bound !

Or, one of those pure Bells of gold

Which, hanging, decks her radiant zone,

More than my tongue has ever told

Should breathe in its impassioned tone 1

Or, the fair Rose set in the maze,
The fragrant maze of her dark hair ;

Delighted on her brow I'd gaze,
And still her unmatched charms declare.

But ere those charms I could reveal,
The jealous gale would, vexed to see

Me honoured thus,, untimely steal
My breath, my bliss, my extacy !

Then would I were the Leaf t which dyes

Her snowy feet with ruby hue !
How dearly would her lover prize

A kiss so odorous and so true !

But more than worlds I'd deem obtained,
Were I the white Symar which, blest,

Enshrines her heart, that mine has chained,
And made a fugitive from rest.

* " Call for wine, and scatter flowers around." — Asiat. Res. vol. iii. p. 174.
•j- The (juice of) Alactaca. — Fide the Songs of Jayadeva.

[ 62 ] [JAN.

THEATRICAL MATTERS.

KEAN, who seems determined to make his retirements and his returns
equally conspicuous, contrived to triply signalize his reappearance at
Drury-lane, by a negotiation, a newspaper correspondence, and a law-suit.
The Atlantic manager is an acute personage, and seems to know the
world on both sides of that sea, which Grattan in one of his flights eulo-
gized as the power of nature seconding the power of mind ; " a column
of water of three thousand miles" seconding the energies of the Irish
volunteers — " pace tanti viri," the figure sounds a little absurd. But
Grattan had a meaning in his madness, and his countrymen understood
him prodigiously well in those days of American rebellion.

(So far, par parenthese.} The manager knew his man; sent Home-
Secretary Cooper to open an arrangement with the great leader, for his ac-
cession to the Drury-lane ministry; laid before his tardy conviction reasons
of such weight, that no lover of his country could refuse them ; proved
at once that the state was lost without him, and that he was lost without
the state ; turned his tardy conviction into glowing acceptance, brought
him up to the door of the Brydges'-street Cabinet, and saw him sworn
into office, even in the very boots which he had put on " to follow the
poor body" of the Covent Garden opposition. For this most impor-
tant service, the Home Secretary has since been honoured with the
amplest confidence of the Atlantic premier — has been promoted to the
Foreign department, and now sustains the weight of the negotiations,
tot et tanta negoiia solus, with all powers proposing the alliance of Pari-
sian dancing-dogs and dancing women, marvellous monkeys, Diavolo
Antonios, dromedaries with three humps, and translators of German
melodrames. But, " to digress from this digression," as Lord Byron
says ; Kean's manliness, as it was termed by his admirers ; his " dis-
loyalty" as it was termed by his haters; and his perfect knowledge of
managers and man, as it was termed by those who did not care if he was
gone, with all his fortune left to pay the national debt ; produced in the
first instance a letter from Mr. Bartley, the very pleasant actor and
respectable Stage Director of Covent Garden. Kean wisely left this
shot to take its parabolic course whither it would ; a second and a third
followed. Kean felt himself dunned by this " d — mnable iteration," and
answered them no more than a dun ought to be answered. The letters
were cleverly written, pathetic on the score of Kean's character, for
which the letter- writer professed a peculiar love, and powerful in their
appeals to that portion of the human sensibilities by which a man
shrinks from 10,OOOZ. damages, though incurred in the most captivating
of causes.

But Kean had by this time kissed hands ; he was installed in the
glories of office; he had tasted of the good things, and had touched the
first quarter's salary. Aristides or Phocion, the vigorous virtue of a
Regulus, or the sublime purity of a Chatham, could not have done more
.nor less than what he did ; he snapped his fingers at the menace, flung
the correspondence into the flames, and in the spirit of indignant honour,
desired his name to be placarded for Richard next day at dawn.

Hostilities now commenced by a brisk attempt at an action by Covent
Garden. The boldness of managers, probably from their habits of deal-
ing with daggers or actresses, is of the most daring nature. The name

1830.] Theatrical Matters. '63

of Chancery, which even in the Fives' Court designates the depth of
calamity ; and every where else carries, like physic, ruin in its chariot
wheels, only that, unlike physic, it speedily cures the patient, though it
never lets him out of the chamber — has no alarms for the manager of a
theatre. He rushes on, like Alexander, to secure conquest, though at
his first step he plunge over head and ears into a Granicus of office ink,
and rise from it only to be buried neck deep in the suffocations of
parchment and special pleaders. On he plunges, cries sauve qui pent ;
which should be translated " Devil take the foremost," and leaves the
world to wonder at his intrepidity. Like Monsieur Chabert — the whole
is a phenomenon ; except that to breakfast on prussic acid, and dine on
corrosive sublimate, are the most trivial ventures, after the entrance into
that furnace, the law ; where man is roasted whole, and whose tempera-
ture is death to every one, but that profession who are obviously prac-
tising for the endurance of heat here and " elsewhere."

The injunction was applied for, and obtained, or it would not be law.;
that law which allows every man to run his chance of ruin. The
injunction was applied against, and dissolved the next day, or it would
not be law, which allows every man to drink the " glorious uncer-
tainty," and to repent of his experiment within the next four-and-
twenty hours.

Kean has gone on since as triumphantly as ever; and Mr. Wallack him-
self owns that the speech is not to be respoken, in which he announced
the extinction of the actor's faculties. His Richard, his best at all times,
and his Othello, always an effective performance, are still followed;
and unless he falls in love again with some Aldermanic fair, or puts, like
Cassio, an enemy in his mouth to take away his brains, Kean may still
be a thriving wooer of the Muse of the lamp and dagger.

Young plays the lago, for who else can play it? — and we question
if any actor ever played it better. The man is made for the part ; we
mean no sneer at a very estimable and intelligent individual. But
Young's sarcastic manner, his mixture of severity and pleasantry, and
the very formation of his acute and expressive features, mark him far
the man who plays with human foibles, and makes, as it may happen,
his mirth or his matter, out of the generous absurdities of mankind.
Without his lago the play would be nothing ; but with it, it is unques-
tionably among the most attractive and triumphant efforts of the modern
stage.

Miss Phillips's Desdemona should not be forgotten. It is a very
sweet, graceful, and feeling performance ; yet there are two things in
which Miss Phillips might very greatly improve — her energy and her
hair-dressing ; they are not very like, but they have each their import-
ance. The stage does not often witness a more calamitous coiffure. It
gives an air of awkwardness to a very pretty, though rather stiff figure ;
it destroys the expression of a very pretty face ; transfers our sorrow for
the character to our anxiety for the actress ; and urges us to the unchari-
table wish, that instead of slaying or being slain nightly, she should once
for all transfer her dagger to the more ignoble office of extinguishing
her friseur.

Lord Normanby, a patriot of the first magnitude, and adoring the
English populace, " the illustrious race of the free," and so forth — is,
like a patriot and a British nobleman, nourishing away with his lady and
a mob of patriots and patriotesses, like themselves, in Florence. We

64 Theatrical Matters. [JAN.

have no desire to mingle our political feelings with our theatrical details ;
but conduct, like this, is among the objects of our irresistible scorn.
While the English population, from whom this childish and idle perso-
nage draws the means of his frivolous career, are pressed by the heaviest
calamities — this nobleman, — how long will public scorn suffer the applica-
tion of the name ? — is capering in an Italian town, gathering the wretched
and ridiculous mob of titled puppyism that every land disgorges into
Italy, and performing in his own person and that of his wife, antics on a
stage. The last tidings are, that he and she performed to " four hun-
dred personages of BANK and FASHION a few nights ago, in Florence."
This paragraph, in the legitimate style of the " Fashionable World" of
a newspaper, was, in all probability, sent from his lordship's proper pen,
and may have been intended alike to spread his fame and to draw
recruits. Four hundred personages of rank, or rabble, to see Lord
Normanby play " Simpson and Co !" Well may foreigners ask, why we
send for their tumblers and baboons, when we have such noble super-
fluities of our own ! Well may the people of England exclaim against
the profits of office and the worthlessness of patriotism, when they see
such absurdities committed by men who should set an example of com-
mon sense and common humanity at home.

But, to turn from our indignation to an anecdote of the infinite bore
of such delights as this novel-scribbling patriot and absentee has taken
upon his shoulders.

The father of the present Sir Watkin Williams Wynn was a great
patron of the arts ; and so fond was he of plays, that he built a theatre
at Wynnstay, in North Wales. On one occasion, Austin, the actor, then
manager of Chester theatre, was requested by Sir Watkin to super-
intend the getting up of a favourite comedy, which was to be acted
entirely by amateurs, many of whom were noblemen and ladies of
rank. A day was fixed for the performance, and, as a matter of course,
a rehearsal was called in the morning. Sir Watkin and Austin were at
their post, making all preparation to give effect to the play. All was

ready. ' Clear the stage/ cried Sir Watkin, f and call Lord A /

f His lordship's gone a shooting/ exclaimed a servant. — ( Call Sir B.
C , then.' ' He is gone a fishing, Sir Watkin.' — e Request Lady

D to come, then.' ' Her ladyship, and several others, are just

gone out for a ride.' — ' Who the d — I/ cried Sir Watkin, ' would be a
manager ?' ( I am sure I should not/ said Austin, ( if I had your
fortune.'

Covent Garden has gone on showily since Miss Kemble's appearance.
She has now added Belvidera to her Juliet, and plays it as well as her
physical powers allow. Her voice is obviously growing more equal to
the, compass of the house, and her action is more decided. The theatre
is crowded on the nights of her performance, and what can she ask
more ?

The Dublin Theatre has been sold, and purchased by the mortgagee,
for a sum which allows of his letting it at 2,000/. a-year ; a deduction
of 1,000/. from the former rate. The manager ought to make some-
thing out of this, when we recollect that Covent Garden lives under
a rent of 14,000/., and Drury Lane under one of 10,00(W. They may
both be pressed heavily enough by this burthen, but let them have good
plays, and they are sure to have full audiences. Let the Irisn manager
take this secret to his bosom, and try to stir up the dramatic power of
the pleasant population round him.

1830.J Theatrical Matters. 65

But what evil genrus in the shape of the most luckless of managers, -
Frederic Jones, has started up to rival him ? Dublin has never been able
to support more than one theatre, seldom even that one, and yet we see
that a second, for operas, &c., is actually building. Even in the day of
Barry and Mossop, of Sheridan, Quin, and Garrick, when first-rate
players were to be found everywhere, and when the higher ranks made
the theatre what the opera is now, their habitual place of assemblage,
two theatres in Dublin only ruined each other ; but, nous verrons.

The fate of the foreign speculations comes just in time. The Parisian
affair was merely a French compliment, paid and at an end. The actors
were introduced, embraced in the public arms, kissed on both cheeks,
and then most courteously bowed out. The manager of the Anglo-
Flemish company improved on this French reception, by taking French
leave.

" An English company had been performing at Amsterdam, under
the management of a Mr. Aubrey, who, by liberal offers, induced Kean,
jun., Miss F. H. Kelly, and other English performers, to join his corps
dramalique. They played e Romeo and Juliet/ at the Hague, with
great eclat, in presence of the King and Queen of the Netherlands, the
Prince and Princess of Orange, and an immensely crowded audience.
The receipts of the night were considerable ; but on the return of the
company to Amsterdam, it was discovered that the manager had made
his exit, after receiving the subscription of the royal party, and there
was no money in the treasury to pay the performers' salaries, beside there
being an arrear of 1 ,000 florins due to the proprietor of the theatre for rent.
In this dilemma a green-room council was convened, when Miss F. H.
Kelly, in consideration of the poorer performers, generously offered to
bear the whole expenses of the theatre for a month, paying all the mem-
bers their full salaries, if Kean would give his gratuitous services for
that period, to which he as generously agreed ; but the proposition not
meeting the concurrence of those whom it was intended to benefit, the
idea was abandoned."

Mr. Aubrey has since, however, denied the abstraction of the money,
there being none to abstract.

But the performer that surpasses all other performers is the debu-
tante of the Adelphi. The name of this extraordinary genius is Jelk,
with which she was honoured by her illustrious sponsors, the King of
Candy and the Emperor of Japan. Her performance has excited the
most boundless popularity ; and the great Northern Romancer, who,
with a large party of wits attended her debut, is said to have continued,
during the whole week after, pronouncing, like his Dominie Sampson,
the word " prodigious !"

A drama had been provided for the first development of her powers,
happily entitled the " Fire Fiend," which was to be opened by a pro-
logue recited by Yates, in the garb of an Exeter 'Change Beef-eater.
But the whisper goes, that the deputy licenser, feeling himself appointed
the guardian angel of that warlike corps, refused his permission, on the
ground that it was " calculated to bring his Majesty's Beef-eaters into
contempt/' Yates accordingly submitted, and appearing in his personal
costume, as a beef-eater on his own account, delivered Mr. Beasley's very
pleasant performance. The prologue playfully describes the pulling
down of Exeter 'Change, and tells us, that — .

M.M. New Series.— Vol. IX. No. 49. K

66 Theatrical Matter*. CJAN-

" The beasts, astonished, still remained in douLt

That Woods and Forests should have turned them out ,'

With Carlton rooks they made their comjnon caws —

Compell'd to bow to Woods' and Forests' laws.

By roars from beasts, and oaths from keepers surly,

Was Burleigh House thus turned to hurly-burley ;

And beasts and birds sought out for other lays,

Where the King's Mews still celebrates their praise.

I was obliged their common route to share,

•And found it quite a bore without a bear.

From that snug nook, so well known at the entry,

Where half a century had stood a sentry,

Ejected, I was left to cry alone,

"With the great bard—' My occupation's gone.' "

The lines then proceed to describe, with a most prolific prodigality of
pun, the difficulties which impeded the performers' engagement and
transit to the theatre.

tc Some thought no poet could be got to write

For one who put George Colman in a fright.

Some thought the new performer's length of ear,

Would seem, on public men^ a public sneer.

Some thought such public talents shown in brute*

A libel on some " honourable" mutes.

Some thought by law they could not let her land,

Because her ivories were contraband —

The vessel, too, would tremble with her weight,

And captains be quite frighted with her freight —
v Said we'd no room in safety here to place her,

And that our prompter would not dare to face her.

I proved the voyage easy of endurance —

I promised, then, that I could find assurance —

I signed and sealed, thinking the matter national —

But hoping still her rations would be rational —

Till freight all paid, her custom duties clear,

She coGies herself to pay her duties here —

We hoping you your patronage will grant
»v,- To Messrs. Mathews, Yates, and Elephant."

. The experiment, however, has succeeded " prodigiously." Miss Jelk
has become the talk of the wits of the grand monde, as our readers will
observe in another part of our publication. The theatre is crowded, and
the proprietors are said to be in treaty with the King of the Ashantees
for a troop of lions, who, if they do not gratify the public appetite, will
probably indulge their own. Though, for curious specimens of creation,
the very best might be found among the lion-s of the West End.

At Drury Lane, a new comedy was produced, under the auspices of
Lord Glengall, and as yet unclaimed by any one else. It deserved a
favourable reception, and had one. The plot of ' ' the Follies of Fashion"
consisted of the foolish contrivances of a city family to make their way
into the society of the nobles ; and the uneasy and intricate contrivances
by which persons of rank manage to make themselves useless, ridiculous,
and unhappy. Lord Splashton and his pretty lady are both furiously in
lov* with each other ; yet both, by the laws of fashion, are forced to seem
furiously in love with somebody else. There is the " Ami de la Maison,"
who pays his adorations to the lady, and the " charming widow," who
Deceives the attentions of the lord. The pair are finally ruined in

1830.] Theatrical Matters. *%

point of fortune, though the decorum of the stage stops short of the
other equally certain catastrophe. The citizen's affairs are in an equally
fair train. But Cupid interposes. A young lover of the young lady has
taken advantage of the citizen's fondness for title, to introduce himself
as Lord Henry something or other ; and as, luckily, though a cheat, he
is, in all other points, a person of infinite merit, the union of the
parties finishes in neither bankruptcy nor hanging.

Lord Glengall deserves credit for the effort. He has exhibited dex-
terity and wit ; and, though his plot has been too obviously connected
with the " School for Scandal," -yet it displays po slight knowledge of
the stage. Lord Alvanley assisted it by a very neat and pointed epi»
logue.

The pantomimes are announced as capital. Their secret has been
long profoundly treasured within the bosoms of the potent wizards,
Messrs. Farley and Barrymore; but by the time these pages go forth
to the admiration of mankind, the secret will be a mystery no more. >

We should not omit the mention of " Black-eyed Susan," a convey-
ance from the Surrey Theatre to Covent Garden. It is a very national
thing, for which we like it better than fifty French farces. It is a very
affecting thing ; and it is as well played as any thing of its class can
possibly be. The story is an expansion of Gay's famous ballad ; and
after bringing William home to Sue, exposes her to the pursuit of a
drunken Captain, whom William slashes across the head with his cutlass,
and for this act of mutiny is condemned to be hanged. The court-
martial is held on board his ship, and a very clever and close represen-
tation it is. But we must give Egerton credit for his share of the per-
formance. He is the Admiral. The part is merely of a couple of
scenes ; but he played it excellently. His manner exhibited a propriety,
and even a dignity, that greatly struck the audience ; and his affecting
and feeling conduct to the brave tar, the leave-taking, and the good-
natured condescension, drew as many tears as we have often seen con-
tributed to the pathos of the stage. Egerton has powers that ought to
keep him in the attention of our rising dramatists.

Philips, a very favourite singer during many years, and a first-rate
theorist in his art, has taken his leave of the Dublin stage. The Lord-
Lieutenant and a crowded house honoured his benefit ; and we are gra-
tified to believe that this very well-conducted and respectable individual
is beyond the chances that so often depress the last years of the favourites
of the stage.

THE ELEPHANT ; OB, THE PERFECTION OF MODEEN GENIUS !

Lord Alv — nly. Have you seen Miss Jelk ? She is a most magnifi-
cent creature, and in this period of theatrical dulness, quite an acqui-
sition. I never saw a performer more capable of drawing a hause. She
makes quite a crush-room even of the stage.

J — k — //. Yes; she is a performer of extraordinary capacity; per-
haps the greatest on any modern stage. I really think she exceeds M'rs.
Faucit considerably, or even Mrs.

H. Sm — th. She certainly throws them all into shade ; the eclipse is
total.

J..Sm — th. They look nothing in her presence. She is, palpably,
more likely than any heroine of them all to support the stage.

68 The Elephant ; or, [[JAN.

H. Sm — th, (aside to J. <S\) That hit you stole from me, as usual. But
I shall do the same by you, whenever you shall say any thing as well
worth stealing.

Gr — nfiy L — ster; The more important question at present, with her,
as with all performers, is whether the stage will be able to support her.

^D'lsr — eli. Her popularity is perfectly settled ; she, alone, Jills the
^ouse, and is the only performer, except Vestris, that, play what tricks
she will, is only the more popular. I have seen no actress so constantly
turn tip her nose at the audience with such perfect impunity.

Lord Gl — ng — //. She conquers the grand difficulty of the drama with
the ease of habit, and makes all her exits with applause.

Lord C—stl — re — gh. Yes ; her end is always her most powerful exhi-
bition, and she plays every part with the same force, elevation, weight,
•and loftiness.

Lord N — g — nt. 1 can vouch for her. I know her memory to be
stable ; her understanding of the largest dimensions ; and, whatever her
female caprices may be, you may rely on her substantial sense at bottom.
I say bottom carries it after all.

C — lly Gr-r—ttan. That all may be in your lordship's experience of
public life, but what / applaud is, her delicacy. Though as little indebted
to drapery as a woman of fashion, and, like her, obliged to strip when
she appears in public, she contrives to make us forget the startling fact,
and looks as modest as if she had never been in first-rate society.
Though I own there is a tale.

Lord F — s L. G — TV — r. Yes ; but that's a tail not for every one's
mouth, however fit for yours ; like all the great, she may have hangers
on. But I should advise them not to hang on by that tail. Ha ! ha! ha !

M — rq — is of Cl — nr — c — rde. Well said, my Lord : but you have
4seen in Ireland lately, and that accounts for your hits at the hangers on ;
yet, certainly, without meaning any imputation on her general propriety
of conduct, I believe that she was lately seen half seas over; and, per-
haps, a little more.

P— c — ck. Certainly not near Howth, my Lord. Though I allow she
might have been thinking of the Main.

Lady C. B — ry. Hoot awa ! my Laird. The puir cratur was thinking
o* travelling to see the bonny braes ayont the Tweed, and was only prac-
tising a red.

Hon. Mrs. H — rt — n. I own I have been charmed with her. Her
residence in Paris has not left the most trivial charge of lightness on
her. She feels, without sentimentality : she thinks, yet knows the ines-
timable value of holding her tongue. She has a voice that can make
itself resistlessly heard upon occasion; yet she is a capital listener, and
has the true politeness df never making the slightest audible remark
upon the infinite impertinences of the well-bred world."

L — F. L. G — w — r (aside.) (Your panegyric is equal to your beauty,
and both are matchless.) But you have omitted one point — her pathetic
power. She constantly keeps three-fourths of the audience in tiers.

The Hon. Lord St—h — pe. Arid the best of all is, that with all her
talents she is not a blue.

The Hon. Mrs. H — rt— n (aside']. (Bitter wretch.) Yes, no one hears
her, haranguing for ever about Greece ; her school-days do not make her
sole recollections, and she wisely does not care if all the Colocotronis
were hanged on their congenial Hounslow,

1830,] the Perfection of Modern Genius ! 00

The Hon. L. Si — h — pe (aside). (An attempt to provoke me into a
flirtation, but she shall be disappointed.) At least., if she should ever
take up the pen, it will not be to write the history of the " Fair Impeni-
tent." She may have cause to blush for others, but will never be com-
pelled to blush for herself.

The Hon. Mrs. Or — y. Let me be peace-maker, and let us all go and
pay her a visit. I dare say, she will not think of etiquette.

Lord M — nidi — rl — s. I can assure you she is high and mighty
enough. Though the story goes, that she brought but a single trunk over
with her.

Lord H. H — // — nd. Yes ; but what a trunk ! One that, like Lord
Stuart's boots and bridles, would fill fifty boxes any night in the year.

J. L — it — r — /. It is now but five o'clock, and she receives no morning
visitors — a sign that she is a candle-light beauty. But here's H — r — ce
Tw — ss, he has had nothing to do since he went to Whitehall, so he'll
take you to her hotel in the Adelphi.

H — ce Tw—ss. With the most unspeakable delight. But her hotel
is — how shall I pronounce it? — an Inn. " Entertainment for man and
beast." And even there her habits are considered low. She actually
lives in the cellar. (He whispers Lord St—h — pe.)

L — nc—ln St — h—pe. Drinks half the day? — A rack-and-manger
life ? — A dozen fellows constantly about her toilette ? — Impossible ! The
story, ladies, is rather startling, but, Tw — ss, luckily your more than
poetic invention is well known.

The Hon. Mrs. H — rt — n. Mere envy on Mr. Tw — ss's part; or a
family feeling for the new Juliet.

H — r — ce Tw — ss. Rivalry is out of the question. Whatever the stage
may be, your great performer is at this moment below every female that
walks the boards.

Lady H — // — nd. That fact is told in such an official tone that, par-
don me, it must be untrue.

Ch — rl — s Sh — r — dan. Your ladyship is perfectly right. The fact is
that she has much more of the Methodist preacher. I have seen her on
her knees in public ; and always with a desk before her, with a book of
notes on it, and a large band under her chin.

H — r — ce Tw — ss. Then, will your ladyship permit me to state a
fact, perhaps more to your liking. She's at this moment in the straw!

( The ladies are all astonishment. They surround H — r — ce Tw — ss, to
learn particulars.)

A loud voice is heard outside. Excellent ! He pretend to manage the
state. Pho ! Let him send for me. I have managed three kingdoms
at a time ; headed seven rebellions ; restored three dynasties ; commanded
the combined fleets of Europe from my closet, for the boobies of Admi-
rals were all planet-struck ; and actually ruled one wife ! The world
is all one great compound of folly; and I am the only man, from the
Equator to the Poles, who has as much common sense as you could
squeeze between your finger and your thumb. Make me first lord of
the Admiralty, Commander in Chief, and Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and you'll see how the nation will go on. (The steps approach.
The Company simultaneously exclaim, " D — // — n! D — // — n! D — // — n!"
A general flight takes place, and the room is instantly cleared.)

[ 70 ] [JAK.

THE 1'HOSECUTION OF THE P11ES3.

WITHIN the last week the vigour of the Attorney- General has been

speech, and all the other st6ck-topics of the Holland and Grey school.
The " Liberty of the press, it is like the air we breathe, without it we
die," has, we dare say, been drunk by the Chancellor and the Attorney-
General, half a hundred times at the Synoposia of Whiggery ; and we
also dare say those friends of liberty would have lavished their loftiest
indignation upon the degenerate soul, who in those brilliant days could
have dreamed of any less lofty homage to the freedom of tongue and pen.

But to this we merely advert ; for no language of ours shall irritate
two such mighty individuals; and, as we shall not be inclined to adopt
the modern fashion of swallowing our words, we shall save ourselves
from the temptation, by the due homage to the powerful minds ana
pure morality of all functionaries whatever. It is our opinion, and we
are happy to find it sanctioned by the leading personages of this free
and fortunate country, that pubh'c discussion is of all things the most
exclusive, and should never be degraded into the profane handling of
any man or men under five thousand pounds a-year, or the representa-
tion of a Borough.

There are, undoubtedly, a multitude of topics on which public writers
might be useful, and to which they should confine themselves. Births,
deaths, and marriages, must interest a large portion of the community,
and by a little more ingenuity of expansion and dexterity of remark,
might be made to assist the public morals in a large degree ; and being
composed of facts, a rare distinction, might considerably supersede the
unprofitable labours of the parson on Sunday, and of the methodist
preacher on every other day of the week. The rising or setting of the
moon, the times of high tide at London Bridge, and the calculations of
the shortest and the longest day, are among the most essential kinds of
knowledge to three- fourths of the community. On these the news-
papers have been hitherto lamentably barren. The field is open, is as
wide as it is open, and the activity of the English mind would, in all
probability, make a very showy affair of it in time. Those subjects
have been culpably overlooked ; but if, as the philosopher said, " the
man who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before,
is a benefactor to society," what must be the services of the writer who
makes three paragraphs spring up to cover the nakedness of the soil,
that of old gave birth only to one ?

But we have not yet exhausted the prospects of this proud and pal-
pable amelioration. Every editor of periodical publications, complains,
not of the dearth, but the superabundance of his poetic contributions.
On an average there must be from fifty to sixty thousand Rosinas,
Stellas, Lysymachuses, and Lysanders, undergoing the monthly morti-
fication of seeing their sonnets returned on their hands ; the very wings
of their immortality clipped at once ; the elixir of perpetual youth
dashed from their lips, and glory at all entrances quite shut out. The
newspapers, by a suitable distribution of their columns, might check
this whole tide of thwarted ambition : two or three of their pages would
give the happiest development of the fond feelings and fine sorrows of
the rising world of poetry ; and after the lapse of the next fifty years,

1.830.] The Prosecution of the Press. 71

the generation of lyrists would cease to plunder Petrarch — make love
by the twopenny post, and live.

The news of fashion might rapidly form a most extensive, as it already
does a most interesting, portion of our daily knowledge. Every human
being must be the wiser and the better .for the assurance of the fact that
the Duke of Bedford has had the gout, but has, luckily, recovered ; or that
the Duke of Northumberland has been taken with the spleen in Ireland,
and is likely to retain his disorder until he can shift his position : that
Lady A. is gone to Bath, and Lady B. to Bristol : that Lord X. has
said his last good thing, and that Lord Y. has never said his first. The
value of the system, once tried, will be universally acknowledged ; and
the saving, soothing, and salutary nature of the change, will give a new
and justified consciousness of our superiority to those ancestors who
plagued their heads, and sometimes lost them too, in their search after a
constitution.

Having laid down the system, who can be so blind as to doubt the
practice ? The English are, proverbially, a gloomy people. The pro-
vision of amusement will be thus a patriotic labour. The ministers of
England have considerable trouble in answering popular complaints,
and suppressing popular grumblings. This trouble will be utterly at an
end ; the mighty minds of those pre-eminent individuals will be left at
leisure to pursue their own illustrious conceptions for the safety of the
state. Where there is no complaint there may be presumed to be no
suffering; or, as half the evils of the world are embittered by im-
patience, the perfect silence of the public on public measures, taxes,
sinecures, new palaces, and new places, will be next to perfect acquies-
cence, and perfect acquiescence, to not feeling them at all. For the At-
torney General we do not feel ourselves competent to draw up a system ;
but we strenuously advise him to urge the principle of punishing to the
uttermost all tendency to bring His Majesty's ministers into contempt.
The advantages of the principle are matchless ; for there is not an act
of the individual, or the public, that it cannot be made to grasp. It
crushes the past and present delinquency of thinking one's self entitled to
inquire into what has been done in the high quarters of Whitehall : it
smites all resistance for the future. With the present ministry, of
course, we can never conceive any kind of evil to originate. They
are all honourable, and some of them right honourable men ; and all
right trusty and beloved councillors, and so forth. But as their immor-
tality of fame does not extend to their corporal existence, they may be
succeeded by individuals whose conduct is not quite so sure of universal
homage. If a tyrannous and odious ministry should, in the lapse of
time, arise in England, the " tendency to bring into contempt" would be
of prodigious value to the new possessors of the Treasury Bench. We
have had administrations in England, already, who found the matchless
value of the principle ; and, if Sir James Scarlet's memory will reach
back to the time of Charles II. and James, he will possibly recollect the
names of Arlington, Lauderdale, Clifford, and their fellows ; a tyran-
nous, apostate, and traitorous ministry, then insulted the land, and be-
trayed the king. The people, long patient, at length remonstrated.
Coercion followed, the law was busy, the dungeon was crowded, the
scaffold was red ; every man who loved his country was marked out for
a victim ; Russell and Sidney were dragged to an ignominious slaughter.
We all know the results to the ministry and their tools, to the unfortu-
nate king, and to the insulted people.

72 The Prosecution of the Press. [JAN.

Of the spirit which has urged the present prosecutions, we must be
cautious how we speak. But of the spirit which has excited the supposed
offences against government,, we must speak plainly. There exists,
throughout the whole of Great Britain, a feeling that we vow, in the
presence of Heaven, we would not have acting against us, for all the emo-
luments and honours that office ever conferred on man. The people of
England have a sense of religion, of public honour, and of the value of a
free constitution. How has this sense been conciliated ? They declared,
in the most public manner, by thousands and millions, their abhorrence
of the violation of the Protestant Constitution. How were those appeals
answered ? They relied upon the firm fidelity of men, pledged to their
cause by declarations through a series of years, and bound to adhere to
it by every consideration that can be supposed to consist in public rank
and personal honour. How was this reliance answered ? They abhorred,
on principle, a military government. They see the places, which by the
regular practice of the country were always given to civilians, put into
the hands of military men, and three soldiers in the cabinet. They see
in the hands of one man a power, to which they can find no counter-
balance, and which they, therefore, conceive ought not to be placed in the
hands of any individual. If men are to be prosecuted for thinking thus,
the indictment must be large enough to contain the whole manly,
rational, and religious population of the British Empire.

As to the trials which have already occurred, we shall only remark,
that while we regret the rashness of some of the persons concerned,
and fully allow that direct charges of peculation and matters of that
nature, unless they can be substantiated, only injure the public cause,
the punishment of those persons generally leaves the matter where it
was found ; and men of high public rank should scorn to appeal to such
vindication as they can find in the harangue of an Attorney- General.

But what was the conduct of those trials ? All the first names of the
Bar were engaged for the Crown. Were those necessary ? Not a soul
opened his lips but the Attorney-General. The accused was scoffed at
for attempting his own defence. But where was he to find an advocate ?

And when was there ever seen such an array of Law Authorities,
State Authorities, Authorities of all kinds, in a Court ? Judges, Privy
Councillors, Ministers, &c. &c. flooding the court, to state what? — their
opinion ! And what effect must displays of this kind naturally have
on the minds of the men who, in the great majority of instances, make
up the jury ?

Of this no more ; if there be strong public indignation, let ministers
ask to what is it owing ? Is it to party ? There is no party. The word
is actually disgusting. Is it to the feuds of Toryism against Whiggism ?
There is now neither the one nor the other. Mr. Peel was the leader of
Toryism, and the name is enough. Is it to the activity of Opposition?
There is now no Opposition, and the nation think no more of the exist-
ence of Lord Grey than they do of the existence of Jack the Painter.
Yet an indignant feeling exists, — it transpires in a thousand ways, — it is
to be seen, felt, and heard in. all directions. The newspapers are
merely the foramina — the volcanic mouths that give a hasty and inter-
mitted sign of the conflagration spreading below. Let the ministry
stop in their career, and ask themselves whether this indignation is to be
appeased by violence, — whether the flame is to be put out by trampling
on it, — whether the pursuit is to be checked, like the pursuit of the
Colchian King, by scattering human limbs in the way ?

1830.] [ 73 ]

NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL.

MB. ALDERMAN THOMPSON, who, we lament to say, is not yet a
baronet, notwithstanding his sudden illumination on the subject of the
Catholic question, is among the loudest advocates for the removal of
Smithfield market westward. The Alderman ought to have some fel-
low-feeling for the beeves : what a figure would he cut if he were
removed westward !

This is a famous time for the lawyers. The old saying, that when
rogues fall out, honest men come by their own, may be reversed very
handsomely now, on condition that we call the " Illustrissimi" of the
Horse-guards " honest," which we do in the most nervous and punctili-
ous sincerity. But the lawyers have the whole profit on both sides.
Four actions in one week. " Egad," as Congreve says, " rooks and
lawyers fatten in the frost; for they pick up, where others would
starve."

We have no earthly idea of laughing at such things : nay, we never
laugh at dungeon bars or fixed bayonets. But there are some
things at which we may still laugh. The Duke of Brunswick
has brought an action against the " Foreign Review" for a libel. We
only hope that he will not trust the tongues of those slippery ora-
tors the lawyers, but come and state the case himself. He has heroism
enough for any thing; and he might have the double advantage of
settling his affair of honour with Count Munster, and giving His
Majesty an airing on Houn slow-heath, at the same time.

The article in question is attributed to a celebrated diplomatist with
the expressive name of Smith Fiddlestick. Some of the papers affect
to make light of the matter, and close their verdict with the easy word,
Fudge. But time may teach them that the forehead of Jupiter Tonans
was tenderness itself to the thunder curls of Lord Teriterden's wig. We
recommend the Editor to solicit the honour of being shot in Hyde Park
by the Duke, in preference ; and he has only to commission Mr. Tatter-
sail for the purpose.

We are no canters ; and we have never heard a sermon of Boatswain
Smith. .Half a sermon of Orator Irving was enough for us in our most
patient days ; and we have bound a solemn determination upon our breasts,
never, knowingly, to read a syllable written by Charles Grant, Parson
Philpot, or High-priest Wilberforce.

And yet the number of horrid acts that are perpetrated daily, among
even the better orders, make us think that something is required stronger
than the march of intellect, to keep men and women from cutting their
neighbours' throats and their own. Every paper teems with suicides,
and those, not like the regular mortality at Paris, of poor devils, who
coming to their last coin, and depositing that last coin in the purse of one
of those commodious avenues to the empire of the devil in the Palais
Royal, walk out and make the Seine their bed for want of a better.
But our self-murderers, in nine instances out of ten, are people of some
condition, with families, occupations, and a place in society. One of
those is the catastrophe which startled the town of Hull a short time
ago. A merchant, finding some speculation going wrong with him, and
disdaining either honest retrenchment or manly industry, adopted the

M. M. New tone*.— VOL. IX, No. 49. L

74 Notes of the Month on [JAN.

simpler expedient of murdering every body about him. This monster's
name was Hentig, and we hope that he was a German. No member of
the Tugendbund, no professor of mysticism and a community of wives,
no Rationalist of theology, could have done the thing in a more philoso-
phical and Teutonic style. He shot his wife dead — he then called up his
cook-maid, and would have shot her if a brace of bullets could do it.
He then set fire to his house for the benefit of giving his neighbours a
fellow-feeling of his inconveniences; and finally shot himself. But even
here he had not reached his full ambition.

It appears by the statement of the cook, that six days previous to his
death, Hentig caused two cakes to be made for his sons, and that,
contrary to his usual habits, he had asssisted in making them ; other
circumstances connected with this affair, induce the belief that the un-
fortunate man put arsenic into the dough. He was particularly anxious
that the cakes should go safely, and went with them on board a vessel
about to sail for Hamburgh. In all probability, the cakes have arrived,
and it is more than possible that the children will share their present
with the other boys of the school ; so that the most fatal result is dreaded.
As soon as the discovery was made, means were taken to advise the
schoolmaster of the circumstance ; but, as the vessel had sailed ten days,
there is but little chance of the messenger arriving in time. It
appears that Hentig had been unfortunate in his speculations. He
had married the unhappy companion of his fate against his father's
express commands. His father, however, subsequently advanced him
7,000/., which he lost in business. The senior Mr. Hentig had refused
him any farther assistance, and had not for a long time been on kind
terms with him. Very recently, however, a reconciliation took place ;
but it is found that the son's affairs are in a very embarrassed state, and
it is supposed that he dreaded exposure so much as to produce that fatal
change in his mind which led to the distressing event of his own and
his wife's death.

This is the statement, painted in the softest colours. The true colours
would paint a furious, moody wretch, outrageous at the coming privation
of indulgences forbidden to millions round him, and in the spirit of a
swindler, evading his debts, and in the spirit of a fiend, gratifying his
hatred of society, and his scorn of Heaven, by plunging all round him
into an unprepared grave.

To cloak this hideous transaction under the name of lunacy, is absurd
and even criminal. It is a denial of the truth to say that this man was
more mad than any other murderer is mad, in his defiance of law and
religion.

Some of the divines on the spot might well occupy their leisure in
examining the habits and studies that led to this act of horror. We are
much mistaken if they will find Hentig the sole wanderer in the way to
his catastrophe. We are equally mistaken if the search would not disco-
ver that tens of thousands who are reading the very same atrocious and un-
principled publications, are enveloped in the very same practical contempt
of Christianity, and are fevered by the same gross personal indulgences,
which prepared Hentig for bathing his hands in slaughter. Cir-
cumstances will, of course, in the great majority of instances, check
the practical progress of the great majority, be they as infidel as
they may. But the preparation is there ; and the investigator cannot be
too expeditious or too sincere.

1830.] Affairs in General 75

Since Sir William Curtis's departure, Alderman Venables has assumed
the heirship of all the " particularly nice, slick right through, tarnation
fine things" (we quote Mathews) of cockneyism. (( Why," said Sir
William, " is a pocket-handkerchief like a serpent ? — Because it is a
wiper."

Nothing so good will ever be said again ; but his successor makes
some fine attempts. Venables on a pedestrian tour through the roman-
tic district of Brixton, towards Norwood, remarked to his chaplain,
"when panting up Brixton Rise, that " every ill should be taxed."
" Taxed," gently inquired the chaplain, " taxed, Sir, for what reason ?"
" Because they are winders," panted forth the Ex-Lord. The Jldus
Achates laughed, and immediately wrote it in his journal.

We see that the chaplain's unrivalled history of the City Voyage up
the River is not forgotten. If being unique be an honour — it must
immortalize him.

Brougham now and then relapses into a Bar recollection. The follow-
ing is his best, and as such, his most frequent story. It is a happy
instance of the elucidation of facts in court.

During the assizes, in a case of assault and battery, where a stone
had been thrown by the defendant, the following clear and conclusive
evidence was drawn out of a Yorkshireman : —

Did you see the defendant throw the stone ? — I saw a stone, and I'ze
pretty sure the defendant throwed it.

Was it a large stone ? — I should say it wur a largeish stone.

What was its size ? — I should say a sizeable stone.

Can't you answer definitely how big it was ? — I should say it wur a
a stone of some bigness.

Can't you give the jury some idea of the stone ? — Why, as near as I
recollect, it wur something of a stone.

Can't you compare it to some other object? — Why, if I wur to com-
pare it, so as to give some notion of the stone, I should say it wur as
large as a lump of chalk.

No one can doubt our attachment to the Established Church. We
have no hesitation in speaking of it, as not merely the most fitted for the
religious government of a great empire by its principles ; but we can find
in history no instance of any national church so generally tolerant, so
gentle to individual opinion, or so little encumbered with vexatious doc-
trines and foolish ceremonies ; none at once so decorous in its worship, and
so mild in its discipline. Yet we are only exhibiting our high respect
and anxiety for its public honour, when we advert to the correction of
those abuses which time introduces into all things; which it introduces
most fatally into the best ; and which, unless reformed by the friends of
the Church, will be turned into the instruments of its enemies.

The increase of sectarianism is notorious. The dissenters from the
National Church amount to millions, and they continue seceding year
by year. We do not object to the widest work of conscience ; and if men
will think that they have formed a fair ground for the nonsense of sup-
posing that education is not the safest means of knowledge, that dis-
tinctions of ranks are not the most obvious means of subordination, or
that the lay tradesman is the best guide of the clerical student, we have
nothing to offer which can shake the determinations of such minds. The

L2

76 Note* of the Month on [JAN,

age of miracles is past. We cannot expect to give sight to the blind,, nor
to reach by reason understandings constructed on a scale so singularly
beyond our comprehension.

But we believe that the people of England are naturally attached to
the Church of England ; and that in thousands of instances, secession is
merely the result of some local inconvenience. We are equally per-
suaded that the recovery of those seceders would be in a vast majority of
cases effected with perfect ease by a little diligence on the part of the
establishment itself. Laws will not do it : the influence of both the
executive and the legislative will fail ; but the renewed activity, decency,
and zeal of the Church itself will be successful, and be the only thing
that will. On this subject we submit a curious document : the attempt
of a military man to reform a singular piece of negligence in the present
Church service :—

(Copy of a Petition presented to the House of Lords on the 4th of June last.

A similar Petition was presented to the House of Commons on the 1st of

June last, and was ordered to be printed)

" To the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled :

" The humble Petition of Lieutenant-General William Thornton, of Grosvenor
Gate, Park Lane, in the County of Middlesex,

" Sheweth— That your Petitioner humbly prays your Lordships to take into
consideration the danger arising to the Established Church, from the forbear-
ance of enforcing the performance of both Morning and Evening Service on
Sundays, in every Parish Church and Parochial Chapel, and the Chapel of
every Extra-parochial Place, throughout England and Ireland, whereby it is
rendered impossible for many persons to obey the laws, or the dictates of
their own conscience, by resorting to their Parish Church or Chapel accus-
tomed upon every Sunday, without leaving their habitations unoccupied, and
thereby exposing their property to loss by robbers ; the alternative obliging
those persons who are by such omission deprived of the opportunity of attend-
ing the Established Service, and who think it a duty incumbent on them to go
to some place of public worship, to resort to Dissenting Meeting Houses, to
Roman Catholic Chapels, or to Congregations denying the Doctrine of the
Blessed Trinity; the only course, as it appears to your Petitioner, by which
they can legally exonerate themselves from the penalties to which they are
liable for not resorting to their Parish Church or Chapel.

" Your Petitioner had the honour of a seat in Parliament when the Act of
the 57th year of King George the Third, commonly called " The Clergy
Residence Act," was passing ; and as it appeared to your Petitioner that the
forbearance of the Bishops to enforce the power given to them by the said
Act would be no excuse to the Clergy for such a neglect of duty as the non-
performance of either the Morning or Evening Service on Sundays, your Peti-
tioner strenuously urged, but without success, that the Clergy should be liable
to some pecuniary penalty or forfeiture for any such omission, which should
go and be paid to the person or persons who should inform and sue for the
same. It was asserted, that it might be safely intrusted to the Bishops to
enforce the two services, but nearly twelve years of trial, since the Act was
passed, have but too truly proved the correctness of your Petitioner's senti-
ments.

" In conclusion, your Petitioner humbJy prays your Lordships to adopt
such measures as shall, in future, make imperative the performance of both
Morning and Evening Service on Sundays, in every Parish Church and Paro-
chial Chapel, and the Chapel of any Extra-parochial Place throughout
England and Ireland, for the benefit and security of the members of the
Established Church. " WILLIAM THORNTON/'

1830.J Affairs in General. 77

To this proposition we can conceive no valid answer. It is certain,
that the absence of a whole family from home at once, exposes their
goods to plunder. The only resource then, is the double service. But
we shall go further than the petitioner, and say, that the service should
be strictly a full service ; that instead of the mere evening service, the
morning service should be repeated, so that no distinction should be
made in length or importance to those who might be compelled to;
remain at home in the early part of the day.

For the length of the morning service we are no advocates ; and there,
too, we should demand a reform. All the world knows that the present
liturgy consists of three former ones, and knows equally, that with
the addition of a sermon, often the dullest of all possible compositions>
the mind of the worshipper becomes utterly weary. Why shall the fear
of change impede the common sense, that tells us the liturgy abounds in
repetitions, and that one of half the length would be of twice the efficacy ?
Two hours and a half, the shortest time in which the morning service is
performed, is too long for attention, and often too long for health. A
judicious limitation to its actual objects would bring back many a
deserter who had been won away by the simpler and more succinct form
of the dissenting chapel.

We can have no objection to the late increase in the number of
churches. But we are perfectly convinced that in a large variety of
instances they were totally unnecessary. If we look into any of the large
churches of London or of the country, in the afternoon or evening, we find
almost a solitude. The fifty London churches do not average fifty persons
a piece. The country churches, except in the instance of some peculiarly
popular preacher, or some singularly zealous clergyman, have seldom in
the evening any beyond a few paupers and a charity school. In point of
exterior, too, the new churches are generally among the very worst speci-
mens of the arts. As to patronage, they are generally turned into snug
sinecures for the sons, or nephews, or daughters' husbands, or nieces' hus-
bands, or some still lower dependant, of the rector. Of course a good deal
of canvassing is employed to have them built wherever the rector is plagued
with those dependants ; and the parishes, already overwhelmed with
poor-rates and taxes, are burthened to make a provision for the hangers-
on. This, we could pledge ourselves, has been the secret history of the
transaction in a crowd of instances ; and all this waste, jobbery, and
sinecurism, might have been avoided by the obvious method of inducing
the morning congregation to divide itself, and find the evening service as
accurately and attentively performed as the morning. Thus the over-
flow which excites the complaint of want of room, and which has been
so zealously laid hold of by those whose patronage it extended, would
have never existed. The beggars and brats would not be the sole tenants
of a church capable of holding thousands ; and though we might have no
new monsters of brick and plaster flaring and staring at us in every
corner, we should have had the old churches attended as they ought, and
the hangers-on serving their country in the fitter employments of the
navy, the army, and the plough.

Don Miguel has managed his matters in the true style of. a man born,
if not to a throne, for a throne. We propose him as a model for all
aspirants. He only swore allegiance several times, promised King
George, puzzled his ministers, raised an army against the constitution to
which he had sworn, knocked one part of its defenders on the head,

78 Notes of the Month on [JAN.

threw the other into dungeons, handsomely brought round the convictions
of the rest in the usual way of working on political convictions; when he
stepped up to the throne, where he now sits, by the grace of Rome, the
will of a loving people, the voice of an approving law, the will of a
pious hierarchy, and the consent of admiring Europe, king of Portugal.
So much for striking while the iron is hot. So much for taking the
tide at the full. So much for scorning the folly of being bound by the
obsolete nonsense of obligations to sovereigns, constitutions, or the public
opinion of honourable mankind. The example is too good to be thrown
away. Let it be adopted boldly, broadly, and promptly, and we pledge
ourselves for its success in three cases out of four. North America
would make a fine kingdom, or two or three. South America is nearly
in this condition already ; and we take it for granted that Bolivar would
not surrender his hold of the privy purse, his right of hanging, drawing
and quartering, and his patronage of collectorships, quarter-master
generalships, and expedition money, for the name of half the legiti-
mates of Europe. The following effusion, said to have been found in the
album of President Jackson, will explain : —

AMBITION.

Tune — " I'd be a Butterfly."

I'd be no president, up for five years,

With tailors and jailors, hail fellow, well met ;
With tinkers for masters, and negroes for peers,

Sickened with canvassing, prosing, and debt :—
I'd put the states and their laws in my fob ;

I'd send the rum-tippling patriots to jail;
I'd teach the robbers the new way to rob ;

I'd be the head, let who will be the tail.

I'd be a field-marshal, all epaulette,

Drilling the patriots with whip and with cane ;
I'd make all fish that came into my net ;

I'd drain their purses, if bayonets could drain ;
I'd stop their speeches, or shorten their tongues ;

I'd teach them reason, or teach them to swing ;
I'd give them soldiership, till all their lungs

Roared for Old Cottonbags, Long live our King !

Down with your snuff-box and pipe, Metternich !

Turkey must go ; seize a province or two ;
Call yourself Viceroy — then King ; but be quick —

All must in turn give the devil his due.
Wellington, must you be always a duke ?

Nothing laid by for your lubberly boys ?
Plucked of your feathers, the falcon turned rook,

Come, and I'll make you Cacique Illinois.

Visions of brandy, for mortals too bright !

Still are ye visions : must Yankee-land still
Talk nonsense of privilege, freedom, and right?

Must Cottonbags but for five years have his will ?
Shades of my forefathers ! felons of old !

Hear, by your handcuffs and chains, when I swear,
Sure as a jail was made felons to hold,

Cottonbags yet shall be diademed here.

A dreadful account of a death by hydrophobia in the north of Ireland,
lately appeared in a Belfast paper, which we wish were posted up in

1830.] Affairs in General. 79

every magistrate's, beadle's, and cottager's room, from the Land's End to
the Orkneys. The disease exhibited itself at so long an interval as three
months from the bite, and the sufferer's agony was almost too terrible for
description. Yet our streets, shops, and highways, are swarming with
mongrels, useless for all possible purposes, but a snap from one of which
might inflict the most hideous of deaths.

We, however, now advert to this melancholy subject, chiefly to men-
tion, that a specific for it is confidently said to be known in Mexico.
We give the statement from Lieutenant Hardy's (R. N.) travels just
published. In the district of Sonora, a wild part of Mexico, infested
with savage animals, hydrophobia is common; the lions, tigers, and
wolves, &c. as well as the dogs, being frequently attacked with it. Lieu-
tenant Hardy was at the house of a Spanish gentleman, whom he men-
tions as a man of singular intelligence and integrity, and who assured
him, that he had on three occasions witnessed the cure, when the dis-
ease was at its height. On one of those occasions the patient was in the
most horrid paroxysms, when an old woman effected his cure. She
mixed a powder in a glass of water, and in the interval of a paroxysm
forced the draught down his throat. She predicted that he would sink
into a torpor for twenty-four or forty-eight hours, according to the state
of his constitution. The patient on this occasion slept for twenty-six
hours ; on his awaking threw a quantity of black fluid from his stomach,
and recovered. Lieutenant Hardy conceives the root to be a kind of
hellebore j its Spanish name is sevadilla ; its botanical name, he thinks,
veratrum sebadilla. Another herb, amole, has been found equally effec-
tive. The receipt given by Don Victores Aguilar, the Spaniard in ques-
tion, is the following : —

" Method of curing Hydrophobia. — The person under the influence of
this disease must be well secured, that he may do no mischief to himself
or others.

' ' Soak a rennet in a little more than half a tumbler of water, for about
five minutes. When this has been done, add of pulverized sevadilla as
much as may be taken up by the thumb and three fingers ; mix it tho-
roughly, and give it to the patient ; that is, force it down his throat in
an interval between the paroxysms. The patient is then to be placed in
the sun, if possible, or near a fire, and well warmed. If the first dose
tranquillize him after a short interval, no more is to be given. But if he
continue furious, another dose must be given, which will infallibly quiet
the paroxysms. A profound sleep will succeed, which will last twenty-
four or forty-eight hours, according to the strength of the patient's con-
stitution ; at the expiration of which, he will be attacked with severe
purging and vomiting, which will continue till the poison be entirely
ejected. He will then be restored to his senses, ask for food, and be per-
fectly cured."

All this is very striking, and the friends of science and humanity
will be glad to hear that specimens of the root have been brought over
from Mexico, by a son of Mr. Ackermann of the Strand, and sent to dif-
ferent scientific persons. We know that there have been a hundred pre-
tended cures for the hydrophobia ; but this medicine comes with singular
testimonials. And when we recollect the powers of the Jesuits' bark, we
have no right to be sceptical, at least till full trial has been made of the
sevadilla. The whole narrative in Lieutenant Hardy's book is very
clear, candid, and interesting. We hope that our colleges of medicine
and surgery will inquire into the subject without delay.

[ 80 ] [JAN.

THE CONTRAST : A SKETCH FROM LIFE.

To the vale of the Elle, from the revels of town,
Sick, faint, and desponding, a stranger came down ;
He came for its quiet, the health of its hills,
The stir of its gales, and the songs of its rills,
And felt that the past and its follies would fleet,
Like dreams, from his mind in this happy retreat.
He came — and his thoughts, like the blossoms of May,
Shot cheeringly forth in their sunny array,
The past flung its shadows around him no more,
For he stood like young Hope on Futurity's shore,
Glancing wide o'er its ocean, deceitful and dim,
For the isles that were sunny and sacred to him.
He dwelt in a cottage where Peace might repose,
And the pale cheek of Pity regain its lost rose ; .
A stream murmured by it, a hedge grew beside,
And the arms of the woodbine clung round it in pride,
And near it, in beauty transcendant to tell,
Dwelt a maiden, the pride of the vale of the Elle :
Her voice it was mild as the plaint of the dove,
But the stranger ne'er heard its sweet language of love ;
Her eye it was bright as the summer sun's rim,
But gently and fondly it glanced not on him :
Like a leaf on the bough, like a weed on the shore,
He was idly beheld and remembered no more.
The stranger departed, unwept for, alone ;
But, though sunk once again in the revels of town,
His mind, like the honey-fraught bee to its cell,
In slumber returned to the vale of the Elle.
How oft, 'mid the gloom and the silence of night,
His stream-circled cottage rose high on his sight !
How oft the dear vale, and its fields and its flowers,
Illumined his dreams, and cheered up the lone hours !
There still .in pale beauty beside him appeared
That form to remembrance so fondly endeared ;
She sate by his pillow, all silent, alone,
And looked as she looked in the days that were gone :
Her blue eye shone bright, and a faint maiden blush
Enamelled her cheek with its delicate flush ;
Her form in the magic of nature was drest,
And her ringlets hung light on her beautiful breast :
He strove to embrace her — he strove but to tell
How long he had loved, how sincerely, how well ;
But swifter, alas ! than the mountain-born stream
She fled, and the stranger awoke from his dream.

Year rolled upon year, he was desolate still,
And fainter and fainter, heath, cottage, and hill
Swept over his mind — e'en remembrance decayed,
Or stirred but at thought of the Elle's fairy maid;
When, sudden, amid the gay world, once again
He beheld her — the lovely, the worshipped in vain ;
How gracefully bending, she beamed on his view,
Like a lily weighed down with the summer' s-eve dew ;
Her charms from the maid to the matron were grown,
But, though many were round her, her heart was alone,
For the cold world of fashion had rung the sad knell

Of the hopes she had nursed in the vale of the Elle.

Oh Nature, one joy that springs warm from the heart

Is worth all the hollow enchantments of art ! '

1830.] [ 81 ]

MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN.

Memoir of Thomas Jefferson, 2 vols.,
8vo. ; 1830. — Next to Franklin, Washing-
ton, and Adams, though the first was near
forty years older, and the others ten or
twelve — next to those foremost men of the
American revolution, stands the respectable
name of Jefferson, inferior to none of the
leading agents of that stirring event, in ac-
tivity, and superior, perhaps, to all of them
in the prosecution of the general rights^ of
freedom — a man, moreover, from profes-
tional and favourite pursuits, better ac-
quainted with the changes, legal and politi-
cal, demanded by the fresh condition of
things ; and, from his free and philosophi-
cal turn, better enabled to shake off old pre-
judices, and make way for new experiments,
with a full reliance on the soundness of his
views, and with resolution enough to go
thorough-stitch with the undertaking. To
Jefferson belongs the honour of drawing up
,^e Declaration of Independence; but that
others might have done, perhaps, as effec-
tively— his best titles to the gratitude of
America are, probably, the breaking up of
the system of entails, and the repealing of
church establishments.

Descended from an old colonist family
in Virginia, and born in the year 1744, he
went through the usual course of education
at William and Mary College, and in
1767 was called to the bar of the General
Court, where he continued to practise till
judicial business was wholly suspended by
the outbreak of the revolution. So early as
1769, he was returned for his native county
a member of the Virginian legislature, in
which he became quickly conspicuous for
energy and promptitude; and dissatisfied with
the general apathy of the older members,
he, in concurrence with some half-a-dozen
others, Henry, the two Lees, and others,
clubbed their efforts together for the pur-
pose of rousing up a more effective opposi-
tion to the claims of the British government
— especially after the declaration of right
on the part of the House of Commons to
tax the Colonies as they pleased. The
chief aim of their first exertions was union
among the colonies, and the establishment
of a correspondence for the discussion of
grievances.

When the Boston Port-Bill passed, the
Virginian legislature, prompted by Jefferson
and his associates, were forward in express-
ing their own sympathy, and in promoting
a general expression of the colonies against
the intolerable oppression. They, too, were
the parties who got up a fast, in all its so-
lemnities, on the day on which the Boston
Port-Bill was to be carried into execution —
the effects of which were astounding and
decisive through the country. The next
measure of this active body was the assem-
bling of a General Congress; and to this
Congress was Jefferson, with Washington,

M. M. New Series — VoL.IX. No. 49.

and others, deputed from Virginia. In that
assembly of patriots, mixed up, however^
of many irresolute and, perhaps, of some
treacherous persons, Jefferson's ardour and
industry gave him considerable influence —
the best proof of which is, that to him was
consigned the task of preparing the celebrated
Declaration of Independence, and such as
finally passed with but few alterations, which
rather softened the tone than essentially
changed the sense. In the latter part of the
same year, when again a member of the
Virginian legislature, the revision of the
whole body of the laws was voted by that
assembly, and the commission placed in the
hands of Jefferson and four others, two of
whom eventually declined acting from a feel-
ing of in competency, arising out of a want of
legal education. To the share of Jefferson fell
the common law and the statutes to 4 James
I., the year, that is, in which the govern-
ment of Virginia was incorporated. This,
of course, comprised the law of descents,
and the criminal law, in both of which
Jefferson ventured upon important changes,
in principle. The bills brought in in con-
sequence of this commission, with one or
two exceptions, were not, however, passed
till after the general peace. During the
war, he was elected Governor of Virginia,
but on the expiration of his government
became again a member of Congress. He
was appointed one of the managers for con-
cluding the general peace, but did not act,
owing to some domestic circumstance ; but
in 1785, he was named Ambassador to
France, and at Paris he resided till he so-
licited his recal, and on his return to
America, in 1790, was appointed Secretary
of State.

At this point terminates the memoir, and
to this point also is brought up the portion
of the correspondence now published, con-
sisting of his public and private letters, but
his private ones are in fact public, for he was
absorbed in the interests of his country, and
was not a man to prattle about common
occurrences. The leading point of interest
in his memoirs are the history of the first
steps of the revolution, and the debates inCon-
gress on the Declaration of Independence.
The next are his details relative to the
assembling of the States General in France,
and the commencement of the revolution,
which occurred during his embassy. His
prominent situation, of course, brought him
in contact with all the eminent men of the
day, on the liberal side of politics, especially
through Fayette, the idol-Frenchman of the
Americans. His account is valuable, a$
coining from an eye-witness and associate
of the principal actors — yet new facts are
very scarce. We do not remember to have
seen it stated any where, that Louis drank
so deeply — Jefferson represents him as in a
state of constant stupefaction, or excitement,

Monthly Review of' Literature,

[JAN.

from drinking. To the pertinacity of the
Queen, and her clique, he attributes the
revolution, or at least the violence of it —
Louis himself would readily have yielded to
the' demand of the Assembly, and been
content with the power they at first were
inclined to leave him ; but all or nothing
was the resolution of the Queen's party. A
considerable portion of the correspondence
is occupied with details relative to the nego-
tiation of treaties of commerce — a matter
now of little interest, except to shew how
readily these rude and unlicked statesmen
fell into the common tracks and trammels
of the most cultivated diplomacy, and
proved as wise in their generation as the
most legitimate.

While Ambassador at Paris, on some
occasion he came over to England, and was
presented to the king, with whose reception
of him he was not very well pleased. The
old king could not very readily controul
his resentments against a rebel, notwith-
standing his well-repeated declaration — and
it would not have been easy for any king
to please Jefferson.

Landscape Annual ; 1830 — For the or-
namental, this Annual is the incomparabilis
of the year — the whole is in good, sober,
substantial taste ; the drawing, and the en-
graving, the binding in design, material
and workmanship, and the literary manu-
facture, sufficiently respectable. The beau-
tiful volume embraces a kind of tour through
Switzerland and Italy, commencing with
Geneva, and terminating at Rome ; and
the plates consist of all the more remark-
able spots, to which the traveller's attention
is usually given, from the one point to the
other — in Switzerland, Geneva itself, Lau-
sanne, the Castle of Chatillon, the Bridge
of St. Maurice, Lavey, Martigny, Sion,
Viege, — and in Italy, the Val d'Ossala, the
Lakes Maggiore and Como, the Temple of
Como, Milan, Verona, Vicenza, Padua, —
Petrarch's house at Arqua, Venice, Fer-
rara, Bologna, and the Fish Market at
Rome. There are twenty-five plates — four
of which are assigned to Venice, represent-
ing the Rialto, the Ducal Palace, the Palace
of the Foscari, and the Bridge of Sighs,
which last struck us as most remarkable,
though all are beautiful — the water is per-
fect. The artist, Mr. Samuel Proutt, in
both selection and execution, has shewn a
just and delicate taste, and his efforts have
been admirably seconded by the engravers,
inferior to none in the country. The de-
scriptions are written by Mr. Thomas Ros-
coe, and answer their purpose perfectly well,
though some of the poetry, well known as it
all is, might very well have been spared.

The Romance of History, Second Series

Spain. By Don T. de Trueba. 3 vols.

I2mo This Romance of History differs

essentially, and favourably, from the old
historical romances, and even the last im-
provements of them by the wizard of the

North. The writer of such romances in the
olden time, and even in more recent times,
either introduced into his scenes new agents,
of his own creation, for the production of
recorded events, or mixed up the domestic
adventures of the chief actors with political
ones, or committed these usually very grave
personages to deeds, of which, if there be
any reliance to be placed upon the laws of
nature, as discoverable, of course, we mean
by experience, they must have been per-
fectly innocent — all which maneeuvres have
manifestly a tendency to confound and per-
plex the student of truth, by associating in
his mind the vagaries of fancy with the
realities of facts, thus counteracting the
historian and the antiquarian, and, at best,
neutralizing their painful efforts. Writers
of what is now termed Romance of History,
on the contrary, pace prudently along the
beaten paths of story, in search of extraor-
dinary facts — the more extraordinary of
course the better — and limit their best ef-
forts to the development of the feelings of
the agents, according to their conception of
probabilities in given positions. This is
doing little or no harm — it is rather work-
ing with the historian than against him.
For the historian himself, even the driest,
must, to some extent, do the same thing,
and will, we suppose, more and more — the
more, that is, novelists by profession, take
to the construction of history — a course
which is rapidly becoming fashionable. For
this project of detailing the marvels of fact
in the tone of romance, we are indebted
mainly to the late Mr. Neale, who, himself,
with considerable success, executed a part
of his plan in the story of his own country.
Don T. de Trueba, who has, we thank
him, shortened his name, and who, we are
glad to find, is the man who has caught
Mr. Neale's mantle, commences his series,
as was natural, with his country, and has
accomplished his purpose with equal spirit
and elegance, and with even a more faithful
adherence to the traditions of fact. Mr.
Neale admitted — like Sir Walter Scott in
his Grandfather's Tales— apocryphal mat-
ters, as if to defeat his own plan ; while
Don T. de Trueba takes up nothing which
is not admitted as authentic by Spanish
historians. And no country in the world
presents more striking scenes, blending, as
many of them do, the manners of the F^ast
and the West, and presenting such heroes
as Pelagius, Bernardo, and the Cid.

The succession of tales, amounting to
twenty -four, and symmetrically distributed,
eight in a volume, carry the reader over the
whole of the long line of Spanish story —
commencing with Roderick, the - last of the
Goths, and the invasion of the Moors — an
act of revenge on the part of Count Julian
for Roderick's seduction of his daughter —
and concluding with the fortunes of Cal-
deron, in the reign of Philip IV., which
reads like the same story in Gil Bias, and
Portocarrero's conspiracy in the following

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

reign in favour of ths Austrian succession.
To analyze any of these little morsels our
space forbids, and, if it did not, to do so
would be useless, for the peculiarity and the
charm are all in the development of inci-
dent and tone of sentiment — the events have
scarcely suffered a modification, and could
only be fairly exhibited by a specimen. Ge-
nerally, they shew judgment in the selec-
tion, tact in pitching upon the point of in-
terest, taste in the details, and felicity in the
execution. The language — and we allude
to so inferior a consideration, because the
writer, as every body knows, is a foreigner
— as to dry correctness and propriety is un-
exceptionable, but shews still a want of ease,
but that chiefly from the absence of the
commoner idioms. It is this, more than
the subjects, which throws a sameness over
the whole, and finally wearies. The book
is an excellent one to put into the hands of
young people — if consecutive reading from
beginning to end be not inflicted upon them.

Annals of the Peninsular Campaigns,
from 1808 to 1814, by the Author of

Cyril Thornton, 3 vols. I2mo. ; 1829

Deprecating all ideas of competition with
the professional learning of Colonels Na-
pier and Jones, as becomes a subaltern
and nameless officer, or with the voluminous
compilations of the universal Southey, the
author of Cyril Thornton, we may confi-
dently announce, has produced a work which
surpasses them both in interest and execu-
tion— in tact of selection, and distinctness
of narrative. Of Southey's performance,
we say nothing — for it will ever be the least
read ; while of Napier, it is doing him no
wrong to say, he writes too exclusively for
the profession, and suffers his general poli-
tics too often to sway his judgment ; and, in
his anxiety to compliment, or in his opinion,
perhaps, to appreciate duly French officers,
occasionally passes the line of sober impar-
tiality. Cyril Thornton, too — for we know
neither his name nor " addition" — has his
prejudices, and, equally anxious to display
the superiorities of the British, sometimes
forgets to give the enemy their due. Still
we give him due credit for intention to tell
the full truth ; but it must be said, and can-
not be denied, he has looked more to the
obvious causes which secured victory to the
one English chief, than to those which
equally ensured defeat to the numerous and
unconnected commanders of the French
forces. But for one account, his surpasses
any other one, and, besides, has the great
advantage of coming altogether, and at once
completing the story. The form of annals,
too, gives him more of freedom, enforces
less the bonds of connexion, and calls for
less research into causes, political and pro-
fessional, but none of these are neglected ;
and he is even prodigal of his criticisms,
though he furnishes sound and satisfactory
reasons for most of them.

No historian of the war has placed the

previous conduct of Spain in so conspicuous
and just a light. Napoleon was not without
his provocations ; nor was Charles or Fer-
dinand so innocent or inoffensive as they
are commonly and carelessly represented.
Godoy's fears, the consequences of his own
usurping, so early as 1806, and the period
of the battle of Jena^ intrigued with Russia
and Portugal, and apparently with England,
for a combined invasion ot France, while
professedly at peace and in alliance with
France; and, in the following year, thii
same Spain concurred with this same France
in a proposal for the seizure and partition of
Portugal.

We English, again, may thank ourselves
for the general distrust with which our as-
sistance was at first and long accepted by
the Spaniards : it was impossible they could
forget, what Cyril Thornton rightly calls,
the base seizure and robbery of their trea-
sure-ships in 1804, before the declaration of
war — an act of positive and brazen piracy.

Notwithstanding the Colonel's superior
rank, Cyril keeps a sharp eye on Napier,
and, detecting his bias, often exposes it
shrewdly and successfully. Colonel Napier
admires Murat prodigiously ; and speaking
of the executions consequent on the horrible
2d of May, at Madrid, ascribes them, on
the authority of French writers, not to Mu-
rat, but to Grouchy, who continued, he
says, the work of slaughter on his own re-
sponsibility, and in direct disobedience to
Murat's orders. " This statement," ob-
serves Cyril, " would have been entitled to
credit, had we learned from the same autho-
rity that Grouchy's delinquency had been
followed by censure or disgrace."

General Foy, who of course will not be
suspected of exaggerating the atrocities of
his countrymen, describes Dupont's wanton
cruelty at Cordova in terms of horror, and
winds up with these words : " Dreadful
scenes ! (the devastations of the city) for
which no excuse was to be found in the loss
sustained by the victors, since the attack of
the city had not cost them ten men, and the
success of the day only thirty killed, and
eighty wounded." What says Colonel Na-
pier ? " As the inhabitants took no part in
the contest, and received the French without
any signs of aversion, the toivn was pro-
tected from pillage." — " It is only neces-
sary to add," observes Cyril, " that the
Colonel gives no authority for -his state-,
ment."

The author dwells with admiration on
the defence of the Zaragozans, and quotes
Foy's testimony to their heroism. " After
this," says he, " it is almost painful to
quote Colonel Napier." — " It is manifest,"
Colonel Napier asserts, " that Zaragoza
owed her safety to accident, and that the
desperate resistance of the inhabitants was
more the result of chance than of any pecu-
liar virtue." — " Chance /*' exclaims Cyril^
with some reason — " such is the melancholy
situation to which a writer, so talented ai

M 2

Monthly Review of Literature,

[JAN.

Colonel Napier, is driven, in denying the
heroic devotion of the Zaragozans ! and the
hypothesis has at least the advantage of
being one not likely to encounter refuta-
tion." The sarcasm is flat, but the censure
is just.

Nor, on the other hand, is Southey's ten-
dency to exaggerate, or at least his readiness
to adopt, the most invidious or outrageous
statements, unobserved by the author,
though not so often exposed as it deserves.
In the defeat of the Spaniards, by Bessieres,
at Rio Seco, the loss seems to be generally
estimated at about 5,000. Mr. Southey
states, on what he calls the best authority —
which appears to be that of the neighbouring
priests — that the number of the slain, alone,
amounted to 27,000. " The absurdity of
the calculation, were it worth while," ob-
serves Cyril Thornton, " might be easily
demonstrated by a reductio ad absurdum"
— which means, we suppose, there were not
so many Spaniards in the field.

With the author's own narrative and judg-
ments, generally, we are little disposed to
find fault. The Duke of Wellington is, of
course, his Magnus Apollo, though he scru-
ples not to censure the battle of Rolica, as
gratuitous. " The object for which it was
fought, a more skilful general," he says,
"would unquestionably have obtained with-
out bloodshed." Nor, again, that of Tala-
vera, as one to which the great captain owes
little of his military renown.

Sir John Moore is judged, perhaps, with
some severity, for which compensation is
made by eulogizing him for qualities un-
connected with his profession. He was
amiable, but incompetent : it comes to this,
though wrapt in abundance of qualifying
phrases. An ignorant ministry plunged him
into difficulties, from which he had not ta-
lents to extricate himself. He began inaus-
piciously, by dividing his troops, and thus
bringing himself into the necessity of con-
tinuing at Salamanca, a whole month, inac-
tive— he retreated with more haste than was
necessary — might, more than once, have
fought with advantage, before he was com-
pelled, &c.

The first act of Sir Arthur Wellesley,
after taking the command in chief, was
crossing the Douro, and routing Soult,
which the author relates without one word
of the cause which led to so easy a victory.
Colonel Napier, we remember, insists at
some length on the conspiracy of the officers,
at the time, against Napoleon, and their
success in blinding Soult as to the advance
of the English commander. Does Cyril
discredit this story, or was he ignorant of
the fact ?

The retreat before Massena is ably and
distinctly described, and due credit is given
to the English commander on the manage-
ment of it, and for his dispositions at the
battle of Busaco. But the lines of Torres
Vedras call forth all his admiration. This
was Wellington's hour of triumph. For

this he was indebted wholly to his own fore-
sight ; and it was effectual. By the way,
we have never seen these celebrated lines
so well described. Here is a portion of the
description : —

Lisbon stands at the extremity of a peninsula,
the neck of which is crossed by several rugged
and mountainous chains, stretching from the Ta-
gus, in a semicircular direction, towards the sea
— a distance of about thirty miles. Along these,
considerably below the point where the river
ceases to be fordable, two lines of defence had
been selected — one considerably in advance of the
other — both of the greatest natural strength. To
add to their security, the whole resources of
military science had been lavished. Mountains
were scarped perpendicularly; insignificant
streams were dammed into inundations ; forts of
the most formidable description were erected on
the heights ; all roads by which the enemy could
advance were broken up and obstructed, and at
every part enfiladed with cannon ; new ones
were formed fo facilitate the communications of
the defensive army ; the weaker points of the
position were strengthened by the construction ol
works and retrenchments • batteries were planted
on posts inaccessible ; and every measure had
been adopted by which the position could be ren-
dered favourable for offensive operations, when-
ever such should be assumed, &c.

In the battle of Albuera, fought by Be-
resford, the commander is treated sharply
and contemptuously. Had he not had the
good fortune to be seconded by more skilful
officers, Cole and Stewart, absolute destruc-
tion was inevitable.

Occasionally, and that very rarely, French
officers are spoken of with some respect ;
but, generally, the tone is supercilious and
contemptuous ; and he is too ready to attri-
bute, what manifestly is attributable to
want of discipline and harmony — to want of
skill. He evidently thinks very meanly of the
best of them. But, nevertheless, these An-
nals of the Peninsular Campaigns is the least
exceptionable book that has yet appeared on
the subject.

Health ivithout Physic — or Cordials for
Youth, Manhood, and Old Age, including
Maxims, Moral and Facetious, for the
Prevention of Disease and the Attainment
of a Long and Vigorous Life, by an Old
Physician. 1830 — The tone of the book
is a little too flippant and petulant for an
old man, but perfectly in correspondence
with that of an old compiler. Old Phy-
sician, the want of individuality, proves the
writer is not — nor is he, probably, of the
profession at all. The book, moreover, in
some conformity with the title, is more a
book of moral remedies than of medical pre-
cepts. Its materials, of course, are deriva-
ble from a hundred sources, but those origi-
nally, were medical ones— for medical men
are, almost exclusively, the only people who
pay any attention to the effects of external
things, or even of internal feelings, upon
the human frame ; and strange it is, that
it should be so, interested as every person

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

B5

is in his own physical soundness. But the
truth is, the subject has got to be so enve-
loped in technicalities, by the artifices of
professional men, that plain persons are de-
terred, by a sense not only of the difficulties,
but of the presumption, of making any at-
tempts to understand as much of themselves,
as other people profess exclusively to do.
The study of our own frame — our brains and
our passions — through the influences of food,
climate, exercise, employment, will, proba-
bly, by degrees, come to constitute a lead-
ing branch of education — or at least the
attention will get to be more turned to the
subject, and every man will contribute to
the general stock, fresh facts from his own
idiosyncracies.

The compilers' ' code of resolutions for
declining life,' is excellent, though he may
be thought to carry his monitions against
excitement to some excess — ' except,' says
he, ' the reasons for a change be inevitable,
live and die in the public profession of the
religion in which you were born and bred.'
The burden of the song seems to be — any
tlu'ng for a quiet life — or, like Sir Hans
Sloane— never quarrel with yourself, your
wife, or your prince.

Life on Board of a Man of War, in-
cluding a full Account of the Battle of
Navarino, by a British Seaman ; 1829. —
This professes, with all due gravity, to be
the genuine narrative of a young sailor, who
served his noviciate, before the mast, on
board the Genoa, and was present at the
battle of Navarino. The volume is dedi-
cated to Captain Dickenson, and embracing
the full details of the battle, the writer stu-
diously arranges his narrative, so as to make
each successive incident contribute to the
perfect exculpation of the said Captain — a
very superfluous effort now, and,' at any rate,
of no value, unless authenticated. This
matter, however, occupies little more than
a third of the volume, while the remainder
is taken up with the alleged personal ad-
ventures of the writer, from his first going
on board — detailed, professedly, in the be-
lief, that no narrative, however faulty, can
be uninstructive, which details the trials of
an inexperienced youth thrown, by his own
caprice, into a state of society entirely new
to him ; and especially that whatever tends
to illustrate the character, manners, and
habits of British sailors, must prove accept-
able to the public. The "common par-
lance" of sailors is faithfully exhibited,
partly in the hope that an exposure of the
absurdity inherent in their irreverent words
and phrases, " is one of the surest means of
their extirpation."

We quote a morsel for the sake of the
concluding remark —

In the cock-pit I heard a weak voice singing the
following verse of a sea song : —

" Poor Joe, the marine, was in Portsmouth well

known,

No lad in the corps dressed BO smart,
In his countenance there ne'er was a frown,
And his manliness won every heart."
The voice came from a remote corner of th»
cock-pit, and on going forward, I saw sitting upon
the doctor's medicine chest, a marine of the name
of Hill. "What," said I, " are you wounded,
Hill?" I held up the lantern at the same timet
and saw the poor fellow wanted both arms, — the
one a little above the elbow, and the other a little
below the shoulder: "and singing, too," I ex-
claimed, "in this state?"—" Why," said he, "you
know I must learn to sing ballads, and, therefore,
I've begun in time ; for d'ye see, since it has
pleased God to let the Turks dock rboth my fins,
I must only thank him that it was not my head."
I doubted much that this was an endeavour to
re-enact an old story that I had heard years be-
fore, and could not help attributing such a piece
of wretched affectation to the influence of Dib-
din's songs, and of many of the melodramas of
our small theatres, which put into the mouths of
our sailors so much false heroism and nauseous
sentimentalism.

Studies in Natural History, by William
Rhind, of Edinburgh.— Here is nothing
new ; but striking facts and admitted prin-
ciples are skilfully brought together; and
though no connected view is aimed at, the
whole has an uniform tendency to enlarge
the dominions of the naturalist, and con-
verge his thoughts to the Author of Nature.
The writer describes himself as directing
his efforts to excite the student of nature to
more expanded investigation, rather than to
dive deeper into abstruse points, or specu-
late on unexplored subjects. The inevitable
effect of a general survey, as he justly re-
presents it, is to dispel the perturbed and
clouded notions of the " power and wrath
and caprice of an unseen, unknown Divinity,
and discover to the patient inquirer, a beau-
tiful system of order, regularity, and mate-
rial harmony — the consummate arrangement
of an all-powerful, benignant, and merciful
God" — without conveying the offensive feel-
ing, that Mr, Rhind is patronizing the
Deity. The author glances over the repro-
ductive powers of nature — the principles of
geology and meteorology — the atmosphere
and the winds— rivers and their formation
— the ocean and its inhabitants — the earth
and its vegetables, insects, animals, man,
and finally the celestial system — moralizing
at every turn and topic, very sensibly, if not
with much point or novelty ; and making
liberal use of Dr. Mason Good and Dr. G.
Gregory, and he could scarcely do better.

Two Funeral Discourses, by John Shep-
pard, author of Thoughts on Private De-
votion ; 1829. — Mr. Sheppard is the au-
thor of some publications on devotional sub-
jects, and more acceptably of a work on the
foreign evidences of the divine origin of
Christianity, noticed by ourselves some
months ago as a performance of considerable

Monthly Review of Literature,

[JAN.

merit for its research, intelligence, and judg-
ment. Though not himself a minister pre-
cisely, he is obviously devoted to clerical
pursuits, and only, for reasons of course sa-
tisfactory to himself, avoids taking upon
himself the responsibilities of a " cure" of
souls. The rules of dissenting societies, at
least the one with which he is apparently
connected at Frome, do not exclude imoffi-
cial persons from occasional ministrations,
and accordingly he, it seems, has preached
many funeral orations. The two now pub-
lished were delivered by him on the deaths
of two ministers, one of them, quite a youth,
hut pious and able, who had but recently
occupied the pulpit at Frome, and the other
a Baptist missionary in India, who was well
known at Frome. The object of the dis-
courses appears to be to repel any hasty
conclusions adverse to the propagation of
the gospel, and the protection of it on the
part of its author, from the apparently pre-
mature deaths of its ablest and most indefa-
tigable preachers and promoters. The tone
is argumentative and earnest — mild and per-
suasive— and no doubt very acceptable to
those who knew the parties. The allusions
to the position and exertions of the mis-
sionary and his intelligent wife, are very in-
teresting and impressive.

Holiday Dreams, or Light Reading in
Prose and Verse, by Isabel Hill ; 1829 —
The author of this little volume is undoubt-
edly a person of considerable cleverness, with
.some humour, and, what is more essential
for her own comfort, with good humour.
Her temperament, besides, is too sanguine
to be readily blighted by a little neglect, or
discomfited by a rebuff* or two. In perse-
verance she is irrepressible ; and, in the ab-
sence of patrons, resolves to write till she
finds them. She is already the author of a
tragedy, a tale, a poem, and two etc. etc.,
together with some scores of occasional
pieces, published in periodicals — which
pieces, for the most part, received by the
said periodicals, either superciliously or un-
gratefully, she now — to shame the fools —
collects and prints. Some, it seems, ap-
peared in the New Monthly, the Weekly
Review, the Literary Museum, and Pocket
Magazine, but all without producing pay
— a mischance, however, which she insinu-
ates is perhaps attributable to the want of
integrity in her go-between ; but as he is,
apparently, nobody but Sir Francis Freeling,
the editors will know how to interpret.
Others were written for a Worthing paper,
the proprietor of which wishing to give a
literary cast to his adventure, secured the
lady's services, but finally ran away, and
forgot to discharge his bills. Others
were despatched to Annuals, of which some
were lost, some few admitted to the honours
of insertion ; and one, in the Gem, actually
remunerated by one of its crimson and gold
copies. Others, again, were handed about
among admiring friends, till, to her sur-

prise, she met with nome so nearly resem-
bling them, that she chose to disclaim them ;
and the single instance of polite attention
and editorial payment, was the original pro-
prietor of the Athenaeum, who not only libe-
rally paid her from his purse, but gallantly
paid her a visit in person, for which she is
duly grateful.

To be sure the good young lady has been
scurvily used, but she has her revenge— she
tells all — and we look for her thanks in giv-
ing them a publicity they would hardly
otherwise find. If she will still write —
and write she will, and can — she must ma-
nufacture tales — they are in constant de-
mand. Her poetry, in the serious way,
wants strength and melody ; and in the hu-
morous, the most fatal of wants, ease and
point ; while her prose essays ramble too
much, and are a little too much recherche
in the pursuit of quips and puns. She shall
speak for herself.

THE TROCHILOS AND TflK
CROCODILE.

Blame not my zeal, altho' ye call

Its object " cruel, false, and vain ;"
Some sympathy awaits us all,
, E'en Nero's death gave one heart pain.»
Nay, I am not so mere a ninny

But I can prop mine own cause — thus,
Can cite the Stagyrite, and Pliny,

Or bid you hear Herodotus !f
They prove that Heaven plants instincts pnr»

And merciful, for some wise end ;
One bird Nile's monster can endure.

The Crocodile hath still a friend.
The little Plover yet doth dare

E'en in his throat to assert her right,
Spite of his teeth, which kindly spare

The servant, they'd scarce find one bite.
She enters, to destroy his foes,

To pearly peril joyous flies,
How strange, that creatures great as those

Should e'er be saved by atomies I
" Seeking the bubble reputation

E'en in the" Crocodile's " mouth," to!
How can he keep from mastication ?

Perhaps he don't like Poultry tho'.
Did some one of his favourite prey

Venture, tho' ne'er so kindly bold, it
Might find it hard to get away—

Once in his jaw— d'ye think he'd hold\i t
His watering mouth would pour persuasions

To treat it with a little bite.
Then, having tears for all occasions,

He could weep back his appetite ;
Sigh o'er the life he had destroyed,

Then lick his lips, and wipe his eyes,
Rememb'ring what he had enjoy'd,

And ready for another prize!

* For this information I am indebted to Lord
Byron.

f These hard names I found in the Bath and
Cheltenham Gazette. I have not the honour of
any further acquaintance with the gentlemen I
quote ; but knowing nothing of Natural History
I take their words. Tney assert that the Tro-
chilos, a kind of Plover, acts as tooth-pick to the
Crocodile, devouring the troublesome insects,
who, when his mouth looks a-jar, fancy that they
shall tind sweets within it.

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

The bird unsparing feasts away,

'Midst all the dangers I have sung,
She earns her safety and her pay

Taking the sting from such a tongue.
Could I, ye hostile knats make skip,

("Would pecking at ye ne'er cost me loss)
By merely — tasting that sweet lip,

It were brave sport to act Trochilos !

Family Library, Vol. VIII. — Court and
Camp of Buonaparte ; 1829. — These
sketches of the Court and Camp of Napo-
leon are intended to form a kind of supple-
ment to the life of Napoleon, which occupied
the first two volumes of the Family Library,
but not written by the same author, or we
should see something like a disposition to
present a fair estimate — (and here there is
none) — some desire to shew the good as
well as the bad, with respect to men whose
characters, every sober person will recollect,
have been gathered, in England at least,
from the representations — it would be cor-
rect enough to say, the calumnies — of their
avowed and deadly enemies. The compiler
writes as if we lived in the days of the Pitt
and terror system, when an ti -jacobinism was
the sole criterion of good citizenship — that
anti-jacobinism, which, though it be appa-
rently as wide from radicalism as the poles
asunder, is of the same intolerable tempera-
ture, equally adverse to life and liberty, sound
sense, and sound morals. Villain and wretch,
slave and fool, are ever at his pen's end; and
sentiments are hazarded of individuals which
nothing short of confidential knowledge
could authorize. Speaking of Napoleon's
sister, Pauline, he assures us, one would
suppose on his personal authority, " Ma-
dame (not the Princess) Borghese detests
her present husband as much as the first —
indeed, she could never love the man whom
she was required to obey. She is, however,
as cordially execrated in return. She occu-
pies one wing of his palace at Rome ; the
greater part of his time is passed at Flor-
ence, and he has caused all communication
between the two sides of the palace to be
carefully closed, that he may not be cursed
with the sight of his wife when he visits the
eternal city." After thus favouring us with
his confidential communications, he disco-
vers, something of the latest, the said prin-
cess has been dead four or five years ; and
coolly remarks, in an erratum, " some words
ought to be altered."

The Duke de Rovigo, of course, meets
with no quarter : and we were surprised to
find him allowing, even with this sweeping
clause of, " though, of course, far from me-
riting implicit credit," " his memoirs will
always rank among the necessary materials
for the history of Napoleon." Though per-
fectly true, this with him is but a transient
conviction ; for we perceive he pays not the
slightest regard to Savary's very minute,
we do not say satisfactory, account of his
personal conduct in the miserable affair of
the Duke d'Enghein ; but gives his own

version of the deed, as if Savary had- never
written a word. Is there any better reason
for crediting Talleyrand than Savaty ? — the
one, as the writer plainly and profoundly
believes, as cunning as a fox, and the other
as stupid as an owl; the one capable of any
perversion, and skilled in making the worse
appear the better reason — and the other as
incapable of telling his own tale favourably,
as of telling it honestly. There were ob-
viously greater men concerned in the chief's
confidence than Savary then was.

With regard to Clarke, the Duke of
Feltre, though probably a man of no very
superior talents, nor very distinguishable for
integrity, but not less so, in either respect,
apparently, than thousands of another school
of politics, of whom the writer would
speak admiringly, he is quite intemperate.
Clarke was a captain in the French army,
so early as 1784, then only nineteen, which
proves he was not the very low (in the
writer's absurd sense) and despicable person
the compiler represents him. In 1792 he
was a colonel of cavalry — how he rose to
this rank is not, he says, very clear — that
is, of course, according to his hypothesis ;
" certainly," he adds, " not by his me-
rit,"— which is plainly quite gratuitously
said, and may serve as a specimen of the
spirit in which the book is written. It is
all alike — a mass of libellous scandal — if not
always false in fact, always perverse in con-
struction, and careless of truth. " Clarke's
regiment," he continues, " would have been
wholly destroyed on more than one occasion,
had not his subaltern officers saved it from
the consequences of his incapacity." What
is the writer's authority for all this ? Ap-
parently none of any credit. The reader
must ask the same question at every step —
for the prejudiced and paltry spirit in which
the book is written, completely strips the
writer of all the consideration and weight
due to impartial inquiry and sober and ho-
nest judgment.

In a brief preface, the compiler expresses
his belief that his statements will be found
in accordance with the very able, interesting,
and trustworthy Memoirs of M. de Bou-
rienne — confessing, in the same breath, that
only one volume out of the six had appeared
when he began. And as to this Bourienne,
Napoleon was not, apparently, very wide of
the truth, when, on some occasion, he said,
" Bourienne, you are but a simpleton !" —
and he might have added, looking to his
subsequent conduct, something worse. This
same Bourienne, whose authority is thus to
be taken for every thing, was a double or
triple dyed traitor — Napoleon's humble
friend and private secretary for years — then
in Louis XVIII.'s service — and, again,
the day before the emperor's return to Pa-
ris, as prefect of police, the author of a pla-
card, announcing the arrest, in the garden
of the Palais Royal, of two men for ex-
claiming, Vive le Roi !

In the same preface, the writer alludes to

88

Monthly Review of Literature.

[JAN.

Colonel Napier's volumes, and the author
of Cyril Thornton's Peninsular Annals, as
having appeared since his book was written,
— leading the reader to conclude these gen-
tlemen would confirm his invidious state-
ments — at least the former will not.

Even as a dictionary, with his limitations,
the book is incomplete. There is no notice
of Kellerman, Lavalette, Duroc, Carnot,
Brune, &c.

Waverley Novels — Rob Roy ; 1829

It is not an easy matter for Sir Walter Scott
to take manum tabula, when once he begins,
and few would wish it otherwise, for no touch
of his pencil is without effect. Here his
purpose was simply to give some account of
the occasion of the tale, and the sources of
his materials, and he goes over again the life
of his hero, only stripping it, as he goes,
of a little of its romance. In the novel, Rob
was fill daring and resolve, with a spice of
generosity in his composition, though that
rather the effect of calculated contempt than
of the pure impulses of nature, and a man
who plundered by wholesale, and was lavish
on the same scale. In the story he shows
more of the peddling rogue — he dilutes his
audacity with a dash of discretion — he is
shirking in danger, and bullying out of it.
The preface, one of considerable length,
embraces the story of the outlawed clan of
the Gregors— the oppressions they suffered,
and the revenges they took. Covering large
tracts on the Highland borders, the counties
of Argyle and Perth, as the Gregors did,
their neighbours, the Earls of Argyle and
Breadalbane, by their influence with the
crown, 'got these lands entered in their own
charters, and took forcible possession as"
opportunities occurred. These encroach-
ments, of course, the Gregors resisted, and
the resistance was by their powerful enemies
represented at court as acts of invasion and
robbery. Mary, and her son James, alike,
legislated against them in the Draco-spirit of
the times, and finally forbade the use of the
very name, and assembling together of more
than four at a time. Mingling rather than
merging in the neighbouring clans, they, in
consequence, became Drummonds, Buchan-
ans, Campbells, &c. in name, but continued
Gregors still, in heart, and still unitable for
clan purposes. In the civil wars they, in
common with other Highlanders (why should
they fight with each other, when the war
opened lowlanders to plunder?) they adopted
the royal cause ; and at the restoration, had
influence enough to get the iniquitous statutes
against them repealed, but not enough to keep
them so. Their re-enactment was speedily
smuggled in again, but the enemies of the
Gregors were no longer able to enforce them
with the old severity. Of this clan, which
of course inherited a sense of their wrongs,
was Rob, not chief, but a chieftain. Born
somewhere about 1670, till the reign of
queen Anne, he mixed the profession of
drover of Highland cattle, and exactor of

black-mail, when he chose to declare him-
self insolvent; and absconding with money
in both pockets, the property of those who
had entrusted him with commissions, con-
fined himself to the less inglorious, but equally
profitable mode of plundering by raids. In
the rebellion of '15, Rob's conduct was 'a
little equivocal: on what specific ground
does not appear, but the principle must be
obvious. He died about 1740, leaving five
sons, t\vo of whom became conspicuous, in a'
manner natural enough — one was outlawed for
sundry acts of violence, and the other caught
and hanged for the abduction of a young
woman possessed of considerable property.

Tales of Four Nations. 3 vols. I2mo. ;
1829 — The author of these not uninterest-
ing, nor ill-written tales, must have been
hard run for a title — " Tales of Four Na-
tions" implies a union and connection,
which the reader will not find. The writer,
though a novice in scribbling, should have
felt, in the case of others, the chilling effect
of a name that expresses nothing distinctly
— should have anticipated the curl and pish
of contempt it excites — the sort of stum-
bling-block it throws at the threshold— just
where common prudence, to say nothing of
common policy, would suggest the most
conciliating care on the part of a new can-
didate.

Of and concerning the said " Four Na-
tions," here are five tales — two, comme de
raison, description of English scenes ; and
one, each, of French, German, and Mexi-
can. With the exception of one of the
English tales and the Mexican, they have
some claim, it seems, to the dignity of facts,
and, of course, in the same proportion forfeit
the honours of invention. The tale of most
pretension, at least so far as length indicates
pretension, called the Hunter's Oak, is a
tale of the English Roses, in which king-
making Warwick, King Edward, and black -
visaged Clifford, play over again some of
their old pranks, with others which " they
knew not of." Warwick, at his glorious
castle, has two beautiful daughters — the
youngest of whom, the prime charmer, is
betrothed to Beaufort, Duke of Somerset
(all among the great folks !) ; but political
interests, after the defeat of the Lancas-
trians, at Towton, prompt Warwick to bring
about an union between Clifford and the
gentle girl. Accordingly, Clifford, in at-
tendance on Edward, visits the castle, and
prosecutes his course of courtship with a
roughness quite suitable to his recorded
character, but not very well calculated to
smooth obstructions presented by a pre-
occupation of the young lady's affections.
To afford the gay king fitting entertain-
ment, a tournay is proclaimed, and War-
wick, confiding in the vigour of Clifford's
arm, announces the hand of his youngest
daughter as the prize of the victor. Beau-
fort, in disguise, of course, attends the lists,
and equally, of course, defeats the arrogant

J830.J

Domestic and Foreign.

Clifford, and thus wins, but does not carry
the prize. He rushes to her feet, indeed,
and, in the presence of the assembled court,
claims her, but chooses, apparently with
most uncalled for violence, to mock, and in-
sult, and defy the new, and, in his opinion,
usurping monarch, and only escapes what
he almost deserves, by the aid of his good
black steed.

Splendidly welcomed as Edward had
been, he was not well pleased at the exhi-
bition, manifestly designed, of the alarming
strength of the garrison ; nor could he for-
bear whispering to Clifford his fears, as
well as his admiration ; and Clifford was
ready enough to understand a hint. He was
indignant at the young lady's repulses, and
enraged by his recent defeat, and he re-
solved at one stroke to gratify the king, and
wreak his own vengeance. The opportu-
nity— and when did opportunity for mis-
chief fail? — soon presented itself. The
blow inflicted by Beaufort confined Clifford
to the «a.stle, and Warwick's embassy to
demand Bona of France in marriage with
Edward, left him almost at unobstructed
liberty to pursue his scheme of revenge.
He quickly secured the co-operation of a
band of outlaws, whose rendezvous was a
cave, the entrance of which was at the
foot of the Hunter's Oak, and which cave
• — scarcely known to any of the castli esta-
blishment— communicated with the castle ;
and by this communication a force suffi-
cient to overpower the garrison was to be
admitted. While thfse preparations were
completing, Edward meets with Grey of
Grooby's lovely widow, and hastily marries
her; and Warwick returns from his em-
bassy only to encounter his sovereign's
mockery. Stung at this insult, he forth-
with leagues with the Lancastrians, and
especially with Beaufort, and quickly un-
seats the young king, who flies before him.
By this time Clifford has got possession of
the castle, and is just on the point of forcing
the young and beautiful Lady Something
Neville to a loathsome maniage, when
Beaufort presents his noble form in the very
chapel, with a competent force to back him
— introduced silently by the old cave —
interrupts the ceremony, and makes none of
killing Clifford — recovers the castle for
Warwick, and, what w?\s more delightful,
the lady for himself.

The " Bereaved" is of a more domestic
and intense cast. A young and volatile
Frenchman, brought up with a lovely cousin,
whom he is to marry after a campaign or
two. In these campaigns he is thoroughly
corrupted, but finally marries his lovely
cousin for the sake of her property — which
he speedily spends among gamesters and
demireps, and drives the miserable wife to
a state of insanity — the cruelty of the worth-
less husband is most revolting.

" The Palace of Capultepec" is of course
Mexican. The tale turns upon the abduc-
tion of the governor's daughter by a troop
M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX, No. 49.

o£ Indians, and the desperate recovery by
a Creole gentleman, whose services finally
subdue Spanish prejudice, and win the
hand of the lady.

" The Ambuscade" is a tale, clumsily
told, of a Cornish pirate — a moody gentle-
man— and the seizure of him and his crew
by the captain of a frigate dispatched ex-
pressly for the purpose.

And « The Chateau by the Lake" is a
common tale of villainy. A young lady
run away with — a forged will — a recovery
and exposuie — very common (in novels),
and very disagreeable.

A Manual of Ancient History, particu-
larly with regard to the Constitutions, the
Commerce, and Ihe Colonies of the States
of Antiquity, translated from the German,
of A. H. L. Heeren's 1829. — We have
nothing in this country on ancient history
worth estimating at a pin's fee ; but Ger-
many can supply works of this class in
abundance ; and we are glad to see we are
likely to have the7uer.efit of the best of them
in our own language, in competent versions.
Any thing requiring very close and con-
tinued research — any topics involving ex-
tensive collection of particulars, have got to
be entirely out of our way ; and, of course,
commercially at least, we do wisely to im-
port what we can no longer raise ourselves.
Ancient history can only be prosecuted suc-
cessfully through intimate and familar ac-
quaintance with writers whose works, so far,
in our days, from bein^ studied, are not
even glanced at. Our knowledge of the
writers of antiquity is almost limited to the
poets — scarcely ever extended beyond half,
a-dozen of the common historians, and those
relative to short periods — Tacitus, Csesar,
Sdlust, Xenophon, Thncydides, and scraps
of Herodotus. Very many of the Greek
writers, not twenty persons probably now
living in this country have ever looked at.
No publisher would venture to reprint such
books as Dionysius, or Di-odorus, or Athe-
naeus. Manuals of ancient history, indeed,
we have in plenty ; but they are all of the
most flimsy cast, and prepared, moreover,
for schools, and copied one from another — ,
not one in a score of them derived at all
from original sources ; and, of course, if the
first be wrong, the posterior ones will not be
right — once wrong, and there is with us
little chance of correction. But Heeren's
manual is plainly derived directly from ori-
ginal authorities — from long and close ap-
plication ; and the proof is that it contains
what you will not find elsewhere. Mr.
Heeren is himself professor of history at
Gottingen ; and he has long been a professor •
in fact, and not in name only. He lectures
indefatigably, not in courses of half-dozen
readings, but through the whole session
zealously, to the tune of a hundred annually.
His volume, however, bears too much the
form of a syllabus, though occasionally ex-
ling into dissertation ; but, in point of

90

Monthly Review of Literature,

[JAN.

utility, will benefit equally professor and
student, by enabling the first to methodize
his acquisitions, and guiding the other
through his untried and intricate course.
His especial object has been to select such
incidents as require to be known by pupils
for the effectual prosecution of then-historical
studies. He has accordingly narrowed the
range of his labours,, and confined himself
to those most remarkable for general civili-
zation and political eminence ; and in these
his attention has been more particularly
pointed to the formation of states — the
changes in their construction — the routes
by which commerce was carried on — the
share which the several nations respectively
had in commerce, and, a matter imme-
diately connected with it, their extension of
it by colonies.

The method adopted by the author blends,
in some measure, the advantages of the two
modes by which history may be conducted,
by nations and periods. He makes five
general divisions : the first embraces the
Asiatic and African states and kingdoms
anterior to Cyrus, about the year B. C. 560,
which consists, necessarily, of little more
than insulated fragments ; the second, the
Persian monarchy, to B. C. 330 ; the third,
the Grecian states, both within and without
Greece, until Alexander, 336 ; the fourth,
the Macedonian monarchy, and its subse-
quent divisions, until they all merged into
the Roman empire ; and the fifth, the Ro-
man state, both as a commonwealth and a
monarchy, until its fall in the west, A. D.
476, with numerous subdivisions, indispen-
sable for a clear and distinctive view of the
subject. Every division, large and small,
is accompanied by a list of the authorities;
and another, of the more remarkable books,
the produce of modern times, on the several
topics, to which some additions are made by
the translator — very insignificant, necessa-
rily—the translator's additions we mean.

This very valuable book has passed through
six editions in Germany, with the successive
revisions of the writer, and has been trans-
lated into the principal languages of Europe.
One appeared in America ; but the transla-
tion before us, notwithstanding the remark
of the Foreign Quarterly, is not a re-print
of the American. The work was originally
published in 1799; and a portion of the
writer's preface is worth quoting, referring,
as it does, to the state of the times, and the
object of his work : —

The transactions of our own times have thrown
a light upon ancient history, and given it an in-
terest which it could not formerly possesR. A
knowledge of history, if not the only, is at least
the most certain means of obtaining a clear and
unprejudiced view of the great drama now per-
forming around us. Airdirect comparisons, not-
withstanding the many opportunities which have
tempted me, I considered as foreign to my plan ;
•eTertheless,if in some chapters of my work, par-
ticularly in the history of the Roman republic,
there may teem to be any reference to the trans.

aclions of the ten years during which this work
has been published, I do not think it necessary
to offer any excuse for so doing. Of what use is
the study of history, if it does not make us wiser
and better? unless the knowledge of the past
teach us to judge more correctly of the present ?
&c. &c.

The Code of Terpsichore, which, being
interpreted, means, it seems, the Art of
Dancing, by M. Blasts; 1829 — The mag-
nificent pretensions of M. Charles Blasis
are perfectly confounding ; he pours forth
upon us his Greek and Latin, his physics
and metaphysics, so unsparingly, that with
less assurance than his own, we naturally
shrink from any encounter with so formid-
able a personage. To pass by such a book,
however, would be unfair to our readers,
who reasonably look from us for some in-
formation relative to every work of import-
ance, and, taking Monsieur's own estimate,
. this is one of the very first. M. Blasis
claims for dancing the dignity of one of the

Fine Arts he places it in company with

Poetry, Painting, and Music, and on a
level with the best of them ; and for himself,
as one of the most distinguished professors
of the art in Europe, the rank, title, and
consideration thereunto belonging.

Practised as dancing is through every
gradation and condition of society, from the
wildest savage of the woods to the daintiest
lady ling of Grosvenor-square, it must surely
have its source in nature. The flood of
animal vigour— the buoyant and bounding
spirit of youth — the irresistible impulses to
action in the 'young and healthy, might
very well account for the rude and violent
exertions of the first, and association, fashion,
and vanity for the gentle and graceful move-
ments of the last ; but M. Blasis looks
deeper — he plunges into the bathos of book?,
old and new, in search of the philosophy of
his subject, and tasking, moreover, his own
sagacity to its ultimate limits, finally as-
signs it a source, innate indeed, but dor-
mant, till awakened by SINGING. Eu-
terpe is thus the parent and not the sister of
Terpsichore. Singing inspired relative or
at least correspondent gestures. The breast
became agitated — the arms opened or ap-
proached each other — the feet began to
form certain steps, more or less rapid — the
features participated in these movements —
the whole body, in short, was soon respon-
sive to the sounds that vibrated in the ears.
This is the source and origin of dancing ;
and the art, in its progress, has been found
capable of designating, it seems, every feel-
ing of the soul, till, such is its present bril-
liant perfection, that M. Blasis obviously
thinks the tongue a most superfluous organ,
or, at least, of no manner of use but for old
ladies and gentlemen, grown stiff and heavy
over a tea-table.

Writers on the subject of dancing, it
seems, are not very numerous, and the few
there are, for the most part, were mere
amateurs and theorists, not themselves artists

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

91

— persons, probably, of taste, talent, and
learning, but no dancers, and, of course, in-
capable of communicating practical instruc-
tion. Now, M. Blasis can pirouette as well
as speculate. Noverre, indeed, treated the
subject in a masterly manner for his day,
and, with his apparent views, which cer-
tainly were not to improve the pupil ; but the
march of improvement in our restless days
has so far outstripped poor .M. Noverre's
farthest flights, as to render his letters no
longer of any use to either professor or pu-
pil. In this absence, then, of all useful
written authorities, M. Blasis, relying on
the toils of learned research, and years of
laborious exertion — emboldened by the sug-
gestions of valued friends — and encouraged
by the success of some publications of his
on the subject on the continent, resolved to
set about tilling up this vacuum in the lite-
rature of Europe, and has actually accom-
plished an elaborate work, embracing, at
once, the origin and progress, the theory
and practice of dancing, in all its varieties,
with the composition and performance of
the pantomime and ballet to boot. In these
marvellous lucubrations of his, he lays dis-
tinct, and, we doubt not, very just claims
to divers ameliorations — to new methods of
instruction, short and infallible — to the en-
larging of the realms of pantomime — to an
•application of the rules and various styles of
the regular drama to the composition of the
pantomine— to the elevating of the ballet to
something above mere divertissiments or
dancing spectacles, &c. In short, the reader
will find, if he has any curiosity, a practical
work calculated to assist the professor — to
enlighten and amuse the amateur, and to
instruct and perfect the pupil. What can
book do more? In addition to all these
valuable materials, the well-filled volume
contains more than twenty programmes —
original compositions of pantomimes, some
.in one act, and others in two and three, and
even five acts. A number of plates are
appended to illustrate the positions into
which Monsieur and his pupils throw the
human figure, in which he can see nothing
but grace, while our unpractised optics can
detect nothing but strain and pain, and
preposterous attitudes — legs at right angles,
&c.

The Harleian Dairy System, by William
Harley, Esq. ; 1829 — The dairy system
thus designated is better known by the not
very delicate term of the Soiling System —
the peculiarity of which consists in keeping
cows constantly stabled in buildings, of
course, clean and well ventilated — in feed-
ing them, in summer, with grass cut fresh
and fresh, and in winter, as much as possi-
ble, with succulent vegetables — and carefully
gathering every particle of manure, wet and
dry, to return upon the land — on the prin-

ciple that the animal and vegetable mutually
maintain each other. The success of rhis
system — that is, the profitableness of it —
under close and unremitting supervision,
exceeds the common process five to one.
But the cruelty, to any feelings not hardened
by the practice, is surely abominable ; and,
indeed, it appears, by the writer's confession,
the unfortunate animals are of necessity
changed every year — none can stand the
discipline longer — the legs swell, and the
feet get sore ; and the consequence is, ge-
neral derangement, and falling off in milk
and flesh.

The inventor of this precious system, and
author of the book before us — now a very
old man, as his care-worn and miserable
features, which he has thought it worth
while to exhibit, attest — commenced his
cow-establishment at a farm called Willow-
bank, in the suburbs of Glasgow, for the
purpose of supplying the " gude town of
Glasgow" with milk, " which soon became,"
he says, " an extensive and regular trade.
Harley's milk also became, as it were, the
fashion ; its unrivalled excellence was the
subject of every lady's praise. All the world
talked of the Willowbank dairy ; thou-
sands, impelled by a curiosity which its
fame nad raised, went to see it; and so
charmed, in short, .was every one with the
order and cleanliness displayed, that many,
who had never thought of it before, now be-
came consumers of milk as a part of their
daily food." The old man prosecuted his
system, as he calls it — with the addition of
his own name, too — with indefatigable
zeal, and now presents the results of an ex-
perience of many years. These are ob-
viously worth the attention of all concerned
with the management of dairies ; for though
we cannot think of the perpetual confine-
ment of the animals with patience, the dili-
gence and tact with which every thing is
turned to account is exemplary, and may be
advantageously imitated in many of the de-
tails. Mr. Harley looked himself to every
thing — kept a minute account of every cir-
cumstance— estimated the cost and profit
of each animal — the returns — the effects of
different food, and could at any moment
tell to a farthing the loss or gain upon every
animal, and every particular experiment.
This same system was adopted by the dairy
companies in town, when companies were
raging, all of which failed ; and partly, we
hope, from the atrocious tying-up of the ani-
mals for a twelvemonth together — the seed
of destruction in the system — the ruinous
effects of which can only be counteracted
by a degree of care and contrivance which
not one dairy-keeper in a hundred will give.
It is a law of nature, never disproved, and
happily seldom apparently failing — that
cruelty, first or last, defeats its own ends.

N 2

C 92 ]

VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS.

[JAN.

Progress of Science in India.— We have
occasionally communicated to our readers
phenomena of an interesting description
which have taken place in India, and ex-
pressed our regret that so many observa-
tions which might be of use to the advance-
ment of science and which we were in-
formed had been made in India, should be
lost for the want of some channel through
which they might be conveyed to the public.
Since we first alluded to the subject, various
societies have been established in the great
Eastern portion of the British dominions
for the cultivation of physical knowledge.
The first volume of the memoirs of the Geo-
logical Society of Calcutta, has just reached
England, containing several papers not
only of local but of general interest. As
the first fruits of an enlightened love for
science, we regard this work with excessive
pleasure, and doubt not, from the well known
zeal of our countrymen in the East, that
each succeeding volume will increase in in-
terest. An enlightened friend to science in
all its branches, as well as an effective patron
of it, Sir Edward Ryan has exerted him-
self to establish a scientific journal as a de-
pot for all the floating observations which
may be made in India. In the present
humble form of this small pamphlet, we can
perceive the germ of future excellence. An
original paper on indigo, which it contains,
would do honour to the first scientific publi-
cation in Europe. It is not suited for our
pages, but we doubt not it will meet inser-
tion from some journal more exclusively
devoted to scientific subjects, and we hope
that due acknowledgment may be made of
the obligation. Now that a commencement
has been made in India, and the example
has been set by the first presidency, it is to be
expected that Madras and Bombay will not
remain behind. The advantages that must
result from this are incalculable, for exten-
sive as our dominion is in India, the natu-
ral history of the country is but imperfectly
known. In exploring its more remote dis-
tricts, some travellers have been eminently
successful, and the results of their inquiries
have been made known to the world ; still
there are many provinces which have been
rarely trod by the foot of an European, and
the notes made concerning them being too
hasty or too few to form a volume, have
been perused only by the friends of the au-
thor. The establishment of a journal, in
which all such productions may find a
place, must form an epoch in the history of
British India. As the increase of its con-
tents will necessarily lead to the appearance
of articles of the highest interest, we shall
always make such known to our readers, to
whom we ourselves have frequently sug-
gested, that as the interests of science are
greatly advanced by the immediate insertion
of observations, we should always feel happy

to receive into our scientific varieties any
communication, of which the truth of the
facts it contains can be properly authenti-
cated.

Artificial Preparation of Ice — After nu-
merous trials made by M. B. Mujlmk with
different salts, for the purpose of converting
water contained in a tin vessel into ice,
during their solution, he ultimately gave the
preference to a mixture of four ounces of
nitrate of ammonia, four ounces of sub-
carbonate of soda, and four ounces of water.
This mixture in three hours produces ten
ounces of ice, while with the mixture of
sulphate of soda and muriatic acid, he ob-
tained ice only after seven hours.

Process for preserving Milk for any
length of time. — This process, invented by
a Russian chemist named KirkofF, consists
in evaporating new milk by a very gentlt
fire, and very slowly, until it is reduced to a
dry powder. This powder is to be kept in
bottles carefully stopped. When it is to be
employed, it is only necessary to dissolve
the powder in a sufficient quantity of water.
According to M. KirkofF, the milk doss not
lose by this process any of its peculiar
flavour.

Cypress Wine. — To eighty pints of water
add ten pints of the juice of elder berries.
The berries are to be lightly pressed : each
pint of the liquid will contain three ounces
of juice, and to the whole quantity add two
ounces of ginger and one ounce of cloves.
Boil the whole for an hour. Skim the liquid
and pour it into a vessel which should con-
tain the whole, throwing in a pound and a
half of bruised grapes, which leave in the
liquor until the wine is of a fine colour.
This wine bears such a resemblance in
colour, flavour, and aroma to the best Cy-
prus wine, that the most experienced Pari-
sian connoisseurs have been deceived by it.

Sacred Beetle of Egypt — The following
curious statement is from the notes of a
traveller in the Libyan desert. October 12.
Being on watch this night, I caught, for the
first time, the scarabceus ateuchus sacer, or
chafer, with which the imaginations of the
ancient Egyptians so frequently busied
themselves. My attention was attracted by
a noise close to my side ; and through the
darkness I discovered a large rolling ball.
Conceiving it to be a crab or land tortoise,
I took it into my hand, but found it to be
nothing but a lump of horse-dung; and
immediately afterwards I perceived a similar
ball come rolling towards me. Upon put-
ting my lantern down and minutely exa-
mining this strange machine, I found that
it concealed a large black chafer, who drove
it forward by means of his long hind legs ;
and as it proceeded, it gradually increased
in size by the continual accumulation of
sand. This, indeed, became so consider-
able at last, that the insect itself was scarcely

1830.]

Varieties.

03

perceptible. It is more than probable that
the Egyptian priests took advantage of -this
deception to mystify their followers, and
that their veneration for the chafer or scara-
bzeus, arose from this circumstance. Upon
a farther examination with the aid of my
lantern, I discovered several animated balls,
of a like description, more than three inches
in diameter. My Arabian companions,
however, did not appear to take the slightest
notice of them.

Astronomy. — The attention of astrono-
mers has been very much directed, of late, to
phenomena attending an occultation of Al-
debaran by the moon. It has been pretty
generally remarked, that this star was either
projected upon or indented the moon's disc
before it was occulted ; and as such a fact
would go to prove the existence of a lunar
atmosphere, much care was besto\v ed by the
Astronomical Society of London to give
general notice of the occultation which took
place last month, in order to collect as much
evidence on the subject as possible. The
trouble they took was well requited : a great
mass of observations of this occultation has
been obtained, and in all but two instances
the projection of the star upon the body of
the moon, or the indentation of the moon's
disc, was observed during a space of time,
varying in duration from half a second to
five seconds.

Literary Union. — This society has al-
ready increased to three hundred members.
The committee sit, pro tempore, at the
British Coffee House. The present meml
bers of the Committee are :
W. Ayrton, Esq. . Rt. Hon. Sir Gore
Prince Cimitilli. Ouseley, Bart.

Sir G. Ducket, Bart. W. H. Pickersgill,
Sir F.Freeling, Bart. Esq., R. A.
J. Goldsmid, Esq. J. Smirnove, Esq.
Dr. Henderson. Rev. A. Wade,D.D.

W. Mackinnon, Esq. R. Watson, Esq.
J. Martin, Esq. J< Webster, Esq.

Thomas Campbell, Esq., Chairman.
The following is extracted from the most
recent prospectus, which states, after men-
tioning that the house, No. 12, Waterloo-
place, lately occupied by the Athenaeum
Club, has been engaged from the 1st of
January, that the Committee intends to
place { The Literary Union' in full ope-
ration on the 25th of March ensuing — That
" the Committee proposes to open the large
coffee-room from the 14th of January until
the 25th of March, from twelve o'clock at
noon to twelve at night daily, during which
time tea and coffee, with the periodical pub-
lications, will be supplied to the members.
The various arrangements contemplated for
dining, the different footing from other
societies on which « The Literary Union'
is established, and the necessity of ensuring
a rigid economy in the household expenses,
render this delay necessary."

Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Jeffrey, Professor
Wilson, and other distinguished literati of
Scotland are, we hear, among the members;

also Professor Schlegel, Cuvier, Albert, Mon-
temont, Senor Goristiza, and other distin-
guished foreigners.

Poisoning by Cheese. — Dr. H. L. Wes-
trumb, of Hameln, found that seven persons
were poisoned by decayed or damaged
cheese. M. Serturner analysed this cheese,
and found in it a peculiar acid, which ap-
peared both to him and to M. Westrumb
to be the poisonous principle ; the analysis
was performed with aether and alcohol.
Three different substances were obtained
from the cheese, viz — 1. Caseate of ammo-
nia; 2. an acid fatty, or resinous cheesy
matter ; 3. an acid, but less fatty matter.
These substances tried separately upon dogs
and cats, showed that the first was the least
poisonous, the third more so, and the second
the most poisonous of all. The symptoms
occasioned by the poison in these animals
were similar to those occasioned in man ;
they were at first nervous, and then followed
by intestinal inflammation. One pheno-
menon especially remarkable was, the pro-
duction of an enormous quantity of ammo-
niacal gas in the intestines ; this resulted
from an organic secretion, for the fatty-poi-
soning matters did not contain any ammonia
whatever.

Nitrate of Silver — A distinguished sur-
geon of Nottingham, Mr. Higginbottom,
although medical practitioners had some in-
distinct notions of the benefits derived from
the use of nitrate of silver, has recently dis-
covered the universality of its efficacy, and
the proper mode of applying it. In the se-
veral departments of army, navy, and hos-
pital practice, its utility is very great. Its
application is so simple, and its operation so
quick, that by rendering unnecessary a mul-
tiplicity of dressings, the period of residence
in hospital may be greatly shortened. In-
stead of daily dressings, attention to the pa-
tient every third or fourth day is frequently
all that is required. Mr. H. has pointed
out the prevailing error, that the nitrate of
silver acts as a caustic. He considers it as
the very reverse, as it is impossible to de-
stroy by it any but the most superficial parts.
" I speak of it," says he, " in its solid form.
Instead of destroying, it frequently preserves
parts which would inevitably slough, except
for the extraordinary preservative powers of
this remedy. A new term is in fact re-
quired for the peculiar kind of influence
which the nitrate of silver possesses in sub-
duing and checking inflammation in
phlegmon and erysipelas, in adducing the
adhesive inflammation in wounds, in pre-
serving the health of parts which in cases
of puncture or bruise are ready to take on
the suppurative or sloughing process, and
lastly in changing various specific actions
and inducing one of a more healthy and
curative kind." The treatment of corns is a
subject of popular interest. Mr. H. re-
marks : " The nitrate of silver is an old re-
medy for corns, but as the plan which I
adopt is rather different from that usually

94

Varieties.

[JAN.

employed, I will describe it briefly. The
patient should put the feet in warm water at
bedtime for half an hour, to soften the corns :
as much of the corn should then be removed
by means of a sharp knife as can be done
without making a wound: the corns and
surrounding skin are then to be moistened
with water, and the nitrate of silver is to be
rubbed on the corn very freely, and lightly
on the skin, so as not to occasion vesication ;
the part is then to be exposed to dry. Little
advantage would be derived if nothing more
were done, as the black eschar would remain
on the corn for some weeks, and during that
time the corn would form anew. About
the fourteenth day it will be observed that
the cuticle is peeling off around the corn,
this is the proper time for putting the feet
in warm water again, and for removing the
eschar, and as much as possible the corn un-
derneath, by the knife. At this period there
is a distinct mark between the surrounding
healthy cuticle and the corn, so that the
latter may be removed more effectually than
at first. The nitrate of silver is to be again
applied as before. This plan is to be re-
peated until the corn is perfectly destroyed.
Formula for reducing a Mercurial Ther-
mometer in, High Temperatures __ If q de-
note the degrees of a mercurial thermome-
ter, n the number of degrees between the
points of congelation and ebullition, 5 the
number of degrees at the boiling point, and
m the degrees of the true augmentation of
heat corresponding to the state q of the
thermometer, the following expression is

/Cf—S*. n _ s

correct : m—q — ( - — ) Q-09 _ 0-028 - - *

^ 4 ' n

New Artificial Horizon — There are few
more cumbersome instruments than the ar-
tificial horizon, in the manner in which it is
usually constructed, so that an improved
one which we have seen with Mr. Newman,
whose character for manufacturing the best
philosophical apparatus is known to every
friend of science in this country, promises to
be of material advantage to the traveller.
This instrument is comprised in a square
box, the top of which is detached when the
instrument is in use. The lower part con-
tains the mercury, which is raised into the
brass basin above by means of two screws,
which previously kept together the parts of
the box, acting upon a moveable bottom.
The basin is rubbed over with nitrate of
mercury, an invention of Professor Schu-
macher, of Altona, the effect of which is to
make the quicksilver adhere to the sides of
the basin, so that with a little care a per-
fectly level surface may be obtained, free
from tremor, and well suited for the pur-
pose for which it is required. By turning
the screws the quicksilver is then let down
again into the reservoir, and the whole fulfils
that indispensable condition in instruments
designed for a traveller, that the box shall
not close unless all that it contains is locked,
or the act of closing locks them.

Human Monsters. — We are not aware
that so many human monsters have ever been
alive at the same time as at the present day.
In China one has nearly attained the age of
23 years, and is double — twoSiamese youths,
united together by a cartilage at the umbi-
licus, are now exhibiting in this coun-
try. Little doubt seems to be" entertained
that a separation might in this case be ef-
tbcted without any injury to the individuals.
It is somewhat remarkable, that the mother
of them has produced 17 children, and never
less than two at a birth. Also a Sardinian
female child about nine months old, double
from the pelvis upwards, has recently died
in Paris.

Earthquake in New South Wales. — An
earthquake has been recently experienced up
the country. Several smart shocks were felt
among some of the mountain ranges distri-
buted over the district of Argyleshire, some-
where about 25 miles from lake George.
The concussion is represented to have lasted
some minutes. It was preceded by the spring-
ing up of a gentle breeze from the S.W.
quarter, which swiftly increased to the velo-
city of a hurricane, tearing up whole trees
by the roots, and scattering their branches
through the air like chaff. While the hur-
ricane raged with the utmost violence, the
earth in various places became convulsed,
heaving up into changing billowy ridges,
yawning and closing, and splitting here
and there into destructive chasms. Some
few stack huts were partially demolished,
and others shifted from their former founda-
tions. One side of a cattle fence was alto-
gether upturned ; but from the isolated na-
ture of the country, there being but few other
inhabitants than the solitary grazier, his
men, and herds, and still fewer fixed habita-
tions, the injury effected to the property was
but trifling, and the convulsion was wholly
sparing of life. After the combined ele-
ments had raged in this way for some mi-
nutes, their roar gradually diminished for
about an hour, when it again increased with
stunning bursts of thunder, torrents of rain,
and blasts of vivid lightning. Men stood
aghast, and the cattle ran cowering for shelter
to the hills. The storm, for the short time
it continued, is represented as having been
almost unprecedented in violence. An ac-
count in the Australasian also informs^is,
that the crater of a volcano had been dis-
covered in the vicinity of Legenhoe, and it
has been increasing daily. Huge heaps of
pitchy and adhesive mould lying around the
mouth, crushing and tumbling in inces-
santly, after smothering the flame for a little,
serve to render the combustion more fierce
and rapid. Few of the natives will venture
to sit down nearer than within a mile of the
volcano.

Sympathetic Ink. — A weak solution of
nitrate of mercury forms a good sympathetic
ink on paper ; the characters become black
by heat.

1830.] Varieties.

To measure the Force of Pressure — If we
take a leaden bullet of any determinate dia-
meter, and expose it to pressure between
plates of harder metal made to approach each
other in a parallel position, the bullet will be
compressed or flattened on two opposite sides
in an equal degree ; provided the lead is
pure, the degree of compression will indicate
the amount of pressure. With a graduated
press of the lever kind, it will be easy to
form a scale of pressure corresponding to
the different degrees of compression until
the ball is reduced to a flat circular plate of
about one fifth of an inch in thickness, and
it will be found that an ordinary bullet of
about five-eighths of an inch diameter will
require a pressure of near 4000 pounds, to
effect this degree of flattening. Suppose,
therefore, we wish to measure an actual
pressure estimated to be nearly 20 tons, we
have only occasion to place ten or twelve of
these balls at a proper distance asunder, so as
not to be in contact when expanded, and
then to measure by good callipers, or other
suitable means, the compression of each
ball, either by its thickness or diameter,, and
afterwards add into one sum the particular
pressure due to each ball from the scale first
made, by using the lever press before men-
tioned. By this mode Mr. Bevan ascer-
tained the amount of friction of an iron screw
press with rectangular threads, to be from
three-fourths to four-fifths of the power ap-
plied ; or the actual pressure has not ex-
ceeded four or five tons when the calcu-
lated pressure, if there had been no friction,
would have been 20 tons. The larger the
ball, the greater will be the pressure neces-
sary to reduce it to a given thickness. An
ordinary leaden shot, of one-eighth of an
inch diameter will require nearly 100 pounds
to compress it to a flat plate. By using a
ball of five-eighths of an inch diameter, Mr.
B. found the actual pressure of the common
bench vice to be above two tons when under
the same force ; if there -had been no friction,
the pressure would have been eight tons.
In the practical application of these balls, it
will be convenient to make a small impres.
sion upon them with a hammer, before they
are placed between the plates, to prevent
them from rolling out of their proper posi-
tion ; this operation will not be found to in-
terfere with the result, as it is the ultimate
compression only that is sought, and which
is not affected by that of a smaller degree
before impressed. This property will also
be found very convenient, for the same sub-
stance may be used several times, by taking
care that each succeeding pressure exceeds
that of the preceding. The application of
these leaden balls to determine the actual
pressure, will not interfere with the regular
operation of a press, as the articles under
pressure may be in the press at the same

95

time the balls are used, which of course must
be placed between separate plates.

Preservation of Butter — The method
used by the Tartars consists in fusing the
butter in a water bath, at a temperature of
190 Farenheit, and retaining it quiescent in
that state until the caseous matter has settled,
and the butter become clear ; it is then to be
decanted, passed through a cloth, and cooled
in a mixture of salt and ice, or at least in
spring water, without which it would crys-
tallize, and not resist so well the action of
air. Preserved in close vessels and cold
places, it may be kept for six months as
good as it v/as on the first day, especially if
the upper part be excspted. If, when used,
it be beaten up with one sixth of cheese, it
will have all the appearance of fresh butter.
The flavour of rancid butter may be removed
almost entirely by similar meltings and cool-
ings.

Steam Navigation on the Ganges Ac-
counts from Benares state, that the com-
pany's steamer Hoogly, could not be got
higher up the Ganges than a place called
Kutchwa, about 45 miles below Mirsapore,
and about 80 from Allahabad. Her further
progress was stopped by a shoal or sand reef
extending completely across the channel, be-
tween the Kutchwa and Badokee banks, the
greatest depth of water across which was two
feet six inches, the vessel at the time draw-
ing four feet one inch forward, and three and
three aft, having only 100 maunds of coals
on board, and the passengers and luggage,
and the freight having been landed. Even
had the steamer been able to overcome this
difficulty, greater still, it was believed, were
to be got over before she could reach Allaha-
bad ; and had she even succeeded in getting
there, it was supposed she could not be got
back before the setting in of the rains. Under
these circumstances it was deemed the most
advisable plan to return to Benares, and
there wait for further instructions.

Action ofSEther on Sulphate of Indigo. —
When sulphuric aether is added to sulphate
of indigo, in about half an hour, at a tem-
perature of about 30° Reaumur, the colour
of the indigo totally disappears, and no sub-
stance whatever is capable of restoring it.
The colourless mixture being subjected to
distillation, yielded a liqnor which reddened
litmus strongly, and gave no precipitate v/ith
barytic salts ; but with a solution of nitrate of
silver, a precipitate was obtained soluble in
ammonia.

Leech Bites. — Dr. Towendhart mentions
a method of checking the profuse bleeding
from leech-bites, which is simple and effec-
tual. The edges of the little wounds are
drawn together with a fine needle and
thread. The thread being drawn through
the cuticle only, gives no pain, and the
bleeding is at once suppressed.

[JAN.

WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS.

WORKS IN PREPARATION.

The Island Bride. By the Rev. Hobart Cann-
ier, with Illustrations by Martin.

Illustrations of Indian Zoology, from the col-
lection of Major-General Hardwicke, selected and
arranged by S. E. Gray, in folio.

The Poetry of the Magyars, with an Account of
the Language and Literature of Hungary and
Transylvania. Translated by Dr. Bowring.

Dr. Conolly, Professor of Medicine in the Uni-
versity of London, is preparing for publication*
An Inquiry concerning the Indications of Insanity.

A Treatise on Arithmetic, designed for the Use
of Beginners. By Augustus de Morgan, B.A.,
Professor of Mathematics in the University of
London.

Anecdotal Reminiscences of distinguished Li-
terary and Political Characters. By Mr. Leigh
Cliffe. The anecdotes are original, and the work
will be illustrated with numerous autographs.

Creation, a Poem. By William Ball.

A new Latin Class Book, containing The Pro-
verbs of Solomon, arranged under distinct heads,
and placed in parallel lines, with an Intermediate
Latin Version, consisting of the Nominatives, First
Persons, and other roots of the Nouns.

The Satires of Horace, interlinearly translated
by Dr.Nuttall.

Hours of Devotion, for the promotion of true
Christianity and Family Worship. Translated
from the original German.

Patroni Ecclesiarum : or a list, alphabetically
arranged, of all the Patrons of Dignities, Rec-
tories, Vicarages, Perpetual Curacies, and Cha-
pelries of the United Church of England and Ire-
land. With Indexes.

The Memoirs of Madame du Barri, Mistress of
Louis XV. of France, forming three volumes of
Autobiography.

The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, in 2 vols. By
Mrs. Thomson, author of Memoirs of Henry VIII.
and his Times.

The Elements of Hebrew Grammar, with a
Praxis. By the Rev. W. T. Philipps.

Travels in Russia, and a Residence in St.
Petersburg and Odessa in 1827-8, and 9, intended
to give some Account of Russia as it is, and not as
it is represented.

London in a Thousand Years, with other Poems.
By the late Eugenius Roche, esq., editor of the
Courier.

Laurie Todd ; or, the Letters in the Woods:
By Job Gait, Esq.

Records of Capt. Clapperton's last Expedition
to Southern Africa. By Richard Lander, his
faithful attendant, and only surviving member of
that expedition. In 2 vols. post 8vo.

Political Life of the Right Hon. George Can-
ning, from his acceptance of the Seals of the
Foreign Department, in 1822, to his J\>ath. By
A. G. Granville, Esq., late his private Secretary.
In 3 vols. 8vo.

The Life of Major-General Sir T.Monro, Bart,
late Governor of Madras, with extracts from his
correspondence and private papers. By the Rev.
Mr. Gleig. In 2 vols. 8vo.

Travels in Siberia, Kamtschatka and China.

By T. Dobell, Esq., Counsellor of the Court of
the Emperor of Russia. In 2 vols. post 8vo.

Travels in Timbuctoo and other parts of Cen-
tral Africa in 1824 to 1829. By Rene Caillie.
In 2 vols. 8vo.

The Rev. Richard Warner, F.A.S.L., has, In
the press, a volume of Literary Recollections and
Biographical Sketches.

The Portfolio of the Martyr Student, contain-
ing an Introduction, Albert, The Apostate, The
Roman Lovers, Aram, &c. &c.

The Fourth Part of Rickards' India is now in
the press, and will complete the subject, entitled,
The Revenue System of India under the East
India Company's Government, as tending to per-
petuate the degraded condition of the Natives.

A Journal of Occurrences and Events, during
a residence of nearly Forty Years in the East
Indies; to be illustrated with nearly 100 plates.
By Colonel James Welsh. .

A novel is in the press, entitled, Fitz of Fitz-
Ford, founded on a popular and interesting Le-
gend of Devonshire. To be comprised in three
volumes. By Mrs. Bray, author of De Foix.

The Life and Times of Francis the First, King
of France, by James Bacon, Esq., is republished
in an improved and enlarged edition.

Mr. Kauer-Klattowski, author of the German
Synoptical Grammar, has in the press, in two
vols., A Manual of German Literature, intended
for self-tuition. The whole selection will be
illustrated by copious explanatory Notes, and the
first portion of the work will be accompanied by
an interlinear analytical translation.

Mr. Klauer has also nearly ready for publica-
tion, A Manual of Icelandic Literature, with an
Abridgment of Dr. Rask's Swedish-Icelandic
Grammar.

The forthcoming poem of The Reproof of
Brutus, will contain distinct appeals on the state
of the country, to Mr. Peel, Sir F. Burdett,
Messrs. Hume, Horton, and Sadler, the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, the Bishop or London, Sir
Walter Scott, Southey, Campbell, Wordsworth,
and Moore, Malthus, M'Cullock, and Mill.

The author of Free Trade and Colonization of
India, has a work in the press, on the Monopolies
of the East India Company.

Mr. R. Sweet has in the press a new edition
of his Hortus Britannicus, which will contain,
amongst other improvements, the colours of the
flowering plants, and be enlarged by the accession
of many thousand new plants.

A second edition has been called for of the
Speeches of the Right Honourable George Can-
ning, with Memoirs of his Life. By R. Therry,
Esq. In 6 vols. 8vo.

A Monthly Publication is about to appear at
Perth, under the title of The Perth Miscellany of
Literature, Agriculture, Gardening, and Local
Intelligence.

Boswell's Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson. A new
Edition. Edited and illustrated with numerous
Biographical and Historical Notes. By the Right
Hon. John Wilson Croker. 5 vols. 8vo.

A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of
Giovanni Finati, native of Ferrara. Translated"
from the Italian as dictated by himself, and.

1830.]

LlslofNew Works.

«dited by William John Bankcs, Esq. 2 vols.
small Svo.

The Book of Psalms, newly translated from the
Hebrew, and with Explanatory Notes. By W.
Fr^m-h, D.D., Master of Jesus Coll., Camb., and
O. Skinner, M. A., Fellow of Jesus Coll. Camb,

1 vol. 8vo.

Memoir of the Life and Public Services of the
iate Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, F. R. S. By
Ms Widow. With a portrait, map, and plates.
4to.

Principles of Geology. By C. Lyall, F. R. S.,
Foreign Secretary of the Geological Society.

2 vols. Svo.

Conversations on Religion, held in Cephalonia,
xvith Lord Byron, a short time previous to his
Lordship's Death. By the late James Kennedy,
M. D. of H. B. M. Medical Staff. Svo.

Consolations in Travel ; or, The Last Daya of
a Philosopher. By Sir Humphrey Davy, Bart.,
late President of the Royol Society. In 1 vol.

The Life of Julius C»sar. By the Author of
the Life of Alexander the Great. 1 vol. small Svo,
On Financial Reform. By Sir Henry Parnel,
JXu'i. Svo.

Musical Illustrations of the Waverley Novels.
•By Eliza Flower.

The Lost Heir, a Novel, which has truth for
its basis.

Charity Bazaars, a Poem.
The Young Wanderer's Cave, and other Tales.
By the Author of "The Children's Fireside;"
constituting the Second Series of that Work,
in 12mo.

The Villa and Cottage Florists' Directory. By
James Main, A. L.S., in one small volume.

The First Number of a New Topographical
Dictionary of Great Britain and Ireland, by
Mr. J. Gorton, Editor of the General Biographi-
cal Dictionary, &c, will appear in January.
To each Number will he annexed a quarto Map,
engraved on Steel, by Mr. Sydney Hall.

An Essay on the Immateriality and Immortality
of the Human Soul. A new Edition, revised by
Samuel Drew.

The Author of the " Revolt of the Bees," is
about to publish Hambden in the Nineteeth
Century, or Colloquies on the Errors and Im-
provement of Society.

A Compendium of Astronomy. Comprising a
complete Treatise adjusted to the improved state
of the Science, and an Astronomical Dictionary.
Designed for the use of Youth of both Sexes.
By R. T. Linnington, author of " The Companion
to the Globes."

Foreign Works in Preparation.

Voyage aux Indes Orientates, par le JVord
de I' Europe, les provinces du Caucase, la
Georgie, I'Armenie, et la Perse ; suivi de de-
tails topographiques, et statistiques, et autres,
sur le Pegare, les Isles de Java, de Maurice et de'
Bourbon ; sur le Cap de Bonne-Epe ranee et
Ste. Helene, in 4 vols. 4to.t with 2 folio atlasses
containing 200 plates ; 3 vols. will contain the
Narrative, and the 4th Zoology find Botany.

A Prench translation of the Stunden der An-
dacht, or House of Devotion.

A French translation of Heeren's Polity and
Commerce of the Great Nations of Antiquity.

Count Segur's History of France, Vol. IX., the
reign of Louis XI.
M.MNew Series — VOL. IX, No. 49.

M. Caille's Travels to Timbuctoo, edited by M,
Jomard. In 3 vols. Svo.

A Theory of Judaism, applied to the Reform
of the Israelites in all the Countries of Europe;
intended also as a Treatise preparatory to a
French version of the Babylonic Talmud. By the
Abbe Chiarini, who proposes to publish The Tal-
mud, with Commentaries, in 6 vols. folio, dedi-
cated to the Emperor Nicholas, who has assigned
6,000 florins towards printing the first, and 12,000
florins per volume for each of the others.

Le Brut d'Angleterre, one of the most ancient
monuments of the French language— being a
poem and chronicle — a work of the 12th century;
collated with MSS. from the King's library.

Dr. Tholuck, of Halle, announces a new Theo-
logical periodical for 1830.

Professor Kruse has announced to his German
friends that he has deferred the Third Part of his
Hellas, in order to .afford him time for introducing
many plans.'of the Peloponnesus, presented to him
by Sir W. Cell.

An English Journal, under the. title of The
Ausonian, or Monthly Journal of Italian Litera-
ture, is announced at Pisa.

Several hitherto unedited MSS., relative to the
History of the Netherlands, arei by order of His
Majesty, now printing, under the care of the
literati of the Low Countries. They are to form
30 vols in Svo.

A new periodical is aVout to be published by
order of the Emperor of Russia, entitled Journal
of the Home Department. It will be of an offi-
cial character, and consist of Ukases, Reports to
His Majesty, Annual Accounts, &c., Statistics
and News.

M. Eiekhoff announces his Synglosse-Indo-

Europeenne, shewing the connection between the

Sanscrit and the principal European Languages.

M. Vuller has announced that he will shortly

publish his Persian Lexicon.

Professor Neumann has undertaken a trans-
lation of the Chinese work of one of the Meta-
physical Treatises of the celebrated Tchu-hi.

Professor Bopp, of Bonn, will shortly publish
his Sanscrit Grammar in Latin.

M. Roorda van Eysinga has translated from
the Malay into Dutch, and printed at Batavia, in
a 4to. volume, The Crown of the Kings of Buc-
haria. It is the Crown of Malay MSS., and was
originally written in Arabic, and contains the
Mussulman system of government, from examples
taken from the History of the Bucharian ino-
narchs.

LIST OF NEW WORKS.

BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.

The Life of Oliver Cromwell. By the Rev. M.
Russell, LL. D. Published in Constable's Mis-
cellany. 2 vols. 18mo. /s.; or fine paper 10s.

Memoirs of Simon Bolivar, President Libera-
tor of the Republic of Columbia, and of his
principal Generals, comprising a secret History
of the Revolution. By General Dacondray-Hol-
stein. 2 vols. 12mo. 21s.

The Book-Rarities in the University of Cam-
bridge ; illustrated by Original Letters, and
Notes, Biographical, Literary, aud Antiquarian.
By the Rev. C. H. Ilaitsborne, M. A. Svo.
JE\. 11s. 6d.

O

List of New Works.

[JAN-

The Vocabulary of East Anglla ; an Attempt
to record the Vulgar Tongue of the twin-sister
Counties, Norfolk and Suffolk, as it existed in
the last Twenty Years of the 18th Century, and
still exists. By the late Rev. R. Forby, M. A.
of Finsham, Norfolk. 2 vols. 8vo. 21s.

A History of Tewkesbury. By James Bennett.
Svo. with Plates. 15s.

FINE ARTS.

Passes of the Alps, by W. Brockendon, is now
completed, in 2 vols. imperial 8vo., .£10., royal
4 to. proofs .£15.

Conversations on Miniature Painting. By Miss
Emma Kendrick. In post Svo. 10s. 6d.

A Selection of the most Remarkable and In-
teresting of the Fishes found on the Coast of Cey-
lon ; from Drawings made in the Southern Parts
of that Island, from the Living Specimens. By
J. W. Bennett, Esq. In 4to. jBl. Is.

The Panorama of the Thames, from London to
Richmond, exhibiting every object on both bauks
of the river. J£\. 8s. plain, .£2. 16s. coloured.

A Nautical Dictionary, or Explanation of Naval
Terms and Manners, in 47 humourous Carica-
tures, designed and etched by Heath. 6s. plain,
12s. coloured.

A Series of Subjects from the works of the late
R. P. Bonnington, drawn on stone by J. D. Hard-
ing. Part II. 12s.

Robinson's Designs for Farm Buildings. Noa.
8 and 9. 6s. each.

Wetten's Designs for Villas in the Italian style
of Architecture. Part IV. 6s.

LAW.

A History of English Law, or an Attempt to
Trace the Rise, Progress, and successive Changes
of the Common Law, from the earliest period to
the present time. By George Crabb, Esq., Bar-
rister. Svo. 16s.

The Law relating to Highways, Turnpike Roads,
Public Bridges, Navigable Rivers, &c. &c. By
J. Egremont. Vol. I. Svo. 12s. 6d. boards.

The Constable's Pocket Companion and Guide;
containing their Duties, Powers, Responsibilities,
Indemnity, Remuneration, &c. By James Shaw.
12mo. 4s.

The Office and Duty of Executors ; or a Trea-
tise of Wills and Executors. By Thomas Went-
wortb.Esq. Svo. 16s.

A View of the Court of Chancery. By the
Hon. William Long Wellesley. Svo. 63.

MEDICAL.

Sketches of Intellectual and Moral Relations.
By Daniel Pring, M. D. Svo. 15s.

A Treatise on Poisons, in relation to Medical
Jurisprudence, Physiology, and the Practice. By
R. Christison, M. D. Svo. 16s. boards.

Bradsley'B Hospital Facts. Svo. 7s.

Hammick on Amputations. Svo. 9s.

Letters addressed to the Royal College of
Physicians, on their Constitution and Charter;
with Prefatory Observations to His Grace the
Duke of Wellington. By Sir A. B. Faulkner.
Svo. 2s. sewed.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Recreations in Science ; or, a Complete Series
ef Rational Amusement. ISmo. 3s. 6d.

Apollo's Gift, or the Musical Souvenir for
1830. 10i.

The East India Register for 1830. 10s.
Time's Telescope for 1830. 9s.
An Introduction to a Course of German Litera-
ture, in Five Lectures, delivered to the Students
of the University of London. By Ludwig von
Muhlenfels, LL. D. Svo.

A Manual of German Literature; containing
Classical Specimens of German Prose and Poetry,
Systematically arranged. By Ludwig von
Muhlenfells, LL.D. 2 vols. foolscap. 16s.

A Summary of Herodotus, and a Copious
Index. 12mo. SB.

A Selection from Lucian's Dialogues, with a
Literal Interlinear Translation, accompanied by
illustrative Notes. 12mo. 2s. 6d.

Supplement to Marshall's Naval Biography.
Part III. Svo. 15s.

Church Reform. By a Churchman. Svo. 8s. 6d.

An Essay on the Uses of Common Salt for
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Experiments and Illustrations from the latest
Authorities. By Cutlibert W. Johnson. Third
Edition. 5s.

A History of English Gardening, Chronological,
Biographical, Literary, and Critical ; tracing the
Progress of the Art in this Country, from the
Invasion of the Romans to the Present Time.
By George W. Johnson. 8s. 6d.

The Elements of Algebra ; designed for the
Use of Students in the University. By John
Hind, M. A., Fellow of the Cambridge Philoso-
phical Society, &c. &c. Svo. 10s. 6d.

A Letter to the Earl of Mountcashel, on a
Change in the Laws of Property. ls-.6d. sd.

A Treatise on Atmospheric Electricity; includ-
ing1 Obsersations on Lightning Rods and Para-
greles. By John Murray. 6s.

Thoughts on Laughter. By a Chancery Bar-
rister. 18mo. 3s.

The Territorial Government and Commerce of
the East India Company. Svo.

The British Farmer's (quarterly) Magazine.
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The Pomological Magazine, coloured plates.
Vol. If. £3. 3s. bound.

The Present Distress in relation to the Theory
of Money. By Edward Selby, Esq. Is..

A Letter on the present Distress of the Country.
By C. C. Western, Esq., M.P. Is.

A Letter upon Prison Discipline ; with a Plan
to defray the expense of prison establishments, &c.
By John Mance, governor of the house of correc-
rection, Petworth, Sussex.

Report of the Doncaster Agricultural Society
on Bone Manure. 2s.

NOVELS AND TALES.

The Exclusives, a Novel. In 3 vols. post Svo.
JEI. Us. 6d.

Tales of an Indian Camp. In 3 vols. post Svo.
JEI. 11s. 6d.

The Rivals, a Novel. By the author of " The
Collegians." In 3 vols. post Svo.

The Fortunate Union, a Romance. Translated
from the Chinese Original, with Notes and Illus-
trations. To which is added, a Chinese Tragedy.
By L. F. Davis. In 2 vols. Svo.

The Olio; or, Museum of Entertainment. Vols.
I. II. and HI., containing 88 Engravings. 23s.

POETRY.

The Maid of Scio, a Tale of Modern Greece.
In Six Cantos. 12mo. 5s..

1-830.]

Lift of New Works.

Oliver Cromwell, a Poem, in Three Books.
l2mo. 6s.

Poems on Malvern, and other Subjects. By E.
Smith. In 18mo. 5s. boards.

RELIGION, MORALS, &C.

Eight Lectures on the First Eight Articles of
the Church of England ; with an Introductory
Discourse preached in Cardiff Church. ByD.
Jones, M.A. 5s. sewed.

Sermons preached at St. Botolph's Church, by
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Annotations on St. Mark. By the Rev. Robert
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Coxe's Liturgy Revised. Crown 8vo. 5s.

Gracie's Worship in the Presbyterian Church.
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Carstair's Scottish Communion Service. In
12mo. 5s. 6d.

A New Scheme of Evangelical Religion. In
12mo. 2s. 6d.

Thoughts on Antitiomianism. By Sylvanus.
PostSvo. 4s.

The Olive Branch ; a Religious Annual for
1830. Consisting of Original Contributions in
Prose and Verse, embellished with a fine Portrait
t>f the Rev. Robert. Gordon, D.D. In 32mo.,
bound in silk. 4s. 6d.

A Child's First Introduction to the Study of the
Holy Scriptures, in a Series of Dialogues between
a Mother and her Child. By A. Catherine Mant,
In 2 vols. 18mo. 6s.

Christian Education, in Spirit and in Truth,
the Forerunner of a New Day; in a course of
Lectures delivered in London, in Spring, 1829.
By Dr. Biber. In 8vo. 7s. 6d.

SCHOOL AND CHILDREN'S BOOKS. '

Familiar Astronomy. By George Darley, A.B.
J2mo. with numerous engravings. 7s. 6d.

The Modern Literary Reader ; consisting of

Selections In Prose and Verse. By L. Langley,
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Dictates ; or Selections in Prose and Verse, fof
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3s. 6d.

Laurent le Paresseux, Tarlton, et la Fausie
Clef. Trois Petits Contes, traduit de 1'Anglai*
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Commedie Scelte di Carlo Goldoni ; or, a Selec-
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L'Avaro, II Cavaliere e la Darna, Un Curioso
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Words properly accented. By A. Gombert. 12mo.
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Recollections of a Blue Coat Boy. 18mo.
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The Toy Shop, or Sentimental Preceptor,
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The Lotus, or Faery Flower of the Poeti.
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Tales of a Grandfather, being Stories from the
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ter Scott, Bart. 3 vols. 10s. 6d.

Bertha's Visit to her Uncle, in England ; com-
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Young Persons. 3 vols. 12mo. 10s. 6d.
VOYAGES AND TRAVELS.

Narrative and Successful Result of a Voyage
to the South Seas : performed by Order of the
Government of British India, to Ascertain the
actual Fate of La Perouse's Expedition. By the.
Chevalier Capt. P. Dillon. 2 vols. 8vo.

Narrative of the Siege and Capture of Bhurt-
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under Lord Combermere, 1825 and 6. By J. N.
Creighton, Esq., Captain in the llth Light Dra-
goons. 4to. 21s.

Bengalee : or, Sketches of Society and Manner*
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PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS.

Patents sealed in November, 1829.

To Francis Westby, Leicester, cutler, for his
having invented certain improved apparatus to
be used for the purpose of whetting or sharpen-
ing the edges of the blades of razors, penknives,
or other cutting instruments.— 26th November ;
2 months.

To John Marshall, Southampton-street, Strand,
Middlesex, tea-dealer, for his new-invented me-
thod of preparing or making an extract from
cocoa, which he denominates, Marshall's Extract
of Cocoa.— 10th December ; 2 months.

To Benjamin Goulson, Pendleton, Lancashire,
suvcreon, for his having invented or found out
certain improvements in the manufacturing of
farina and sugar, from vegetable productions.—
14th December ; 6 months.

To Charles Derosne, Leicester-square, Middle-
sex, gentleman, in consequence of a communica-
tion made to him by a certain foreigner residing

abroad and invented by himself, being in posses-
sion of an invention for certain improvements in
extracting sugar or syrups from cane-juice and
other substances containing sugar, and in re-
fining sugar and syrups. — 14th December; 2
months.

Patents, which having been granted in the
month of January 1816, expire in the pre-
sent month of January 1830.

9. Joseph Reynolds, Kitley, Salop, for im-
provements in the construction of wheel-car-
riages, ploughs, <§rc. to be moved by steam.

10. Edward Cooper, London, for his method of
printing paper for paper hanging.

15. Thomas Deacon, and John Richard Haynes,
London, for an improved stove grate or fire-
place.

23. James Barren, London, for his
merits in castors.

C ioo 3

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS.

BARRY ST. I.EGER.

ALTHOUGH genius may not have lived
to accomplish all of which it was capable,
or to have performed, in the maturity of
manhood, that which we had a right to an-
ticipate from its earlier efforts, we should
not let it sink into a premature grave with-
out some slight history of what it had at-
chieved, and some notice of what it has pro-
jected. We do not like to see talent pass
from the face of society, that has been de-
lighted with its exertions, unhonoured by
some tribute to its memory ; nor, to snfFe?
the recollection of its existence to be effaced,
as easily as that of the many who have
passed through life, without having performed
one act to distinguish them from the mass
of their fellow-creatures. Had the subject
of the present memoir been permitted a
longer life, instead of having been con-
demned to a premature death, he would, in
all probability, have established a character
by his literary labours, which would have
made the proudest biographical work glad to
have enrolled his name among the history
of those whose works have earned for them
a deathless name. As it is, the few works
Mr. St. Leger has left us, are too excellent
of their kind, and have entitled their au-
thor to too great a reputation, for us to per-
mit his life and death to pass unrecorded
among his literary contemporaries ; and it
is with a melancholy pleasure that we con-
sider it among the eludes of our office to
devote a few of our pages to the purpose of
preserving some reminiscences of the talents,
which, like those of Mr. St. Leger, have
been cut off by death before they had
reached their maturity.

Francis Barry Boyle St. Leger was the
son of a most respectable Irish family of that
name, and very nearly connected with seve-
ral distinguished families, both in England
and Ireland. The youngest child, he was
from his infancy rather the favourite of his
mother, the Honourable Mrs. St. Leger;
and, to this circumstance, as well as to the
precocity of his own mind, that very early
introduction to society which gave such a
character to his future life and manners, is
perhaps to be attributed. His father, being
the intimate friend of Francis Lord Guild-
ford, introduced Mr. Barry St. Leger, even
while an infant, to the distinguished circle
at Wroxton. This circle consisted of the
principal of the whig party in politics, .and
of all that was eminent for genius and lite-
rature of the day. Here it was that Sheri-
dan let loose the flood-gates of his wit ; and
that John Kemble condescended to play the
inferior parts in the pieces which were got up
in their private theatricals, and the subject
of our present memoir frequently acted, as a
child, the most prominent part in the piece
in which Mr. Kemble took the inferior cha-
racter. The precocity of his mind made

him a general favourite with the circle ; ami
from this early introduction to society he
derived those ideas and knowledge of life at
a very early period, which, under ordinary
circumstances, are only the result of years
and experience. Here too, from the liberal
political principle which he heard discussed,
he imbibed those notions of politics which
in his mind generated that true indepen-
dence of principle, which is of no party,
and upon which he acted, frequently to his-
own detriment, throughout the remainder
of his short life. From the powers of enter-
tainment which at this early period he
evinced, he became not only the pet of the
Guildford family, but of the whole circle
that then frequented Wroxton ; and allowed
to mingle in their meetings with more than
the privileges of a man, he saw so much of
society, and with a discrimination so much
beyond his years, that at a very early period
he entered into active life with a better
knowledge of society than falls to the lot'of
many of twice his age.

He commenced his education at Rugby,
in the expectation of completing it at col-
lege ; a high civil situation in India, how-
ever, being offered to his friends, it was
accepted for him ; and thus entering early
into active life, he completed his education
in the world. At seventeen he went to
India, where unforeseen circumstances threw
him into the performance of more arduous
duties, and into situations of so much con-
sequence and responsibility, that his life in
India used to be a subject of wonder to him-
self, when additional experience made him
more sensible of the high offices he had per-
formed at so early an age as seventeen.
The customs of the country, however, as ill
accorded with his recollections of Wroxton
comforts, as what he called the tyranny and
the injustice of the Eastern government,
did with the principles of liberty which he
had imbibed in that circle. He now there-
fore determined to throw up his situation ;
and with the full knowledge of the arduous
task before him in this country of fighting
his way even to competence, through all the
fag of the English bar, he sacrificed the
certainty of a large fortune to his indepen-
dence of principle, came back to England,
and entered himself a member of the Inner
Temple. From this period his literary la-
bours commenced. Independently of writing
for various periodical publications, he be-
came the editor of the Album, a work set on
foot, and published by Mr. Ascham, the li-
brarian, of Bond-street, to whose kindness
in this early stage of his short career, Mr.
St. Leger has frequently expressed himself
as being greatly indebted.

In 1823 he wrote Gilbert Earle, which
was published by Mr. Charles Knight, of
Pull Mall East, another esteemed friend of
the author. This book at once ranked him

1830.]

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons.

101

among the highest of his contemporaries in
works of fiction. It displayed an intensity
of feeling, and a knowledge of human na-
ture far above his years, and became so ge-
nerally read and admired, and so much
talked of in the highest circles, that it in-
duced him to proceed in the same path ;
and Blount's Manuscripts, published by
Knight, and Tales of Passion, lately publish-
ed by Colburn, were other productions of his
pen in the same walk of literary composi-
tion. The tendency of these works has
been objected to by some fastidious critics,
although their power over the feelings of
the reader has been acknowledged by all i
but in any impartial analysis of the whole of
the writings of Mr. St. Leger, they will be
found quite as honourable to the moral qua-
lities of his mind,, as they are creditable to
his genius. He never wrote but with the
view of correcting error, or of doing some
good to society. If scenes are depicted too
vividly, it was owing to the intensity of feel-
ing with which he wrote ; he never became
a hacknied author ; he never wrote merely
technically ; he felt his subject before it en-
grossed his pen ; and to these reflections
and reminiscences are to be imputed all the
penchant and energy of his own feelings.
Although he wrote with a facility equalled
by few of his contemporaries, he was never
idle ; inactivity was never a characteristic of
his genius, which was ever on the alert, and
always at work. During this period he
wrote almost constantly for the most respec-
table periodicals of the day ; and at the same
time pursued his professional studies with a
perseverance that, added to the peculiar ta-
lent he possessed of speaking, would ulti-
mately have ensured his standing at the bar,
to which he was called as a member of the
Inner Temple, in the year 1827.

In his circuit he was making considerable
progress, and, had he been spared, there is
every probability that he would have at-
tained that eminence in his profession which
his early talents indicated. This, however,
with all other prospects, were cut short by
his premature death. In June last he was
seized with a fit of epilepsy, produced, it is
supposed, by a too constant exertion of
mind ; from this he partly recovered ; but
relapse succeeding relapse, so wore down his
constitution, that, strong as it was, it sunk
at last under his repeated attacks, and he
died on the 20th of November, at the early
age of thirty, in the house of some friends,
who had long been warmly attached to him
for the many excellent qualities he possessed.
Thus died Barry St. Leger, who a few
previous months appeared possessed of
strength and constitution, that seemed to
ensure a long life ; and of qualities of intel-
lect and mind that would have made that
life a distinguished one. He was cut off
amidst a number of projects, which, if ac-
complished, would have placed him very
high in the literary annals of our country.
He had long determined to write no more

works of mere fiction ; but to devote him-
self to historical composition. At the time
of his death he had nearly completed and
printed a work, founded upon the old chro-
niclers, which we trust will be still given to
the world. He had projected a History of
the Wars in Spain, and of the Reformation
in France ; both of them very interesting
branches of general history ; and had made
some progress in the first, a specimen of
which had been submitted to the Society for
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. These,
with other works, had occupied a great por-
tion of his time in the year previous to his
death ; and it is to be feared were so mucli
thought upon even during his last illness,
as to impede his recovery. His mind was
too active for his friends to keep it in that
passive state so necessary to his convales-
cence. As a writer, Mr. St. Leger displayed
great in tenseness of feeling, and a deep know-
ledge of the secret workings of human na-
ture. His descriptions were vivid, and pic-
tures of passion powerful. His Gilbert
Earle, and his tale of the Bohemians, rank
among the best efforts in this department of
literature. As a man he was estimable ;
and, as a companion and friend, the delight
of all who enjoyed his intimacy. His con-
versation was always fluent, and generally
brilliant ; and a remarkably strong, as well as
a peculiarly discriminating memory, enabled
him so to illustrate it by anecdote and by
quotation, that there were few who had en-
joyed his society once, that did not covet a
continuance of his acquaintance. In Barry
St. Leger, his family have lost an affection-
ate brother, his friends a delightful compa-
nion, and the world a man whose talent
might have added much more to the literary
store of his country, than his short career
has permitted.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR MILES
NIGHTINGALL, K. B. C. &C.

Few officers have been engaged in a
greater variety of active and important ser-
vice than the late Sir Miles Nightingall.
He entered the army on the 4th of April,
17$7? as an ensign in the 52d regiment of
foot, and proceeded immediately to India.
On the 12th of November, 1788, he was
promoted to a lieutenancy in the same corps.
Remaining in India, he was employed in
the army under the late Sir William Mea-
dows, in the campaign of 1790, and was
present with the grenadiers of the 52d regi-
ment, at the assault of Dendegul.

Immediately after that affair, he was ap-
pointed Major of brigade to the King's
troops ; and, in that capacity, attached to
the first brigade, he was engaged at the siege
of Puliganacherry. In the campaigns of
1791 and 1792, under Lord Cornwallis, he
was present at the siege and assault of the
town and fortress of Bangalore ; at the siege
and storming of the stronghill fort of Severn-
droog ; in the general action with Tippoo
Saib, near Seringapatam, on the 15th of

102

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons.

[JAN.

May, 1791 ; in the general action of the
6th of February, 1792, when the enemy's
lines were stormed under the walls of Sering-
apatam, and at the siege of that capital, the
surrender of which led to a termination of
the war on the 19th of the ensuing month.

In the peace which followed, he continued
as major of brigade to the king's forces. On
the breaking out of the war with France, in
1793, he served at the siege and capture of
Pondicherry. He remained in India till
August, 1794, when, in consequence of
severe illness, he was under the necessity of
returning to England ; where, on his arrival,
he was appointed Aid-de-camp to the Mar-
quis Cornwallis, then commanding the east-
ern district. Previously to this, however, on
the 1st of September, 1794, he had obtained
a company in the 125th foot.

On the 28th of February, 1795, Captain
Nightingall was promoted to a Majority in
the 121st Foot, and appointed Brigade Ma-
jor-General to the eastern district.

On the 9th of September, in the same
year, he procured, by purchase, a Lieutenant-
Colonelcy in the 115th regiment ; and, on
the 28th of October, also in 1795, he was re-
moved to the 38th regiment of Foot. In
the two succeeding years, he served with the
latter regiment in the West Indies. Owing
to a severe attack of the yellow fever, he
was compelled to return to England; but,
having recovered during the voyage home, he
was immediately after his arrival, appointed
deputy Adjutant-General to the forces in
St. Domingo. He sailed for that island
early in 1798, and held his appointment till
July, when he was sent home with despatches
to government.

In February, 1799, Lieutenant-Colonel
Nightingall again proceeded to St. Domingo,
accompanied by Lieutenant-General Mait-
land, on a mission of considerable import-
ance to Toussaint L'Ouverture, the cele-
brated black chief.

On his return to England, in the month
of July following, he was made assistant
Adjutant-General to the army, under the
Duke of York, in Holland. There, he was
engaged in the actions of the 19th of Sep-
tember, and the 2nd of October. He was
next employed on the coast of France, under
Lieutenant-General Maitland. In January
1800, he sailed for Quiberon Bay ; .in Feb-
ruary, he returned to England, to take out
troops for an attack upon Belleisle ; and, soon
afterwards, he sailed from Cork, with the
36th regiment of Foot, with the view of
taking possession of Honat, as a preparatory
measure. The object, however, was aban-
dence, and, in July, he returned home with
despatches. In 1801, he was appointed
assistant Quarter-Master-General to the
eastern district : a post which he enjoyed
until the cessation of hostilities between
France and England, when he accompanied
the Marquis of Cornwallis to Amiens and
Paris, as private secretary.

In July, 1802, this officer was appointed

to a Lieutenant-Colonelcy in the 51st Foot.
On the 25th of September, 1803, he ob-
tained the rank of Colonel in the Army.

Having been appointed Quarter-Master-
General to the king's troops in India, Co-
lonel Nightingall sailed, in 1803, for Bengal.
On his arrival there, he found that the army
under Lord Lake had taken the field against
the Mahrattas. He joined immediately ;
reached head-quarters previously to the at-
tack on Agra, and served in the attack of a
body of infantry posted under the walls of
that town, and at the siege and capture of
the fortress. He was afterwards in the
general and decisive action at Laswaree; and
he continued to serve with the army in the
field till the termination of the war with
Scindeah.

•In 1805, Colonel Nightingall was ap-
pointed military secretary to the Marquis
Cornwallis. On the 8th of May, 1806, he
was removed from the 5 1 st to the 69th regi-
ment. On the death of the Marquis Corn-
wallis he remained in Bengal, in the office
of Qurter-Master-General, until February
1807. His health being much impaired, he
then returned to England, and soon after-
wards resigned his staff appointment.

Colonel Nightingall's interval of relaxa-
tion was very brief. Within four months
after his return, he was appointed to serve
as Brigadier-General, with the forces under
Major-General Spencer. He accordingly
proceeded to Gibraltar, and was employed on
the coast of Spain, until General Spence's
division joined the army under Sir Arthur
Wellesley, at Mondego Bay. He was then
appointed to command the third brigade,
with which he served during the campaign
of 1808. He was consequently in the actions
of Roleia and Vimiera, for his gallant con-
duct in which he received the thanks of Par-
liament.

Early in July, 1809, he was placed on the
staff of the Kent district, as Brigadier-Ge-
neral. Ill health detained him from active
service till the month of January, 1810,
when, with the rank of Major-General, he
returned to Portugal, joined the army at
Cartaxo, and distinguished himself in the
battle of Fuentes d'Onor.

In 1812, Major-General Nightingall once
more visited Bengal, and was sent by Lord
Minto to take the chief command of Java
and its dependencies. In that station, he
reduced the Rajah of Boni, and also esta-
blished the British supremacy in Celebes.
On the 14th of June, 1814, he was made
Lieutenant-General ; in 1815, a Knight
Commander of the Bath ; and, soon after-
wards, he received the Colonelcy of the 6th
West India Regiment.

The Lieutenant-General was next in-
vested with the command in chief at Bom-
bay, whether he sailed in 1816. He re-
mained there till 1819, when he returned to
England. On the 19th of February, 1820,
he was appointed Colonel of the 49th Foot.

At the time of this officer's death, which

1830.]

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons.

103

occurred at Gloucester, in the month of Oc-
tober, he had been several years one of the
representatives in Parliament of the borough
of Eye, in Suffolk. He was in his 61 st year.

JOSEPH MAWE, ESQ.

Joseph Mawe, an old and valued corres-
pondent of the Monthly Magazine, and
justly celebrated throughout Europe as a
mineralogist, geologist, and chonchologist,
was born about the year 1755. His first
introduction to the scientific world, was,
we believe, through " The Mineralogy of
Derbyshire, with a Description of the most
interesting Mines in the North of England,
Scotland, and Wales ;" an octavo volume,
published in the year 1802. This is a per-
spicuous and useful work, fraught with in-
formation, relating to the mineral treasures
of Derbyshire.

It is to the enterprise and talent of Mr.
Mawe, that we are indebted for the most
faithful and interesting description of the
Brazilian States that has yet appeared in
this country. We understand that, subse-
quently to the publication of his work upon
Derbyshire, he undertook a commercial
voyage to the Rio de la Plata. On his
arrival at Monte Video, his ship and cargo
were seized ; and, on the appearance of the
expedition under General Beresford, he was
banished into the interior. When he had
recovered his liberty, he went to Brazil,
where he was graciously received by the
Prince Regent, afterwards John VI. of Por-
tugal. By that prince he was employed,
in the year 1810, to investigate the mine-
ralogical riches — the extensive gold and
diamond districts — and the agricultural
state of the empire of Brazil. He was the
first Englishman who had ever been so en-
gaged ; and his task was performed in a
manner equally satisfactory to himself and
to the Prince Regent. On his return to
England, he gave to the public the first
portion of the result of his observations, in
a quarto volume, entitled " Travels in the
Interior of Brazil." This was in the year
1812. The book immediately ranked
amongst the most valuable standard works

of its class; and it has not only gone
through numerous editions in England, and
in the United States of America, but has
also been translated into almost all the con-
tinental languages, and published in France,
Sweden, Germany, Russia, Portugal, Bra-
zil, &c.

In 1813, Mr. Mawe published his "Trea-
tise on Diamonds and Precious Stones," a
work also of considerable celebrity. As a
mineralogist, he was now deservedly held in
the highest estimation for the variety and
importance of his knowledge, and for the
facility with which he developed the princi-
ples ofj^his favourite science. He was, in
consequence, employed by a great personage
on the Continent, to collect mineralogical
and geological specimens in the counties of
Devon and Cornwall. In this pursuit, he
discovered, in a mine, on the edge of Dart-
moor, a rich vein of arsenical cobalt, and
capillary native silver. Of the capillary
silver, some of the fibres are said to have
been more than a foot in length.

In addition to the works already men-
tioned, Mr. Mawe published "Familiar
Lessons on Mineralogy and Geology," a
little volume which has gone through many
editions ; — " An Introduction to the Study
of Conchology ;"_" The Linnaean System
of Conchology; "_"The Shell-collecting
Pilot, or Voyager's Companion;" — "In-
structions for the Blow-Pipe ;" — " A De-
scription of Lapidaries' Apparatus ;" — and
several other works ; besides which, he con-
tributed to Lamarck's Conchology, &c.

Mr. Mawe was a member of the Mine-
ralogical Society of Jena. For several
years, during the latter part of his life, he
kept a shop near Somerset-House, in the
Strand, for the sale of mineralogical and
geological specimens — in fact of every thing
connected with the sciences to which his
useful life was devoted.

In all the domestic relations, Mr. Mawe
was not only respected and esteemed, but
beloved. After a long and severe illness,
he died at his residence in the Strand, on
the 26th of October.

MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT.

OUR letters from the country furnish us with nothing new respecting the season, the
ulture and condition of the lands, or the extremely depressed condition and circumstances
of the majority of their occupiers. The season for wheat sowing has been more propitious
than we had expected ; and that most important branch has been, in general, completed to
its fullest extent, upon a considerably improved tilth. The great and almost universal
defect is the unparalleled foul state of the lands ; which, however favourable the ensuing
year may prove, must occasion a vast defalcation in the bulk and measure of the crops of
every kind, with, too probably, no slight deterioration of their quality. There is no possi-
bility of eradicating weeds from broad-cast or narrow-drilled corn. Among the best farmers
the spring fallows are in a considerable state of forwardness : an important branch of cul-
ture which has been impeded beyond precedent, in consequence of the inordinate length
of the late most vexatious and distressing harvest.

We have in late reports described the young wheats as forward, and, to a degree, luxu-

104 Agricultural Report. £JAN.

riant ; which, however, must be understood as relative to those upon the warmest and most
fertile soils ; since, generally, and upon poor lands especially, the coming Christmas will
exhibit the shortest and most backward show of wheat upon the lands within memory.
Unavoidable late sowing, and the foul, sodden, and chilled state of the earth, are obvi-
ously the joint cause. The frosts have had the beneficial effect of checking the ravages of
the slug, which had commenced its destructive career. Tares, clover, and the artificial
grasses, have made good progress. Opinion has; again varied in respect to the wheat crop,
which, it is now asserted, will not prove so considerable in quantity, as was supposed during
harvest. The poorer class of farmers have perhaps generally disposed of the greater part of
their stock of wheat, in order to discharge, as far as within their power, the very pressing
demands upon them ; and many in better circumstances, from one motive or another, have
thinned unusually their stack-yards. The barley and pulse crops are in sufficient plenty; but
the greater part of the former stained by the wet, and the latter soft, and hence not readily
saleable ; and all gradually declining in price. The quantities of barley, fit for malting,
offered at market, have been very limited during the season — a circumstance apparently of
no great consequence, the brewers holding great stocks of malt as well as hops, of which the
deficiency of the late crop has had no great effect in raising the price. The stocks in hand,
and the foreign import, which must continue during the spring, preclude all expectation of
a rising corn market.

The cattle markets, both for fat and store stock, are supposed to have, reached their
minimum of autumnal price, and are quoted with a shade of advance. There has been a
fine opportunity of purchase for those who have possessed the means, together with the
materials of winter keep. They cannot fail of a profitable return. With respect to those,
the majority, it is to be feared, in reduced circumstances, they have been enabled to pur-
chase on credit, even where an old arrear has subsisted, from the absolute necessity of sale
in the glutted markets. Winter cattle feeding, however, may prove a serious concern,
more especially in the event of a long frost, (no unreasonable expectation) from the general
failuie of the root crops, of mangold beyond the others, which, when successful, affords
such immense supplies. Its total deficiency will be severely felt in the coming season,
turnips also being a failure, and potatoes below an average crop. Carrots and parsnips, by
far the most nutritious of all our roots, fitted indeed only to one particular soil, are
much neglected in England, even upon the proper soils. The carrots of the present season
are particularly fine, and of substantial quality. Apples are superabundant, and the metro-
polis is amply stocked, not only with the new varieties, but with increasing quantities of
the old and excellent sorts, the nonpareil, russetin, rennet, and pippin of improved quality.
Cider in the west is retailed at twopence the quart !

Flesh meat has sold in the country at an old-fashioned price, very ill suited to present
cost. In Wales, good beef and mutton have been retailed at three-pence per Ib. Here we
have a verification of the old adage, " down corn, down horn." It would seem, however,
there must subsist some other cause for this, than the inability to purchase food, in, we
hope, yet a small comparative minority. Fine things, nevertheless, have commanded a fine
price ; and a small lot of Devon oxen, the prime beef of England, of about seventy stones
each, the property of his Grace the Duke of Norfolk, have been sold at somewhat above one
shilling per Ib ; some Scots, of about sixty stones weight, at the same price. In the late fully
attended annual London cattle show, the animals brought to their existing state of fatness,
at such an expense of time and money, (no palpable evidence of poverty in the country)
have met with considerable prices. At the cattle show at Chelmsford, Mr. Western, M.P.
for the county of Essex, exhibited three pure Merino wedders, not only valuable for the fine-
ness of their fleece, but for their general symmetry and fatness of carcass. This gentleman,
with Mr. Towers of the same coumty, and the late Mr. Trimmer, whose fine stock will
soon be on sale, have deserved well of their country, for retaining and improving this most
valuable breed, so unaccountably neglected by the great body of our flock -masters, who now
complain so much of the depreciation of British wool, and of the preference shown to
foreign.

The accounts from various parts of the country are horrible, and nationally disgraceful .
From such parts, a dread of the difficulties to be encountered during the winter, in regard
to the maintenance of the surplus labourers, appears to be most appalling ; whilst in dis-
tricts more favourably circumstanced, there appears almost an incredulity on the subject,
and a general apathy. Our sympathy for the suffering of the labourers is shocked,- and
materially reduced, by that disgusting demoralization by which they are too generally dis-
graced. Incendiarism and horrible cruelty to animals, appear to be their favourite modes of
revenge. Among so many similar instances, the shoulder of a poor sheep has been lately
severed from its living carcass, and the animal left in that mangled and tortured state ! The
wrongs and cruelties inflicted on the suffering poor, have, no doubt, from the beginning
been enormous, and an attention to their morals either totally neglected, or conducted,
more especially of late years, on erroneous principles ; but they possess yet too much of the
common sense of the times, and sufficient acuteness, to merit forgiveness or apology for
their enormities. These wretches, so prone and ready for mischief and diabolism, would
skulk and hang back on any honest, patriotic call for their co-operation and assistance, even

1830.] Agricultural Report. 105

in their own cause. Their insolence goes hand in hand with their dishonesty and cruelty.
We hear from Baldock, Herts, that property is in a state of insecurity never before expe-
rienced, and that the wretched and degraded labourers on the roads treat passengers with
the most wanton insults. On the occasion of some sheep and Christmas turkies being
stolen, these highly gratified insolents amused themselves by the exclamations, to all who
passed, of, "gobble, gobble," and "baa, baa!" The meeting of Parliament being sp
near, it would be premature to say any thing on the meditated petitions for the reduction
or abolition of the duties on malt and beer ; yet one remark may be in place, on the almost
universal preference (pf John Bull, rich or poor) of sophisticated, sugar-sopped, and
drugged beer. De guslibus non est disputandum ; thence we will remain contented with
our own, without pretending to prescribe in the case for others. As to the geneial state of
public affairs, surely we ought to remain contented, and even elated, by the most blooming
hopes, since WILLIAM COBBETT, that well known and eminent master of the gift of the
gab, whether on paper or ore rotunda, being rejected as prime minister by his ill-advised
sovereign, is about to become the prime minister of the people. This eminence, no doubt,
his lectures will procure for him.

Smithfield.—'B&S, 3s. 2d. to 4s. 8d — Mutton, 3s. 6d. to 4s. 10d.— Veal, 4s. Od.to5s. 4d.
Pork, 3s. 8d. to 5s. 2d — Rough Fat, 2s. 2d.

Corn Exchange — Wheat, 43s. to 80s — Barley, 22s. to 40s — Oats, 12s. to 32s —
Fine Bread, the London 4 Ib. Loaf, lOd — Hay, 55s. to 100s. per load — Clover, ditto,
55s. to 115s — Straw, 30s. to 42s.

Coals in the Pool, 29s. to 39s. 9d. per chaldron.
Middlesex, December 21st.

MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT.

SUGAR — The decline which took place in the prices of Musccvidoes, appears to attract
the attention of the trade, and the prices are in several instances a shade higher. St. Lucia
sugar sold 43s. to 52s. ; the low brown sold lower than the market prices. The estimated
sales this week, 3,100 hogsheads and tierces. In refined goods there is little alteration ;
the export demand is inconsiderable, and the grocers purchase only for their immediate
wants. Molasses are higher, and rather brisk. N East India Sugar — There is still a good
demand for Bengal sugars ; sales are reported at Is. 6cl. advance on the late East India
House sale. Foreign Sugar — There is some demand for Havannah sugars for the Medi-
terranean ; and several large contracts are reported 26s. to 30s., stated, we believe, about
27s., some low white Pernams sold at 25s.

COFFEE. — The sales of this week are quite inconsiderable, the middling Dutch and
good to fine middling Jamaica, met a ready sale for home consumption ; but all inferior
parcels are very dull, and are offered at reduced rates. In Foreign or East India Coffee
there are no transactions worth reporting ; the market is dull, without alteration in prices.

RUM, BRANDY, AND HOLLANDS — The sales of rum are more limited than last
week ; they consist of some good parcels of Jamaica at former prices ; some proof Leewards
rather under Is. 3d., and a parcel Is. under Is. 7d. ; Brandy is held with much firmness,
on account of the high prices in France ; Geneva is without variation.

HEMP, FLAX, AND TALLLOW. — The tallow market has been very firm all the week.
In hemp and flax there is no alteration worth reporting ; the letters from St. Petersburgh
are dated the Istinst. — Exchange, 10. 9-16. ; nothing done. — {Frosts, 4 degrees ; ice, five
feet thick.]

Bullion per Oz. — Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. Od Foreign Gold in Bars,

£3. 17s. 9d. — New Doubloons, £3. Os. Od — New Dollars, 4s. 9|d Silver in Bars,

(standard), Os. Od.

Course of Foreign Exchange. — Amsterdam, 12. 6^ Rotterdam, J2. 6| — An-
twerp, 12. 6J-.— Hamburgh, 13. 14.— Paris, 25. 75 — Bourdeaux, 26.0 — Berlin, 0. 0 —

Frankfort-on-the-Main, 153. OJ — Petersburg, 10 — Vienna, 10. 11 Madrid, 35. Of —

Cadiz, 36. 0 — Bilboa, 36. 0 Barcelona, 35. Of Seville, 35. Of Gibraltar 49. 0±.

—Leghorn, 47. 0^ — Genoa, 25. 90 — Venice, 47. <)£ — Malta, 48. 0£ Naples, 39. 0| —

Palermo, 119. 0.— Lisbon, 43. 0 — Oporto, 43. 0.— Rio Janeiro, 24. 0 Bahia, 26. 0*.

Buenos Ayres, 0. 0 — Dublin. 1. 0* Cork, 1. 0|.

Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of
WOLFE, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhitt — Birmingham CANAL, 300A— Coven-
try, O/ — Ellesmere and Chester, 105|/ — Grand Junction, 290/ — Kennet and Avon,

M.M. Neiv Series VOL. IX. No. 49. P

106

Commercial Report.

[JAN.

J — Leeds and Liverpool, 430/ Oxford 6C5/. — Regent's, 22^. — Trent and Mersey,

sh.), 790/ — Warwick and Birmingham, 270/.— London DOCKS (Stock), 9U— West

India (Stock), IQ21 East London WATERWORKS, 113^ — Grand Junction, 50/.—

West Middlesex, 75/._ Alliance British and Foreign INSURANCE, 9f/ — Globe, 165/.

—Guardian, 26|/.-_ Hope Life, 6^.— Imperial Fire, IUI — GAS-LIGHT Westminster

chartered Company, 56£/. — City, 01. — British, 01. — Leeds, 195/.

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES,

Announced from November 22d to December 22d, 1829, in the London Gaxette.

BANKRUPTCIES SUPER-
SEDED.

George, p. Bow, linen-draper

Stretch, j. C. Worcester, auctioneer

Parnall, J. jur.. and W. Parnall, Biis-
tol, coppersmiths

Sevsrn, J. Upper Thames-street,
grocer

Butler, W. Birmingham, manufac-
turer

Barrett, P. and S. Appleton, apothe-
caries

Wyatt, T. St. Paul's Church-yard,
warehouseman

Wheeler, T. Hereford, corn-dealer

Tay.or, J. Kizbymisperton, timber-
merchant

Sparks, W. H. Godalming, paper-
maker

BANKRUPTCIES.

[This Month, 195..]

Solicitors' JVames are in

Parenthesis.

ArHerton, R. Salford, merchant.

Mdlington and Co., Bedford-row;

Gaskill, Wisan
Alfred, J. Pilkin^ton, dealer. (Milne

and Co., Temple ; Ainsworth and

Co., Manchester
Andrew, J. Wirksworth, scrivener.

(Smithson and Co., New-inn ;

Thomas and Hutchinsons, Chester-
. field
Akkroyd, j. Woodhcuse, shopkeeper.

(Robinson, Essex-street ; Ward,

Leeds
Ainley, E. Netherlong, clothier.

(iattye and Co., Chancery -lane j

Slephencon, Huddersfield
Arrowsmith, S. Manchester, victual-
ler. (Makinson and Co., Temple ;

Hadfield, Manchester
Barry, A. King-street, Portman-

square, poulterer. (Tribe, Clif-
•ford's-inn

Barton, J. Manchester, brush-manu-
facturer. (Kurd and Co., Temple ;

Allen, Manchester

Brierley, Ducldnfield, dye;-. (App!eby
• and Co., Gray's-inn ; Whittbead,

Manchester

Boys, E. jun. Canterbury, spirit-
dealer. (Langhim, MrttettV

buildings
Binns, A. Keighley, worsted-spinner.

(Still and Co., Lincoln's-inn ; Ne-

therwood, Keighley
Brett, T. Rotherham, innkeeper.

(King, Castle-street j Oxley, Ro-

Blundell, J. B. Bankside, iron-mas-
ters. (Gad;den, Furnival's-inn

Burbery, R. and G. J. Wigley, Coven-
try, ribband-manufacturers. (James,
Bucklersbury

Bamford, G. Ashover. builder.
(Smithson and Co., New-inn ; Hut-
Chinson, Chesterfie'rt

Bladon, R. C. Hoxton, grocer.
(Lofty, King-street

Benrimo, S. and D. Aldgate, mer-
chants. (Hindmarsh and Co,
Jewin-street, and Manchester

Brook, R. Leeds, linen-draper.
(Woodhouse and Co., Temple ;
Stott, Leeds

Brown, W. Hyde, linen-draper.
Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane ;
Hadfield and Co., Manchester

Buckland, C. Sturminster-Newton,
shopkeeper. (Bative and Co.,
Chancery, lane j Wasbro'.igh and Co.,
Bristol

Boast, J. Little Yarmouth, inn-
keeper. (White and Co., Great St.
Helens ; Worship, Great Yarmouth

Barnes, C. Norwich, builder. (Fen-
ton, Austin-friars ; Jay and Co.,
Norwich

Bevan, W, sen. and W. Sevan, jun.
Morriston, andd R. Bevan, Mon-
mouth, iron-manufacturers. (Price
and Co., LincolnVinn } James
and Co., Swansea

Barnard, W. P. Walworth, victualler.
(Hubert, Clement's-inn

Bowry, A. East Moulsey, corn-
dealer. (Orleb*r, George- street

Bridgman, A. Linton, victualler.
(Lythgoc, Essex-street

Campbell, G. Half Moon-street, coal-
merchant. (M'Duff, Castle. street

Collins, M. J. Berwick-street, sper-
maceti-refiner. (Brown and Co.,
Mincing-lane

Christopherson, j. Liverpool, mer-
chant. (Baxendale and Co., King's-
arms-yard ; Shackletch and Co.,
Liverpool

Carver, A. M. Leicester, milliner.
(Fleming and Co., Lincoln's-inn-
fields j Stone, Leicester

Creed, j. Hemel-Hampstead, com-
mirsion-agent. (Grover and Co.,
Bedford-row ; Grover and Co.,
Hemel-Hampstead

Connop, J. and T. L. Evill, Token-
house-yard, dyers. (BSrkett and Co.,
Cloak-lane

Creed, G. Hemel-Hampstead, auc-
tioneer. (Grover and Co., Bedford-
row ; Grover and Co., Hemel-
Hampstead

Candy, T. sen. Marston Bifcott, cat-
tle-salesman. (Helder, Clement1s-
inn ; Boor, Warminster

Crow, T. S. Clfrkenwell, dairyman.
(Templar, Great Tower-street

Cust, J.Ripon, innkeeper. (Beverley,
Temple ; Coates, Ripon

Churchill, J. Portsmouth, mercer.
(Bogue and Co., Gray's-inn j Hop-
kins, Gosport

Cattell, S. Coventry, ribband-manu-
facturer. (Austen and Co., Gray's-
inn ; Troughton and Co., Coventry

Conway, J. Staining-lane, builder.
(Disnum, Little Distaff-la:ie

Collins, M. Brompton, victualler.
(Garrard, Suffolk-street

Deirne, L. Pancras-street, smith.
(Tatrairdin, Child's-place

Dean, C. Nottingham, grocer. (En-
field, Gray's-inn ; Enfield and Son,
Nottingham

Dennison, W. Toxteth-Park, mer-
chant. (Norris and Co., John-
street ; Toulmin, Liverpool
Elsom, F. D. Cierkenwell, timber-
merchant. (Willet and Co., Essex-
street

Emery, J. H. Vauxhall-road, victual-
ler. (M.rtineau and Co., Carey-
street

Edwards, H. Brunswick-square, sur-
geon. (Harris and Co., Beaufort-
buildings

Ellis, j. and J. Sanders, Bristol, barge-
masters. (Vizard and Co., t.in-
coln's-inn-fields j Gregory and Co.,
Bristol

Emerson, W. Alford, linen-draper.
(Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane j Ro-
binson, Alford

Edwards, W. Over, dealer. fErittan.
Basinghall-street ; Bevan and Co.,
BrUtol

Fletcher, J. Binbroke St. Mary, vic-
tualler. (Eyne and Co., Gray's-inn

Foster, E. Hitchin, druggist. (Aih-
fieldj Lawrence-lane

Fryi J. Whitechapel, corn-dealer.
Young and Co., St. MilrtredV
court

Ford, G. Frome-Selwood, lir.en-dra-
per. (Perkins and Co., Gray's-inn j
Miller, Frome

Forrest, J. B. Kilbourn, oilman.
(Atkins, Fox Ordinary-court

Farrar, J. Halif.x, mercer. (Ellis and
Co., Chai eery-lane ; Hadfield and
Co., Manchester

Gal?, C Hart-street, plumber. '(Rey-
nolds, Carmarthen-street

Giroux, G. G. New Kent-road, mu-
sic-seller. Willet and Co., Essex-
street

Giles, W. Stoke-Row, timber-dealer.
(Holmes and Co., Great James-
street ; Neale, Reading

Gable, T. A. Bethnal-road, silk-
manufacturer. (Warren, Symond'*-
inn

Garden, W. High Holbo.rn, stationer.
(Wilson and Co., Lincolo's-inn-
fields

Grieves, W. Holborn-bridge, cheese-
monger. (Whiting, London-bridge-
foot

Grey, J. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, mer-
chant. (Bell ant! Co., Bow-church-
yard ; Carr and Co., Newcastle

Groberty, B. Ne«bury, carrier.
(Graham, Serjeant's-inn ; Graham,
Newbury

Glover, J. Derby, tailor. (Robinson
and Co., Charter-house-square

Galley, J* Whee.ock, cheese- f.ictor.
(Roarke, Furnival's-inn ; Broad-
hurst, Nantwich

Gatisdin, W. and J. Jacobs, Barbican,
tailors. (Robinsonand Co., Chaiter-
house- square

Gardiner, G. Alnwick, draper. (Dunn,
Gray's-inn j WiLon, Newcastle

Gooilen, R. collingbourne, maltster.
(Warren, Symond's-inn

Gee, T. Liverpool, cordwainer. (Ad-
lington and Co., Bedford-row ;
Houghton, Liverpool

Godfrey, W. Strand, wine-merchant.
(Cods, Northumberland-street

Graystone, J. Bury St. Edmunds,
cutler. (Bromley, Gray's-inn ;
Leech, Bury St. Edmunds

Graham, W. Bristol, linen-draper.
(Poole and Co , Gray's-inn ; Parker,
and Co., Bristol

Giddings, R. Lyncombe, and Wid-
combe, baker. (Makinson and Co.,
Temple; Hell ngs, Bath

Gaskill, J. late of Harp-lane, wine-
merchant. (Dicas, Austin-friars

Gledhill, J. Birstal, grocer. (Battye
and to., Chancery-lane ; Higham,
Leeds

Grant, W. Gosport, silversmith.
(Kogue and Co., Gray's-inn

Halse, H. Musbury, siiecp-salesman.
(Holme and Co., New-inn } Marly,
Crewkerne

Hunt, R. Duke-s'reet, Spitalfields,
silk-manufacturer, (smith, Basing-
hall-itreet

Hill, J. S. New Gravel-lane, steam-
boiler-manufacturer. (Drucc and
Son, Billiter- square

Hampden, E. Clare-market, coffee-
house-keeper. (Collier and Co.,
Carey-street

Holtom, B. Charlotte-street, apothe-
cary. (Cattlin, Ely-place

Howelis, T. Old Montague-street,
chemist. (Ritson and bon, Jewry-
*treet
Maine, M. Liskeard, draper. (Vljard

1830.]

Bankrupts.

tod Co., Lincoln's-lnn-fields ; Gr«*
gory and Co., Bristol
Hammond, C. Kentirh Town, brewer.

(Cook and Co., New-inn
Harsleben, C. and J. G. Anthony,
LaiTib'sConduit-itreet, confectioners.
iMunt and Co., Liverpool-street
Hardisty, W. Liverpool, merchant.
(Adlington an-1 Co , Bef rd tow }
Lowndes ana Co , Liverpcol
Hughes, R. Flint, shopkeeper, (jeyes,
Chancery-lane ; Evans, Chester-
Home, Denbigh

Hay wood, H. Ramsgate, innkeeper.
(Reriaway, Clement's inn } Weils,
Ram'Jgate

Hitch, W. C. Hertford, statuary. (Car-
ter and Co., Rryal Exchange
Hill, T. Wapping-wall, 'hip-chandler.

(Kearsey and Co , Lothbury
Haines, E. Coventry, dyer. (Byrne,
Lincoln's-inn ; Carter and Co., Co-
ventry

Hucker, J. Glastonbury, stocking,
manufacturer. (Adlington and Co.,
Bedford-row ; Reeves, Glastonbury
Henderson, G. Berwick, corn-mer-
chant. (North and Co, Temple}
Weddell, Berwick
Hacker, H. Harwich, linen-draper.

(Sole, Aldermanbury
Hay, J. High Wyccmbe, paper-maker.

(Alexander and Son, Carey-street
Holloway, J. F. Madiford-court, Fen-
church-street, merchant. (Holrree,
Liverpool-street

Hind, B. -Nottingham, iron-merchant.
(Mardoucall and Co., Parliament-
straet ; Payne and Co., Nottingham
Hicks, M. Abeiystwith, victualler,
(Jenkins and Co., New-inn ; Jones,
Abergavenny

Jones, J. Bathwick, Uvery-stable-
keeper- (Williams and Co , Lin-
coln's-inn-fields ; Mackey, Bath
Jacobs, B. Penner, shopkeeper. (Platt
and Co., New Boswell-court ; Fro-
thero and Co., Newport
Jarman, J. Bath, haberdasher. I Jones,

Crosby-square ; Hellings, Bath
Jameson, A. Yarm, surgeon. (May-
hew, and Co., Carey-street
jobling, R. S. Duke-s.reet, wine-
merchant, (osbadelston and Co.,
London-street

Jackson, W. New Malton, corn-mer-
chant. (Wihoii, Southampton-street;
Allen, New Malton
Kay, R. and J Matthews, Bolton-Ie-
Moors, money-sc' iveners. (Mi:ne
and Co., Temple ; Walker, Preston
Kelly, E. Paddington, scavenger.
(Carlon, High-street, St. Mary-le-
bone
Kingsford, E. Lambeth, miller.

(Swinford, Mark-lane
Kent, N. sen. Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
ccrn-dealer. (Brown, Fenchurch-
street ; Brown, Newcastle-upon-

Lacey. J. Norwich, plasterer. (Ash-
urst, Newgate-street ; Cook, Nor-
wich

Lope?, A. and M. J. Iglesia:, Cop-
thall-court, merchants. (Paterson
ai d Co., Broad-street

Lee, W. T. Wakefield, merchant.
(Maxon, Little Friday-street} Up-
ton and Son, Leeds

Lazarus, M. Bath, broker. (Makinson
and Co., Temple; Heilings, Bath

Lucy, J. Bedwardine, builder.
(White, Lincoln's-inn ; Holdsworth
and Co., Worcester

Leman, J. H. Margate, grocer.
(Wilde and Co , College-hill

Lewi?, R. Pontypool, victualler.
(White, Lincoln Vinn ; Jones and
Co., Usk

Lillyman, A. Poulton-cum-Seacombe,
innkeeper. (Chester, Staple-inn }
Hindc, Liverpool

Lee, F. Althone, horse-dealer. (Hart,
George-street

Mattison, G. Camberwell, tavern-
keeper. (Keane, Great Russell-
street

IWoore, J. Nottingham, victualler.
(Gregory, Clement's-inn ; Wise and
Co., Nottingham

Mackgrath, E. Kegent-street, wine-
merchant. (Waugh, Great James-
, street

Marshall, W. Whitechape!, steam-

cngiiie-boiler-maker. (Fowell and
Co., Nicholas-lane
Marshall. T. Poultry, haberdasher.

(Hannington and Co., Carey-lane
Millar, R. Gray's-inn-lai.e, grocer.

(Garry, Gray's-inn
Matthews, W. Old-sfeet, timber-
n erchant. (Tanner, New Basing-
hall-street
MaUey, C. Whitecross-ttreet, ba^er.

(Francis and Co., Monument-yard
Morgan, T. Ross, tailor. (.Smith and
Co., Red Lion-square } Hall and
Co., Ross and Hereford
Mardon, E. Honiton, hatter. (Ander-
ton and Co., New Bridge-street ;
Teire.l and Co., Exeter
Kevill, J. and W. Wigan, manufac-
turers. (Smith, Chancery-lane }
iwoser, Kendal

Newboid, W. Coventry, ribband-rr.a-

mifacturer. (Austen and Co.,

Gray's-inn } Troughton and Co.,

Coventry

Notley, R. Cbpham-road, st..tuary.

(Lindsay, Copt!. all-court
Nekton, J. Pendltton, grocer. (Milne
and Co., Temple } Bent, Man-
chester

Nicholson, R. Bradford, earthenware-
manufacturer. (Shearman, Gray's-
inn } Hailstone and Co., Bradford
Oriel, T. sen, and T. Oriel, jun.
Poland-stree-, tailors. (Hamilton,
Southampton-street
Ogden, W. Bangor, hatter. ( Burne,
Lincoln's-inn ; Williams, Peurteos
Overington, B. Wl.ickham, brewer.
Holme and Co., New-inn ; Cruick-
"•hank, Gosport

Place, J. jun, Nottingham, saddler.
(Hurd and Co., Temple } Greasley,
Nottingham

Parker, J. Manchester, commission-
agent. (Makinjon and Co., Temple j
Makin'on, Manchesttr
Priestn.il], G. Stockp'-rt, silk-spinner.
(James, Bucklershurx } Hunt and
Co., stockport

Plumbe, S. Great Russel-Mreet, apo-
thecary. (Bower, Chancery-lane
Perry, T. Chaiford, clothier. (Herlon

Bath } Pottinger, Westbury

Palmer, J. A. and W. Bouch, Law-
rence-lai.e, drapers. (Swain and Co.,
Fredericks-place

Parsons, J. Lambeth, timber-dea'er.
(Maymoth and Son, Great Surrey-
street

Petherbridge, E. and W. Newton-
Abbot, linen-drapers. (Jonea, Size-
lane

Parker, W. jun. Pontypool, grocer.
(Few and Co., Henrietta-street }
Beddoe, Bristol

Philpott. J. Billericay, coach-pro-
prietor. (Bun and Co., Carmarthen-
street

Pears, W. T. Thorney, farmer. (Bar-
ker, Gray's-inn

Parson?, E. Leeds, potter. (Richard*
son and Co., Poultry } Richardson,
Leeds

Mate, J. jun. Nottingham, saddler,
(Kurd and Co., Temple } Greasley,
Nottingham

Rogers, C Gainsburgh, linen-draper.
(Dawion and Co., N w %Boswcll-
court j Ccod and Co., Gainsburgh

Reynolds, J. Upper Thames-street,
coal-merchant. (Coirie and Co.,
Lower Giosvenor-street

Roblnsui, G- Regent-street, mercer.
(Fox and Co., Frederick's-place

Richards, W. jun. Tiverton, maltster.
(Bennet, Featherstone-buildings }
Leesemor,e, Tiverton

Richardson, W. Tottenham-court-
road, ironmonger. (Williams, Al-
fred-place

Rabbits, R. Hcytesbury, farmer,
(Perkins and Co., Gray's-inn }
Miller, Frome-Selwcod

Roby, J. H. Leamington, victualler.
(Kelly, New-inn

Russell, E. and T. Wehb, Stourport,
timber-merchants. (Jennings and
Co., Temple ; Winnall, Stourport

Richardson, R. B'u chin-lane, bock-
binder. (Richardson and Co., Bed-
ford-row

Redstone, H, Winchester, linen-dra-
per. (Brcugh, fleet-street

P 2

107

Sing!etan, J Ha'ifax and Heudan'
linen-draper. (Emmett, New-inn ;
Alexander, Halifax

Sweeting, j. S. Ludgate-street, fancy-
warehouseman. (Tilson and Son ,
Colemsn-street

SaviJ!, j. Holborn-hridge, 1-aker.

(Wilkinson and Co., Bucklershury

Stockman, C. Bath, perfumer. (Jones,

Cro by-square ; He. lings, Bath
Sephton, P. Kirkdale, bricklayer.
\Norrisand Co., John-street; Sil-
cock, Liverpool
Selby, P. Wareham, ironmonger.

(Phippard, Wareham
Smith, H. G Regent-? treet, wine-
mei chant. (Beaumont, Golden-
sc)uare

Semple, J. Hampstead-road, timber-
rr.erchant. (Stokes and Co., Cat-
eaton-street

Stavenhagen, C. H. Fenchurch-street,
merchant. (Blunt and Co., Liver-
pool-street

Smith, j. and T. and S. C. King-
street and Southward, hosiers and
manufac'urers. (Gattye and Co.,
Angel-court

Shaw,j. Kirknurton, timber-merchant.
(Clarke and Co., Lincoln's-inn-
fiekis; Whitehead and Co., Hud-
i-'ersrield

Sparks, J. Shrewsbury, dealer in

• earthenware. (Hicks and Co.,

Bartlett's-buldings ; Brown, Hanley

Shapley, T. Bath, grocer. (Makinson

and Co., Temple ; He lings, Bath
Turner, S. A. and J. Sharp, Cam-
bridge, woollen-drapei's. (Coe and
Co., Pancrai-lane } Harris, Cam-
bridge
Tristam, H. Dunster-court, merchant.

(Birkett and Co., Cloak-lane
Travis, H. Durham, surgeon. (Smith-
son and Co., New-inn
Tayler, D. F. M.msfield-street, en-
gineer. (Bostock, Getrge-street
Thache, J. Chelrenham, grocer.
(James,. Ely-place ; Jessop, Chel-
tenham

Thomas, H. Bath, bookseller. (Jen-
kins and Co., New-inn
Tnoit.pson, J. sen. Howden, and R.
and W. Thomp:on, Barnby-on-th.e
Marsh, sacking-manufacturers.
(Bell, Bedford-row

Watson, J. Kirg-street, Covent-gar-
den, n.usic-master. (Lay, Hack-
ney
Wat?on, J. Long Acre, coach-builder.

(Goren and Co., Orchard-street
Wilson, P. Bolton, whitster. (Adling-.
ton and Co , Bedford-row ; Board-,
man, Bolton

Watson, J. T. Gainsborough, ship-
wright. (Hicks and Co., Gray's^
inn; Haine and Co., Hull
Wilkinson, J. Liverpool, ironmonger,
(Norris and Co., John-street; Wil-
son, Liverpool
Wilde, w'. Norwich, dyer, (Austin,

Gray's-jnn ; Crook, Norwich
Wheeler, W, Cheltenham, whitesmith.
(Clarke, ard Co., Lincoln's-mn-
fie:ds ; Walter and Co., Chelten-
ham

Worjindin, T. New Malton, corn-
merchant. (Hicks and Co., Gray's-
inn } Lambert, New Malton
Wilton, C. Sheerness, publican. (Bart-

ktt and Co., Nicholas-lane
Wright, T. M. Bodmin, linen-draper.
Pearson, Temple ; Daniels, Bristol
Woodhouse, H. Manchester, colour-
dealer. (E.lis and Co., Ctancery-
lar.e ; Hampson, Manchester
Webster, J. Lowdham Lodge, cattle-
dealer. (Pontifex, St. Andrew's-
court

Walters, D. Swansea, linen-draper.
(Battye and Chance ry-lane 5 Was-,
brough and Co., Bristol
Waller, M. Lad-lane, warthousegian»

(Fisher, Walbrook-buildings
Wormald, W. E. Uo.rtley, manufac-
turer. (Battye and Co., Chancery-
lane ; Hargreaves, Leeds
Winterbottoin, J. Lancaster, cotton-
spinner. (Hurd and Co., Temple j
Seddon, Manchester
Wallis, G, Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
painter. (Brooksbank and Co.,
Gray's-inn } Browne, Newcastlt-
upon-Tyne.

C 108 ]
ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS.

[JAN.

Rev. B. King, to be domestic chaplain to Lord
Crewe.— Rev. C. Green, to the Rectory of Burgh
Ca>tle, Suffolk.— Rev. W. H. Shelfnrd, to the
Rectory of Preston, Suffolk.— Rev. C.J.Myers,
to the Vicarage of Flintliam, Notts.— Rev. W.
Fletcher, to the Perpetual Curacy of Charsfield,
Suffolk.— Rev. P. D. Foulkes, to the Vicarage of
Shebbcar, Devon. — Rev. R. L. A. Roberts, to the
Rectory of Llangwyfan, in the Isle of Clwyd, —
Rev. J. T. Watson, to the Vicarage of West-
Wratting, Cambridge.— Rev. G. Preston, to the

Vicarage of Christ Chuivh, with Rectory of St.
Leonard, Foster-lane, London — Rev. J. Allpoit,
to be Minister of St. James's Chapel, Ashted, Bir-
mingham.— Rev..C. F. Rroughtoii, to the Vicarage
of Uttoxetfr. — Rev. S. Raymond, to the Rectory
of Swindon.— Rev. F. H. Brickenden, to the Rec-
tory of Winford, Somersetshire — Rev. R. Grape,
to the Rectory of Hoggeston, Bucks. — Rev. J.
West, to be Chaplain to the Radclitfe Infirmary,
Oxford.

POLITICAL APPOINTMENT.

Bails Amherst and Howe to be Lords of His Majesty's bedchamber.

CHRONOLOGY, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, ETC.

CHRONOLOGY.

December 3.— Old Bailey sessions commenced.

— Smithfield market commenced opening on a
Thursday, in addition to its former open days, by
order of the Lord Mayor.

7. Parliament prorogued to the 4th of February,
when the members are oidered to assemble for
the dispatch of business.

8. Sessions ended at the OH Bailey, when 10
convicts received sentence of death, nearly 90
were transported, and several imprisoned.

— The Court of King's Bench granted a rule to
stay proceedings against an inhabitant of St.
Georges's, Camberwell, for refusing to pay the
rates imposed by the Select Vestry of that parish
for repairing a new church ; four rates of .£780
each for repairs to a church built only four years !

10. The 31st annual adjudication for prizes held
by the Smithfield Club Cattle Shew ; the metro-
polis never boasted of a greater number of first-
rate agriculturists being present, nor was there
ever a finer display of the effects of breeding in
the cattle department.

13. The new church at Camberwell crowded to
excess, to witness a parishioner do penance, for
calling a married woman by an improper epi-
thet !!!•

* The officiating clergyman, after he had con-
cluded his sermon, approached the vestry. The
pressure of the crowd to obtain a sight of the
proceedings in the vestry, where it was then un-
derstood the recantation was to be made, led to
great noise and confusion, and a scene was ex-
hibited very unbecoming the sacred character of
the building. At length the party offending made
hie apearance, attired in a white covering. He
was attended by four friends on either side, and
while the clergyman read the form of recantation
laid down by the ecclesiastical law, he bowed in
affirmation of the several points in it, and the
ceremony terminated. The party then left the
vestry-room by the small door, to the manifest
disappointment of several hundred persons who
were assembled outside the church, in hopes of
seeing this legacy of Popish mummery performed
in a frotfitant church in the nineteenth cen-
tury !!!

15. A meeting of agriculturists was held at the
York Hotel, H. B. Curteis, esq., chairman, to
adopt measures lor the repeal of the malt and beer
duties, when it was resolved to petition Parlia-
ment for a total repeal of the duties on malt and
beer.*

Dec. 21, Messrs. Gutch, Fisher, and Alexander,
tried for publishing a libel in the Morning Jour^
nal on the Lord Chancellor, and found guilty.

-•2. The same gentlemen tried for a librl, in
the Morning Journal, on His Majesty, and on
his Government, and declarod guiltv of the Jibel
on His Majesty, but not on His Majesty's Govern-
ment; they were besides recommended to the
mercy of the court, on account of the feeling of
excitement arising out of the agitated state of the
times.

Same day, the same gentlemen were found
guilty of publishing, in the Morning Journal, a
libel on the King and Legislature.

23. Messrs. Marsden, Isaacson, and Alexander,
tried for publishing a libel, in the Morning Jour-
nal, on the King and the Legislature, and found
guilty.

Same day, Mr. Ball was found guilty of pub-
lishing a libel against the Lord Chancellor in the
Atlas, but recommended to the mercy of the
Court.f

* Lord Teynham joined in the object of the
meeting, and said, " He had traversed whole
parishes and districts, and entered the cottages of
the labourer and artisan in every direction, in
order to make himself master, personally, of the
subject. He was truly sorry to say, that so de-
plorable was the state of distress in which that
class was plunged, that no language could ade-
quately describe his feelings at beholding it.
Every person acquainted with the country was
aware that at the present moment there was a
less consumption of malt by probably two-thirds,
than there was in 17/3. This was a striking
proof of the distress of the labouring classes," &c.

f All these trials took place in the Court of
King's Bench, before Lord Chief Justice Teii«
terden.

1830.]

Chronology) Marriages, and Deaths.

109

24. The Recorder made his report to the King,
of the state of the condemned criminals in New-
gate, when four were ordered for execution on
the 31st instant.

MARRIAGES.

The Hon. R. King, eldest son of Viscount Lau-
ton, and M.P. for Roscoinmon, to Miss Anne
Booth Gore, sister to Sir R. JR. Gore, bart. — M.
de Thicry, son of Baron de Thiery, to Miss

' Frances Elliuor Allen, niece of Lady Mahon.— At
Marylebone, J. Greenwood, esq., to Anne Sophia
Synge, only daughter of the Dowager Lady Synge.
—P. D. Cooke, esq., to Lady Helena King, eldest
daughter of Lord Kingston. — Capt. Cuthbert
(2d Life Guards) to the Hon. Jane Graves. — At

"St. Georges's, Hanover- square, Capt. W. Locke,
toSelina, fifth daughter of Admiral and Lady
Elizabeth Tollemache. — J. A. Lloyd, esq. , to Fanny
Drummond, daughter of M. M'Gregor, esq.,
H.M.'s Consul at Panama. — At Hampton, J.
Kingston, esq., to Louisa Henrietta, daughter of
the late Sir C. Edmonston, bart.— At Westbury-
on-Tryme, Mr. A. P. Moffatt, third son of the late
Rev. J. M. Moffatt, to Mary, daughter of the late
J. B. Brooks, esq., of Clifton.

DEATHS.

Suddenly, at the Castle Inn, Windsor, Sir R.
Bedingfield, bart. — At Baling, the Rev. Dr.
Nicholas.— Near Grimsby, Mr. J. Cook, one of
the corporation; he unfortunately lost his way
returning from Brocklesby, in the dark, on the
night of the storm, Nov. 23, and was found dead
on the road through the inclemency of the wea-
ther.—At Oakley, Sir Richard Brooke de Capel
Brooke, bart.— In Bruton-street, the lady of the
Right Hon. Sir J. Nicholl.— In Upper Brook-
street, Viscount Haberton.— At Leamington, Jane,
wife of G. C. Antrobus, esq., M. P.— At Roehamp-
ton, A. A. Ponsonby, youngest son of the Hon.
W. Cavendish and Lady Barbara Ponsonby. — At
Clovelly court, Sir J. H.Williams, bart.— AtChi-
chester, General Nicholl, 88 ; he was the oldest
officer in H.M.'s service, his first commission being
signed by George II.— At Cranbury-house, W.

Chamberlayne, esq., M.P. for Southampton.— At
Kennington, Lady Murray, widow of Sir Robert
Murray, hart!— At Clifton, 85, Mr*. Turner, relict
of Archdeacon Turner, and daughter of the late
Admiral Sir W. Burnaby, bart.— At Hastings,
Lady Anne Catharine Kerr, fourth daughter of
the late Marquis Lothian.— B. Tucker, esq., 68,
surveyor-general to the duchy of Lancaster. — At
Ashton Clinton, the wife of G. R. Minshull, esq.
— At Ramsgate, Sophia, youngest daughter of Sir
J. Lake, bart.— Lieut. General Sir Henry Clin-
ton, Colonel of the 3d regiment of foot. — At Sy*.
ton-house, Lady Thorald. — In Whitehall-place,
Frances, youngest daughter of Sir A. Croke. — At
Oulton-park, the Rev. Sir Philip Grey Egerton,
bart.— Isle of Wight, the Hon. Catherine Rush-
worth, relict of E. Rushworth, esq , and daughter
of the late Lord Holmes. — In Cadogan-place, Mrs.
J. Brooks, widow of the late John Brooks, esq.,
banker, and niece to the Right Rev. J. Egerton,
formerly Bishop of Durham. — The Hon. Sophia
Napier, daughter of the late Lord Napier. — At
Brompton, Major General Codd. — At Clapham,
Mrs. Medley, relict of G. Medley, esq., M.P. for
East Grimstead, and daughter of the late Sir
Timothy Waldo.— R. Sinclair, esq., Recorder of
York.— At Airdrie House, Earl of Kellie, 85.— At
Bath, Lieut. John Henderson, (B) R. N,

MARRIAGES ABROAD.

At Baltimore (U. S.) Jerome Napoleon Buona-
parte, to Susan Mary, only daughter of Mr. B.
Williams.— At the British Ambassador's, at the
Hague, Capt. Northay (Colrlstream Guards) to
Miss Boreel, daughter of General Boreel, and
niece to Baron Fagel, formerly Ambassador from
Holland to England.— At Tournay, J. J. W. Van
de Wall, esq., to Anna Constantia, daughter of
R. Foley, esq., and niece of Admiral Sir Thomas
Foley.

DEATHS ABROAD.

Prince of Oldenburgb. eldest son of the late
Queen Catherine, Grand-Duchess of Russia. — At
Parma, Maria Julia, relict of the late W. Skriue,
esq , formerly M.P. for Callington.

MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES.

NORTHUMBERLAND —A dispute has been
on foot for some time, between the inhabitants of
Tynemouth and the government, relative to the
right of interment in the burial ground belonging
to the castle. It is now likely to be adjusted,
the government having offered to relinquish all
claim to the said ground, except to 40 feet east,
north, and south, and 12 feet to the west,

DURHAM.— The pier at Harth'pool was much
damaged by the gale of the 14th ot October ; the
commissioners are about to have it repaired, and
a subscription will be raised in aid of the expense.

On the 2nd instant, an East India Association
was formed at Sunderland.

The Lord Bishop of Durham has made a dona-
tion of .£2!) in support of the funds of the
Northern Academy, for promoting the fine arts at
Newcastle.

YORKSHIRE.— A dreadful occurrence took
place at Hull, on the night of the 22nd of Novem-

ber. A gentleman of the name of Hentig, a
Hamburg merchant, in a fit of insanity, killed his
wife, by a shot from a pistol, set fire to his house
in several places, fired at his servant-maid, and
then shot himself.

A meeting has been held at York, under the
auspices of the Archbishop, who took the chair,
lor the purpose of adopting measures for placing
the city walls in perfect repair. A committee was
appointed, and a subscription will be opened, as
soon as estimates of the expense are obtained.

The Rev. Joseph Coltman, of Beverley, ha§
given a handsome organ to the Church Methodist
Chapel there.

Great Driffield has been made a post-town ; the
first bag to London was made up on the 7th of
December. Heddon will also, at the commence-
ment of the year, be made the seat of a daily post
to Hull, through Skirlaugh and Rise to Hornsea ;
being the first establishment of an otfficial post in
that part of Holderneas.

110

Provincial Occurrences : Yorkshire, Norfolk, fyc. [JAN.

The funds of the York Coun!y Hospital being
nearly exhausted, a bazaar, concert, and ball took
place the week before Christmas, for the purpose
of raising a sum of money to replenish them.
The project originated with the Hon. Mrs. Beilby
Thompson, and it was patronised by all the ladies
of distinction in the county. A vast number of
articles were contributed by the ladies, the value
of which was estimated at .£5,000. The receipts
from the sale of these, from the concert, and
from the ball, were ^£4,2/8. 16s. 6d.

Nov. 30. Another meeting' of the unemployed
workmen took place on Hunslet Moor, when,
amongst various resolutions, the following passed
unanimously, " That we, the operatives, by no
moans wish to assume a situation that does not
belong to us, yet, we are well aware that labour
is the only source of wealth, and that we are the
support of the middle and higher classes of so-
ciety ; and, therefore, unless we can obtain la-
bour, and a fair remuneration for it, the middle
classes must soon sink to our level, and the whole
community become disorganised. We see that a
great redundancy of machinery is throwing large
numbers out of employment, and forcing them
upon their parishes." — Leeds Intelligencer.

Dec. 11. A meeting of the inhabitants of Hud-
dersfield and neighbourhood, was held at the
Court-house, the chief constable in the chair, to
take ,5 n to consideration the present deplorable
utate of the operatives and labouring classes, in
consequence of the dreadful depressions of trade,
when various speeches were made, and a com-
mittee was formed, and several resolutions enter-
ed into for the purpose of calling the public at-
tention to their miserable condition.* An appeal
has been made at Leeds on behalf of the unem-
ployed poor ; and two meetings have been held,
one at the Workhouse Board Room, the other at
the Court House, for the purpose of soliciting
subscriptions by personal canvass throughout that
town. At Halifax trade is as bad as ever, and no
hope for the better ; at Bradford it is still worse

* Mr. Joseph Batley, of Armitage, said— There
has never been a period within the recollection of
any one present when the town and neighbour-
hood of Huddersfield presented an aggregate of
suffering so truly appalling as at the present mo-
ment. That we are surrounded by 13,000 of our
fellow-creatures, as capable of happiness, and as
susceptible of misery as ourselves, who are drag-
ging on a miserable existence with the wretched
pittance of 2£d. per day, is of itself a fact suffi-
cient to melt the hardest heart, and awaken the
most insensible to feelings of pity and benevo-
lence. In contemplating the mass of misery
around me ; when I reflect 6n the patience, the
resignation, with which it is all borne, it excites a
high admiration at the heroic fortitude of the
poor sufferers, and it deepens every feeling of
commiseration. Had the tame degree of suffer-
ing and privation existed 30 years ago, I am per-
suaded that the presence of an army would have
been necessary to have preserved the country in
peace. But although the unbroken tranquillity
which has hitherto been preserved in the midst of
the most intense suffering is a subject of admir-
ation, it may be easily accounted lor ; we are in-
debted for this tranquillity to the superior intelli-
gence of the labouring population. They are not
now that ignorant, headstrong, brutal mob, which
have been the terror of the peaceable in former
days; no, they are an educated, well-informed
people, and they need not be told that every act of
lawless violence on their part would only aggra-
vate their own misery, and remove to a greater
distance the prospect of better days !!!

than Halifax. The landlords of the county are
pretty generally reducing rents : SirTatton Sykes
has at this moment 110 less than tixty farms upon
his hands! — Leeds Intelligencer, Dec. 17-

The first stone of the new church at Myton,
Kingston-upon-Hull, was laid, Dec. 14, in grand
style and ceremony ; it is to contain 1,200 sittings.

NORFOLK.— A committee has been appointed
at Norwich, to consider the distressed state of the
manufacturers in that city, with a view to devise
some means to alleviate that distress.

A meeting of the operatives of Norwich has
recently taken place, when the following resolu-
tion, amongst others, was agreed to unanimous-
ly :— " That this meeting views with indignation
and disgust, the combination of master manufac-
turers and the court of guardians, as calculated
to destroy the rights, independence, and comforts
of the journeyman weavers of this city, and will
bring them ultimately to a worse state of pau-
perism than that which they at the present most
severely suffer."*

Cromer Hall, the seat of G. Wyndham, esq., has
been destroyed by fire ; this handsome edifice was
of the Gothic order, and recently erected on the
site of the old hall, at an expense of more than
.£12,000 ; it had been just completed, but was not
furnished.

LINCOLNSHIRE.— The sheriff has refused to
call a county meeting for the petitioning the legis-
lature for a repeal of the Malt and Beer taxes,
alleging, " that although the weight of taxation
falls with more than an average pressure on the
agricultural classes, and although he feels the
necessity of the measure, yet he is convinced that
the exigencies of the country, during the recess,
must have irresistibly drawn the attention of
H. M.'s government to the state of the kingdom
in all its branches ;" and therefore advises wait-
ing. In consequence of the refusal, five magis-
trates have convened a meeting to be held at tlie
Castle Hill, Lincoln, on January 8.f

* The Rev. Mr. Beaumont, in addressing the
chairman, said : — " We sometimes hear farmers
talk of the rot among sheep: my opinion is that
the rot has got into the boasted commerce of this
country, and that it is in vain to expect it will
ever attain its former splendour. To this rot
maybe added the fact, that France, Germany, the
Netherlands, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, and
Russia, have all, since the conclusion of the late
French war, been vigorously pushing on the
manufacture, at their own homes, of cottons,
linens, woollens, and cutlery. We are therefore
under a woeful delusion if we expect ever to see
the commerce of this nation flourish again as in
times past. — The monopoly of landed property is
the chief cause of all our sufferings. For, it is
notorious to all, that a comparatively small num-
ber of individuals have clasped nearly the whole
surface of the country ; and having done this,
they boldly maintain their superior claim to
power ; which claim they ground upon their
having a greater stake in the country than those
who have no property. It follows of course, that
an honest working man, born and brought up,
settled and having a family in the country, is not
supposed to have any stake in it, because he has
no visible property ! Excessive taxation is also,
not a remote, but an immediate cause of the pre-
sent sufferings of the nation, and if one half of
the present taxation were remitted, even the other
half would finally ruin the country, &c. &c."

f One of these magistrates, Mr. Johnson (of Wy-
tham on the Hill) has published an addms to the
County at large, headed with the following lines
from Shakspeare :— O

1830.] Staffordshire, Berks, SussM, Shropshire,

Ill

' STAFFORDSHIRE. - The Roman Catholic
Bishops are at present holding a synod at Wolver-
hampton. At the chapel on Sunday, the whole of
the Roman Catholic Bishops in England partici-
pated in the celebration of mass.

BERKS.— A highly respectable meeting of gen-
tlemen inferes-ted in agricultural affairs, has been
held at Reading, to take into consideration the
necessity of petitioning the legislature on the high
duties on malt, hops, and beer, when resolutions,
praying their repeal, were unanimously agreed to.
The .petitioners state, that from these excessive
duties, the labourers are compelled either to
drink water, or to have recourse to the pernicious
us? of ardent spirits!*

SUSSEX.— A meeting took place recently, at
Battle, to petit'on the legislature for the repeal
of the Malt and Beer duties, when it was stated
by Dr. Lambe, "that he regarded beer as a
necessary beverage of the hardworking indus-
trious labourers, and that the high duties operated
as an absolute prohibition ; the duties levied a
tax of more than .£10 on the produce of a single
acre of barley, and raised beer from 2d. to 6d. per
pot. — Medical men in that neighbourhood knew
how necessary beer was to the health of the
labouring classes. He mentioned a melancholy
illustration of this fact. Five labourers were em-
ployed in Romney Marsh : only one of them could
afford to purchase beer ; the remaining four
drank water. Of these the whole fell ill with the
fever then prevalent, and died ; the beer drinker
alone escaped the malady !!!" — Brighton Gazette.

At the Lewes winter assizes, Mr. Baron Bol-
land said, in his charge to the grand jury, that
" he regretted the amount of the calendar, but
in looking over it, it appeared to him that the of-
fences were principally committed by persons
whose avocations were crime and immorality ;
and that it was, therefore, not to be attributed to
the temporary evils of the country, nor to be

0 but Man I proud Man, '

Drest in a little brief authority,

Most ignorant of what he's moet assur'd,

His glassy essence— like an angry Ape,

Plays such fantastic tricks before high heav'n

As make the Angels weep; who, with our spleens,

Would all themselves laugh mortal.

After a short exordium, he says, "It is the
bounden duty of all, high and low, rich and poor,
be their opinion of the Malt Tax what it may, to
flock to Lincoln, and, by so doing, show a deter-
mination to support the birth-right of English-
men HI Let the fair opinion of the county

be taken, whether you will petition against the
Malt Tax, or be content to go on in the present
hopeful way, trusting to the relief those are likely
to give, who have, by their counsels, brought the
country into the present state." — Lincoln Mer-
cury, Dec. 11.

* It was not formerly the lot of the boasted
peasantry of England, alter their hard day's la-
bour, to go home to their families, and to regale
themselves with water, in the chilling months of
our dreary winters. We trust this iniquitous tax
will at length be repealed, so that every hard-
working man may again have his two pints of
good ale daily. It will have a better effect in
making them love their country, than in per-
suading them to emigrate, and preaching to them
the marvellous delights and comforts abounding
in those Elysian fields of modern puffing, Botany
Bay, Van Diemen's Land, and the Swan River
settlements, whore nectar and ambrosia may be
had, say they, at two-pence a-pint !

taken as a proof of the demoralization of the
people at large'1!! !

Dec. 3. The new road connecting the two cliffs
at Brighton, was opened \VitU a procession and
dinner.

SHROPSHIRE.'— A very numerous meeting
has been held at the County Hall, Shrewsbury,
for considering the best means of retaining th«.
Irish road through that town, when various reso-
lutions were entered into, expressive of the great
injury the proposed alteration would occasion to
Shrewsbury, and forVhich, merely to save about
four miles of road, the extravagant sum of
^£100,000 of public money would be wanted 1 A
committee was formed, and a subscription entered
into for conducting, strenuously, their opposition
to the alteration.*

SOMERSETSHIRE.— Dec. 11. A meeting of
merchants, shipowners, and others, interested in
the port and harbour of Bridgewater, was held,
when it was unanimously resolved to apply to
parliament for a bill to carry into effect a plan
for the improvement of the port of Bridgewater ;
the accommodation it at present affords being
totally inadequate to the existing state of its
trade. In .1811 only 80,000 tons register entered
the port; this year there have been more than
112000. — The amount of shares already sub-
scribed for exceeds .£10,000.

The annual meeting of the Bath and West of
England Agricultural Society, took place, Dec. 8,
when the various Reports relating to plough-
ing, orchard plantations, dairy stock» &c., were
made, by which, it appeared, the society was in a
sound state, although the number of subscribers
had greatly diminished, owing to the depression
of the times. At the dinner the Marquis of Lans-
downe (president) descanted on the necessity of
ameliorating the condition of the English agri-
cultural labourer.

DEVONSHIRE.— An additional general ses-
sions wa? held at Exeter Castle, Den. 2, when the
chairman observed to the grand jury, that their
services were required at this additional sessions,
first, as regarded charges not proved on the in-
quiry in that court, tl.at the individuals should
not, for any lengthened period, be deprived of
their liberty!!! and secondly, in the hope that
crime might be diminished, if not suppressed, by

* The magnitude of the loss which would occur
to Shrewsbury, from being deprived of the Irish
travellers, might be gathered from the fact, that
in 1828, there crossed over in the government
packets, from Holyhead to Dublin, cabin passen-
gers 8,659, servants and children 1,845, deck pas-
sengers 1,6/2, four-wheeled carriages 587, two-
wheeled carriages 46, horses 194 ; and in the
course of la-t year, 830 pairs of horses were em-
ployed in posting between Shrewsbury and Os-
westry alone, besides mail and other coaches. Of
the whole of this travelling, and the profits arising
therefrom, the tt.wn would necessarily be de-
prived, were the road diverted, as it is now pro-
posed. The second class of travellers, compre-
hending all tourists into Wales (who, since the
erection of the magnificent bridges at the Menai
and Conway, had greatly in.reased) would, of
course, avoid the town, as, were the new ruart
constructed, their journey would only le retarded
by deviating from the more direct line, towards
Shrewsbury. The third class — the travellers
from the north to the soutli trt England — would
necessarily go the new route ; and the town
would most certainly be deprived of the whole of
them.

112 Provincial Occurrences : Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, $c.

the certainty that speeiy punishment would fol-
low detection of offence !!!— Trueman's Exeler
Ffying Post.

The new canal and railway, communicating
between the Cann slate works, and the new quay
at Catwater, Plymouth, were opened on the 20th
inst., by the passage of boats and waggons, c -n-
taining large quantities of paring stones and
slates from the quarries. All the artificers, with
their various implements, and attended with
music, flags, &c., accompanied the waggons. A
great increase to the trade of the port is expected
from these improvements.

WARWICKSHIRE.— Yesterday Robt. Brown,
of this city, was released from durance vile. He
had been confined in our gaol from the month of
of September, 1822, (now more than seven
yeirs!!!) for contempt of the Court of Chan-
cery, in not answering a bill filed against him, to
enforce a treaty for the sale of some old houses
in Gosford-street.— Coventry Observer, Nov. 19.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE. — At Bristol three
churches and two chapels are now in course of
erection : one of the latter is understood to have
been built at the entire cost of one individual.
In addition to 19 churches of tlie establishment,
Bristol contains nearly 30 dissenting meeting.
Louses, without including others of a minor de-
scription, occupied by the various sects into
which some of the non-conformists are divided
and subdivided.

A meeting was lately held at Bristol, to con-
si-^er the propriety of founding a college in this
city for the education of youth. It was attended
by a number of influential gentlemen, and reso-
lutions were passed for carrying the measure into
effect. The sum of .£15,000 is to be raised in
200 transferable shares of .£50 each. It is not
intended to board or lodge the students in the
college, hut they are to be accommodated in the
houses of the tutors or professors ; and the insti-
tution to be opened to persons of all religious
denominations.

KENT. — The following, signed by Lord Mar-
nham, as Foreman, and by 22 of the Grand Jury of
t'lia county, has been forwarded to his Grace the
Duke of Wellington. — " Grand Jury Room, Maid-
i-tone, 16th Dec. 1829.— My Lord,— We.the Grand
Jury of the County of Kent, assembled from all
parts of the County in discharge of our public
duties, feel that, in justice to our resprctive neigh-
lours, we ought rot to separate, without commu-
ricating to your Grace for the information of His
Majesty's ministers, the deep and unprecedented
distress, which, from our personal and local know-
lodge, we are enabled to state, prevails among all
classes throughout this country, and to a degree
that must not only be ruinous to individuals, but
must also, at no distant period, be attended with
serious consequences to the national prosperity.
In making this communication to your Grace, it is
our only object to call the attention of the King's
Government to the real state of the country, in the
hope that speedy and effectual measures may be
t-xken to alleviate those distresses which press so
severely on the several classes of society."

WALES. — A navigable canal, and a wet dock,
or basin, are amottg the contemplated improve-
ments at the port of Caidiff. The formation of
a railway from South Comely, through the seve-

ral parishes of Pyle and Kcnfig, Margam, Abera-
von, Michelstone, and Baglan, to Briton-Ferry,
Glamorganshire, has also been decided upon, and
cannot fail of being highly advantageous to the
surrounding country, as it will intersect a district
rich in coal and mineral ores.

The chain bridge, at Pout Kemys, three miles
from the town of Usk, is now completed, and open
for the accommodation of the public. When the
new line of road is formed, the distance from
Abergavenny to Usk will be shortened two miles,
and all hills will be avoided, so as to facilitate
the intercourse between these towns and the com-
munication with Bristol.

IRELAND.— At the annual dinner of the Clon-
dalkin Free Schools, which recently took place,
Sir. O'Connell presided, and gave as the first
toast, " the people, the genuine source of legiti-
mate power." For their benefit, he said. kin°s
reigned, and not that a haughty aristocracy might
enjoy titles and emolument?, or a pampered
prelacy roll in gilded chariots. It was, there-
fore, natural they should precede him in the order
of the toasts ; he then gave " the King," and the
next toast was " the repeal of the Union," which
was received with enthusiastic cheers. — The
Guardian, Dec. 8.

The following interesting ami gratifying state-
ment of the gradual increase in the number of
men engaged in the fisheries for the last seven
years, is extracted fmm the report of the Com-
missioners of the Irish Fisheries, presented to the
House of Commons last session ; the sources from
whence the information set forth in that statement
is derived, are the annual returns made by the
several officers of that department, at the close of
the Fishery Year, which terminates on tlie £th of
April. In April 1822, the number amounted to
36,159 men; in ditto 1823, 44:892 ; in ditto 1824,
49,448 ; in ditto 1825,52,482; in ditto 1826,57,805 ;
in ditto 182", 58,044; in ditto 1828, 59,329; in.
ditto 1829, 63,421.—" Beau Green, Dunally,
Nov. 30. — Saturday last, five men, in a yawl, were
in pursuit of a shoal of sprats, in Iver Bay, for
bait, with hand loops, when a whale, in pursuit of
the shoal, with open jaws, came in contact with
the yawl (broadside to) ; feeling the yawl, the
the monster closed its jaws, and crushed it in
pieces, with the exception of the two ends, in one
of which was a young lad, in the act of putting
out his loop ; he was the only one out of the five
that escaped. — One man was found crushed, and
fastened to a piece of the floating wreck. Tin's
sad catastrophe took place within 70 yards of the
deep shelving shore of Ballysigad ; 100 boats
were at the time fishing about a mile di.'tant.
A bunch of hair from the gills of the whale, fas-
tened in a slr.ver of tke wreck, confirms that the
boat was destroyed in the way described, and in
the way which those on shore, and tlm«e in the
boats agree in attesting."— Evening Packet.

GUERNSEY.— As a proof of the value of land
in Guernsey, it may be stated tliat an elegant
market, almost rivalling'that of Liverpool, and
covered with a glass roof, is btiihling on ground
that actually sold at £15(1,000 per acre. This is
inferior to some ground sold some time ago, by
Earl Sefton, at Liverpool, for tipxvards of £ 200,000
an acre. Both are, however, outstripped by the
South bridge, at Edinburgh, which is erected on
ground that sold for .£400,000 an acre.

THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

OP
POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES.

VOL. IX.] FEBRUARY, 1830. [No. 50.

MOTHER SHIPTON'S PROPHECIES.

LISTEN, listen, all good people,

All who go to bed betimes ;
All who live by church and steeple,

Hark to Mother Shipton's rhymes !
In the year that's now beginning,

Neck-and-heels in frost and snow,
Noble Lords shall go on sinning,
Till they're called to go below.
All confusion,

All profusion, —^

Getting credit where they can ;
Till the Rabbis
Seize their abbeys,
All from Beersheba to Dan.
Such the shoals great Lords are stript on. —
Hark! the rhymes of Mother Shipton!

In the year that's now beginning,

Rothschild, fortune's first postillion,
Kings' and people's shillings winning,

Shall be richer by a million :
Fifty yellow-muzzled Smouches

Shall be German barons made ;
Noble blood is in their pouches,
Glory's in the old clothes' trade.
Ancient rag-men,
Bearded bag-men,
Shall ennoble Austria's line ;
Attic-dwellers,
Lords of cellars,

Shall in courts and councils shine,
Where their Jewish hides were whipt on.-
Hark ! the rhymes of Mother Shipton!
M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 50. Q

114 Mother Shipton' s Prophecies. [FEB.

In the year that's now beginning

Shall St. Stephen's seats be crammed ;
Peel shall go on statute-spinning —

Pleasure worthy of the d — mn — d !
Full committees of both Houses

Shall be bothered by Joe Hume ;
Every cause that he espouses

Shall be bothered by Hal Brougham.
Long haranguings,
Worthy hangings,

Shall delight my Lords and Commons ;
Ayes and Noes
Shall curse the prose
Of Grey, the " last of all the Romans ;"
Whiggism's bitter cup be sipt on. —
Hark ! the rhymes of Mother Shipton I

In the year that's now beginning,

Blunder shall be heaped on blunder ;
John Bull's belly shall be thinning —
John Bull's ribs be shook asunder ;
Rascals — Russian, French, and Danish,

Yankee, Caffre, Portuguese,
Polish, Esquimaux, and Spanish —
All shall rob us as they please :
All be robbery,
All be jobbery,

Till John Bull will bear no more ;
Till his horn
Is tost in scorn,
And the brute begins to roar.
Who that horn shall then be tipt on ? —
Hark ! the rhymes of Mother Shipton !

In the year that's now beginning,

Fanny Kemble's length of purse
Shall some Lord's, in want of lining,

Take, for better or for worse.
Still the girl shall go on crying,

On the Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
Living, by her skill in dying —

Three days, for her high and dry days.
Half the week,
Italian, Greek,

Earning shillings on the boards ;
All the rest,
In the West,

Smiling, shining at My Lord's.
Love and Paton so have skipt on. —
Hark ! the rhymes of Mother Shipton !

1830.] Mother Shipton' s Prophecies. 115

In the year that's now beginning,

Full five hundred noble wives,

Not content with private sinning,

Shall give all the world their lives ;
All their conquests o'er " moustaches,"
All their lovers in the Guards,

All revealed by (***) stars, and ( ) dashes,

Till the blind can tell their cards ;
All the grandees,
All the dandies,

All the club and Crockford tribe,
All the dukes
Of White's and Brooks',
Shall their desperate pens describe,
All those « Wives of Bath" have tript on.—
Hark ! the rhymes of Mother Shipton !

In the year that's now beginning,"

England's King shall have a home,
Where the Guards their drums are dinning,

Where old Nash has built a dome ;
Emblem of a Yorkshire pudding ! "• * ' f

Emblem of a wigless head !
Emblem of a dunghill budding,
Aptly covered o'er with lead !
Engines smoking,
Senses choking,
Pool in front and pool in rear,
Harlots prowling,
Rabble howling —
All to charm the royal ear ;
Thus, by taste our purse is dipt on.
Hark ! the rhymes of Mother Shipton !

In the year that's now beginning,

Wellington shall out be kicked—
Scorn shall o'er his fall be grinning ;
Peel again be conscience-pricked ;
Lyndhurst play again the Tory ;

Goulburne say his backward prayers ;
Herries with repentance bore ye ;

Murray slide down the back stairs ; —
All the swordsmen,
All the Boardsmen,
All the epauletted crew,
Head and heel,
Sash and steel :

Thanks to One who lives at Kew !
Cumberland's the soil they've slipt on.—
Hark ! the rhymes of Mother Shipton !
Q2

C 116 3 [FEB,

THE YEAR 1830.

LET none of our gentle readers imagine that we are about to make a
melancholy business of it : quite the contrary. We are rejoiced that a
new year lies before us, for we never hated a year so thoroughly as the
year that is gone by. It began in sulkiness and sourness of all kinds ; sky
and earth, sea and shore, were equally in ill-humour; every hour of it
was pregnant with politics and bad weather. It had speeches and storms
enough to have made half a century detestable. As it grew, hurricanes
and harangues contested the superiority; ^Eolus and Mr. Peel vociferated
with rival lungs ; Wellington and the north-wester were our unhappy
portion once in every four-and-twenty hours. We had Lord Holland's
protests, and the Duke of Buckingham's letters, encumbering the news-
papers ; while the snow was falling at Midsummer. But now all is at rest.
The public — that unfathomable ocean of politics — is tranquil; — as tranquil
as Sir Thomas Lethbridge's sleep on the back benches, after his best
harangue ; or the sleep of the House during it. We petition no more.
The Constitution quietly and safely reposes, with its head in the mouth
of his Grace the Premier. The Cabinet rides in triumph without a mor-
tal memento in its rear : its members are in full possession of all the
national confidence that they will ever attain ; perquisites, patronage,
and permanency, are the motto on their triumphal car ; the nation is yet
neither actually conquered by France, nor paying tribute to Russia, nor
paying the rest of the world its debts on a composition of a farthing in the
pound, nor flying to the Ilinois, nor sunk into the bowels of the ocean.
Well then may we exult, put on our gala-dress, and, glorifying King,
Marchioness, Duke, and Horse-Guards, thank the stars for all their
miracles, and welcome in the happy new year !

But let us take the affair a little more in detail. That England never
had such a Cabinet before, we assert with the most fearless confidence; that
the " grand machine" was never so thoroughly deserving of its name ; that
it has all the finest properties of a machine ; and that not a desultory move-
ment of mind, not a disturbing volition, not the most delicate deviation
from the impulse of the master-hand, is perceptible by the keenest eye.
And what lover of his country but must rejoice in this completeness of
organization ? We have now none of those turbulent disclosures of
state affairs, which so often startled the nation in the times when premiers
were unscientific enough to let such men as the Chathams, Hollands, and
Shelburnes within the Downing-street machinery ; disturbers, which
were no sooner among the wheels, than they set the whole machine out
of order ; one wheel went to the north, and another to the south, until
the whole burst asunder, and the nation saw itself cabinetless for some
twelve hours !

England survived, it is true, those melancholy chasms in her execu-
tive existence. But who could think of the possibility of their occurring
again, without horror ? What man in the possession of his parts of speech,
but would exclaim against the national misfortune of seeing a set of new
liveries at the Treasury door, or the cabriolet of the Premier turning off
from the entrance of Downing-street ? Nations will bear to lose much ; but
the smile of Mr. Peel, as he mounts the spacious staircase of the Home
Office, amid his troop of bowing messengers and adoring policemen,
would be a loss which England could never sustain ! The unquestioned
fact is, that the empire never had an administration on whose ability,

1830. J The Year 1830. 117

integrity, dignity of mind, and official and personal honour, it had
formed so decided an opinion. If all this be so, why the deuce should we
alone hang our hats upon our brows ? Why should we lift up our voices in
lamentation, and not rather take the goods the gods provide us ; rejoice
in the conviction that the seasons will be more propitious this year than
the last, — as when things come to the worst they must mend ; that the
weavers, farmers, merchants, and populace will not be more clamorous,
miserable, or bankrupt, or famished this year than the last, for the same
reason ; that free-trade laws, corn laws, poor laws, Chancery laws, police
laws, and parliamentary laws, will be as favourite and flourishing as ever
they were ; and, first and highest of all our congratulations, that the pre-
sent Cabinet will stay in — to the last hour that they can.

We have heard — but it was with at once the deepest alarm and the
most unqualified surprise — that a most illustrious personage, chiefly
residing in the neighbourhood of Windsor, has lately shewn occasional
symptoms of restlessness, and has now and then even gone the length of
wishing what no two men on earth wish more than Lord Grey and Mr.
Brougham. But not desiring to commit the disrespect of asking
direct questions of that illustrious personage, we shall ask them of Lord
Fife. — " Does your Lordship, in the sacred recesses of your own immacu-
late breast and accomplished understanding, feel a doubt as to the
incomparable openness, manliness, and sincerity of his Grace the Pre-
mier's mind j as to his utter scorn, not merely of the low arts of office,
but of the high ; of his public power of addressing the Senate ;
of his profound personal knowledge of the constitutional laws of Eng-
land j and of his perfect fitness, from his habits of life since he first
wore an epaulet, to administer the concerns of a British people ?

' ' We ask, can your Lordship have any idea that the equal of the Home
Secretary could be found, not merely in the ranks of Toryism, but un-
der the banners of Broughamism ? (Whiggery is a dead letter). It is
useless to go on. The virtues, talents, and public services of the others
have been too familiar to public recollection to require a catalogue of
our inditing. Then, my Lord, take the first opportunity, the first
mollia tempora fandi, of telling, where it may be felt, that England,
having never produced such a cabinet, never expects to be able to pro-
duce such another."

So, the ministry will stand. Pledge will be added to pledge, and per-
formed with all the fidelity of the last. Sneerers may arise, who will
persist in believing that sufferings among the people have some connexion
with blunders in the Government. Weavers, by the twenty thousand,
will, by possibility, march through the streets, and startle the laced
menials in Whitehall. But the refutation will come from a quarter irre-
sistible in point of dignity. A note will settle the point ; and the recreant
weavers will be convicted of being hungry under false pretences. What
the next Speech from the throne will be, we shall not presume to inquire.
We know too well the sovereign respect due to the august individuals
into the hands of whose inscrutable wisdom we have committed our desti-
nies. We sit under the shadow of the Treasury wing ; rejoicing in its
strength, and measuring the solidity of its protection by the thickness of
its shade. But, judging from the past, the Speech will be of the most
cheering nature. The British empire will hear with delight, and the
continental world with consternation, that all our energies are not merely
unimpaired, but invigorated ; that we stand on a footing of the firmest

118 The Year 1830. [FEB.

pacification with all the world ; that our interposition has extinguished
continental war ; that our commerce has improved infinitely • that our
revenue is magnificent j that Ireland has already exhibited the most
abundant fruits of the " emancipatory policy ;" and that the universal
prosperity of the empire justifies the fullest congratulations of its gover-
nors. If all this be so, why the deuce should we not sing lo paeans, and
play Bacchanals in the procession of the most matchless of ministers ?

But who is to move the Address ? The report goes, that it has been
offered to Brougham, and that he returned for answer, that he was not
Master of the Rolls yet ; and that, if ministers did not, within one calen-
dar month, accomplish their promise of persuading Leach to die, he
would open his mouth for the first time these two years, and speak his
mind. Mackintosh has, by anticipation, rejected the offer, saying that he
is an old man ; and, by the course of nature, Goulburn must outlive him,
unless the right honourable Chancellor of the Exchequer should take
orders as a Methodist preacher, and forswear the Treasury Mammon.
The young maiden-speech tribe are, unluckily, younger than they were
ever known ; and, from their specimens of abortive eloquence, too sure
to break down. But those are difficulties that the practised dealings of
the Home Secretary with mediocrity of all kinds, will soon remedy.
He proverbially loves blockheadism ; selects his associates out of the
thickest crania of the clubs ; shrinks at the contact of a man of
talents, with the instinct that nature provides for every animal in the
presence of its peril ; would no more take an able man into his office or
his association, than he would put a lighted candle into his pocket ; and
now feels the benefit of his prudence, in enjoying the full tranquillity of
a driver of asses.

Yet we cannot flatter ourselves that the race of the grumblers is yet
in " the tomb of all the Capulets." They will probably have the
effrontery to ask, whether the grand measure of conciliation has con-
ciliated any thing ? Whether it is not just as perilous an enter-
prize for Parson Abraham to collect his dues in the year 1830, as it was
in any year of the " six hundred" of chains and sorrows ? whether old
Admiral Evans was not as near going out of the world at a tangent from
the muzzle of a musket, in 1829, as any country gentleman in the cen-
tury before ? and whether there has been the diminution of a single
policeman in the whole multitude of the Irish gendarmerie, or any symp-
tom of the safety of leaving Ireland, happy and free as she is, to her
own guardianship ? Thirty thousand of the best troops of the empire
are at present her " sponsors" for good behaviour ; and it is no compliment
to the notorious " economy" of the Premier to suppose that they are a
regiment too many.

Others, in the same unconscionable spirit, may ask, whether the
murders, burnings, hangings, and houghings do not proceed with the same
patriotic energy among what the patriots call the finest " pisantry on
earth ?" whether Captain Rock is not in a state of as vigorous legislation
as at any hour since the writing of his history ? whether the Papists
have not declared themselves injured and insulted, tricked by the word
of promise to the ear, and determined to pursue the patriot means of
clamour, turbulence, and intimidation, until they break the Union ?
What the result of breaking the Union must be, is no equivocal matter.

There will even be men heard to say (such is the infatuation of party),
that Ireland is at this hour in a state of pauperism ; that England is in

1830.] The Year 1830. 119

the same condition; that the honourable and manly "portion of the public
mind in both is totally and incurably disgusted with the conduct of those
individuals to whose rank and responsibility they looked with confidence ;
that they expect nothing good from the present state of things ; and that
the name of public man, or the mention of public pledge, is received with
the utmost scorn. To all this we, in the joyousness of our souls, say,
" Ye are blockheads ! Have we not a Cabinet of soldiers ? — the First
Lord of the Treasury, a soldier ? — the Secretary of State for the Colo-
nies, a soldier ? — the Lord Privy Seal, a soldier ? Have we not the
Secretary at War, a soldier?" What if all those were once civil
appointments, and scrupulously kept in the hands of civilians, from
some awkward prejudices in the heads of the men who founded the Con-
stitution ? We only answer, those men lived a century and a half ago,
and were blockheads besides. The answer is irresistible ; and there the
matter ends.

But the Cabinet are not of that calibre which is satisfied with a simple
negative to the charges of the disaffected. They have a noble field be-
fore them, and nobly will they work up the occult fertility of the soil.
The first man that comes home to every man's breast and pocket is the
tax-gatherer. The fondest admirers of the premier and soldiership in
all its branches, is touched here ; and it must be confessed that, if on
the Duke's first return from the parade of the Guards, he would lower a
few of the taxes, he might win a smile the more, even from those masters
of the indefatigable smile, who line his daily way to Downing-street.
The fact is, that the taxes bruise out our souls and bodies, and that the
comings of Christmas and Easter are dreaded more than the navigation
of half the globe, as is well known to Mr. Peel and his Swan River
relative. Well, at least one tax is to be repealed — the Malt tax. For
this we have — shall we write the word ? — the pledge of ministers ! It is
nothing to the contrary, that the revenue has fallen off by the 100,000/.,
and that we shall be happy if, before the end of a quarter or two more, we
shall not have to say, by the million. But the miracle will be wrought :
the malt tax will be repealed, and no substitute, ten times more crushing,
be laid on to reconcile us to the rapid prosperity of our finance. The
next grand improvement will be, a complete revision of the Corn laws.
No man will thenceforth eat bread at three times the price that the
Frenchman, within twenty miles of our shore, pays for it. No British
farmer will be ruined by the difficulty of paying his dues, even at that
rate ; or, if ruin can be more complete, see that point effected for
him by the importation of thousands of tons from the barbarians of the
Baltic.

The Free-trade, that legacy of the Jacobins to the Huskissons, and of
the Huskissons to the grateful people of the British empire, will be
divested instantaneously of all its old accompaniments, of broken merchants
and starving manufacturers, of towns deserted, and factories blazing
in the flame of their own treddles. France, and the whole foreign
world, will recognize the Huskissonian principle, that an inundation of
strange goods thrown in upon the native manufacturer at a price ruinous
to the seller, and merely as a refuge from instant bankruptcy, is the
true mode of encouraging his industry. The whole business will run as
smooth as a shuttle ; and even if France, Germany, Russia, and the
universe, should shut their ears to our persuasions, their ports to our
produce, double their custom-houses, and tax ten-fold every thing that

120 The Year 1830. [FEB.

bears the name of English ; we shall have only to laugh at their obsolete
prejudices, and congratulate ourselves on our infinite velocity in the
inarch of mind.

Lord Aberdeen is the foreign secretary, Jama super csthera notus.
Who, upon the surface of the earth, can be ignorant of the splendour of
Lord Aberdeen's faculties? the brilliancy of an eloquence that extin-
guishes or consumes every thing before it; and the vigour, wisdom,
and steadiness of a diplomacy that has, for two long years of British
triumph, delighted Europe and puzzled our politicians ? To the carping
queries of faction, in arid out of the House ; from his lordship's esta-
blished supremacy of talents, we can anticipate only the most cutting
and victorious replies.

Some of the factious will probably attempt to take this paragon
of foreign secretaries to task : for instance, upon Portuguese affairs.
He may be asked, whether we are at peace or war with Portugal?
What his lordship will say, we must not conjecture. But the most
statesman-like answer on the globe would be, " To the best of his
Majesty's Ministers' knowledge, they do not know ; but, if noble lords
will insist on their belief, they believe that they are at neither the one
nor the other." To the question, whether they recognize or not Don
Miguel's title ? the irresistible answer would be, also, " Neither the one
nor the other." — " Do they support or disavow the Constitution brought
from the Brazils by the British ambassador ?" The answer would be,
(e Neither the one nor the other." — (f Do they recognize or not the
refugees in Terceira, in their resistance to Don Miguel ?" — " Neither the
one nor the other."

The logic, wit, and wisdom of this species of reply must rapidly tell
upon any House ; and faction must be dumb for ever on all matters
lying between Gallicia and the Tagus.

The Turkish affair may be dispatched with equal facility, and in just
the same manner. To the queries, " Did the British Cabinet remon-
strate against the invasion of Turkey ?" the answer of a great states-
man would be, " We did : we acted with an energy all but supernatural ;
we sent a dozen couriers a- week, and had three councils a-day in the
best part of the shooting season ; but the Russians are savages, and they
laughed at us/' — " Did you attempt any thing further than this literary
resistance ?" — " Yes ; we sent an ambassador, who gave the handsomest
ball ever given on a ship's deck, coasted up the Bosphorus in grand cos-
tume, and was present at a feast, where his Highness the Sultan drank
the health of King George the Fourth." — " But the Russians marched over
the Turkish provinces, broke down the Sultan^ and encamped within
sight of Constantinople." — " It must be allowed that something of the
kind is reported ; but the whole transaction originated in a mistake."
With this answer, we conceive that the most acrimonious faction must be
satisfied, or must be pronounced incapable of feeling the wisdom of the
wise.

But it is time to take a graver glance at what has actually passed. We are
not such complete converts to Lord Plunket's memorable dictum, as to be-
lieve that History is altogether an old almanack. It may be a capital
maxim for a trader in party, an advocate of Whiggery on this side the Chan-
nel, and an ex-qfficio Attorney -General on the other. But we are, thank1
Heaven ! not accustomed to guide our consciences by a brief, and as
little inclined to bow to the principles of the first party that will smile

1830.] The Year 1830. 121

upon our speeches. In addition, Lord Plunket and his tribe are objects
of our peculiar disgust ; and we will pronounce, in the teeth of any
trimmer of them all, that the events of last year have given a lesson worth
all that will ever drop from the lips of political apostacy.

Through what new shapes and changes of national life we may be
destined to pass before another year shall roll over our heads, is in
the decision of Providence ; but, if they keep pace with the year
1829, they must "be eminently anxious and trying. No year, since the
memorable 1 789, which announced the fall of the French monarchy,
has seen a course of events so pregnant with mysterious threatenings to
the whole system of continental power. To England its warnings have
been still more distinct ; for in England alone has there been a direct
and declared " breach of the Constitution."

The Protestant advocates could not extort the secret necessity of this
breach from the minister. He was asked to point to what personage, quar-
ter, or circumstance, he alluded with such overwhelmed features. He still
refused; and murmured over the coming downfall. But the secret
never escaped his lips. It has never escaped them since ; and it must
have been of the most extreme species of secrecy, for to this hour it has
not been discovered by living man.

Some conjectured that the appalled minister had been shaken in
his nerves by the revolt of the troops. But not a drummer rebelled.
Some conceived that an invasion by the Pope in revenge for the humi-
liation of his tribe, might have been announced to him by Lord
Burghersh, in a note on the back of his lordship's latest sonata. No
document of the kind is known to have reached Downing-street. Some
even conjectured that the right honourable gentleman's own dismissal
from office might have been the appalling vision. But the fact never
reached human ears ; and we are still perplexed to conceive that momen-
tous danger, too resistless to be encountered, and too terrible to be
described, which came with such silence, and has passed away with
such civility.

The progress of the Popish bill was urged with extraordinary rapidity,
and by majorities that astounded the country. On the 6th of March, the
House came to a division on going into the committee ; the Propapists
being 348, the Protestants 160— majority 188.

On the 18th of March the second reading was carried, the Propapists
being 353, the Protestants 173 ; majority 180. On the 30th of March,
the bill was read the third time, the Propapists being 320, the Pro-
testants 142. The majority was here inferior. But the necessity for
exertion on the part of propopery had been long felt to be at an end.

Its progress in the House of Lords was equally rapid, and still more
astounding. The reception of the measure in the Commons for seven
years, had prepared the nation to expect a numerous troop of supporters
to the popish bill. But the Lords had distinguished themselves by a
manly and open repulsiveness to every approach of the measure. They
were felt to be placed in the advance of the Constitution. Their rank
in society, which might be presumed to make men additionally cautious
in treading a circuitous path in politics, their senatorial independence of
popular caprice, their general elevation of habit, and even their general
time of life might have been presumed to secure them from sudden
submission. And it niust be acknowledged that the most manly and.
high-hearted exhibitions of resistance were made in the Lords. But the

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122 The Year 1830. [FEB.

same extraordinary result followed, rendered still more unaccountable
by its circumstances. On the 31st of March, the bill was brought in ;
the debate was continued on April the 2d, the 3d, and 4th ; when the
House divided, the Propatists being 217, the Protestants 112 ! On the
7th, the bill was committed ; on the 8th, the report was received. On
the 10th of April the bill was read the third time and passed, the Pro-
papists being 213, the Protestants 104. In the preceding session those
same Lords had flung out the measure with strong contempt by a
majority of 40. The bill was now carried by a majority of the very
same men, amounting to 109.

No measure that ever came before an English Legislature had pro-
duced so strong an expression of feeling out of the House. The whole
number of petitions that could be obtained by the entire force of
Whiggism, of apostate Toryism, and of Popery, making every effort for
triumph, was scarcely more than a fifth of the Protestant petitions. The
exact numbers were — to the Lords, petitions against popery, 1,994— -for
it, 630 ! To the Commons, petitions against popery, 533— for it, 159.

The names to the Protestant petitions were by tens and hundreds
of thousands. The single petition of London bore 116,000 signa-
tures of householders. The petition from the Protestants of the north
of Ireland, bore, as well as we can recollect, upwards of 200,000
names of landholders, manufacturers, and other persons of pro-
perty. The church of England distinguished itself ably; the utter
rejection of the Home Secretary by Oxford; and the eager and
triumphant voting for Sir Robert Inglis, whose claim on the University
was of neither office nor patronage, but of sound principles and uncom-
promising Protestantism ; the whole of the proceedings through the
empire, were irrefragable evidences of the national feeling in the rich
and poor, the high and the low, in the seats of learning, in the factories
and in the cottages. The total number of petitions against popery were
2,537 — of those for popery, 789. The majority thus in favour of the
religion and Constitution of England were 1,748.

But what have been the effects of this sweeping measure on Ireland ?

" My Lords," were the words of the Premier, " I am sanguine
that this will produce a state of amelioration in Ireland — the higher
orders (the agitators) will have a motive in promoting tranquillity
there; and, I trust, they will set an example which will be followed
by their inferiors, and that they will live upon good terms with each
other. This is all that we ask of them ; and if they should consent
to do so, the country will be quiet. If it is not so — if this measure will
not answer, I shall be prepared to come down with other measures —
which, /, trust, will prove more efficacious"

This " amelioration" has been a perpetual course of outrage, midnight
murders, burnings, and defiance of the law. We have seen within a few
months the necessity for anticipating the regular course of the circuits ;
and a special commission sent down to the south of Ireland, to check, if
it could not extinguish, a notorious system of mid-day assassination.
What was the language of the direct agent of government, the Solicitor
General : " There is a system of conspiracy of the most branching atrocity,
spread through a vast extent of the lower classes, marked by mysterious
symbols, bound by horrible oaths, carried on by secret and universal
correspondence, and characterised by the most hideous violences to law,
religion, and. human nature." How much of this has subsided; or

J830.] The Year 1830. 123

rather, what new triumph have not the agents of that frightful com-
pound of superstition and blood, found in the baffling of that commis-
sion, and the impunity of the criminals ? Open rebellion does not yet
rage through Ireland, cities are not set in flames, and provinces ploughed
with the ploughshare of destruction. But is government to be good for
nothing but to keep off the last extremities of civil war ? Is a country
to be pronounced prosperous, on the sole strength of its not being swept
with the torch and the sword ; or is a peasantry to be declared " amelio-
rated" because it does not stand in open arms against the King's banner ?
Are the papists to be declared loyally won over to subordination, because
they are hitherto satisfied with shouting their applause for Mr. O'Connell's
promise to repeal the union? or is the Irish church tobe pronounced secure,
because the payers of its dues are hitherto contented with cursing the
receivers to their face, or shooting them from time to time at their own
doors ? Or is the government to be pronounced secure, because the green
ribbon of the Order of Liberators is yet suspended only from the neck,
and not from the pike of those new-found loyalists, whose motto is,

" Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow ?"

Or is the supremacy of England to be declared beyond all conspiracy ;
because hitherto there has only been summoned an " assemblage of those
glowing patriots who long to emulate the glories of 1780, and remember
America ?"

But let us come to the test of this amelioration. The grand, con-
ciliatory, conscience-calming, sorrow-balming measure has passed six
months ; and still there is an army of 30,000 troops of the line in Ire-
land. Between the constabulary force, which is in all senses military,
the militia depots, the regimental depots, and the remainder of the yeo-
manry, every man of them available and employed, the force that
keeps " ameliorated" Ireland in a state of tranquillity ! — such tran-
quillity as would be called outrage and bloodshed in an Arabian desert,
or on a Turkish frontier, — is little short of 60,000 men.

Is there any proposition to reduce that force, to thin the garrison that
holds Ireland for England, or rather to lessen the number of the gaolers
that coerce the furious and sanguinary disaffection of the whole popish
population ? Not the slightest ; not a brigade, not a company, not a
platoon has been suffered to leave the sacred soil in which the spirit of
amelioration has been so busy under the miraculous auspices of the
" atrocious Bill."

The foreign policy of the Administration must look for its defenders in
the same quarter with those of its " ameliorating" system. What" has
been that policy, judging from its effects, — for no man can hope to judge
from its principles, one of the grand boasts of the Administration being
to suffer no knowledge of its principles, upon this or any other point of
government, to escape ; but time and facts, surer guides than any specious-
ness of harangue, have decided the question. If perpetual failure is to
be deemed a proof of wisdom, then have the foreign measures of
this administration been pre-eminently wise.

First let us look to the movements of France. On the first mention
of sending French troops to the Morea, the British Cabinet was under-
stood to make the most angry remonstrances imaginable : for the measure
was presumed to menace our possession of the Ionian Isles, and wat

R 2

124 The Year 1830. [Fa*.

evidently of an order which might have been turned into serious injury
to English interests in Greece and the Mediterranean. The remonstrance
failed, and was thrown into contempt by even the French gazeteers.
The French expedition sailed, took possession of every spot of the Morea
that it found desirable ; and there remained undisturbed masters, and
would probably have remained there masters until they required the
presence of a British expedition to drive them out, but for the triumph
of Russia.

In the new crisis produced by that triumph, what was the obvious
policy of the English Cabinet? To conciliate the French nation, to
raise up a powerful fellow-feeling in that most powerful people, and
interpose France as an European barrier against the tremendous force of
Russia. How has this been done ? Has the Polignac alliance invigor-
ated the cause of England ? Has the imputed tampering with the French
Cabinet cemented the connexion ? Or has not the whole intrigue broken
down ? Has not the whole public mind of France risen as with one voice
of scorn and indignation, and the name of the English Administration,
and of England along with it, been a watchword of wrath and bitter-
ness ? Is not the Polignac Cabinet called the Wellington ? and is not
the mere appellative enough at once to mark and excite the loudest hos-
tility of the French people ?

Of their dealings with Portugal we have already spoken. Of the
perplexity, incompleteness, and precarionsness of all their relations with a
country of such essential importance to our Peninsular interests, can time
be required to give further proofs ? Do the English Cabinet consider Don
Miguel at this hour an usurper or a king ? They give him no title ;
yet they send him a minister, under the name of Consul ; they denounce
him in Parliament, yet they correspond with him in their offices ; they
entertain a young Queen of Portugal here, receive her at court, and
allow her royal attendance, and an actual court; yet at the same hour they
allow their merchant ships to recognise Don Miguel's embargoes ; they
negociate with him ; and in the same breath which proclaims Don Pedro
still Sovereign of Portugal, give all the actual rights of sovereignty to
the man who supersedes him, who sets at nought his resentment, and
proclaims himself authentic master of their ally's hereditary throne.

What has been their diplomacy with Russia ? Feebleness, from begin-
ning to end ; insolent menaces cast back in their teeth, and paltry acqui-
escences, cast back with the same scorn. In the very hour when the
Cabinet declare that the Turkish dominions must be kept inviolate, the
Russian army haughtily answers the declaration by invading the frontier.
Lord Heytesbury is sent post haste to St. Petersburg!! to warn the Czar
of the terrors of British hostility. The Czar listens, bows out the
ambassador, orders his horse that evening, and the next tidings of him
are, tfyat he and his troops are passing the Danube.

Demosthenes, in his most contemptuous description of the weak minded
among his native politicians, eminently marks those who built the public
security on human casualty. " Philip is sick, Philip is dead," says the
great Greek statesman and philosopher ; " and you think that now all
danger is at an end, and you have only to dance and feast. Fools, and
ready for the chain, if Philip were dead to-morrow, your imbecility and
infatuation would raise up another Philip the day after/'

The reverses of the Russian army in the first campaign supplied the part
of t( Philip dead" to the British Cabinet. Their triumph was clamorous ;
all their instruments were active in propagating the belief that the blow

1830.] The Year 1830. 125

had paralyzed Russia ; that the extraordinary tardiness and palpable
inefficiency of our efforts at the Russian and Turkish courts, had been
occasioned by that overflowing sagacity, which knew that Russia could
never break down the vigour of the Turk in arms ; and that British help
would be only a showy superfluity in a strife where the victory must so
inevitably fall to the Ottoman !

Accordingly, nothing was done — the field and the seas were left to
themselves. But the government papers, and the government reviewers,
made up for this pacific resignation, by a double portion of activity.
The papers scoffed at the idea that Russia could ever make head again ;
and recommended the Turk to give his enemy a merciful opportunity
of retiring from the negociation, in terms not too severe for Russia's
former feelings of fame. The government reviewers scoffed at the mere
idea of a Russian army showing its face in the field against a Turkish
standard ; " the rout was indescribably ruinous ; a Moscow retreat on a
minor scale ; the complete dismembering of the army !" And Colonel
Evans, who had ventured to say that, "notwithstanding the Russian
losses by the inclemency of the season, they still had the superiority,
still kept possession of the Danube provinces, and still kept possession
of every fortress which they had taken ;" was unhesitatingly pronounced
a blockhead. This was the language of government : not of the mere
writer in a review, but of the Administration, availing itself of an organ
of extensive publicity. And it is notorious to those conversant with
the opinions of the higher London circles of political life, that, Admi-
nistration, military as it was, looked to the passage of the Balkan as an
exploit altogether beyond the power of the Russian army.

But the Balkan was passed, and with an ease which shows how vehe-
mently even a Cabinet of quarter-masters-general may blunder in their
own matters. And from the summit of the mountains the invaders poured
down upon Constantinople, with no more obstruction than one of their
own torrents. Where, then, were our fleet, where our troops, where our
lazy strength, to drive back the enemy from the feeble barriers of our
ally ? Where? The majesty of the state was reposing itself on the cushions
of the Treasury, or pheasant shooting about the country. The Turkish
empire was conquered. The capital alone was saved. Did the vigour
of English alliance effect this? Or was there such a commanding
might about the presence of Lord Aberdeen's brother caracoling on a
caparisoned horse, with a pelisse on his ambassadorial shoulders, as to
startle back the grim warriors of the Caucasus and the Ural ? It would
be the broadest burlesque to make the assertion. The Russian emperor
stopped because he had gone as far as he desired, because the Ottoman,
in Constantinople, would be his best viceroy for the few years which it
might suit his policy to reign by deputy ; because the seizure of Con-
stantinople was not worth a rush without the possession of the Bos-
phorus and Dardanelles, which its seizure then might render liable to an
European blockade ; and because, with the possession of those passes,
Russia must hourly .grow to a height of commercial opulence, physical
force, and military power, that will make Constantinople the conquest
of a moment.

But the boast of the Cabinet is, that our ally was saved by negocia-
tion ! And is it come to this ; that to secure a point of the very first
importance to the general European system, our only hope is in the
expertness of the tongue? That to save the Mediterranean from being
turned into a Russian dockyard, and every nation of Europe from being

126 The Year 1830. [FEB.

exposed to insults and aggressions ; our only expedient is the trickery of
diplomacy ? That to rescue the naval supremacy of England from the
most desperate and inevitable hazard that has ever tried it, and that the
next quarter of a century will surely bring ; our only exertion should be
to outflank the Czar, by Lord Heytesbury, at Moscow, and Sir R. Gor-
don at Constantinople ? What would Oliver Cromwell have said to this ?
He who pronounced that " the best ambassador was an English man of
war." With what contempt for his coadjutor would Lord Chatham
have heard this expedient proposed in the Cabinet ! With what lofty
scorn Pitt, that man of British mind and British integrity, would have
frowned down the petty spirits, to whom such contrivances were
wisdom ! — Pitt, who pronounced that the Russian attack on Oczakow,
the barbarian fortress of a barbarous shore, was enough to demand the
whole rising of the British empire in its might to crush the young ambi-
tion of Russia.

To the Duke of Wellington, or the people about him, it is impossible
that we can have any personal prejudice. We desire to know nothing of
them but by their public acts. But, if we find those acts unsuccessful in
every instance ; marked by overweening confidence in their origin, and
miserable falling off in their close ; if looking through the whole course
of their policy, we look in vain for any one evidence of the foresight of
the statesman, the candour of the lover of liberty, or the dignity of the
legislator ; if we see all the great questions passed by, " till a more
convenient season ;" all the laws and regulations which carry on the
system of national strength, disturbed by childish tampering ; the boyish
reveries of pseudo-economists, adopted for the tried practice, that of a
narrow island made the commercial sovereign of the world; all the
great national interests in a state of decay — the farmer, the artizan, the
miner, the merchant, sending up from all quarters of the land the same
voice of reproach and recrimination, yet not a single restorative mea-
sure offered by the wisdom of the Cabinet ; promises in abundance,
performance utterly negative ; thousands and tens of thousands of the
most dextrous and industrious workmen in the world wandering through
the highways, and glad to fight with the dogs for their food ; an enor-
mous increase of pauperism, that must be fed ; while the rents, profits,
and produce of all the higher classes are hourly sinking ten, fifteen, and
fifty per cent. ; while the old hospitality of the English noble is extin-
guished by the failure of his income ; and the country gentleman is flying
to hide his head in Bath and Brighton, or stooping to the deeper humilia-
tion of haunting the skirts of the Treasury for a government dole ;
while the very flower of our lower orders are hiring vessels to transfer
themselves and the remnants of their property to America, the Cape,
Canada, New South Wales, to any corner of the earth, where they
can escape the deadly incumbrances of existence in England ; while, in
spite of all official dexterity, the revenue is going down day by day,
and the truth is at last beyond the power of disguise, — must we be
blamed, if we ask by what chance has this combination of evils been
heaped upon this peculiar time ? Unless we can be convinced that
something beyond human observation is the cause, and that we are
smote by an avenging miracle, we must look for the cause among earthly
things. We might as well believe that the laws of gravity would
change, as that the eternal connexion between imbecility and ill success
should be averted from an empire.

]830.] The Year 1830. 127

We put the question upon this plain ground — In the whole circle of
policy, what one great principle has the minister sustained? In the
midst of a hundred national diseases, what one remedy has he offered ?
Has he healed the circulation, the corn laws, the poor laws, or any of
the whole number of evils ? Not one. He has harangued, and writ-
ten billets, and tampered, and temporized. But what has he done?
Nothing !

For what then are we to give him the credit of statesmanship ? If he
had been hunting hogs in Hindostan, or shooting pheasants in the moun-
tains of the moon, he could not have done less. If he had been asleep
every hour during thelast two years of his uncontrolled supremacy, — for
no minister had ever so jealously provided against all obstruction in his
coadjutors, — he could not have done less. Nay, total negation would
have been better ; for the common course of things carries nations on
more fortunately than the miserable alternation of impotence and pre-
sumption, the consciousness that something is expected, with the hope-
lessness of discovering any thing effectual ; the determination to bustle
through at all hazards, with the conviction that all is going wrong,
all made only to puzzle the experimentalist into deeper and more inex-
tricable confusion.

Are we to trust him with our foreign diplomacy? He has been
baffled in every negociation. He has been compelled to abandon every
project, he has seen the name and power of the country diminished in
his hands, and he has suffered the sudden exaltation of a rival empire,
which threatens Europe with rapid hostility.

Are we to trust him with our domestic government ? Before his face
every calamity of our affairs has darkened and accumulated ; he has
proposed no alleviation, and affairs are growing worse and worse.

Are we to trust him with our liberties, with the support of our esta-
blishments in Church and State, with our Free Press, that glory and Pal-
ladium of our liberties, and with the care of Protestantism, without
which England would be but a mighty corpse, a loathsome mass of
decay? Let those who remember beyond the moment, answer the
question.

Yet we must not be supposed to join with those who cry out — Despair.
We believe that there is a fund of vigour in the empire, that may stand
experiments, the least of which would shake the sickly frames of other
empires to dissolution. There is probably no dominion on earth that
has within itself so strong a repulsion of injury, or so vivid and
rapid a spring and force of restoration. Its strength is renewed like
that of the young eagle ; and it is this very faculty of self-restoration
that allows the empire to hold together, notwithstanding the infinite
speculations, tamperings, and absurdities of political quacks of all kinds.
No country " takes more ruining" to be ruined. But there is a time
for all things, and there is a time for the exhaustion of this faculty,
and the close of the national endurance of a system of miserable
charlatanism.

Yet is it enough that England should be kept merely above bank-
ruptcy, that she should be floated merely with her chin above water,
while she has the original power of being the first, most vigorous,
richest, and happiest portion of the world ? when she should walk the
water, and triumph in those convulsions of the moral elements, that would
sink and swallow up every other country ? Where does the earth con-
tain a people so palpably marked out for superiority in all the means of

128 The Year 1830. [FEB.

private and public enjoyment of affluence, influence, and security ? The
most industrious, strong minded, and fully educated population of the
world inhabit her island. She has the finest opportunities for commerce, the
most indefatigable and sagacious efforts and contrivances for every neces-
sity or luxury of mankind ; inexhaustible mines of the most valuable
minerals, and almost the exclusive possession of the most valuable of
them all, coal ; a singularly healthy and genial climate, where the
human form naturally shapes itself into the most complete beauty and
vigour; a situation the most happily fixed by Providence for a great
people destined to influence Europe : close enough to the continent to
watch every movement, and influence the good or peril of every king-
dom of it from Russia to Turkey, and yet secured from the sudden shocks
and casualties of European war by the Channel, of all defences the
cheapest, the most permanent, and the most impregnable !

Why should there be a stop in the career of such a nation ? If such
a nation is not at the head of every thing, are we to lay the blame on the
wind or the moonshine ? If we see every bounty of nature and mind
blunted, and turned into the source of some public misfortune ; are we to
say that this is done without some blunder somewhere, without some
peevish pertinacity in folly ; unless we take refuge in the theory, that it
has been visited on us by the curse of Providence ?

Do we look to the continent ? There every province has been ravaged
by war within the last twenty years. Yet, there is not a spot from
Calais to Gibraltar, in which an Englishman might not live with more
command of every bounty of the earth than in the richest county of
England. Every kingdom of the continent has seen its treasury robbed
by an invading army, or wasted with requisitions, and the enormous
expences that war brings in its train. Yet in all those kingdoms there
is not at this moment so great a difference between the expenditure and
the revenue, as in powerful, commercial, sovereign England.

To come to particulars as to our revenue. In the year 1829, its defal-
cation was one million one hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds !
What it must be this year may be conjectured from the fact of a loss of
upwards of one hundred thousand pounds already ; notwithstanding
all the proverbial dexterity of the Exchequer Bill contrivances, and the
infinite puzzling of the long-winded affairs that they call Treasury
Accounts.

But let us see the contrast of those rude financiers across the Atlantic.
The American treasury has an actual surplus of. revenue above all
demands ; is actually paying off its public debt ; and has a balance laid up
against the time when it may be convenient to send out a fleet to ride off
Liverpool, or the mouth of the Thames !

Such is the answer to the cry that all the world is distressed like our-
selves. The cry is a mystification. Are we to be told that commerce
has been unfortunate ? Where is the fault, but in our own new-fangled
laws ? If the Continental States have resumed their own little carrying
trade, we have the whole uncontested range of the ocean, spreading with
all its arms round the world. America is the only competitor, upon her own
coasts. But who contests with us in the whole of the Spanish colonies,
the West Indies, Canada, the magnificent range of the Indian Ocean,
Hindostan, the Isles, China ?

Is the interest of the national debt the solution of the enigma ? But
what is even the enormous sum of thirty millions a-year, to a country into
whose bosom every corner of the earth pays tribute, and whose annual

1830.] The Year 1830. 129

revenue is nearly twice that sum ? Let those who can, solve the pro-
blem. With us it rests only to say, that, feeling no more hostility to the
mere individuals of the government, than we should to any other blun-
ders, we have the fullest right to demand from them the cause why their
Administration has been exclusively one of misfortune ; why the finances
are in a state of increasing perplexity ; why the population is growing
perpetually more embarrassed and ill provided ; why the reputation of
England abroad is going down, and the supremacy shifted to the head
of a power that threatens the independence of the Continent, and with it
of England ?

As we are closing these remarks, we have heard the exultation of the
ministerial prints on Prince Leopold's probable promotion to the Greek
throne. But is this a homage to English influence ? Do we not know
the alliance of the Cobourg family with that of the Czar ; and can we
suppose this Prince will be more English in Greece than he was in
St. James's ? Who knows any thing about him in England, but as
a pensioner to an enormous and most improvident amount, who has
received already out of the national purse, a sum little short of seven
hundred thousand pounds sterling ? Or who cares any thing about this
sullen foreigner, except to hope that he will have the decency to resign his
fifty thousand pounds a year at once ; or that ministers will have the
decency to have no " delicacy" on the subject, but give him notice that
he must drain the reluctant country no longer. To suppose that any
Englishman feels either himself or his country honoured in putting
either cap or crown on the head of this foreigner is idle. England only
wishes to see no more of him, and get rid of the Prince and his pension
with the greatest possible expedition.

But, on the really important question of the permanency of the
Cabinet, if any man, from John o' Groat's House to the Land's End,
can lay his finger upon any one great healing measure of this Govern-
ment— any one instance of meeting the calamities of the time — any one
proof of salutary and acknowledged influence or service in the European
system — then say we with the courtiers, Let them go on triumphing !
But if this as much defies probability, as a change in the tides, then say
all honest and sober men, How long are we to give a Cabinet of Soldiers
credit for being a Cabinet of Statesmen ? How long are we to suppose
that a man vigorous in the field, is to be therefore wise in council ? or
that the faculties which were in their maturity twenty years ago, are to
claim a renovated y.outh, and be in the full bloom of legislation for ever ?

Then, away with the Cabinet, and let it make room for one in which
men's habits have been neither exposed to the morals of a camp, nor their
hearts inured to the bloody waste of the field, nor their education for the
government of freemen formed by a forty years' unquestioning and
unquestioned exercise of that discipline, which, essential as it is for the
soldier, is the direct reverse of every feeling of civil life. We will have
nothing to do with cap in hand submission, with the mute obedience of
the drill, with the haughty spirit of the guard-room. If the Cabinet can
have divested itself of those things, let it go on. But we hate experi-
ments ; we rely deeply on the force of old associations ; we think the
Soldier proper only in his proper place ; and we long to see once more at
the head of affairs, Statesmen, according to the old and glorious model of
England.

M.M. New Scries.—VoL. IX. No. 50. 8

[ 130 ] [FEB.

A FROST IN LONDON.

A FROST in London ! What a miscellany of absurd mischances,
what lavish materials for laughter and description are comprised in these
words ! Every quarter of London abounds in food for cachinnation.
Let me extract a few " Random Records." — In the more fashionable
streets, where the quick, bustling step of business is little, if at all,
known, the pavement on either side (for I am supposing a strenuous
frost ushered in by its usual herald, a snow-storm) is one mass of dark
glossy ice, which the trim dandy eyes with a ludicrous misgiving, as if
but to look, were to tumble. Should he wear stays, his trepidation
deepens into paralysis. — Hard by the squares, close underneath whose
rails, a mass of drifted snow lies couched, some five or six urchins are
busy manufacturing snow-balls, one of which, destined for the sconce of
a fellow idler, wears away on the wrong tack, and drives bump ashore
against the midriff of a fat man in spectacles. — On the Serpentine, a
prepossessing young skaiter, whose first year of shaving will not expire
till March, inspired by the manifest admiration of a group of lovely
girls, resolves for once to outdo himself, but, alas ! in rounding the loop
of the Figure of Three, he loses his equilibrium, changes abruptly from
the perpendicular to the horizontal, and cuts one figure more than he
had anticipated. Close beside him stands a determined wag, who over-
powered by his sense of the ridiculous, misses his footing, and plunges
into an adjacent hole, and finishes his laugh three feet beneath the sur-
face of the ice. It is to be hoped that he will be drowned, as the in-
terest of his situation will be materially improved thereby. — In Sloane-
gtreet, which the " nipping blasts" scour from one end to the other, like
Cossacks on a foraging party, Number 179, in venturing forth to visit
Number 98, meets with Number 82 First Floor Furnished, with a thin
blueish tinge at the tip of her nose. Neither ladies have been conscious
of the existence of hands or feet for the last ten minutes. Their tongues
however, it is gratifying to add, are still in high condition. — Through-
out the east-end, every third plebeian's digits are deep " embowelled" in
his pockets : the Hounsditch Israelites, with their stiff frozen beards,
look like itinerant statues of .^Esculapius : and the driver of the hackney
coach, which stands next the airy regions of Finsbury-square, is a petri-
faction from the waist downwards. — At Bishopsgate Within, Miss A — ,
the Venus of the ward, who has been asked thrice in church, cannot
become one flesh with Mr. B — , the Apollo of Farringdon Without, till
the huge chilblain, on the fourth finger of her left hand, has become
sufficiently thawed to permit the passage of the wedding ring. Her
opinion of the frost is, in consequence, far from disinterested. — At the
Horse Guards, the two mounted sentries look ossified and hopeless, for
an indefatigable north-east wind is momently assimilating their condition
to that of Lot's wife. — In turning up from Guildford-street into Russell-
square, an intelligent, serious looking gentleman comes into hasty and
unexpected collision with another, equally intelligent, at the edge of a
long slide. The consequences are obvious. Both plunge to earth, and
(wonderful to relate) the same oath, given out in a bold bravura style,
mellowed by a slight touch of the plaintive — like the Jeremiads of the
Poor Gardeners — bursts at the same moment from the lips of both. On
comparing damages, one gentleman finds that he has split his new black
shorts ; the other, that he has staved in the crown of his best hat. — In

1830.] A Frost in London. 131

driving up Constitution-hill, where Boreas is proverbially frolicsome,
my Lady B/s Jehu becomes suddenly 'unconscious of a nose, but finding
that the footman behind is in the same predicament, he resigns himself
with a grim smile of satisfaction to his fate. — While quitting a linen-
draper's in Hanway-yard, whither he has been accompanying two ladies
a-shopping, a smart youth, in a gay blue mantle, comes down, just out-
side the door, on that particular portion of his person which naturalists
have defined as the seat of honour. On jumping up, agreeably savage,
he discovers the shopman in convulsions, and his fair friends in hysterics,
though he himself cannot see the joke. It is surprising how insensible
some people are to humour ! — Should the wind be high, and the snow
exuberant, umbrellas make a point of turning inside out ; bonnets, like
pigs on a trip to Smithfield, take every direction but the right ; hats
evince a disposition to see the world, and ladies' dresses to mount up-
wards in the scale of things.

So much for externals : within doors, the student sits " contractus
legens" — as Horace says — by his fire-side, and sensitive young ladies,
who have been for some time striving to summon up courage to go a
shopping, move to the window, cast a glance at the snow on the pave-
ment, shudder gracefully, and creep closer to their " ingle-nook." — In a
warm cushioned arm-chair, with spectacles on his nose, the " Miseries of
Human Life" in his hands, and " Rejected Addresses" lying on the
table beside him, sits the old bachelor, condemning the unoffending
eyes of the frost and its stern rheumatic concomitants. How different is
the state of the married man ! He — happy fellow ! — as evening draws
on, sits surrounded by his children, the two youngest of whom, in con-
sideration of the severity of the weather and the social influence of
Christmas, are permitted to nestle close beside him, where they amuse
themselves by making pincushions of his calf, pouring Port- wine into
his pockets, and stuffing his snuff-box with apple-pips. See what it is
to be a parent ! But it is at night that the father is most in his
element. Then, while the thermometer is below zero, and the water is
frozen in his bason, he is roused from dreams of happiness by the cla-
mour of his daughter Anna Maria, who sleeps in the crib beside him,
and whose hooping-cough, like Rachael mourning for her children,
" refuseth to be comforted." Up jumps the worthy gentleman, lights
the tinder-box, finds Anna Maria black in the face, runs off for the
doctor, leaps the first gutter, tumbles, breaks his nose against the second,
and is hauled off to the watch-house as a drunkard. Such are a few
among the numerous absurd concomitants of a Frost in London !

FUDGE ! ! !

IN REPLY TO A FOREIGN FRIEND, WHO INQUIRED THE MEANING OF BUR-
CUELL'S FAVOURITE EXCLAMATION IN THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.

So oft might Burchell now apply

His favourite word again ;
'Tis easier to exemplify

Its meaning than explain.
'Tis said and written, " that Burdett

Sincerely loves reform ;
That England's sun's about to set

In Revolution's storm ; —
S 2

132 Fudge!!! [FEB.

" That Whitbread, not by accident,

Once tasted his own beer ;
That Irving's rant, a wise man went

A second time to hear ;
That peace the Frenchman now delights,

And poetry the Dutch ;
That Keswick Bob too little writes,

And Harry Hope too much ; —

" That Cobbett's honesty and wit

Alone can save the land ;
That Bentham three whole lines has writ

Himself can understand ;
That Goulburn's speeches can allure

Joe Hume to praise a tax ;
That ne'er was sympathy so pure
As Buxton's for the blacks ; —

" That all old Blackstone taught us once

Grim Birnie proves untrue ;
That Robert Peel is not a dunce,

Or Rothschild not a — screw ;
That Husky's eloquence consoles

The House for Canning's loss ;
That Brougham don't think upon the Rolls,

That gold to Copley's dross ; —

" That when Utilitarian scribes

The hireling press condemn,
They are not angry that the bribes

Should never come to them ;
That some most patient friend of Mill

The 'Westminster' perused,
And thought it not the bitterest pill

That ever taste abused; —

" That Newcastle and Sadler are

< Small deer/ as Plunket thought ;
That Scarlett's monstrous popular,

And Whigs are never bought ;
That female bosoms never beat

When Abercorn draws nigh ;
That living man unscorched can meet

The glance of Stanley's eye ; —

" That Russia's emperor has not

The slightest wish to reign,
Instead of Mahmoud, on the spot

Where Constantine was slain ;
That chance alone at Waterloo

Gave England's arms the day ;
That Frenchmen quoted ' Qu'il mourut,'

And scorned to run away j —

" That Eldon's going to uphold

Mechanics' Institutes ;
That all for love, and not for gold,

St. Albans married Coutts ;
That all the world, of poetry

Think Jeffery is a judge "

" Hold ! hold, my friend ! I now perceive
What Burchell meant by— Fudge !"

1830.] [ 133 ]

MY CHRISTMAS DINNER!

IT was on the twentieth of December last that I received an invitation
from my friend Mr. Phiggins, to dine with him, in Mark-lane, on
Christmas-day. I had several reasons for declining this proposition.
The first was, that Mr. P. makes it a rule, at all these festivals, to empty
the entire contents of his counting-house into his little dining-parlour ;
and you consequently sit down to dinner with six white-waistcoated
clerks, let loose upon a turkey. The second was, that I am not suffi-
ciently well-read in cotton and sugar, to enter with any spirit into the
subject of conversation. The third was, and is, that I never drink cape
wine. But by far the most prevailing reason remains to be told. I had
been anticipating for some days, and was hourly in the hope of receiving,
an invitation to spend my Christmas-day in a most irresistible quarter.
I was expecting, indeed, the felicity of eating plum-pudding with an
angel ; and, on the strength of my imaginary engagement, I returned a
polite note to Mr. P., reducing him to the necessity of advertising for
another candidate for cape and turkey.

The twenty-first came. Another invitation — to dine with a regiment
of roast-beef eaters at Clapham. I declined this also, for the above
reason, and for one other, viz. that, on dining there ten Christmas days
ago, it was discovered, on sitting down, that one little accompaniment of
the roast beef had been entirely overlooked. Would it be believed? —
but I will not stay to mystify — I merely mention the fact. They had
forgotten the horse-radish !

The next day arrived, and with it a neat epistle, sealed with violet-
coloured wax, from Upper Brook- street. " Dine with the ladies — at home
on Christmas-day." Very tempting, it is true ; but not exactly the letter
I was longing for. I began, however, to debate within myself upon the
policy of securing this bird in the hand, instead of waiting for the two
that were still hopping about the bush, when the consultation was sud-
denly brought to a close, by a prophetic view of the portfolio of draw-
ings fresh from boarding-school — moths and roses on embossed paper; —
to say nothing of the album, in which I stood engaged to write an elegy
on a Java sparrow, that had been a favourite in the family for three
days. I rung for gilt-edged, pleaded a world of polite regret, and again
declined.

The twenty-third dawned ; time was getting on rather rapidly ; but
no card came. I began to despair of any more invitations, and to repent
of my refusals. Breakfast was hardly over, however, when the servant
brought up — not a letter — but an aunt and a brace of cousins from
Bayswater. They would listen to no excuse ; consanguinity required
me, and Christmas was not my own. Now my cousins keep no albums ;
they are really as pretty as cousins can be ; and when violent hands,
with white kid gloves, are laid on one, it is sometimes difficult to effect
an escape with becoming elegance. I could not, ^however, give up my
darling hope of a pleasanter prospect. They fought with me in fifty
engagements — that I pretended to have made. I shewed them the
Court Guide, with ten names obliterated — being those of persons who
had not asked me to mince-meat and misletoe ; and I ultimately gained
my cause by quartering the remains of an infectious fever on the sensi-
tive fears of my aunt, and by dividing a rheumatism and a sprained
ancle between my sympathetic cousins.

As soon as they were gone I walked out, sauntering involuntarily in
the direction of the only house in which I felt I could spend a " happy"

134 My Christmas Dinner ! [FEB.

Christmas. As I approached, a porter brought a large hamper to the
door. " A present from the country," thought I ; " yes, they do dine
at home ; they must ask me ; they know that I am in town." Imme-
diately afterwards a servant issued with a letter : he took the nearest
way to my lodgings, and I hurried back by another street to receive the
so-much- wished-for invitation. I was in a state of delirious delight.

I arrived — but there was no letter. I sate down to wait, in a spirit of
calmer enjoyment than I had experienced for some days ; and in less
than half an hour a note was brought to me. At length the desired
dispatch had come : it seemed written on the leaf of a lily, with a pen
dipped in dew. I opened it,- — and had nearly fainted with disappoint-
ment. It was from a stock-broker, who begins an anecdote of. Mr.
Rothschild before dinner, and finishes it with the fourth bottle — and who
makes his eight children stay up to supper and snap-dragon. In Maca-
damizing a stray stone in one of his periodical puddings, I once lost a
tooth, and with it an heiress of some reputation. I wrote a most irritable
apology, and dispatched my warmest regards in a whirlwind.

December the twenty-fourth. — I began to count the hours, and uttered
many poetical things about the wings of Time. Alack ! no letter came ;
— yes, I received a note from a distinguished dramatist, requesting the
honour, &c. But I was too cunning for this, and practised wisdom for
once. I happened to reflect that his pantomime was to make its appear-
ance on the night after, and that his object was to perpetrate the whole
programme upon me. Regret that I could not have the pleasure of
meeting Mr. Paulo, and the rest of the literati to be then and there
assembled, was of course immediately expressed.

My mind became restless and agitated. I felt, amidst all these invi-
tations, cruelly neglected. They served, indeed, but to increase my
uneasiness, as they opened prospects of happiness in which I could take
no share. They discovered a most tempting dessert, composed of for-
bidden fruit. I took down "Childe Harold," and read myself into a
sublime contempt of mankind. I began to perceive that merriment is
only malice in disguise, and that the chief cardinal virtue is misan-
thropy.

I sate " nursing my wrath" till it scorched me ; when the arrival of
another epistle suddenly charmed me from this state of delicious melan-
choly and delightful endurance of wrong. I sickened as I surveyed,

and trembled as I opened it. It was dated from , but no matter ;

it was not the letter. In such a frenzy as mine, raging to behold the
object of my adoration condescend, not to eat a custard, but to render it
invisible — to be invited perhaps to a tart fabricated by her own ethereal
fingers ; with such possibilities before me, how could I think of joining
a " friendly party" — where I should inevitably sit next to a deaf lady,
who had been, when a little girl, patted on the head by Wilkes, or my
Lord North, she could not recollect which — had taken tea with the
author of " Junius," but had forgotten his name — and who once asked
me " whether Mr. Munden's monument was in Westminster Abbey or
St. Pauls ?" — I seized a pen, and presented my compliments. I hesi-
tated— for the peril and precariousness of my situation flashed on my
mind ; but hope had still left me a straw to catch at, and I at length
succeeded in resisting this late and terrible temptation.

After the first burst of excitement I sunk into still deeper despon-
dency. My spirit became a prey to anxiety and remorse. I could not
eat ; dinner was removed with unlifted covers. I went out. The world
seemed to have acquired a new face ; nothing was to be seen but raisins

1830.] My Christmas Dinner ! 135

and rounds of beef. I wandered about like Lear — I had given up all !
I felt myself grated against the world like a nutmeg. It grew dark — .
I sustained a still gloomier shock. Every chance seemed to have ex-
pired, and every body seemed to have a delightful engagement for the
next day. I alone was disengaged — I felt like the Last Man ! To-mor-
row appeared to have already commenced its career ; mankind had
anticipated the future ; " and coming mince-pies cast their shadows
before."

In this state of desolation and dismay I called — I could not help it—-
at the house to which I had so fondly anticipated an invitation and a
welcome. My protest must here however be recorded, that though I
called in the hope of being asked, it was my fixed determination not to
avail myself of so protracted a piece of politeness. No : my triumph
would have been to have annihilated them with an engagement made in
September, payable three months after date, With these feelings I gave
an agitated knock — they were stoning the plums, and did not imme-
diately attend. I rung — how unlike a dinner bell it sounded ! A girl
at length made her appearance, and, with a mouthful of citron, informed
me that the family had gone to spend their Christmas-eve in Portland-
place. I rushed down the steps, I hardly knew whither. My first im-
pulse was to go to some wharf and inquire what vessels were starting
for America. But it was a cold night — I went home and threw myself
on my miserable couch. In other words, I went to bed.

I dozed and dreamed away the hours till daybreak. Sometimes I
fancied myself seated in a roaring circle, roasting chestnuts at a blazing
log; at others, that I had fallen into the Serpentine while skaiting,
and that the Humane Society were piling upon me a Pelion, or rather a
Vesuvius of blankets. I awoke a little refreshed. Alas ! it was the
twenty-fifth of the month — it was Christmas-day ! Let the reader, if
he possess the imagination of Milton, conceive my sensations.

I swallowed an atom of dry toast — nothing could calm the fever of my
soul. I stirred the fire and read Zimmerman alternately. Even reason
— the last remedy one has recourse to in such cases — came at length to
my relief : I argued myself into a philosophic fit. But, unluckily, just
as the Lethean tide within me was at its height, my landlady broke in
upon my lethargy, and chased away by a single word all the little sprites
and pleasures that were acting as my physicians, and prescribing balm
for my wounds. She paid me the usual compliments, and then — " Do
you dine at home to-day, Sir ?" abruptly inquired she. Here was a
question. No Spanish inquisitor ever inflicted such' complete dismay
in so short a sentence. Had she given me a Sphynx to expound, a
Gordian tangle to untwist ; had she set me a lesson in algebra, or asked
me the way to Brobdignag ; had she desired me to sliew her the North
Pole, or the meaning of a melodrama ; — any or all of these I might have
accomplished. But to request me to define my dinner* — to inquire into
its latitude — to compel me to fathom that sea of appetite which
I now felt rushing through my frame — to ask me to dive into futurity,
and become the prophet of pies and preserves ! — My heart died within
me at the impossibility of a reply.

She had repeated the question before I could collect my senses around
me. Then, for the first time, it occurred to me that, in the event of my
having no engagement abroad, my landlady meant to invite me !
" There will at least be the two daughters," I whispered to myself; " and
after all, Lucy Matthews is a charming girl, and touches the harp divinely.

3 36 My Christmas Dinner ! £FEB

She has a very small pretty hand, I recollect ; only her fingers are so

? tinctured by the needle — and I rather think she bites her nails. No,
will not even now give up my hope. It was yesterday but a straw —
to-day it is but the thistledown ; but I will cling to it to the last
moment. There are still four hours left; they will not dine till six.
One desperate struggle, and the peril is past; let me not be seduced by
this last golden apple, and I may yet win my race." The struggle was
made — " I should not dine at-home." This was the only phrase left
me; for I could not say that " I should dine out." Alas ! that an event
should be at the same time so doubtful and so desirable. I only begged
that if any letter arrived, it might be brought to me immediately.

The last plank, the last splinter, had now given way beneath me.
I was floating about with no hope but the chance of something almost
impossible. They had " left me alone/' not with my glory, but with
an appetite that resembled an avalanche seeking whom it might devour.
I had passed one dinnerless day, and the half of another ; yet the
promised land was as far from sight as ever. I recounted the chances I
had missed. The dinners I might have enjoyed, passed in a dioramic
view before my eyes. Mr. Phiggins and his six clerks — the Clapham beef-
eaters— the charms of Upper Brook-street — my pretty cousins, and the
pantomime- writer — the stock-broker, whose stories one forgets, and the
elderly lady who forgets her stories — they all marched by me, a pro-
cession of apparitions. Even my landlady's invitation, though unborn,
was not forgotten in summing up my sacrifices. And for what ?

Four o'clock. Hope was perfectly ridiculous. I had been walking
upon the hair-bridge over a gulf, and could not get into Elysium after all.
I had been catching moonbeams, and running after notes of music.
Despair was my only convenient refuge; no chance remained, unless
something should drop from the clouds. In this last particular I was
not disappointed ; for on looking up I perceived a heavy shower of
snow. Yet I was obliged to venture forth ; for being supposed to dine
out, I could not of course remain at home. Where to go I knew not :
I was like my first father — " the world was all before me." I flung my
cloak round me, and hurried forth with the feelings of a bandit longing
for a stiletto. At the foot of the stairs, I staggered against two or three
smiling rascals, priding themselves upon their punctuality. They had
just arrived — to make the tour of Turkey. How I hated them ! — As I
rushed by the parlour, a single glance disclosed to me a blazing fire,
with Lucy and several lovely creatures in a semicircle. Fancy, too, gave
me a glimpse of a sprig of misletoe — I vanished from the house, like a
spectre at day-break.

How long I wandered about is doubtful. At last I happened to look
through a kitchen-window, with an area in front, and saw a villain with
a fork in his hand, throwing himself back in his chair choked with
ecstacy. Another was feasting with a graver air ; he seemed to be swal-
lowing a bit of Paradise^ and criticising its flavour. This was too much
for mortality — my appetite fastened upon me like an alligator. I darted
from the spot ; and only a few yards farther, discerned a house, with
rather an elegant exterior, and with some ham in the window that looked
perfectly sublime. There was no time for consideration — to hesitate
was to perish. I entered ; it was indeed " a banquet-hall deserted."
The very waiters had gone home to their friends. There, however, I
found a fire ; and there— to sum up all my folly and felicity in a single
word- — I DINED!

J830.] C 137 :

THE BRITISH WEST INDIA COLONIES, AS THEY WERE,
AND AS THEY AEE.

THE present situation of the British West India Colonies, and the
important consequences involved in the line of policy that may be
adopted towards them by the Government at home, render it necessary
that we should approach the subject with extreme caution ; and that we
should consider the measures acquired for the amelioration of the slave
population, with that moderation and serious attention which its import-
ance demands.

Disregarding equally the irritable feeling created on one side by those
persons who contend for an uncontrolled freedom of trade, and the
impracticable schemes and abstract inapplicable reasonings of the violent
abolitionists, we propose to give a general view of the present state of
our West India possessions, noticing the causes which appear to have
led to their depreciated condition, and stating concisely the remedies
that have been proposed to avert the ruinous consequences which it is
alleged must overtake them, if they are left unaided to struggle with
existing difficulties.

In the course of this investigation we shall have to advert, in particular,
to the general tenor of the policy under which our Colonies were reared
-p— to the necessity of keeping up a protective system against foreign
competitors — and of maintaining the colonial intercourse in such a manner,
as to inspire confidence between the colonist and the government of the
mother country. We shall notice the measures recommended by govern-
ment for the amelioration and ultimate emancipation of the labouring
population, and the impediments which are experienced in carrying these
recommendations into immediate effect.

In taking a short view of this difficult but very important subject,
we must take care not to place ourselves amongst the number of those
theorists who would at once proceed to legislate for our West India
Colonies, as if they had merely to deal with a country entirely new, and
totally disencumbered of antecedent claims and obligations : — we must
look at these possessions as they actually exist at the present day : we
must not recommend to do evil, that good may come ; but, taking a fair
view of measures encouraged and sanctioned by former legislatures, and
of existing claims and property created by law, we must consider what
is best to be done under present circumstances, and advocate the adop-
tion of that course which seems most consonant to a due regard for exist-
ing rights, and most reconcilable to the dictates of justice and huma-t
nity.

It has of late years been too much the custom in this country with a
numerous class of the community, whose knowledge-ef the Colonies has
chiefly been derived from the ex parte statements made at anti-slavery
meetings, or from the violent publications with which, in our day, we
have been so largely favoured, to consider these possessions as something
foreign or anti-national, instead of looking at them in the manner in
which they ought fairly to be viewed — namely, as a part and parcel of
the British empire, and in the actual possession of British subjects, whose
interests, habits, and feelings ought to bind them by the strongest ties
to the mother country.

From the earliest period of their occupation, it has been the study and
endeavour of our leading statesmen to protect them from foreign aggres-

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 50. T . ..

138 The British West India Colonies, [FEB.

sion, and to watch over their rising prosperity, and encourage their pro-
ductive industry — not, certainly, for their benefit alone, but in order
that the mother country might secure and appropriate the entire advan-
tages of that industry ; that she might, by and through them, open new
and certain markets for the consumption of her own manufactures and
produce — establish, especially in times of difficulty, safe depots for the
extension of her foreign trade — and create fixed and regular employ-
ment to increase the number of her ships and seamen.

With this view, the various legislative enactments have, from the
earliest times down to the present moment, been framed.

The celebrated Navigation Act of the 12th of Charles the Second,
secured the plantation trade to British shipping, by enacting that the
produce of the Colonies could only be transported from thence in British
ships ; and that, instead of proceeding to the nearest or best market, the
colonists should only export their produce to another English colony, or
to England, Wales, or Ireland, " there to be laid on shore," under the
penalty of forfeiting the ship and goods, or their value.

The rapid development of the numerous advantages accruing to the
mother country from the colonial trade, soon led to further restrictions.
The statute 15, Car. II. c. J, prevented the colonists from purchasing
their European supplies at the cheapest markets, obliging them to take
from home every thing they required, with the exceptions of horses and
victuals from Ireland and Scotland.

The preamble to this important " Act for the encouragement of
Trade," states in concise terms the nature of the policy by which the
government was, at this early period, actuated;

" In regard his Majesty's plantations beyond seas are inhabited and
peopled by the subjects of this his kingdom of England, for the main-
taining a greater correspondence and kindness between them, and keep-
ing them in a firmer dependence upon it, and rendering them yet more
beneficial and advantageous unto it in the further employment and
increase of English shipping and seamen, vent of English woollen and
other manufactures and commodities, rendering the navigation to and
from the same more safe and cheap, and making this kingdom a staple
not only of the commodities of those plantations, but also of the commo-
dities of other countries and places, for the supplying of them ; and it
being the usage of other nations to keep their plantation-trade to them-
selves," &c. And for the purpose of still further securing to England
the whole advantages of this colonial trade, our several Colonies were pro-
hibited from having any direct intercourse with each other. Ireland was
also excluded from the benefits of the trade, until these measures were
eventually modified in the same reign to the extent of re-opening an
intercourse — subject, however, to the payment of very heavy duties.

Although the Colonies did not acquiesce in these heavy restrictions,
and the Island of Barbadoes openly, in 1676, remonstrated against
them, they not only continued to be rigidly and jealously enforced, " in
regard it much concerneth the trade of this kingdom," but direct duties
began, about this time, to be levied at home upon sugar and other tro-
pical produce ; and although some modification took place in favour of
vessels employed by Spaniards bringing fc money," the law continued in
this state down to the reign' of George the Second, when a material
relaxation, in regard to their staple commodity, took place. It was then
enacted (by 12th Geo. II. cap. 20), that British-built ships, navigated
according to law, the sole property of British subjects, who were resident,

1830.] us they were, and at they are, 139

the major part in this country, and the residue in the Colonies, might, on
taking out a licence for that purpose, clear out from Great Britain for
the Colonies, there load and carry sugars to any foreign port of Europe.
By the 15th Geo. II. this permission was extended to ships belonging to
Great Britain, navigated according to law ; and these enactments con-
tinued in force until they were repealed by 34th Geo. III. cap. 42.

In the mean time the duty on sugar and other tropical produce had
been gradually increased, till, in 1799, it had reached to 20*. the cwt.
on sugar, equal to about 38 per cent, upon the price at which it was
then sold.

By statute 4th Geo. III. cap. 15, coffee, pimento, and some other
articles, were added to the list of those subjected to the regulations
of Charles the Second ; and the " Free Port Act" (6th Geo. III. cap. 49)
legitimatized the trade with the Spanish Colonies, by permitting the
importation, in one-decked vessels, of live stock and other commodities
(tobacco excepted) into Dominica, and also into certain ports in Jamaica,
with the further exceptions of the articles sugar, coffee, ginger, and
molasses. But these indulgences were superseded by the 21st and 27th
Acts of the same reign.

The export and import trade between Ireland and the Colonies, which
had been prohibited since the time of Charles the Second, was not again
thrown open until the 18th and 20th statutes of Geo. III., when Ireland
was placed on the same footing, in that respect, with Great Britain.

Our limits will not permit us to enter into an account of the various
regulations attempted for adjusting the intercourse between these Colo-
nies and the United States, after the latter had attained their indepen-
dency. Suffice it to say, that that intercourse was courted principally
with a view to obtaining supplies of essential necessity ; and that, up to
a recent period, it was strictly limited to British shipping, navigated
according to law, and presented no material deviation from that broad
principle of appropriation which governed the first legislators in the time
of Charles the Second.

We have considered it necessary to take special notice of the tenor and
bearing of these early enactments, because many persons have been so far
misled in regard to the relations between the Colonies and the mother
country, as to suppose that every interference has been solely with the
view of conferring benefits on the former, and that the latter has
derived no adequate remuneration for the trouble of governing them.

Although, as may easily be supposed, these restrictions, imposed solely
for the benefit of the mother country, prevented the West Indians from
enjoying the full advantages, which, in other circumstances, they might
have derived from their productive industry, and commanding geogra-
phical position for trade, yet there was no attempt made at home to
detract from their importance in the estimation of the public ; and the
firm, tenacious, and uncompromising measures of the British Government,
inspired the colonists with a strong feeling of security in the stability of
their property. Respectable families felt no hesitation in embarking
in colonial pursuits ; and, notwithstanding the pressure of the measures
imposed by the mother country, the Colonies continued to rise and flou-
rish under her protection ; and it seems to have been reserved for some
of the economists and philanthropists of modern days, to discover that
the Colonies were an iniquitous burden, and that the negro population
carried there would, instead of being gradually trained to habits of civi-
lization, be more happy if forcibly emancipated, like their former bre-»

T 2

140 The British Went India Colotnes, [FEB.

thren of St. Domingo and Mexico, whose present condition we shall
shortly have occasion to notice.

Had the regulations which his Majesty's Government attempted to
establish by the provisions of the 3d Geo. IV. cap. 44, the 6th of Geo.
IV. cap. 114, and the 7th and 8th Geo. IV. cap. 56, been met on the
part of the United States with a corresponding liberality, there can be
very little doubt that both parties would have derived many advantages
from the contemplated interchange of commodities ; but, unfortunately,
the time for promoting an equitable intercourse had been allowed to
escape ; and the extravagant pretensions assumed by these new states
having put it out of our power to accede to their unreasonable expecta-
tions, without materially compromising the national dignity, these
enactments, in so far as regards the desired intercourse with the United
'States, remain worse than a dead letter. And the colonists affirm, that
with all the machinery of free ports, and the aid of new regulations,
avowedly framed for their relief, they are now in a worse situation in
many respects than they were previous to their enactment. That they
are still, by law, obliged to procure that essential article, fish, at the
dearest market; that heavy duties are now imposed, by the mother
country, upon flour, rice, staves, shingles, timber, and other articles of
essential necessity, from the United States, formerly obtained free of duty,
in exchange for their rum and molasses ; that 12s. the hundred- weight
duty precludes them from applying to the cheapest markets for beef and
pork ; and fifteen to thirty per cents, upon negro clothing, and other
articles, indispensable in the cultivation of a West India estate. More-
over, that the 'new export regulations, the warehousing in bond, and
free-port systems, have proved equally nugatory ; and that so far from
a great boon having been conferred on the West India planter, the bene-
fits expected from these boasted enactments are quite illusory, and have
unfortunately failed to give that relief which it was the avowed object
of the legislature fully to afford !

While these and other adverse circumstances, to be hereafter noticed,
have, as it would appear, operated against the prosperity of the Colonies
in the West Indies, the planter has been unable to find any counter-
vailing advantages in Europe. The monopoly in the British market,
which was at one time the equivalent allowed by the mother country
for the restrictions imposed on the planter, has been latterly more
extensively infringed by the admission of Mauritius sugars, on equal
terms, for home consumption, and of foreign sugars, to a small extent,
in the refineries ; whilst the high duties continued since the peace have,
as is affirmed, tended to check the gradual increase of consumption, and
the continental markets have been inundated with sugar, the produce of
foreign Colonies, who persist in carrying on the slave trade; and all
these circumstances have operated to reduce the price of sugar in the
home market, until it is now very considerably under the cost of pro-
duction.

We have seen a representation from the West India body, which is
now before his Majesty's Ministers, wherein the subject of the sugar and
rum duties is so forcibly stated, that we think we cannot do better than
extract what is said regarding the former commodity.

" It appears that the duty has, at different periods, borne the follow-
ing proportion to the price.

" From 1792 to 1796, the price was 55*. Id. the cwt., and the duty
J 5 s.} being in the proportion to the price 27i per cent.

1830.] «* they were, and as they are. 141

" From 1797 to 1798, the average price was 67*. 3d. the cwt., and the
duty 17*. 6rfv being in the proportion of 26 per cent.

" In 1799 and 1800, the average price was 64*. 2%d. per cwt., and the
duty 18*. 2e?. per cwt., being in the proportion of 28 per cent.

" In 1801 and 1802, the average price was 52*. *]d. per cwt., and the
duty was 20*. per cwt., being in the proportion of 38 per cent.

" From 1803 (when the war duty of 1*. the cwt. was imposed) to
1823 inclusive, the average price was 46*. 4d. per cwt., and the duty
(after deducting a provisional allowance of 3*.) was 27*-, being in the
proportion of 58^ per cent.

" In 1824, 1825, and 1826, the average price was 33*. 5d. the cwt.,
and the duty 27*v being in the proportion of 80| per cent.

" The average prices were not again published until the latter part of
the year 1828.

" During the present year (1829) the price of sugar has been gradu-
ally falling. By the returns in June, the average price was only 29*. 6d.,
while the duty, remaining at 27*., bore the greatly- increased propor-
tion to the price of 91^ per cent.

" By the last returns, the price was 25*. Id. the cwt., the duty 27*.,
being in the proportion of 107 per cent.

" Thus the duty on sugar, at the present moment, is infinitely larger
in proportion to the price than at any former period.

" Upon all middling and inferior kinds of sugar (which form about
three-fourths of the supply), there is a very serious loss. On a con-
siderable portion of the latter, which do not now sell for more than 17*.
or 19*. per cwt., the duty amounts to from 142 to 159 per cent. ; and,
on those lower qualities of sugar, the planter, after paying the freight,
insurance, landing, and sale charges, (at least 8*. the cwt.,) has only from
9*. to 11*. the cwt. for the expense of production, which, with reference
to the present low price of rum, and to the current expences of carrying
on the cultivation of the estates, cannot be estimated at less than 18*.,
without making any allowance for the interest on the capital embarked.

" He is thus receiving 7*. to 9*. per cwt. less than the cost of produc-
tion j and it is evident that neither production nor taxation can continue
on such a basis.

" The West India body, under existing circumstances, seek in vain for
any reasons to justify the continuance of a duty so greatly disproportioned
to the price : and they submit that it is contrary to every principle of
legitimate taxation to keep the rate of duty so high, that its continuance
must evidently ruin the producer." ,

Agreeably to this statement, the planter has to divide every hundred
pounds received for inferior sugars (taking the price at 45*., including
the duty) in the following manner :-—

The government receives for duty £60 0 0

The planter must pay freight home, dock rates, labourage,
and other charges 22 4 6

£82 4 6

so that to maintain the labourers and their families on his
estates, support himself, family, and assistants, pay his share
of Colonial burdens, &c., he has little more than a sixth part,
or 17 15 6

£100 0 0

142 The British West India Colonies, [FEB.

Eighty-two per cent., or five-sixths of the price of a considerable part
of his marketable produce (but varying in a certain ratio according to
the price of sugar) is thus taken from him ; and, before he can apply a
penny of the remainder towards providing for himself and his Euro-
pean overseers and mechanics, he is bound, by the laws of the Colonies,
to find food, clothing, and medicines, for his negroes, whom he cannot
even enfranchise, without first giving security that they shall not become
burdensome to the community.

If this state of things arose from over-production in our Colonies, or
if it were possible to substitute there the cultivation of any other remu-
nerating commodity in the place of sugar, a specific might be found ;
but, unfortunately, these effects arise from a different cause, and do not
admit of so easy a remedy. This we shall endeavour to explain.

Previous to the commencement of the late war, the West Indians com-
plained that the high duty prevented the consumption of sugar from
keeping a steady pace with the increasing population and growing wealth
of the country. But the destruction of the French Colonies in St. Do-
mingo, the check which our naval superiority put it in our power to give
to the foreign slave trade, and various other occurrences during the war,
enabled the planter to maintain his ground, notwithstanding the increased
duties then imposed. Since the return of peace, and although the con-
sumption has not kept pace with the increased quantity now brought to
this market, the same heavy duties continue to operate against the
planter. He has had, in addition, to encounter a ,new, and very unfair,
species of competition with foreigners, which is thus explained in the
paper to which we have already referred : —

" Although the British West India Colonies had long furnished a suf-
ficient supply for home consumption, and a large surplus for exportation,
new competitors have been admitted into the markets of this country.

" When the admission of Mauritius sugars was about to take place,
his Majesty's Ministers, in 1825, stated that the West India interest 'in
opposing the measure were wrong/ as some 10 or 12,000 hhds. only
could find their way into the English market. By the parliamen-
tary returns, it appears, however, that the importation of Mauritius
sugars, which, in 1825, was only 93,723 cwt., equal to 6,464 hhds. of
141 cwt. each, has been regularly increased to four times that quantity,
being, in 1828, no less than 361,052 cwts., 24,900 hhds. of 14^ cwt. ;
and there is reason to believe that this island will permanently add about
one-eighth to the quantity of sugars which are admissible for home con-
sumption on the terms of the old Colonies.

" From the great markets of Russia, Austria, France, and the Nether-
lands, the British planter is virtually excluded by the fiscal regulations
of those countries ; and in the continental markets that remain open to
him, he is met by competitors from foreign Colonies, who are constantly,
and at a comparatively small expense, acquiring new labourers by means
of the slave trade, and who are thus immediately enabled to extend the
culture of the sugar-cane at a low cost. To these causes may be attri-
buted the overwhelming quantities sent to the continent since the
peace.

" It is to be observed, that the humane regulations pursued by the
British planter for the civilization of the negro population, gives
foreigners, in the circumstances under which they are placed, many
advantages in the competition with him. If in this competition our
Colonist is allowed to sink, it cannot be doubted that less national evil

1830.] as they were, and as they are. 143

would arise from now supplying a defalcation of revenue, resulting from
a reduction of duty, from other sources, than in enduring the wide cala-
mity that would result from the ruin of our Colonies.

t( It may be fairly stated, also, in the event of such a catastrophe, that
foreigners could not be expected to bring, permanently, a supply of
sugars to this country so large, as to sell it at the present rates with the
existing duty ; for if by a grinding and oppressive policy, the cultivation
of our Colonies be once destroyed, it is in vain to expect that it can ever
again be restored.

" It is only by steady low prices that the large supply now established
can, by extending consumption, be taken off; and as no return is at
present left to the producer, it is evident that low prices can, for a
length of time, only be maintained by an abatement of duty; it is,
therefore, absolutely necessary that the taxation of sugar should bear
some reference to the cost of its cultivation — a consideration which forms
no part of the system by which the existing duty on this article is regu-
lated.

" These remarks do not specify how much low prices of sugar are
calculated to contribute to the comfort of the middling and lower orders
of the community. This is a consideration, however, that is deserving
of the greatest attention, and is the surest basis on which to rest the per-
manence of a large revenue on such an article."

The extent of the rum duties appear to be more oppressive than even
those on sugar. In 1824 the Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed that
the duty should be placed on an equality with that on British spirits,
that it might be used by the rectifier. Accordingly, next session of
Parliament, an act was passed admitting it to rectification ; but, with
that inconsistency, which the West India Planter has so much cause to
deprecate, Is. 6d. per gallon duty more than is paid on British spirits,
was imposed, on pretence of protection to the latter. The West India
body were assured, that if, contrary to the intentions of Government,
this duty should prove prohibitory, relief should be granted. It has
proved completely prohibitory, and no relief has been afforded.

The quantity has accumulated so much, that the price has fallen to
two-thirds ofv what it was when this extra duty was imposed ; and it is
almost impossible to effect sales at these prices. In Scotland and Ire-
land, where the duty on home-made spirits is 2s. I0d.} it is on rum 8.?. Qd.
the gallon, which is quite contrary to the sound principle admitted by
his Majesty's Government. It may, we believe, be satisfactorily esta-
blished that the removal of this extra and unjust duty would be inju-
rious to no national interest, but would be made very serviceable to the
revenue in superseding the introduction of foreign smuggled spirits,
— of which, notwithstanding our expensive exertions to prevent it, great
quantities are still introduced on various parts of our coast.

When the late Lord Londonderry, at the Congress of Vienna, and
elsewhere, made such strenuous efforts to put a final stop to the slave
trade, preferring, in some measure, the accomplishment of its abolition
to a discussion of the commercial interests of the country, it could
scarcely have been foreseen that his efforts would have been so unavailing
as they appear to be at the present day, or that solemn engagements
would have been eluded in the manner that they now are. It was then
asserted that Great Britain had, during the war, made such good use of
her naval power to put down that trade, that, with the exception of the

144 The British West India Colonies, [FEB.

trade to the Brazils, and about 2,000 slaves annually smuggled into
the Spanish possessions, it had entirely ceased. But the documents
recently printed by order of parliament, not only demonstrate, in the
most undeniable manner, that the Colonies of France and Spain have
renewed this trade to an enormous extent, but that it is sanctioned, or
at least not opposed, by the local authorities. The parliamentary papers
afford ample proof of the extent to which it is still carried on in the
island of Cuba. The British Commissioners there declare from Havanna,
that " the slave trade with this island is fully as extensive, and is car-
ried on in all its branches, with very nearly as much publicity as if our
treaty were not in existence ;" that " the representations which his
Majesty's Commissioners have been in the habit of making to the Cap-
tain-general on the arrival of slave vessels are perfectly useless."* That
" no concealment whatever is found necessary ;" that '" the abolition by
Spain is merely nominal, and, instead of promoting, only serves to
injure the cause of humanity."

The affirmation of the British commodore employed for the suppression
of the slave trade on the coast of Africa,t that that trade " between the
Gambia and Cape Palmas, is carried on solely almost under the French
flag," is abundantly confirmed by various documents in the parliamentary
papers alluded to ; and while France and America pertinaciously deny
the right of mutual search, it is evident that vessels assuming these flags,
may, in general, elude the activity of our cruisers with impunity. The
authorities in the French Colonies seem to pay as little regard to the
ostensible acts of their government on this subject as those of Cuba.
One of the Parisian journals, in June last, gives a specification of seven
cargoes, amounting to nearly 2,000 slaves, landed in Martinique alone
(viz. from the 4th of November, 1828, to the 5th of January, 1829), from
Africa, in the short space of three months ; J and the importation and
sale of negroes in the French West India islands, has been declared to
be as common as that of mules. It appears that the number of slaves
legally imported into Rio Janiero from the 1st of July, 1827, to the 31st
of March, 1828 (a space of nine months), was no less than 30,964,
exclusive of those carried to Maranham, and other Brazilian ports. J5y
the Convention of the 23d of November, 1826, this traffic will cease to be
legal, on the part of Brazil, after the 13th of March, of the present year
(1830), from which day no vessel is to be permitted to leave the African
coast ; but six months is allowed from that date for vessels to reach their
destination. Such, however, are the facilities afforded by geographical
position, that unless more good faith is displayed by the Brazilian, than
has been shewn by the French and Spanish authorities, there is reason
to fear that they will continue to carry on the slave trade, and that our
measures of abolition, entered into with the concurrence of all the poten-
tates of Europe, amidst the pomp of congressional discussion, will have
added to its cruelties without diminishing its extent.

Hitherto, however, this trade in Brazil has not been illegal ; but
its continuance in the French and Spanish islands, in open violation of
solemn engagements, and in contempt, as it were, of the expensive mea-
sures, and ardent wishes of Great Britain, whose Colonies have observed

* Class A — Correspondence with British Commissioners, pp. 93, 148.

•f- Class B — Correspondence with Foreign Powers, &c. pp. 125—105 to 107-

+ Journal of the Socie'te' de Morale Chre'tienne.

1830. J as they were, and as they are. 145

the strictest good faith in abstaining from it, calls for the most pointed
remonstrances, and the severest reprehension of every friend of humanity.
In short, it has been computed that upwards of 600,000 human beings
have been forcibly carried to the foreign Colonies since the peace ; and
were the enormous sums expended from first to last, by this country in
payments to Portugal, maintenance of shipping, expense of the mixed
commissions in Sierra Leone, and elsewhere, in our ineffectual endea-
vours to put down the foreign slave trade, to be compared with the little
positive good that has actually been gained to the cause of humanity, it
is much to be feared that, without calculating upon the expense to which
we are still pledged in continuance of our efforts, the result would startle
the abolitionists themselves, and give foreign powers no very high opinion
of our political wisdom, however much they might affect to praise the
motives by which we have undoubtedly been governed.

It is, however, among other causes for retrospective reflection on this
subject, melancholy to perceive that the number of beings who have
fallen a sacrifice to the additional cruelties incident to that concealment
which is necessary in the prosecution of an interdicted and illicit trade,
is perhaps much greater than the number of those who, by our exertions,
have been intercepted, and restored to a state of comparative liberty ;
while at the same time it may be doubted whether, in many instances,
the situation of those helpless beings, who have been rescued, is much
improved by the new circumstances in which fortune has placed them !

Foreigners may be disposed to question the prudence of our national
policy in having, by the abolition of our slave trade, divested ourselves
of great commercial advantages from pure considerations of justice and
humanity, yet they cannot now doubt the sincerity and good faith with
which we have actually carried the measure into execution ; and although
they may feel inclined to deride our expensive attempts to enforce the
same strict observance in others, they can have no just complaint if, in de-
fence of our own interests, now indemnified with those of justice and philan-
thropy, we insist upon the adoption of more strenuous efforts for carrying
into effect the decisions of the different cabinets of Europe, as expressed
at Aix-la-Chapelle, Vienna, and finally at Verona, ff that they continue
firm in the principles and sentiments manifested by those sovereigns, in
the declaration of the 8th of February, 1815 ; and that they have never
ceased, or ever will cease to consider the slave trade as a scourge which
has too long desolated Africa, degraded Europe, and afflicted humanity ;
and that they are ready to concur in every thing that may secure, and
accelerate, the complete and final abolition of that traffic."

We shall now take notice of other circumstances deserving particular
attention. The want of confidence between the Colonies and the mother
country, has latterly formed a most unpleasant feature in our colonial
intercourse.

We have already stated that there was a period in their history when
such feelings did not prevail ; and we see every reason to desire that
such times may again return ; for, unless they do, it is impossible that
the mutual benefits which the mother country and Colonies may confer
on each other can be fully realized.

Of late years two classes of persons in this country have succeeded in
establishing an incredible influence over the minds and understanding
of their brethren ; the one, by most extensive pretensions to philan-
thropy ; the other, by holding up, as dolts and blockheads, all persons

M, M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 50. U

140 The British West India Colonies, [FEB.

who do not subscribe, to the most extreme of their doctrines, on the
subject of free trade.

We have often been much amused with the extent to which this sort
of dominion has been carried. In our occasional walks into the city, we
sometimes encounter an unworthy son of some hardy North Briton, who
had probably been transferred, unbreeched, from his native hills to the
more genial clime of the western world, there to realize a fortune now in
the possession of this his nondescript descendant.

He generally meets us with an apologetic grimace for being found in
that neighbourhood, and nothing shocks his feelings so much as to be
classed as a West Indian. We have also seen M. P/s, and others
denominated influential individuals, in a similar predicament, although
their errand may have been, to draw from the produce of their West
India property, the means of maintaining their station in society. We
and all other persons would think much better of such individuals, and
they would be more worthy of the sires from whom they are descended,
were they honestly to avow the property which they inherit ; and to
acknowledge and fairly connect themselves with the many weighty
duties which its proper management imposes upon them.

On the subject of free trade we have no unsocial predilections; but
we think there is good reason in saying it should not be made to over-
ride all those connections and interests which have arisen out of our
colonial establishments.

The very name of colony implies that the trade between it and
the mother country is strictly national, and is not to be consi-
dered in the light of a foreign trade ; and that the obligations which
have been established when the colonies were created, are not to be
broken down without the most open, complete, and deliberate deci-
sion : it is a thing not to be done by a side wind, and ought never
to be attempted in that manner. It has been estimated that we now
derive an annual revenue of nearly seven millions from the duties on the
commodities imported from our West India Colonies, the statement of
which fact, carries with it a view of the very extended interests that are
involved in a system producing such a result, and we should, at all
events, ascertain fully the benefits that we are to receive in exchange,
before we break it down.

Have we at present to complain of the high price of the commodities
which we now draw from thence? Or can we obtain a permanent
supply of them on better terms from any other country ? or can we, in
any other way, command the numerous additional advantages that accom-
pany these fixed and secure channels of trade ?

It is often bruited forth that this country pays largely for a West
India monopoly; but any person who has attended to our preceding
remarks will see the inconsistency of such assertions. If the rate of
duties levied in this country on the produce of our Colonies be too low
in reference to those levied on similar commodities from foreign coun-
tries, let all such questions be the subject of fair and open discussion and
arrangement. We feel, however, particular objections to any extended
facility being given, on lower duties, to our direct trade with the Brazils,
Cuba, and other countries who still carry on the slave trade ; objections,
which, we have no doubt, will equally enter into the minds of our
readers. By being too indifferent with regard to that point, this country
loses one of its principal arguments with foreign nations for enforcing

1830.] as they rvere, and as they are. 147

the entire abolition of the slave trade. We would, however, observe,
that whenever that measure is carried into full effect, we can then look
to a period, when, under just regulations, great facility may be given to
the general trade of the world.

Our attention has lately been directed to an act which was passed in
July, 1828, entitled " an act to allow sugar to be delivered out of ware-
house to be refined," which carries with it more of an anti-colonial
character than we could have wished to see enrolled, without more grave
discussion, among the acts of the British legislature.

It sets out by stating, " that it is expedient to permit for a time to be
limited, and in limited quantities, foreign sugar to be used in refineries
employed in refining sugar for exportation ;" and it enacts, that on pay-
ment of a duty of 2Js. the cwt. (the same duty as on that from our own
Colonies), upon foreign sugar, not better than the average quality of
British sugar, and 9d the cwt. additional duty in respect of every 1,9. the
cwt. that foreign sugar to be refined may exceed in quality that
average, that the said foreign sugar may be issued, from the bonded
warehouse, to the refiner, upon his giving bond to export an equivalent
quantity of refined sugar, treacle, and bastard sugar. And for the pur-
pose of ascertaining the actual average price, the act renders necessary a
great multiplicity of oaths ; and imposes, under severe penalties, many
very troublesome and vexatious offices upon the civic authorities, and
upon all the importers of British plantation sugars, the sworn brokers,
the West India agents, and, in short, upon every person connected with
the West India trade.

It has been alleged that this act is to afford such facility in the supply
of sugar to the sugar refiner, as to enable him to renew the export trade
he has lost since the peace. But it is quite unreasonable to suppose that
an Act of Parliament so shackled and encumbered with regulations,
could be of any material use in extending any branch of manufacture
whatsoever.

We apprehend that the export trade of refined sugar to the continent,
since the peace, has diminished in consequence of the large supplies of
raw sugar that have been imported there, direct from transatlantic
quarters ; and, of the fiscal regulations which most of the continental
countries have established since that time for the protection of their own
manufactures. No such act as this, therefore, i can, in our judgment,
effect the intended object, and its operation has consequently been, to a
very great extent, a dead letter.

We have, however, heard of projects for amending or extending the
operation of this act, virtually to enable us to refine the sugar of foreign
Colonies for consumption in this country. The anticipation of plans of
this kind spreads feelings of uneasiness in the minds of our colonists,
leaves no stable resting-place to them, and gives currency to an opinion
that the government and the legislature are willing to introduce a wedge,
which, although inoperative now, may, by degrees, be made use of to
overthrow the preference that is established in favour of the produce of
our West India Colonies. These ideas have acquired stronger influence
in consequence of the very abundant supplies and low prices of sugar
the production of our own Colonies, and which are in such abundance,
that neither the refiners, nor any other class of persons in this country,
can at present consume them.

We state this matter plainly, and, we believej fairly ; for it appears t0

U 2

148 The British West India Colonies, [FEB.

us to involve principles that require to be very narrowly attended to ;
and we would rather be blamed for over-zeal, than for negligence in a
matter of so much importance.

^ The tinies certainly require that the most complete co-operation of
views should exist between the West India Colonies and the mother
country. Other nations of Europe, and America, are using every pos-
sible means to rival us in tropical productions/and these exertions on the
part of foreigners call for corresponding energy on our part. We have,
therefore, regretted very sincerely, the lengthened and serious differences
which have existed with the legislature of Jamaica, and those of some
other Colonies on the subject of double duties. The extremities to which
these discussions have been carried, has necessarily added to the gloom
that is thrown over West India interests. We trust, however, that as
time has allowed heated feelings to subside, a period is near at hand
when such explanations may have been exchanged as may lead to a
speedy settlement of all differences of this kind.

The violent abolitionists or anti-colonial party still continue, most sedu-
lously, to propagate the opinion that no improvements are in progress to
ameliorate the state of civilization among the negro population. They
continue to deride all opinions expressed to the contrary by persons of
all classes, civil and military ; persons in the church, in the army, in the
navy, and in the law, who are now, or have been formerly resident in,
and are well acquainted with the Colonies. They equally deride all
Colonial legislative enactments, and designate them as nugatory. We,
therefore, consider it a perfectly hopeless task to address any explanation
to persons whose minds are so constituted. But we can take upon our-
selves to affirm that great and gradual improvement in the state of the
negro population is in progress. The extension of the establishments of
the church in these countries, with the safe means of instruction thereby
gradually extended to their population, is affecting a steady improvement
in the whole state of society.

No person can doubt of the rapid progress that religious instruction
is making in the West Indies, who reads the different reports from
societies for propagating Christianity that are before the public ; and we
think that a fair general estimate may be formed of the amelioration that
has of late years taken place among the negro population of our Colonies,
by making the following extract from Mr. Barclay's description of their
situation in Jamaica, in his lately published work on that island :-—

<f Twenty years ago, there was scarcely a negro baptized in Jamaica : now
they are nearly all baptized.

" Twenty years ago, the churches were scarcely at all attended by the
slaves ; since then, the number of churches, or places of worship of one kind
or other, has been more than doubled — in fact, nearly trebled ; and yet, in the
districts where I have had an opportunity of seeing them, they are all fully
attended, and principally by slaves.

" Twenty years ago, negroes were buried at midnight, and the funeral rites,
in the forms of African superstition, were the occasion of continual excesses
among those who attended. Negroes are now buried during the day, and in
the same manner as the white people.

" Ten years ago, the marriage rite was altogether uuknown among the
slaves. The number now married is not inconsiderable, and is fast increasing.

" While the importation of Africans was continued, the practice of Obeah
was common and destructive : it is now seldom heard of.

" The working of sugar-mills encroached on Sunday during crop ; it is now
prohibited by law, and Sunday is strictly a day of rest.

1830.] as they were, and as they, are. 149

" Formerly, the negroes cultivated their grounds on Sundays — white persons
were even sent to superintend them; now they have by law twenty-six work-
ing days in the year for this purpose. Every manager must swear that he has
given them this number of days; and no slaves now work at their ground on
Sunday, but such as are more inclined to make money than to attend church.

fc When the abolition of the African trade took place, a large proportion of
the slaves were newly-imported Africans, maintained with provisions raised
or bought by the master, or lodged with other slaves, who had grounds, which
they assisted in cultivating. Now, the plantation-slaves in Jamaica have all
houses of their own, and grounds of their own; and are, in every respect,
more comfortable and independent. They form more steady connexions ; pay
more attention to their families, in the way of keeping them clean and dress-
ing them neatly ; and, in short, have acquired more taste and desire for
domestic enjoyments.

" Manumissions were at one time burdened with heavy taxes; they are
now perfectly free.

" For cruel and improper punishments, slaves had formerly no adequate
redress : now they are manumised and provided with an annuity for life ; and
magistrates are appointed a council of protection to attend to their com-
plaints.

' ( Formerly, the trial of slaves was, I believe, by parol ; and the power of
death was entrusted to the slave-courts, who could order the criminal to
immediate execution : now the whole evidence and conviction must be trans-
mitted to the governor ; and, unless in cases of rebellion, the sentence cannot
be carried into execution without his warrant.

" For ten slaves that were executed twenty years ago, there is not now
more than one, and I think not even that proportion.

tf Twenty years ago, the coasting vessels of Jamaica were almost exclu-
sively manned with slaves. From the increase of the free population, the
coasting vessels are now more commonly manned with free men.

" The operative mechanics about towns — carpenters, shipbuilders, &c. —
were mostly slaves : this description of work is now performed principally by
free people of colour.

" A few years ago, marriage was unknown among the free people of colour :
it is now becoming common ; and many of them are careful to preserve the
sanctity of the institution.

".The number of free persons in Jamaica, in 1787, was estimated at only
10,000 : it is now 35,000, and rapidly increasing by manumissions, as well as
by births.

" These few particulars will convey but a very "inadequate idea of the pro-
gress made by the negroes, and how superior a ) people they are in every
respect to what they were when the slave-trade was abolished in 1807. But if,
as Mr. Stephens observes, f every mitigation of slavery is a step towards free-
dom/ this brief statement may be sufficient to shew what progress is making
towards it."

The reform of their judicatures, and the introduction of more learned
persons to preside over their courts, which is another measure now under
the consideration of his Majesty's Ministers, must, if introduced in such
a judicious manner as to carry with it the feelings of confidence of the
Colonists, have a very material influence in working a beneficial result.

We could undertake to show, if our space admitted of it, from par-
liamentary documents, and from information about to be made public,
that' there now appears to be a fair spirit of acquiescence in the resolu-
tions of 1823. But, because, in some of the Colonies, the local knowledge
and practical experience of the persons most materially concerned, have
not considered it proper to adopt all the measures that are interpreted to
be the consequences of these resolutions., and have paused to consider the

150 The British West India Colonies, [FEB.

effect of those already adopted, they are represented as contumacious,
although they are merely desirous of acting with proper caution.

The colonist, who is the principal instrument for carrying new regu-
lations into effect, has responsibilities to discharge, and motives to awaken
his caution, much greater than can guide persons who offer recommen-
dations from hence to be applied to a sphere not under their immediate
observation.

If this great work of emancipation is to be accomplished, it can only
be reared up by time, and with great patience. The native superstition
of the imported African forms an almost insurmountable barrier to much
being effected with him. But the Creole population now rising up, are
a different and superior race, and the diminished influence of African
superstitions upon them, by the greater mixture of European opinions,
offers much more encouraging prospects of their rapid improvement.
Mr. Coleridge says, " In setting about the conversion of more than
800,000 black slaves into free citizens, we must act sensibly and dis-
creetly ; especially we must begin with the beginning, for IT is NOT

A MATTER OF DECREE, EDICT, OR ACT OF PARLIAMENT; there is no

hocus pocits in the thing, there are no presto movements.

" It is a mighty work ; yet mighty as it is, it must be effected, if at
all, in the order and by the rules which reason and experience have
proved to be alone effectual. If we attempt to reverse the order, or to
alter the mode, we shall not only fail ourselves, but make it impossible
that any should succeed."

Many persons zealous for immediate emancipation quiet the scruples
they might otherwise feel in recommending this hazardous experiment,
by making the vague proposition, that compensation should be paid to
the planter in the event of his property being injured or destroyed by
the consequences of such a measure.

This notion of compensation has always appeared to us a proposition
of the most wild and ill-considered description. It supposes, in the
first place, that legislation is to proceed on the chance of creating wide,
and extensive danger, and, consequently, large claims of indemnity.
But it has not the foresight to embrace any objects of eventual benefit,
by which the nation, in the event of mischief resulting, may be remune-
rated for undertaking such obligations.

Just measures of sound legislation are guided by caution and fore-
sight j and when the period of emancipation does arrive, it will owe its
etablishment to the silent operation of improvement in the habits of
the negro population ; and we sincerely believe all practical means are
now in progress to generate that improvement. Instead, however, of fol-
lowing this topic any further, we shall employ our time more usefully
in adverting to the effects of premature emancipation in Hayti and
Mexico.

The papers transmitted to the Foreign Office, by Mr. Consul General
Mackenzie, relative to Hayti, presented to parliament in 1828 (printed
in 1829), afford ample proof of the total failure of the most strenuous
efforts to promote labour of any kind among the prematurely-liberated
Africans in that once flourishing colony.

It appears that, during the seven years prior to 1801, "labour had
been almost entirely abandoned, and the country reduced to a waste." —
" By the laws then passed, all the cultivators were attached to the plan-

1830.] as they were, and as they are. 151

tations, without the power of subsequently quitting them."* These laws
have been continued, and " the provisions (of the Code Rural} are as
despotic as those of any slave system that can be conceived" — " the
labourer is deemed a vagabond, and liable to punishment, if he ventures
from his dwelling or farm without licence." t — "Marriage is scarcely
thought of, and all the ties consequent on it have not even the shadow
of existence." J — " The very little field labour effected is generally per-
formed by elderly people, principally Old Guinea negroes. No mea-
sures of the government can induce the young Creoles to labour, or
depart from their habitual licentiousness and vagrancy." — " The laws
recognize no other punishment than fine and imprisonment, with hard
labour : although it is no uncommon thing to see the soldiery and mili-
tary police use the ' plat de sabre/ and coco macae, in a most cruel and
arbitrary manner, but almost always, from the natural obstinacy of the
negro, without the intended effect." — " The few young females that live
on plantations seldom assist in any labour whatever, but live in a con-
stant state of idleness and debauchery."§ Such has been the melancholy
effects of premature emancipation in the French part of the island,
which at one time exported 47^500,000 French pounds of clayed, and
95,500,000 pounds of raw sugars ; but the inhabitants are now obliged
to smuggle, for their own consumption, two or three hundred hogsheads
from the slave owners of Cuba.||

The eastern, or late Spanish part of the island, was principally occu-
pied for breeding cattle — but this branch of industry has also fallen
into decay ; and over most of this extensive district, ' ' the means of sub-
sistence, either for the traveller or his cattle, are so scanty, that it is
necessary to carry every thing, even corn for horses in passing over it."1T
In short, it caonot be denied that Hayti "has sunk under an odious
combination of the darkness, ferocity, vices, and superstitions of all
colours, and all nations, unredeemed by the virtues of any !"

In Mexico, the free labour system does not seem to present more
encouraging results.

Mr. Ward, who during the years 1825, 1826, and 1827, was his
Majesty's Charge d' Affaires in that country, addressed, in the early part
of the year 1826, an official letter from thence to the late Mr. Canning,
giving some account of the information he had ^obtained during a hasty
visit to the sugar valleys of Cuernavaca and Cuentla Amilpas, situated
about fifty miles from the capital, where, previous to the revolution,
very considerable sugar estates had been established and cultivated by
slave labour. On the approach of the insurgents, during that period,

* Communications received at the Foreign Office relative to Hayti, p. 17.

f Ibid. p. 22.

£ Ibid. p. 24.

§ Ibid.

|| The plantation La Borde, at Cayes, was one of the most flourishing in the colony ;—
" people of authority, at Cayes, declares, that at the commencement of the revolution,
there were 2,000 slaves on it, and that the produce was 2,000,000 pounds of clayed sugar."
i — " As its character," says Mr. Mackenzie, " of being one of the most princely properties
in St.. Domingo was generally admitted, I visited it during my stay at Cayes, and found
the three sugar mills entirely destroyed, and unfit for use. All the dwelling-houses, which
had been of stone, and most substantial as well as elegant, were unroofed. Only one sugar
house retained its roof, and that was rapidly falling into decay. Not a cane was planted.
About sixteen labourers were hanging about, cultivating, I was told, only provisions for
their own use." — Videy. 158.

f Ibid. p. 107.

152 The British West India Colonies, [FEB.

the slaves joined them en masse, adding, by their ferocity, to the horrors
of the contest ;* and only those planters, " who had provided themselves
with a mixed cast of free labourers, retained a sufficient number to con-
tinue cultivation on a smaller scale."

This letter seems, in the first instance, to have given rise to some mis-
apprehension as to the extent to which free labour had been applied in
the cultivation of sugar. But Mr. Ward has, since that period, given to
the public a work entitled "Mexico in 1827/' in which there is much
additional information regarding the present state of the Mexican sugar
cultivators ; and, although we have not sufficient data to enable us to
make an accurate comparison between the past and present state of the
sugar plantations in the neighbourhood of the capital, there is still suf-
ficient evidence to prove, that, although some remains of industry are
still kept up in these valleys, yet that even these Haciendos, which had
been ruined during the revolution, had never been rebuilt ; that in other
parts of the country, at Oaxaca, the Baxio, Valladolid, and Guadalaxara,
but more especially in the neighbourhood of Vera Cruz, where very con-
siderable sugar estates formerly existed — every vestige of industry has
been destroyed ; that the export of sugar from Vera Cruz, which, in
1802, seems to have been to the declared value of 1,500,000 dollars, has
now entirely ceased ; and that even in the rich valleys of Cuernavaca,
and Cuentla Amilpas, the free labourers can only supply to the Mexican
capital an article, " coarse in appearance, and of a bad colour," at a rate
equal to from 53*. 9d. to 62*. 8d. the cwtv being such as our Colonies
now furnish at 5*. to 10*. the cwt.

The grand question, however, in this inquiry, is, " What has been
the effect of emancipation upon the labouring population ?" And here,
as in the case of Hayti, we are not left in any doubt on the subject. Mr.
Ward expressly tells us, " the sound of the whip is never heard : but
whether freedom will have the effect (as many hold here) of raising the
workmen in the scale of civilization, is a question which I cannot pretend
to decide. It is much to be desired, certainly ; for a more debauched,
ignorant, and barbarous race than the present inhabitants of the sugar
districts, it is impossible to conceive. They seem to have engrafted all
the wild passions of the negro upon the cunning and suspicious character
of the Indian, and are noted for their ferocity, vindictiveness, and attach-
ment to spirituous liquors. When not at work, they are constantly drunk ;
and, as they have little or no sense of religious or moral duties, there is but
a slender chance of amendment"

Mr. Ward's book shews abundance of other evidence that the effect of
premature emancipation has, so far as we can judge, been injurious,
rather than beneficial, to the negroes themselves.

In the language of the parliamentary resolutions, it is only by " deter-
mined and persevering, but at the same time judicious and temperate,
measures," that we can " look forward to a progressive improvement in
the character of the slave population ;" — " to prepare them for a parti-
cipation in those civil rights and privileges which are enjoyed by other
classes of his Majesty's subjects ;" — and, " after all," to use the words of
Mr. Canning, " the measure will eventually make way, rather by the
light of reason, than by the coercion of authority."

* ({ Their ferocity was of use in the field of battle ; but it was only by frequent examples
that it could be prevented from shewing itself on other occasions." — Mexico in 1782,
p. 187.

1830.] as they were, and as they are. 153

Having taken the foregoing extensive survey of the circumstances that
affect our West India possessions, our mind is filled with strong impres-
sions of the many difficulties and dangers by which they are sur-
rounded !

It appears to us that the measures best calculated for operating, gene-
rally, in a beneficial manner, would be, to make, on the grounds stated,
an immediate reduction of the duty on sugar and rum, so as to increase
the consumption of both, and to enable the latter to cope more effectually
with smuggled foreign liquors. In the second place, that the most
urgent appeal ought to be made to France to wipe away the stigma
of continuing the slave trade in her own colonies, contrary to public
avowal, and of allowing others to carry it on under her flag. If this
abolition of the foreign slave trade were fairly accomplished, we should
relieve our Colonies from some of the weight of unfair competi-
tion, to which they are exposed in raising their produce, and then,
but not till then, be able to lay the foundation, so long looked for-
ward to, for the civilization of Africa, and for ridding ourselves of the
useless expenditure at Sierra Leone, and of the mixed commissions which
have cost us, with sums paid to Spain and Portugal for abolishing the
slave trade, according to papers submitted to the Finance Committee,
about 7>000,000/., and now create an expenditure of upwards of
340,000/. per annum. And, thirdly, by the institution of a minute
inquiry into the actual state of the labouring population, and of society
in general, in our West India Colonies, that there may no longer be any
misunderstanding on that subject in this country — a measure which
ought to have preceded every other in 1823, when the government first
took the question of amelioration into their own hands.

This proceeding is now more urgently required for the sake of Govern-
ment itself, that it may, by directing the inquiry, stand forth in that situ-
ation of responsibility in the management of the interests of those distant
parts of the empire, that the duties of office impose on them. It appears to
us, that of late years the Government has hardly considered it had any
responsibility imposed on it in the management of questions in Parlia-
ment affecting the state of society in the West Indies. All such matters
have been left to the exaggerated and 'angry discussions of pseudo-
philanthropists and Colonists ; and the minds of the people of this
country have been without any safe guide in regard to them.

Because there is a state of society different from that existing here, and
of difficult management in the distant parts of our empire, it is surely no
reason why its interests should be deprived of the watchful care of the
Government. We believe the manner in which these possessions have
been treated in this respect, has impressed widely the feelings of inse-
curity of property ; but the crisis of danger is now so great, that we
cannot doubt that the deliberations of his Majesty's Government will be
steadily employed to investigate and remove, as far as they can, the evils
under which our West India Colonists have, for so long a period, been
compelled to labour.

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 50.

[ 154 ] [FEB.

THE GREEK FIRE.

THE late circumstances of Constantinople have attracted attention to the
possibility of our recovering some of the secrets of art and literature, which
have been so long supposed to be among the buried treasures of the capital
of the Constantines. That Constantinople once contained great libraries,
and that those libraries were rich in classics, there can be but little doubt.
It was in the various flights of the Greek scholars from the city, on the
successive approaches of the Saracens and Turks, that the Greek classics
were introduced into Italy, and that taste for the learning of antiquity
revived, which revived the European mind. Yet the researches of
our literary tourists have hitherto been in vain.

The seraglio library contains but a number of handsomely written and
showily bound copies of the Koran, Turkish law, and the regulations of
the palace and the government. The libraries of the Ulema and other
public bodies are equally barren ; and the search at the shops of the
dealers in MSS. has produced little more than copies of Antar, and the
Arabian Nights. Professor Carlyle, who, a few years ago, went on an
express mission to purchase all valuable MSS., and peculiarly those of the
classics, returned with nothing much more original than some copies of
Arabic verses, of which he gave a translation in English, of the usual
value of professorial poetry. It was pretty, perfectly feeble, and passed
away into rapid oblivion.

Dr. Clarke followed, with equal zeal and equal ill luck ; and both the
investigators were not unnaturally inclined to think, that where they
failed, success was not to be awarded to the sons of man. But neither of
the men was fitted for a service which will never be performed by an
Englishman, a giaour, a professor of Arabic, who could not hold five
minutes' dialogue with Turk, Jew, or Arab— or a professor of every thing
in the world, the depth of whose knowledge was, as the mathematicians
say, in the inverse of its superficies, and whose grand purpose was, in the
Indian phrase, " to walk, talk, and make book/'

Von Hammer, the Austrian Oriental Secretary, a true scholar, and
resident for many years in the east, is of a totally different opinion ; and
he thinks that the vaults of the seraglio, and other places of deposit in the
Turkish capital, actually contain very considerable quantities of MSS. in
chests, probably undisturbed since the capture; and, of course, that
instead of stealing into the library above ground, we ought to plunge
into the subterranean, and there revel in the lost books of Tacitus and
the complete Decads of Livy.

It is notorious, that there still remain in the seraglio trophies of the
Greek empire, even so minute as arms and armour ; it seems to be esta-
blished, that in the vaults there are chests, unopened for ages ; and Von
Hammer's conclusion ought to stimulate our government to try its credit
with the Sultan, if it have any remaining, and obtain permission to search
those munimenta.

It is not unlikely, that among the books of ancient literature, we might
discover some of those treatises on the ancient arts, dyeing, enamelling,
gilding, the fabrication of steel, the cutting of precious stones, the manu-
facture of imperishable colours, and that multitude of various inventions,
which to this day astonish us in their ruins ; which are in almost every
instance the parents or predecessors of our most useful arts ; and whose

1830.] The Greek Fire. 155

knowledge might still add, in a most important degree, to our command
over nature.

But, for the present, we shall content ourselves with an effort to
ascertain the remaining knowledge of one of the most formidable, yet
least known instruments of ancient warfare, the famous Greek Fire.

The powers of this fire have been celebrated in an extraordinary degree
by the historians of the empire. According to them, it was utterly
irresistible; flung on a ship, the vessel was inevitably consumed, and
only ashes indicated the spot where the proud galley and its proud war-
riors had the moment before dashed away like the chariot of Neptune
himself, through the roaring waves. Flung on a fortress, a sudden
blaze rolled up, a scorching heat melted, or turned the stones into lime,
and a cloud of dust that hovered above the fated spot, bore up, as it
were, the soul of the expiring city into the elements. Exaggerations of
this kind are the native results of great terror and great surprise, acting
upon the vividness of the Eastern imagination ; yet even the sober Euro-
pean could see in its effects something more resembling the influence of
a demon than of human ingenuity. The rockets, or cases, containing
the Greek fire, are compared by De Joinville, to " fiery dragons rushing
through the air ;" and the terror in the French camp at Acre was so much
allied to superstition, that on the appearance of one of those tremen-
dous ministers of evil on the wing, St. Louis was accustomed to throw
himself on his knees, and tell his rosary to a long roll of his favourite
saints, to avert misfortune from his cavaliers. The flight of those
carcases was rare, from the awkwardness of the whole machinery of war
in those days ; so that St. Louis was not forced to the duty of saying his
protecting prayers too frequently for royal leisure. But we may be
assured, that the phenomenon which could thus mystify a bold and con-
fident monarch, had no want of wonderers and alarmists in the " general
camp, pioneers, and all."

The Greek fire is usually conceived to have been one distinct and spe-
cific composition. This is an error. There appear to have been various
kinds of it, used in different forms, and of a very various compound. In
the attack of a fleet, it was shot from the ship's sides through long tubes,
from which it was propelled by some contrivance that has escaped
history. It was also flung on board the enemy in large balls of iron.
Those contrivances almost suggest the idea of the modern cannon and
shell. The usual mode, in defending a fortress, was to arm the walls
with it in large flaming reservoirs, with a fire underneath. The material
was thus ready to be poured down on the head of the assailants. It was
sometimes fixed on the points of arrows, and shot off against towers and
battering machines.

The chief use of the Greek fire was against ships ; its chief adoption
having probably been in the various attacks on Constantinople, which
was at that period most accessible by sea, and most in alarm at the fleets
of the Mediterranean States. Its common designation was the Maritime
Fire ; and from its liquid state, Dr. Maculloch, who is equally entitled to
be listened to as a chemist and an antiquarian, conceives it to have been
in general a resinous compound, sometimes with naptha and nitre, and
sometimes without either, according to occasion.

" Procopius, the most intelligent of the Greek chroniclers, or Byzan-
tine historians, describes a composition of this kind as in an oily state,
which in conformity to the habits of his time, connecting its powers with

X 2

The Greek Fire. [¥EB.

sorcery, he calls ' Medea's oil.' But the historian seems to have bor-
rowed this term from Pliny, who calls naptha EXatov M^s*a£, a sort of
proof, that naptha entered into its composition. Cinnamus also calls the
Greek fire TTu? M^oxov.

'' All those names bespeak some resinous or oily compound, such as
might be used in fire ships, or for other purposes, with or without nitre.
But Leo uses a different expression, when he calls it TIv§ pra B^ovrti? KO.I
xaTTxy, (fire, with thunder and smoke). We must conclude {hat he is
speaking of some explosive substance into which nitre entered as an
ingredient, and that consequently there were more Greek fires than one.
Of the terms used by others, I need mention only that of the author of
the ' Gesta Dei per Francos,' who calls naptha 'oleum incendiarinm ;'
making it further probable that this ingredient entered into some of those
compounds."

It was natural to suppose that the writers of those days should have
given very different accounts of the power and fabrication of this formid-
able means of hostility. The spirit of mystery, which has gathered so
much factitious interest round the capital of the Sultan in late times,
appears to have thrown the same veil over the transactions and resources
of the palace of the Constantines. Magic was resorted to for the origin
of all extraordinary inventions, and the instrument which the sorcerer
was declared to have invented, was to be degraded by no less potent
hand. The Byzantine historians were the legitimate ancestors of the
romancers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and are often not
much more matter of fact than the " historical novelists" of the nine-
teenth. The mighty weapon, concealed from all human knowledge but
in its effects, the grand defence of the last bulwark of the Eastern empire,
the destroyer of fleets, and the overthrower of armies, might well be pre-
sumed to be described with all the mystery and magniloquence of a
singularly imaginative people.

When the work of description came into the hands of foreigners, if
the magniloquence wTas lost, the mystery remained the same. The Spe-
culum Regale, in detailing a number of engines of ancient war, rushes into
strange yet high sounding allusion to the Greek fire. Omnium autem
quce enumeravimus, 8$c. Or, to give the passage to the general reader.
— " But, of all the arms and machines which we have enumerated, the
most powerful is the Curved Giant of Shields, vomiting out poisoned
flames." This is scarcely to be comprehended, unless it might imply
some enormous boiler or cauldron, in which the material was kept on
the walls, ready to be cast on the advancing fleets or armies. Undoubt-
edly, in process of use, different ingredients must have suggested them-
selves to the Greek fire-workers, and the composition may have grown
more complex in its later periods. Quintus Curtius gives a description
of fire, which was probably the origin of the Greek, and which seems to
have been no more than turpentine. The receipt given by the royal
historian, Anna Comnena, makes it of sulphur, naptha, and bitumen.

It was at length so far made manageable as to be sent from place to
place in small vessels, and became so far purchasable by the belligerents
of the time, as to have been used alternately, for the defence of the
Greek and the Saracen. A French chronicle of 1190, gives a passage
stating, " that a Saracen ship sent by Sultan Saladin to the assistance of
his garrison, besieged in Acre, was taken at sea, and that on board were
found a great number of bottles containing the Greek fire."

1830.] The .Greek Fire. 157

The invention was in the hands of the Arabs,, e,ven five hundred years
before. It had been used in their fire-ships, at the second siege of Con-
stantinople, in 716.

" It is not very easy/' says the author of the memoir, " to conjecture
what it really was. Supposing it to have been naptha, or petroleum, or
any similar liquid, it could not have been thrown from machinery in a
stream, to any distance, as it must have been extinguished in its passage
through the air. As little could it have been used by hand, to produce
any serious effect ; or not, at least, without the risk of equally injuring
both parties. On the other hand, it could not have been thrown in an
inflamed state in those bottles, or closed vessels, as it could not have
burnt without the contact of air."

Among the qualities most essential to a fire used for maritime pur-
poses, and the one for which the Greek fire was most renowned, was
that of being inextinguishable by water. None of the receipts for
its composition enable us to discover by what means it was in possession
of this quality. Vinegar and sand were supposed to be the chief
resources against this persevering flame. The Sieur de Joinville's des-
cription, to which we have already alluded, gives the most intelligible
account of, at least, its appearance and effects, in his narrative of the famous
siege of Acre, by the Crusaders. It came forward, " rushing through
the air as large as a wine barrel, with a tail like an enormous fiery
sword ; its noise was as loud as thunder, and it was like a fiery flying
dragon." When it was seen rising for its flight from the Saracen
ramparts, the whole camp of the Crusaders wras held in terror. Knights
are mentioned, who commanded their soldiery to think of no defence,
but to fall on their knees, and pray to Heaven as the sole resource against
this incarnation of evil. It was on such occasions that St. Louis,
when in bed, was accustomed to rise, and " with uplifted hands, pray
for the preservation of his warriors." The fire was thrown three times in
the night from a " petrary," probably a stone cannon or mortar, and four
times from a cross-bow.

The sight of this general commotion in the splendid camp of the
Christian knighthood, must have been finely picturesque ; from the
rich mixture of arms and caparison, the standards, emblazoned tents,
and the other usual accompaniments of the days of chivalry ; for the
light discovered the whole, from front to rear, spreading over the
entire horizon an illumination as bright as day.

One of the most curious circumstances of the whole secret, is that it
should have remained a secret so long. This might have been conceivable
had the use of it been confined to Oriental war, in which credulity and
superstition equally blind the keenness of human curiosity. But its
use was brought into Europe, and among the most subtle and investi-
gating people of the middle ages. The Greeks used it against the
Pisans, in the eleventh century. It was used even against the vessels of
our own country, by Phillip Augustus, at the Siege of Dieppe. It was
used even so late as the year 1383, at the Siege of Ypres, by the
garrison.

Gibbon, who has collected every thing that he could turn into a sneer
against religion, repeats the monkish legend, that this celebrated invention
was revealed to Constantine the Great, by an angel, with the condition
annexed, that it should never be communicated to any foreign nation;
it being the peculiar privilege and blessing of the Christian empire, and

158 The Greek Fire. [FEB.

its communication to the heathen being the signal of the Divine ven-
geance upon the negligent possessors ot so magnificent a gift.

The sneer may be suffered to take its way ; but the only fact seems
to be, that, Callinicus, an architect of Heliopolis, sold the invention to
Constantine Pogonatus about three centuries later than the date of the
angelic visit, or about A. D. 668. The probability is, that this architect
brought it from some Persian or Indian repository. The chief ingre-
dient in this original form of the " fire" was said to be naptha, the well-
known produce of the north of Persia, and still in the central pro-
vinces perpetuating something like the old famous worship of the
Guebres.

It is well known that the chief inventions which have figured in
European history, were scarcely more than revivals or transmissions of
Egyptian or Arabian knowledge, and that of these, too, the fountain
was India. Printing, the loadstone, and gunpowder, the three grand
instruments of modern civilization and general power over mind and
matter, wrere certainly known in the remotest India at a period beyond all
chronology. Alexander's assault on some of the cities on the Indus was
met by a discharge of fireworks, probably a species of the rocket, from
the walls ; and Philostratus, in the life of Apollonius Tyanaeus, states
that the true cause of Alexander's shrinking from the invasion of India
between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, was, the knowledge that the
men of those cities had the power of hurling thunderbolts and lightnings
from their battlements ; and that Hercules and Bacchus, in their inva-
sions of India, had been overthrown in their assaults upon those pos-
sessors of the weapons of the gods.

The expedition of Alexander itself bears back the invention far enough,
for it took place three centuries and a half before our sera. There is the
distinct mention of gunpowder, and even of projectile instruments, or
cannon, in the Chinese annals, within eighty-five years following our
sera. Gunpowder is mentioned in the Hindoo code, which is of a very
remote antiquity. The Arabs were acquainted with the use of gun-
powder long before the supposed invention by Schwartz. A writer in
the collection at the Escurial, about A. D. 1249, describes an explosion
of rockets, as a multitude of " fiery scorpions hissing and writhing
through the air, surrounded and bound with nitrous dust, from which
they explode in thunder and flame. We might see," continues the
wondering narrator, " when the machine was fired/. a sudden cloud
spread through the air, with a hideous roar, like thunder ; and as it
rushed on, vomiting flame, every thing round it was torn into pieces,
burned, and turned into cinders."

The actual receipt for gunpowder is given by Marcus Graecus, before
either Friar Bacon or Friar Schwartz were born. He gives it as a
composition for a rocket, and calls it " a flying fire." — •" R. duas libras
sulphuris vivi, libras duas carbonis salicis, salis petrosi libras sex." He
directs the three to be ground very fine in a marble mortar, and then
used, ad libitum, for ramming the rocket case.

The Congreve rocket is an improvement on the old, principally in the
greater proportion of its nitrous or explosive ingredients ; and it has
gradually become an instrument of palpable importance in sieges. Its
use has not been adopted in ships, from its extreme hazard to the vessel
from which it is discharged ; but it is a curious instance of the re-intro-
duction of a great weapon, which, for three hundred years, had been
excluded by the improvements in artillery and the arts of destruction.

1830.] [ 159 3

THE LAMPLIGHTER EXTINGUISHED; OR, A BURNING EXAMPLE

TO SMOKERS,

BY ONE OF THE NEW SCHOOL.

JACK CURLING was a lamplighter,

And light in all his ways ;
And he added Hymen's link to his,

And wedded Dolly Blaise.

This merry lad o' the ladder lived

In Lad Lane — classic spot!
And Dolly was in Bread Street bred,

And there her bread she got.

She loved him in most ardent style,

(Which one of woman's ways is :)
Yea, she so loved, that one might say,

No flame e'er burned like Blaise's !

Jack loved her with a love mature,

Yet owned one love more ripe ;
For, though he eyed Doll with delight,

His idol was his pipe.

Tobacco was his stable joy,
< Which nothing could forestal,
And, for that Jack thus smoked, the wags
A smoke-jack him did call.

'Twas puff, and whiff, and fume, and blow ;

And Jack would sometimes joke,
That e'en when Dolly's fire was out,

She oft saw " Curling smoke."

j
She smoked his humour for a time ;

And " Ah !" exclaimed he still,
" How sweet's the love that meets returns !"

While she his pipe did fill.

But, in his passion for the weed,

He soon of nought else thought,
Until, whilst he for " short-cut" longed,

She longed to cut him short.

" Say, is your body," she exclaimed,

" A tenement so hot,
That you must go thus for to make

A chimney of your throat ?"

Still as he plied his ceaseless tube,

And vapoured round the room,
" If you smoke on so," Dolly cried,

" You'll put me in a fume.

160 The Lamplighter extinguished. [FEB-

Why thus continue ?" she went on ;

" What use is in't, I pray ?" —
" What use?" cries Jack — " why am I not

A weed-burner to-day ?"

Like a foul chimney then he smoked,

Or like a hotwell's tide ;
And yet went smoking on, till e'en

His garret, was high-dried.

His duties now were slighted all,

His acts they shunned the light ;
Since e'en the very lamps he lit

Scarce glimmered through the night.

And then his wife burst forth, and spake,

Prophetic, to this tune: —
te Mark ! since my counsel's chance you miss,

Mischance shall mark you soon."

One night he smoked, and went to bed,

As he was wont to do ;
A cry of " Fire !" anon proclaimed

The house was smoking too.

'Twas all Jack's work — for, after he

Had smoked five pipes before,
He knocked the sixth's hot ashes out

All on the second floor.

" Rise, Curling, rise !" his wife screamed out :

' ' Curling, arise, you sot !"
The curling flames arose — but, ah !

Curling himself did not.

For, " much bemused with beer" and smoke,

The fuddled sleeper lay ;
So, finding he would not get up,

She up and got away.

The firemen then they plied their pipes —

Such work to them was sport ;
And some long ladders fetched — but these

Ere long were found too short.

As for poor Jack — when the flames had ceased,

And the smoke away was fanned,
They found him dead by the pipe of the house,

With his own pipe in his hand !

1830.] [ 161 ]

WALKS IN IRELAND : N<\ V.

I LEAVE the county of Wicklow, with its ever-changing alternation
of sunshine and shade ; its sparkling villas and cheerful lawns, on the
east ; its solemn valleys and unpeopled mountains, on the west : " the
March of Mind" has brought " the Spirit of Improvement" to my plea-
sant haunts, and, like poor General Boone, I must retire into the interior.
What with piety and planting, Methodism and Scotch firs, there is no
such thing as taking a stretch of half-a-dozen miles in any direction now-
a-days : on one side you are met with, " No person permitted to walk in
this demesne without a ticket from Mr. or Mrs. Popkins ;" on the other,
" Alderman Perriwig allows no one to cross this plantation ;" or, " Take
notice, Mr. Ferret has closed the road over this hill." Hemmed in on
the right and left, you endeavour to advance in front ; but you are
stopped by, " Any person found on this mountain will be persecuted
according to law." Determined to effect a timely retreat, you face about ;
but a great white post, like an Austrian sentry, stares you in the face,
with " No passage this way." Powerscourt is shut up ; the Dargle is
forbidden ground on Sundays ; — nay, no later than yesterday, I was
greeted, at the foot of Bray-Head, with " No person allowed to walk on
these grounds," marvellously ill-painted on a dirty board. How often
have I lain on the rocky crown of Bray-Head, in the dreamy sunshine of

livelong summer day, while a thousand gay and glittering fancies
floated through my mind, " like a half-seen brook sparkling through
flowers," as one of the pretty writers in the Annuals might say, or as I
would say myself, if I had the luck to be a poet ; — or, again, in thought-
ful autumn, watching the evening mists as they saddened around the
Pirate's Rock, in the uncertain distance ; or the restless waves, as they
raved and tossed beneath my feet, like the guilty in a troubled sleep.
But those days are gone by, and Bray-Head is now possessed by " the
Spirit of Improvement" and stuck all over with a legion of little starve-
ling larches ; so that, until exorcised by the woodcutter some fifty years
hence, it is, I suppose, to be held sacred from intrusion.

It is strange enough that, in many instances, Religion is made the
stalking-horse for the system of exclusion of which I complain, and you
are denounced as little better than an idolater if you think of a country
excursion on a Sunday ; as if religious feeling, and abstract love of the
Creator, are not as likely to take possession of one's mind when listening
amidst sunshine, and flowers, and all sweet and pleasant sights and
sounds, to the innocent creatures of God, the blackbird or the lark, sing-
ing their unpremeditated hymns of natural inspiration, as when seated
beneath the loftiest roof that ever ascended at the bidding of man, unra-
velling the mazy intricacies of the profoundest discourse ever delivered
on either side of any question by the Reverend Doctor Philpotts, or lulled
by the sweetest organ ever built by Flight and Robson.

Let us away, then, to the south : the wildest mountains of Cork and
Kerry are as familiar to me as the Burlington Arcade to Pea-green
Hayne, or Regent-Street to a Half-pay ; and although I have not the
honour to be a sworn Whiteboy, yet I can count amongst my acquaint-
ances many distinguished members of that respectable fraternity. More-
over, I am very sufficiently versed in traditional lore ; so that I flatter
myself I am not unequal to the task of guiding you into the heart of that
region of mystery and adventure, where George the Fourth and Captain

M. M. New Smer.— -VoL. IX. No. 50. Y

162 Walks in Ireland. [FEB.

Rock hold divided sway. Let us go then — but not to-day— not
to-day.

To-day, while the dull rain is falling, and the lagging wind is moan-
ing through the trees, and the drift creeps heavily along the sullen
waters, let us sit by the fire, and tell old tales — spin yarns, as we say at
sea — for, amongst my other accomplishments, I am an amateur sailor. I
will call up, from the depths of my memory, some of the countless wild
and gloomy legends, which in Ireland cling to every hill and glen, every
rock and ruin — from the Causeway to Cape Clear — and you shall half
believe in spirits before I have done. I promise to you that I have not
the least intention of using either order, method, or connected system
in my narration. I intend to follow the vagrant ignis fatuus of my own
fancy, skipping from one county to another, just as said fancy shall think
proper to bid me. My mind is, at this present moment, too full of rest-
less indolence either to remain quiet on the one hand, or to choose its
own course on the other. Dim recollections of bygone scenes and sha-
dowy tales of diablerie, and chivalrie, and antient wars, and fierce baro-
nial feuds, are flitting slowly before me, in orderly disorder, like phan-
toms in a magic glass ; and all I can do at present is to catch and
embody a few of them for you. So pray bend down your stately reason
for a while, like a tall lawyer I know of, when he puts himself upon a
civil equality with a stunted client, and looks, as he bends to lend a sym-
pathetic ear to the wrongs of the pigmy litigant, his white wig curling
round his solemn face, and his long black gown drooping around him,
like an aged giantess condoling with a wayward dwarf. Do now, like a
kind Reader as you are, resign yourself to that species of voluntary illu-
sion which legendary lore requires ; and let us talk of ghosts, and pro-
phecies, and haunted ruins.

Red Gap Inn.

I remember well how strongly my boyish feelings were excited at
reading the narrative of Raymond's escape from the murderous inn-
keeper, in Lewis's romance of " The Monk." His version of the story
has nearly faded from my memory ; but the circumstances upon which
he founded it are said to have occurred in Ireland, and, wild and impro-
bable as they are, you shall have them, verbatim, as they are related upon
the spot ; and, moreover, I am not to blame if you think fit to believe
them, inasmuch as I give up my authority — and Lord Lyndhurst himself
could ask no more. My informant's name is Catherine Flynn.

As you go from Kilcullen Bridge to Carlow, about three miles on
your road there stands, and barely stands, a ruined house. The situation
has nothing particularly striking about it; the country is open and
thinly cultivated, and a faint outline of hills is visible in the distance ;
but you may guess that, some seventy or eighty years ago, when the
system of travelling was so imperfect, even in England, that a journey
from York to London was thought more of than a trip, now-a-days, from
the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, to Tobolsk, or Ekaterinesklopfponski,
or any other locale, with a sweet-sounding name, under the benign sway
of the Emperor of All the Russias, that this same mansion looked bleak
enough, on a winter's evening, in wild, depopulated Ireland.

The travellers in Ireland, in those times, were persons whom business
would not suffer to stay at home. Nobody thought of whisking from one
end of the island to the other, to look at a waterfall or a lake : the time

1830.] Red Gap Inn. 163

had not arrived when one post-captain (a good title, by the way) would
start off— all the offices having declined insuring his toes and fingers, at
any premium — to pay a morning visit to a polar bear ; and another,
excusing himself from the Horticultural Fete, accept an invitation to a
dejeune d lafourchette from the Esquimaux, the world seeing nothing
extraordinary in the thing all the while. De gustibus nil disputandem.
However, give me the box-seat on the Limerick coach, in preference to
an outside on an iceberg, any day in the year.

There were no Limerick coaches, however, in the days I speak of;
every one travelled on his own account, and, in consequence of the
unsettled and impoverished state of the country, the transmission of
money especially was attended with considerable danger. The ruin to
which my story clings, is now

a solitary spot as Sorrow could desire ;

For nodding to the fall is each crumbling wall,
And the roof is scathed with fire.

It was then, however, a substantial-looking inn : the proprietor was a
farmer, as well as an inn-keeper ; and although no particular or satis-
factory reason could be assigned for it, beyond vague and uncertain
rumours, he was by no means a favourite with his neighbours. He had
little, indeed, of the Boniface about him ; dark, sullen, and down-look-
ing, he never appeared, even to a guest, unless when specially called for,
much less to a thirsty brother farmer or labourer, passing his heavy,
old-fashioned door, to ask him to taste his home-brewed ale or usque-
baugh ; yet the man was well to pass in the world, and with the aid of
three or four hulking sons, and a heartbroken drudge of a wife, managed
his farm and his inn, so as to pay his way at fair and market, and " hold
his own," as the saying is, in the country. For all that, there were
those who did not stick to say that more travellers went to his inn at
night than ever left it in the morning ; and one or two who remembered
him in his early days, before he had learned to mask the evil traits of
his character by sullenness and reserve, would not have taken the broad
lands of the Geraldines of Leinster to pass a night in the best bed-room
in his house ; — no, no — they would rather take chance in the Bog of
Allen, for that matter.

A severe storm, however, compelled a traveller to halt there one even-
ing, although he had originally intended to get further on his journey,
before he put up for the night. Not that he had any suspicion of the place ;
on the contrary, he thought it rather a comfortable, quiet-looking con-
cern; and, turning from the lowering, inhospitable sky, and wishing the
pitiless driving sleet good night, he rode into the inn-yard, saying in his
own mind, " I may go further, and fare worse." Now I am of a very
different opinion.

It was late in the evening, and late in the year — no matter about dates,
I am not particular. So the traveller (who, being a merciful man, was
merciful to his beast), having seen his horse fed, and carefully laid up
for the night, thought it high time to look after himself, as to both his
outward and inward man. Accordingly, throwing his saddle-bags over
his arm, he walked into the inn-kitchen, in those days the most com-
fortable winter apartment in the house, to thaw himself at the huge fire,
and give the customary mandates concerning supper and bed — to say
nothing of a bottle of good old wine, then to be found in every inn in

Y 2

164 Walks in Ireland. [FKB.

Ireland. This feat accomplished, away he stalked to his own apart-
ment— jackboots, silver- headed riding- whip, cloak and all — followed
close by a terrier dog, who had been lying at the kitchen fire when he
came in, but who now kept sniffing and smelling at his heels every
step of the way up stairs.

When he had reached his room, and had disencumbered himself of
his heavy riding gear, the dog at once leaped upon him with a cry of
joy ; and he immediately recognized an old favourite, whom he had lost
in Dublin a year or two before j wondering, at the same time, how he
had got so far into the country, and why he had not known him before.
When the landlord entered the room with supper, the traveller claimed
his dog, and expressed his determination to bring him on with him to
Cork, whither he was bound. The host made not the slightest objection,
merely observing, that he had bought him from a Dublin carrier, who,
he supposed, had found him in the streets. That point settled, the tra-
veller dismissed his landlord for the night, with directions to cause him
to be called betimes in the morning : the man smiled darkly, and
withdrew.

The traveller made himself as comfortable as he could, with the aid
of a good supper and a cheerful fire, not forgetting his lost-and-found
companion, until, after some time, finding that the wine ran low, and
that a certain disposition to trace castles and abbeys in the glowing
recesses of the burning turf,* was creeping over him — that is to say, in
plain English, catching himself nodding over the fire — he thought it best
to transfer his somnolency to a well-curtained bed that stood invitingly
in a recess of the room.

As he proceeded to undress, the anxiety and agitation of his dog
attracted his attention, and at last fairly aroused him, sleepy as he was,
though he could in no way account for it. The animal ran backward and
forward from him to the bed, and as he laid aside each article of cloth*
ing, fetched it to him again, with the most intelligent and beseeching
gestures ; and when, to satisfy the poor creature, as well as to discover
if possible, what he wanted and meant, he resumed some portion of his
dress, nothing could equal his joy. Strange suspicions began to flash
across the traveller's mind ; he ran over every circumstance, even the
minutest, which had occurred since he entered the inn ; and now that
his attention was excited, it did strike him that, after making every
allowance for boorishness, and rusticity, and sullenness of temper, there
was more of the gaoler than of the innkeeper in the bearing and deport-
ment of his silent host : he remembered, too, how heavily the miserable-
looking, haggard wife had sighed, while she looked at his own burly
figure as he stood by the fire, as though she sorrowed over a victim whom
she could not save ; and, lastly, and above all, he pondered on the
ominous smile with which the innkeeper received his directions to be
awakened early in the morning.

Meanwhile the indefatigable dog was busied in pulling off the bed-
clothes as well as his strength would permit ; and when his master went
to his assistance, what was his horror at seeing, beneath clean sheets and
well-arranged Blankets, a bed and mattress literally dyed with dark-red
stains of blood ! Though a man of peaceful habits, he knew as little of
fear as most people, and the exigency of the moment roused every energy

* In most parts of Ireland, peat, or as we call it, turf, is used for fuel.

1830.] Red Gap Inn. 165

of his mind : he deliberately locked the door, examined the walls to
see if there was any private entrance, looked to the priming of his pistols,
and then stood prepared to abide by whatever might come, and to sell his
life as dearly as he could.

The dog watched him intently until his preparations were completed ;
and then, having assured himself that his movements were observed by
his master, he jumped once more on the fatal bed ; then, after lying
down for an instant, as if in imitation of the usual posture of a person
composing himself to sleep, he suddenly changed his mind, as it were,
sprang hastily to the floor, and stood, with eyes fixed and ears erect, in
an attitude of most intense attention, watching the bed itself, and nothing
else. The traveller, in the meantime, never stirred from the spot, though
his eyes naturally followed those of the dog ; and for a time every thing
was as still as the grave, and not a stir nor a breath brake the stillness of
the room, or interrupted the silence of the mute pair. At last a slight
rustling sound was heard in the direction of the bed : the dog, with ears
cocked and tail slightly moving, looked up at his master, as if to make
sure that he was attentive, and in an instant the bed was seen descending
swiftly and stealthily through the yawning floor, while a strong light
flashed upward into the room. Not a second was to be lost. The tra-
veller dashed open the window, and leaped into the yard, followed by
his faithful companion. Another moment, and, without giving himself
any trouble on the score of a saddle, he was on the back of his horse, as
fast a hunter as any in Leinster, and scouring away for life and death on
the road to Kilcullen, followed by a train as pitiless as that which hurried
from Kirk Alloway after poor Tarn O'Shanter.

You may be sure he spared neither whip, spur, nor horseflesh ; and,
thanks to Providence and a good steed, he reached Kilcullen in safety.
The authorities secured the villainous host and his accomplice sons, and
the infuriated peasantry gave the fatal inn and its bloody secrets to the
flames.

There is the story ; and if it be true, I can only say that I wish

I knew where I could get one of the breed of the traveller's terrier, for

love or money.

The Man with the White Hqrse.

Since we are upon the subject of popular legends, I cannot help telling
you a case which occurred within my own knowledge; partly within
my own recollection, in which a prediction was verified in a manner so
striking and remarkable, as to deserve the attention and surprise even of
the most incredulous.

Early in the last century, a certain antique mansion-house in the county
of Kildare was the residence of an elderly gentleman, of singular and
eccentric habits. Some said that in his youth he had been concerned in
" the troubles," as they are called, of the Revolution of 1688 ; and,
indeed, I remember to have seen some of the brass money, with which
his loyalty was said to have been rewarded by that worthy and generous
monarch, James the Second. Some said that he had been crossed in
love, as well as disappointed in politics: at all events, he had long retired
from public life, and even from private politics ; and having no relatives
to look after his wealth, which was reputed to be considerable, he was
suffered to glide quietly out of the recollection of his neighbours, and to
indulge, without interruption, in all the moods and tenses of misanthropy
and old bachelorism.

166 Walks in Ireland. [FEB.

' His prime-minister was a sour, vinegar-faced, griping steward, who
grew by degrees in the confidence of the old man, so as to become, as it
were, his representative in all matters of business connected with the
world and the social system — a sort of maire du palais, in fact, by whose
intermediation he was relieved of all that might interrupt his moody
dreams, or break the even tenor of his sombre and secluded life.

Matters stood thus, when, one morning, the old gentleman was seen to
issue forth, mounted upon a white horse, almost as old and misanthropic
as himself, to enjoy the only indulgence his habits permitted — namely, a
solitary ride along the most unfrequented roads in his neighbourhood. So
completely had he withdrawn from all communion with his kind, that his
appearance excited no more attention among the peasantry than that of
the quiet silent animal he bestrode ; and he was suffered to glide along
the lonesome bridle-paths which he loved to haunt, without even the usual
courtesy of a passing salute, inasmuch as it was discovered by experience
that said courtesy might just as well be bestowed upon an ass or a cow,
for all the notice or return it met with. One thing, however, might be
depended on — " the world forgetting by the world forgot," — the old
gentleman was pretty sure to remember his dinner ; and duly, as the
hour arrived for that refection, his household, such as it was, might
expect to see him pacing up the grass-grown avenue which led to his
solitary abode.

Wisely has it been remarked by somebody or other, that there is
nothing certain in this world — a remark to the truth of which a glance
at the Gazette compels many a rueful assent, and of which the household
aforesaid found the value on the day I speak of; for though, reasoning
from past experience, when they saw their silent master wend his way,
they counted upon his return with as much certainty as upon that of the
gloomy evening, with its sullen shadows, and made their preparations
accordingly ; yet they were destined to be disappointed. The evening
came, to be sure, and the fire blazed, and the candles burned, and the
dinner smoked ; but the man of silence returned no more — neither he
nor his white horse were ever seen nor heard of from that day to this.

In our times, God be praised ! no gentleman whatever — no matter
how silent he may be, can walk off the stage of life without making
some noise. Hand-bills will describe him from top to toe, carefully
noting all those little imperfections of person, and peculiarities of bear-
ing, voice, and manner, which he, the proprietor, had fondly hoped to
gloss over — to slur, as it were — to carry off with that easy grace which
every body thinks he possesses : — as thus —

Mysterious Disappearance !

Left his lodgings, 937, Strand, on Saturday, 16th ult., at eight o'clock
in the evening, a little in liquor, and has not since been heard of,

AN ELDERLY GENTLEMAN,

About 5 feet 1 inch in height ; head a little bald ; face (especially nose)
a little red ; a little inclined to corpulency ; squinted a little with the
right eye, and limped a little with the left leg ; stuttered a little, espe-
cially after dinner, or when in a passion ; and took a great deal of
dark snuff, which he carried loose in his waistcoat-pocket.

Had on

A white hat, yellowish- white cravat, flannel under- waistcoat and drawers,

1830.] The Man with the White Horse. 167

yarn stockings, brown cloth gaiters ; shoes very square at the toes, as
he suffered much from corns ; grey kersymere breeches, with seven-
pence-halfpenny in the left pocket, and a metal watch, with black
ribbon and brass key, in the fob ; black waistcoat, much stained with
snuff j and brown coat. Is supposed to have fallen into the Thames,
or the hands of the resurrection-men.

A REWARD OP FIVE SHILLINGS

will be cheerfully paid, by his disconsolate friends, to any person who
may be able to verify either of these alarming suspicions, or otherwise
account for his disappearance.

Sncoks, Snodgrass, Brampton, and Tooks, Printers.
N. B. Hand-bills executed on the shortest notice.

Then the newspapers teem with articles all headed " Mysterious
Disappearance •" the police are all activity ; the river is poked from
Hammersmith to Blackwall ; lightermen are seized ; coalheavers are
examined. The body is found at the end of two months under a barge
near Tower Stairs ; — the coroner flies to the spot ; a jury is summoned ;
the body is identified by a cicatrix on the top of the head, from a fall
down stairs, after an evening spent with the Merry-go-nimble Club, a
convivial society, of which he was a distinguished member in early life ;
the inquest is adjourned, de die, in diem, seven times, for the procure-
ment of additional and important testimony, which having been
obtained, a verdict of " Found Drowned" is returned, to the infinite
satisfaction and edification of all interested and concerned in the protec-
tion of life and property, the prevention of crime, and the furtherance of
the ends of justice : nay, all is not yet over with the defunct — little did
he think during his swipy, gin-drinking, grass-cut-smoking, snuff-
taking life, what posthumous distinction awaited him — what indemnity
in fame, for insignificance in existence. We, of the magazines, write
him up, and, with the Monthly for a recording angel, he is consecrated
to a two-and-sixpenny immortality.

Alas ! we ordered these things not so well at our side of the water,
in the days of which I write. The white horse and his rider returned,
as I have said, no more ; the ominous-looking steward gave out that his
master had gone on a long journey — of the truth of which assertion I
make not the slightest doubt — and, of course, as in duty bound, entered
into possession to keep all things in order until his return ; but, although
the unsettled state of the country, the lax adminstration of the laws, and
the small estimation in which the solitary man who had disappeared had
been held by the neighbourhood, concurred to permit his disappearance
to pass without legal investigation — yet a whisper of evil, a muttered
denunciation went forth among the people. The aged peasants shook
their heads as the steward passed, and said that ill-gotten wealth never
throve, and that nothing would prosper with him, or his house. With
the aristocracy of the country he of course had no footing ; and after a
vain and ineffectual attempt to win his way by an affectation of hospi-
tality, pompous, and overdone, as is the fashion among upstarts, he, and
his establishment, relapsed into a gloom still deeper, and more unsocial,
than that of his predecessor. The ominous predictions which are said to
shadow a doomed house gathered around him and his, and woe and
ruin were prophesied against all who meddled with any of his race, or

168 Walks in Ireland. [FEB.

blood, or partook of his guilty prosperity, in bargain, in friendship, but
above all in marriage.

This man had an only child, a daughter, and secluded as she was from
all society, by both popular opinion, and by the sour ascetic habits of
her father, it seemed not unlikely that, in spite of her attractions as an
heiress, the curse of old maidenhood might fall upon her, and thus the
fatal race perish root and branch — but it fell out otherwise ; her singular
story reached the ears of one who was entitled by prescription to defy
the devil and all his works — a man who bore a charmed life, who was
shielded alike by circumstances and profession from all apprehensions
either as to this world or the next, inasmuch as he had already gone
" deeper than ever plummet sounded" in actual practical experience of
the evils of the one, and theoretical acquisition of a title to those of the
other, being, at once, a pauper, a rogue, and an attorney. This esti-
mable gentleman having nothing to lose, and as little to fear, had, of
course, every thing to hope and gain, and despising prophecy and warn-
ing, made up his mind to win the mysterious heiress. Introduction in
the ordinary way was, of course, out of the question ; his intended was,
as I have said, shutout from the world by the very circumstances which
constituted her attraction in his eyes, and even had the case been other-
wise, nobody who knew him would have had the hardihood to intro-
duce him as an eligible acquaintance, much less as a suitor, to her, or
any one else.

An obstacle like this, however, was a trifle to the enamoured man of
law ; he borrowed a steed from a credulous client, taking care that it
was not a white one, lest the colour should excite unpleasant recollec-
tions, and commending himself to the patronage and protection of Mer-
cury and St. Nicholas, set forth to achieve an introduction for himself.
Arrived at the gate of his land of promise, his charger, hitherto as meek
and patient as Rozinante himself, became suddenly unmanageable, upon
instinct, I suppose, he reared, and kicked: and snorted, and bounded, as
if he actually had discovered what an attorney he had got upon his
back. The gatekeeper and family ran out to see what was the matter,
and just as they appeared, down came the adventurous equestrian at their
feet. When the compassionate group raised him from the ground, he,
in a faint voice, begged to be carried to their master's house, as he felt
so ill from the effects of the fall he had received, that he was utterly
unable to proceed ; his request was accordingly complied with, and a
few minutes found him languidly reclining on a sofa, under the pitying
eye of the gentle object of his wishes, and ready to be fallen in love with
after the most approved fashion. — They were married of course.

They were married, and, to all appearance, their situation was as pros-
perous as heart could wish. The unjust steward was called to account for
his stewardship before One from whose eye no secrets are hid ; and the
fatal possessions of " the man with the white horse" passed into the hands
of his son-in-law, without inquiry or dispute. The story began to die in
the country ; the new possessor was of a gay and hilarious temperament,
and that goes a great way to conciliate the world, worthless and unprin-
cipled as he undeniably was; at all events he was a good-humoured
rogue, and cheated facetiously, and the ludicrous trick by which he had
won the hand of the heiress, formed, by antagonism as it were, a sort of
set off in his favour against the ghostly suspicions which rested on the
memory of her father. In his case there was no foul practice against life,

1830.] The Man with the White Horse. 169

and, indeed, the only point of resemblance between the two was, that
as one horse had carried off the original proprietor, another animal of
the same species, as if anxious to make restitution, had replaced him by
trotting up with the present, and throwing him down in his stead : an
instance of honest sagacity not to be surpassed in the Percy Anecdotes.
The wealthy attorney cast the slough of his profession, and soared into
the upper regions of society as a magistrate and a sportsman; a nume-
rous family grew up around him, and he embarked, with every prospect
of success, in various thriving speculations; but, like death in the Apo-
calypse, the rider on the pale horse followed his footsteps, and threw his
shadow over the fate and fortunes of him and his. Nothing that he
touched throve with him : the very speculations by which others made
wealth failed in his hands, and plunged him into embarrassments ; the
paths by which others advanced to eminence led him to ruin ; his pro-
perty melted away from him like snow from a hill side ; he returned to
his profession, he practised every art and mystery of attorney ism to
retrieve his fortunes — all was in vain. His family — I knew them well —
according as they grew up they were provided for, as the phrase goes,
in marriage — woe to the house into which they entered — woe to the man
who clasped hands with one of the race. The eldest son was said to
resemble his grandfather the steward more than any of the rest, and he
rather piqued himself upon imitating his stewardlike habits of accuracy
in keeping minute accounts and so forth ; at all events, he certainly
inherited the largest portion of the cold villainy of his character, and, if
old saws are to be believed, of the blasting influence of his destiny.
After ruining the once happy and prosperous family into which he mar-
ried, by involving them in an inextricable labyrinth of law, after embez-
zling enough of their property to have secured a handsome indepen-
dence, poverty and disease have at last overtaken him together, and he
is now, in middle age, a conscience-stricken valetudinarian, of whom
you would say, in spite of yourself, as you passed him in the street,
" there goes a doomed man."

The daughters — kind, domestic, gentle girls they were — each after
each they married, as I have said, and under favourable auspices, as one
would think, but as the youthful establishment of each grew up, it
seemed as if a germ of misfortune, a principle of decay was implanted
in their very nature, like a canker in a young tree — nothing prospered
with them — all went wrong.

I dare say by this time you think me a superstitious fool, and, to tell
you the truth, I care very little whether you do or not. I know very
well that all tellers of ghost stories, and such like, are listened to in this
workday world rather incredulously ; but remember that I have not
asked you to assent to the popular explanation of the strange circum-
stances I have related : and probably, in your opinion, the dishonesty
and treachery of father and son account sufficiently, in the ordinary
course of events, for the downfall of all who had the misfortune of being
connected with them, without requiring the aid of supernatural inter-
ference. There are the facts, I can vouch for them, and you are welcome
to collate and explain them as you think fit : all I can tell you is, that
never was coincidence more literal than that between the prediction and
the subsequent facts ; misfortune and ill luck have trod upon the heels
of the descendants of the unjust steward, and all who were unhappy
enough to form any alliance with them, down to this very hour ; the
M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 50. Z

170 Walks in Ireland. [FEB.

ill-gotten property is scattered, as it were, to the winds of heaven, and
the peasant, as he tells the story, points to its fulfilment in the ruined
mansion of " the man with the white horse."

The Devil's Mill

About six miles to the westward of Dublin stands the village of
Lucan, " noted," as the Post Chaise Companion has it, "for its medicinal
spring, the waters of which are of great efficacy in many disorders," that
is to say, it is a pretty rural retirement, where people of fashion, in
former times, when there were people of fashion in Dublin, used to
recover from the effects of the dissipation of the season, by keeping
regular hours, and taking regular exercise, through romantic woodland
scenes, and in a mild salubrious climate, though they .invariably attri-
buted their cure to a pint of cold clear water (as agreeable in taste and
smell as the washings of a gun), by them taken twice a day.

The low road to Lucan is a beautiful drive, passing through the
Phoenix Park, with its place of arms, the fifteen acres, where more duels
have been fought than upon any given spot on the face of the globe,
and the Strawberry Banks, whence Dublin is supplied with that fruit,
and where, in the pleasant days of summer, the citizens ruralize, after
the fashion of their brethren of Cockaigne, amongst the Arcadian groves
of Hampstead and Richmond Hill. Winding onward through rich mea-
dows, and sunny slopes, and gradually losing sight of all that can remind
you of the city, the road reaches the Liffey, there a dark, rapid, and
sullen-looking stream, overshadowed by tall trees, and embosomed
among gloomy superstitious groves, and silent upland pastures, that
shut out all distant views, and preserve unbroken the character of the
place. A little farther on, where the shadows fall deepest over river
and road, the troubled voice of the stream, at once mournful and com-
plaining, gives token that its course is ruffled by some impediment, and
there, half overcome by the indefatigable waters, lie certain antique
walls, and a ruined wear, denominated by the peasantry " The Devil's
Mill." A gloomy spot it is, that lonesome road, with its nodding spectral
trees, when an autumn evening is falling around you, and closing in the
view with its thin gray pall; when the chafed torrent is raving and
groaning through the dim-seen ruins, as if anxious to shake off their
load, and sweep them headlong from its path ; and when the wild
legend, to which they owe their name, arises in your mind. Many and

many a time have I heard it, with the woods of L town right before

me, and the work of the fiendish architect beneath my feet, as I sat on
the twisted root of one of the venerable trees ; while with that air of
undoubting implicit belief which lends a peculiar interest to all Irish
legends, whether humorous or tragic (for your narrator delivers them
to you, no matter how extravagant, as if he believed every jot and tittle
of them from the bottom of his soul), some patriarch of the neigh-
bouring village pointed out the various localities of the story. Here
it is for you.

In the old-world times of the Charles' and James', ay, up to the mid-
dle of the last century, the Irish nobility were a fierce and lawless race,
little resembling their contemporary brethren of England, in manners or
habits, and preserving much of the feudal sway of the days of the
Henrys and Edwards, together with no small portion of the rude pomp
and stern aristocratic bearing, consequent upon that system. Between

1030.] The Devil's Mill. 171

them and their vassals " there was a great gulf fixed/' and I could tell
you tales for a twelvemonth, of their desperate feats in drinking, hunt-
ing, courtship, and duelling, gathered from the descendants of those
very vassals, and handed down in fear and wonder from father to son :
somewhat distorted, perhaps, by reason of the wide separation I have
alluded to between the castes, but yet possessing strong traits of charac-
ter, national and individual, and, like all other traditional tales, shadow-
ing out real events of by-gone times, even in their wildest flights. The
memory of many a noble, of the times I speak of, is tainted with the
charge of league and compact with the powers of darkness ; and I do
not wonder at it : the miserable country was convulsed by civil wars of
the most unsparing nature, and torn to the very vitals by every con-
ceivable alternation of unflinching pitiless cruelty, as either party was
hurried along by the tide of fortune, evil or good, by the headlong fury
of victory or defeat ; and it is in no way strange that the scared pea-
santry, as they beheld with awe and wonder the excesses of their supe-
riors, should attribute them to a deeper influence than the mere ordinary
passions of human nature, and that they should see in the wild unnatural
merriment of their midnight festivities, as well as in the sweeping fury
of their partizan warfare, the workings of the inspiration of the spirit
of evil, rather than the mere abuse of sensual pleasures and lawless
power.

Among the latest who fell under the heavy imputation I have described,
was a former possessor of the beautiful, though sombre-looking, seat,
whose ancient trees overshadow the road at the spot where the scene of
my legend is laid. The mansion and demesne then bore the name of
L town, from the family to which it belonged ; its present proprie-
tor, however, has called it Woodlands, and, while in his hands, I will
warrant it from witnessing any feats which may require either the head
or the heart of the daring few, who at any time have been suspected of
encountering the dwellers in the dark abodes, though, to tell the truth,
his father might have been in possession of the philosopher's stone, for
aught I can say to the contrary, inasmuch as he commenced his career
as a flying stationer, that is to say, an itinerant vender of pamphlets,
and died a member of parliament worth half a million sterling.

It is said that one of the L family (the former possessors of the

estate) shewed William the Third the passage across the Boyne ; at all
events, without pretending to investigate that point of history, I can
only say, that there are few names to which the Irish peasant attaches
such deep damnation, and which he pronounces with such a fervour of
hatred and horror as that of L .

At the time I speak of, the L — • — of the day seemed fairly deter-
mined to earn in his own person all the anathemas which the people
had ever poured out upon his race ; he drank like a Frey Graf of the
fourteenth century — he rode like the wild huntsman — he was the first
and the last in the revel and the field, and though frequently engaged
in the sanguinary duels of the period, as well as in all other hazardous
exploits, that seemed to promise a short and speedy termination to his
fierce career, yet he ever escaped unhurt, as if he bore a charmed life ;
but of all the passions which swayed his mind by turns, that of play
seemed the master, and the ruler : for this he would sacrifice all else
besides, and night and day, when the fit was upon him, lights danced,

1 rafters rang, and the very owls and ravens whooped and croaked as

Z 2

172 Walks m Ireland. [F^u.

the voices of his fierce companions and of himself broke through the
stillness of the antique mansion, and the solemn woods, with song, and
shout, and blasphemous incantation, as the shifting luck at dice or cards
stirred their spirits, and chafed their blood.

On a November night, when the groaning trees bowed beneath the
storm, and the Liffey, swelled by the mountain rains, swept through the
vale in a dark brown flood, that threatened to carry every obstacle
before it, from Lucan to Dublin Bay, the usual party was assembled at

nin L town. It seemed as if the night had lent a portion of its
ness and fury to their spirits and demeanour; they drank, and
played, and shouted, as if bent upon rivalling the storm without ; and
ever as the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared, they mocked the
elemental strife in their impious songs and ribald jests. As though,
in very deed, the powers of nature were moved at their audacity, it
seemed as if the storm increased in intensity, and concentrated around
the house, until at last even the boldest of them thought they could
distinguish hoarse yelling voices mingling with the midnight blast, and
ghastly faces leering through the windows, and furious eyes glaring out
of the darkness, as the livid lightning flashed through the gloom, like
the banner of the accursed host ; crash after crash of thunder pealed
through the very room with every flash, until at last, a globe of fire, the
brightest, the most terrible that ever eye beheld, leaped right among
them, dazzling them for an instant with its intolerable light, and leaving
them the next, in the darkness and the silence of the grave.

The host was the first to start up and thunder to the servants for
lights, and when the affrighted menials came, it was an altered scene
which presented itself ; the tables had been upset, and the lights extin-
guished by the explosion of the thunderbolt, though none of the guests
were hurt. But on collecting their scattered senses, and looking around,
they all perceived, with a shudder, that a stranger was added to their
company. Now, though at the first glance, he was to all appearance no
more than a middle aged man, dressed in black, yet, as they looked at
him, they could see that the outline of his figure wavered and flickered,
as if traced upon a mist ; and in his eye there was something so fiendish
and withering that the boldest heart grew cold before his glance, nay,
the very storm itself seemed to dwell around, or emanate from him, for ever
as he moved in his chair, though every motion seemed studied, and
subdued, as he turned and bowed in token of recognition to one after
another of the silent group, floor, walls, and ceiling trembled and shook
as if the mansion was about to come down, and bury them in its ruins.

L/ was a bold hearted man, and though daunted by what he saw,

and well he might be, he was the first of the party to recover himself
sufficiently to speak; he demanded the name and purpose of the intruder
— there was a pause before the stranger replied, then mastering an
obvious inclination to laugh, which gave a yet wilder and more unna-
tural air to his countenance, he coolly replied, '' That he was right well
known to every individual in the honourable company, and that he was
the guest of their host, by regular invitation, given so very lately, and
acceded to by them so unanimously, that he could not help wondering
at the strange reception they gave him" — and with this, after another
withering glance round the circle, he looked downward at his own feet ;
all eyes followed his, and all recognized with horror the fatal hoof— in
Ireland, as in Germany, the infallible mark of the devil : for disguise the

1830.] The Devil's Mill 173

rest of his person as he may, it seems he never parts with or conceals
that. The company, with one accord, fled from the room.

In the neighbourhood of L town lived a clergyman, renowned for

his piety ; and little as the inmates of that mansion thought of him in
their blasphemous revelry, and much as they were accustomed to scorn
his ghostly counsels on ordinary occasions, yet now, in the hour of
supernatural peril, he was called for by all, as the only champion who
had a chance of success against their dangerous enemy. He came at
once, and, without the slightest hesitation, committed himself alone
with the evil one. Of the particulars of their interview little is known ;
as the legend draws near its close it waxes dim and faint, like an inco-
herent dream. The demon, avowing his errand, boldly declared that
he came for him who had summoned him, and that he would not depart
without him, unless compelled by a superior power. Strong as were
the exorcisms of the virtuous priest, yet the fiend, armed with the guilt
of his summoner, as with a delegated commission of vengeance, stood
upon his right. At length a species of compromise was effected : the
demon consented to forego his claim for the present, out of compliment
to the merit and skill of his antagonist, rather than upon compulsion,
and through fear of his exorcisms, but only on condition that a task
should be assigned to him which he could not perform. Now every
child (in Ireland at least) knows, that if you try skill with the devil,
endeavour to puzzle him, and fail in the attempt, you pay for the failure
and become his victim, by virtue of a kind of satanic forfeiture of recog-
nizance. The aged priest pondered for an instant, and listened to the
raging torrent as it swept along in its strength, and he knew by the
sounding roar that the stream, which in summer glides pleasantly
through greenwood and pasture, just deep enough to shelter the nimble
trout in its transparent eddies, was now careering from mountain and
swamp, armed with the fury of a hundred midnight torrents, and sweep-
ing cabin and peasant, cattle and stock, from its downward path, like
any other pitiless conqueror. The old man's eye lighted up with the
hope of baffling the subtle fiend, and he chuckled at the thought of giv-
ing him enough of cold water for once in his life, as he bade him filter
the swollen river with dam and wear, and build a substantial mill in the
midst of the torrent.

Lamp grew dim, and tempest was hushed, and lightning crept back
into the bosom of the cloud, and the old priest hid his face between his
hands ! as with fantastic and unholy gestures, and forbidden words of
power, the evil spirit summoned his brethren around him ; and the roof
rang once more with peals of fiendish laughter, as they listened to the
simple task of the priest, and vanished to perform it. Like the tall
piles that arise at the bidding of sleep in a troubled dream, or the fan-
tastic architecture one constructs in the western clouds of the evening
sky, the affrighted exerciser could see by a lurid light, as of a mighty
furnace, the mill arising through the cleft waters, as with jest, and song,
and damned merriment, the busy demons plied their task ; then came a
glare of brightest light, the throng broke, and fell back, the work was
finished, and wheel and hopper clanked, and banged through the hushed
night. The priest's heart died within him at every stroke — " Heaven be
good to me !" said he ; " what will become of me ?" for he thought on the
well-known consequences of failing in an attempt to puzzle the devil. —
" What next ?" said the stranger, impatiently — " what next ?" and his

174 Walks i?i Ireland. [FEB.

brow darkened, and his eyes glared wolfishly at the poor priest—
" Sancte Johanne ora pro me — Beati Apostoli, orate pro me" — " Give me
work/' shouted the evil one, his form dilating as his human disguise
gave way before his fiendish rage — " Give me work, I want no prayers,
— you promised me work — keep your word or look to yourself." Just at
that instant a saving thought flashed across the mind of the terrified old
man : he remembered the well known crux, which at various times has
posed the most intelligent and dextrous devils in Pandemonium ; and
with a long-drawn gasp, like that of one who had just been snatched
from the devouring sea, " You want work," said he, " do you ? be off
with yourself, then, to the Bull of Clontarf* — the blessed saints be
praised that put it into my head — and make me a three-plie cable of the
sand of the sea. And hark ye," said he, his spirits rising at the blank
disappointed look of his enemy, " you needn't be in such a hurry with
this job, the day's long, and the wages are small." The baffled demon
vanished with a howl.

And now farewell to Lucan, with its long-drawn vistas of solemn
woods, its mazy river, and atrabilious-looking water drinkers ; cross as
they seemed, many a pleasant day I have passed among them in merry
childhood, wondering all the while how they could look so sad and yel-
low, while the swift river sparkled, and the sweet birds sang, and the
trees blossomed around them ; but I have eaten of the fruit of know-
ledge of good and evil since those times, and I wonder no more.

J. R. O.

LONDON ANOMALIES.
BY HUDIBBAS, JUNIOR.

OH ! London's a comical place,

In which comical people do dwell ;
Where comical streets you may trace,

And comical things the folks sell :
And what is more comical still,

Although it seems nearly a fiction,
Each street with its name chimes so ill,

That the whole is a plump contradiction.

First Cheapside is known to be dear ;

Wood-street is all stones, bricks, and mortar;
In Mil/c-street the people drink beer ;

In jBeer-lane they've nothing but water;
In the Poultry no fowls you will see,

You need not go there for conviction ;
In Love-lane the folks disagree; —

Thus the whole is a plump contradiction.

On Saffron-hill every thing's brown ;

In Cow-cross you seldom see cattle;
In Water-lane no one can drown;

In Angel-court, Lord, what a prattle !
In Honey-lane there's not a bee,

Although Drones there may meet no restriction;
In Orchard-street grows riot a tree; —

Thus the whole is a plump contradiction !

* A sand bank in Dublin Bay.

J830.] London Anomalies. 175

In Fleet-street the coaches go slow;

Racket-court is quite peaceful and quiet;
You'll find not an arrow at Bow,

And Parade-street is all, riot;
Still-alley is pestered with noise,

Which the neighbours all find an affliction ;
In jLaoMane are very few boys; —

Thus the whole is a plump contradiction !

The New River head is its tail;

Mount Pleasant with mud is offensive;
In .ZVew-street they sell things quite stale;

Little Britain is very extensive;
That the New Road is old is quite true,

In Truth-street live dealers in fiction ;
While Old-street is looking quite new; —

Thus the whole is a plump contradiction !

Mount-street as a pancake is fiat,

And Hill-street is all on a level;
While Green-street's as black as your hat,

And .Down-street's as rough as the devil ;
In Golden-lane some keep a pig,

In spite of Mic. Taylor's restriction ;
In Bush-lane you can't see a twig ; —

Thus the whole is a plump contradiction !

In Whych-street folks live any how,

In Idle-lane all by their labour;
In Field-lane there ne'er was a plough;

In Friendly-court none knows his neighbour;
In St. James's lives many a true Greek,

For young opulent boobies' affliction ;
In Greek-street but broad Scotch they speak ; —

Thus the whole is a plump contradiction !

In Rider- street all people walk ;

In Walker' s-court some keep their trotters;
In Dumb-alley all the folks talk/

In King-street there are treason anol plotters.
Then, ye Streets, Lanes, and Alleys, adieu !

Like your dwellers, you're all but a fiction
For search London life through and through,

'Tis all but a plump contradiction !

[ 176 J [FEB.

THE ENGLISH AND IRISH CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT.

THAT some changes in church matters are brewing, we suppose no
man who has his senses can doubt. What the nature of the changes
may be, is still in the bosom of those gentlemen who have so handsomely
vindicated to themselves the title of the " Inscrutables ;" nor are we at
all inclined to approach the depths of their mystery. We have no fear
that the matter will sleep ; nor that, when all is ripe, there will be any
great modesty of concealment. The Whitehall preachers are gone ; a
very proper performance, for anything that we can venture to say. The
Commission for altering the Ecclesiastical Laws, may be moving with
the deliberate majesty of church work ; or sweeping on with the brilliant
rapidity of the pas de charge. But of this, too, we say nothing. The order
for the return of all the members of all the multifarious sects that " rave,
recite, and madden through the land," is in full action ; and we shall, of
course, have it on the table of Parliament, and a formidable muster-roll
it will be ! All those things may be among the most innocent casualties
imaginable ; but their coincidence is curious. Yet, however, as premises
may be harmless, conclusions may be the contrary, we leave the draw-
ing of them to those whom it may concern.

Our present employment is to give some of the facts touching the
present state of the livings, patrons, and appointments, of the Church.

The use of an Establishment for Religion, depends upon the obvious
grounds, that religion is essential to the good order of a state. Its value
to the individual is a different consideration, and a higher one, as con-
nected with the hope of futurity. But the public value of religion
consists in its rendering the governed properly subordinate to the gover-
nors— in its extinction of turbulence, rapacity, and bloodshed — and its
general disposal of the people to live peaceably, and be content with
their own.

As it is to be presumed that the legislator chooses for the best, he
will not select a bad religion where he may have the power to select a
good one ; or he will select that for his establishment which is already
the religion of the intelligent majority, and which is therefore likely to
be the one best suited, at least in its forms, to the habits and minds of
the nation, or perhaps the only one which they will receive. To perpe-
tuate the religion, he gives it " an Establishment," or regular form and
substantial system of offices, duties, and income ; thereby providing for
the rising up of a succession of ministers, and pledging the power of the
state to its protection and permanency.

The more detailed uses of church establishments (and we do not limit
the term to the Church of England) are to be found, —
—In the protection which their creeds and authenticated forms of doc-
trine, and the necessary education, decorum, and public responsibility
of their ministers, provide against the extravagancies of fanaticism ; a
service of singular value, when we recollect that fanaticism has had fre-
quently the power of throwing whole communities into the most fatal
confusion, besides plunging multitudes of bewildered men into the great-
est spiritual blindness and temporal misfortune.—

— In their provision for religious instruction ; a most important task,
which cannot be safely left to the rude hands that would otherwise be
ready to make it an instrument of evil ; nor to the casual benevolence,
which, however copious for a time, is so sure to run dry.—

1030.] The English and Irish Church Establishment. 177

— In the charities, and other dispensations for the relief of human suffer-
ing and ignorance ; the foundation of schools, of alms-houses, and the
other means of ensuring comfort and general assistance to the poor, &c.

The short life of man makes it necessary to provide for a succession of
officers, in any system which it is advantageous to preserve beyond the pre*.
sent moment; but, in the church, those officers, the priesthood, mustbe edu-
cated for their situation, at a considerable expense, and for many years. To
justify this expenditure of time and money, there must be an obvious per-
manency }n the offices ; otherwise, the parent will not encounter the
effort, which may be rendered useless at the very time of completion.
Thus, the Jjublic knowledge of the permanency of the employment is
essential to the^ certainty of the succession.

In all things connected with human nature, abuses will come ; but we
have no right to forget the good even in the fullest consciousness of the
evil. We are perhaps not more willing to be blind to the evil than other
men ; but we say it with the most solemn sincerity, that, for all the
noblest purposes of an establishment, the Church of England has neither
" second nor similar." What form of church government on earth has,
for the duration and extent of the Church of England, exhibited a more
illustrious succession of pious and intellectual teachers — has been dig-
nified by more various and vigorous learning — has contributed more to
the highest literature, of both theology and the classics ? What church,
in the day of religious persecution, braved the terrors of martyrdom for
the truth with more holy courage ? or what body of men, in the day of
royal oppression, was first marked for ruin, or stood forth with more
manly heroism, until the day was won, and England free ?

That such a church should be sustained with all our strength, we will
hold, in the presence of the boldest innovator ; to be among its cham-
pions, we feel an honour ; and, if it should be destined to sink, we
fearlessly pronounce that with it will sink the freedom as well as the faith,
the power as well as the virtue, of England.

We disdain being the advocates of its abuses ; wherever they are to
be found, let them be swept away. But we have a right to choose our
reformers. Not every one who calls himself a friend to freedom, loves
to give up his tyranny ; and not every one who demands increased self-
denial in the church, is free from the " itching palm." Above all
reforms, we shall have no political reform of the church, let the hands
that touch its failing strength be whose they may. To suppose that any
real reform is meditated, to release the church from the old and evil grasp
of influence in the higher quarters, is to suppose what no man living will
ever see attempted. That no minister will ever curtail his own patron-
age, is a law to the full as irrevocable as any law of the Medes and
Persians.

In the first establishment of religion in England, the division of the soil
suggested the appropriation of certain portions of the lands, or their pro-
duce, to the maintenance of religion. As popery began to predominate,
those lands began to be usurped by the monks or regulars, to the injury
of the parochial or secular clergy. The reformation under Henry VIII.
broke up the monasteries. But their lands were not restored to the ori-
ginal designation : the brutal spirit of the king, and the fierce rapine of
the courtiers, were indulged with the plunder of the church property,
and the reformed clergy were thus in general left to struggle with poverty.
To relieve it pluralities were suffered, which, though in a multitude of

M.M. New Series.— VOL, IX. No. 50. 2 A

178 The English and Irish Church Establishment. [FEB.

instances absolutely necessary for the decent maintenance of the clergy,
yet in some rose into an evil, against which it was necessary to provide
by statute. The laws on this subject were as early as Henry's reign.
Clergy were compelled to reside upon their livings by the Acts 21st
Henry VIII. cap. ]3., and 20th Henry VIII. cap. 13. Those acts were
amended and embodied by the 57th George III. cap. 99, entitled, " an
Act to consolidate and amend the laws relating to spiritual persons holding
farms, and for enforcing the residence of spiritual persons on their bene-
fices, and for the support and maintenance of stipendiary curates in
England."

We come now to the numbers.

The number of the parochial benefices in England and Wales is, upon
the authority of parliamentary and diocesan returns, estimated in all their
kinds of rectories, vicarages, perpetual curacies, donations, and chapelries,
at twelve thousand.

Those benefices are held by about 6,700 incumbents. Of those incum-
bents one benefice each is held by 3,900, and more than one by 2,800.

The patronage of those benefices is divided between the Administra-
tion, the Bishops, the Deans and Chapters, the Universities, the schools,
and the lay patrons. The Crown patronage comprehends — 103 benefices
in the gift of the first lord of the Treasury, 39 in those of the Duchy of
Lancaster, and 899 in the hands of the Lord Chancellor.

The Administration thus has 1,041 benefices.

The twenty-six Bishops and Archbishops, with the Deans and Chap-
ters, have 1,377 benefices.

The public schools of London have 45 ; Eton has 45, and Win-
chester 10.

Oxford has 403, and Cambridge 280.

The lay patronage comprehends one half of the whole establishment.
The peers and baronets having 1,400 ; and the benefices in private
hands, and generally disposable as property, being 6,491 ; the lay patron-
age thus amounting to 7^891.

Of the benefices, the most valuable are chiefly in the hands of the lay
patrons. But the Treasury patronage is rich ; the livings in the Chan-
cellor's immediate gift are in general small ; but of them he has 899.

On the whole, the establishment is poor. It appears from the parlia-
mentary return made by the clergy to the King in Council, presented by
command of the Prince Regent, in 1818, that there were 1,629 benefices
not exceeding 80/. a year, and 4,361 (as a total), not exceeding 150/.
a year. But the value of all livings having since fallen a fourth, and in
many instances more, the deduction must be allowed for ; and there will
be nearly 4,000 benefices not exceeding 100£. a year.

The state of the Irish Protestant church has been matter of scarcely
less debate, and naturally of much more ignorance than that of the Eng-
lish. The peculiar tenure of the English government in Ireland, long
rendered it necessary, at least in the eyes of politicians, that all means of
influence should be exerted to retain the allegiance of the people.
Among those means of influence the church was unfortunately reckoned,
and the high offices of the establishment were, with fatal frequency,
made the instruments of attaching the leading families of Ireland to the
Government.

Nothing can be more idle than to suppose that a civilized church can

1830.] The English and Irish Church Establishment. 179

subsist among an uncivilized people. The state of Ireland, for a long
succession of centuries, a state of almost total anarchy, left the Irish
church to the spoiler. Henry VIII. was a robber and a murderer, and
the confiscator of the church in England was not likely to be restrained
where confiscation found pretexts under prerogative and national insecu-
rity, and where the punishment of the rebel was so easily alleged for the
plunder of his property.

The natural operation of popery to amass wealth in monkish hands,
had in Ireland singularly combined with the circumstances of the time,
to leave the church open to plunder. In the long course of furious civil
wars, the parish clergy had to a great extent fled to the protection of the
monasteries. The return for this protection was in general a bestowal of
their tithes upon the monasteries ; which, for the purpose of receiving
those tithes, and performing the necessary duties of the livings, sent out
clerical agents, or vicars of their own, to superintend the livings, endow-
ing those vicars with a portion of the tithes, thence called vicarial.
Henry VIII.'s sweeping plunder came ; he extinguished the monasteries,
and seized upaii the tithes in their possession. The greater portion of
those tithes he gave away or sold among his lords and courtiers ; and
thus lay proprietor or impropriators, as they are called, possess to this
day, about half the whole of this ancient provision for the Irish clergy,
with more than half the livings in England as adowsons, or privately dis-
posable property. In Ireland the imperfect reception of protestantism
even among the nominally reformed, degraded the church more and
more in the eyes of England, and her governors and deputies in Ireland ;
and the despatches of those officers to their successive sovereigns, from
the days of Edward VI. and Elizabeth, down to William III., give the
most melancholy details of the poverty, obscurity, and general dilapi-
dation of the church. Bedell, the excellent and able Bishop of Kilmore
in 1630, gives a picture of his diocese to the celebrated Archbishop
Laud, that resembles the picture of the early Christian church under the
pagan emperors.

The Irish clergy, depressed as they were, by the excesses of the time,
yet made frequent remonstrances to the English viceroys; and their
declarations contained in Lord Straiford's correspondence with his short-
sighted and unfortunate master, convey the strongest feelings of injury
and desertion. They solemnly adjure the monarch, in an address from
the whole of the archbishops, bishops, and clergy, to look upon their
sufferings, " to which in all the Christian world there is no equal, for
the extremity of contempt and poverty to which the clergy have been
reduced, by the perpetual spoliations of the laity and the crown — by so
frequent appropriations, and violent intrusions into their rights in times
of confusion ; having their churches ruined, their habitations left deso-
late, their glebes seized, and by inevitable consequence, an invincible
necessity of a general non-residency, whereby the ordinary subject had
been left destitute of all possible means to learn true piety to God. "*

A large portion of the evils of the Irish church, in times chiefly subse-
quent to the reign of William III., or the period of Protestant ascend-
ancy in Ireland, also resulted from the system of unions. Those unions
were of two kinds ; perpetual, which were effected by the consent of all
the parties concerned, patron, parson, bishop, archbishop, and privy

* Lord Stafford's Letters, Vol. 1. pp. 382, &c.

2 A 2

180 The English and Irish Church Establishment. [FEB.

council, an assemblage of interests which naturally prevented any per-
sonal unfairness in the transaction. The second order was the Episcopal
union, which being made for the life of the incumbent, and at the will
of the bishop, was of course liable to be turned into a source of corrupt
patronage to the bishop's friends or relatives. Both unions, however,
generally originated in the smallness of the livings, which, from their
poverty, were singly unable to sustain the clergyman. The connexion of
the parishes thus became frequently indispensable for the decent per-
formance of the rites of religion.

Swift was no lover of the bishops, nor of the Church, nor of Ireland,
nor of any thing existing, yet he vindicated the principle of those
unions, by the necessity of the case. " The clergy," says he, " having
been stripped of the greatest part of their revenues, the glebes being
generally lost, the tithes in the hands of laymen, the churches
demolished, and the country depopulated; in order to preserve a face
of Christianity, it was necessary to unite small vicarages, sufficient to
make a tolerable maintenance for a minister."

The term " union" sounds large. But it is fully known that in a
multitude of instances those unions of parishes are but aggregates of
poverty; they frequently producing less than a couple of hundred
pounds yearly, and sometimes not half the sum; obviously a very ina-
dequate provision for a man expected to support the decencies of his
station, and utterly inferior to the average produce of the same education
or general ability exercised in any other persuit of life.

As to the numbers of the Protestant and Popish population, the
usual popish rant about the " seven millions," is rant and no
more. Omitting Mr. Leslie Foster's census, as a Protestant authority,
(which has, however, never been impeached), the return made by the
Popish bishops to Parliament, in 1824, was, Papists, 4,980,209 ; Pro-
testants, 1,963,487- It is a remarkable circumstance too, that notwith-
standing the advantages of the Papist population for increase, they being
chiefly peasantry, and in that state of life in which men are not restrained
from marrying by any fear of the want of provision for their offspring,
or of lowering their own condition — circumstances which materially
impede marriage among the classes above them — the Protestant popu-
lation has actually advanced more than the Papist; the Papists in
1792, having been reckoned to the Protestant, by the Catholic Conven-
tion, as three millions to one, which, if continued, would make the
Papists now nearly six millions, the Protestant population having
unquestionably doubled in the last thirty years. The increase has been
— Papist, as five to three ; Protestant, as six to three. The general
proportion laid down by Mr. Foster is, Papist to Protestant, as 2| to 1.
Thus recovering nearly the same proportion at which the Protestants
stood a century and a half ago. By Sir William Petty's statement in the
year 1672,* " The Roman Catholics were to the Protestants as eight
to three, or as 2| to 1.

It is further remarkable, that this proportion has been maintained in
the teeth of a host of difficulties ; the first grand difficulty being the
frequent or continued absence of the great Protestant landlords : many
of them living almost constantly in England, some being English peers,
and almost all exhibiting the most perpetual and most culpable eagerness

* Political Anatomy, page 8.

1830.] The English and Irish Church Establishment. 181

to live any where but at home. The influence of example acts upon the
lower Protestant gentry, until it frequently happens that the only Pro-
testant left in the parish is the parson, and even he sometimes finds it a
matter of personal safety to live elsewhere.

The next influence is the general ignorance of the peasantry, of whom
twenty years ago, not one fourth could read a syllable ; and of whom
immense multitudes could not speak a word of English. Even the
prejudices of the resident gentry, almost all dishonestly hostile to the
idea of paying their tithes, and many of them dreading the returning
popularity of the clergy, as an ill omen to their own habitual frauds
upon the church property, or even as leading to a resumption of the
alienated glebes (of which no less a number than 1,480 ! are in possession
of the laity,) were of no slight import in sustaining the the old system
of Popery.

Yet, with all those obstacles, Protestantism has grown in Ireland;
and since the period of the Union, when political feelings became less
active in the patronage of the livings, there can be no doubt that a very
considerable progress in Protestantism, and with it, in education, and
general civilization and comfort, has been made.

Thus, from the Parliamentary returns it is shown, that there being in
the whole of Ireland, in the year 1801, but 689 Protestant churches, there
have been added, previously to the year 1829, no less than 618 churches,
making in the whole 1,307 ; the additional number of seats being
about 200,000, and the whole providing seats for about 457^,450; a
provision much more complete than in the English church, when we
consider that the Protestants of Ireland are still under two millions, and
that allowance must be made for infancy and age, the infirm, and the
absent on unavoidable grounds ; independently of the " Second
Services," which are now generally established wherever there is a con-
gregation to attend to them.

The number of Protestant benefices in Ireland, was reckoned at 1,254,
two years ago ; and the number is increasing, from the breaking up of
the Unions, wherever the death of the incumbent, and the growing
value of the district allows of the appointment of a clergyman. The
clergy at the same period were reckoned at 1,20^) rectors and vicars, and
750 curates ; the latter rapidly increasing in number ; the whole
amounting to 1,950. The bishops are eighteen ; the Archbishops, four;
the twenty-two, having an average income of £5000 a year. The benefices
have an average income of £250 a year. The curate's salary is by law
£75 Irish, or in the new currency, £69 4s. 7id. But many of them
have larger salaries; and where the incumbent does not reside, the
curate, if the benefice be only of the value of £80, or £100, or £120,
has by law the whole receipts of the parish, with the glebe house, and
garden."

A portion of this general progress is due to the " Asssociation for
Discountenancing Vice, and for the Promotion of Religion and Virtue,"
established about the close of the last century, and chiefly carried on
by the clergy of the establishment. The schools connected with it, and
under the protection and inspection of the respective parish clergy,
contain about 20,000 children. The Sunday schools last year numbered
185,450. The Kildare Street Society had in their schools, in 1829,
about 107,000 children; Protestantism thus supplying with education,
religious knowledge, and in many instances, with books, &c. and the

182 The English and Irish Church Establishment. [FEB.

means of entering advantageously into life, no less than 312,000 human
beings ! the boundless majority of whom must, otherwise, have been
abandoned to impiety, impurity, and rebellion.

We must not forget that all this has been effected with remarkably
disproportionate means ; the average income of 250/. a year being
palpably inadequate to the support of a gentleman and his family, let
the colour of his coat be what it may ; much less to give room for the
distribution of extensive charity. A few of the benefices are large; but
their size implies only the greater poverty of the rest. To what exer-
tions of public good, and individual charity, the Irish church might be
willing to give itself, if its whole lawful income, — an income to which it
undoubtedly has as much right as the Duke of Bedford or Devonshire
has to his rental, — must be conjectured from what it has done under pri-
vation ; for, at this hour, one half of the property of the Irish clergy is in
the hands of laymen ; the number of six hundred and eighty parishes
being wholly in lay possession, and their tithes amounting to no less a
sum than 300,000/. a year, exacted too with a strictness which makes a
striking contrast to the mode of obtaining clerical dues. And to this
monstrous usurpation, we must remember to add the lay possession of
1,480 church glebes !

We are no advocates for the abuses of the Irish church, if abuses they
be ; nor are we inclined to doubt Lord Mountcashel's good intentions.
There must be, in every human system, matters requiring public vigi-
lance. But the friend of his country will pause before he desires to
overthrow an establishment, from which so much public service has
been derived, and from which so much more may be rationally expected.
Nothing is easier than to attract popularity by the old declamations
against ecclesiastical sluggishness or sleekness ; but unless these de-
claimers can bring themselves to believe that Christianity can be learned
by instinct, or that it is no matter whether it is learned or not — that
children shall not be baptized, nor marriages solemnized, nor the dead
buried with decency, there must be a class of men appointed to per-
form all these things. The declaimers may think that all ceremonial and
all doctrine are idle, that man is soulless, and, being thus degraded to
the brute, may be left to the impulses of the brute during life, and, on
his death, may be flung into the first ditch. But the example of this
philosophy, even so near us and our time as France and the French Re-
volution, shows the physical peril of such conceptions ; and that, where
.man is a brute in his death, his living instincts may be furiously turned
to bloodshed, plunder, and the general subversion of society. The
whole experience of mankind is in favour of some public system of reli-
gion. From the most ancient and cultivated nations, to the least refined,
all equally formed for themselves a priesthood, a body of men educated
for the support of worship in its doctrines and forms, and sufficiently set
apart from the secular struggles of life, to give up their whole mind to
the maintenance of a religious feeling among the people.

A priesthood we must have, in some form or other; and the sole ques-
tion remaining is, whether we shall have it on the model approved by
the oldest authority, and sustained by means acknowledged by our
habits and laws ; or, breaking up the whole fabric which our forefathers
raised, summon a new and untried race from the multitude into the
temple, and commence a new career of public religion by robbery,
under the guidance of usurpation, popular rashness, and sullen infi-
delity.

1830.] [ 183 ]

MOORE'S NOTICES OF LOUD BYRON.

ALL the world, talkers, readers, blue-stockings, and all, have long
since made up their minds about the subject of Mr. Moore's present
volume. That Byron was a great poet is unquestionable, and that, on
the strength of his poetic reputation, he was perfectly satisfied to build
reputations of any other kind, is equally clear. Not that he was a hair's
breath worse than nine-tenths of the decorous young gentlemen whom
we meet every day roving the fashionable streets; the only difference
being that his Lordship's taste for notoriety urged him into perpetual ex-
posure; while those young gentlemen drink, play, quarrel with their fami-
lies, ruin their tailors, make lawless love, and contract heartless mar-
riages ; but have the grace to keep the affair to themselves as much as they
can. Byron let out the secret without ceremony, exulted in telling the
world every unlucky circumstance about him, and perhaps was never
in higher self-applause than on the day when he had to divulge that he
had nine executions in his house, had separated from his wife, and had
fairly proclaimed war with mankind.

All this, however, " argued a foregone conclusion," for, lover of ec-
centricities as a man may be, there are obvious inconveniences in their
pursuit which probably save the world from being often perplexed by
a career of this inveterate opposition to public tastes. Byron's parentage
may account for some portion of his propensities. His father was, by Mr,
Moore's account, a thorough scoundrel ; a base though showy profligate,
who, after spending all his patrimony in low excess, turned fortune-hun-
ter, and married a half-mad woman for her money. The detail of this
match is full of the Biographer's industry. It appears that Miss Cathe-
rine Gordon, of Gight, had about 20,000/. ; of which Captain Byron con-
trived to get rid in less than two years, reducing the Heiress of Gight to
an allowance of 150/. a year. There, unquestionably, too, was madness
in the line. Lord Byron's grand uncle, who was tried, in 1765, before
the Peers, for killing his cousin, Mr. Chaworth, in a duel, passed the
latter years of his life in an extraordinary seclusion, which was known
to be connected with lunacy. Other branches of the family were, if
less public, equally singular ; and, we must, in charity, suppose the same
excuse for Captain Byron, who began his career by carrying off and
marrying the wife of Lord Carmarthen, and whose progress through
life was only from one profligacy to another. His daughter, by, the
lady, was the Honourable Augusta Byron, subsequently married to
Colonel Leigh.

The poet's mother was married in 1785 ; and he was born, in Holies-
street, London, on the 22nd of January, 1788. The head of the line
was in the De Buruns, of Normandy, who came over with the Conqueror,
and whose posterity inherited large estates in Nottinghamshire, Derby-
shire, and Lancashire. Mrs. Byron was a descendant from Sir William
Gordon, third son of the Earl of Huntley, by the daughter of James I. of
Scotland.

Lord Byron made himself remarkable, at an early period, by his
irritability. The misery which a man inflicts on himself by this habit is
so much more severe than its offence to others, that it is only just, in
all such instances, to suspect some morbid cause. Byron had two or
three : he had a tendency to some disorder of the kidneys, than which a
more agonizing visitant when it comes, nor a more fretful fear when it

184 Moore s Notices of Lord Byron. £FEB.

threatens to come, is not within human, sufferings. A calamity of the
same organs made Rousseau mad and a misanthropist through life, and,
finally, drove him to suicide. It was, probably, the chief source of
Swift's eternal spleen ; and a large portion of Gibbon's restless scorn of
all that is best and noblest in our nature, may have arisen from a similar
malady. Byron had the additional misfortune of a club-foot, which,
from its being the unlucky appendage to a man, vain, even to foppery,
of his personal appearance, was a source of constant vexation. Other
vexations existed, in the character of his parent, which, whether from
a slur thrown on his birth, or the natural reluctance of respectable
people to have any thing to do with so extraordinary and violent a per-
son as Mrs. Byron, (his father having died some years before) left the
young heir of a broken patrimony strangely at a loss on his entrance
into the world.

Dallas, a very remote relation, as the biographer emphatically remarks,
seems to have been for some time the only substitute for the " troops of
friends" that generally make a young lord buoyant on the St. James's
tide. If Byron had been intended for a politician, or a dandy, or a
hanger-on of the clubs, or a well bred fortune hunter, this desertion
would have undone him ; he would have taken to the bottle, from that to
the dice, and from the dice to that cure of all sorrows, payment of all
debts, and relief from all ennui, which is to be found in prussic acid or
the pistol.

But he was intended by nature for a poet. And every step of his
career was by a strong necessity ordered for his future eminence. His
foot, his disease, the desertion of all other society, and the society of Mr.
Dallas, were all powerful provocatives to spleen. The insolence and
flagellation inflicted on him by the Edinburgh Reviewers, first taught
him that he could be a satirist. The selfishness of the world first stimu-
lated him to cut and scarify it in all directions ; and the bitterness and
insanity of his virago mother first drove him abroad, and gave the world
« Childe Harold."

Our theory is unquestionable, that the materiel of poetry exists in a
thousand minds for one that has the circumstances to bring it out; as
every pebble contains fire, and hit it but hard enough, gives it out too ;
but bury the flint in a slough, or polish it into the ornament of a fair
lady's necklace, and it is equally beyond the chance of giving out that
spark, which if luckily placed, may blow up a house, a ship, or a city. If
Byron had found his entre into the world preceded by the fair and the
fond strewing his path with rose-buds, as is the custom with young lords
in general ; if noble fathers had overwhelmed him with cards for their
banquets, and noble mothers speculated on him for their daughters, and
noble misses " fondly marked him for their own," what could he have
been but what all the tribe of heirs are ? Where would have been his
solitary hours of fierce musing, his'brilliant visions of vengeance, his Don
Juan determinations to slay and betray, and sting and startle, and lay
society in flame, that he might have the delight of seeing it roast while
he danced round the pile ?

With seventy thousands a year, he would have been like Bob Ward, a
diner out and epigram maker ; with Alvanly's reception among the old
women, he would have been like him, a lover of comfits and writer of
epilogues ; with young Castlereagh's or Clanricard's prospects, he would
have been petted and pulled about by the lovely marriageable and por-

1830.^] Moore's Notices of Lord Byron. 185

tionless, until he was spoiled as much as any of them for any thing but
being a Lord ! and Heaven only knows how small a portion of human
use, good, or dignity, is concentred in the name. But it was otherwise
decreed — he was cast out into the desert, to wander, like the demoniac,
among the tombs ; but there to harden himself against the infirmities of
nature, and defy the accidents of fortune; until, like the daemoniac, a
mightier spirit stirred within him, and he raved against man in accents
more than of man.

Byron remained in Aberdeen from five till ten years old, and was then
brought by his mother to London, for the double purpose of trying some
quackery with his foot, which her folly contrived to make a source of
perpetual torment to the poor boy, and of beginning his education.
Various doctors, JEsculapian and Priscianist, took his body and mind
into their successive charge, and with equally ill fortune ; his mother's
temper, of which the biographer has by no means deprived the public of
sufficient details, defeating the cares of guardians, masters, and physi-
cians, alike.

At length he was sent to Harrow, where he boasts of having hated the
master, Dr. Butler, and made eternal friends of some of the pupils;
until he left the school with no more learning than he took into it, ex-
cept the learning of cricket, boxing, swimming, gaming, and the other
accomplishments of public schools.

Byron's early judgment was too quick not to see the absurdity of
that system by which ten years are devoted to the worst education at
the highest price, He read much, but read after his own manner ; and,
accordingly, brought away with him more real knowledge than perhaps
was to be found in the whole school besides, masters and all. But he
brought away " small Latin and less Greek," and appears to have been
wise enough never, in after life, to have felt the slightest wish to bur-
then his memory with either.

Byron's palpable feeling was that the whole system was a dull bur-
lesque. The tedious inutility of verse-making, in dead languages, by
men who will never be able to write a verse in any living one, is a fine
subject of ridicule. And the successful expedition with which every
English gentleman, unless he be doubly marked for boobyism, forgets
every syllable of his ten years' toils, is scarcely more demonstrative of
the intrinsic errors of the plan, than the recollection of those scenes and
excesses into which a great school initiates the early mind : scenes arid
excesses to which we unhesitatingly trace the broad and spreading de-
generacy of the national heart and the national understanding.

In this we allude to no one great school more than another.
Their present masters, we take it for granted, make as good non-
sense verses as any of those who have made nonsense verses before
them. The old system is the sin. The national evil consists in
giving ten years to what might be acquired in two ; in the miserable
abandonment of the young to their own extravagance, their own pas-
sions, and their own resentments; in the encouragment of tyranny by
fagging ; and in the general growth of selfishness, waste, and arrogance,
by the allowed habits of those establishments, one and all.

The death of his grand uncle, the fifth Lord Byron, in 1795, (this
lord's grandson having died the year before) gave him the title. The
old lord was reputed, in his own neighbourhood, to be a furious mad-
man. He always carried loaded pistols, and the country was filled wijtJi

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 50. 2 B

186 Moore' f Notices of Lord Byron. £FEB,

stories of his insane violence. He let his house go to ruin, endeavoured
to dilapidate the family estate, and died, with the popular impression of
his having gone straight to Erebus.

Lord Byron having now become a ward in Chancery, the Earl of
Carlisle, the husband of the deceased lord's sister, was appointed his
guardian. It was an uneasy guardianship for the unfortunate Earl.
Mrs. Byron was a virago, who flew into paroxysms of fury on the
slightest contradiction, and with whom the earl was obliged to draw an
immediate line of demarcation. The young lord availed himself of
the first use of his pen to fix him conspicuously in a lampoon.

The biographer's anecdotes of the scenes between the son and the
mother, are sufficiently extraordinary. Mrs. Byron, in her rage, was in
the habit of flinging the poker and tongs at the head of the young dis-
putant ; and the hostility at length became so deadly, that an instance
occurred, in which " they were known each to go privately, after one of
those nights of dispute, to the apothecary's, anxiously inquiring whether
the other had gone to purchase poison !" After an uneasy sojourn at
Harrow, he went to Cambridge, where he amused himself according to
his whim ; bred up a bear, which he pronounced that he kept to sit for
a fellowship ; and published his first volume of poems by a " Minor."

Here his life was like that of his contemporaries, and he suitably
begins one of his letters with — " My dear Elizabeth : Fatigued with
sitting up till four in the morning, for the last two days at Hazard, I
take up my pen." Moore in his note animadverts upon " that sort of
display and boast of rakishness, which is but too common a folly at this
period of life. Unluckily, this boyish desire of being thought worse than
he really was, remained with Lord Byron, as did some other failings and
foibles of his boyhood, long after the period when with others they are
past and forgotten."

Byron's description of Cambridge in this letter is emphatic enough.
" A villainous chaos of dice and drunkenness, nothing but hazard and
Burgundy, hunting, mathematics and Newmarket, riot and racing."

His tastes for adventure had now begun to take a form. " Next January,
(but this is entre nous, for my maternal persecutor will be for throwing
her tomahawk at any of my curious projects) I am going to, sea for four
or five months, with my cousin, Captain Bettesworth, who commands the
Tartar, the finest frigate in the navy. I have seen most scenes, and long
to look at a naval life. We are going probably to the Mediterranean, or
to the West Indies, or to the d — 1." He finishes the letter by saying,
that he has " written the first volume of a novel, and a poem of 380
lines," which formed the ground work of the "" English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers." The satire thus having been written before the
affront, though probably some additional pungencies were thrown into
its enlarged shape.

In his visits to London, about 1808, he became acquainted with the
Mr. Dallas, of whom we have heard so much in the noble Lord's deal-
ings with Murray. Dallas seems to have made his way by giving him
opinions of his " Minor" poems, and to have tried to turn his influence to
advantage, by lecturing him, probably with sincerity, upon the bard's
absurdities in scepticism. But Byron asked no higher opportunity than
to make the most of his infidel fame, and he loaded his adviser with letters
full of the most daring nonsense, for the purpose, as Moore says, of
astounding his adviser. He thus prefers " Socrates to St. Paul, and Con-

1830.] Moore's Notices of Lord Byron, 187

fucius to the Ten Commandments, believes that virtue is a mere feeling,
not a principle, and that death is an eternal sleep."

Of this farrago, Moore pronounces, that if it was meant for his usual
purpose " of displaying his wit at the expense of his character ;" it must
be recollected, that it was addressed to " one of those officious, self-satis-
fied advisers, whom it was at all times the delight of Lord Byron to
astonish and mystify." It was one of those " tricks with which through
life, he amused himself at the expense of the numerous quacks, which his
celebrity drew round him." So much for the biographer's homage to
Mr. Dallas.

His first literary event was in 1808 ; the Edinburgh Review cri-
tique on the ' ' Hours of Idleness." He had notice of it, and mentions it
to one of his correspondents, Mr. Becher : — " I am of so much import-
ance, that a most violent attack is preparing for me in the next number
of the Edinburgh Review. This I had from the authority of a friend,
who has seen the proof and MS. of the critique. You know the
system of the Edinburgh Review gentlemen is universal attack. They
praise none, and neither the public nor the author expects praise from
them. They defeat their object by indiscriminate abuse, and they never
praise any except the partizans of Lord Holland and Co." ,

The critique came out, and it vexed him for the moment. " A friend
who found him in the first moments of excitement, after reading the
article, inquired anxiously, whether he had just received a challenge !"
(By the by, not a very complimentary question to his Lordship's nerves.)
But Byron's " Satire," in petto, fortified him against the shock. On that
day he tried his double allies, wine and ink; drank three bottles of
claret, and reinforced his " Satire," " by twenty lines." When a man
has nothing else for it, he has, as Shylock says, " revenge." Lord
Byron had already anticipated the insult by " 380 lines of revenge ;" the
additional " twenty made him feel himself considerably better," and he
proceeded forthwith to cut up the critics with the delight of a fresh sti-
mulus for " savagery."

At this time he writes to his friend Becher : — " Entre nous, I am
cursedly dipt; my debts, every thing inclusive, will be nine or ten thou-
sand before I am twenty-one." He had the early fondness for travel
natural to every body, boobies and all. But his fondness was for regions
beyond what the Travellers' Club call Pcstchaise-land. He longed to sun
himself in India, or at least in Persia. But India, probably as being the
further off, was his favourite. He writes to his mother in 1808: — " I
wish you would inquire of Major Watson (who is an old Indian) what
things it will be necessary to provide for my voyage. I have already
procured a friend to write to the Arabic Professor at Cambridge for
some information I am anxious to possess. After all, you see my pro-
ject is not a bad one. If I do not travel now, I never shall, and all men
should one day or other. I have at present no connexions to keep me at
home, no wife, no unprovided sisters, brothers, &c."

But first of the first, he was to bring out his Satire, and silence the
critics for ever. This none would have blamed ; but he freighted his
" shippe of fooles" with the name of every poet, and almost every man of
his acquaintance. He frequently too changed his colouring in the course
of his revisions ; and Lord Carlisle who flourished in the MS.,

" On one alone Apollo deigns to smile,
And crowns a new Roscommori in Carlisle,"
2 B 2

188 Moore's Notices of Lord Byron.

having returned a cold answer to a hint that Lord Byron was ready
to take his seat in the Peers, was hitched into a bitter rhyme. Others
were stung in the MS., and balmed in the book. Thus,

" I leave topography to coxcomb Gell,"

was smoothed down to classic Gell.

Byron was always in love with somebody or other, like all boys that
are left to themselves, and not kept in awe by the solemnity of a papa.
His flames began with a peasant, Mary Duff, at eight years old ; and
proceeded from one idol to another, until he fell into something like
real passion with that person, of the most unloveable name of Chaworth,
who affronted him by calling him ' ' a lame boy," and whom he con-
tinued to adopt as Petrarch his Laura, and Dante his. Beatrice, for a
poetic lean ideal, or commodious lay-figure to dress his future verses on.

Byron's life at Newstead was little calculated to charm him with Eng-
land ; it was the rude, self-indulgent, rough life of a boy, spoiled by a
fool of a mother, and left his own master when he should have been at
school. His companions were as singular as himself. One of them,
the Charles Skinner Matthews, whom he celebrates in the " Childe
Harold," a bon vwant, an oddity, a boxer, a rambler, and unhappily a
boaster of atheism, gives this sketch in a letter to a female correspon-
dent : —

" Ascend with me the hall steps, that I may introduce you to my
lord and his visitants. But have a care how you proceed : be mindful
to go there in broad daylight, and with your eyes about you. For,
should you make any blunder, should yon go to the right of the haM
steps, you are laid hold of by a bear ; and should you go to the left, your
case is still worse, for you run full against a wolf. Nor, when you have
attained the door, is your danger over ; for, the hall being decayed, and
therefore standing in need of repair, a bevy of inmates are very probably
banging at one end of it with their pistols ; so that, if you enter without
giving loud notice of your approach, you have only escaped the wolf and
the bear, to expire by the pistol-shots of the merry monks of Newstead.

" Our party consisted of Lord Byron and four others ; and was now
and then increased by the presence of a neighbouring parson ! As for
our way of living, the order of the day was generally this : — For break-
fast we had no set hour, but each suited his own convenience — every
thing remaining on the table till the whole party had done : though, had
any one wished to breakfast at the early hour of ten, one would have
been lucky to find any of the servants up. Our average hour of rising
was one. I, who was generally up between eleven and twelve, was
always, even when an invalid, the first of the party, and was deemed a
prodigy of early rising. It was frequently past two before the breakfast
party broke up. Then for the amusements of the morning : there was
reading, fencing, single-stick, or shuttlecock in the great room j prac-
tising with pistols in the hall ; walking, riding, cricket, sailing on the lake,
playing with the bear, or teasing the wolf. Between seven and eight
we dined, and our evening lasted from that time till one, two, or three,
in the morning. The evening diversions may be easily conceived.

" I must not omit the custom of handing round, after dinner, a human
scull, filled with Burgundy. After revelling on choice viands, and the
finest wine^/of France, we adjourned to tea, where we amused ourselves
with reading or improving conversation, each according to his fancy :

1830.] Moore's Notices of Lord Byron. 189

and, after sandwiches, &c., retired to rest. A set of monkish
dresses, which had been provided, with all the proper apparatus of
crosses, beads, tonsures, &c., often gave a variety to our appearance and
to our pursuits."

Gaming is a sort of apprentice fee, which all young men of rank, and
multitudes of no rank at all, pay for their entrance into that miserable
and silly life called fashionable. Byron, who took his share of every
thing, good and bad, dashed into gaming like the rest. But he made
the affair one of principle. " I have," says his journal, " a notion that
gamblers are as happy as many people, being always excited. Women,
wine, fame, the table, even ambition, sate now and then. But every
turn of the card, and cast of the die, keeps the gamester alive : besides,
one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing else. I was
very fond of it when young, that is to say of Hazard, for I hate all card
games, even Faro. When Macco (or however they spell it) was intro-
duced, I gave up the whole thing, for I loved and missed the rattle of
the box and dice, and the glorious uncertainty, not only of good luck or
bad luck, but of any luck at all, as one had sometimes to throw often
to decide at all. I have thrown as many as fourteen mains running, and
carried off all the cash upon the table occasionally ; but 1 had no cool-
ness, no judgment, no calculation." His lordship's delicacy never per-
ceived that gambling is robbery, the taking the purse of some fool,
foolish enough to risk his money on the throw of a die : his sensibi-
lity felt too much, to feel the radical baseness of the act of taking a man's
money out of his pocket, when, in nine instances out of ten, the pro-
cess was the direct road to his beggary and suicide. Gambling is the
fashion, as all the world knows ; but it is impossible to connect the
idea, in any instance, with dignity, feeling, or delicacy of mind. It is
the meanest form of avarice !

Moore makes the most of his noble friend's melancholy. But how
much of this must be attributed to the night's debauch, the glasses of
pure brandy, and the dash and rattle of the dice, with dashing of all
other kinds, to the amount of bankruptcy, is left untold. The bard's
constitution was originally a bad one : he made it worse by indulgence in
all shapes and shades of whims ; he quarrelled with the world j he had a
daily head-ache, and a dozen daily duns ; and, if this is not enough to
account for heavy spirits, without either the sublime or the profound,
the problem is beyond solution.

He was now seriously bent on travel, as he says, " Vov all the world,
like Robinson Crusoe." And concludes a letter on the subject by
laughing at his friend Hobhouse, who seems to have taken the journey
in the fiercest resolution of authorship. " Hobhouse has made woundy
preparations for a book on his return — one hundred pens, two gallons
of japan ink, and several volumes of best blank, are no bad provision for
a discerning public."

From Falmouth he wrote an excellent song, which we do not recol-
lect to have seen in any of his publications.

THE LISBON PACKET.

Falmouth Roads, June 30, 1809.

Huzza, Hodgson ! we are going;

Our embargo's off at last ;
Favourable breezes blowing,

Bend the canvas o'er the mast.

Moore's Notices of Lord Byron.

From aloft the signal's streaming —
Hark ! the farewell-gun is fired ;
Women screeching, tars blaspheming,
Tell us that our time's expired.
There's a rascal,
Come to task all
Prying from the Custom-house !
Trunks unpacking,
Cases cracking;
Not a corner for a mouse
'Scapes unsearched amid the racket,
Ere we sail on board The Packet .'

Now our boatmen quit their mooring,

And all hands must ply the oar ;
Baggage from the quay is lowering ;
We're impatient — push from shore.
" Have a care ! that case holds liquor." —

" Stop the boat ! I'm sick— oh, Lord !"—
" Sick, Ma'am ? — damme ! you'll be sicker
Ere you've been an hour on board."
Thus are screaming
Men and women,
Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks ;
Here entangling,
All are wrangling,
Stuck together close as wax.
Such the general noise and racket,
Ere we reach The Lisbon Packet !

Now we've reached her ! Lo ! the captain,

Gallant Kidd, commands the crew ;
Passengers their berths are clapt in,

Some to grumble, some to spew.
" Heyday ! call you that a cabin ?

Why, 'tis hardly three feet square —
Not enough to stow Queen Mab in !
Who the deuce can harbour there ?" —
"Who, Sir?— plenty;
Nobles twenty

Did at once my vessel fill." —
" Did they ?— Jesus !
How you squeeze us ! —
Would to God they did so still !
Then I'd 'scape the heat and racket
Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet !

Fletcher, Murray, Bob, where are you ?

Stretched along the deck like logs !
Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you !

Here's a rope's-end for the dogs.
Hobhouse, muttering fearful curses,

As the hatchway down he rolls;
Now his breakfast, now his verses,
Vomits forth, and damns our souls.
Here's a stanza
On Braganza. —

" Help !"— " A couplet?"—" No, a cup
Of warm water." —
" What's the matter?"—
'* Zounds ! my liver's coming up :
I shall not survive the racket
Of this brutal Lisbon Packet !"

1830.] Moore's Notices of Lord Byron: 191

Now at length we're off for Turkey —

Lord knows when we may come back;
Breezes foul, and tempests murky,

May unship us in a crack :
But, since life at most a jest is,
1 As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is ;
Then laugh on, as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
Great and small things,
Sick or well, at sea or shore ;
While we're quaffing,
Let's have laughing ;
Who the devil cares for more ?
Some good wine ! — and who would lack it,
E'en on board The Lisbon Packet ?

He landed at Lisbon, and rode through Spain to Cadiz. With Cadiz
he was delighted, for many reasons : the first of which he gives in the
words, " Cadiz is a complete Cythcra. Many of the grandees who have
left Madrid during the troubles, reside here ; and it is the prettiest and
cleanest town in Europe. The Spanish women are all alike, — their
education the same. The wife of a duke is in information as the wife of
a peasant ; the wife of a peasant is in manner equal to a duchess. Cer-
tainly they are fascinating ; but their minds have only one idea, and the
business of their lives is intrigue" This character of the Spanish ladies
was dashed off after a week's acquaintance with a single town, on the
principle of Matthews's story of the French officer in prison at Ports-
mouth ; who wrote down in his journal, that all the English ladies
boxed, gave each other black eyes, and drank gin. It must be allowed,
however, that a larger knowledge of the Peninsula might not have
much altered his opinion. Absolution is cheap, and frailty, of course,
fashionable.

At Malta he met with Mrs. Spencer Smith, the wife of Sir Sydney
Smith's brother. He describes her as very pretty, very accomplished, ex-
tremely eccentric, and twenty-five. She was quite a cosmopolite, was
born in Constantinople, the daughter of the Austrian ambassador, married
Smith, then, we believe, Envoy, or Secretary of Legation, quarrelled with
him, as all women of genius and romance do with their husbands, —
rambled over the continent, apparently for no other reason, than that
she had no business there, — ran after the the French, — ran from the
French, — fled with an adventurer, the Marquis De Salvo, from some
prison or other, though, as the lady declared, with an unimpeachable
character, — believed herself a public victim to the security of the conti-
nent— and took to herself the flattering belief that she was the object of
peculiar horror to Napoleon. This was just the woman to captivate the
quick fancy of a man like Byron ; and he embalmed her in his first
foreign verses.

In his letters he keeps up a regular detail of his movements, with
now and then an anecdote. The following is well told.

" You don't know D — s, do you ? He had a farce ready for the stage
before I left England. When Drury-lane was burned to the ground,
by which accident Sheridan and his son lost the few remaining shillings
they were worth ; what doth my friend D — do ? Why, before the fire

192 Moore's Notices of Lord Byron. £FEB.

was out, he writes a note to Tom Sheridan, the manager of this combus-
tible concern, to inquire whether this farce was not converted into fuel,
with about two thousand other unactable MSS. Now, was not this
characteristic ? The ruling passions of Pope are nothing to it. While
the poor distracted manager was bewailing the loss of a building only
worth £300,000, in comes a note from a scorching author, requiring at
his hands two acts and odd scenes of a farce !"

After two years travel he returned, in 1811, and luckily escaped
publishing a " paraphrase" on Horace, which Moore pronounces heavy
enough to have sunk his lordship below the possibility of recovering a
poetic reputation. Dallas was the lucky critic on the occasion, and he was
rewarded by the MSS. of Childe Harold. In another month his mother
died, " characteristically/' of a fit of rage, brought on by reading over
the upholsterer's bills !

He now, probably warned a little by the suddenness of this death,
made his will, the most striking point of which is, his determination
that nobody should mistake him for any thing but what he was.

" The body of Lord B. is to be buried in the vault of the garden of
Newstead, without any ceremony or burial service whatever, or any
inscription, save his name and age. His dog not to be removed from
the vault."

So much for bravado ; too boyish for Byron's time of life ; to say
nothing of the profaneness. It was in this spirit, that the wretched
coxcomb, Shelley, whose only apology can be, that he was insane,
scribbled himself down, Atheist, in the album of Mont Blanc. The
whole was vulgar bravado — that was not content with being impious
unless all the world knew it ; that felt insult to Heaven an empty indul-
gence, unless the insult was blazoned to man ; and that found its triumph
in calling on society to stare at the courage which could defy common
sense, and outrage decent virtue. We are neither Methodists nor Mug-
gletonians, but we have knowledge enough of the Shelley tribe to
know that three-fourths of their taunts and insolence are adopted merely
to catch the world's wonder.

His next tidings were of the death of another atheist, his friend
Matthews, who was drowned at Cambridge. But this worthless person-
age was fortunately replaced in the same year by a different kind of
friend. The burlesque in the notes to the " Edinburgh Bards" on
Moore's duel with Jeffrey, had drawn on a correspondence, the result of
which was a meeting, not with sword and pistol, " and other wild
animals," but over coffee ; and the two poets became companions. Byron's
nature was haughty and bitter; there is no use in denying it. But
Moore's, setting aside the little retorts natural enough to a stranger
and an Irishman, thrown loose among the proudest aristocracy that
pride ever made at once insolent and ridiculous, has always been touched
with human good nature. His satires on the great, in and out of power,
we can heartily forgive, for the sake of those noble persons themselves;
than whom, as a race, no race on earth requires more to be reminded,
that men without title are not dust under their feet ; and that the wearer
of a coronet may deserve the lash and may meet it, from a man with
not a drop of Norman blood in his veins.

The warlike correspondence ended in an armistice, cemented at a
dinner given by that " ancient and loving grandmother, as Massinger
would have it, of the muses/' Rogers ; but of which Byron would partake

1830.] Moore's Notices of Lord Bt/rohC 193

nothing but " potatoes and vinegar," a mixture which that wicked wit,
Lady Caroline Lambe, pronounced to be " in compliment to the country
of his antagonist, and the qualities of his host." Byron's opinions
about the poets of the day were easy enough. " Do read mathematics.
I should think X plus Y, at least as amusing as the Curse of Kehama,
and much more intelligible. Master Southey's poems are,, in fact, what
parallel lines might be, viz., prolonged ad infinitum without meeting any
thing half so absurd as themselves."

What news, what news, Queen Oreaca,

What news of scribblers five ?
S , W , C— e, L— d, and L— e,

All d — mn — d} though yet alive.

The initials comprehended the various names of Scott, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Lloyd, and Lambe ; though, subsequently, he did due honour
to Scott's fine Lyrical powers. The others he seems to have com-
plimented when he chose to play the courtier, and burlesqued when he
returned to the art of plain speaking. He concludes this letter, with—
" Coleridge is lecturing." " Many an old fool," said Hannibal to
some such lecturer, " but such as this never,"

His hits on character are in the highest spirit of that dash and rattle,
which he loved. " Pole is to marry Miss Long — and will be a very
miserable dog for all that. The present ministers are to continue, and
his majesty does continue in the same state, so there's folly and madness
for you, both in a breath.

" I never heard but of one man truly fortunate j and he was Beau-
marchais, the author of Figaro, who buried two wives and gained
three lawsuits before he was thirty."

His summer visits to the country seats gave him some insight into
public persons. At Lord Jersey's — " Erskine was there, good but intoler-
able. He jested, he talked, he did every thing, admirably. But then,
he would be applauded for the same thing twice over : he would read his
own verses, his own paragraphs, and tell his own story again and again ;
and then the ' Trial by Jury :' I almost wished it abolished, for I sat
next him at dinner."

Drury Lane having been burnt, for the ruin of Sheridan's creditors, and
rebuilt for the ruin of a fresh set, the committee, with Lord Holland at
their head, perpetrated the long-laughed-at scheme of summoning all
the verse makers of England or Europe to write an opening address.
Some thousands poured in upon them, all equally good or evil. Until
the committee convinced, at last, that to choose was impossible, and
to recite them all at once, not very easy ; came to the natural expedient
of having one address, written by one person, and recited by one other.
The task was comfortless enough, and Lord Byron made it a curiously
anxious one; for we have no less than a dozen letters written to his unfortu-
nate inspirer, Lord Holland, in the course of a month ; and every one of
them containing cuttings out,, cuttings up, and corrections, that must
have singularly perplexed his lordship. It is not easy to reconcile this
industry with his letter to Mr. Murray.

" I was applied to to write the address for Drury-lane ; but the
moment I heard of the contest, I gave up the idea of contending against
all Grub-street. To triumph would have .been no glory, and to have
been defeated — 'sdeath ! I would have choked myself, like Otway, with .a
quartern loaf. So, remember, I had, and have nothing to do with it,

M. M. New Smw.— VOL. IX. No. 50. 2 C

194 Moore's Notices of Lord Byron. [FKR

.upon my honour /" His poem, after all, was good for nothing ; but it
was good enough for the purpose. It produced, however, two good con-
sequences, the " Rejected Addresses," on the fame of which " the
authors of the Rejected Addresses" still put forth their performances ;
and the display of Dr. Busby's person haranguing from the boxes, his
son's person haranguing from the stage ; a display of the Bow-street
officers interfering with the eloquence of both ; and a week's ridicule of all
the parties concerned. The Dr.'s poem, beginning with

" When energizing subjects men pursue,
What are the prodigies they cannot do ?"

had the honour of a parody in the Morning Chronicle by his Lordship.

" When energizing objects men pursue,
The Lord knows what is writ by Lord knows who.
A modest monologue you here survey,
Hissed from the theatre the other day." &c.

The Address continued to be a bore to him, and to his correspondents
for some months ; but he at last plunged into authorship again, and pro-
duced his poem on " Waltzing," which being but lightly received, he
disowned.

" I hear that a certain malicious publication on waltzing is attributed
to me. This report, I suppose, you will take care to contradict, as the
author I am sure, will not like that / should wear his cap and bells."
This, in a letter to the publisher himself, is rather amusing.

He and Sheridan sometimes met ; the young Lord having a great and
justified admiration for the abilities of the old dramatist. — <( Sheridan
was a rogue all his life long, but a delightful rogue."

" One day I saw him take up his ' Monody on Garrick/ He lighted

on the dedication, to the dowager Lady . On seeing it he flew

into a rage, and exclaimed, that it must be a forgery — that he had never
dedicated any thing of his to such a d — d canting, &c. &c., and so went
on for half an hour, abusing his own dedication/'

" He told me, that on the night of the grand success of his f School
for Scandal/ he was knocked down, and put into the watch-house, for
making a row in the street, and being found intoxicated by the watch-
men."

" When dying, he was requested to undergo an operation. He replied,
that * he had already submitted to two, which were enough for one
man's lifetime ; — having his hair cut, and sitting for his picture !"

The biographer now comes to the Leigh Hunt acquaintance, which he
gets over in a tone of easy contempt.

" It was at this time that Lord Byron became acquainted (and I
regret to have to add, partly through my means) with Mr. Leigh Hunt."
They went together to dine with Hunt in the Coldbath-fields prison,
where he was confined for a libel on the Prince Regent, in 1813. The
morning was ushered in by an epistle from his Lordship to Moore,
beginning with

" Oh you, who in all names can tickle the town,
Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Brown ;
For hang xne, if I know of which you may most brag,
Your quarto of Two pounds, or Twopenny Post-bag."

The result of this acquaintance has been sufficiently known.

183t).] Moore s Notices of Lord Byron. 195

Byron's letters have a fling at every body. — " Rogers is out of town
with Madame de Stael, who hath published an essay against suicide,
which I presume will make somebody shoot himself; as a sermon by
Blenkinsop, in proof of Christianity, sent a hitherto most orthodox
acquaintance of mine out of a chapel of ease a perfect atheist. There
is to be a thing on Tuesday yclept a National Fete. The Regent is
to be there. Vauxhall is the scene. There are six tickets issued
for the modest women, and it is supposed there will be three to
spare. — Canning has disbanded his party, by a speech from his
* * # * I — tne true throne for a Tory. — Madame de Stael Hoi-
stein has lost one of her young barons, who has been carbon-
adoed by a vile Teutonic adjutant, kilt and killed in a coffee-house in
Scrawsenhausen. Corinne is of course what all mothers must be, but
will, I venture to prophecy, do what few mothers could, write an Essay
upon it. She cannot exist without a grievance, and somebody to see
or read Jiow much grief becomes her." In his poem* the " Devil's
Drive," Satan comes to the House of Lords.

ff He saw my Lord Liverpool seemingly wise,
The Lord Westmoreland certainly silly ;
And Johnny of Norfolk a man of some size,
And Chatham, so like his friend Billy.
And he heard, which set Satan himself a staring,
A certain Chief Justice say something like swearing,
And the Devil was shocked, and says he I must go,
For I find we have much better manners below."

The " Chief Justice" was probably Ellenborough, whose manners were
violent and insolent.

Byron at length turned his thoughts to looking out for a wife; and Lady
Melbourne recommended Miss Milbanke, to whom he accordingly made
proposals. The offer was rejected ; but the lady adopted the extraordi-
nary measure of requesting his correspondence. So much for the
delicacy of the blues. At the end of two years of this foolish and triiing
sentimentality, he was informed that he might make his proposals again.
" What an odd situation is ours," says Byron, t{ not a spark of love on
either side/' The mode of making this overture must be a pleasant
discovery for the lady. His " memoranda" say, that a friend advised
him to take a wife, and mentioned one. Byron mentioned Miss Mil-
banke. The friend objected to her want of immediate fortune, and her
" learning." Byron allowed the argument, proposed for the friend's
choice, and was refused. On reading the refusal he tried Miss Milbanke
again, writing a letter to her at the moment of his receiving the rejec-
tion. The friend still argued, but taking up the letter said, " It is
really a very pretty letter. It is a pity it should not go. I never read
a prettier one." — " Then it shall go," said Byron. It went at the instant,,
and as Moore rather legally says, was " the fiat of his fate." Byron
declared that he had not seen her for ten months before !

What wonder that this kind of marriage should have run into bicker-
ings and separation. The biographer throws no further light on the
" mysterious separation," of which all the world talked so much at the
time. But the courtship was a sufficient solution. The wife had taken,
her steps in palpable defiance of her parents and friends, and of course
had nobody to thank for her subsequent ill-luck but herself. Byron
brought her into a house which had nine executions in it in the

2 C 2

106 Moore's Notices of Lord Byron. QFiSB.

course of one year, — was a roue, and clearly a troublesome companion
ibr a fire- side. But all this the lady knew before; for the gentleman
had never made any concealment of his tastes ; and she ought to have
abided by them. Moore says, with sufficient plainness, that the fault
" was in the choice" And as Miss Milbanke married, in the spirit of
llueism, a man who was proud of publishing his scorn of mankind and
womankind, and home and country, and the habits and principles of
English life, she ought to have made up her mind to go through with
the affair. Byron was no more to blame than every rake, and he was
probably not more a rake than ninety-nine out of the hundred of his
rank, except in his ostentation of offence to society. His wife took him
" with all faults," and her separation from him certainly threw the weight
of blame on her side. Byron's nature was arrogant and sullen, but he
had intervals of gentleness and feeling. Time, and kindness at home/
might have softened him, and he might have gradually taken the place
in society, due. to men of abilities, who have at length discovered that
there is a more enduring fame, and a wiser occupation of life, than the
cackle of coteries, or the alternate riot and dejection of the tavern.

The volume, on the whole, is amusing. Moore should be a man of
tact — from his mixture with the race who are always talking about it--
yet \ve miss this considerably in his determination to insert every thing
that dropped from Byron's pen — the frequent panegyric of himself in
the letters must have been a painful pressure on the biographer's
feelings, to which we think his love of fidelity might have given way
without a crime. Byron's own detciils of his reprobate amours, the
morals of his friends, and his religious notions in general, (which are
nonsense, much less remarkable for their novelty than their ostentatious
emptiness, folly, and ignorance,) ought to have been wholly omitted.

But, for the one grand merit of impartiality, the biographer may
claim universal praise. He lets out the facts, be they what they will,
and run a muck at whom they may. The following anecdote from one
of Byron's many journals, is we suppose, historic.

" Murray, the bookseller ! has been cruelly cudgelled of misbegotten
knaves, in ' Kendal-green/ at Newington Butts, in his way home from
a purlieu dinner, and robbed — would you believe it ? — of three or four
bonds of forty pounds a-piece, and a seal ring of his grandfather's,
worth a million. This is his version ; but others opine that D'Iraeli,
with -whom he dined, knocked him down with his last publication, the
Quarrels of Authors, in a dispute about copyright. Be that as it may,
the newspapers have teemed with his injuria formce, and he has been
embrocated and invisible to all but his apothecary ever sines."

Nothing is said in this volume, that we can discover, of the famous
MS. which was burned, " to the amount of 2,000/.," at the desire of
Mrs. Augusta Leigh, to the chagrin of Murray and Moore, and the
astonishment of every body. But whatever the loss was at the time, it
seems to have been completely atoned by the use of papers in extraordinary
abundance, provided by his lordship to acquaint posterity with his
" whereabout." We thus have one entiled a " Register" of his ways ; ano-
ther, a " Dictionary ;" a third, " A Journal ;" and so forth ; amounting not
perhaps " to the value of 2,000/.," but clearly amounting to a close detail
of almost every transaction of his mind or body. So much the better,
we say. The MS. ought not to have been burned ; though, from the
superfluity of Journalising, nothing may have been lost by its mounting
to that lunar region where

1830.] Moore s Notices of Lord Byron. 197

Lawyers' consciences, and lover's brains,

And statesmen's feelings float, and Laureate's strains.

Of Byron's poetic powers there can be no doubt ; and as little of his
possessing some qualities which circumstances might have softened and
improved into social good. But he was, in the strongest sense of the
word, unlucky. He had but two friends, Hobhouse and Moore, both
gentlemen, and fitted to have led him away from the hollow and hazard-
ous pursuits which bad company and bad habits had made second
nature. But the Shelleys and the Matthewses, and the Guicciolis,
had higher captivations for him ; and he flung away himself, his
fortune, and his fame ; a memorable example of great powers ren-
dered a source of misery to the possessor ; and of the highest advantages
of society consigning him, by a direct and almost fated progress, to the
life of an exile, to an empty struggle for empty objects, and to a foreign
grave, among the obscure haunts of banditti and barbarians.

THEATRICAL MATTERS.

Miss KEMBLE has appeared in a third character, Euphrasia, in the ''Grecian
Daughter." The choice was injudicious : the play is intolerable. Murphy had
some liveliness as a farce writer, and by the help of plundering from the
French, might have been endured in a comedy ; though there, his dialogue
is deplorably dry, or relieved from dryness only by the worse quality of gross-
ness. But in tragedy he was beyond all endurance. The frigidity of his
French model, for he was an eternal plagiarist, was uncompensated by any
dexterity of his own. The inflexible and didactic dulness of the foreign dia-
logue was transferred with desperate fidelity through his pen; and away he
prosed in the idle belief that he was actually writing blank verse until he
mercilessly murdered the heroine and the subject together. Mrs. Siddons
gave some popularity to Euphrasia, as her acting would have given popularity
to any thing. But the part is forced, and is not capable of powerful effect,
let it be placed in what hands it will. Kemble's Evander was an example of
personal ability, struggling against a disadvantageous part. Bennett is a melo-
drame player, on the Macready plan, a plan which he must utterly abandon
before he is fit for tragedy or any thing but sitting before blue fire and raving
to demons. Warde's voice is still unmanageable ; the weather, we suppose,
has made a malicious combination with nature to render him formidable to
the human ear, and he is the most calamitous of lovers and heroes.

Drury-lane promises a multitude of pleasantries, when the frost shall let
people enjoy them ; till now the power of laughter has been frozen on the lips,
and the genius of theatres has been buried in a cold bath of sleet. However,
sunshine and summer airs must come at last ; and we shall then be able to
enjoy the dozen comedies which Lord Normanby has just brought over with
him from his repertoire on the classic shores of the Arno. Kean plays frequently
and with success, retarded only by a thermometer fifty degrees below the point
of human endurance. Morton was said to have a drama on the subject of Baron
Trenck. The dramatist has indignantly denied the imputation, and says, that
though the secret of his having a drama with a person of that name in it, his
is not the Baron : perhaps Morton is irate with the report that could fasten on
him any connexion with the memory of so notorious a prison-breaker, or, per-
haps, the whole is a pleasant, though by no means new theatrical expedient to
awake the public curiosity to the drama by a little previous controversy.

Macready, who, it seems, will engage with nobody, or whom nobody will
engage, is mentioned in the Portsmouth paper as exhibiting his Macbeth
before an audience of ten persons in the boxes, and a proportionate number
in the pit. Macready is a clever fellow in his way, but deplorably given to
think very highly of himself, and very lowly of all who differ with him on.i

198 Theatrical Matters. FEB.]

this point. He is, on the whole, we think, very well circumstanced at the
Portsmouth distance from town.

" Robert, the Devil/' a melodrame with more than an usual proportion of
songs, we are told, is to be brought forward rapidly at Covent Garden.
Duruset, always a very agreeable and popular singer and performer — Keeley,
a dry humourist— and Miss Cawse, a pretty and piquant one, are to have the
principal characters. The Gazza Ladra is to be brought out at the theatre,
turned into English. The plot (the Maid and the Magpie) is abominably
tedious and childish, but the music is frequently pretty, and we hope it will
succeed better than those importations in general. But there are fifty operas
of Rossini, worth fifty of it. Why will not managers lay their hands on
some of them ?

Miss Jarman is gone to Edinburgh ; peace be with her. She is said to be
greatly admired by the f modern Athenians :' joy be with them ! They may
keep the lady as long as they please. She has some theatrical faculties, but
Nature has denied her others, without which the stage says to the host of its
debutantes, " Come like shadows, so depart."

The French comedians at the Lyceum, threaten to take the field in great
force ; they have already announced their Staff with due magniloquence. The
actors engaged are — M. Portier, for two months; M. Chacon, comedian, of
the Bourdeaux Theatre ; M. Belford, pere noble, of the Marseilles Theatre ;
M. St. Aubin, premier amoureux, of the Lille Theatre ; M. Felix, second amou~
reux, from Bordeaux ; Mad. Dumorit, first Duenna, from Bordeaux ; Mad.
Baudin, second ditto, from Nantes; Mad.Caussin, premiere chanteuse, of Stras-
burg; Mdlle. Florville, of the Lyons Theatre; Mad. Beavois, seconde amoureuse,
of the Metz Theatre; Mdlle. Jrma, of the Theatre Vaudeville, Paris; and
Mdlle. Anais, Mesds. St. Ange and Beaupre are also engaged, with several
other artistes from that capital. Mdlles. Jenny Colon, Leontine Fay, and
Bernard Leon, are expected in the course of the season. Laporte, Pelissie,
and Cloup, are the directors. To these people we have no objection. They
play pretty Vaudevilles ; play them tolerably well, and are not paid intolerable
salaries. The case is different, and shamefully different with the Italian Opera.
There a woman, with whom no decent person ought to sit dawn in company,
carries off half a dozen thousand pounds in half a dozen months, on the simple
strength of her solfaing. Such is Noble patronage, while not merely the native
theatre is deserted by them ; but demands of a more important nature than
those of theatres are urging them on every side. The money paid for this
childish and unnational indulgence amounts to not less than 50,000/ a-year,
the half of which would relieve the national theatres from all embarrassment,
encourage the arts, stimulate dramatic authorship into a sudden life that might
give us a second Shakspeare, and provide for the popular mind the most intel-
lectual of all amusements. Yet all this enormous sum goes into the hands of
a little knot of signors and signoras, of whose lives, here or elsewhere, the
anecdotes are sufficiently public to leave no kind of doubt on the deserts of
the individual. If our nobility had the spirit or common sense of English
gentlemen about them, they would send back the whole tribe to wallow in their
native Italian sty, and make their purgation with the Pope and Cardinals.

Laporte is actively engaged in preparations for the opening of the Italian
Opera, which will shortly take place, many of the artistes engaged being
immediately expected in London. Donzelli, Curioni, Santini, Ambrogi, ami
Lablache, are among the number, as well as Mesdames Blasis and Lalande,
Castelli, and one or two third-rates. Gosselin, Charles and Ronzi Vestris,
and Mdlle. Brocard, are engaged for the ballet ; Mdlle. Taglioni will also add
to its importance in the course of the season. Deshayes will have the direc-
tion of the dances. t( La Gazza Ladra" is spoken of as the opera intended for
the opening, in which Santini and Ambrogi will make their debut. Some new
operas are in preparation, amongst them Pacini's L'Arabe nelle Gallie" stands
most prominent. Bochsa will, we believe, again have the direction of the
music. We expect to hear of the engagement of some other donnas, as the
Opera at present seems very deficient in them. This list, however, shows con-

18.10.] Theatrical Matters. 199

siderable deficiencies : Malibran, Pasta, Pisaroni, Sontag, Zuchelli, Galli, &c.
are among the " non inventi." De Begnis is in London, as the papers say,
reposing from his triumphant tours through the country, and when he shall
awake, ready to take as many pupils as he can possibly get. Old Garcia is
looking to a London engagement; but the French say that he has every quali-
fication for a singer "but voice;" and we say, that from what we remember
of the Senor, they are welcome to keep him till he " struts the stage" no more.
A comedian of the name of Mansard, who chose to distinguish himself as a
patriot, or as a rebel, by studiously adopting Bonaparte's dress on the stage,
and giving a fac-simile of his manner, has been brought before the Court of
Montauban, fined one hundred francs, and a fortnight's imprisonment. The
fellow deserved it, as does every fellow who takes advantage of a public situ-
ation to insult the good order of the state. As to the tyranny of the Bourbons
on such occasions, we can remember the keenness of the Bonaparte police on
similar subjects. The actor who dared to represent the Duke d'Eughien would
have been guillotined.

NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL.

INDIA is almost too far off for us to trouble our cerebellums about it.
With seventy- five per cent, taxes to pay, who can reproach us with
inhumanity for forgetting the troubles of blacks and browns ten thousand
miles out of sight ? Yet India is a curious instance of that universal
consent which all corners of this best governed of all enopires have to be
in trouble at this present time. The old happiness of making both ends
meet, is likely to be a good deal discoloured, by this kind of conjunc-
tion. The letters from our scorching brethren in the great peninsula are
expressive.

<e DUM DUM, July 21. — " Really the state of things is such that one
hardly knows how to begin, and what the result of all their wise
proceedings will be, God only knows. If all rumours be true, we are
all likely soon to see old England, — that is, those who have the luck to
get out of the country. The plot is thickening fast, and matters must
soon come to a crisis. A late order abolished several provincial battalions,
and three (6th, 7th, and 8th) corps of irregular cavalry. The 6th have
(they say) refused to disband, as well as the Dinagepore battalion, who
not only refuse to lay down their arms, but have got the judge in con-
finement, and possession of the treasury chest. This will run like
wild-fire through the country, and who is to put it out ? In short, Lord
Bentinck is going on like a blind man, without knowing what he is
about. The state of disgust and dissatisfaction throughout the country
exceeds any thing you ever witnessed."

The DUM DUM, at the top of this letter, would furnish a "diner-out"
with a pun. But if the writer could have dated his dispatch from the
city of the DEAF or the BLIND, we might discover in it that he had :a
good deal more to say, and also that he was confoundedly afraid to say
it. Well ! India has of course, its full title to take a share in the boue-
versemens, (for no English word has efficacy for the idea,) which thee
felicity of enjoying the present illustrious ministers may bring on, before
the next half-dozen years, or perhaps before the sixth part of the
time.

Let us look at the elements which we hope may not be mixed in this
Indian chaos. — A breaking up of the charter ; which nominally preserved,
and radically perverted, would, before a year was out, be so many skins of

200 Notes of the Month on [FEB.

parchment, and no more. — An inundation of all kinds of muslin and
rascality under the name of Free Trade, into the East, from Bombay to
Birmah. — Discontent, grumbling, and courts martial among the repug-
nant officers, with the echo of their parts of speech among the sepoys.
— Angry rajahs and imprisoned polygars sending missions to the
Pindarrees to come down by the half million, and make a general
plunder. — The Russian army, with all the pikemen of the Don and the
Caucasus, quietly gathering like a hurricane cloud on the frontier, until
the business is ripe ; and our well paid ambassador at St. Petersburg^
and nincompoop, is though one of the nearest and dearest cousins of the
Minister, informed by the Czar that there is no further occasion for his
services ; an Ukaze is issued from the throne of earthly thrones, acquaint-
ing England, that Russia being displeased with our habit of shaving,
and our dislike to train oil, recommends that we should withdraw from
India, and keep within our own inland, until further orders. — Then
explodes the hurricane; Field Marshal Powderowski, with Generals
Thunderblastem and Lightningsplitzem, "at the head of separate corps,"
rush over the Indian Balkan, before the Members in Council at Calcutta
have time to secure their dressing boxes. Then come Affghans, Persians,
Chinese, Tartars, rolling down like a hundred avalanches from the
Pole. — And what is to knock out the brains of all those Goths and
Vandals? — the solitary wisdom of Lord William Bentinck: a very
good man, we hope and believe, for a whig ; and endeared to the universe
by being at once a son of that very dull nobleman, the late Duke of
Portland, and a dependant of that very slippery statesman and poet, the
late Mr. Canning. But setting aside his Lordship's duplicate fame, as a
retreating warrior in Spain, and as a retreating legislator in Sicily ; we
think that he will have quite enough on his hands. We only say, how-
ever, as Mr. Dillon, in his celebrated Narrative of the Lord Mayor's
Journey up the Thames, said of his Lordship and the goose pye, — we
wish him well through it.

As to the complexion that the affair may take at-home, for that we are
prepared. There may be two visits to Windsor, and three cabinet
councils, for which no man living will be the wiser. The government
newspapers may pleasantly hint, in the first instance, that the whole of
the Indian news is a fabrication, of which they can point out the fabri-
cator, he residing in an attic " not a hundred miles from Leadenhall
Street." In the next instance, they may be suffered to declare that the
whole is an expedient of the most extraordinary genius that ever bore
the destinies of England in his hand, to compel the Russians to throw
off the mask, and come to a fair understanding, whether they meant to
go to war or not.

The next information may be of a succession of balls in Whitehall ; a
levee at the Pimlico Palace, the minister "most graciously received, and
surer than ever of retaining his hold on the confidence of the best of
kings, and the affections of the most triumphant of nations." On the
very evening of the most glowing paragraph, may come out the Gazette,
cashiering every hero of them.

The papers now are overflowed with such a flood of panegyric on the
late President of the Royal Academy, that they have nearly drowned
the public sympathy. His life is already announced as on the tapis,
by Campbell, who, it seems, was on terms of intimacy with him, and

1830.] Affairs in General 201

who, of course, will write with the enthusiasm of old acquaintance.
His works are already announced as in a state of preparation for the
engraver, and we shall no doubt be furnished with recollections sup-
plied neither by the pen of the poet, nor by the pen of authenticity in
any shape.

Lawrence was a loss to the arts. He was a man of a singularly
elegant taste in painting ; and by a happiness, unaccountable from his
early circumstances and education, of graceful accomplishment in many
other ways. His nature was the teacher : it gave him, by instinct, a
graceful address, a graceful phraseology, and a graceful mind. Nature
had also given him a handsome face, to which his manners and his
abilities gave a kind of dignity ; and, on the whole, never was man
fitter for the painter of the fair and fashionable world.

But the estimate of his powers may be made more fairly when the first
regret for his loss shall have subsided. He was a masterly draughtsman;
he had great skill in taking the likeness, and all his portraits were
characterised by elegance ; yet to this elegance he often sacrificed truth.
He wanted the force, the fearless and decided pursuit of reality, which
made the fame of the great painters. His colouring was tame j it pos-
sessed neither depth nor nature. All the bloom of his women was
rouge, and all the clothing of his men, silk, or some unsubstantial
weaving of the pencil.

Reynolds had the boldness to paint cloth as it was ; the eye could
distinguish it at a glance from velvet, or gossamer, or stained paper, or
cloud. Lawrence's back grounds were feeble, a mottled vapour, the
feeble sunshine, or showery landscape of a soil washed with eternal
droppings of the sky. His portraits, too, had an extraordinary and un-
fortunate likeness to each other ; and it was one of the wonders of the
painter's art how he could reconcile the perfect accuracy of the indi-
vidual likeness with this curious generic resemblance.

It is equally remarkable that a painter, so cautiously reluctant to
offend rank, should have almost always painted his women of rank, as if
their morality were as transparent as their dress. Many of them, he
certainly could not exaggerate on this point, and some of them might
have taken a pride in the display. But Lawrence gave the same ex-
pression to all. In this he differed from Reynolds ; whether the
difference be due to the inferiority of the artist or of his time. But to
have given Lawrence his fair place before posterity, he ought to have been
suffered to abandon portraits for awhile, and give the only proof of his
powers that a great artist can be content with — historical painting. He
often expressed a wish to make this experiment. But his perpetual em-r
barrassments and the perpetual solicitations of persons of the higher
orders entangled him, and checked his step into the region of the grandeur
of his art.

One historical picture of his we have seen, which he painted in early
life, and which gave the noblest promise. We believe that he never had
time to paint another. The subject was Satan in Pandaemonium,
standing on the burning lake, and summoning his overthrown legions
to rise. Beelzebub stands by his side, but in shadow. The Prince of
Evil is the most powerful embodying of the Miltonic conception that
perhaps the pencil could give. The countenance magnificently beautiful,
yet full of scorn and despair j the figure with the proportions of a giant,
yet light and youthful ; the attitude fierce and defying, yet full of dig-

M.M. New Scries.— VOL. IX, No. 50. 2 D

202 Notes of the Month on [FEB.

nity ; the whole figure kingly, or more, of a king of those beings, who
could " take the wings of the morning, and fly to the uttermost parts of
the sea."

We hope that this fine picture will be among the first that are
engraved. It will be only a due tribute to the painter's fame.

We give the following hint to the melodramatists. It is too pathetic
for our sensibilities.

" On one occasion a bailiff, ' wishing to do the thing genteel/ dis-
guised himself so successfully as actually to mislead the servant of
Sir Thomas Lawrence into the belief that he was a gentleman who
wished to sit — alias to be taken off, rather than to take his master off.
He was accordingly admitted, and introduced into the show-room till
Sir Thomas Lawrence could be apprized of his visit, .who soon made
his appearance — when, to his astonishment, he found the strange gentle-
man on his knees, in the utmost agony of tears, before the portrait of a
venerable lady habited in mourning. Sir Thomas, with all his graceful
kindness and eloquence, raising the stranger, begged to know to whom
he was indebted for the honour of a visit, and the cause of his exces-
sive grief. The Dispenser of " unholy writ" overpowered by the
talents of the painter and the gentleness of the man, confessed that he
was overcome by remorse at the unexpected sight of the picture, which
so greatly resembled his dear lost mother, who, by imprudence, he had
reduced from a state of opulence, to misery, want, and the grave. He
then explained the true object of his visit, but assured Sir Thomas that
such were his feelings and admiration of his talents, that any arrange-
ment the most convenient to him he would with pleasure accept, and
that he should for ever regard him as the maker of a ' sinner saved/ "

In the pause of the English Attorney-GeneraFs libel functions, the
Irish Diabolus has taken up the trade. The proprietor of the Dublin
Evening Post has been called on to plead. The paper is a very clever
one, and has been for a long time the organ of the " Association/' and
every kind of party, person, and doctrine, that could, in the words of
Captain Rock's historian,—

Make the fun stir
In Ulster, Leinster, Connaught, Munster;

but unless O'Connell and his compatriots spoke treason, we can discover
no treason in the Dublin Evening Post. The Freeman's Journal is still
more deeply stricken : for it is said to have no less than four ex-officios
against it. And the Attorney-General is determined to make Mr. Henry
Grattan plead, Mr. Grattan being no longer the proprietor !

Why all these symptoms of belligerency are going on, in the pacific admi-
nistration of Mr. Archdeacon Singleton, is beyond our fathoming. With a
Lord Lieutenant who, possessingnomorethan<£150,000a-year, relieves the
starving weavers by buying five pounds worth of waistcoats from them
at a time, which may, in all human probability, last his Grace for twice
the number of years, we cannot conceive why this irritation should
continue an hour. The law of the Irish press, however, is so incom-
parably fitted for encouraging it in licentiousness, that perhaps we ought
to feel no surprise at the active vigilance of the Diabolus on the other
side of the water. In England but two proprietors of a paper must
register. In Ireland, if there were five hundred, all their names must

1830.] Affairs in General 203

go in, and every member liable for every paragraph. Nor is this all.
The presentation of a Grand Jury, made up of those great lawyers,
called country gentlemen, or, perhaps, grocers and cobblers, may order
the presses, types, and printers to be tossed into the street.

No wonder that the newspapers, gifted with such ultra freedom, such
savage liberty, such reckless hazard, and superhuman release from the
chains of authority, should be objects of incessant alarm to a paternal
Government.

The old sneers at the stage will not last above the first week after
Easter : this we are positively informed. As no less than four of the
nobility will indulge the theatrical public with the exhibition of their
delightful accomplishments — Lady Harborough, Lady W. Lennox, Lady
Fife, and the Countess of Sontag Thundervontrunck — they will, by the
particular desire of managers, appear under other names, lest the gal-
leries should be too much alarmed by being suddenly brought into the
presence of the haut ton.

The grand agitator, begins every year, like Bonaparte, with a grand
expose of what he intends to do. Though we are sorry tp say, that
he generally ends the year, pretty much in the style of his pattern, by
telling us, what he had intended to do. We are no lovers of this frac-
ture of promise. We recollect that he solemnly pledged himself to
die, either in the Jield or on the scaffold, before he would see his
beloved forty-shilling freeholders deprived of their birth-right ; a birth-
right much nearer and dearer to them than their shirts. We now,
in the name of all that is patriotic, by the aggrieved majesty of the
rights of man, and the naked injuries of the wwforty-shillinged, call
upon the great agitator, before the assembled world, to redeem his
pledge, without further let or hindrance, giving him his choice of the
field or the scaffold.

Yet, precarious as the very sound of pledge is in our ears, if he
he will but break ground upon any one of his list of public efforts, we
shall perhaps suffer him to exist until the end of the session. He pub-
licly vows— 1. To repeal the Subletting Act — 2. To repeal the Vestry
Bill — 3. To repeal the Grand Jury System of Jobbing — 4. To repeal
the law that makes Truth a Libel. — 5. To repeal the law rendering
the Charities of Dissenters and Catholics unsafe. — 6. To repeal the
laws of Corporation Monopolies — 7- To repeal the law authorizing
excessive tolls— 8. To repeal the law allowing the freedom of Cor-
poration to non-residents, and excluding certain residents — 9. To re-
peal the law, allowing tithes in Ireland — 10. To abolish all sinecures,
and pensions unearned by public services — 11. To diminish all public
salaries raised during the war, or by the fall of the paper curency :
the salaries of the Judges having been twice raised in this way — 12.
To procure a new and comprehensive code of law — 13. To correct the
present system of legal proceedings, and render law simple, cheap and
expeditious — 14. To call for, 1st. The abolition of the irresponsible
power placed in the most unsuitable hands of unpaid magistrates — 2nd.
The abolition of the present system of special pleading, that being the
most fertile source of falsehood, fraud, and perjury — 3rd. The abo-
lition of the absurd distinctions between Courts of Law and of Equity —
4th. The abolition of all decisions on mere points of form, and com-

2 D 2

204 Notes of the Month on [FEB.

pelling all decisions to be made on the merits only- — 6th. The abolition
of all technical rules for the exclusion of evidence, and the compelling
judges to receive evidence from every quarter capable of giving it — 6th.
The prevention of any suits being instituted until both parties appear
in proper person before the Judge, whenever such attendance be had.
— 15. To obtain a radical reform of the House of Commons.

Now of all those brilliant conceptions, the great agitator will not
realize one, nor attempt to realize one. But there are men of a different
stamp upon earth ; and to some of those, the list of this copious promiser
may be of importance. We hate the watchword, Reform, while it re-
mains the pretext of the basest trickeries — of the basest faction : but we
fully join with those who say, that there is " something rotten in the
state of Denmark." The country has a right to call for reform : for a
close inquiry into the whole machine of its government : for a keen and
sifting examination into the nature and proceedings of its representatives.
The crisis is at hand ; and those who wish to see England escape a trial
q£ misery and blood, will resolutely wish, and openly demand, to see a
change of the system, under which corruption has thickened round the
high, and poverty smitten the low. The enormity of sinecures, the
great reversions, the overgrown salaries of public men, all are exciting
a spirit of scorn among the nation, which delay may unhappily irritate
into a spirit of vengeance. Mr. Peel's salary is £6,000 a year, besides
a whole crowd of minor emoluments. Mr. Herries' salary, as master of
the mint, an employment of which Mr. Herries of course practically
knows nothing ; and which is, in fact, nothing more than a cover for
paying a Cabinet Minister an inordinate salary, is no less than £5,000
a year. Does any man living venture to say, with the hope of ever
being believed again, that Lord Ellenborough's services to the country,
as President of the Board of Controul, are worth £5,000 a year, besides
the abundant possession of that mysterious thing called patronage ?
What is the office of Post Master General, but a huge sinecure ; the
secretary to the post-office doing all the duty, and the noble person at
its head not burthening himself with much severer labour, than that
of signing his quarterly receipt for his monstrous salary ? Does Lord
Rosslyn, the Privy Seal, render services to the amount of his £3,000 a
year ? The whole system is nonsense. England contains hundreds of
men, fully as competent to every office under the roof of Downing-street,
who would do the work, and more than the work, for the tenth part of
the salary. Look to America. She does not pay her great officers a
tenth of the sum. Is she worse served? Is she not better served ? The
salary of her President is not equal to the salary of that man, of the
turned coat, Mr. George Dawson, of despicable fame. The salaries of
her two Secretaries of State are not equal to the Treasurership of the
Ordnance, conferred on Billy Holmes., for whipping in the Commons,
the only service of which such a person is capable, hceccine Jleri Jlagitia.

There must be an end to these things ; aye, and a speedy one. With
every man's income drained to let persons of this class roll in their car-
riages ; for whom no man on earth feels the most trivial consideration,
the Daw sons, the Bankes, the Plantas, the Goulburnes, &c. £c., names
the very antipodes of public ability, manly accomplishment, or national
confidence; with a general breaking down of the public prosperity,
which every man attributes to ministerial blundering; and the still
deeper evil of an universal scorn of the professions of public men ; who

1830.] Affairs in General. 205

will be absurd enough to say that things can go on as they are ? There
are sullen visions upon the clouds, to which the brute feeders in the
mire of corruption cannot lift up their eyes. But those visions will take
substance yet, and those clouds let loose the thunders.

Since Battersea-fields were the scene of his Grace of Wellington's
shooting at Lord Winchelsea, they have been embellished by another
exhibition of the " only way of settling matters between gentlemen."
The difference in the parties Was considerable, we must allow ; for in-
stead of the noble lord shot at, the present sufferer was a poor literary
struggler ; and, instead of the magnificent field-marshal with half a
hundred uniforms, the present shooter was a commissionless lieutenant
with a waistcoatless coat. The catastrophe was succinctly told by one
of the witnesses on the coroner's inquest : —

" Thomas Skinner said : I live in Battersea-fields. I am a labourer in
the employ of the proprietor of this house. On Friday morning last,
about half-past six o'clock, I was going to my work at the Red House.
I was in the field, and observed two flashes, about 300 yards from me,
and pop, pop, almost at the same moment. It was dark and snowy at the
time. I heard the parties speak, but could see nothing of thenl On my
arrival near the Red House, I observed four persons carrying the body
of a man on a shutter, or a board. I heard the deceased say, ' Oh, do
not shake me !' They placed him at the front door of this house. Mr.
Swaine's family were in bed at the time. I knocked at the door, and
told them there was a dead man, and then went to my work. I knew none
of the persons concerned."

Such was the " affair of honour." Two wretched men going out to
a common in this bitterest of seasons before day-break, without light
enough to see each other ; and going out for the purpose of mutual
murder. The witness's sang froid is characteristically worthy of the
affair. He knocked at the door, told them there was a dead man, (as if
it had been a dead rat,) " and then went to his work." The victim,
Clayton, died in twelve hours. The antagonist was stated, by the police
officer who arrested him, to be drunk. Yet this fellow had the flourish
of " honour" about him as loftily as any Patrician of St. James's.

" Mr. Hone arrived just before the prisoner gave the account, and his
worship now asked whether it had not occurred to him, seeing that he
had given the offence, and had declined giving a written apology, to fire
his shot in the air.

" The prisoner (with an appearance of surprise) : I would notjire in
the air with any man. If I had it again to do, I would not.

" Mr. Chambers inquired whether both pistols were fired at the same
moment ?

" Prisoner : I believe they were. It was dark. I could not see
Clayton.

" Mr. Chambers now told the prisoner he would advise him seriously
to make his peace with God, for, if he were found guilty, he would, in
all probability, be executed.

" The prisoner seemed rather astonished to hear this ; but, after a short
pause, as if weighing the advice in his mind, he said, ' I have seen a good
deal of service, and shall meet my fate with becoming fortitude, I have
reason to believe : but I must say that I think it unjust, if I should be
used as you say.' "

206 Notes of the Month on [FEB.

The guilty lenity of the courts on such occasions may let this man,
who has seen so much "service," loose again upon society. But the
law is express. Duelling is murder. For it is obviously murder to fire
at a man with intent to kill him. It cannot less be murder, because the
challenger may be killed in the attempt to kill the challenged. The
highway robber risks his life perhaps still more in the attempt to rob '
but neither law nor common sense justifies him for the crime by the
personal hazard. If we are to be told that the challenged exposes him-
self voluntarily, we are told what is an untruth in a thousand cases out
of a thousand and one. The challenged is forced to the field by a sense
of the degradation with which the criminal and foolish notions of society
brand the man who shrinks from rushing from a field of blood into the
presence of the future world, who dreads to leave wife and children
probably beggars, or whose generous feelings abhor shedding the blood
of a rash and passionate fool.

To say that duelling keeps society in good manners, is contradicted
by all experience. Good manners never originated in personal fear, but
in personal confidence and general goodwill. The habit of duelling
divides society into the bully and the coward. The Irish, half a century
ago, were the most habitual duellists of Europe, — they were the most
uncivilized gentry on earth. The Irish Brigade were the most habitual
duelists in the French army. They were brave, but proverbially the
most uncivilized corps in the service ; and were in every instance kept
in Coventry by the native officers. The Americans now are the most
habitual duelists. They are proverbially the most uncivilized society
under the sun. Their gouging, tearing, biting, and rifle murder, are
below even the Indian savage. The most civilized and most intelligent,
the most heroic and high spirited nations of antiquity, the Greeks and
Romans, had no duels ; and yet for want of them, they had neither
insolence of manner, nor assassinations. The law must be restored to
its primitive meaning ; the laws of God and nature demand it. The
man who sends and the man who accepts the challenge, should be
transported for life, where death has not ensued ; where it has, the
survivor should he hanged. The seconds, in all cases, should be
transported ; for seven years or upwards, according to their share in
promoting, or their negligence in reconciling the quarrel. Let this
punishment be once inflicted, and it would not be required again for a
hundred years.

Somebody or other had the immeasurable cruelty a week or two since,
to rob Lord Ellenborough of his donkey. His lordship was represented
by the Bow Street reports as inconsolable for the loss of a companion so
dear to all his sensibilities. He, however, found the barbarian who
had thus left him a prey to solitary anguish, recovered the donkey,
free of expense too, and is now all smiles again.

The chief ministerial paper has lately published a succession of articles
that extremely perplex the quidnuncs. Windsor and its inmates are
handled in the most unceremonious style ; and even the highest dweller
is called to account for his disbursements. We give the words of one
paragraph, which makes every lock on our brows " emulate the fearful
porcupine :" —

1830.] Affairs in General 207

The King's Pocket Money.— The following has been stated to be at His
Majesty's disposal ; the expences of his Royal state, and his charities, being
defrayed out of the Civil List:— Privy Purse, £60,000. a-year; the Duchies of
Cornwall and Lancaster, £25,000. a-year ; the Surplus Revenue of Gibraltar,
£8,000. or £10,000. a-year; an obscure, but snug little matter in Scotland,
under the quaint denomination of " Green Wax ;" Droits of Admiralty ; and
a variety of odds and ends, for the diligent collection of which, a certain Right
Honourable Gentleman is indebted for that high degree of confidential favour
which he is said to enjoy, and which he has employed to so many good pur-
poses, both in the east and west — to the benefit alike of the Christian and Jew.
These items (not to mention Hanover, where there are pretty pickings) amount
to upwards of £100,000. a-year, which is at the absolute disposal of His
Majesty, unburdened by any charge whatever.

If this be true, we congratulate the spenders, whoever they may be.
If the King require this, with the 300,000/. a year voted for the supply of
his Castle, well and good — let him have it. But we wish, like all London
besides, so see him dispense a little of the light of his countenance, inde-
pendently of the exhilaration of his expenditure, in town. Our theatres,
our shopkeepers, our nobility, and our populace, all long to know some-
thing more of the English monarch than they do of the monarch of Mus-
covy, or to have somewhat more chance of seeing King George than they
have of seeing Sultan Mahmoud. Let him come among them, arid they
will shew him more honest English feeiing in an hour than he will
know in a year among the circle of gas-lamps and bedchamber-lords of
Windsor.

The Bishop of St. Asaph's is dead. We take it for granted that that
scurra Philpott will be running up to town to claim something or other
on the occasion. We take it for granted also, that he will have his
journey for his pains ; and after trying to sneak his way into Apsley
House (where he will never get farther than the servants' hall), he will
be sent off. — *i$ rov tStav TOWOV. Let the wretched man's remaining Greek
tell him what we think of him, and what millions think of him. He
has obtained a celebrity of his own, which let those envy who may. For
this man's conduct, we feel an unspeakable disdain ; nor shall we, while
we have power to speak our mind, ever suffer him to fall into the silence
that can let him imagine himself forgotten or forgiven.

The Dowager Queen of Portugal is dead at last, for which the
story goes, that the Portuguese here are about to have a solemn Te
Deum. This woman was but fifty-four, yet she has figured before her
affrighted subjects long enough to make them wish her in the Red
Sea, for the last quarter of a century. She was the daughter of the
mother of the present King of Spain, though by what father, the old
Queen's habits render among the most difficult questions. The matri-
monial connections of the Romish royal family give a striking view of
the pleasant complications that popery sanctions, in the flocks of its
royal sheep.

Ferdinand VII., when Prince of the Asturias, married the daugh-
ter of the (then) King of Naples, and sister of the present King ;
while the latter married about the same time the sister of Ferdinand.
They thus became doubly brothers in-law, and Ferdinand became his
own brother-in-law. On his second marriage, he wedded his niece,
the daughter of his sister and King John VI. of Portugal. By this

208 Notes of the Month on Affairs in General. [FEB.

marriage he became his own nephew-in-law. Ferdinand's brother Don
Carlos, and his uncle Don Antonio, are both married to daughters of
John VI. of Portugal ; which has made his brother and his uncle also
his brothers-in-law. Finally, Ferdinand has married the daughter of
Francis I. his brother-in-law, and one of his sisters — that sister being
the niece of his first wife, and whose brother, Don Francisco di Paulo,
married the eldest sister ; thus Ferdinand has become at once the uncle,
the uncle-in-law, and the brother-in-law of the last named Prince.

The Attorney-General has not brought forward any libel prosecutions
" since the holidays," the fated period for which he announced that he
had suspended his vengeance. A sense of the public feeling should
make its way at last within the varnished doors of the Cabinet. The
personal attacks on character have been disposed of. Let the visitation
and the vengeance rest there. But if the ministerial character is to be
defended only by prosecutions, it must perish. The public indignation
will be roused by the proof of vindictiveness against the public freedom
of speech ; and the prosecutions and the prosecutors will be overthrown
together.

Nothing but the idlest misconception can think that the Standard, one
of the most manly, sober, and able publications, that distinguish the
history of the public press, has ever had national evil, or even ministe-
rial obloquy, in its contemplation. Admiring, as we do, the eloquence
and literature of its columns, we have felt our chief tribute demanded by
the spirit of sincerity, the honest patriotism, the solemn and unadul-
terated zeal for the constitution in church and state, that have still more
conspicuously distinguished this masterly journal. To suppose that
exertions of such an order could be created by the feeble gratification
of stinging a minister, would argue an absurd ignorance of human
nature. But to suppose that the spirit which sustains such exertions
can be extinguished by the pressure of ministerial vindictive prosecution,
is to argue an equally absurd ignorance of the course of human things.
By paltry revenge, by gross oppression, by an unrighteous use of power,
the noblest natures have been, at times, embittered into dangerous and
irreconcilable hostility. But genius and virtue can never be broken
down into the slave, nor terrified into the apostate, nor made to hug
the chain, — but with the solemn determination to beat it into the
sword !

A new weekly journal, " The Foreign Literary Gazette/' has just
appeared. Its purpose is to give the most immediate intelligence of
foreign publications; and the numbers already given to the public
fully sustain the promise implied in the name of the principal conductor,
who is, we understand, the very able and active editor of the London
Literary Gazette. The articles are intelligent, various, and interesting,
and from our respect for the individual, and our feeling of the necessity
of some such performance, we both wish it well, and augur its rapid
and extensive celebrity.

1830.]

C " 209 ]

MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN.

The Exclusives, Svols., \Zrno. ; 1830 —
These, we were led to believe, were the
elite of the elite of the fashionable world,
and the picture, of course, drawn by one of
themselves, for who else could get a peep
behind the curtain ? The Court Journal,
now very high authority, whispered, a few
days ago, the highest personage of the land
was the original suggester and shaper,
though compelled of necessity to consign
the execution to less laborious hands — the
minister's, perhaps, or some duke or duchess,
or peer or peeress, of lower degree, and
greater leisure. But we have been sadly
taken in — it proves to be no representation
of those who, by the rerum imperiti, are
supposed to constitute the highest classes of
society; but of a soi-distant, self-elected
knot, a clique, a set, made up of persons, or
at least originating in persons baffled in
their ambitious attempts to lead the good
among the great, as they readily did the
bad, and become in danger themselves of
exclusion from them, resolving to turn the
tables upon them, set up a claim to superior
qualifications, arrogate the name and ho-
nours of fashion, and shrouding themselves
with a veil of mystery, exclude all who were
likely to censure their practices, or not go
completely into their views. How the
writer comes by his knowledge, or what is
his or her authority, or whether the whole
be not imaginary, we know not ; — common
report, and she is " a liar," and the public
prints, who are not at all better, point to
certain well-known personages, who, whether
truly or not, are said not to have escaped
the flames without a little singeing. That
some such society, so influenced by a com-
mon spirit, or, rather, blindly following the
wiles and the smiles of some presiding ge-
nius, for self-defence, and for exclusive pur-
poses, exists, is not at all improbable. All the
world through, birds of a feather flock toge-
ther, and among them all, high and low, the
exclusive spirit pervades ; and nowhere is
this spirit so apparent, and so fiercely effec-
tive as in the middle classes of society — no-
where appears there so much fixedness of
purpose, such inflexibility in resisting en-
croachments, such determination, in keeping
out the lower vulgar still, as in the- out-
skirts of London, at Clapham, or Kenning-
ton, and places of that cast. The " Ex-
clusives," and Almack's, long ago, in this
respect, are fools to them ; but these Ex-
clusives are represented as aiming not so
much to exclude, as to seduce — to sweep
within their net the influential, the wives
of ministers, youthful senators, wealthy
peers, &c. ; and the purpose of the novel is
to shew the workings of the set, by detailing
the history of its leaders, and, especially, of
a few of its victims. We answer not fpr
the correctness of the picture ; we know
nothing about the parties ; it is with us a

M.M. New Series — VOL. IX. No. 50.

fancy-piece, and the writer shall speak for
himself. He describes, obviously, to con-
demn, and details only to expose, and is, of
course, liable to the charge of exaggeration
— that is his affair. After describing a
good old-fashioned assembly of the last
reign, where all is good-naturedly supposed
to be as it should be, he adds—

Thesociete choisie. however, which Lady Til-
ney desired to form was, in its nature, the very
reverse of what has been described. Its exclusive
character was to consist, not in the selection of
what was amiable in nobility.or virtuous in talent ;
it was not to be the circle drawn within a narrower
circumference, for a more perfect enjoyment of
private friendship, or the cultivation of more in-
tellectual pursuits than the wide range of fashion-
able life could afford ; it was not to be retirement
from the busier throng, for the purposes of a
more rational and purer existence ; but it was to
consist of those whose follies in the pursuit of
pleasure, and whose weakness in the indulgence
of all the emp/ty toys of life, had given them a
distinction above their fellows ; of those who
judged immorality, when burnished by the tinsel
of superficial acquirements, as venial error ; of
those, in short, who were either senseless or
wicked enough, to consider life but a bubble, to
be blown down the current according to the dic-
tates of the will, and whose daily existence testi-
fied that they were alike without a thought or a
fear for the morrow's eternity. Such were to be
its members, and its seclusion from the general
eye of the world ; its secession from all others

but ; its rigid law, that unmarried women

were not eligible to its chosen meetings — for what
purpose, and to what end were these? If for
vanity of distinction, merely, it was weak; if for
the purpose of indulging in pursuits and conver-
sation, which could receive a check in a society
less selected for the object, it was wicked. In
whichever point of view, a society so constituted
must be demoralizing, for assuredly it would have
the character of being, if it even were not really
vicious — and its example would have a contami-
nating effect in the corruption of morals, and the
overthrow of the barriers of domestic peace.

It is, perhaps, scarcely worth the space to
allude further to the tale ; but in a word —
the hero of the piece is a young lord, of
superior intellect, brought up with a respect
for religion and good morals, and betrothed
to a lady of the same virtuous bringing up
and excellent qualities. On his return
from a continental tour, being in parlia-
ment, and likely to become somebody, he is
immediately snapped up by the society, and is
soon alienated from hjs old and more sober
associates ; and, what is worse, one of the
circle, a young Circaean widow, fascinating
and irresistible, contrives to sow jealousies
between him and his soul's charmer, and
only fails of entangling him in a marriage
with herself by blundering in the address of
a letter. The wrong epistle luckily dis-
closes the whole series of artifice and in-
trigue in which she had long been dealing ;

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Monthly Review of Literature,

[FEB.

and after numerous contretems, and severe
suffering on the part of the young and
interesting couple, they finally meet and
" explain."

The other conspicuous victim of this
charming set, is that of a young lady, of
great beauty, of course, and fascinating
qualities, who marries a lord, already some-
what connected with the party, and now
high in office. Of course, her marriage
gives her importance, and everybody is
put immediately in requisition to draw her
within the magic circle. One lady, an old
stager, it appears, is especially appointed to
drill the poor unsuspecting lady, who is all
simplicity and frankness, and devoted to her
husband — qualities which are treasons to the
society ; and a profligate youth is encou-
raged to pay her his patronizing and insidi-
ous attentions to detach her unfashionable
fondness from her caro sposo. This gen-
tleman goes somewhat beyond the rules of
the institution, and almost succeeds in cor-
rupting her; but, luckily, his purpose is de-
tected before an eclat is produced ; the lady
goes abroad with her well-judging husband,
and an absence of a couple of years seems
to cure all. The sufferers, of course, re-
nounce the Exclusives.

The Cabinet Cyclopaedia : Sir Walter

Scott's History of Scotland ; 1830

Though histories of Scotland undoubtedly
abound, nobody, who knows any thing
about them, will think another, and that
Other coming from Sir Walter Scott, su-
perfluous. The story of the country was,
in fact, till now, untold in a style and
spirit to keep us awake, and with a judg-
ment, at once sharp and sound, to engage
our confidence. Of the older writers on
Scottish history, who reads either Buchanan
or Boethius ? — and of more modern ones,
Robertson is confined to Mary and James,
and as to Pinkerton and Hailes, though
both go farther back, it must be allowed,
the first wanted judgment, and the other
materials. The treasures collected within
these twenty years by Mr. Chalmers and
Mr. Thomson of the Register-Office, are
reported to be immense ; and of these Mr.
Tytler is now taking the full advantage.
His history, at the first glance, might be
expected to supersede Sir Walter's, but it is
too voluminous — too controversial — is not
yet completed, and, besides, only begins
with Alexander III. The rest are all for
the antiquary, or for schools, or relative to
particular periods only, and of little autho-
rity. A popular view of the whole history
was obviously still wanting — and who, for
talents natural and acquired — from personal
position — from early association — from con-
tinuous study of the subject — from indefa-
tigableness— from rapidity and facility of
execution, was so admirably calculated to
perform the task as Sir Walter Scott ? He
has done it, distinctly, vividly, happily.
The externals of research— the parading of

authorities — the balancing of evidence —
the pros and cons — these are the scaffold-
ing, and are all swept away, and the build-
ing is left full and free in its fairest propor-
tions. The rapid and searching glance
which he casts into the chaos of his mate-
rials, like electric fire, often evolves and
separates the pure elements. It follows not
that Sir Walter is always right ; — his pur-
pose, it must be recollected, was to give
results only, and our reliance is upon the
strength and rectitude of his judgment.
No doubt he often cuts the knot which more
perseverance might untie, but then it is
generally where it is scarcely worth the labour
of solution.

The early history is full of confusion, with
conflicting statements at every turn — the de-
bateable ground of antiquaries for centuries
— the Scots and the Picts, the Celts and the
Goths, where they begin, where they end,
whence they spring, and where they vanish
or amalgamate. Sir W. seizes upon the
prominent points, and leaves the minor
and mingled details to more minute in-
quirers. In the time of the Romans, he
finds none but Caledonians — these were, of
course, Britons, or at least undistinguishable
from them now. In the fifth century ap-
pear Picts and Scots — who were these ?
The Picts were Caledonians, called .Picts
by foreigners, the Romans, to distinguish
them from the southern, and now more
civilized natives, from the fact of their still
painting their bodies — nee falso nomine,
says Claudian. They occupied, apparently,
the whole line of the eastern coast, from the
extreme north down to the Firth of Forth,
and were mixed up, more or less, with set-
tlers from Scandinavia, who must be called
Goths, while the Picts were by origin Celts.
The Scots, on the other hand, were colo-
nists from Ireland, established late in the
fifth century, and covering the western
coast, to the Firth of Clyde, till they came
up with other Irish settlers of an older
period. After the invasions of the Saxons,
in the sixth century, the whole country now
called Scotland, appears to have been di-
vided under five distinct governments —
1st. the Saxons, extending along the coun-
try from Berwick to the Firth of Forth —
2nd. the kingdom of Strathclyde, occupying
the central parts of the Lowlands, as far, to
the south, as the borders of Cumberland —
3rd. Galloway, filled with the elder Irish
colonists, and a remnant of unexpelled
Picts — 4th. The Irish settlers in Argyll
and still farther north, and 5th. The Picts
of the north and east. Of these five, the
Picts were at this period by far the most
numerous. In the ninth century, the Picts
and Scots, after a struggle of centuries,
finally merged into one nation, under the
dominion of Kenneth Macalpine ; and from
this period vanishes the .name of Pict, not
so much from destruction, as is often stated,
though there was probably enough of it, as
from their melting into the Scots, of whom

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

211

Kenneth was one by birth. Under one of
his successors, a third Kenneth, were sub-
dued the dominions of Strathclyde, or, at
least, rendered tributary, for, apparently,
they were governed by their own chiefs
still.

Till the age of Malcolm Crean Mohr,
son of the e gracious Duncan,' little can be
made of a continuous story ; but with him
begins a new and a permanent interest.
There are no more gaps of any considera-
ble dimensions. Malcolm married Edgar
Atheling's sister, which connected him
with an English party, which, though a
discomfited one, had some influence on the
fortunes of Scotland. His court became by
degrees the common refuge of the discon-
tented, not only of the Saxons, but of the
Normans, many of whom, by him and his
successors, were retained by feudal grants.
The daughter of this Malcolm was married
to Henry I. of England, and his son David
volunteered a defence of his niece, Matilda,
but proved unfortunate at Northallerton.
The connection with the Normans was kept
up by nearly all the successors of Malcolm
till Alexander III., at which time all the
chiefs of the Lowlands at least were actually
Normans ; and on the death of his grand-
daughter, the maid of Norway, nearly all
the competitors for the crown were Norman
— both Baliol and Bruce were so. The
story of the Bruce is, of course, told con
amore ; and, indeed, the whole narrative, to
the succession of the Stewarts, is fondly and
warmly told, and possesses more interest, and
is altogether more readable, than it has ever
been made before. The volume concludes
with the Field of Flodden, and the death of
the fourth James.

Dr. Biber' s Lectures', 1830 — We know
nothing of Dr. Biber more than he tells us.
He is a German, it seems, who has long
resided in England, and considers it as his
country. He writes the language of Eng-
land well — too idiomatically, indeed, for the
writing to be all his "own — and he has looked
upon English society, in its several gra-
dations and classes, with the eye of a philo-
sopher, sternly trying them, not by any arti-
ficial criterion, but by the inflexible princi-
ples of common sense and common equity,
enlightened by revealed religion. He is a
most unflinching and unsparing person ; he
makes no compromisings ; he tells what to
him seems the truth, and he tells it plainly
and eloquently, in full confidence that plain
truth can do no harm, and must, first or
last, work useful effects. The Lectures
were delivered to public audiences in town,
and are stated to have been given extempo-
rarily — not, of course, without due prepara-
tion— and subsequently written from notes
taken by a friend, which process probably
contributed very materially to the perfect
English of them. The subject of them is
Education, and, specifically, Christian edu-
cation, which the author finds to be univer-

sally neglected in all existing systems,
whether for rich or poor. The thing which
is wanting through the whole of society,
and which, to be at all effective, must
begin and co-operate with education, is
influential religion — not a religion for the
brain, but for the heart — not the incul-
cation of doctrines, but the controlling of
conduct — not catechisms and creeds, but a
permanent stirring of the conscience.

Dr. Biber is of no church or sect ; he is
a Christian, neither indifferent, nor tolerant
of indifference, but earnest to excite and
extend a feeling for religion that shall
really operate upon the actions of its pro-
fessors. He would influence the education
of youth, not by emulation, by ambition, by
the hope of reward, but by the love of
knowledge — by a deep sense of the obliga-
tion upon them to cultivate all their powers
— by obedience to the commands of Scrip-
ture. Upon parents he would enforce their
duties towards their children more than
their rights over them, and presses upon
them the necessity of directing education
more according to the abilities and qualities
of their children, than, as is universally
done, according to the station and circum-
stances of the family. He would — good
man ! — banish vanity from among the motives
which operate upon parents in the education
of their offspring. He would gladly see
broken up among children those distinctions
which depend upon the father's acres,
and dwells with delighted recollection
on schools in Germany, where the sons
of the noble, and his tenant, or his tailor,
learn and eat together. The right, or rather
the duty, of superintending education, falls
naturally upon the parents ; but if they
neglect, society must not — it is equally the
duty of society to supply such neglect. It
is the duty of society to see that all its
members are educated, and that, not accord-
ing to their rank or station, but their capa-
cities and tendencies, and to the fullest
extent. It is not only the duty, which,
however, he chiefly insists upon, but the
advantage of society to do so — for what is
the consequence of neglecting it, but a
mass of population bred up to plunder and
prey upon the rest ? Dr. Biber doubts not
the actual losses incurred by the wealthy in
this way would more than cover the expences
attending upon general and complete edu-
cation. But the quantum of expence he
disdains to calculate — it is the first obliga-
tion of society, involved in the profession of
Christianity, to look to the well-being and
cultivation of all its members.

Well, but has not society, within these
few years, effectually bestirred itself for this
purpose — has it not actually instituted
schools of one kind or other, in which not
fewer than a million receive instruction ?
Yes; bat probably a million more share
none of these advantages. Advantages,
too, Dr. Biber would exclaim, -+- I have
looked close into these schools ; I can trace

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Monthly Review of Literature,

£FEB.

no advantages ; they are mere show-shops,
drill-yards, manufactories of bigotry and
solemn foppery, cramping and stunting the
human intellect, grinding all, mechanically,
in the same mill, or shaping them after the
same pattern. The foremost thought among
the great patrons of education in England
is to teach the greatest numbers by the
smallest means, without distinction of capa-
city or regard for particular talent — not to
awaken the intellect to spontaneous exertion
— so set it a working and fermenting, but
to cram the memory with odds and ends
— creeds and codes of divinity ; to show
handsomely at public examinations — to teach
sharpness in detecting the slips of their
companions, and emulation, envy, and all
uncharitableness. Gabbling the command-
ments against swearing, lying, and stealing,
is to counteract the practice and examples
they meet with in the streets and at home.
The difference between the National and
Lancasterian systems, he finds to amount
to a geometrical distinction — the first teach
in squares, and the others in semi-circles ;
and infant-schools are mere introductions to
the national, governed by the same prin-
ciples, and filled with the same nonsense.
In none of them did Dr. Biber discover any
thing like intelligence ; none of the children
could go one step out of the given track of
question and answer. He found one form
copying " Live in Love." — " What does
that mean?"— "I don't know."— " You
don't know ! but don't you know what
love means ?" — " No." — " Or do you
know what live means ?" — " No." —
" What must you do to live in love ?" —
" I don't know." — " Do you know what
you must not do to live in love ?" — " No,
I don't."—" Well ; but you should know
something about what live in love means.
Does it mean that you are to fight with the
other boys ?"— " I can't tell."— " Well,' ;
said I, turning to my friend, " what do you
say to this ?" Upon which the school-
master, observing somewhat of the scope of
our conversation, came up to us, and said,
" I dare say you might ask such questions
nil over the school, without getting a better
answer ; they none of them know what they
are writing."

Others were writing long words — one had
on his slate, " disadvantageous." " AVhat
does that word mean, my boy ?" — " I don't
know." — " You know, perhaps, what dis-
advantage means?" — "No." — "Do you
know what advantageous means ?" — " No."
" Or have you ever heard the word advan-
tage ? what does that mean ?" — " I don't
know." — " Well, but suppose you lost your
jacket, would that be an advantage or a
disadvantage to you ?" — " An advantage"
was his answer. Some of the children read
the parable of the Prodigal Son, when Dr.
R. asked what was meant by riotous living ?
"Dissipated living." — "And what doe;?
that mean ?"— " Wasteful living."— " And
what does that mean ?" Their synonimes

were exhausted. To get upon intelligible
ground, he then asked what things were
necessary for subsistence, and what were
not ? when some of the girls contended that
beer, and cheese, and cakes, and patties,
were indispensably necessary for life, &c.

The cant, and parade, and puffery of these
institutions, in a multitude of particulars,
are well exposed, as well as those of some
others of a less public character, especially
Gall's Sabbath School System, and his
Rules for Teaching Children to Pray. But
in nothing is he more earnest, or more
effective, than in dissecting the hypocrisies
and pretensions of society, in higher classes :
but we have no space to follow him. The
whole volume is worth . attending to. We
are tempted to quote a piece relative to
servants. Of course the evil it exposes is
incurable ; but let it be seen.

In no country, I apprehend, is there a more de-
based and more corrupted race of servants to be
found than in this — owing to the hauteur with
which they are treated, and from which other
fruits cannot be expected. It is not natural that
a human being should consent to be treated as
if he belonged to a different species, to be used
as a machine for a variety of purposes, without
being regarded otherwise than as a machine ;
seen, and yet not perceived ; spoken to, and yet
hot noticed ; to be condemned to stand, earless,
eyeless, motionless, and speechless, until the look
or word of command restore to him the use of his
senses and limbs for a specific purpose ; to be
considered and dealt with, in the parlour, as a
piece of furniture ; or in the kitchen, as an uten-
sil ; and to be attended to in his wants and wishes,
or cultivated in his affections, no more, if not less,
than the dog or the horse, upon whom it is his
duty to wait, in the master's name ; — I say it is
not natural that a human being should consent to
endure all this degradation at the hand of his
fellow-creature,without a compensation which, in
his estimate, makes up for the loss of what no
man should ever be tempted to part with, his
human capacity. And what can that compensa-
tion be ? It cannot, in the very nature of things,
he a moral one ; for the last remnant of taste for
any mental or moral gratification, would render
the condition, by the endurance of which it is
supposed to be purchased, perfectly insufferable.
The compensation for the conditional setting aside
of the fact, that the servant has an immortal soul
as well .is his master, and is his fellow-creature
in every respect, can only be one which is cal-
culated to make the victim of human pride and
vanity, really forget that, which he is under the
obligation of affecting not to know; it can only
be the high wages of Mammon, and the sensual
enjoyments which can be bought with them, and
which too often the master's sensuality presents
in a more alluring light. Are we then to wonder
that our servants are covetous and vicious, when
we have taken care to exclude from their bosoms
every nobler feeling, which might be a safeguard
to them against the snares of evil ; and if, by
way of reconciling them to such degradation,
we hold out direct temptations to covetousness
and to vice? The feelings and humanity of re-
ligion have, after a long- slumber of dulness,

J830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

been aroused to an unequivocal condemnation of
negro slavery, which is a thraldom of the body
more than of the soul ; but it may well be ques-
tioned, whether negro slavery is in itself worse,
And it must at all events be admitted, that it is
J'ar more consistent, than that slavery which I
have been describing, which, under the forms of
freedom, demoralizesthe soul, robs it of all liberty
and of all dignity, and, by the bait of licentious
self-indulgence.entices man to descend, of his own
accord, below the level of a brute, &c.

Tales of a Briefless Barrister, 3 vols.

12mo. ; 1830 Barrister or no barrister,

.with briefs or without, these tales — the rea-
der need apprehend none of the botherings
of the courts — though not very remarkable
for novelty of incident, or cleverness of con-
struction, or the painting of striking scenes
to the neglect of every thing else, are very
agreeably told, leisurely and quietly, with
ffaiete de cosur and soberness of humour,
touching grave topics lightly, and light ones
trippingly, and securing attention without
wearying it. The principal tale, entitled
" Second Thoughts are " best," concerns
chiefly a young gentleman of good family
and fortune, who, at a very early age, aban-
dons his father's roof and civilized society,
to consort first with gipsies, and, in succes-
sion, with players, radicals, and methodists,
for the purpose of correcting, by any means,
the world and 'its worthless ways. After
a career of four or five years, during which
misery had brought him acquainted with
strange companions, and with, of course,
very moderate success in the carrying of his
object, circumstances, especially the death
of an elder brother, bring him back to his
father's home, where he quickly begins to
feel some of the consequences of his devia-
tions from the forms of society recoil upon
him. Unluckily, his father's conduct had
not been of the correctest — through some
.very singular circumstances, the mother of
his children was not his wife ; the discovery
of which, apparently, though not distinctly,
adds to the son's embarrassments in treading
back the path to sobriety and intercourse
with his caste. Though returning, with
very little persuasion, to his father's house,
he had changed none of his opinions — at
least he refused to confess a change ; but a
succession of little events and rr/ortifications,
by degrees, and not very slowly, operate a
complete one, which he finally and fully
acknowledges. He encounters an elderly
gentleman at a coffee-house, who, by good
humour and calm argument, baffles and
bothers him, and by whom, eventually, with
the aid especially of a lovely niece, he is
finally corrected and redrilled into the level
course of common forms. It is idle to
particularize farther ; the merit of the tales
lies in the cheerful philosophy and moderat-
ing tone of the author — a vein of quaint and
quizzing remark running through the whole,
the more acceptable as there exists, at the
same time, a disposition to discussing. It
is more to the purpose to furnish a specimen,

though it be one, rarely occurring, of un-
mixed gravity. The dialoguists are the
hero, and the chief agent of his reforma-
tion. The young gentleman begins Socra-
tically : —

" But are you not of opinion that there is
something wrong in the state of society ?"

The stranger good-humouredly answered him
accordingly, " There is."

" And is it not desirable that that which is
wrong should be corrected and made right ?''
"It is desirable."

«• If there be something wrong, and if It be
desirable that it should be made right, by what
means can it be so made right but by direcihig
the attention of the world to the means of cor-
recting evil ?"

" Clearly that must be the first stf p to' im-
provement.''

" And is not that which is right more advan-
ageous than that which is wrong?"
" There can be no doubt of it..''
" When, therefore, men know what is wrong,
and how it may be corrected ; and when they
know that the right is more advantageous than
the wrong, will they not naturally pursue that
which is right ?"
" No."

" No?" echoed the young gentleman. " Are
not all men guided in their conduct by that
which they perceive to be their interest ?"

" Not one in a thousand," said the stranger.
" Human beings do not act upon calculation ;
they act from impulse, from passion, from ca-
price, from any thing, in short, than calculation.
All the moral and religious exhortations which
are addressed to mankind, all the passionate and
earnest appeals that are made to their feelings
in favour of virtue, are on the supposition that
they do not act upon calculation. If virtue,
and religion, and propriety of demeanour, and
benevolence in conduct, were the result of cal-
culation, they might be taught as easily as the
multiplication-table, and their influence over the
mind would be as permanent and universal as
the knowledge of figures. When a man has
learned the multiplication-table, he knows as
long as he lives, and he uniformly acts upon
the knowledge, that three times three are nine ;
lie never has a moment's doubt of the fact. In •
matters of calculation there is also a complete
and unwavering uniformity of opinion ; oh other
topics you can scarcely find two people to think
alike."

The best scene in the book is a literary
converzatione, to which the hero is con-
ducted by some of the understrappers of the
press the foppery and inanity of such meet-
ings are well shewn up.

Family Library, Vol. IX. Milman's Con-
clusion of his History of the Jews ; 1 829.

With Mr. Milman's views, his execution

of the early history of the Jews was a diffi-
cult, because a delicate, and even a treacher-
ous task, while that of the modern part was
comparatively easy and safe ; for, though
the materials were more scattered, he had
only a plain tale to tell. He has, however,
done the whole thing, in our opinion, for
the most part, well, and is already, we hope,

214

Monthly Revictv of Literature,

[FEB.

begirt for new undertakings. He is a
very competent person for such matters;
and we must say, we greatly prefer his his-
tory to his poetry. Divided as men are, on
the momentous question of religion — even
we who heartily embrace the fact of revela-
tion— it was not to be expected Mr. Mil-
man would please every body ; and, accord-
ingly, we find, many of his friends — we do
not, of course, mean the " mumpsimus"
party, but even those who are willing and
able to take common sense with them to
the consideration of the subject, — even these
have, some of them, thought him approach-
ing the very confines of scepticism ; while
others, of the evangelical cast, not to use
the opprobrious term of fanatic, have broken
into open exclamations, and charged him
with rank infidelity. We observed a letter
in a religious paper, called the Record, a
few days ago, representing the work as
stained with one universal tinge of atheism
— the writer affirming, moreover, that he
knew but three persons who had read it,
and all three had had their faith not only
shaken, but shattered. Mr. M. will, of
course, treat those extravagances with the
contempt they deserve. His purpose was
plainly to confine himself, as far as was
practicable, to the historical — to separate
what rested, apparently, upon human testi-
mony, and though constituting a portion of
the scriptures, to treat it like any other his-
torical evidence — to discriminate the extra-
ordinary from the common — to illustrate,
in the career of the Jews, each stage of
civilization, by reference to similar stages in
other nations in different regions of the
world — and to explain what was explainable
by natural phenomena, on the common
principles of philosophy — to admit no more
causes than are necessary, and to ascribe
the same effects to the same causes. The
prosecution of these principles has, occa-
sionally, given the author the appearance of
wishing to reduce extraordinary matters to
the smallest possible quantity of miracle,
and has exposed him to the vituperation of
some who would have men, like children,
shut tLeir eyes, open their mouths, and
s -A- allow what is put into them. According
to these persons, Mr. Milman has treated
the inspiration of the scriptures with little
or no respect. Yet to suppose the scrip-
tures the direct effect of inspiration both in
matter and language, from one end to the
other, and on every subject, is a supposition
fit only for children. The absurdity of it,
to any one who looks fairly at them, stares
him in the face. Obviously the historical
part depends on human testimony, for it
tells only what had occurred ; and differing,
as in different parts it often does, if not in
substance, yet in circumstance, the con-
clusion is irresistible, that the writers de-
pended not on divine communication, nor
wholly on their own knowledge, but on
report and tradition. Take the moral parts
again, such as the Proverbs — what signs are

there of inspiration there? Are not the
maxims and monitions the gatherings up of
ordinary and every day's experience ? The
story of Job again is, apparently, merely
dramatic — inspiration would not surely
argue so uncharitably as Job's comforters ?
In short, inspiration seems limited to the
prophetic parts, and in them to the subject
— the varying style shews, not the varying
feelings of inspiration, rtbut the varying in.
strument — the taste of the individual.
Ezekiel differs from Isaiah, and Jeremiah
from both, not because each is not divinely
inspired, but because each conveys his in-
spirations in the manner prompted by his
genius, associations, and habits.

Mr. M., in his preface to the last volume,
describes his views of inspiration as corre-
sponding with those of Tillotson, Seeker,
and Warburton — like our. own, though,
perhaps, not so broadly expressed — and
prudently (we do not use the word invi-
diously) appeals to the authority of the pre-
sent bishop of London, who, in some
Dissertation of his, expressly states his
belief, " that Moses himself may have pos-
sessed many sources of information, from
which he might draw the most material
circumstances of the early history of man-
kind, without being indebted for them to
direct inspiration," — which sources could
amount to nothing but tradition — books,
apparently, there were none.

Now these views of inspiration leave
greater freedom of inquiry, and are admira-
bly calculated to baffle such men as Bayle,
Voltaire, and Volney, and all who attempt,
as somebody said — Paley we believe — to
wound Christianity through the sides of
Judaism. The Jews were the conservators
of the doctrines of the divine Unity and
Providence, and the promises of a Re-
deemer ; but, in other respects, they seem
to have been left to pass through the ordi-
nary stages of society, with no other advan-
tage than the stimulus and excitement such
apparent privilege was well calculated to
furnish. " The seeming authorization," says
Mr. M., " of fierce and sanguinary acts,
which frequently occur in the Hebrew an-
nals, resolves itself into no more than this —
that the Deity did not think it time to cor-
rect the savage, I will add, unchristian,
spirit inseparable from that period of the
social state." Whether we can penetrate
the purpose of the Deity or not, the career
of the Jews is accountable enough upon the
common influences of human passions —
they acted like other men, with this dif-
ference only, that they were more assuming,
insolent, and inflexible, from the feeling, —
irrepressible and inevitable, if the fact were
so, and the belief of it comes to the same
thing, — that they were the favourites of
Heaven, and its especial instruments of
vengeance.

The best and most humane feelings per-
vade Mr. M.'s tracings of the treatment this
unhappy people met with in their later hi*-

1830.]

Dotnestlc and Foreign.

215

tory ; and referring to the anticipations of
their general conversion, he concludes
thus : — " Christianity, to work any change
on the hereditary religious pride of the Jew,
on his inflexible confidence in his inalien-
able privileges, must put off the hostile and
repulsive aspect which it has too long worn ;
it must, shew itself as the faith of reason, of
universal peace and good will to men, and
thus unanswerably prove its descent from
the all-wise and all-merciful Father. "

Excitement ; or a Book to induce Boys
to read; 1830 This well chosen collec-
tion comprises remarkable appearances in
nature — signal preservations — and such in-
cidents as, in the editor's judgment, are
particularly fitted to arrest the youthful
mind. The collector was prompted to make
the selection, and publish it, by the remark
of an Edinburgh professor amounting to
this— that, let any boy be as thoughtless
and volatile as you please, if you can hit
upon a train of thought that suits his state
of mind, you are sure to secure his atten-
tion ; and if this faculty be thus once
excited to one class of objects, it may be
afterwards more easily directed to others.
The language is obviously that of Mr.
Dugald Stewart, or cne of his disciples, and
is, at best, but a sort of ex uno disce omnes
argument. We like the city preacher's
(Cecil) remark a great deal better — it has
no theory mixed up with it. ( No sermon,'
said Cecil, < put my mind half so much on
the stretch as a sermon to children ; stories
fix children's attention. The simplest
manner in the world will not make way to
children's minds for abstract truths. With
stories I find I could rivet their attention
for two or three hours.' The collection
itself consists of passages chiefly from po-
pular works, most of them very well known
— a lion hunt in Africa, from the notes of
Pringle's Ephemerides — the Boiling Springs
in Iceland, from Henderson's Journal —
Signal Preservation in the Life of Captain
James Wilson — Destruction of a Whaler
by a Whale, from a narrative from the
mate, Owen Chase, of Nantuckett — the
Black-Hole of Calcutta — the Boa Con-
strictor's swallowing a Goat, from Mac-
leod's Voyage of the Alceste — the Sufferings
of the Judsons during the Burmese War —
Lion Fight, from Croly's Salathiel— Anec-
dotes of Lions, and an Elephant Hunt,
from Thompson's Travels and Adventures
in Southern Africa — the Ashantees, from
Bowdich's book — the Wreck of the Me-
dusa— Sharks in the South Sea (original)

Siege of St. Sebastian (original,) with a few
others, and among them, His Majesty's
Visit to Scotland in 1822, taken from letters
addressed to Sir W. Scott, on the moral
and political character and effects of the
said visit, which were written, it seems, but
not generally known to be so, by James
Simpson, a Scotch advocate, better known
as the author of < a Visit to the Field of

Waterloo.' This account of his majesty's
visit we never read before ; it is impossible
not to be borne along by the eloquence and
enthusiasm of the writer, and as impossible
not to exclaim — absurd — at the end of it.

Ruins of Ancient Grandeur in Idumsea —
an extract from a work by Alexander Keith,
minister of St. Cyrus, entitled ' Evidences
of the Truth of the Christian Religion, de-
rived from the Fulfilment of Prophecy,' —
is a remarkable passage. We can only
direct the reader's attention to it.

Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia,
2 vols ; 1830. — This is a posthumous pub-
lication— the work of a Norfolk clergyman —
a man whose life was actively and usefully
spent in the education of youth and the du-
ties of a country magistrate, utterly unknown
to literary fame, though respected by the few
who knew his acquirements, and were able
to estimate them. The Editor of the per-
formance is Dawson Turner, one of his
early pupils, who has put together a few
particulars concerning the author, and the
circumstances which led to the composition
of the work. The Vocabulary itself is of
very considerable value, as a mere collection
of ancient words still in use among the
illiterate, but faithful conservators of them,
in a region, in some respects, as remote as
any corner of the kingdom, and as unlikely
to be corrupted by affectations and improve-
ments in matters of language. But the
distinguishing merit of the book is the
sound view the writer takes of the matter
historically — the independent consideration
he gives to it — his contempt of mere theo-
ries, and disregard of great names — the
true clue which his shrewd understanding
afforded him, and the steady use he made
of it, in tracking the labyrinths of his subject.
The preliminary essay is one of the most
intelligent things we have seen a long time.
The basis of ,the EnglisrV language is irre-
fragably Saxon. No one word, now in use,
is clearly traceable as Celtic, in spite of all
the efforts of Whittaker, and others of his
school. The fact of a Saxon basis is esta-
blished, beyond all further discussion, by
Sharon Turner, in his History of the
Saxons, if other evidence be wanting. Take
a proof : —

" Then when Mary was come where
Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at
his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou
hadst been here my brother had not died.
When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and
the Jews also weeping which came with her,
he groaned in spirit and was troubled^ and
said, where have ye laid him ? They said
unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus
wept. Then said the Jews, behold how he
loved him."

Excepting the names, this passage con-
tains seventy -two words, all of which are
Saxon, but the two printed in italics, and
none of which are yet obsolete. Mr. Forby
establishes the same point by tracing the

216

Monthly Review of Literature,

[FEB.

history of the country. The Saxons, we
know, succeeded each other, horde after
horde, driving the Britons before them to
the north and west ; and this they appear to
have done sweepingly — leaving, we mean,
but a sprinkling of Britons, and certainly
not enough to retain long their own lan-
guage, for the fact of the intraceability of
any Celtic words is undeniable. In what
state the language of the Saxons then was
we know not — no documents exist ; but
our Saxon Lexiconists choose to define it as
pure Saxon, which was subsequently cor-
rupted by successive intermixings of Danish
and Norman. This original purity, and this
subsequent corruption, Mr. Forby doubts ;
he questions not but this pure Saxon had
already Greek and Latin mixed up with
it, and that thus much of both the latter
came to us ' north about.' The intercourse
of the Romans with the Germans on the
Rhine, from the days of Caesar, or before,
and of the Greeks, earlier and later, with
those on the Danube, could not fail of in-
troducing numerous words, with foreign
articles. Even in Tacitus we find some of
the chiefs, and others who were not chiefs,
acquainted with Latin. Pure Saxon, if there
is any meaning in the term, was thus, ap-
parently, corrupted before it came to Eng-
land, from these sources. Established,
however, in England, in this state, what-
ever it was, the Danish invasions could
have affected it little, for their occupation
of any part of the country was no where
continuous for any considerable time ; and
if it had been, how know we that this
Danish differed from the Saxon ? did not
both come from the same quarters, and ap-
pear to be of the same races ? The Nor-
mans again were the same ; they invaded
Normandy, from the same regions, about
the same time the Danes did England, and
probably spoke the same language. Before
the Normans, indeed, invaded England,
they had become half French, but then
Norman-French also seems to have had
little influence upon the general language
of England. It must be recollected, the
Normans, compared with the Saxons, were
very few, and that they did not, like the
Saxons themselves, in the case of the Bri-
tons, cover the country, and expel the mass
of the population. Only the nobles and the
clergy of the Saxons probably learnt or
adopted the Norman language ; the bulk of
the people could have little interest in doing
so : and the fact is, that Kelham's Norman
Dictionary, the very object of which was to
collect the Nonnan words in English use, is
far from ample ; and the words are chiefly
such as were used in the law courts. French,
indeed, under the Plantagenets, came in in
abundance, and the stream has never ceased
to flow from their times to these ; but this
was discernible mainly in books, and but
slowly made its encroachments on the
spoken language of the country, and espe-
cially among the illiterate. The Greek and

Latin of modern importation are, of course,
attributable wholly to the writers of books.

It is only of late years that the subject of
Provin nalisms has been at all understood.
Sir Thomas Brown, who settled as a phy-
sician at Norwich in 1637, in a discourse of
his on languages, quotes a sample of Nor-
folk words, quite new to him, a stranger,
not more than twenty-six, which he re-
fers to a Saxon origin. Ray, far better
known as a naturalist, never surpass-
ed for accuracy and sagacity, made a
much more considerable collection. There
is also a collection of Suffolk words by
Major Moore ; and many county histories
furnish lists of words considered as peculiar
to districts. Some papers in the Archseo-
logia exist of the same kind — such as Mr.
Drake's comparison of the Mseso-Gothic
and the Anglo-Saxon. Dr. William's
words, too, may be added, from the West
Riding of Yorkshire, in the sixteenth cen-
tury, and Mr. Wilbraham's Cheshire words
in the nineteenth. Mr. Brockett's book on
the dialect of Northumberland, may also be
mentioned, and particularly a couple of vo-
lumes recently published on the Craven
dialect. These are all of a grave cast, but
several pieces exist of a burlesque character,
equally valuable, for they equally supply
words of good origin, such as Timothy Bob-
bin, the Lancashireman, and the dialects of
Exmoor and Sedgemoor. Of these, Grose,
in his provincialisms, made considerable
use ; and, finally, Mr. Samuel Pegge made
large additions to Grose. The aggregate
of all which, exclusive of the Craven dialect,
which has been published since his death,
Mr. Forby states to be about 3,500. Mr. For-
by himself, in the district of East Anglia,
meaning only Suffolk and Norfolk, collects
2,500, and of these, 600 only had he found
in previous collections. Of course he has
made an addition of 1,900.

The Essays on the pronunciation and
grammar of East Anglia, though full of
information, and shewing a thorough know-
ledge of the subject, we cannot now notice —
they will be found even amusing.

Bertha's Journal, 3 vols., 18mo. ,• 1830.
— Of all the little works contrived of late
years, for the purpose of conveying informa-
tion to young folks, in an attractive manner,
this, we think, will prove by far the most
successful. Some link connecting subject
and self — something in the form of narra-
tive is indispensible to arrest attention ; and
this form of a journal, keeping up a perpe-
tual allusion to personal pursuits and family
arrangements, yet without occupying any
disproportionate space, very sufficiently and
happily effects this purpose. Bertha has
spent the first years of her childhood in
Brazil, and circumstances still detaining her
mother in that country, she is sent to an
uncle's to secure an English education and
English manners. The tie between parent
and child is to be maintained by Bertha's

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

217

engaging to keep a journal, which she ac-
cordingly does during the whole voyage,
and her residence through the winter, a
new scene to her, at her uncle's, with a
family of young cousins all actively and
eagerly occupied in acquiring information
under the eye and direction of very intel-
ligent and judicious parents. The young
Bertha, though so entirely foreign to her
previous habits, soon accommodates and
enters into the spirit of the thing ; and the
daily pursuits of the school-room, the novel-
ties out of doors, the conversation of well-
informed people, especially of those who
have travelled into distant countries, furnish
the current topics of the journal. The in-
formation thus conveyed is of the most
varied kind, though a large proportion is
employed on the memorabilia of botany and
natural history, but upon nothing of the
common-place kind, and all of the latest
and most authentic character. Every Sun-
day some religious topic is noticed — some
passage of Scripture illustrated — some appa-
rent contradiction reconciled, and especially
the ceremonials of the Jews are explained ;
on good, sound, orthodox principles, of
course, but without any attempt to enforce
matters of doctrine, and singularly untinged
with party-spirit. The elements of geology
also are detailed, in the principles of Cony-
beare and Phillips ; and a little touch of
metaphysics, we observed, after the manner
of Mr. Dugald Stewart, distinguishing, very
nicely, judgment and taste, as two faculties,
&c. Manners, morals, and character, are, of
course, carefully attended to by the excel-
lent uncle and aunt ; and Bertha, who is a
very honest little girl, has the satisfaction
of conveying to her mamma, on the autho-
rity of her uncle, her progresses in improve-
ment— her happy exchange of indolence
for activity — neatness for untidiness frank-
ness for shyness, with many other budding
virtues, which are likely to ripen during the
projected tour of all the party in Ireland.
This tour will of course extend her journal,
which not only young but old may read
with pleasure, and no little chance of gather-
ing knowledge.

Political Economy. An Inquiry into
the Natural Grounds of Right to Vendible
Property or Wealth. By Samuel Read ,•
1829 — Writers on Political Economy ge-
nerally define their science, as what deter-
mines the laws which regulate the produc-
tion and distribution of wealth. Mr. Read
thinks it not only of prior, but of higher
importance to determine, first, the natural
grounds of right to the said wealth, which
he, for the sake of a more specific term,
chooses to call vendible property, and frames
the title of his work in accordance with this
view. This is making, we think, a great
fuss about nothing, and a fuss far from
harmless ; for nothing is harmless which
takes the attention from the real pith of
a subject, and fixes it upon inferior or

MMNew Series — VOL. IX, No. 50.

foreign considerations. If political econo-
mists have not formally discussed the
grounds of right, those rights have always
been implied in their discussions; and
in point of fact, and it may be added, with
any tolerable government, inevitably, civil
rights are, for the most part, built upon
those perhaps sufficiently understood prin-
ciples of natural right.

But though Mr. Read takes more credit
than we think due to him, on this point,
or useful for the discussion of the sub-
ject, his book is an excellent onef and
especially throughout the whole of the
controversial matter. Its chief merit, in-
deed, and in the present puzzled state
of the " science," that is no slight one,
is the attempt to rescue it from the clutches
of the mathematical economists, into which
it has unluckily fallen, and place it again
within the province of plain facts, common
experience, and moral reasoning. He finds
no advantage has been conferred on the
" science" by Adam Smith's improvers. —
Ricardo's doctrines, especially, appear to
him to be a set of mere sophistications, and
we fully agree with him. That man — a
clever man, and a reasoning one upon given
data, but incapable of estimating the sound-
ness of those data — a man, moreover, in
possession of half a million, and, therefore, of
course, in England, if such a person write a
book, it must be one of authority, at least as
long as the writer has aught to give — that
man has done more mischief in these mat-
ters than any man of his time. Some of
his doctrines, it is true, such as that of rent,
were merely speculative, for nobody acts
upon them ; but others have had a prac-
tical effect, and woeful in proportion to the
effect, such as his sentiments on bullion
and paper, and especially his conclusions on
the subject of profit and wages. These,
profit and wages we mean, according to
Mr. Ricardo, vary inversely to each other,
and his rule, which, of course, the masters
welcomed with pleasure, thinking the game
must be in their own hands — to keep up
profits, you must keep down wages. To
justify this doctrine and precept, he prefaced
them with another maxim, that the natural
amount of wages was that which would just
enable the labourers to live, and keep up
their numbers. Never was greater nonsense
uttered ; but the terms of this " law" were
so precise and clear, so mathematical and
exact, and with such a perfect absence of
doubt, as to leave an impression which any
memory could retain, and the grounds of
which it seemed superfluous to consider. It
was, to most minds, an axiom, and what is
the advantage of an axiom if it must be
perpetually reconsidered? But, notwith-
standing, profit and wages are not always in
opposition — scarcely, indeed, ever ; and still
less is the lowest possible quantum of sub-
sistence the natural rate of wages ; and Mr.
Read, though not the first who has done it,
has done well in exposing these absurdities
2F

218

Monthly Review of Literature,

[FEB.

with a degree of clearness we have not be-
fore met with. We shall still express our
own convictions. The law which regulates
profit is the relation of supply and demand,
and that same law will raise or depress both
profit, and wages, though not precisely in
the same ratio. The rate of wages, again,
is not the least the labourer can live upon,
but the best he can get by bargain and
compact. Look to the common sense of the
thing, shown by plain facts.

Some years ago, manufacturing labourers
had high wages. Why ? Because it was
the master's interest to give them. Why ?
Because he had a market for his actual pro-
duce, and for as much more as he could com-
pass. It was his interest, therefore, to em-
ploy as many more labourers as possible, to
the extent of his capital and credit, and
tempt them with higher wages. These
labourers have now low wages — and why ?
Because it is no longer the master's interest
to give higher. Why ? Because he cannot
himself get the prices he used to do. Why ?
Because either he has overstocked the mar-
ket, or that market is contracted — either he
has indiscreetly multiplied the supply, or
the demand has decreased, or both. And
both causes have concurred. Other coun-
tries manufacture for themselves ; and the
masters among us, calculating on the old
demand, have not stopped their supplies in
time. These are undeniable facts, and
surely shake to the foundation the sound-
ness of Mr. Ricardo's doctrine.

Ricardo and all his school assign all to
labour, not meaning, nevertheless, to ex-
clude capital, but rather implying that
capital is the result of previous labour. Of
this an ill use has often been made by in-
judicious persons, especially by the author
of " Labour defended against the Claims of
Capital," who have led the labourers to
suppose they, the existing labourers, do all
—are the sole producers, and, of course, are
entitled to all, or at least to a much larger
share than they ever get. It has not been
sufficiently urged, in company with this
notion, that the labourer, as things are now
conducted, could no more get on without
other people's capital, than the possessors
of capital without his labour. The effect
of this doctrine, coupled with existing
misery, is to exasperate, and to teach them
to throw more blame upon the masters than
fairly belongs to them. The government is
far more to blame than the masters ; for the
great mass of taxation falling upon con-
sumables, presses heavily upon the labourer,
and makes him feel the reduction of wages
more severely than he would otherwise do.
To listen to these Ricardo folks, the natural
and inevitable tendency of civilization is to
depress the condition of the workman — ca-
pital and labour are for ever separate, and
their interests are for ever opposed to each
other. No : capital and labour are not ne-
cessarily and for ever separable ; and the
Co-operatives, now beginning to spread and

be felt, will prove the fallacy of doctrines
calculated to drive the labourer to despair
and the country to rebellion.

True Stories, from the History of Ire-
land, by J. J. Gregor. Second Series ;

1830 Of course, these are intended as

companions to Sir W. Scott's stories from
the Scottish history, as well as some other
person's stories from the English history ;
but neither of them very worthy of the dis-
tinction they aspire to. The first series did
not fall in our way ; and this, which is en-
titled the second, is nothing but a continu-
ous history of the Anglo-Irish under the
reigns of the Tudors. In that of Henry
VII. something like an approach to distinct
stories is attempted in the narratives of the
two impostors, if impostors they both were,
Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, both of whom
were favoured by the Irish, then, apparently,
all Yorkists. A similar attempt, though
blended still with both these, is the story
which details the ups and downs of the Earl
of Kildare, during the same reign. Two
or three similar attempts occur, as the story
of Lynch, the mayor of Galway, 1493, who,
with a sort of Roman sternness, an exagge-
rated sense of duty, more surely to be won-
dered at than admired, became the arrester
of his own son, charged with a murder,
committed in passion and mistake, and not
only his arrester, but his judge, and finally,
and literally, his executioner, for nobody else
could be found barbarous enough, even in Ire-
land, to perform the horrid office. More than
one half the volume is occupied with O'NeiTs
rebellion, during, the last twenty years of

Elizabeth the narrative of which is full of

confusion, and written in perfect obli vion of
the author's professed purpose. Though
O'Neil, as Essex said of him, probably
cared as little for religion as his horse did,
yet the changes in religious forms, and for
political purposes, violently enforced, were,
at least, the ostensible cause of O'NeiFs
rebellion ; and we are glad to see, in any
shape, such violences for such purposes
reprobated. A popular history of Ireland
is sadly wanted, and we are half afraid
Moore is scarcely to be trusted with the
subject.

An Introductory Treatise on the Nature
and Properties of Light, and on Optical
Instruments. By W. M. Higgins — Greek
and Latin used to be not simply the staple
but the ne plus ultra of English education,
and the pedagogue, to employ the language
of the late Dr. Parr, who failed to drive it
into the heads of his pupils, jerked it in
where he could. Things are changed now,
and education is required to be de omnibus
rebus et quibusdam aliis : we know not
what good can come of it: the brain of a boy
is not like the stomach of an ostrich, it can-
not digest the heterogeneous crudities with
which it is surcharged, and intellectual dis-
ease must follow. Still this system is the
rage of the day, and interest is too feelingly

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

219

alive in the promotion of it for the press not
to swarm with elementary works of every
description, in addition to what each joint
stock knowledge company sanctions by its
approval. Sunt bona, sunt quadem medi-
ocria, sunt mala plura. The work before
us belongs to the former class. Without any
pretention or parade, it affords a clear but
simple view of the elementary properties of
light : the principles of the science are per-
spicuously laid down and applied to illus-
trate the theory of optical instruments, and
the more striking natural phenomena.
With the whole of this book we have been
much pleased, and by persons little versed
in mathematics, it will be found extremely
useful — indeed, if the remainder of the
author's course of natural philosophy, which
will speedily appear, is to be judged by
this specimen of his labours, there will be
few, if any, productions on the same sub-
jects, better adapted for general circulation.

Time's Telescope ; 1830 — This annual
melange — a combination of the Almanack
and the Album — is very well calculated to
convey much useful information to certain
classes, in a very agreeable way. Its mate-
rials are thrown together under the heads of
Remarkable Days — Astronomical Occur-
rences— and the Naturalist's Diary, and each
of these for every month in the year.
Under the first head fall short notices, taken
chiefly from the periodicals, of eminent indi-
viduals, who have died in the course of the
preceding year — and some many years ago —
placed at the anniversary of their deaths ;
and of some who are stiU living, as Scott
and Moore commemorated at the anniversa-
ries of their birth; — together with snatches
of poetry from the popular writers of the
day, at every seizable opportunity which
the calendar presents. The Astronomical
Occurrences and the Naturalist's Diary are
full of very valuable matter, conveyed in a
plain and intelligible manner. The wood-
cuts are numerous, and are relative, gene-
rally, to objects of sufficient interest. Among
them we observed Sir Walter Scott's Whim-
sical Buildings at Abbotsford, and Moore's
Cottage, near Devizes, where the editor in-
forms us — God-wot — the Poet lives rather re-
tired than otherwise, while all the world sup-
poses him involved in all the follies and
gaieties of life.

Though the editor of the preceding vo-
lumes has disclaimed having any thing to
do with the present, the change is not per-
ceptible— the manner and materials are es-
sentially the same — though the old Editor
would probably not have committed so gross
a blunder as the following : —

" Jan. 23d, 1806, Right Hon. William
Pitt died. This eminent statesman com-
menced his parliamentary career early in
life, having taken his seat soon after he came
of age. He had not long been a member
when he was attacked by Sir Robert Wai-
pole, and taunted with his youth ; to which

Pitt replied in a speech which might be re-
garded as a model for young men to imitate.
It is worthy preservation, and will justify
insertion on this day.'*

And then follows Lord Chatham's well
known speech, which is very safely preserved
in numerous records — though he, it is
equally well known, was as much entitled
to the credit of it, as this well-read editor of
Time's Telescope.

Moments of Loneliness, or Prose and
Poetic Efforts, $c. By Sibella JEliz. Hat-
field; 1829 — Printed at Falmouth, as was
this volume of odds and ends and occasional
scraps — at the very Land's-end — it is a pity
it had not remained in that corner of the
world ; and the author's parents, to whom,
11 by their affectionate permission," she duti-
fully dedicates, been spared the expense of
carriage. Not that the contents are worse
than scores of similar books which fall into
our hands, and of which the world never
hears, even from us — but mere mediocrity,
especially in poetry, no mortal can bear, not
connected by love, or friendship, or neigh-
bourhood ; and scarcely then. The folly is,
not in printing for private circulation, to
save the labour of copying, at the obliging
importunities of friends, but in publishing,
and hoping such things will sell. It is
marvellous that anybody can still be found,
of man and woman born, even in so remote
a spot, to imagine for a moment that strang-
ers will buy them. Nobody, now-a-days,
— and let the publishers of such i things listen
to us — nobody purchases a volume of any
kind, and especially of poetry, unrecom-
mended — on the chance of what he may
find ; the very numbers forbid ; and books
of indispensable importance crowd upon all
who have money to spare to the full amount
of their available funds. We are far from
saying this is the worst volume that ever
Was printed ; but really, on glancing over it, '
our eyes caught nothing better than the
piece we copy : —

ON BEHOLDING A BEAUTIFUL AND
WELL-KNOWN SEA PROSPECT.

How altogether lovely ! what a glow

Of gold around the sky, and on the sea!

Yon glorious, gorgeous sunset canopy

Is worthy of this paradise below.

This prospect is no stranger unto me ;

Mine eye can claim acquaintance with each

hue,
Oft seen before : yet, as on novelty

1 gaze intent, oh, magic memory!
Thou fixest thus my gaze uponthe view,
And drawing feelings out in bitter tears,
Thy long-resisted influence appears

Too much — too much, I will not, must not weep.
Scene of the beauteous land, and glorious deep,
Once more, once more, we part— perchance for

years : —
Let me bear from thee, as from some loved

friend,
Lessons that make me worthy here to bend.

2 F 2

220

Monthly Review of' Literature.

[FEB.

With memory'! sweetness o'er thee ; the wild

storm

Hath oft assailed thy lonely castle's form,
Sacred Pendennis! yet thou standest still,
Braving the blast awaked at Heaven's will,
And calm and lovely smiles the azure deep,
As if it ne'er had felt a tempest's sweep : —
I have had clouds and storm-blasts round me

too,
But oh, I will be firm and calm as you.

Deutsches Lesebach ; or Lessons in
German Literature. By J. Rowbotham.
F. Ast. S. L. 1829 — This is one of the
scores of introductory helps to the study of
languages prompted by the spirit of emu-
lation and improvement, spreading fast
through every class of instructors — scarcely
excepting certain privileged institutions,
where the professors, raised, in their own
fancies, above the necessities of vulgar ex-
ertion, would willingly, but must not wholly,
indulge the otium of their own shades and
eschew the conflicts of competition. The
plan of this little work is well conceived,
and the proposed assistance so well ar-
ranged, step by step, as to call, if that be
a virtue, for no other efforts than acts of
memory, till the pupil is, ultimately, as he
ought to be, thrown almost solely on his
own resources. But the planning is better
than the execution, though the errors of ex-
ecution are chiefly such as are almost insepa-
rable from one who undertakes to judge of a
foreign language. The pieces are not, in
the first place, well selected, for many
abound in phraseology now perfectly obso-
lete among the best writers of the day, —
and others are not even free from common
grammatical errors. The translations, again,
though on the whole very well performed,
are often, we take upon ourselves to say,
erroneous, and that, of course, precisely,
where a learner would find obscurities — that
is, he will be most misled where he most
wants help, and most relies on receiving it.
For the student, then, who has an instructor
at hand, the volume is a good one ; but for
one who depends wholly upon books, he
must look for a safer guide, and such are
not wanting. Mr. Bernays's Selections,
which we noticed a few months ago, are
made with a modern knowledge of the lan-

guage— he is a native German, and a man
of good taste.

A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of
the Genitals of the Male, by Dr. Titley ;
1830 — This medical treatise — the produc-
tion of a gentleman who has directed his
attentions closely to a subject of incalculable
importance, since it unhappily concerns very
considerable numbers, and those most ex-
posed to the impositions of quackery, and,
moreover, the physical soundness of suc-
ceeding generations, we notice, partly for
its apparent completeness as to descriptions
and remedies, but more particularly for its
Preliminary essay, in which the author dis-
cusses the history, nature, and general
treatment of Lues Venera. This discussion
is very ably conducted, and to a conside-
rable extent establishes his point. He
scouts the notion of its being a new disease,
or even a specific disease; but this last
matter we leave, as a question exclusively
professional — he denies that it was, as is so
often affirmed, an importation from Ame-
rica, or even the communication of the
Moors at an earlier period. He finds the
disease marked among the Greeks by Hip-
pocrates, in its strongest and most specific
symptoms, and even in the same combina-
tion of symptoms, or nearly so — he finds it
among the Romans, in the works of Cel-
sus ; and in numerous writers from two to
three centuries before the American Disco-
veries. Yet it cannot be denied, that num-
bers soon after these discoveries do speak of a
new disease of this kind, that is, of one
appearing during the last years of the fif-
teenth century. It is not quite satisfactory,
to say, that all were mistaken — that the
same thing had existed, but was not ob-
served before. No, the intelligent author
inclines to believe there was a new disease,
then imported from America, — not however
the Lues Venera but the Yaws. That is a
disease quite distinct from Lues Venerea,
but attended with several similar symptoms."
It is, however, peculiar to tropical regions,
and soon mitigates in other climates — as
confessedly the new disease, as it was
termed in the south of Europe, in a few
years did — a fact which does not at all cha-
racterize the Lues Venerea.

VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS.

The White Lupin. — Gardeners generally
think the white lupin a summer plant, re-
quiring much water and manure. Willdenow
imagines that the husks of the white lupin,
before they are ripe, might be substituted
for coffee when they have been prepared in
water, cut, dried, and roasted. M. de
Vulflfen, having taken an agricultural journey
some time ago, found that in one part of
P'rance, the white lupin was cultivated in
vast plains ; and that it attained the finest

development in places where the soil was
not very sandy. The sole object of this
extensive cultivation of the lupin was to
employ it as a manure ; for no animal eats
either the plant or the grain it yields. On
account of the nature of the soil most favour-
able to it, the white lupin is cultivated
only in the district which forms a triangle
between Valence, Lyons, and Grenoble. Be-
yond these limits, and in places where the
soil is richer and more compact, this plant

1830.]

Varieties.

221

has not a flourishing appearance. To give
an idea of the powerful action of the white
lupin as a manure, we shall quote the words
of M. Vulffen himself. « It is impossible,"
he says, " to have seen the vast extent of
country which the south of France presents,
the prosperity of which, and the very popu-
lation, rests upon this plant, and to have
heard the extraordinary influence it exercises
upon the production of corn unanimously
extolled, without feeling the necessity of
making careful experiments regarding it."
The consequence is, that this experienced
agriculturist has been making experiments
on the white lupin in Northern Germany,
of which he has published an account,
having fully and satisfactorily proved that
the cultivation of this plant is of a nature to
surpass the most sanguine hopes.

Artificial Gems The base of all arti-
ficial stones, is a paste composed of silex,
potash, borax, oxide of lead, and sometimes
arsenic. The best silex is obtained from
rock crystal, and the next best from white
sand, or flint. The following are two re-
ceipts for making a good paste : — Rock
crystal, 4056 grains, minium (red lead) 6300,
pure potash 2 154, borax 276, arsenic 12 or.,
sand 3600, ceruse (white lead) 8508,
potash 1260, borax 360, arsenic 12. Now,
it is of borate of lead and silex, that Mr.
Faraday has succeeded in making the flint
glass, of which such high expectations are
formed for scientific purposes. Now, it is
known, that more metallic matter was for-
merly employed in the manufacture of glass,
than at the present day, and the consequence
was, as may be observed in many of our
very old church windows, that the surface of
the glass became oxydised. We hope that
the same fate may not attend a return to the
same, or similar method of manufacture.

Improvement of the Cape of Good Hope.
— The advantages that would result to
England from a communication with the
interior of Africa are well known ; and it
affords us great pleasure to learn that at the
Cape of Good H ope much is now doing to
effect this desirable object, by the construc-
tion of a new road over the Hottentots' Hol-
land Mountains, which has been planned by
Major C. C. Michell, the surveyor-general
of the colony, under instructions from the
governor, Sir Lowry Cole. It appears that
the old military road of the French block,
though reflecting considerable credit on the
engineers by whom it was executed, has not
answered the expectations formed of it,
owing to several natural difficulties ; and
the governor, with a zeal for the improve-
ment of the colony, which does the highest
honour to that distinguished officer, has
made a personal journey of inspection, ac-
companied by the surveyor-general, to ascer-
tain the practicability of improving the pas-
sage over the steep and dangerous mountain
range. In this plan Major Michell, after a
laborious survey of the whole chain of the
" Hottentots' Holland Kloof," seems to

have triumphed over the difficulties inter-
posed by nature to the passage of the ma-
jestic barrier which divides the western
coast and capital of the colony from the in-
terior. By the most able and ingenious
adaptation of his new line of road to the
stupendous features and intricate sinuosities
of the ground, he has provided an easy
ascent over a mountain chain of which the
lowest passes rise to the perpendicular height
of eleven hundred feet above the plains at
their base. The breadth intended to be
given to the road is twenty feet, with the
exception of that part near the summit,
which requires blasting, less than a quarter
of a mile in length, and which, for the pre-
sent, will only be made twelve feet broad.
Appropriate stop places will not be neg-
lected. The road will average in its slope
two and a half inches to the yard, which, in
a country like this, may almost be regarded as
approaching to a dead level, considering that
the old kloof averaged nine and a half to ten
in the yard. The ultimate utility of this great
work to the colony, (and eventually to the
mother country) in facilitating the inter-
course between the coast and the interior
for the transit of foreign merchandise and
native produce is incalculable. But we
notice the undertaking chiefly for the one
more interesting proof which it affords of
the advantages which accrue even to the
civil service of the state from the cultivated
genius and science and the enterprising
spirit of military men whenever a fair field
is permitted to their abilities and zeal in the
arts of peaceful improvement.

Height of the Patagonians.~-An officer
of Captain King's expedition has commu-
nicated the following interesting notice.
Measurement of the largest Patagonian, in
a tribe of about 150 in number. Height,
6 feet 2 inches ; circumference of the chest,
3 feet 11 inches; ditto of the loins, 3 feet
5 inches ; ditto of the pelvis, 3 feet 10
inches. The limbs of the men were finely
formed, but the muscles were not so strongly
marked, and did not exhibit those elevations
when thrown into action so much as in
stout sailors or other athletic Europeans
who have been accustomed to muscular
exertion. There was, seemingly, in the
whole of them, of both sexes, a thickish
layer of adipose substance, under the com.
mon integuments, covering the whole of the
body, which seemed to fill up the hollows of
the muscles seen so distinctly in most hard-
working persons. The shortest man in their
party was five feet ten inches and a half
high : the generality of them appeared to be
about six feet, with large bodies. The
women, he thought, were larger in propor-
tion to the men than is observed in civilized
society.

Wells of Salt and of Fire in China —
A French Missionary, M. Imbert, has
forwarded to Europe a description of cer-
tain wells of salt and of fire,atOu-Tong-Kiao
Kiatingfou, and at Ise-Lieou-Tsing, in

222

Varieties.

[FEB.

China, which rank among the most singular
natural phenomena on record. The wells
are perforations about five or six inches in
diameter, extending to the depth of as much,
in one case, as 3,000 feet, ordinarily from
15 to 1,800 in the solid rock ; from which,
in the one case, water is drawn by means of
a hollow bamboo and the labour of oxen,
which yields from one fifth to one fourth of
its weight of salt, and, in the other, an in-
flammable gas is discharged in very large
quantities, which serves to boil the pans in
which the salt is prepared, as well as to
supply the means of illumination. The
method by which these wells, or cylinders
are made in the rock, is by attaching
a steel head, weighing about three or four
hundred pounds, by a cord, to a beam,
Which has a motion on a horizontal axis,
when, by depressing the opposite end of the
beam, and suddenly dismissing it, the steel
head, which moves up and down in a stone
cylinder, pounds the rock beneath, and the
perforation so made being properly mois-
tened, the pulverised rock, in the shape of
mud, lodges above the steel head, and is,
when necessary, drawn out, and rejected.
At least three years are required to make
one of these wells, though sometimes, when
the rock is good, the workmen can perfo-
rate two feet in 24 hours.

The Light of the Sun compared with
that of the Stars — In the Philosophical
Transactions for 1767? a suggestion is
thrown out by Mr. Mitchell, that a com-
parison between the light received from the
sun and any of the fixed stars might furnish
data for estimating their relative distances ;
but no such direct comparison had been
attempted. Dr. Wollaston was led to infer
from some observations which he made in
the year 1799, that the direct light of the
sun is about one million times more intense
than that of the full moon ; and, therefore,
very many million times greater than that
of all the fixed stars taken collectively. In
order to compare the light of the sun with
that of a star, he took, as an intermediate
object of comparison, the light of a candle
reflected from a small bulb, about a quarter
of an inch in diameter, filled with quick-
silver, and seen by one eye through a lent
of two inches focus at the same time that
the star and the sun's image, placed at a
proper distance, was viewed by the other
eye through a telescope. The mean of
various trials seemed to show that the light
of Sirius is equal to that of the sun seen in
a glass bulb one-tenth of an inch in diame-
ter, at the distance of 210 feet, or that they
are in the proportion of one to ten thousand
millions : but as nearly one-half of the light
is lost by reflection, the real proportion be-
tween the light from Sirius and the sun is
not greater than that of one to twenty
thousand millions. If the annual parallax
of Sirius be half a second corresponding to
a distance of 525,481 times that of the sun
from the earth, its diameter would be 3'7

times that of the sun, and its light 13-8
times as great. .The distance at which the
sun would require to be viewed so that its
brightness might be only equal to that of
Sirius, would be 141,421 times its present
distance ; and if still in the ecliptic, its
annual parallax in longitude would be
nearly '3'" ; but if situated at the same
angular distance from the ecliptic as Sirius,
it would have an annual parallax in latitude
of l-"8.

German Names. — The great men of the
sixteenth and seventeenth century who
throw such a splendour over the literature
of Holland, are seldom connected in our
thoughts with the country to which they
belong. They write -the learned language
of Europe, not that of their native land.
In fact, the old and absurd habit of Helen-
izing or Latinizing their surnames, fre-
quently leads to great confusion in their
patronimics. The name of Aurelius, the
preceptor of Erasmus, was no better than
Hermanszoon. — Canisius was Mynheer de
Hondt — Fullonius is Willem Gaaeffe — and
the magnificent Johannes PalaBonydorus,
without his mask, is simply Jan Oudewater.
But what shall we say to the vanity of Eras-
mus— Desiderius Erasmus, with his Latin
and Greek names, each meaning the same
thing. His mother knew him only as
Gherardt Gherardts ; while the gentle Phi-
lippus Melancthon, or, as he occasionally sub-
scribed himself, Ippofilo di Terra Nera, would
scarcely be recognized under his synony-
mous and national appellation of Schwards-
herdt. Then there was Jan Van Gorp,
who wrote a book to prove that Adam and
Eve spoke Dutch alone, but was ashamed
to employ the language of Paradise to in-
troduce himself to the learned world, and
took thereupon the title of Toropius Bec-
auns.

New Fossils — A new species of Ptero-
dactyle, for which the name of Pterodac-
tylus Macronyx is proposed, has been
discovered in the lias, at Lyme Regis in
Dorsetshire. The head of this new species
is wanting, but the rest of the skeleton,
though dislocated, is nearly entire, and the
length of the claws so much exceeds that of
the claws of the Pterodactylus-Longirostris
and brevirostris, of which the only two known
specimens are minutely described by
Cuvier, as to show that it belongs to
another species. Dr. Buckland, by whom
the above account has been communicated
to the Geological Society, also concludes,
from an extensive series of specimens, that
the fossils, locally called Bezoar stones, that
abound at Lyme, in the same beds of lias
with the bones of Icthyosaurus, are the
fasces of that animal. In variety of size and
form they resemble elongated pebbles, or
kidney potatoes, varying generally from
two to four inches in length, and from one
to two inches in diameter ; some few being
larger, others much smaller. Their colour
is dark gray, their substance like indurated

1830.]

Varieties.

223

clay, of a compact earthy texture, and their
Chemical analysis approaches to that of
album grfficum. Undigested bones and
scales of fishes occur abundantly in these
fgecal masses. The scales are referable to
the Dapedium politum and other fish that
occur in the lias : the bones are those of fish,
and also of small Icthyosauri. The interior
of these bezoars is arranged in spiral folds ;
their exterior also bears impressions received
from the convolutions of the intestines of
the living animals. In many of the entire
skeletons of young Icthyosauri the bezoars
are seen within the ribs and near the pelvis :
these, most probably, have been included
within the animal's body at the moment of
his death. The doctor found, three years
ago, a similar ball of faecal matter in the
collection of Mr. Mantell, from the strata
of Tilgate Forest, which abound in bones of
Icthyosauri and other large reptiles ; and he
conjectures that these bezoars exist wherever
the remains of Plesiosauri are abundant.
An indurated black animal substance, like
that in the ink-bag of the cuttle fish, occurs
in the lias at Lyme Regis ; and a drawing,
made with this fossil pigment three years
ago, was pronounced by an eminent artist to
have been tinted with sepia. It is nearly
of the colour and consistence of jet, and very
fragile, with a bright splintery fracture ; its
powder is brown like that of the painter's
sepia ; it occurs in single masses, nearly of
the shape and size of a small gall bladder,
broadest at the bare end, and gradually
contracted towards the neck : these are
always surrounded by a thin nacreous case,
brilliant as the most vivid Lumachella ; the
nacre seems to have formed the lining of a
fibrous thin shelly substance, which, toge-
ther with this nacreous lining, was prolonged
into a hollow cone like that of a belemnite,
but beyond the apex of this alveolus no
spathose body has been found. Dr.Buckland
infers that the animal from which these
fossil ink-bags are derived, was some
unknown cepholopode, nearly allied in its
internal structure to the inhabitant of the
belemnite ; the circular form of the septa
shewing that they cannot be referred to the
molluscous inhabitant of any Nautilus or
Corn u- Ammonis.

Apparatus for Warming Buildings.

A patent has been obtained for an appara-
tus designed to combine elegance with
Utility and economy, and appearing to offer
one of the most convenient and effective
methods of warming large apartments and
public buildings that has fallen under our
notice, beside possessing the very important
feature of heating air without deteriorating
it. The proposed form of the apparatus is
that of a hollow pedestal, containing a
spiral channel through which the pure at-
mospheric air is made to pass in a consider-
able current by the upward pressure caused
by rarefraction, the spiral being encompassed
by a chamber filled with hot steam.

Questions regarding Alcohol.— An Ame-

rican professor has proposed the following
query for a medical dissertation : — Are
spirituous liquors obtained from succulent
fruits, as grapes, apples, pears, and peaches,
more inflammatory than those from grain or
wheat, rye, corn, oats, and barley ? From
some observations made on the effects of
intemperance upon persons within his
knowledge, professor Eaton imagined that
the following results were clearly evinced.
Those who drank wine, cider, perry brandy,
and cider brandy, presented red, bloated,
and highly inflamed surfaces. Those who
drank gin and whisky, became pale and
debilitated. Those who drank rum, were
at a medium in this respect. Hence he in-
ferred, that although pure alcohol is always
the same, there is something combined with
it which influences its effects, and that alcor
holic liquors, from succulent fruits, had a
tendency towards the surface ; that the same
from farinaceous seeds caused a recession of
the fluids towards the heart, and that when
derived from the herbage of plants, as the
stalks of cane, its effects were of the
medium kind.

The spontaneous Purification of Thames
Water — In the report which Dr. Bostock
made of the result of his examination of
Thames Water to the Commissioners
appointed by his Majesty to inquire into the
supply of water for the metropolis, one of the
specimens, taken near the King's Scholars
Pond Sewer, was described as in a state of
extreme impurity. This water had remained
in the laboratory unattended to, and after an
interval of some weeks it was observed to
have become clear, while nearly the whole of
the former sediment had risen to the surface,
forming a stratum of half an inch in thick,
ness, and still emitting a very offensive
odour. In process of time this scum sepa-
rated into large masses or flakes, with
minute air bubbles attached to them. At
the end of two months longer these masses
again subsided, leaving the fluid almost
totally free from any visible and extraneous
matter. On analysis the water was found
to contain lime, sulphuric and muriatic
acids, and magnesia, in much larger quan-
tities than in the specimens of Thames
water previously examined ; the proportion
of saline matter being increased four-fold.
The proportion of the muriatic is nearly
twelve times greater; that of carbonate of lime
between two and three times, and that of sul-
phate of lime five and a half times greater.
The water in its foul state had given very
obvious indications of both sulphur and
ammonia ; but neither of these substances
could be detected after its spontaneous
depuration. The source of these new
saline bodies is referable to the organic
substances, chiefly of an animal nature,
which are so copiously deposited in the
Thames. The depurating process may be
denominated a species of fermentation, in
which the softer and more soluble animal
compounds act as the ferment, and are

224

Varieties.

[FEB.

themselves destroyed ; while the salts that
are attached to them are left behind.
Hence the more foul the water, the more
complete the depuration ; and it is on this
principle that the popular opinion of the
peculiar fitness of Thames water for being
used at sea may be explained ; its extreme
impurity inducing a sufficient degree of fer-
mentation to effect the removal of all those
substances which might occasion any future
renewal of that process.

Atomic weight of Mercury. — In a recent
examination of the powder supposed to be
a protoxide of mercury, the attention of an
experienced American chemist, was turned
to the subject of the atomic weight of mer-
cury ; and upon applying to some of its
combinations the generally received theory
that binary compounds are more difficult of
decomposition than ternary, he was led to
the conclusion that its equivalent number
has been misstated by chemical writers.
The protosulphuret and protochloride are
both more easily decomposed than the com-
pounds containing double the proportion of
heir respective electro negatives. The only
cyanide of mercury is now considered as
containing two atoms of cyanogen. The
protoxide, it is believed, exists only in com-
bination with acids. He has very frequently
decomposed several of the protosalts of mer-
cury with alkalis, and the resulting powder
has uniformly contained metallic globules,
either visible to the naked eye or easily
rendered so by a slight degree of friction
with the finger; the pressure attending
which could only have brought already ex-
isting uncombined particles within the
sphere of each others attraction. When
calomel (protochloride of mercury) is de-
composed by an alkaline solution, if the
latter be cautiously dropped upon it, a red-
dish powder is at first apparent — (a careful
repetition of this experiment has placed its
accuracy beyond a doubt. On calomel,
prepared by precipitation from a solution of
crystallized protonitrate of mercury with
muriate of soda, which was repeatedly
washed with warm distilled water, with
solution of muriate of ammonia, and with
warm alcohol, he dropped a small quantity
of potass water, a reddish powder was very
distinctly observable. When sufficient al-
kali was added to decompose all the calomel,
the powder was of a brownish black colour ;
and when dry, contained visible globules of
metal. This shows the fallacy of one of
the reputed tests of the purity of calomel.)
This fact and the subsequent evidence of
the existence of metallic mercury in the
powder, may serve to explain each other.
A muriate of the alkali is formed at the
expense of a portion of water, and the oxy-
gen being left to the free exercise of its
affinity, forms with half of the metal a
binary compound, the red oxide through
which the remaining proportional of mer-
cury in a state of extreme comminution is

mixed. The powder will be found capable
of amalgamating gold, and the uncombined
metal may be rendered evident by friction,
percussion, or elevation of temperature, or
by pouring upon it a minimum quantity of
diluted acetic acid. The supernatant liquor
will contain peracetate. More conclusive
evidence of an error in the atomic weight
of any body, could not be adduced. An-
nexed is a table of the corrected atomic
weights of a few of the mercurial combi-
nations : —

Suboxide . . .
Oxide ....
Subchloride
Chloride . . .
Subiodide . .
Iodide ....
Subsulphurei
Sulphuret . .
Cyanide

Proportions
by

Analysis.

Atomic
Pro-
portions.

Atomic
Weights, j

100 m-
100 m-
100m-
100m-
100m-
100m-
100m-
100m-
100m-

- 4ox
- Sox
- 18 ch
[- 36 ch
- 62 io
-124 io
- 8su
- 16 su
- 26cy

2m-
1m-
2m-
1m-
2m-
1m-
1m-
1m-
1m-

-lox
-lox
-Ich
-Ich
-1 io
-1 io
-1 su
-1 su
-1 cy

208
108
236
136
324
224
216
116
126

Preparation of Hartshorn Jelly. — The
following process is due to a French che-
mist, M. Ferrez: four ounces of rasped
hartshorn are to be steeped in eight ounces
of water, acidulated with sixty grains of mu-
riatic acid for ten minutes, and then washed
carefully in two or three waters. It is theft
to be boiled with fresh water for half an
hour, pressed through a cloth, and the liquid
filtered while hot. This fluid is the jelly,
which being qualified by sugar or other in-
gredients, and boiled slightly, gives, upon
cooling, a perfectly clear and good jelly for
the table.

The Progress of Steam That a steam

carriage could be produced was well known
to every engineer, the object to be obtained
was to produce a machine which, when
every thing connected with it was consi-
dered, should be less expensive than a ve-
hicle drawn by horses ; whether this is
finally obtained is yet to be seen. But the
results which have appeared, from a compa-
rative trial near Liverpool, of certain loco-
motive engines, seem to have given rise to
a new question — whether or not a force ca-
pable of producing a velocity (on a rail-road
certainly) of 32 miles in the hour, may not
be applied by means of rotatory vanes, to
raise and direct a body in the air — or at any
rate guide a balloon. The success of such
an attempt is by no means more chimerical
than many projects which have been brought
to bear at the present time, would have ap-
peared half a century since ; and though we
are far from thinking that the element of
air, like the other elements, will be subjected
to the power of man, still it is by no means
improbable that material benefits may accrue
from the attempt.

1830.] f 225 J

WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS.

WORKS IN PREPARATION.

Excerpta Historica ; or, Illustrations of English
History. The object of this work is to elucidate
public events, domestic and foreign, our ancient
relations with France, Spain, and other nations,
the laws and constitution of England, the state of
the Navy and Army, the economy of the Royal
Household, the splendour, magnificence, and per-
sonal character of our Monarchs, the history of
Monastic Establishments, the lives of distinguish-
ed men, the costume,, modes of living, manners and
customs of our ancestors, the moral and political
condition of society, the state of language and
literature, the introduction and progress of the
Arts, Heraldry, Courts of Chivalry, and Gene-
alogy : in short, to collect whatever may present
vividly to the mind the characteristic features of
former ages. This collection will undoubtedly
prove of the utmost consequence to Historians
and Antiquaries ; and, indeed, to men of letters
generally. It is to be published in royal 8vo., in
Quarterly Parts, of not less than one hundred
pages, illustrated by wood-cuts. Part I. will ap-
pear in March.

The Portraits of the Countess Gower, the Hon.
Mrs. Hope, and Lady Charlotte Bury, from paint-
ings by Sir Thomas Lawrence, will form the ear-
liest of the forthcoming embellishments of La
Belle Assemblee, in continuation of its series of
the Portraits of the Female Nobility, now in pro-
gress.

BIOGRAPHY.

Memoirs of Sir James Campbell, of Ardkinglass,
written by Himself. In 2 vols.

Sir Ralph Esher, or Memoirs of a Gentlemen of
the Court of Charles II.

Personal Memoirs of Pryce Gordon, Esq. In 2
vols. 8vo.

The Private Correspondence of John Pinkerton,
Esq. Edited by Dawson Turner, Esq. In 2 vols.

The Correspondence of Sir John Sinclair, Bart.
In 2 vols.

Musical Memoirs, or an Account of the State of
Musfc in England, from the first Commemoration
of Handel in Westminster Abbey, in 1/84, to 1829,
with Anecdotes of the Professors. By W. T.
Parke. In 3 vols. small 8vo.

The Life of Sir Thomas Lawrence. By Thomas
Campbell, Esq. 8vo.

The Life of Titian. By James Northcote, Esq.
2 vols. 8vo.

The Life of Henry Fuseli, H. A. By John
Knowles, Esq. 2 vols.

Personal Memoirs of Captain Cooke. Written
by Himself, in 2 vols.

Life of Sir Joseph Banks, with selections from
his Correspondence. By a Member of the Royal
Society. 2 vols.

The Life of John Hampden. By Lord Nugent.
2 vols. 8vo.

Lives of British Painters. Vol.11. By Allan
Cunningham, will contain Memoirs of West,Opie,
Barry, Blake, Bird, Fuseli, Raeburn, &c. &c.
HISTORY.

History of Modern Greece. By James Emer-
son, Esq. In 2 vols. 8vo.

• A General History of the East Indies. By Mr.
Charles Marsh.

Private History of the French Cabinet, during
the period of the Directory, the Consulate, and the

M.M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 50.

Reign of Napoleon. By M. Bourrienne, Private
Secretary to the Emperor.

An Account of the Subversion of the Constitu-
tion in Portugal by Don Miguel. By Lord Por-
chester. In 8vo.

Commentaries of the Life and Reign of
Charles I. Vols. 3 and 4. By I. D'Israeli, Esq.

Mr. Britten's History and Antiquities of Bristol
Cathedral, with Eleven Engravings and One
Woodcut, is nearly ready. Also, the Fifth Num-
ber of his Picturesque Antiquities of the English
Cities.

Conversations upon Comparative Chronology
and General History, from the Creation of the
World to the Birth of Christ. In 12mo.
MISCELLANEOUS.

Dr. E. J. Seymour has in the press, Illustra-
tions of some of the Principal Diseases of the
Ovaria, their Symptoms and Treatment. In 8vo.,
with 14 Lithographic Engravings.

Personal Narrative of an Officer in the English
Army of Occupation in France. In 2 vols.

An Inquiry into the best means of Preventing
the Destruction of the Aborigines usually incident
upon Settling of new Colonies. ByS. Bannister,
late Attorney-General in New South Wales.

A Treatise on the Principles of Hydrostatics,
together with a new Theory of Hydrodynamics.
By Mr. Mosely,of St. John's College, Cambridge.

Letellier's Grammar translated from the French.
With numerous additions and explanations for
the use of the English Pupil. By Constant Coffyn
Cook and Housekeeper's Dsctionary. By Mat-
thew Scott, M.D. In 12mo.

The Picture of India ; exhibiting in a brief, yet
clear and graphic manner, the Geography, Topo-
graphy, History, &c. of that most iuteresting por-
tion of the earth ; and an impartial view of the
Indian Question, with reference to the impending
discussion of the renewal of the Charter. In 2
vols. 8vo.

Tales of Scottish Life and Character. In 3 vols.
NOVELS AND TALES.

A novel, Sir Ethelbert, or the Dissolution of
Monasteries. By the Author of " Santo Sebas-
tiano."

A New Work by the Authors of " Tales by the
O'Hara Family." In 3 vols.

Tho Tuilerios, an Historical Romance. In 3
vols.

A New Work, by the Author of " Sayings and
Doings."

A New Novel, by the Author of " Brambletye
Honse."

A -New Novel, by the Author of " Flirtation."

Gertrude, a Talc of the Sixteenth Century..
In 2 vols.

The Jew, a Novel. In 3 vols.

Wedded Life in the Upper Ranks. In 2 vols.

Sydenham, or Memoirs of a Man of the World.

Spanish Novellists. By Thomas Roscoe, Esq.
In 3 vols.

The Domnics Legacy. By the Author of " The
Sectarian."

Cloudsley, a Novel. By Wm. Goodwin, Author
of " Caleb'Williams." In 3 vols.

A New Tale of the Sea. By Mr. Cooper.

Manners of the Day, a Novel.

The Oxonians; or, a Glance at Society. lu
3 vols. small 8to.
2 G

226'

List of New Wor/cs.

[FEB.

Tales of the Five Senses. By the Author of
" The Collegians."

Basil Harrington and his Friends. In 3 vols.

The King's Own, a Tale of the Sea. In 3 vols.

Tales of a Tar. By Captain Glascock, Author
of" The Naval Sketch Book," &c.

Tales of the Colonies. By W. Howison, Esq.,
Author of " Sketches in Canada " In 2 vols.

East and West. By the Authors of " Rejected
Addresses.'' In 2 vols.

Carwell ; or, Crime and Sorrow. In one vol.
8vo.

The English at Home. By the Author of
41 English in Italy," Ac. In 3 vols. '

Scenes of Life and Sketches of Character. In
2 vols. Svo,

The Reminiscences of a Young Fencible.

Sketches of the Irish Bar. In 2 vols.

Stories from the Old Chroniclers, with pre-
fatory Essays and Historical Notes. By the late
Barry St. Leger, Esq. In 3 vols.

The Wanderer's Cave, and other Tales. By
the Author of «« The Children's Fireside." In
I2mo. boards.

POETRY.

Second Volume of Odes and Addresses to Great
People. By the Author of " Whims and Oddities.''

The second Volume of the Fall of Nineveh. By
Mr. Atherston.

Mount Sinai, a Poem. By William Phillips.
Illustrated by Mr. Martin.

St. James's, a Satirical Poem, in Six Epistles,
addressed to Mr. Crockford.

Poetical Beauties of the Poets of the l<Uh and
17th Centuries, from Surry to Dryden. Selected
by the Rev. Mr. Parry.

RELIGION, MORALS, &C.

Sermons on Several Occasions. By the Rev.
Henry Moore, Assistant for some years to the
Rev. John Wesley, A.M. With a Memoir of his
Life, and Christian Experience, from his Birth to
the first Conference held after the Death of Mr.
Wesley.

Sermons on Various Subjects. By the Rev.
Joseph Edwards, B.A.. Trinity College, Cam-
bridge ; Curate of Wattisham, Bricett, and Little
Fenborough.

The History of the Bible. By the Rev. O. R.
Gleig. In 2 vols.

The Protestant Instructor, or an Account of the
Rise and Persecutions of Christianity. By the
Rev. E. Harrison.

VOYAGES AND TRAVELS.

A Voyage to the Pacific and Behring's Strait.
By Captain F. W. Beechey, R.N., in which Pit-
cairn's Island, Taheiti, Kamtschatka, Loo Choo,
and other places in the Pacific, were visited. In
one vol. 8vo.

Travels among the Bedouias and Wahabees.
By the late John Lewis Burkhardt, Esq. In
one vol. 4to.

Travels in various Parts of Peru ; comprising a
Year's Residence at Potosi. By Edmund Temple.
In 2 vols. 8vo.

Travels in Poland and the Crimea, and various
Parts of the Turkish Empire. By the late James
Webster, Esq., of the Inner Temple. In 2 vols.
8vo.

Letters from Nova Scotia ; or, Sketches of a
Young Country. By Captain William Moorsom.
In onevol. 8vo.
Notes on Hayti, made during a Residence in

that Republic. By Charles Mackenzie, Esq., late
Consul-General at Hayti. In 2 vols. postSvo.

Four Years Residence in the West Indies. By
F. W. H. Bayley.

The Field Sports of the North of Europe ; in-
cluding a personal Narrarive of a Residence in
Norway and Sweden. By L. Lloyd, Esq. In

2 vols. 8vo.

Letters from Switzerland and Italy. By John
Came, Esq.

Journal of a Nobleman at the Congress of
Vienna. In 2 vols. post 8vo.

LIST OF NEW WORKS.

BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.

Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, with No-
tices of his Life. By Thomas Moore. Vol. l.
4to. j£2. 2s.

The Life of Major General Sir Thomas Munro,
Bart., late Governor of Madras. By the Rev.
Mr. Gleig. In 2 vols. 8vo. j£l. 12s.

Memoirs of Rear Admiral Paul Jones, compiled
from Original Journals and Correspondence. In
2 vols. I2mo. 14s.

Memoirs and Correspondence of Thomas Jef-
ferson, late President of the United States. Vols.

3 and 4. 8vo. 28s.

Annual Biography and Obituary for 1829.
8vo. 15s.

Historical Memoirs of Andrew Melville. In
18mo. 4s.

Memoirs of John Martyn and Thomas Martyn,
Professors of Botany in the University of Cam-
bridge for Ninety-three Years. By G. C. Gor-
ham. In 8vo. 10s. 6d.

A Topographical and Genealogical History of
the Hundred of Carhampton. By James Savage.
In 1 vol. 8vo. 18s.

Beverlac ; or, the Antiquities and History of
the Town of Beverley. By G. Poulson, Esq.
In 2 vols. 8vo. .£1.128. ; 2 vols. 4to. j£2. I6s.bds.

Times of Trial ; being a Brief Narrative of the
Progress of the Reformation, and of the Sufferings
of the Reformers. By Mary Anne Kelty, Author
of " The Favourite of Nature." In 1 vol. post 8vo.
10s. 6d.

EDUCATION.

A Compendium of Astronomy. By R. T. Lin-
nington, Author of " The Companion to the
Globes." 12mo. 8s.6d.

Excitement; or, a Book to Induce Boys to
Read. 18mo. with a Frontispiece. 4s. 6d. half
bound.

Beatson's Index to Sophocles. 8vo. 12s.

True Stories from the History of Ireland.
Second Series. By James M'Gregor. 18mo.
3e. 6d.

The Family Classical Library. Vol. I. 4s. 6d.

A Compendius Grammar of the Egyptian Lan-
guage. By Rev. Henry Tattam, M. A. 8vo. 18s.

LAW.

Petersdorff's Practical and Elementary Abridg-
ment of the Cases argued and determined in all
the Courts of Law. Vol. 12. In royal 8vo.
£1. 11s. 6d.

Palmer's Practice in the House of Lords. In
Svo. 14s.

MEDICAL.

Treatise on Fever. By Southwood Smith. In
Svo. 14s.

1830.]

List of New Works.

227

Practical Remarks on Amputations, Fractures,
and Strictures of the Urethra. By Stephen Love
Hammick. In 8vo. 9s. boards.

Alcock's Lectures on Practical and Medical
Surgery. In 12mo. 10s. 6d. In 8vo. coloured, 21s.

A System of Regional and Surgical Anatomy.
From the French, with Additions. By C. F.
Staunton, M.D., and G. T. Haden, M.R.C.S.I.
Parti. With Plates. In Svo. 2s.

An Inquiry into the Nature of Parasitic Tumors.
From the German «f F. J. Meyen, M.D. In
12mo. 2s.

Introductory Lectures to a Course of Military
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PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS.

Patents sealed in January, 1830.

To William Hale, Colchester, Essex, mechanist,
for having invented a machine or method of rais-
ing or forcing water for propelling vessels. —
12th January ; 6 months.

To James Carpenter, Willenhall, Wolverhamp-
ton, Stafford, and John Young, Wolverhampton,
locksmiths, for having invented certain improve-
ments on locks and other securities applicable
to doors and other purposes. — 18th January;
6 months.
2 G 2

List of Patents.

To William Parr, Union Place, City Road,
Middlesex, gentleman, for having invented or
found out a new method of producing a recipro-
cating action by means of rotatory motion to be
applied to the working of pumps, mangles, and
all other machinery in or to which reciprocating
action is required or may be applied.— 18th Jan-
uary ; 4 months.

To Edward Dakeyne and James Dakeyue,
Parley Pale, Derby, merchants , for having in-
vented a machine or hydraulic engine for apply-
ing the power or pressure of water, steam, and
other elastic fluids to the purpose of working
machinery and other uses requiring power and
applicable to that of raising or forcing of fluids.—
21st January; 6 months.

To John Yates, Hyde, Chester, calico printer,
for having invented a method or process of giving
a metallic surface to cotton, silk, linen, and other
fabrics. — 26th January ; 8 months.

List of Patents which having been granted in
the month »f February 1816, expire in the
present month of February 1830.

1. John Millington, London, for machinery
by which vessels mat; be propelled in the water.

• 3. John George Drake, London, for a certain
method of expelling the molasses of syrup out
of refined sugar in a shorter time than is at
present done with pipe clay.

— John Budgeon, Dart-ford, /or aprocessfor
reducing rags or articles composed of silk or
cotton after they have beennsed,and bringing
them into their original state, and rendering
the material of which they are composed fit to
be manufactured and again applied to bene-
ficial and useful purposes.

6. John Thomas Dawes, West Bromwicb,/or
improvements in steam engines, applicable to
other purposes.

— Joseph Barker, Camberwcll, for certain
means of continuing the motion of machinery.

10. William Milton, Heckfield, for improve-
ments upon the wheeJs and perches of car-
riages.

20. Henry de Sarul, London, for improved
cylindrical gold and silver sweep and washing
machine.

— William Baynham,-London,/or a composi-
tion for making leather and other article;!
water-proof.

29. Joseph Manton, London, for his improve-
ments in fire arms and the shoeing of horses .

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS.

SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE, P.R.A., F.R.S.,
LL.D., &C.

PRESSED as we are for room, it is impos-
sible for us to pay the enlarged attention we
could wish to the high professional merits
of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the President of
the Royal Academy, of whom death has just
suddenly and unexpectedly deprived us. In-
deed, we can do little more than offer a
brief and simple statement of the few facts
and dates which have come within our know-
ledge.

Mr. Lawrence's father, formerly an offi-
cer in the excise, kept the White Lion inn,
in Broad-street, Bristol, where the child
appears to have been born, in the year 1769.
His mother was the daughter of a clergy-
man, the incumbent of Tenbury, in Glou-
cestershire. He had two brothers and two
sisters ; of whom the sole survivor is his
younger sister, the wife of Dr. Bloxam, of
Rugby.

When young Lawrence was about a year
old, his father removed to Devizes, in Wilt-
shire, where he became the landlord of the
Black Bear. The old gentleman is de-
scribed as a fine tall man, eccentric in
dress and manner, sensible and clever, fond
of reading and reciting Shakspeare and
Milton, and much gratified when his supe-
rior guests condescended to become listeners.
It is possible that the boy imbibed this pas-
sion from his parent ; as Sir Thomas Law-
rence was always distinguished for skill,
taste, and feeling, in recitation. He was
also, in his youth, an elegant dancer, fencer,
and billiard-player ; and with an adequate
knowledge of music, a capital singer, and
performer on the violin. How he first ac-

quired a taste and talent for drawing, does
not appear ; but, when not more than six
years old, his skill in sketching likenesses
procured for him great celebrity. When
about this age, he produced two portraits, in
profile, of the late Lord and Lady Kenyon ;
the former of which her Ladyship always
considered to be the most faithful of any
that had been taken of her husband. At
the age of nine, — it is said, without instruc-
tion from any one — he was capable of copy-
ing historical pictures in a masterly style ;
he succeeded also in compositions of his own,
particularly in one of Peter denying Christ ;
and, in about seven minutes, he scarcely
ever failed in producing a strong likeness,
distinguished, too, by freedom and grace, of
any one who might be present.

Not succeeding in his occupation as an
inn-keeper, at Devizes, his father retired to
private life, in Alfred-street. Bath. There,
the boy was, for a time, under the profes-
sional care of Mr. Hoare. an eminent cray-
on painter, and father of Prince Hoare, Esq.,
the well-known dramatist, &c. There, too,
he executed crayon likenesses, at half-a-
guinea, and a guinea each, by which means
he was the chief, if not sole support of his
father, brothers, and sisters. The Hon.
John Hamilton and Sir Henry Harpur,
Bart., patronized him warmly : the former
allowing him access to some fine productions
of the old masters, and the latter generously
offering to expend £1000. on the completion
of his education in Italy. The offer seems
to have been somewhat proudly declined.

In 17?33, before he had completed his four-
teenth year, young Lawrence obtained from
the Society for the Encouragement of Art,

1830.]

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons.

220

&c., in the Atlelphi, for the crayon drawing
of the Transfiguration of Raffaelle, the So-
ciety's prize of a silver palette, gilt, with the
additional, and then very unusual compli-
ment of five guineas.

At the age of fifteen, this distinguished
and promising youth went to Salisbury,
where he was patronised by Dr. Hancock,
in whose family, two of his portraits, in
coloured chalk, yet remain. On the recom-
mendation of Dr. Hancock and his friends,
he next removed to London, accompanied
by one brother, and his two sisters, who re-
sided with him in Greek-street, Soho. Many
of his pencil sketches, &c., were, at that
time, disposed of by his father, as low as
half-a guinea each. All of these that Sir
Thomas could afterwards meet with, he is
known to have re-purchased, and sometimes
at very high prices.

Mr. Lawrence, for some time after his
residence in London, painted heads at three
guineas each. In 1787 (the season of Wes-
tall's first appearance), and before he had
completed his eighteenth year, he exhibited
seven pieces at Somerset House. Amongst
these was a portrait of . Mrs. Esten, in the
character of Belvidera. In 1788, he had
six portraits in the exhibition ; in 1789,
amongst thirteen of his pictures, were por-
traits of the Duke of York, and three ladies
of quality; and in 1790, he exhibited por-
traits of the Queen, the Princess Amelia,
and a whole length of Miss Farren. The
last-mentioned fine picture was hung as a
pendant to Sir Joshua Reynolds's celebrated
whole length of Mrs. Billington, as St. Ce-
cilia.

Amongst Mr. Lawrence's earliest and
most generous patrons was the late Lord De
Tabley. His exquisite painting of Lady
De Tabley, in the character of Hope, one
of his finest productions, will be long re-
membered.

In 1792, when he exhibited a portrait of
George III., he was a principal Painter in
Ordinary to His Majesty. The Prince of
Wales, our present King, having been
struck with the beautiful fidelity of some of
Sir Thomas Lawrence's likenesses to ladies
whom he knew, honoured him with some
commissions, with which it is hardly neces-
sary to say he was abundantly satisfied.
From that period, the painter's fame and
fortune were established. Probably no artist
ever painted so many portraits of his sove-
reign as Sir Thomas Lawrence has produced
of George the Fourth, with whose friendship,
as well as patronage, he was honoured for a
series of years, until death dissolved their
intercourse.

After the general peace of 1814, Sir Tho-
mas painted the portraits of Blucher, Pla-
toff, Metternich, Castlereagh, Wellington,
•Sec. ;— subsequently, those of Louis XVIII.
and several members of the royal family, at
Paris; the Allied Sovereigns, and their
Ministers, at Vienna ; the Pope, and Cardi-
nal Gonsalvi, with others, at Rome : and,

more recently, that of Charles X., of France,
by whom he was invested with the insignia
of the Legion of Honour.

On the death of Sir Benjamin West, in
1820, Sir Thomas Lawrence was elected to
succeed him, as President of the Royal
Academy. He was then at Rome, em-
ployed on a portrait of the Pope, but he
speedily returned to England.

In his high and honourable office, Sir
Thomas Lawrence's elegance and suavity
of manner, united with a strong impression
of his general benevolence and liberality,
rendered him eminently popular. It is
greatly to the credit of the Academy, that,
in the person of Martin Archer Shee, Esq.
it has elected a successor, at least equally
worthy.

The critical eye cannot have failed to
remark that, although, from circumstances,
confined almost exclusively to portrait-
painting, Sir Thomas Lawrence's genius
was essentially historic and poetic. Inde-
pendently of his noble portraits, witness his
Lucifer, Hamlet, &c. It is said, also, that
his attention had been long engaged upon a
grand composition from Milton. In por-
traits, he possessed the eminent merit of
presenting the most exquisite likenesses, at
the same time that he heightened in beauty,
character, and expression, every feature of
his original. Let critics, when so disposed,
compare him with Rubens, Titian, Velas-
quez, Vandyke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, &c.

Sir Thomas Lawrence's prices were ne-
cessarily high — £600. for a whole length, a
moiety of which was expected to be paid
on the first sitting. No wonder, therefore,
that his professional income should have
been estimated at from £10,000. to £15,000.
a-year ; no wonder at the immense number
of pictures which he has left unfinished. Of
these, many will, of course, be handed over,
for their last touches, to our chief surviving
artists ; and, from his happy skill in deline-
ating the female form and face, Pickersgill,
we apprehend, will have an abundant por-
tion of them on his hands.

However, notwithstanding his high
prices, and consequent large income, Sir
Thomas has died poor, and embarrassed in
his circumstances ; yet, contrary to report,
he was no gamester ; his involvements are
ascribed chiefly to his liberal and profuse
expenditure in the purchase of scarce and
valuable works of art. His collection of
drawings, etchings, &c., is supposed to be
worth £50,000. ; a sum which, it may be
presumed, will more than cover all defi-
ciencies.

For many years Sir Thomas Lawrence
was intimately connected with the Siddons
and Kemble family. It is generally under-
stood that there was an attachment be-
tween him and one of the daughters of Mrs.
Siddons; but, that the mother's consent
was refused, on the ground that his income
was not then adequate to her wishes and
expectations. Be that as it may, the lady

230

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons.

[FEB.

died, and Sir Thomas remained unmar-
ried.

It was on Saturday, the 2d of January,
when he dined with a party at Mr. Peel's,
that Sir Thomas experienced the commence-
ment of that attack which terminated in his
death, on the 7th of that month. In the
interim, however, he was several times
abroad ; and, for the Athenaeum Club
House, on the Wednesday, only thirty
hours before his decease, he was anxiously
engaged on a splendid portrait of His Ma-
jesty ; thus verifying his motto — Loyal a la
mart. His last drawing, lithographed by
Lane, and now at every printseller's, was a
]H)rtrait of Fanny Kemble.

Sir Thomas Lawrence's illness was un-
derstood to be of an inflammatory nature ;
but, on opening the body, by Mr. Green,
the Lecturer on Anatomy, at the Royal
Academy, it appeared that, although inflam-
mation of the bowels had taken place, the
actual cause of his death was an extensive
and complicated ossification of the vessels of
the heart.

Sir Thomas Lawrence was considered so
handsome in his early youth, that Mr.
Hoare is reported to have said of him, that
if he had to chuse a head for a picture of
Christ, he would select Lawrence for that
study. This character he retained in an
eminent degree through life. He was
thought to resemble Mr. Canning, and he
was proud of the resemblance. Two or
three slight portraits of him are amongst his

friends; one, we believe, remained in his
own possession ; besides an exceedingly fine
one, in rapid progress, at his death, which
he intended as a present to the Literary and

Philosophical Institution of his native town

Bristol. He had appointed the 12th of
January for a sitting, to his friend and
townsman, Baily, the sculptor, for a bust.
Since his decease that able artist has taken
a cast of his head, from which it is his inten-
tion to proceed.

On the evening of Wednesday, the 20th
of January, the remains of Sir Thomas
Lawrence were removed from his house, in
Russel Square, to Somerset House, where
they lay in state on the following morning,
the day appointed for his public funeral, at
St. Paul's Cathedral. The order of proces-
sion resembled that which was adopted at
the funeral of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The
Academicians, Associates, and Students,
attended ; also the officers, &c. of the So-
cieties of Painters in Water Colours and
British Artists. There were forty-two
mourning coaches, the coaches of all the
Ministers, many of the nobility, and about
two hundred others. In all respects, every
possible mark of respect was paid to the
memory of the deceased. His remains
were interred in the vault beneath the south
aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral, in the imme-
diate vicinity of the grave of Sir Christopher
Wren, and divided from Sir Joshua Rey-
nolds's only by that of Sir Benjamin West.

MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT.

THE general tenor of our country letters is, that an Agricultural Report for the past
month must be chiefly meteorological, with a detail of home business, of almost universal
distress in the midst of overflowing abundance, and of the great and various efforts making
for its relief. About the middle of last month, in the most forward districts, and among
the best farmers, winter fallowing was completed, and some little ploughing done for beans,
our earliest spring crop. Upon cold and difficult soils, tenanted by persons in distressed
circumstances, all out-door business is very backward ; the chief exertions of such having
been directed to getting their corn to market with all possible expedition, in order to raise
money for their immediate occasions. The commencement of the frost put an immediate
stop to field labour, with the exception of carting manure upon the land, and taking back
bank and ditch earth, as a fresh supply. Felling trees, carting wood, and road-mending,
have also formed the usual routine of home occupation. To speak of the weather, during
the last thirteen months, our climate, however proverbially variable, has surely outdone
all its former outdoings. No living man, we apprehend, ever before witnessed such
incessant alternations of wind and weather. During the severity of the frost, we were
somewhat surprised at finding the wind quoted, in most parts, as from the N. and N. E. ;
whereas, in our vicinity, it has seldom remained long in those quarters of the compass,
blowing chiefly, during the frost, from the E. S. E. and even the S. To this general
southerly tendency of the wind, we no doubt owe the short duration of the frost, and
frequent thaws. Had the wind, as in former hard winters, blown steadily from the N.
and N. E., we might again have had frost and skaiting-fairs upon the Thames. But culti-
vation, draining, and clearing the country of wood, has softened the ancient rigour of our
climate, and never more will Father Thames bear the burden of hackney-coaches plying
upon his glassy bosom, as happened a few years before the Revolution ; nor will, pro-
bably, another " Tiddy Doll" (whom, by the by, we knew personally) ever again
hate a similar occasion to exclaim "where are you now, Mary?" as in the great frost
of 1739-40.

The thaw now appears to be general, with rain, the wind full south, and we now look
for a cheering appearance of the late sown wheats, which have lain dormant and hidden in
the soil, an unprecedented length of time. The frost very fortunately put an end to the

1830.] Agricultural Report. 231

ravages of insectile vermin, and has been further instrumental in the destruction of vast
numbers of vermin of another description, which of late years have increased multitudi-
nously in most parts of the country — crows, rooks, wood-pigeons, and small birds of every
description. The gunners have taken an active part in aiding Nature in this her neces-
sary work of cruelty. Roads have been rendered impassable in various parts, by a depth
of snow which has not been witnessed for many years ; and, on one occasion, upwards of
one hundred men were employed in order to make a passage for the mails and stage-
coaches. The deep covering of snow has, however, been beneficial to the lands in a double
view ; as a preventive of the frost from penetrating too deep into the soil, and as a manure,
by its nitrous and fructifying quality. Some time and labour have been thrown away, by
attempting to cart and even to plough during the intervals of frost and thaw ; particularly
upon heavy lands, which such weather leaves in the same sodden and puddled state as
constant rain. The snow has also protected the turnips, but they cannot be expected 4o
remain long sound after a change of weather. The sheep are said to do very well upon
them ; and these animals, to which moisture is known to be the great bane, are, by an
English custom, left abroad in deluges of wet, their fleeces constantly soaked through, and
their loins chilled ; yet they generally escape in some sort of condition. But surely a
superior condition of our flocks, both in wool and carcase, would well repay the labour
and expense of sheltering and of supplying them with food, which, at any rate, must be
done, whilst they remain in the field covered with snow.

That immense bulk of fodder, of hay and straw, of which not long since we made such
boast, has already been considerably, indeed alarmingly, reduced on some farms, where, in
case of a protracted spring, a deficiency of food for the stock will be most distressing, if not
ruinous. Great quantities of barley have been thrashed for the straw, and the corn itself,
perhaps our largest crop, is too generally unfit for any purpose but cattle food.

The late crop of wheat is again represented variously, with more complaint of late, both
of the yield and the quality ; and it is now said the stock of English wheat will be nearly
exhausted before harvest. Those farmers who have no other resource, have nearly cleared
off the whole of their corn, and disposeable live stock, the value of which has been totally
absorbed by rent, taxes, and poor's rates, leaving yet, with too many, considerable arrears !
From some counties a slight advance is reported in the price of store stock, but at most of the
great fairs, there has been the usual glut of fat cattle and sheep, which could not be
ridded at any price, and this was particularly the case at Aylesbury, with the finest show
that has been there seen during many years, in consequence, it appears, that the number
of stall-fed cattle at present, is considerately below that of former years ; as much is averred
of the reduced number of sheep in the hands of our flock masters. Pigs have had some-
what of a start again in price. Apples and potatoes also begin to feel the effects of con-
sumption. The rabbits and hares, near the great preserves, have done immense mischief
by cropping the young buds of the wood, during the hard weather. The former con-
tinue to increase in such multitudes, that neither the national consumption, nor any
means that can be adopted, are sufficient to reduce them. Game is said to be scarce,
excepting where preserved. The wages of labourers in regular employ, from 12s. to 9s.
per week, in the best counties ; 8s. and 9s. in the poor land districts. The reports from
Scotland are more favourable in all respects, than from any part of South Britain. How
happens it that their labourers are more generally employed, and in so much more com-
fortable circumstances than ours ? Is there then a lesson to be taken from our northern
brethren ? On one subject, however, it does not appear that we can gather much
instruction from them. Their writers tell us that, in the case of Gowrie, alone, the
deficiency in the last crop of wheat, occasioned by the " wheat-fly," amounted to the
value of £36,000. Now this is somewhat like using the ancient figure of putting the
cart before the horse, since, but for the nature of the season, neither fly nor consequent
deficiency would have been heard of. From the multitude and variety of memoirs and
essays on this subject, it would seem that certain northern heads were ven table flies*
nests, and a large premium for fly-traps will, no doubt, be shortly offered.

The accounts from almost every quarter of England of unemployed labourers, and their
dissolute, demoralized state, are most distressing. Their diabolical cruelty to the innocent
animals of those persons whom they deem their enemies, still continues. They are
driven to a state of absolute madness and distraction ; and all the boasted religious
instruction, which has been made so great a point of, within the last thirty years, seems
to have been cast upon the waters. A correspondent from a great county tells us that it
has cost that county nearly forty thousand pounds, within a year, to provide the com-
monalty with religious books and instruction ; on which he remarks, that such a sum
would have been far more charitably, morally, and better employed in relieving their
physical wants ! The returns of rent made, instead of ingratiating and encouraging the
tenantry, seem to have given very general, and at present, not much concealed dissatis-
faction. The universal cry is for an adequate reduction of rent, to enable them to afford
which, the landed interest have it in their power to reduce taxation and redress grievances.
The spirit of association for addressing the legislature is alive, active, and energetic
throughout the land, guided by men of the highest character for both influence and

232 Agricultural Report. £Fj?B.

talent. To addresses, whether of petitions or remonstrance, from such a source, the
parliament will feel it a bounden duty to attend. It is most desirable, however, that those
who petition, would calmly consider to what degree the evils of which they complain, may
have been attributable to their own errors, and how far relief may still be in their own power.
This passage must not be understood as extending beyond the immediate state of our
agricultural and commercial concerns ; for as to the abuses and systematic errors of our
government, unless they are reformed, no certain and permanent material benefit can be
obtained. With respect to an immediate remission of taxes, it will be obviously nugatory
to require too much. For example, the malt and beer duties, on which, it would seem,
Mr. Coke's opinion deserves most attention. Relief from both cannot be expected ; and
it will be more for the general interest that malt should be left free. It may, perhaps,
appear, anon, that the long-winded speculations and controversies on our CURRENCY
have not been worth the paper on which they have been written.

Smithfield.—'Beef, 3s. to 4s. 2d — Mutton, 3s. 6d. to 4s. 4d Veal, 3s. 4d. to 6s. 4d.

Pork, 3s. 8d. to 5s. Gd — Rough Fat, 2s. 2d.

Corn Exchange. — Wheat, 40s. to 65s — Barley, 27s. to 36s — Oats, 16s. to 32s —
Fine Bread, the London 41b. Loaf, lOd — Hay, 44s to 100s. per load. — Clover, ditto,
55s. to 112s — Straw, 36s. to 45s.

Coals in the Pool, 32s. 6d. to 37s. 3d. per chaldron.
Middlesex, January 25*.

MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT.

SUGAR. — The demand for Muscovadoes continued general last week, and considering
the small shew of sugars, the purchases were extensive. The prices of strong and colour-
ing sugars were about Is. higher ; the other qualities were unvaried. The stock of sugar
is nearly the same as last year. The weekly deliveries are increasing. At the close of
the market the estimated sales of this day were 1,100 hogsheads and tierces, including the
public sale of St. Lucia, which went off at full price. In refined goods the prices were Is. and
2s. higher : in the middling qualities there was no alteration : the low goods sold at a
small reduction. Molasses were dull at a small decline. Average price of sugar in last
week's Gazette, 23s. 6d. Foreign Sugars were small parcels of the late public sale, which
were disposed of. Middling white Havannah, 44s., yellow, 23s. 6d. to 28s. Sugar
Duties. — In an interview between the ministers and West India planters, on Saturday,
the Duke of Wellington held out not the slightest hopes that any duties on any sort
would be taken off.

COFFEE. — The coffee market was rather heavy last week. Foreign and East India
were a shade lower ; Sumatra, 27s. 6d. to 28s. ; low, good, ordinary St. Domingo, 31s.
The parcels of Jamaica and Berbice suitable for home consumption went off at full
prices.

RUM, BRANDY. HOLLANDS. — The rum market remained from last week : purchases
were inconsiderable, the buyers refusing to accede to the advanced prices. Brandy and
Geneva were neglected.

HEMP, FLAX, AND TALLOW — The tallow market has been declining : the prices at
6d. to Is. lower ; flax is without variation. Hemp at a small decline.

Bullion per Oz Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. Od. — Foreign Gold in Bars,

£3. 17s. 9d. — New Doubloons, £0. Os. Od — New Dollars, £0. Os. Od — Silver in Bars
(standard), £0. Os. Od.

Course of Foreign Exchange.— Amsterdam, 12. 7^- — Rotterdam, 12. 74 — An-
twerp, 12. 74 — Hamburgh, 14 Paris, 25. 80 — Bourdeaux, 26. 10 — Berlin, 0. 0 —

Frankfort-on-the-Main, 154. 0 Petersburg, 10 Vienna, 10. 19.— Madrid, 35. 0^ —

Cadiz, 35. Of — Bilboa, 35. OJ Barcelona, 35. 0| — Seville, 35. 0£ — Gibraltar 47. 0|.

—Leghorn, 47- Of — Genoa, 26 Venice, 47. 0^ — Malta, 48. 0| — Naples, 39. 04 —

Palermo, 119. 0 — Lisbon, 43. OJ Oporto, 43. OJ — Rio Janeiro, 24. 0 — Bahia, 26. 0|.

Buenos Ayres, 0. 0 Dublin. 1. 0£ Cork, 1. 0£.

Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of
WOLFE, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill. — Birmingham CANAL, (i sh.) 300/. —
Coventry, 01. — Ellesmere and Chester, 103/ — Grand Junction, 284Z — Kennet and Avon,
27i/.— Leeds and Liverpool, 430/.— Oxford 665/.— Regent's, 22£/.— Trent and Mersey,
(J sh.), 780/.— Warwick and Birmingham, 270/.— London DOCKS (Stock), 821 — West
India (Stock), 1887. — East London WATER WORKS, 114/.' — Grand Junction, 01. —
West Middlesex, 774^ — Alliance British and Foreign INSURANCE, 101. — Globe, 164/.
—Guardian, 274/._ Hope Life, 6£/ — Imperial Fire, 112/ — GAS-LIGHT Westminster
chartered Company, 551 — City, 190/ — British, O/ — Leeds, 195/.

1830.] t 233 3

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES,

Announced from December 22d, 1829, to Jan,. 23d, 1830, in the London Gazette.
BANKRUPTCIES SUPER-

SEDED.
Newcombe, T. York, common carrier
Woodward, R. Great St. Thomas

Apostle, packer
Fox, S. Blackfriars-road, druggist.

BANKRUPTCIES.
[This Month, 141.]

Solicitors' JVames are in
Parenthesis.

Addis, T. Hereford, builder. (Boden-
ham, FurnivaPs-inn ; Bodenham
and Co., Hereford

Alsop, T. Manchester, grocer. (Forbes,
Ely-place ; Milnes, Derbyshire

Audley, W. Grafton-street, victual-
ler. (Stevenson, Paternoster-row

Armitage, W. Netherend-in-Denby,
fancy-manufacturer. (Walker and
Co., Lincoln's-inn-fields ; Allison,
Huddersfield

Bowles, J. Balsham. grocer. (Gatty
and Co., Angel-court

Bloxham, J. M. Halesowen, apothe-
cary. (Barber, Fetter-lane ; Fel-
lowes, Dudley

Bowes, J. Leeds, flax-spinner. (Ma-
kinson and Co , Temple ; Foden,
Leeds

Baynton, T. Spa, Gloucester, coaeh-
proprietor. (Warren, Symond's-inn

Burt, J. Whitchurch, linen-draper.
(Sole, Aldermanbury

Bowler, J. Kidderminster, carpet-
manufacturer.(Bigge, Southampton-
buildings ; HaUen and Co., Kid-
derminster

Buckingham, S. I. Islington, victual-
ler. (Parker, FurnivalVinn

Brancker, T. Leeds, merchant. (Ri-
chardson and Co., Poultry ; Ri-
chardson, Leeds ; Davenport, Liver-
pool

Birks, j. Wickersley, maltster.
(Lever, Gray's-inn

Birks, j. Doncaster, cattle-salesman.
(Lever, Gray's-inn ; Fisher, Don-
caster

Budd, j. Minchinhampton, maltster
and baker. (Beethams, Freeman's-
court

Brashier, E. J. Chancery-lane, shoe-
maker. (Swan, Bell-yard, Doctor's-
commons

Bre;r, J. and J. sen. and jun. Luton,
dealers. (Taylor, Featherstone-
buildings ; Williamson and Co..
Luton

Buxton, O. and T. Preston, corn-
dealers. (Norris and Co., John-
street ; Walker, Preston

Carne, G. H. Limehouse, victualler.
(Marson and Son, Newington

Crawley, S. Hemel-Hampstead, linen-
draper. (Farrar, Godliman-street

Crole, D. Sweeting's-allev, broker.
IPaterson and Co., Old Broad-
street

Crump, T. and J. Tewkesbury,
woollen-drapers. (King, Serjeant's-
inn ; Brookes and Co., Tewkes-

Clark, T. B. and W. Woodbridge.
drapers. (Jones, Size-lane

Cooke, S. Coventry, riband-manfac-
turer. (Austen and Co., Gray's-
inn ; Troughton and Co., Coventry

Clarke, E. and A. Deacon, Goswell-
street, drapers. (Bartlett and Co.,
Nicho'as-lane

Coppock, J. and C. Cross, Gutter-
lane, silk-warehousmen. (Fisher,
Walbrook-buildings

Crook, H. Preston, coach-proprie-
tor, (Kurd and Co., Temple ;
Charnley. Preston

Dewhirst, ' T. Sheffield, grocer.
(Walter, Symond's-inn ; Parker
and Co., Sheffield

Davenport, E. Bristol, grocer. (Brit-
tan, Basinghall-street ; Bfivan and
Co., Bristol

Dawson, W. Tetford, carpenter.
(Young and Co., St. Mildred's-
court ; Pye, Louth

Davis, S. S. and J. S. and j. Robin-
son, Liverpool, merchants. (Taylor
and Co., Temple ; Pritt and Co.,
or Lowndes and Co., Liverpool

Downing, H. Smethwick, iron-mas-
ter. (Tooke and Co., Bedford-row J
Capper, Birmingham

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 50.

Elhm, T. Liverpool, bricklayer.
(Chester, Staple-inn ', Cort, Liver-
pool

Elgic, G. T. Silver-street, wine-mer-
chant. (Wilkinson and Co., Buck-
lersbury

Fisher, W. Keswick, jeweller. (Ad-
dison, Gray's-inn ; Li^htfoot, Kes-
wick

Fraser, J. Bath, perfumer. (Simpson,
Furnival's-inn ; Brokenbrow, Bath

Farrant, T. Egham, upholsterer.
(Yates and Co., Bury-street

Franklin R. Southampton-row, tailor.
(Brough, Chancery-lane

Fox, S. of Hackney, Edmonton,
Stoke Newington, and Blackfriars-
road, surgeon and apothecary.
(Gregory, King's Arms-yard

Guy, A. Chippenham, money-scri-
vener. (Pinneger, Gray's-inn ;
Pinneger, Chippenham ; Clarke and
Son, Bristol

Goodchild, J.Reading, grocer. (Hore,
Serle-street ; Mogridge, Reading

Gore, E. Worcester, brewer. (Platt
and Co., New Boswell-court ; Hyde,
Worcester

Geddes, R. Fenchurca-ttreet, wine-
merchant. (Murphy, Castle-alley.
Cornhill

Gray, j. Lambeth, coal-merchant.
(Bennet, Adam's-court, Bread-
street

Gaskell, N. Wigan, iron-master.
(Keightley, Temple; Winstanley,
Liverpool

Howard, R. High Holborn, baker.
(Turner, Cliflord's-inn

Hattcrsley, D. Bilton-with-Harrogate,
innkeeper. (Dawson and Co., New
Boswell-court ; Powell and Son,
Knaresborough

Hammond, G. Piccadilly, draper.
(Ashurst, Newgate-street

Hastie, T. Whitehaven, merchant.
(Falcon, Temple; Hodgson, White-
haven

Huddlestone, S. Ardwick, .saddler.
(Norris and Co., John-street ; Ry-
mer and Co., Manchester

Hendrey, J. Great Newport-street,
plumber. ^Pontifex, St. Andrew's-
court

Howells, R. Llandovery, shopkeeper.
(Vizard and Co., Lincoln's-inn-
fields ; Gregory and Co., Bristol

Hall, T. G. Kingston-upon-Hull,
merchant. (Walker, Old Broad-
street

Hawkins, C. E. Crown-street, Soho,
victualler. (Evans and Co., Ken-
nington-cross

Haxby, J. Brotherton, lime-dealer.
(Milne and Co., Temple ; Walker
and Co., Manchester

Horridge, J. Liverpool, confectioner.
(Smith, Chancery-lane ; Bristow,
Liverpool

Harris, J. Stepney, currier. (Sandom,
Dunster-court

Judson, C. jun. Ripon, upholsterer.
(Beverley, Temple ; Coates, Ripon

Jacobs, J . Walton-upon-Thames,
auctioneer. (Norton, jewin-street

Jacob, S. and J. Houndsditch, fur-
riers. (Pasmore, Sambrook-court

Kemball, J. Haverhill, grocer. (Gat-
ty and Co., Angel-court

Leach, J. H. Canterbury, draper.
(Ashurst, Newgate-street

Lloyd, J. Liverpool, linen-draper.
(Kurd and Co., Temple; Booth,
Manchester ; Brown, Liverpool

Lang, N. Teignmouth, grocer.
(Darke, Red Lion-square; Herne.
Exeter

Lodge, D. Almondbury, fancy-manu-
facturer. (Walker and Co., Lin-
coln's-inn-fields ; Allison, Hudders-
field

Lamb, J. jun. Nottingham, tobacco-
nist. (Hurd and Co., Temple ;
Greasley, Nottingham
Luckett, W. Bloxam, dealer in cat-
tle. (Aplin, Banbury
Mears, W. Chapel-street, Mayfair,

baker. (Griffith, Queen-street
Mortlock, W. Rochester, linen-draper.
(Rogers and Son, Manchester-build-
ings

Meekley, W. East Retford, lace-
manufacturer. (Dawson and Co.,
New Boswell-court ; Mee and Co.,
East Retford

2 H

MurgtroyU, W. Sculcoates, grocer.
(Adlington and Co., Bedford-row ;
Perrit, Kingston-upon-Hull

Moody, R. Romsey, plumber. (Kelly,
Temple

May, R. Devonport, tobacconist.
(Smith, Basinghall-street ; Husband,
Devonport

Morgan, j. Exeter and Woodbury,
grocer and farmer. (Adlington and
Co., Bedford-row j Furlong, Exeter

Mitchell. G. jun, Brighton, broker.
(Egan and Co., Essex-street; Val-
lance, Brighton

Mayor, j. Freckleton, and H. Crook,
Preston, corn-merchants. (Chester,
Staple-inn ; Armstrong, Preston

Mayor, J. Freckleton, and H. Bur-
saugh, and H. Crook, Preston,
corn-merchants. (Chester, Staple-
Inn ; Armstrong, Preston

Marshall, J. Norwich, silk-merchant.
(Hudson, Gray's-inn

Morris, R. Regent-street, auctioneer.
(Burton, Queen-square

Mosman, A. Liverpool, merchant.
(Battye and Co., Chancery-lane ;
Crumps, Liverpool

Nevett, J. George-yard, agent.
(Kearsey and Co., Lothbury

Noy, E." H. Cannon-street, money-
scrivener. (Nicholson, Dowgate-hill

Nimmo, W. Calthorpe-place, baker.
(Cocker, Gray's-inn

Newcomh, E. Brent wood, corn-
chandler. (Holtaway and Co.,
Tooke's-court

Neale, W. and R. Hale, Southwark,
druggists. (Sherwood and Son,
Southwark

Oke, E. Falmouth, tailor. (Nicol,
Queen-street, Cheapside

Price, C. Strand, umbrella-manufac-
turer. (Humphreys, Broadway,
Ludgate-hill

Packman, W. Ludgate-hill, tavern-
keeper. (Thompson, George-street

Page, D. Epsom, horse-dealer.
(Young, Poland-street

Preis, P. M. Regent's-park, wine-
merchant. (Atkins, Fox Ordinary-
court

Preiss, P. M. and W. Donne, or
Donna, Park-terrace, wine-mer-
chants. (Freeman and Co., Cole-
tnan-street

Peters, j. Hoxton, ale-brewer.(Brown,
Gray's-inn

Pays, W. Leeds, coach-maker.
(Woodhouse and Co., Temple ;
Stott, Leeds

Petrie, T. S. Liverpool, wine-mer-
chant. (Battye and Co., Chancery-
lane ; Crumps, Liverpool

Packwood, T. Welshpool, innkeeper.
(Tooke and Co., Bedford-row ;
Griffiths, Birmingham

pearce, R. A. Southwark and Pimlico,
livery-stable-keeper. (Turner, Clif-
ford's-lnn

Pain, J. Bentinck- street, dealer in
beer. (Hamilton and Co., Berwick-
street

Pearson, W. York-castle, tanner.
(Tattershall, Temple ; Tattershsll
end Co., Sheffield

Potter, J. Maidstone, grocer. (Dod,
( Northumberland-street

Rix, E. Brighton, linen-draper.
(Hardwicke and Co., Lawrence-
lane

Rastall, J. Kilburn, builder. (Nico!,
Queen-street, Cheapside

Richmond, T. Stones-end, Southwark,
corn-dealer. (Tilson and Son, Cole-
man-street

Rowe, J. St. George's in the East,
shipowner. (Wells, York-terrace,
Commercial-road

Rayner, R. Crawford-street, iron-
monger. (Orchards, Hatton Garden

Ripamonti, A. G. Fox Ordinary-court,
merchant. (Coombe, Tokenhouse-
yard

Shepherd, J. L. Castle-street, linen-
draper. (Davies and Co., Warwick-
street

Sprigg, O. Birmingham, fire-iron-
maker. (Austen and Co., Gray's-
inn ; Palmer, Birmingham

Scrivener, N. Ratcliffe Highway,
builder. (Gilbert, Mark-lane

Smith, J. Nottingham, lace-manufac-
turer. (Foster, IawrencePou»tney-
place ; Nuuall, Nottingham

234

Smith, G. Nottingham, currier.
(Foster, Lawrence Pountney-place ;
Nuttall, Nottingham

Smith, T. Bromley, sheep-salesman.
(Addison, Gray's-inn

Sirley, J. East Peckham, baker.
(Bigg, Southampton-buildings

Scott, W. Bristol, merchant. (Hicks
and Co., Bartlett's-buildings j Tan-
ner and Son, Bristol

Sainter, W. Kingston-upon-Huli,
worsted-manufacturer. (Capes,
Gray's-inn ; Shearburn, Snaith

Sainter, J. Snaith, worsted-manufac-
turer. (Capes, Gray's-inn j Shear-
burn, Snaith

Smith, D. WaJham Green, stage-
coach-proprietor. (Willis, Sloane-

Stephenson, J. R. Manchester, iron-
monger. ( Ellis and Co , Chancery-
Hampson, Manchester

Smith, J. and J. Hutchinson, Liver-
pool, shipowners. (Chester, Staple-
inn ; Mallaley, Liverpool

Thompson, N. Dartmouth, master-
mariner. (Wolston, FurnivalVinn ;
Wolston, Brixham

Taylor, J. Kirby-Misperton, timber-
merchant. (Hicks and Co., Gray's-
inn ; Walker, Malton

Thackeray, J. Manchester, cotton-

Bankrupts.

[FEB.

spinner. (Ellis and Co., Chancery-
lane ; Hampson, Manchester

Tidman, E. Birmingham, victualler.
(Heming and Co., Lincoln's-inn-
fields ; Bird, Birmingham

Thatcher, W. Westminster, victualler.
(Glynes, Vine-street

Tatton, J. H. Thames-bank, coal-
merchant. (Ivimey, Harpur-street

Vandercom, T. Hampstead-road,
plasterer. (Farden, Great James-
street

Williams, W. Bristol, iron-founder.
(Austen and Co., Gray's-innj Ar-
nold and Co., Birmingham

Williamson, J. and T. Rishworth.
Keighley, worsted-spinners. (Daw«
son and Co., New Boswell-court ;
Weir, Bradford

Walker, J. Clehonger,miller.(Church,
Great James-street } Bellamy,
Hereford

Walters, T. ]un. Cheadle, innkeeper.
(Barber, Fetter-lane J Brandon and
Co , Cheadle

Watson, w. and T. Yeoman, jun.
Cliffe-cum-Lund, miller, (jaques
and Co., Coleman-street ; Wood
and Co., York

Wildblood, S. Rayton, maltster.
(Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane j
Holden, Liverpool

White, J. Bolton-upon-Dearne, inn-
keeper. (Taylor, John-street j Bad-
ger, Rotherham

Wright, J. and J. Davies, Liverpool,
grocerc. (Taylor and Co., Temple ;
Miller, Liverpool

Wood, J. Haddenham, baker. (Lo-
vell, Gray's-inn ; Nash, High Wy-
combe

Wicks, P. Holloway-road, cheese-
monger. (Fisher, Walbrook-build-
ings

Whitby, T. Liverpool, miller. (Ad-
lington and Co., Bedford-row ;
Parr and Co., Liverpool

Wagner, G. and W. Chapman, Greek-
street, drapers. (Ashurst, New-
gate-street

Wake, M. Wapping, anchor-smith.
(Brown, Mitre-chambers

Weston, G. Lane End, Stafford,
earthenware-manufacturer. ( Hicks,
and Co., Bartlett's-buildings ^
Brown, Hanley

Yeoman, T. Siitton-upon-Derwent,
corn-Factor. (Jaques and Co ,
Coleman-street j Wood and Co.,
York

Yates, C. Stafford, banker. (Dax
and Co., Lincoln's-inn-fields ;
Jones and Co., Staffordshire-pot-
teries.

ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS.

Rev. J. H. Watson, to the Rectory of Tydd St.
6iles, Cambridge.— Rev. R. F. Jones, to the
Vicarage of Compton, Barks.— Rev. J. P. Mar-
riott, to a Prebendal Stall in York Cathedral.—
Rev. G. C. Rashleigh, to the Vicarage of An-
dover, Hants.— Right Hon. and Rev. Lord W.
Russell, to the Rectory of Eastmanstead Chey-
neys, Bucks. — Rev. M. C. Thompson, to the Rec-
tory of Woodstone, Huntingdon. — Rev. E. R.
Thead, to the Rectory of Fletton, near Peter-
borough.—Rev. W. Hicks, to the Rectory of
Stunner, Esses.— Rev. C. Fisher, to the Rectory
of Culton, Suffolk.—- Rev. G. Bonner/to be Minis-
ter of the New Suffolk Square Church, Chelten-
ham.—Rev. R. Newcome, to the Rectory of

Clocacnoc, Denbigh.— Rev. P. Poore.to the Rec-
tory of Fyfield, Hants.— Rev. R. Ward, to the
Rectory of Stanton, Norfolk.— Rev. V. K. Child,
to be Domestic Chaplain to Earl Buchan.— Rev.
H. J. Barton, to the united livings of Latton and
Eisy, Gloucester.— Rev. J. Bramston, to the Vicar-
age of Great Baddow, Essex.— Rev. J. Spur-
geon to the Rectory of Twyford, Norfolk.— Rev.
H. Gipps, ,to the Vicarage of Corbridge, Nor-
thumberland.— Rev.H. J.Todd, to the Prebend of
Husthwaite.— Rev. W. Cuthbert, to .the Chapel-
ries of Bowtry and Austerfield.— Rev. F. Cus-
tance, to the Perpetual Curacy of Rippenden,
Halifax.

CHRONOLOGY, CARRIAGES, DEATHS, ETC.

CHRONOLOGY.

December 24. Exeter 'Change, the ancient
bazaar of London, totally demolished, and its site
added to widen that part of the Strand on which
it formerly stood.

25. By news from Constantinople, dated, the
Blonde, Nov. 5, it appears that our ambassador
gave a grand entertainment on board that frigate,
to a party of 450 visitors, comprising all the prin-
cipal Turks, Franks, and Russians, with a num-
ber of Turkish and Frank ladies!!!*

27. (Sunday!) The Solicitor-General paid a

* Amongst the distinguished guests were a
number of Turkish nobleman (a thing nnprece-
dented in the annals of history), such as the Se-
raskier Pacha, a second person in the Turkish
empire ; the Capitan Pacha, High Admiral of the
Turkish navy ; Gazee L'Asker Hekim Pacha, or
Sultan's physician; Reis Effendi, Secretary for
Foreign Affairs ; Halil Pacha, Ambassador to
Russia ; Silektar Agasi, Sword Bearer to the Sul-
tan ; Abdulageit Effendi, Chief Surgeon, &c.,with
a number of naval and military officers.

third visit to the Fleet prison, and remained, ex-
amining the Chancery prisoners, from about 11
A.M. untiU P.M. !!l*

* Two of the prisoners, after a long incarcer-
ation in the Fleet, the one three years and-a-half,
and the other a much longer period, received their
discharge a few dayssince, through the instrumen-
tality of Sir Edward Sugden, who, in both cases,
had exerted himself greatly, and in one of them
paid j£20 out of his own pocket. The name of
one of these prisoners is Measell, and that of the
other Butcher. Measell, shortly after his im-
prisonment, lost his wife, who died of a broken
heart, and some of their children followed her.
The tears trickled down the old man's cheeks as
he narrated his short and artless story. After her
death he had contrived to pick up a subsistence by
taking other prisoners to lodge in his room, and
supplying those who wanted, and could afford to
pay, with the luxury of a bedstead and a few
chairs in the cells of the Fleet!!! He has crawled
from his old habitation into the heart of the City
of Charities, whether to a dwelling or to the
streets we know not ; but this we know, that he
had not the means to pay his discharge fees, and
would have been detained on account of their

1830.]

Chronology, Marriages, and Deaths.

235

Dec. 31. ThiB,the last day of 1829, was elgnaliaed
by the execution of four convicts at the Old Bailey 1

January 5, 1830. By the state of the revenue,
published this day, it appears there has been a
falling off of .£1,165,449, compared with that of
last year ; that ending January 5, 1829, being
.£48,305,328, and that up to this day being
.£47,139,873!

8. Message of the President of the United
States to the Congress, arrived : it breathes a
friendly tone to Great Britain (in modifying the
tariff) as well as to most foreign states.*

10. The services of the King's chaplains at
Whitehall dispensed with, by order of the Bishop
of London.

14. Sessions commenced at the Old Bailey.

— A deputation from the city of London
had a conference with the Duke of Wellington and
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in Downing-
street, on the subject of the price of coals, the
combination among the coal-owners of the Tyne
and Wear, and of the best modes of reducing the
alleged high charges in the port of London.

19. The Solicitor General applied to the Lord
Chancellor of the Equity Court of England, for
the release of Mr. Wegener, who has been in
prison [thirteen years for contempt of Court.
The Solicitor General said " there is no plaintiff,
no attorney, no clerk in coui't, and no demand!!!"
The Lord Chancellor granted the order for the
discharge of Mr. Wegener, without payment of
costs.f

21. The Middlesex magistrates passed resolu-
tions to the Home Secretary of State for the con-
sideration of ministers, relative to the improper
indulgence of British spirits, aggravated by the
mixture of vitriol and other deleterious ingredients,
and sold at a cheap -rate to the lower classes of
the people, thereby causing misery, madness, and
crime, in the metropolis.

22. Sessions terminated at the Old Bailey
when 15 prisoners received sentence of death, 124
were transported, and 40 imprisoned for various
periods.

Jan. A meeting of maltsters took place at the
Corn Exchange, London, which was very fully at-
tended, when a petition to the House of Corn-
non-payment, had not another prisoner stepped
forward and advanced the amount!!! — Bells
Messenger.

* General Jackson has more than realized the
hopes of his friends, and completely silenced and
confounded his enemies. The finances of the
Americans are in such a flourishing state, that
the Debt will be redeemed in four years ; and if
the present rate of taxation continue, the govern-
ment will be placed in the singular situation of
having more money than they well know what to
do with it !!! What a contrast to the present state
of England !!!

f We trust that at length some good will result
from the publication of such appalling scenes of
suffering. The following dialogue passed between
the Lord Chancellor and the Solicitor General :—
Lord Chancellor. Why did he not apply a long
time since ? — Solicitor General. Because he did
not know, or had not inquired into any of these
circumstances.— Lord Chancellor. There should
be some person appointed to give advice to these
unfortunate persons \— Solicitor General. 1 hope
we shall remedy that, with your Lordship's as-
sistance.—Lord Chancellor. IT MUST BE REME-
DIED!!!—Solicitor General. We all of us see the
necessity of it. — This passed in the court ; out of
it, the necessity of some alterations to ameliorate

raon: wa-5 adopted, which pray? for the repeal of
the duty on malt.*

MARRIAGES.

At Troy, the Hon. P. Abbott, brother to Lord
Colchester, to F?ances,Cecil, daughter of Lady E.
Talbct, and the l&to JJean of Salisbury, and niece
to the Duke of Beaufort.— At Marylebone, R. B.
Clayton, esq., son of Lieut. Gen. Clayton, to Miss
C. J. Dobson. — At Westminster, C. Stephens,
esq., to Catherine, youngest daughter of M.
Wood, esq., M.P. — At St. George's, Hanover-
square, S. Digby, esq., to Miss Morse.— At Lam-
beth, J. Wright, widower, aged 102, to C. Strin-
ger, widow.

DEATHS.

Sir Charles Burton, Bart. — At Kensington,
Miss Vernon.— In Regent-street, Mrs. Willaume,
niece of the Right lion. W. Wyndham.— In Albe-
marle-street, Dowager Lady Neave.— In Curzon-
street, the Dowager Marchioness of Donegall. —
At Camberwell, Sir W. C. te Crespigny, Bart.—
At Manton House, Lady Isabella Boyle, daughter
of Lord and Lady Cork.— AtQueenborough, T. Y.
Greet, esq., late Mayor of that place ; the fisher-
men hoisted flags, and illuminated their houses to
celebrate the event ! — Alexander Davison, esq., 80,
of Swarland Park, Northumberland, and formerly
of St. James's-square, London.— At Fineshade
Abbey, the Hon. J. Monckton.— At Whitehall,
Dowager Lady Grantham, 74.— At Hadleigh,the
Rev. Dr. E. A. H. Drummond, 72, only son of the
late Archbishop Drummond.— At Hampton Court,
Sir J. Pakington, bart., 70, of Westwood Park ;
by his demise the baronetcy, created in 1620, be-
comes extinct. By the contents of his will it ap-
pears that J. S. Russell, esq., of Powick Court,
near Worcester (nephew of the deceased) has a
son about four years of age ; to the eldest son
that may be born of this child, Sir John has be-
queathed his large landed estates, so that the in-
come must accumulate for nearly forty years ; in
default of issue, the estates go to the descendants
of the second son of Sir William Bryan Cooke, of
Wheatley, near Doncaster; and in case of a
second default, the property goes to a grandson of
Mr. Knight, of Lea Castle. Sir John has, there-
fore, effectually barred any of the present gener-
ation from the enjoyment of his property. His
will, in some respects, resembles that of Mr.

• The petition states that the malsters, in com-
mon with every other class, are suffering under a
taxation, the principal cause of which appeared
to be the enormous national debt contracted in a
paper currency, the interest of which is now ex-
acted principally in metallic currency. The peti-
tion went on to state that the expenses of the army
and navy were thus increased from .£3,700,000
a-year to upwards of .£14,000,000 ; the civil list
from .£900,000 to .£3,500,000 a-year ; and, in fact,
the whole expenditure of the country had in-
creased within the last thirty-eight years from
.£15,000,000 to about .£60,000,000 a-year. While
the currency had been limited, all places, pen-
sions, sinecures, &c., remained the same; and
while the price of land had advanced more than
two-fold, rents had not been reduced, though paid
in the same limited currency. The petitioners
could not refrain from recommending a revision
of the church property, by which princely incomes
of .£30,000 and .£40,000 a-year were drawn by

mitred Lords from the earnings of a starving po-

the condition of poor suitors has been pretty visible pulation, the people now being called upon to pay
for many a long day ! .£8,000,000 a-year in church and poor-rates.

2 H 2

23(5

Chronology, Marriages, and Deaths.

Thelluson."— In Gower-Btr&et, Honore Mar-
guerite Francoise, wife of Dr. Spurxheim.— In
Russell-square, Sir Thomas Lawrence, President
of the Royal Academy.— In Davies-street, Anne,
Countess Dowager of Galloway, 88. — In Great
Stanhope-street, the Countess St. Martin de
Front, 79.— At Duncombe Park, the Hon. A. Dun-
combe, fourth son of Lord FcTersham.— At Elthy
House, Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Vinicombe Pen-
rose. — At Chester, Alderman Bowers. — At Maul-
den Mill, Bedfordshire, Mr. Edward Pennyfather,
and two days after, at the same place, Mr. Isaac
Pennyfather. These gentlemen were twins, and
both lived to be nearly 77 years of age.— At Castle
Irvine, Eleanor Jones, at the advanced age of 105.
She retained all her faculties till within the last
six months, and was only confined to her bed one
day before her death. No person remembers her
having a day's sickness.— At Batsford Park, Lord
Redesdale, 81.— At Burnham, the Rev. J. Glasse,
88. — In Montague-square, Lady Lee O'Meara,
wife of Barry O'Meara, esq. The first husband
of this lady was Captain Donellan, who, nearly

half a century ago, was executed at Warwick for
the wilful murder of Sir Theodosius Boughton,
bart., of Lawford Hall, by poisoning him with the
Juice of laurel leaves. — The Right Rev. Bishop
Sandford. — In Saville-row.the Right Hon. George
Tierney, M.P.— At the Palace of St. Asaph, the
Bishop of St. Asaph, 74.

MARRIAGES ABROAD.
At Quebec, the Hon. F. W. Primrose, brother
to Lord Roseberry, to Percy Gore, third daugh-
ter of Colonel R. Gore, and niece to Major Gene-
ral Arthur Gore, and Vice-Admiral Sir J. Gore.

DEATHS ABROAD.

At Tournay, Captain R. Foley, R.N., nephew
of Admiral Sir T. Foley.— At Paris, Mr. Wilkin-
son, the banker ; he died suddenly, just after be-
ing admitted to a private audience with Prince
Polignac.— At Paris, 31st ult., the Hon. Arthur
Southwell, only son of the Right Hon. Viscount
Southwell, of Hindlip Castle. The Queen of Por-
tugal.

MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES.

NORTHUMBERLAND.— The Newcastle Sav-
ings' Bank have published their account up to
November 20th, last, by which it appears that
upwards of .£264,000 have been received, from
4,006 depositors, eight charitable institutions, and
88 friendly societies.

DURHAM.— At a meeting of proprietors and
occupiers of land, and other Inhabitants of Nor-
ham and Island shires, held at Berwick, it was
resolved, in consequence of the great and general
distress existing amongst the industrions poor
and labouring classes, to petition Parliament for
a total repeal of the duties upon malt and beer.

The foreman of the Grand Jury at the late
Sessions at Durham, informed the Chairman,
that he was desired by his fellow jurymen, to
complain of the multitude of trivial cases which
were brought before the court ; he was quite
certain that many of the indictments would nol
have been preferred if the expenses had not been
paid for by the county. Another cause of com-
plaint was tbe number of indictments manufac-
tured out of one offence ; and he was desired to
request the magistrates to be economical, as, in the
present depressed state of the agricultural interest,
the county rates were so very oppressive.

The coast of Durham was visited with a violent
storm from the N. and N.N.E., on the 9th of Jan. ,
a part of the wall of Clifford's Fort, at North
Shields, was broken down by the irresistible
force of the sea. Hartlepool pier, was also much
damaged. In another gale on the 20th, much
damage was done to the shipping.

CUMBERLAND.— The report of the committee
appointed to ascertain the state of the poor, in
Carlisle, presents an appalling picture of misery
and want. — Upwards of 1,000 families were found
to be in distress, comprising at least 5,000 indi.
viduals! The want of food, fuel, and clothing,
was general. With many families there was no-
thing deserving the name of bed or bedding ; but
they slept on chairs, or the floor, and covered

themselves with what they could! --The various
interests of this important county are at length
roused by the pressure of distress to speak out,
and call for relief. A requisition is in course of
signature to the High Sheriff, to call a county
meeting.*

A meeting has been held at Wigton, to carry
into effect the establishment of an infirmary for
that county, when a piece of ground on the west
side of the city of Carlisle, was decided on as the
situation for the infirmary, and the committee was
empowered to purchase the same. The dona-
tions for the building amounted to nearly .£8,000.
A similar institution is about being founded at
Whitehaven, in the same county.

YORKSHIRE.— Earl Mulgrave's alum manu-
factory, situate under the cliff at Kittleness, near
Whitby, with the agent's house, and 14 cottages,
were reduced to ruins recently by the falling of an
impending rock. A cracking before the fall, gave
timely notice to the workmen to escape.

At the General Annual Meeting of the Society
of Shipowners, held in the Mansion House, Hull,
Jan. 13, it was resolved," that this Meeting con-
templates with deep regret, the present condition,
and with melancholy forebodings the future pros-
pects, of the Shipping Interest of the United
Kingdom, as well as every other upon which it is

* The design originated, we believe, with the
agricultural and shipping interest. The Earl of
Lonsdale, as Lord Lieutenant of the county, was
first consulted ; and, in a letter, addressed through
his steward, to the gentlemen who took an active
part in the matter, his Lordship expressed his
hearty concurrence, but recommended them not to
insist on any particular legislative measures, but
to urge on the attention of Parliament the preva-
lence of great distress, and petition for such
remedies as the legislature may think best. His
Lordship observed that the Duke of Wellington
was not convinced that there was great distress in
the country, and, therefore, it was expedient to
press this fact firmly but respectfully.— Leeds
Intelligencer,

1830.]

Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Lincolnshire.

237

dependant; and bellerlng that the causes of its
distress have never yet been made the subject of
a full and impartial examination, feel it their
duty once more to petition both Houses of Par-
liament, praying that such inquiry may be in-
stituted during the ensuing Session, as may lead
to the adoption of those remedial measures which
alone can prevent this very important national
interest from sinking into a state of hopeless and
irrecoverable decay III"

The distresses of the country experience no
abatement — no alleviation but from the hand of
private charity, which can do little in so over-
whelming a visitation. We continue to receive
the most heart-rending accounts from all quar-
ters; and we fear that, unless we have a speedy
change, we shall soon have a still more melan-
choly tale to tell. The Barnsley weavers residing
in the villages of Kexbro', Darton, Cawthorne,
HOyland-Swaine, and High-Hoyland, are almost
to a man working upon the roads, or depending
upon parochial or individual relief. Many have
a family to support for a shilling per day, some
even not so much! At Huddersfield, Knares-
borough, and many other places, the condition of
the labouring poor is deplorable beyond descrip-
tion.— Leeds Intelligencer.

A very destructive fire lately consumed the
manufactory of Mr. Greenwood, at Wheatley,
near Halifax. Luckily no lives were lost ; but
no less than 1,500 persons are thrown out of em-
ployment by this melancholy event.

A very numerous meeting has been held at Don-
caster of landowners, farmers, and others inte-
rested in agriculture, in order to consider the pre-
sent state of the country, when it appeared to be
the powerful feeling of all present, that something
must be done to relieve the present depression, or
irrecoverable ruin would be the consequence ; it
was, therefore, unanimously resolved to petition
the legislature, on the meeting of the Parliament,
to take into immediate consideration the state of
the country. Sir W. Cooke, bart., was in the
chair, and two of the county members, Messrs.
Buncombe and Wilson, were present.

Most of the large towns in this county, will
soon be lighted with gas. Preparations are
making to light Ripon with that material. A
joint stock banking company is formed in York.
The capital to consist of .£500,000, in 5,000 shares
of .£100 each. There are .£122,416. 6s. lid. depo-
sited in the York Savings' Bank, by 2,976
depositors.

On visiting the poor of Leeds, by the relief
Committee, it was found, that there were at
least 4,000 persons in the town, whose average
earnings did not exceed one penny a day !

Something more than one-third of the cloth
manufactured in Yorkshire is exported, and less
than two-thirds disposed of at home. Therefore
the well being of our manufacturers must mainly
depend on the home market.

The Hon. E, R. Petre, has been elected Lord
Mayor of York for the ensuing year. The gen-
tleman is a Roman Catholic. He will also be
the High Sheriff for the county ; uniting the two
offices in his person— a very singular occurrence.

The Yorkshire coast was visited by a dreadful
storm on the 9th, 10th, and llth, of January,
attended with two very high tides on the latter
day, which did great damage, at Scarborough,
Bridlington, and Whitby. At the latter place

several houses were washed into the sea ; and
at Staithes, a village adjacent, no less than 18
houses were washed away.

A new Cutlers' Hall, on a noble scale, is
about to be erected in Sheffield.

The distress in the manufacturing districts of
Yorkshire, appear to be of the most appalling
nature. The sufferings of the poor during this
inclement season must be dreadful.

LANCASHIRE.— A meeting has been held at
Liverpool, when it was resolved to form a com-
pany for the purpose of applying to Parliament
for power to accomplish the great national under-
taking, of a rail-way from thence to Birmingham.

The superb service of plate, weighing 1,200
ounces, voted by the merchants and other inha-
batants of Liverpool, to James Maury, Esq., late
American Consul in Liverpool, during 40 years,
was presented to that gentleman lately in the
Grand Jury room.

No less than 10,000 persons are weekly relieved
by the soup committee of Preston, and one-third
of the population are actually receiving charit-
able relief in one shape or other. But this is not
all. No person receiving more than half-a-crown
a-week is entitled to relief !— a circumstance, as
the Preston Pilot observes, from which we may
form some estimate of the wretched earnings of
the 10,000 who are relieved. The probability is
that the average does not amount to two shillings
a-week. Notwithstanding the miserable state of
things, we are assured, upon good authority, that
Preston is " infinitely better off" than most of
the neighbouring towns.

LINCOLNSHIRE.— Jan. 8. Upwards of 2,000
persons attended the County Meeting, called by
several magistrates, the Sheriff having refused.
It was held in the Castle-Yard, Lincoln, for the
purpose of petitioning the Legislature for the
repeal of the malt and beer duties, when a rote
of censure passed unanimously against the
Sheriff for refusing to call the meeting, " thereby
shewing an unwarrantable contempt for the
wishes of the county, and setting a most danger-
ous example, tending to deprive the people of
England of their legitimate rights and constitu-
tional privileges." The petition to the House of
Commons was afterwards proposed and carried
unanimously.* Thanks were likewise voted to

* Petition.—" We, the undersigned Inhabi-
tants of the County of Lincoln, call upon your
Honourable House, beseeching you earnestly
though respectfully that you would give your un-
divided attention to the unspeakable distress
which pervades the country. We humbly re-
present, that taxation, excessive as it was at the
conclusion of the war, has become far more so by
the change in the value of money. That it is
incumbent on the Government to accommodate
its expenditure to this new order of things, which
itself has created. That the burthen is now in-
tolerable, and must be lightened. We therefore,
under the perfect conviction that Taxes must be
remitted to a great amount, beg to point out to
your Honourable House the injurious nature of
the taxes on Malt and Beer. That they are hos-
tile to Agriculture, and are equally disadvan-
tageous to Manufactures, for they deprive us of
the use of our own produce, and sends millions of
pounds out of the country to purchase the pro-
duce of foreign soils. That they deprive the peo-
ple of their natural beverage, forcing them to the
use of noxious drugs and ardent spirits. That
these obnoxious taxes fall principally upon the

238 Provincial Occurrences : Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, fyc. £FEB.

the magistrates who signed the requisition for
the meeting. After the meeting, above 100 of the
principal gentry dined together, and amongst the
topics introduced at table, Sir W. Ingilby said,
«' In a late parliamentary inquiry, it was stated
by a very old and experienced agriculturist, that
45 or 50 years ago, there was not a house in his
parish where there was not a barrel of good malt
liquor on tap, and that now the change was so
entire, that there was not one house in the whole
parish, where a barrel of beer was to be found
broached!!!"

NORFOLK. — General meetings of the no-
bility, clergy, and freeholders of this county, as
well as the owners and occupiers of land in the
hundreds of Tunstead, Happing, Grimshoe, Eyns
ford, Guiltcross, Shropham, &c. &c., have taken
place, when it was determined to petition Par-
liament for a repeal of the malt tax. " Nothing
but a reduction of taxes, can save thousands of
industrious families from ruin'*— was the univer-
sal opinion at all these meetings.

The cliffs at Mundesley have been greatly un-
dermined by the late very high tides, and the
whole line of coast demonstrates the devasting
influence of the hurricane of Jan. 2 ; the land
has been swept into the ocean in some places
astonishingly.

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE.— At the meeting at
Newark, Dec. 31st, for relief of the poor .£553
was subscribed for purchasing beef, and selling
it to the poor at l£d. per lb., and flour also in
a similar way. From the details brought before
the committee, it appears there are in Newark
482 families (1,468 persons) quite distressed and
unemployed.

WORCESTERSHIRE.— At a Meeting of the
Committee of Magistrates, at the last Quarter
Sessions, at Worcester, it was resolved to procure
an act of parliament for the erection of county
courts and judges' lodgings in that city.

By the annual accounts of this county, made up
to Michaelmas last, it appears that the sum ex-
pended was upwards of .£8,000 ; about .£6,000 of
which was spent in punishing crime! inde-
pendent of .£000 for maintaining Irish vagrants,
and .£350 for the Clerk of the Peac'es Bill of
cravings!!!

GLOUCESTERSHIRE.- It is lamentable to
witness the frequent perpetration of serious of-
fences by the youthful class of society in this city,
of which the recent quarter-sessions afforded
abundant proof. Out of 47 prisoners enume-
rated in the calendar, 2 1 were under the age of
20 !!! The magistrates, laudably anxious to re-
claim these early wanderers from the path of rec-
titude, felt great difficulty in deciding on the de-
gree of punishment ; but in almost all the casesf
imprisonment, with hard labour, was resorted to,
as most likely to attain the desired end.— Felix
Parley's Bristol Journal.

At a public meeting recently held at Bristol, of
the merchants, manufacturers, traders, and other
inhabitants of that city, resolutions were entered

middle and labouring classes, and that the effect
is to demoralise one, and to make the other dis-
satisfied. We, your Petitioners, therefore humbly
pray your Honourable House, that you would be
pleased to repeal forthwith these odious Taxes,
and grant that the trade in Beer may be free."

into, subscriptions commenced, and a committee
formed, for the purpose of forming a rail-road
from thence to the city of Bath.— The Mayor of
Bristol has granted the use of the Guildhall for a
public meeting to petition Parliament for a repeal
of the malt and beer duties.— Subscriptions have
commenced at Bristol to defray the expenses of an
application to Parliament for leave to build a
suspension bridge over the river Avon from Clif-
ton Down.

SUSSEX.— The Earl of Egremont, according
to annual custom, on New Year's Day, gave a
dinner to upwards of 2,000 poor women and chil-
dren of Petworth and the adjacent parishes.
There were 4 fine oxen, estimated to weigh from
120 to 130 stone each, slaughtered and cooked on
the occasion, beside 500 plum puddings, and a
plentiful supply of strong beer. The company
were enlivened by the band of the 10th hussars.

The magistrates assembled at the late Lewes
quarter sessions, passed resolutions on the com-
mercial and agricultural distresses of the country,
which were forwarded to the Duke of Wellington,
who, in his answer, said, " I will draw the atten-
tion of the King's servants to it."

CHESHIRE — There are now in Macclesfield
900 families not possessing more than one blanket
to every 10 persons!! Nothing but personal in-
spection can convince one of the horrible wretch-
edness existing in the dwellings of the poor. In
one instance our informant found a family, con-
sisting of father and mother, a daughter aged 17,
another about 13, in the last stage of consump-
tion, and two young children, with but one bed to
sleep on, and that without blankets or any other
covering than a coarse linen sheet and a tattered
cotton rug !!! It is our duty to appeal in the
strongest language we can use to the humane
feelings of those who in these times have means
to relieve left in their power. — Macclesfield
Courier.

On New Year's Day Earl Grosvenor and friends
visited, according to annual custom, the school at
Chester, of which he is the founder. The chil-
dren, to the number of 460, were assembled in the
spacious room up stairs, and presented a very
clean and healthy appearance, especially the
little girls, 100 of whom distinguished for good
conduct, received an annual suit of clothes from
the Countess. His lordship delivered an appro-
priate address to his youthful auditory ; and at
half-past one the little hungry host proceeded to
the large room below, to dine, where they found
555 lb. of roast beef; and plum pudding in pro-
portion, and the boys were regaled with half a
pint each of good ale. This school was esta-
blished in 1812, for the gratuitous instruction of
the children of the inhabitants of Chester ; and
10,000 children of both sexes have already received
the invaluable blessings of education. The Chester
Chronicle, from whence we extract the above,
adds, " we wish this noble and patriotic example
ware more generally followed. Did every noble-
man and gentleman in England but love the chil-
dren of the tenantry and labourers as he does his
game ."

BUCKS.— At the Magistrates' Chamber, Janu-
ary 2, several poor persons complained of not re-
ceiving their allowance, which led to a conversa-
tion between Lord Nugent and Sir J. D- King as

1830.J

Essex, Devonshire, Cambridge, Berks,

to the state of the poor in general, and the best
mode of affording them relief. They coincided in
opinion that the best plan would be to let them
have small portions of land to cultivate. Sir J.
King mentioned an instance in his own parish
where a person, who occupied a small quantity,
for which he paid a rental of .€6., maintained
himself and family independently of parochial as-
sistance.

ESSEX.— The calendar at the recent quarter
sessions of this county furnishes an apt illustra-
tion of the demoralizing effects of the distress
generally felt throughout the kingdom. There
were 62 prisoners for trial, 35 of whom were
charged with stealing property, the aggregate
value of which did not exceed £10 or .£15 at the
utmost ; and this, too, after a gaol delivery only
one month back.— Essex Mercury.

DEVONSHIRE.— A meeting of the freeholders
of this county has taken place at Exeter, at which
upwards of 2,000 persons attended to take into
consideration the state of the Tithe Laws, when a
petition was unanimously agreed to be presented
to the legislature " under the firmest conviction
that the existing Tithe Laws are highly injurious
to the best interests of society, both in a religious
and political point of view, and praying such
alterations and arrangements as may be deemed
more consistent with justice* and religion." Pe-
titions to be presented in the House of Lords by
the Lord Lieutenant, and in the Commons by
the county members. Thanks were voted to the
Sheriff.

CAMBRIDGE.— Sir S. V. Cotton, bart., in
moving the petition, said, that by striking at the
root ol the licensing system, affecting the repeal of
the malt and beer duties, they would at once afford
relief to the agriculturists of the kingdom. The
petition was unanimously agreed to, after much
speechifying, uproar, proposals for impeach-
ment, &c. &c.f

At a late meeting of agriculturists belonging to
Ely and Witchford Hundreds, it was unanimously
resolved to petition Parliament to take into con-
sideration their present state, as well as those of
the labourers, and to adopt measures for their
relief. It appears from a statement produced at
the meeting, that the arable farms in the neigh-
bourhood were cultivated at an expense of
£22. 5s. 6d. (including rent and tithes) for three
acres of wheat, barley, and beans, and that the

* "Disputes respecting payment of Tithes,"
say the petitioners, " are determined in a court
constituted in a manner peculiar to itself, and
without the constitutional intervention of a
jury !!!'' — This allusion will apply to the Chancery,
as well as the Ecclesiastical Court. When it was
mentioned at the meeting, by the Hon. Newton
Fellowes, he was interrupted by rounds of ap-
plause, and cries of " It's the Inquisition I" " Re-
lics of Popery!" &c. &c.

•j- Mr. Wells, of Huntingdon, said, it was over
taxation, a standing army, a countless host of
placemen and pensioners, that was the cause of
our distress. In looking over a document he held
in his hand, he found that in Huddersn'eld there
were 13,226 individuals subsisting upon 2£d per
day ; he mentioned other places in the same
miserable state, and then compared their situa-
tion with Colonel Trench, whose salary and pay,
he said, were about £b. 10s. per day, equal to
what is daily earned by nearly 600 poor labourers
of Huddersfield, and sends supperless to bed every
night 300 honest Englishmen II!

produce of the crops, at the present prices
amounted to .£21. 7s. 6d. ; thus rendering the oc-
cupation not merely profitless to the tenant, but
the returns 6s. per acre minus the disburse-
ments !!!— Cambridge Chronicle.

BERKS.— At the quarter sessions, the chair-
man (C. Dundas, Esq., M. P.) adverted to the
general state of crime throughout the country,
and could not forbear observing that its influence
arose principally from the universal distress which
was spread throughout the kingdom ; it was un-
questionable that the poor were in a most misera-
ble state ; the consequence was, they were driven
to the commission of dishonest acts. It was la-
mentable to notice that some magistrates had been
compelled to commit offenders for stealing articles
of a very trifling nature.*

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.— The Annual Poul-
try show at Lord Althorp's farm, Chapel Bram-
ton, notwithstanding the unfavourable state of
the weather, was never more numerously and
respectably attended. The competitors were also
numerous, and the various descriptions of poultry
exhibited, afforded ample testimony of the progress
of improvement in breeding, &c.

SOMERSETSHIRE. — The parishes at Bath
of St. Peter and St. Paul, Bathwick, St. Michael,
and the Abbey, have had meetings on the subject
of the assessed house and window taxes (which,
when they were laid on the people during the re-
volutionary war, were promised to be repealed
whenever peace should be established), and re-
solved,— " That a memorial be presented to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, pointing out the
oppressive and grievous nature of the assessed
house and window taxes, more particularly in
Bath, where a large portion of the inhabitants
obtain their livelihood by the letting of lodgings,
and who, owing to the general depression of the
times, are threatened with total ruin from the
pressure of these burthens, and that a deputation
be appointed to present the same."

DORSETSHIRE.— A new road is now being
formed between Crewkerne and Langport, which
will be opened by Lady-day next, by which means
an easy communication will be opened between
Dorset and the most populous district of Somer-
setshire. It will lead from Crewkerne to Mer-
riot, Lopen Head, Compton Durville, Kingsbury
EpiscopS, Muchelney, and across the river Par-
ret, over a handsome stone bridge, which is now
in course of erection, to within a quarter of a
mile of Langport, where it will join the new road
which has been completed from that place to
Bridgewater.

SHROPSHIRE.— Petitions to parliament for
repealing the duty on malt are rapidly spreading
through this county. Already have they been
signed at Ellesmere, Whitchurch and Wem,

* The committing for trifling offences, it seems,
is not confined to Berks, for two babies fabout
six years of age !) were charged at the Westmin-
ster sessions, Jan. 8, with having robbed a mercer
of a pair of stockings!!! The principal witness
was a policeman, who admitted that he knew
they were about to commit a robbery, and there-
fore watched till he saw them do it! So much
for the new plan of preventing robbery! The
chairman very properly restored the infants to
their parents for correction at home, rather than
try them at the bar!

240 Provincial Occurrences : WiUe, Kent, Derbyshire, <$•<?. [FEB.

Wellington, Wenlock, Brldgenorth. Ludlow,
Bishop's Castle, Shiffnal, Newport, and Oswestry.
The Shropshire masters, at the quarterly meet-
ings last week, were compelled to submit to ano-
ther reduction in price, viz. 5s. per ton on pig
iron ; and this will ultimately cause a depression
of full 10s. per ton on manufactured bars and
rods.

WILTS.— At the quarter sessions, there were
93 prisoners for trial, and upwards of 20 appeals
were entered. Simon Haskell, for having entered
Ragland coppice, the property of the Marquis of
Bath, with intent to destroy game, was sentenced
to seven years transportation!!! At these Ses-
sions, petitions to his Majesty and to both Houses
of Parliament, on the distress which pervades every
class of the community, were unanimously agreed
to, and signed by every magistrate present.

KENT. — Fifty-nine houses were lately destroy.
ed by fire at Sheerness ; the damage is estimated
at .£20,000.

A meeting has been held at Tonbridge, and pe-
titions been prepared there and at Wrothain to
the legislature, on the depressed state of the
country.

DERBYSHIRE.— A meeting has been held a
the County Hall, Derby, and which was attended
by the most eminent agriculturists and landowners
in the county; when, after many communications
had been read, relative to the agricultural dis-
tress of the country, it was agreed that a memorial
should be presented to the First Lord of the Trea-
sury, representing the extreme depression of the
agricultural interest.*

WARWICKSHIRE,— At a meeting lately held
at the Public Office, Birmingham, it was resolved
to establish in that town a society for the Sup-
pression of Mendicity. The committee of this
Self-Supporting Society have recommended also
the appointment of four additional surgeons, in
order to extend its benefits as much as possible
over the town and neighbourhood.

The amount received in deposits at the Birming-
ham Savings' Bank last year was .£25,787. 18s.2£d.
while the sums repaid, including interest, did not
exceed .£13,313. 10s. lOd. leaving an excess of
Receipts of £12,474. 7s. 4|d. ; and in the course
of the same period, interest amounting to
.£1,177. 13s. 5|d. has been paid to depositors, or
placed to the credit of their respective accounts.
The total amount of deposits, on the 20th

* We extract from this memorial the following.
..." We hold it to be our bounden duty as men
desirous of enjoying and of transmitting our pos.
sessions unimpaired, to our posterity, to state
without disguise or delay, to those authorities to
which we necessarily look for relief, our painful
sense of our present sufferings, and our reasonable
apprehensions of being driven by a continuance of
them, from that sphere which we occupy amongst
the loyal subjects of this empire. We beg to inti-
mate to your Grace with melancholy reluctance
our personal knowledge of rents greatly reduced
'and still in arrear — of tenants ruined— of labour-
ers unemployed— of farms thrown out of cultiva-
tion, and of sales, forcibly effected, of produce, at
a price infinitely below the cost of production ;
and to express our conviction, under the duration
of the present severe distress, of our inability to
keep up our usual demand for articles of manu-
facture, and to contribute our accustomed share,
which we have always borne, and are still ready
to bear, willingly, in proportion to our means,
in the collection of the revenue."

of November, was £ 43,906. 7s. 8d. of which
.£43,741. 17s. 5d. was Invested in government
securities, and .£164. 10s. 3d. remained in the
hands of the treasurer. The number of deposi-
tors was 2,480.

A meeting of the merchants, manufacturers,
tradesmen, mechanics, artisans, and other in-
habitants, has been held at Birmingham, for
forming a general political union " between the
lower and middle classes of the people.'1 The High
Bailiff having refused to call it, alleging that
" it was no part of his duty to call a meeting for
such a purpose," a party of 12 of the inhabitants
undertook it ; and it was attended by upwards of
10,000 persons, who resolved, "That the severe
distress which now afflicts the country, and which
has been so severely felt for the last 15 years, is en-
tirely owing to the gross mismanagement of pub-
lic affairs; and that such mismanagement can
only be effectually and permanently remedied by
an effectual reform in the Commons House of
Parliament." A censure was passed on the High
Bailiff, and thanks to the Chairman and Messrs.
Att^vood and Beardsworth, and the Political
Union formed, and 36 gentlemen nominated for
a Political Council; when, after three cheers
•« for our good king," this immense assembly
quietly dispersed.

SCOTLAND.— Before the middle of the 18th
century, Loch Roag was the most celebrated her-
ring fishery station on the North-west of Scot-
land, the herrings there being accounted the
largest and richest of all. Soon after 1750, the
.herrings abandoned Loch Roag, and for 35 years
none were seen in it. In 1790 the shoals began to
revisit the loch,and in the course of 1794 no fewer
than 90 sail of deck vessels were employed in the
fishery. In 1797, the herrings again bade adieu
to the loch, and no shoal has entered till the pre-
sent (1829) autumn ; when, after the lapse of 32
years, their presence was again witnessed to the
great joy of the parishioners of Uig.

IRELAND. — Distress in the Liberty. A
meeting was lately held at Dublin, for furthering
the plans previously adopted for the relief of
the starving artisans. Thousands of the miser-
able victims of decayed commerce, with which
the Irish metropolis abounds, took their station
near the Rotunda, and presented a melancholy
spectacle. The attendance at the meeting was,
we are sorry to say, very thin. The Lord Mayor
presided at this meeting. One of the Secretaries
read the report of the Committee which had been
appointed at a former meeting. This report
stated that there'were the appalling number of 7,000
indigent operatives receiving from the Committee
a weekly allowance at the rate of a penny a
day!!! About 130 of the weavers who could not
obtain employment in Dublin, have sought it in
the manufacturing towns of England, rather than
remain in a state of mendicity at home. The
efforts to promote the use of Irish manufactures
have not, as yet, produced any sensible effect.
The Committee refer to the report previously pub-
lished ; and appeal, in very pressing terms , to the
public feeling, touching the urgent necessity for
general exertion, to arrest the progress of exist-
ing misery. The balance on hands for the relief
of those indigent families with which the Liberty
is crowded, amounts to the pitiful sum of .£307.

THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

OF

POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES.
VOL. IX.] MARCH, 1830. [No. 51.

THE OPENING OF THE SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.

ON Thursday, the 4th of February, the Parliament was opened by
Commission. On this mode of commencing the public business, we have
no inclination to involve ourselves in extent of remark. But we believe
that a more acceptable mode of declaring the royal opinion on national
affairs might be discovered, and that this is the seventh or eighth
commencement of the session which has exhibited the Hibernian anomaly
of his Majesty being in two places at once, and speaking to his faithful
subjects the Lords and Commons at Westminster assembled, while,
at the same moment, he is listening to the polished pleasantries of Sir
Andrew Barnard; or giving a solemn ear to the grave wisdom of Sir
Edward Nagle, in his boudoir at Windsor. When King Charles of
facetious memory was asked, why, instead of speaking his speech, he
read it, the monarch, fc who never said a foolish thing, nor ever did a
wise one," replied, that " By'r Lady, he had so often asked Parliament
for money, he was ashamed to look them in the face." We are far from
presuming that any such declaration will be made by our illustrious
Sovereign. But we wish that we could enjoy the advantage of seeing
him oftener. We give him full credit for the due fitness for his exalted
functions, and for the corresponding zeal. But still, Windsor is twenty-
two miles from Westminster, and the most loyal telescope will find a
difficulty in penetrating so far. A day spent on the road between Hyde
Park Corner and the Castle-gates, may be but a pastime to Ministers,
who are, we honestly believe, much more harmlessly employed while
counting donkeys or dandelions along the road, than counting boroughs,
or scribbling despatches in the showily-furnished rooms of Whitehall :
but to humbler men, the distance interposes a formidable barrier
between his Majesty and public recollection; and, not being of the
opinion of some important persons, that royalty may be fairly left beyond
the visible horizon, so long as the country is blessed with a stirring
Cabinet, we say, let us have no more Speeches by Commission.

We utter those sentiments from unfeigned respect for the monarchical
portion of the Constitution. In the struggles which will unquestionably
rise, we cannot afford to cast away any part of that great defence which
our ancestors erected for the freedom of the people. The weight of the
attack has, within our time, shifted from quarter to quarter of that triple
bulwark, which, if ever wisdom, virtue, and piety hallowed a work of
man, hallowed the Constitution of the British Empire. To what has been
done, we shall advert no more, until we can return with a hope of reno-

M.M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 51. 2 I

242 The Opening of the Session of Parliament. [MARCH,

vation. But the monarchical principle still remains unassailed by any
breaker-in upon the glorious labour of the glorious dead ; and that prin-
ciple it shall be our most zealous task, as it is among our first duties,
to preserve unshaken in the general trials that, from time to time, visit
all nations.

The King's Speech is divided, as usual, under the several heads of
foreign and domestic policy, trade and revenue, law, manufactures, and
the state of the people. In this Speech, two important features are
omitted, the Church, and Ireland. Another feature might have heen
introduced, for which no trivial gratitude would have been felt ; and
which must be introduced before long ; the improvement of the Legis-
lature. A measure before whose importance all the other interests of
the state are child's play.

Let no one suppose that we are stooping to follow in the train of those
miserable beings whose principles were as black, as their conduct was
calculated to excite the indignation of every man of British feeling.
We abhor the Radicalism, which sees nothing in established institutions
but objects for the exercise of its powers of overthrow ; hates every man
in the exact proportion as he rises superior to the multitude in manliness,
wisdom, and integrity ; and clasps to its bosom and lifts on its shoul-
ders every man of conspicuous miscreancy. But we must not suffer
ourselves to be deaf to the voice that calls for the purification of all the
great instruments of Empire. We must see the great political priest-
hood who officiate in our names round the Altar of the State, prepared
for their office by something more than the mere robes. And we must
see this, or see a result, to which our present public anxieties, the
clamour of our struggling population, and the deepening pressures on
every man, let his rank be what it may, will be but as the blowing of
the summer's wind. The theory, that there was a grand rectifying
power in the Legislature, which would instinctively correct its anoma-
lies, seems to be given up by its oldest advocates. Canning's showy
declamation has faded away, and we hear no more of the influence of
popular checks on the one hand, and legislatorial impulses on the other,
each exercising that measured restraint, those centripetal and centrifugal
forces, by which the State was swept harmoniously round its orbit
from year to year, every slight deviation compensated by some wise
reaction, until the whole moved, the balanced and illustrious pheno-
menon of a free constitution. But we may give other evidence than
our own, to the fact that Parliamentary Reform, conducted on the origi-
nal principles of parliament, is growing less into a rabble desire than
a public demand. We quote on this subject, (Quarterly Review, Ja-
nuary 1830) an authority which will be scarcely suspected of blowing
the trumpet to rouse a sleeping opinion.

" We cannot refrain from intimating it as our firm persuasion, that
whoever listens attentively to the tone and language which is now heard
in the unrestrained intercourse of the higher as well as lower classes of
society, will be constrained to admit, that the resolutions and proceed-
ings of the Legislature, and especially of the House of Commons, no
longer command that respect and submission with which they were
wont to be regarded !"

After this auspicious opening, the Review gives a passing touch of
panegyric to Parliaments in general, which by no means communicates
any peculiar share of brightness to the one in question. " So long as
the Representatives of a Free People discharge their duty with wisdom

1830.] The Opening of the Session of Parliament. 243

and firmness, no class of men can be named who receive a larger share
of the love and veneration of their countrymen ; but there is none
whose dereliction of duty is visited with more mortifying alienation and
neglect."

The sentences that follow are equally pithy.

" When a popular body begins to degenerate, it affects to deprecate
all injudicious harshness and austerity, when the end can be equally
attained by being more measured both in their language and resolu-
tions. The people perceive the change ; and, after a while, an evident
abatement ensues of the expectations which are formed of their delibe-
rations. After this, they become so idle or inattentive, that they suffer the
business which comes before them, to pass too much as a matter of
course ; and this, in its turn, causes their proceedings to be treated with
carelessness, and sometimes with disrespect."

Then comes on the more formidable declaration, partaking of that
style —

" When old Experience doth attain
To something of prophetic strain."

" In the last stage of decay they serve merely as a pageant, and are
despised, as only serving to register the decrees of the Executive
Government, which they have neither the virtue to modify nor to resist."
The Review then remeasures its steps ; and stating that there are im-
portant individuals who still think the danger chimerical, proceeds to
fix its speculations to the particular object, and inquires — " whether it
be really so certain that this branch of the Legislature (the Commons)
possesses the character that it once did, for either ability, attention to
business, or independence." On those points it is declared that —
" whether it be that the House has sunk, or the well-educated c6mmu-
nity has risen, it would be difficult to maintain, that as a body, they
now constitute the choice of the Commons of the Realm, in the same
sense in which they did some time ago/' The next hit is " unkinder
still." " Let any person listen to their ordinary conversation or reasoning,
or sit down to the perusal of the thoughts they may have committed to
writing, and they are not only found inferior to many private indi-
viduals among their contemporaries, but one seldom recognizes the
grasp of mind and statesmanlike qualities which the representatives of
a free and enlightened country might be expected to possess/'

Then ensues a comparison with the proceedings of the Upper House,
in which the Lords beat their unfortunate compatriots hollow — " for
gravity, precision, and judgment." — " Another quality, in which the
Members of the Lower House are thought likely to have somewhat
declined, is efficiency. Whether this be originally the fault of the House
or of the neglect or hurry of the Government, by whom the necessary
measures ought to be prepared, can make no difference. — The main,
purpose of the House of Commons is, to see that the business of the
nation be done, and its grievances redressed ; and if, year after year, they
meet and separate without seeing this accomplished, their efficacy must,
for all useful purposes, be regarded as diminished. All real business is
drowned in debates and reports. It is astonishing, at the end of a Ses-
sion, to see how much has been said, and how little real business has
been transacted."

So far has gone the estimate of the Legislative diligence, information,
and ability. It is, certainly, not given in the shape of flattery, and we
are, unfortunately, not at present furnished with materials for the over-

2 I 2

244 The Opening of the Session of Parliament. [MARCH,

throw of this merciless inquirer into public brains. But we come to a
question still more important.

" The point, in which the Members of the House of Commons have
sometimes been thought to be most deficient, is> their want of indepen-
dence ! Though less open to direct improper influence than formerly,
there is too much reason to surmise that they do not speak and vote
sufficiently according to their real sentiments."

The necessity of adhering to a party ; the " multitude of applica-
tions which almost every member receives from his constituents, com-
pels him, whether attached to Administration or not, to receive favours
of one kind or another, from almost every department of the Government.
All those things, in the breast of a person of delicate feeling, restrain
the just and legitimate freedom of thought and language, beyond what
can be easily imagined" We here protest against the Reviewer's ideas
of the case ; we believe that the imagination is perfectly conceivable,
and that a person of " delicate feelings/' as the epithet is happily
applied, generally, has no scruple whatever in trying the strength of his
own delicacy. But " worse remains behind."

" There is something," says this writer, " in the very atmosphere of
the House, unfavourable to bold and uncompromising conduct. It is,
de facto, a sort of overgrown club.. This is the worst part of the whole
business. Things are every day admitted in private among the mem-
bers, which are absolutely denied or concealed in the speeches reported
from the gallery. Whoever, therefore, should endeavour to rend
asunder that veil, which by all parties in the House is held up before
the public, would lose his character and caste. He would be treated
with coldness by those to whom he wished most to approximate, while
he might feel insuperable repugnance to unite with those who were
most willing to receive him. A loss of independence more painful to
the individual or more injurious to the commonwealth than this, cannot
well be pictured. It amounts to a surrender of the noblest privileges ;
and chokes the source of the fairest virtues which distinguish and adorn
the citizen of a free country."

A quotation from Sallust reinforces the position, that, as the common-
wealth rises to distinction by the virtue and incorruptibility of its indi-
vidual members, so does the period arrive when the commonwealth
must support, as it may, the vices of its leading men. Then comes the
comment.

" Were many of those elder Romans among us, the versatility of the
House of Commons would not be so rapid and remarkable as we some-
times find it. It too often happens, that the public measure connects
itself at some link or other with the job. It is the indulgence of a
grovelling and selfish spirit by their representatives, which has, at last,
in so many instances, made the subjects of free states grow weary of
their representatives, and take refuge in an absolute monarchy — as both
more vigorous and more virtuous." The argument is clenched with the
famous quotation from Montesquieu — " As all things have an end,
the state of which we are speaking, will lose its liberty and perish.
Rome, Lacedaemon, Carthage, all have perished ; and it will perish when
its Legislative shall have become more corrupt than its Executive."

This we give " without note or comment," as the phrase is. We
shall not add a syllable to it. We shall not even venture to say whether
it is true .or false. And for this silence we, in common with all writers
within the borders of this free country, have our especial reasons. But
the whole extract is a sign of the times. It must have been no. gentle

1830.] The Opening of the Session of Parliament. 245

change of the tide that swept round the good ship the Quarterly to lie
with her stem where her stern lay before. There are more things in
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But it is not
for us to " pluck out the bowels of the mystery/' and there we leave it
to the grand interpreter — Time.

The King's speech has for once disappointed no hope of the country,
for the sufficient reason, that the country expected nothing from it. It
is of course the speech of ministers ; and however their words are in
the habit of exceeding their deeds, yet their whole frame is so nerveless,
evasive and trifling, that they have not left themselves the faculty of
even a vigorous fiction. The first statement of this Ministerial Expose is
worthy of being ranked under the " Court Circular." It informs his
Majesty's faithful people that they are not at present fighting the French,
nor the Russians — intelligence which, for its interest and novelty, must
be duly appreciated by an admiring people.

The speech next informs us that the Turkish and Russian war has
been brought to a conclusion. This vies in novelty and interest with
the preceding.

His Majesty has " concerted with his allies measures for the final
pacification and settlement of Greece, and trusts to be able to lay such
information before the House as will explain his conduct in those trans-
actions." We trust that his ministers will lay a very large bundle of
tape-tied papers on the table of the Honourable House, which nobody
will read, or could understand in case of reading ; that Lord Aber-
deen will make a speech of immeasureable prolixity and unfathomable
profundity on them in the Upper House, and that Mr. Peel will emu-
late his Lordship's example with an extraordinary closeness of rivalry in
the Lower ; that Mr. Hume will throw the subject into confusion, and
Alderman Waithman throw the house into convulsions ; that the motion,
whatever it may be, wrill leave the country gentlemen and others as
wise as it found them ; that a great deal of pleasantry will diversify the
proceeding, and that every one present will be happy to get to his bed.
" His Majesty laments that he is unable to announce to you any prospect
of a reconciliation between the princes of the House of Braganza." Of
course not, and the result of the attempt was obvious from the be-
ginning to every human being but the " Inscrutibles." The scarlet doors
of the council-room shut out the common sense that was to be found in
the streets. Every captain of a skiff from Rio or Lisbon could have
told the wise men of Downing Street that Don Miguel was a coxcomb,
and that Don Pedro was not a hair's-breadth more indebted to nature ;
that two coxcombs can never be brought together but for some ad-
ditional display of foolery — an inflexible law; and that to persuade
either of them to listen to any plea of public feeling or personal ge-
nerosity, is an extravagance worthy only of the stolidity of a Rat
Cabinet.

But it comes out in this formal document, that Don Miguel is to be
recognized as king. And the document makes the further confession,
that the Don has forced us to this measure. He is told, that he has
gained the victory, and that he owes it to himself, to his system of
scorning our remonstrances, and harassing our intercourse with his
people — " The numerous embarrassments arising from the continued
interruption of those relations, increase his Majesty's desire to effect the
termination of so serious an evil." — te Here be sweet words, faith," as
Dame Quickly says. There is no mention of the right or wrong of the
affair, none of the old declamation on the hereditary privileges of the

246 The Opening of the Session of Parliament. [MARCH,

Brazilian prince, nor of the guarantee of England to the perpetual con-
nection of the thrones, nor a syllable of the antagonist right of Don
Miguel. The only question with his Majesty's ministers, after all their
virtuous wrath at usurpation, comes to be one of profit and loss.
Whether shall we gain or lose more by siding with Don Miguel or
grappling with him ? The question is undoubtedly an excellent one
for a rat cabinet, but it is, be believe, the first time that it has been
embodied in a king's speech. That Don Miguel's conduct has been
contemptuous of the opinions of the cabinet we perfectly allow, and by
no means blame him for it. That he " humbugged" — the vulgarity of
the word does not prevent its applicability — the Lord Dudley in the most
consummate manner, is matter of universal acknowledgement ; nor do
we impeach him for so fair and so easy an exercise of his ingenuity.
(The noble lord had, however, the compensation of getting his house
handsomely furnished on the retreat of the royal fugitive, on which for-
tunate windfall we congratulate a nobleman of his narrow income).
That Don Miguel laughed at in council, and put to instant rout in the
field, the whole rabble of that puppyism in politics, which, armed with
a Benthamite consitution, and a clamorous tongue, began with giving
lectures on liberty, with the dungeon and the scaffold in the back-
ground ; we cannot place among the counts of his indictment. But, that
he did as it pleased his royal will, to our merchants and fellow subjects
— that he treated England with scorn, and menaced us with the com-
bined hostility of the family thrones, is as well known, as it would have
been natural that we should retort scorn with scorn. But he knew our
ministers better ; he threw " embarrassments" in their way ; and he left
them to flounder on as they could. It does not appear that he moved
hand or foot to assist us out of the slough. The policy of contempt
fully achieved its triumph, and the ministerial expose has at once taught
him, and every other state, how to deal with us in future. But among
the " quips and cranks" of the affair, is the horror of the radicals at the
triumphant Portuguese. In their journals, in their harangues, in the
streets, in the Honourable House, in every spot, from a Mechanics' In-
stitute up to the legislature, they exhaust all their righteous indigna-
tion upon this " unlicensed grasper at a diadem/' Brougham exhales a
subtler venom while the name hangs upon his lip ; Hume is more un-
bearably Scotch in that conglomeration of rugged words which tumble
out to announce his virtuous wrath ; and poor Lord Holland shakes off
his years, and shoulders his crutch, to shew how fields were won in the
days when Burdett and he were babes, sitting beside the full-charged
kennel of Westminster eloquence, and sworn to Fox and buff-waistcoats.
And the best part of the burlesque is, Don Miguel's " guilty disregard
of royal rights," concentred in the word, usurpation,

Oh word of fear,

Ungrateful to a whiggish ear !

To have overlooked the glaring ridicule of this sudden fastidiousness
would have argued wilful blindness ; and accordingly Lord Aberdeen,
who, mystified as he is, is not wilfully blind, attacked the noble lord on
his sudden oblivion of his great friend, Napoleon, that gentle and un-
usurping friend of liberty, on whose fall his lordship had bestrode his
foundered Pegasus, and over whose tomb he had wept, to the amount of
one of the most melancholy epigrams that ever made the clay lie heavier
on the remnants of a lamented rogue.

The portion of the speech specially addressed to the House of Com-

1830.] The Opening of the Session of Parliament. 247

mohs, commences, as usual, with a promise of ceconomy in the budget.
" The estimates have been framed with every attention to oaconomy ;
and it will be satisfactory to you to learn, that his Majesty will be ena-
bled to make a considerable reduction in the amount of the public ex-
penditure, without impairing the efficacy of our naval or military
establishments." What reductions the premier may be pleased to make,
we must be satisfied to wait for, until it shall be his will to declare them.
But what he will not make, we shall take the liberty of venturing to
conjecture. He will not retrench a penny of his own salary of 5,000/.
a year as first Lord of the Treasury, nor of the pay and allowances of
the multitude of those epaulet wearers whom he has planted behind
the desks of civil office. To the fieldmarshal's emoluments, we have no
objection. He has earned them, we admit. But generosity in public
men is out of the question, and what he has earned he will hold fast.
Nor will he diminish a penny of the enormous salaries of his fellow
officials, nor mulct Sir Henry Hardinge of his half-pay, on considera-
tion of his 3,000/. a year as Secretary at War. Nor will he unrighte-
ously slice away the smallest strip of his gains from the celebrated Billy
Holmes, that model of a statesman, and meritorious servant of his coun-
try ; though those gains, in the single office of the Ordnance, amount to
2,000/. a year. Nor will he hurt the patriotism of Colonel Trench,
whose public services, equally valuable, have been rewarded by a ". grate-
ful country," much against its inclination, with 2,000/. a year more. Nor
shall we see any reduction, of any importance in the eyes of any man
alive, (except that man be a Chancellor of the Exchequer,) suffered to
occur during this session, nor the next, nor the next dozen, if we should
be favoured with the present ministerial dynasty so long. That the
premier would wish to lessen the public expenses, we have no doubt, if
it could be done without any sacrifice. But that government, consti-
tuted as it has been within our memory, will ever seriously set about
measures which curtail its own influence, we must be allowed to dis-
believe.

Of course there will be desperate doings among the minor offices. We
see, in the dim futurity of the grand retrenchment, the dismissal of a shoal
of fifty pound clerks ; and Lord Melville, a nobleman and minister, whose
zeal, vigour, and ability, have been by all men long estimated at their
full value, has already commenced a new sera in " chips." The pecula-
tion in chips has been magnanimously crushed in the bud throughout
the dock-yards ; and if the ship-carpenter lights his fire with any chips
whatever, they must henceforth not be the chips of his Majesty's blocks !
But what do we hear of retrenchment in the salaries of the whole body
of the higher dependants on the purse of John Bull ? We have not yet
heard that the proud patriotism of his Grace of Buckingham has stooped
to follow the example of Lord Camden, and disgorged the enormous
profits of his place in the Exchequer. As to that illustrious victim, the
Marquis Camden, we see that this nobleman's self-denial does not ascend
to the denial of self-panegyric. Every year a trumpet is blown before
him, on his refunding the sum, which the outcry of the nation wrung
from him after long and many a compunction. But of Lord Camden
we plainly say, that he had as much right to the whole 40,000/. a year,
as he has to the 4,000/. a year, which he has retained : he having in
fairness no right whatever to either, if right is to be estimated, not by
the mere grant of ministerial prodigality, but by service done. What
services were ever done by the Marquis Camden in the Exchequer to the

248 The Opening of the Session of* Parliament. [MARCH,

value of 4,000/. a year ? Or what services of any kind has he done
during the last fifteen years ? Has he not lived in total absence from

Eublic exertion during those money-making years ? Yet his tranquil-
ty, varied only by his transits from one country seat to another, from
the Wilderness to the Priory, and from the Priory to the Wilderness, (as
the newspapers take the trouble to tell us) has cost the public purse,
within those fifteen years, the sum of no less than 60,0001.

And there remain a whole tribe of sinecures, equally corpulent, and
equally well earned. Is there nothing to be done with the pension list
of England and Ireland, but to pay them ? The English pension list is
not less than 100,000/. a year ; the Irish is 80,000/. Is there no ground
for asking questions in this rich department of national liberality ? Let
justice be done, say we. Let the man of genius, the man who has bled
for the empire, the public servant of the country, or even of the crown,
who has laboured until he can labour no longer, be rewarded, or rescued
by the state from the degradation of povery. But let none other be
suffered to live upon the sinking resources of the empire.

Let the whole enormity of reversions be cut away. Lord Ellen-
borough is a clerk in the court of King's Bench, a court in which we
never heard of his Lordship's soliciting any of the labours of patriot
industry ; and yet from this easy function, his Lordship receives £1,500
a year. The reversionary places in Ireland were of old a rich harvest
for the minister, and they still have some very tolerable things, suffi-
ciently acceptable to persons of condition on both sides of the water.
Let those be lopped down to the ground. There can be no right to
their possession now, where there could have been no right from the
beginning. The prodigality of a minister, or the corruption of a
minion, can constitute no right ; and if the holders set up a clamour,
the true answer to them is, " You have fattened on the public vitals
till you have sickened and exhausted the public strength ; be content
with your past plunder, and be thankful that you are not compelled to
refund every shilling of it !"

The undeniable fact is, that the abuses of patronage, through the
whole extent of office, have been monstrous. We, of course, cannot
lay the blame of this upon the present ministry, the evil is of old stand-
ing ; it has been the scandal and the crime of every successive adminis-
tration, and it singly has gone further to degrade and vilify the powers
of government in the public mind than all the other errors or crimes of
public men. Here the reform must begin. Here is the deepest root of the
whole national discontent, and here the steel must strike. England is
too high-minded to hesitate at the largest sacrifices, where she feels
them essential to her honour. In a righteous cause, she knows no limit
to her liberality. But it is the sting, to think that her liberality may be
given to support the waste and luxurious insolence of a class whom she
cannot recognize as among her active and honourable citizens. Every
shilling lavished on the sinecurist is not simply so much thrown away,
but it is the infusion of a new portion of distrust and repulsion into the
national heart, until that heart refuses to be drained any longer.

But when the whole finance of sinecurism shall have been rigidly
shorn away — and in this we include the inordinate payments annexed
to inadequate services in every department of the State — the premier
will have another noble opportunity for the exercise of his saving
virtues. The British army amounts in troops of the line to no less
than 91,000 men; or, reckoning depots, staff, waggon-train, and the

1830.] The Opening of the Session of Parliament. 240

various scattered officials connected with this ponderous establishment,
we have to pay at least 150,000/. And this in the fifteenth year of an
unbroken peace ; with his Majesty's gracious declaration that we are in
brotherly love with all mankind, or, in the more circuitous dialect of
the speech, that, " His Majesty receives the strongest assurances from
all foreign powers of their desire to maintain and cultivate the most
friendly relations with this country/'

If his Majesty's ministers do not believe those most friendly assu-
rances, why do they report them to his Majesty's people ? If they do,
why are his Majesty's people forced to pay this military multitude ? The
colonies, we admit, require troops, and those troops must be occasionally
relieved ; but 30,000 men form a force three times the strength of any
that we have in the colonies. Why then are we to be encumbered with
the remaining 100,000 ? Are we to be told that they must be reserved
for European emergencies ? Let us also be told, that France, or Spain,
or Holland, is meditating a descent on our coasts. Let us be told, that
the sea between Calais and Dover is dried up, or that we are to be in-
vaded by balloons. But if those tales are not to be told us, are we
not entitled to demand, why we shall be put under the burthen of
an enormous military establishment for a contingency which ministers
would be the first to pronounce ridiculously remote? Why are we to
pay eight millions of pounds a year for a service which ought not to
cost us one ? Nothing can be more idle than to suppose, that if we
to-morrow disbanded nine-tenths of the troops now in Great Britain,
and if France or Russia declared war against us the day after, we should
not have full time to prepare an army adequate to every possible pur-
pose. The foreign standard cannot be planted at our doors without
our having seen its wavings along the horizon. The channel cannot be
bridged over in a night. The preparations of foreign war must be slow.
Even the vivid and remorseless activity of Napoleon could not over-
come the obstacles that nature has erected between this country and the
impulse of a hostile force. On the other hand, by preserving the staff
and a few of the regimental officers, a regiment fit to take the field
could be formed on the nucleus of the old corps in a month. Napo-
leon's preparations for invasion cost him nearly two years, and still they
were incomplete. Yet to meet this remote contingency, this almost
impossibility, we are to be broken down with an enormous expenditure.
Here the premier may exhibit his economical zeal with the most laud-
able vigour ; and we shall follow shouting, " lo triumphe" in his train.

The Navy is the true power of England ; her most vigorous and
irresistible arm ; her most natural and most impregnable defence. To
the largest expenditure of public wealth actually required by the navy,
no true Englishman will ever demur. The Humes and Burdetts may
cavil at this expenditure; but we disclaim all alliance with them and
their faction. In our remarks we have no object in view but the public
good ; and it would be no gratification to us to assist the ambition or swell
the clamour of men whose principles we scorn.

The allusions in the speech to the public distress are flippant and fee-
ble. But the topic would now lead us too far ; and besides is too likely
to be a permanent one, to make it necessary for us to examine it now.
It is the great problem of the time. That England, with her extra-
ordinary means of prosperity, should be yearly sinking into pecuniary
distress, is not to be accounted for on the ordinary grounds of national

M.M. New Series —Vol. IX. No. 51. 2 K

250 The Opening of the Session of Parliament. [MARCH,

evil. But the ministry by which this distress cannot be counteracted,
acknowledges its own unfitness for its trust, and ought to be removed.

The Debates which have already occurred, shew the feeling of the
country. On the first night, the whole power of the minister could not
bring forward more than 158 members in the Commons. The address
was carried by a trifling majority ; though it is almost an etiquette that
it should give rise to neither a debate nor a division. In the Lords, a
division was called for by Lord Stanhope, evidently against the wish of the
Noble opposition, who reverence etiquette more than their contemporaries
in the lower House. The division was of course, in point of numbers,
merely nominal, and for the purpose of avoiding a slight to Lord Stan-
hope. Yet, even in that division, appeared names of formidable im-
port : the Dukes of Cumberland, Newcastle and Richmond.

A committee of eleven has been appointed for the India question ; on
which however there is no probability of a decision. Yet we draw no
conclusion from Lord Ellenborough's elephant letter. His Lordship
writes with an easy pen, and was probably more engaged with some
new pattern of pantaloons, or some exquisite cosmetic, at the time than
his billet doux to Sir John Malcolm. Yet even Lord Ellenborough him-
self might be the " tame elephant between the two wild ones," and be
unconciously trained on between the premier and his friend Sir George
Murray, to say what might answer the purpose of two personages who
have played many a ruse before now. His Lordship's letter declares,
for it is nonsense to say that it has any other meaning, that the India
charter is to be renewed. The declaration comes out under circum-
stances which make us conclude the direct contrary. And if the letter
shall serve to lull the vigilance of the Company, it will have effected at
least as much as any penmanship of poor Lord Ellenborough's could
ever hope to do. The remainder of the debates have been busied about
motions of such persons as Sir Robert Wilson (who is not yet a general),
of Lord Holland, who will never be Secretary of State, and of Lord
Palmerston, whom the Princess Lieven's most ardent influence has
failed of making prime minister. Mr. Huskission, who is not yet
Secretary for the colonies, had made several speeches on the popular
distress, to the existence of which he has pledged himself, with the
happiest oblivion of his opinions six months ago. The stock question
of East Retford has been talked over again for the fiftieth time, and the
representative glories of Birmingham extinguished by 126 to 99.
While such models of patriotic wisdom engross the public ear, we may
congratulate the premier on his security from all the " natural shocks"
that place is heir to. But this kind of debating must have an end !
The country looks for something more from its representatives ! There
are the elements of an irresistible opposition in the legislature ; and if
they are not inclined to act there, they are likely to be summoned to a spe-
cies of action, which we would as sincerely deprecate as the most luxurious
sinecurist who ever smiled over an order on the treasury. The national
feeling is deeply dyed with scorn ! The session of 1829 is indelible !
The Rat Cabinet is estimated at its proper value ; and let the worst
come to the worst, we say, " Long live the King !"

1830.] [ 261 ]

THE FOUETEENTH ; OR, THE UGLY MAN.

BEFORE I enter upon my explanation of the riddle which I have
just written — " The Fourteenth" — it is necessary that I should introduce
myself to the reader " in my habit as I live."

It is the practice of writers who describe themselves to begin by
saying — " I am five-and-twenty years of age. My manners are amiable,
my address fascinating. My person is well-formed, and my features,
though not handsome, are interesting. They are capable at times of an
expression that is considered fine — indicating purity of mind, firmness of
character, and sweetness of disposition/' This at least is the style of
those very old, or very young gentlemen, who offer themselves in the
"Morning Herald," on such eligible terms, as sacrifices to rich widows and
wards in Chancery. I am sorry that I cannot conscientiously adopt
this style myself— a hero, in these days, being nothing if not handsome.
But I must admit at once, in plain language, without shame or equivoca-
tion, that I am what the world calls — and particularly the female part of
it — confoundedly ugly ! There is not a feature in my face where it
ought to be. I look as if I had just walked out of " Der Freischiitz."
You would fancy that I had been, not created, but guessed at — or that I
had been made by mistake. I have been accused of picking up my
countenance at a masquerade; and it has been stated that Mr. Farley
invented me for a pantomime. People are surprised that they do not
see a line of italics upon my forehead — " drawn and etched by George
Cruikshank." Listen has frequently expressed his admiration of my
ugliness, and regards we with a kind of envious enthusiasm. I was
once obliged to fight a duel with a friend, only for looking at his little
girl, whose imagination had been excited by reading the history of an
ogre ; and was, a short time ago, cast in an action preferred against me
for stopping to admire a horse, that happened at the same moment to
take fright. I am a particular favourite with the author of " Franken-
stein," who thinks me philosophically frightful : I sate to her for the
Monster. I have seen people stare at me, as if they wondered how I
escaped from St. George, or wished to know when I was last at Wantley.
Frequently have I been puzzled to think how Narcissus could fall in love
with himself: the thing seems to me impossible. When I have surveyed
my face in a glass, I have been rather alarmed lest, instead of passing a
pocket, I should put my hand into it. How sorry I have sometimes
been, when, calling upon a friend, I have seen all the little children, as
they stole a glance at me on my entrance, prefer going to bed to the
proffered privilege of a game at forfeits ! Shakspeare must have seen
me in a vision when he drew Caliban ; Spencer also has very nearly
described me in several places. One day or other, I shall be taken
up for a triton that has strayed from its pedestal in a gentleman's pond.
I should make a capital study for a knocker : Mr. Nash wishes to take
a cast of my face for that purpose. It is not long ago since mine host of
the « Saracen's Head" offered me a share in the concern, on condition
that I put up my portrait for the sign. He little suspected the impossi-
bility of painting it ; it would be easier to personify a chaos. Fuseli
could not have made me more frightful; nor could Lawrence have
extracted a grace from me — even when the alchemy of his pencil found
gold in all things. No painter, therefore, has yet had the courage to sketch
me. Yes : as I stood the other day, looking at a Hercules and laughing at

2 K 2

252 The Fourteenth ; or, [MARCH,

myself, I turned and caught a pale thin young man pencilling my con-
.tour into his pocket-book ; and a few clays afterwards, while I was
talking to some ladies in a carriage, what was my surprise at recognizing
my own features, in all the sublimity of ugliness, painted upon the pan-
nel ! I was in the character of a griffin ! What was worse, the ladies,
who happened to be horribly handsome, observed the likeness, which
they seemed to regard as a coincidence highly flattering to me. I fan-
cied every moment that they would compliment me on the resemblance,
and expect me to present them with their crest set in diamonds, for my
miniature. While leaning over, they glanced first at the green pannel,
and then at me — comparing the grin of the griffin with the smile of
unconsciousness which I assumed, and which must have looked very
like a paroxysm of horror. It grew more and more ghastly, as I affected
to look pleasant. I endeavoured to twist my mouth into something not
disagreeable, and tried it in every possible shape, from an S to a Z : but
in vain. I only resembled a fury playing on the fiddle. At last, finding
that the griffin had decidedly the best of it, I left the ladies to their scent-
bottles. I believe one of them fainted. As I retreated, they seemed a
little surprised at my walking away in the ordinary manner, like other
people. They looked down, and consulted together — they had counted
my legs.

I shall not attempt to convey to the reader any definite notion of my
features. As well might I endeavour to paint the sound of the bagpipes,
or to turn a barrel of vinegar into verse. It may be observed, however,
that my eyes would not be so exquisitely disagreeable, if they were a
better match either in colour, size, or situation. Eyes in general look
much better for wearing lashes ; but mine, being destitute of these
ornaments, are not seen to advantage. Of my nose, which is constructed

on true Bardolphian principles but no, I should do it wrong to

throw out even a hint respecting it. Let it pass for ever undescribed — a
shape of shadows — a riddle to all ages. I bequeath its memory to man-
kind ; and, in after-times, let it be said that there was at least one nose of
which the human mind could form no conception. Pitt and Sheridan
are reported to have had a duel of wit on this subject. The meeting
took place ; and spiry steeples and burning meteors were exchanged —
but without effect: the affair was compromised. But mine — I will not
compare it with the Pyramids. I will merely observe, that if it should
acquire, either from time or the table, any other form or hue, it must
inevitably be handsomer than it is. I shall close this part of my subject
by saying, that my mouth seems cut in my face like a keyhole ; that
Mr. Kean has completely failed in his imitation of my legs in " Richard ;"
and that my feet very much resemble those which we frequently
encounter in modern poetry, being sadly deficient in quantity when com-
pared with each other.

After the incident related above, of my rival and representative the
griffin, and his frightened and fainting patrons, the reader will be sur-
prised to learn that I am an especial favourite in all societies ; and that
the more delightful as well as more discerning sex, in particular, has
invariably received me with favour and partiality. I am, in fact, one
of the most popular men of my day. A party is hardly considered com-
plete without me. I take precedence of the youthful and the elegant.
You will always find me in the loveliest, the liveliest, and the least super-
ficial circle in the room. I attract about me the gay and the romantic —

1830.J The Ugly Man. 253

the sentimental and the impassioned ; all sects and parties, from the
grave dowager to the graceful damsel. Mind, I am not hired like a
genius or a juggler, who is expected to amuse in proportion to the
honours that are paid him. I am not employed either to attract visitors
or to frighten them away. My face is not my fortune. And yet I am
hunted as a curiosity, and carried about like a new poet or a new shawl,
and shewn to every body. But for what ? I do not write songs — nor
have I made any useless discovery in science. Of art, I am too ignorant
even to talk fashionably upon it ; nor am I sufficiently acquainted with
the names of the old masters to pretend to admire them. " To be able
to dance well," says some great author, " requires a good understand-
ing;" it also requires legs — which the articles that assist me in walking
cannot with correctness be called. Of music I know little : I used to
play on the flute j but a superstitious lady having been thrown into
hysterics by the expression of my face during the performance, I have
since thought proper to desist. As for my singing — it would only
remind you of a frog imitating a blackbird, or affecting to hum " I'd be
a butterfly !" There is some secret, then, by which ugliness may be
made fascinating, and the absence of every accomplishment eminently
profitable ? There is — and I shall at once give this secret to the world,
for the benefit of the ordinary and the uninvited. It consists simply in
this singular fact — that I never in my life happened to read any one of
the Scotch novels ! This forms my character j I am known as " the
gentleman who never read ( Waverley' !" I live upon the nil admirari
— I flourish upon nothing. I do not know " Salathiel" from " Pelham,"
and my popularity is consequently prodigious. I am the first person
singular — the curiosity of the hour. Every body is contending who shall
get me into a corner to describe to me Amy Robsart or Mac Ivor. I am
like the New World — all are anxious to cultivate me. My ignorance is
universally coveted — to know is to be nothing. People are dying for
the delight that awaits me on the first reading. How I am envied ! All
leave me with an impression that I am exceedingly well informed,
because they have communicated to me every thing that they happen to
know up to that period. I am locked into boudoirs and private rooms.
Consultations are held as to which novel I am to read first, and at what part
I am to begin to be enchanted. At one visit they unfold to me the entire
plot ; at another, they are all impatience to know how far I have read,
and what my sensations were when I came to a particular chapter ; at
the third, they meet me on the stairs, to ask if I had the least idea of its
being so interesting, and whether I am not perfectly enraptured.

Amidst these flattering successes, I am of course exposed to some
annoyances. There are those that take a pride to gird at me — as men
did at Falstaff. But my triumph is no less complete — I have captivated
the loveliest of her sex. She writes romances, and I have promised to
read none but hers. I am to furnish her with perpetual ideas for her
corsairs and bandits : she will never want a demon while I live. But
having accomplished my first object, by introducing myself at full length
to the reader, I will proceed to my story.

My hopes of happiness just alluded to had not yet received a confir-
mation. I was in hourly expectation of a decision, and flattered myself —
except when I happened to be standing near a mirror — that it would be
favourable. My anxiety increased to the highest pitch, when I was
informed that my fate would be decided as soon as the sentiments of a

254 The Fourteenth ; or, [MARCH,

rich relative should be known, and that in five days an answer should be
sent. Well, five days were not quite an eternity ; it was only to wait with
patience — the hour would come. My heart beat responses to the clock,
and ticked as if it had been warranted. I watched every hour that
came, as a debtor does a dun, and was thankful when it was gone. Five
days — twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth — it would be the fourteenth of the
month. Memorable date ! I fancied myself in my fourteenth year, and
that I was going to be bound apprentice to Pan or Apollo, Nothing
but delight was before me. There seemed to be no number beyond
fourteen ; that formed the sum - total of my arithmetic and my
anxiety. Yet it appeared to contain more figures than the national
debt ; I thought it never would come. At last, however, it arrived.
Heavens ! what a discovery I then made : it was the commence-
ment of a new hebdomad; it was a dies non ; it was, in short,
Sunday ! I found it out by the title of my newepaper on the
breakfast table. Watching for the fourteenth, I had overlooked
the days of the week. I read the paper completely through, down to
the printer's name, to revenge myself" on my stupidity. The day, how-
ever, departed in the usual way ; the sun sunk, and, to my great satis-
faction, rose again. Now, then, for my letter. " Letitia," said I (these
girls get such fine names), " you may bring up my coffee ; and mind,
I expect a letter this morning ; pray let me have it the moment it
comes." The girl stared at first, and then I believe almost tittered.
" There has been one already, sir." — c< There has !'' exclaimed I, in a
rapture ; ' ' never mind the coffee now ; put that down immediately, and
bring me the letter." She indulged me with another stare, and treated
herself with another internal titter. " Oh ! I refused it, sir," said she,
with an air of discretion, and a smile that betrayed much satisfaction
with herself, and surprise at my emotion. " Refused it ! furies ! when ?
why ?" — " It came by the eight o'clock post, sir. I thought it was a
valentine, and that of course you would not take it in/' This was said
with a significant glance at my figure, intimating, in very good English,
that she considered me a fair subject for a quiz ; and that the epistle she
had, with so much tenderness for me, rejected, was a dispatch not from
Cupid, but from Momus. I was in a violent rage, but I smothered it in
its birth. I felt an earthquake within me, but stood firm. It was not so
much at the girl's good-humoured glance, and the commiseration with
which she regarded me, as at the loss of my letter, and the situation I
was in, in expecting an epistle of such importance upon such a day. I
summoned my wits, and held a select vestry in my mind. The result
was inevitable ; I was obliged to take in every letter that came, until the
right one arrived. I communicated this determination to Letty, with
instructions to deliver them to me without delay. " Certainly, sir,"
said she, " and if I had known that you take such things in, I would not
have refused the one that came this morning — but I have seen rather
handsome gentlemen send them back."

Determined not to be disconcerted by this incident, but to wait at
home the whole day, I -drew my chair almost into the fire, and invented
a plan for laying out my grounds — when I got them ; and then I longed
for the lease to arrive — or in other words, for the letter ! The post-hour
came, and — Heu mihi I what an inundation of dispatches ! I forget how
many — some at twopence, some at threepence — none paid ! The whole
Post-Office establishment, backed by the Stationers' Company, had

1830.] The Ugly Matt. L>55

conspired to prey upon me. Like the letters of the alphabet, which they
exceeded in number, there were no two alike. Some were folded very
mysteriously, and tortured into geometrical forms ; others were not
folded at all, but looked as if they had been doubled in the dark. The
seals were no less multiform, and were graced by every impression from
a sixpence to a key. There was, however, a surprising unanimity in their
contents ; they all struck at me with some silly satire. But it was quite
in vain. Nature had done so much for me, that my enemies could not
by any possibility caricature me. I wished that these were indeed my
portraits: instead of scorning them, I contemplated them with envy.
All that I regretted was, that the real letter, the Ariel among these
mischievous imps, did not appear. I waited till the next post ; to my
dismay, the dose was repeated — " the mixture as before." Here they
were again, some directed at the right-hand corner, and others at the
left — many bearing the insignia of a button, and more of a thimble. I
opened them one by one ; and Letty found or feigned something to do
about the room, in order to catch a glance at their contents, and to see
how I bore my misfortunes. Every one I came to increased my dis-
appointment. I looked for " South Audley-street" at the top, and
" sincerely your's" at the bottom, in vain. Letty observed the change of
countenance that attended the opening of these seals. She felt for me — -
I saw it in her face. She is really a kind creature, for she never laughs
out even when I look serious. When I opened the last, and beheld a
coloured nose extending all across the page, with " turn over" written
beneath it, tears of disappointment gushed into my eyes. Letty attributed
my grief to the sight I had just witnessed ; she ventured to speak. " I
wish you hadn't taken them in, sir ; it's a shame that they're all so ! I
did think you would have had one rose, or a true lover's knot ; and I'm
sure if I'd known, and had thought you wouldn't have been offended,
I'd have sent you one myself — with some verses out of Tasso, made by a
friend of mine, a governess, that knows French very well."

After thanking Letty for all her intended kindness, I desired her to
let me have the result of the next delivery. It was to the same effect
as the preceding — they were roseless, torchless, heartless and dartless.
Above all, they brought with them no redeeming companion, no saving
clause or accompaniment, that, like a delightful air, might make even
nonsense endurable. They were a flock of ravens — but where was my
promised dove ! My mortification rose twenty per cent. I paced up
and down my apartment, ruminating upon philosophy and the post-
office — on ill-directed love and mis-directed letters. At length the final
double-knock was heard — the last delivery had arrived. The sound
came upon me like the tolling of a bell ; it announced the death of my
hopes. Another moment, and a step is heard on the stairs, hurried and
agitated. The door is flung back, and a packet of letters placed on
the table — with four pence out of a half-crown that had paid for them.
The door is shut again, and the candles brought nearer to me ; — the seals
are broken — the paper rent asunder. My eye glances rapidly over them
one after another j my hand drops them tremblingly upon the table —
the last wafer gives way — I turn paler than the paper, and sink back in
my chair exhausted. It was not among them.

In this state of stupor I continued for an hour or two, when I rose,
and once more paced the apartment. I began to sing, but a servant
tapping at the door to tell me that her mistress had heard a strange

256 The Fourteenth ; or, [MARCH,

noise, and desired to know if anything was the matter, induced me to
abandon this mode of cultivating my miseries. On looking in the glass,
1 beheld my features for the first time with complacency and satisfaction.
They seemed to be the true outward and visible sign of the tempest that
raged within. I saw — I felt — that I was " like no brother." I could
not help entertaining a belief that the ties that bound others did not
extend to me — and I resolved to terminate my wretchedness at once.
How could I live with such a face as mine ! how should I look in old
age — solitary and frightful ! And then — wondering how Chabert could
be so foolish as to refuse prussic-acid — a thing that seemed to me the
elixir — I rushed out in search of it.

Many were the shops I visited — but I was not so lucky as Romeo ;
our apothecaries are too well off. Some considered me a madman —
others seemed to think me far too demoniac to stand in need of such
remedies, and that I was only tempting them to perdition. All refused.
At last I found a shop with a boy whistling behind the counter. I
made a desperate effort to be agreeable, and pleaded some experiments
in natural philosophy — but he denied me like the rest. I begged for
a little laudanum for the tooth-ache ; the earnestness of my manner, I
suppose, alarmed him, and he recommended tincture of myrrh. I gave
him a look that I have no doubt haunts him to this day. As I stood on
the step hesitating which way to go, I recollected a chemist of whom I
had sufficient knowledge to calculate upon his consent ; with him in
some way or other I should effect my purpose. His house was only a
street or two off, and I accordingly hastened thither. We chatted toge-
ther about coughs and the currency, the weather and the Duke of Wel-
lington. But, in spite of every effort, I could not introduce my subject.
I reflected upon the trouble into which he would be brought by my
death— to bring a person whom I knew into collision with a coroner
would be selfish and cruel. My heart failed me ; and, after one or two
fruitless efforts to accomplish my request, I had only fortitude enough to
ask for an ounce of acidulated drops ! He wrapped up my change in
paper, and I was again left in the world without a hope.
. I now began to revolve in my mind the various modes of dying which
human genius has invented. Drowning I entertained a particular aver-
sion to — besides, the water was so extremely cold. Pistols occurred to
me — but then I am no sportsman, and could never make sure of my
aim. My razors I recollected required setting ; but the instant this
objection crossed my mind, I turned my head and saw that I was
passing a cutler's shop. I went in and selected a new set. They were
not polished, and I could not have them that night. They were to be
sent to me the next morning — certainly not later than nine. I consented
to live till that hour. I felt relieved, and more satisfied with myself;
and in this state returned home. Here, the first thing that met my
sight was the hideous pile of letters — a Mont Blanc of paper, under
which all my hopes lay buried. I calculated what they had cost me —
and seventeen and sixpence sank deep into my soul. I vowed revenge.
A flush of triumph pervaded my mind as I contemplated the pleasure
of burning them. This was succeeded by a profounder thought ; — why
not set fire to the house, and perish like Sardanapalus ! A moment's
consideration, however, convinced me that I had no right to do this, as
I was only a lodger. Musing on the letters, I reflected upon the happy,
the enviable lot of a twopenny-postman. He knows not the sickness of

1830.] The Ugly Man. 257

hope deferred ; he never experienced what it is to open an unpleasant
letter, or to wait for an agreeable one that has never been written. He
has no letters — no correspondents of his own ; he has only to take two-
pences, not to pay them. How superior seemed the fortune of the man
who had delivered these dispatches (probably a good-looking person),
to mine, who had received them 1 The contents of them were nothing
to him — he looked only at the direction. He dreamed not of the agita-
tion which his knock produced ; he presented the letter with a firm
hand — while mine trembled as it touched the seal. It might bring
tidings of the loss of friends — or of money; and welcome for him —
twopence being the boundary of his sympathies, the alpha and omega of
his imagination. His bag and mind empty, he had gone home (perhaps
in the omnibus) to his wife, whose kind heart and careful fingers were
counting the copper for him into shilling piles ! Whilst I — but I could
not trust myself to look at the picture. I had no wife i I seized the
letters and thrust them separately into the flames, to protract my enter-
tainment. At last I became impatient, and consigned two or three at a
time to destruction. The funeral pyre flourished — the coals crackled —
the blaze ascended. I sate and surveyed it with a smile strengthened
by a substratum of malice and revenge. But presently, in the midst of
my enjoyment, I perceived that though the flames subsided, a sort of
smothered light remained. I turned an inquisitive glance up the
chimney — it was on fire ! What was my consternation at that moment !
I felt my brain spin round. An unnatural glare was thrown on the
walls of the apartment — I shuddered at my own shadow. In a few
minutes the house was alarmed ; the servants burst into my room, and
saw the rug and fender covered with the fragments of my letters.
They then rushed up stairs, to the roof of the house, with water;
thither, half-distracted, I followed them. The night being cold, my
great-coat was brought to me ; and, in my confusion, I thrust it first into
a tub of water, aiad then down the chimney 1 After a little time the fire
was extinguished, the crowd soon dispersed, the engines reluctantly
retreated, and the house was restored to tranquillity.

In this calm, however, I had no share ; the events of the night had
only confirmed my resolution, and I anxiously looked forward to the
hour of nine, when my purchase of the preceding evening would
arrive. Soothed by this reflection, I retired to bed — and to broken
slumbers. I beheld nothing but scarlet coats and leather bags — a legion
of postmen; — I was wandering in a hall lined with looking-glass, that
reflected my own figure a thousand times over ; — I was committed for
trial for placing my portrait in the Royal Academy, to the great injury
of the nerves of several persons of distinction. When I awoke it was
very near nine — only a few minutes remained for me. My eyes fell
upon the glass, and I gave the last shudder of disgust at the unhappy
features that had involved me in ruin. The delay of the cutler rendered
me impatient. I wondered what the papers would say the next morn-
ing, and whether they would publish woodcuts. Unconsciously I took
up the wet sheet before me, to read my final debate. Underneath it
lay — mysterious providence ! — a letter. To seize it, to break it open, to
devour it, was the work of an instant: it realized my fondest, my
wildest dream. It was dated on the thirteenth; but on Sunday there
were no letters, on Monday too many ; the delay was clearly explained
— it had just been delivered. At the same moment, Letty entered die

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 51 . 2 L

The Fourteenth ; or, the Ugly Man. [MARCH

room. " Your razors are come, sir." — " Very well," said Ij " then let
me have some hot water, for I must dress directly."

I hobbled like Vulcan to his Venus. She is a splendid creature, and
writes poetry so intelligibly, that you would hardly know it from prose.
She possesses great originality of taste ; for she does not think me at all
too ugly — for a German tale. It is a maxim of hers that mediocrity
even in ugliness is despicable. We are to be married on the First of
April — the title of her next romance. Letty, who has a notion of litera-
ture, goes with us into the country. — Reader, whosoever you are, let this
be at once your affliction and your balm — -that you are less happy and
less ugly than I am. B.

THE EXISTING DISABILITIES OF THE JEWS IN THE BRITISH

EMPIRE.

IN the year 1753 the ministry gave their sanction to a bill enabling
all foreign Jews, settling in England, to obtain letters of naturalization ;
the previous obstruction having been the necessity of their receiving the
Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The bill passed ; but the public feel-
ing was against it ; circumstances raised this feeling into open violence,
the ministry shrunk from resisting the national impulse, and the bill was
speedily repealed. Since that period no effective effort has been made
to influence the legislature on the subject of the Jews. They remain
exposed to formidable civil disabilities. — In the first place, the usage of
the corporation of London withholds from Jews the freedom of the city,
and thus prevents them from exercising retail trades within its limits.
And this, though but a local injury, yet becomes of the highest impor-
tance, when we recollect the magnitude of London, its influence on the
country, and its being the chief residence of the British Jews.

The great general impediment to the Jewish possession of the rights
of citizenship in the British islands, is the oath of abjuration, which, in
denying the supremacy of any foreign potentate over England, pledges
the taker of the oath, " on the faith of a Christian !" The taking of this
oath, and of the oath of allegiance, on the holy evangelists, alike renders
it obnoxious to the Jew. The oath of abjuration, containing the allusion
to " the faith of a Christian," of course cannot be taken by a conscientious
Jew ; and by this impediment he is precluded from sitting in parlia-
ment ; his vote may be refused at elections ; he cannot practise at the
bar as either barrister, attorney, or notary ; he cannot even act as school-
master or constable. An annual Indemnity Bill may protect him against
penalties, as it did the dissenters before the repeal of the Test Act ; but
in all instances, where the oath must be taken before the office is assumed,
it obviously acts as a direct disqualification. Another, though minor,
disqualification arises from the 13th and 14th of Charles II., requiring
persons who teach in private houses to have a license from the bishop of
the diocese. Protestant dissenters and papists were relieved from this
statute by the 31st of George III. Jews are still liable to it ; and cases
might easily arise in which it would form an obstruction.

It is a striking circumstance, that the repeal of the Test and Corpora-
tion Acts, by 9th George IV., should have actually placed the Jew in a
worse condition than he was before. Until the year 1828, he might, like other
non-conformists, have been protected by the annual act of Indemnity,
in all cases where the oath of abjuration was not to be taken until after the
assumption of the office. But the declaration which was substituted for the

1830.1 Existing Disabilities of the Jews in the British Empire. 259

abjuration oath contains the phrase, " on the true faith of a Christian,"
and is, therefore, still incompatible with the feelings of the Jew. There is
now no bill of Indemnity, and he remains under the weight from which
the late statute has relieved all but the Jew. But, by inability to make
this declaration, he is actually excluded from all corporate offices, and all
places under government.

In addition, it is still a question, whether the Jews are, even now, within
the privileges of the Toleration Act, (1 W. andM., c. 18). That act, which
was for the protection (from heavy penalties for non-attendance on the
church service) of all non- conformists, except papists, and "such as
denied the Trinity" obviously excluded the Jew from its protection. It
may seem that by the statute of 1813, repealing the clause which contained
the words, " such as denied the Trinity/' the Jew was taken within its
boundary. But the point is by no means settled, and the Jew remains
liable to the chance of vexation on the statute. The conception, how-
ever, that a natural-born English Jew cannot be a possessor of real pro-
perty, is a vulgar error, the opinions of the ablest lawyers having long
decided the question. In the present time Sugden, Butler, Preston, and
Humphreys, have distinctly expressed their opinions in the affirmative.

We have followed in this statement Mr. F. H. Goldsmid's intelligent
pamphlet, as the most unequivocal evidence of the objects which the
English-born Jew proposes in his appeal to the legislature. The boon
which he asks is twofold : 1st. The removal of any doubts existing, re-
lative to the operation of the Toleration Act, and the statute of 1813;
2nd. A statute allowing the omission, by English-born Jews, of. the
words " upon the true faith of a Christian," in taking the abjuration oath
or the Declaration. To this it might be advantageous to add the direc-
tion, that all oaths administered to the Jew should be administered on
the Old Testament, as they at present are in courts of justice.

We can see nothing irrational in these demands, nothing hazardous
to the constitution, and nothing offensive to the religion of England.
For the Jew is not bound by his tenets to overthrow protestantism in any
shape. He is not chained neck and heels to the footstool of a foreign,
potentate, who looks upon protestantism as revolt, and who looks upon
the revolters as punishable by the sword and the flame, should chance
ever give him the power. The Jew is not bound to make proselytes, by
the belief that the making of proselytes secures his own soul from the
penalties of the future world ; that it is the only way to save the soul of
the heretic from final ruin ; and that to secure both results it is justifiable
to use the extremities of persecution ; or, in other words, to " consume the
body for the sake of the soul." On those grounds we separate the claims
of the Jew, by the broadest line, from the claims of the papist. To to-
leration we are the most unhesitating friends — to toleration on the largest
scale— a total avoidance of every restraint upon a man's communion with
religious things— a sacred sufferance of perfect freedom in his mode ot
address to the common Father and Lord of All ! We resisted the de-
mands of the papist, not as requiring religious freedom, for religious
freedom he possessed in the fullest extent ; but as compromising the
safety of the state, as admitting into the councils, by which the protes-
tant religion of England was to be protected, an influence always di^
rectly hostile to protestantism, and which is at this hour anticipating the
period when it shall maintain a deadly struggle with our religion and
constitution in their very temple. " Tolerate all religions," says Loek<>,

2 L 2

260 Existing Disabilities of the Jetvs in the British Empire.

in his famous essay on " Toleration," " tolerate all religions but Popery !
for popery tolerates none !" We resisted its demands, for the additional
and still higher reason, that, seeing it denounced, in the most solemn
words of Holy Writ, as the grand corruption of Christianity, which was
to be suffered for a while, only for the trial of the human heart, and was
finally to be extinguished by the open and tremendous vengeance of
Heaven ; the attempt to raise it into the place of power and honour was
a national pledge to its support, and a public scorn of the high denun-
ciations which had forewarned us of its offence to Heaven, and of its
determined fall. Those reasons are as strong with us as ever ; they were
founded on neither party nor passion ; and they will survive both : our
opinions were not formed on the fluctuating policy of man ; and they are
not to be shaken by the temporary triumph of men, from whose prin-
ciples we shrink with still more instinctive disdain, as their success urges
on the crisis of their country.

But we can discover no sufficient reason why the Jew, if a natural-born
subject of Great Britain, should not possess every privilege attached to
so fortunate a distinction. He already exercises one office, which is,
perhaps, more important to society than any other that England con-
templates ; he sits on juries, and thus decides on life and fortune. We
are not aware that he has exhibited any unfitness for this important
trust ; and the chief qualities which it demands are satisfactory evidences
of his fitness for the other general trusts of the commonwealth. We
unhesitatingly lay down the principle, that religious opinions are not
justifiable obstructions to public employments or national privileges,
except where out of those religious' opinions political prejudices or hos-
tilities grow. To such exceptions the papist is as obviously exposed as
the Jew is not ; and on this ground we say, that the exclusion of the
Jew is not less an act of injustice to himself, than a wrong to the country
which is deprived of the public services of a portion of its people. As
to any fear that the public councils may be perverted by the overflow
of Jews into the legislature, the idea is chimerical. The Jews are a small
community ; in general a very poor one ; and in general a very secluded
and unambitious one. They have no party stimulant to urge them to
faction, and the strong probability is, that if half a dozen of them
became Members of Parliament, it would be the full number, and that
of those the attention would be much more turned to commercial than
political details. The whole population of the Jews in England is esti-
mated under 30,000. The religious maxim of the Jews is also directly
adverse to public disturbance. " Seek ye the peace of the city where
ye dwell, and pray for it, for in the peace thereof ye shall have peace !"
The Jew looks upon himself as of too distinct, and perhaps of too supe-
rior a race, to make the struggles for popular rank in other nations of
much interest to him ; he retains a good deal of the original impres-
sion of the patriarchal age of sojourning and pilgrimage ; and, looking,
like his great forefather, to a glorious consummation in his original land,
feels but few of the stings that rouse other men to force their way to
eminence up the perilous path of human passions. The Jew has been
often a victim to popular violence or to regal rapacity ; but it is remark-
able, that during the long period of their residence in the British empire,
there has been no Jewish insurrection. Mr. Goldsmid asserts, that
there has not been even a single instance of a Jew being, — " he does not
say guilty, but even suspected, of any offence against the state."

1830.] Existing Disabilities of the Jews in the British Empire. 261

If the wealth of the Jews be a subject of alarm to those who natu-
rally desire to see Christianity take the lead in a Christian Legislature,
the answer is, that the Jews, as a body, are, perhaps, next to the gipsies,
the poorest body in England. A few of their community are always
men of great wealth. Yet even that wealth is liable to strange fluctuations,
and there seems to be something in the nature of Jewish opulence that
always and in all countries prohibits it from taking the shape of golid
and publicly influential property. But if alarms still exist, the Jew
is ready to offer the strongest declaration that British law can require,
as his assurance against disturbing the Religion or Constitution of
England. He is ready substantially to take all the Oaths demanded of
Dissenters ; his only objection being to the phrase, " on the faith of a
Christian" — a clause which must be altogether inefficient as to any secu-
rity in his instance, if he were to adopt it ; but which his national belief
prohibits him to adopt.

It is observable that the admission of the Jew to all political privileges
has been established during the last twenty years in France and Hol-
land ; and is almost coeval with the rise of the United States. This is
no argument for its establishment here, from the difference of our Legis-
lature. But the conduct of the Jew under the possession of those pri-
vileges in foreign countries, is entitled to rank among the probabilities of
his future conduct here. And it is found that the sober and unambitious
habits of the Jew have undergone no change by this participation of
power. No Jewish interest has displayed itself in any of the Legis-
latures of the States into which they have formally gained admission.

To the question, why the Jews have not exerted themselves at an
earlier period, or why they do not now press their claims more forcibly
upon the public, the answer is not altogether easy ; probably they have
seen the Legislature too much occupied with the Dissenters and Roman
Catholics, to expect much attention ; probably, with that indelible pride
which marks the character of the Jew, they have been reluctant t6
mingle their claims with those of other modes of belief; probably their
desire for popular privileges is considerably restrained by the notorious
existence of a strong body of opinion among them, which deprecates all
public privileges, as injurious to the purity of their religious tenets, and
looks to no final establishment but in the land of their fathers. At all
events their moderation in pursuit of privileges may be fairly assumed
as an evidence of their future moderation in the use of them.

But to all objections on the ground of religious difference, the answer
is direct and irresistible. Christianity forbids all persecution, and allows
no attempt on the faith of men by personal injury. In the first place,
because the spirit of Christianity is benevolence ; and in the second,
because all such attempts, where they succeed, produce only hypocrisy,
as, where they fail, they produce injury and unhappiness. That the
Jews have long been persecuted, is the scandal of Christendom. But it
was not by Christianity that they were persecuted. Their blood was
upon the hands of rapacity, of tyranny, of furious prejudice, of brutal
ignorance — not of Christianity. The men who dragged the unfortunate
Jew to the scaffold, or crushed his limbs on the rack, or looked on as
they were burned to cinders on the pile, were the same who slew or
racked, or burned the Albigenses, and the early Protestants of Germany
and Flanders. Men to whom the Bible was a sealed book, and who were
sent forth by Rome to lay waste the early Church, and who were the sworn

262 Existing Disabilities (ft lie Jews in the British Empire. [MARCH,

enemies of all creeds but their own idolatrous and sanguinary superstition.
In all Protestant countries all actual cruelties to the Jew may be said to
have ceased with the commencement of the Reformation ; and the example
of Protestantism has, for a century past, sheltered him from the old
violences of Popery. Yet, in the Popish countries he is still an object
of especial insult. His confinement in the Ghetto, at Rome, and his
compulsory attendance at the periodical sermons of the monks, whose
zeal is measured by the force of their animadversions on their unwilling
hearers, is a relique of their slavery, and an evidence of the spirit that
\vould lay waste its victims on the first burst of popular rage or priestly
fanaticism. On the part of Christianity, we wholly disclaim all right or
desire of forcing human consent by human evil. Christianity is common
sense elevated by divine obedience. It knows the folly of persecution,
and would, on that ground, disdain to use it. But it knows the crime,
and what it would refuse, as an abuse of reason, it abjures and abhors
as a direct breach of the first law of religion.

It will be fully admitted, that the habits of the Jew have seldom
lessened the prejudices of society. His determined separation, his
peculiar ceremonial, his exclusive tenets, and his unequivocal assumption
of a religious superiority, which some consider as ignorance and some as
insult, have sternly prohibited him from entering within the social pale.
His occupations, generally connected with the lowest livelihood; his
avidity of trade, down to the most repulsive sources of gain ; that love
of money which has characterised him in every age of Europe, and has
seemed to supersede every love of the honours of literature, the arts,
and all those manly and graceful pursuits in which a high heart or
a vigorous mind naturally solicits distinction ; have nearly flung him
out of the reach of public feeling. But much of this character" must be
accounted for by the difficulties of his position.

The legal disabilities which still beset the Jew, in the principal
countries of Europe, shut him out from the career of a more honourable
ambition. Trade, in some shape or other, has been left to him as his
only resource. In the early ages of England and the Continent, the
tyranny of the government would have instantly extinguished all his
property, had he ventured to place it in a less transferable shape than
commerce. The doors of the law and the legislature were closed against
him. Almost the whole range of professional life v/as closed against
him. Trade was his only resource, and unless he were content to perish
in the streets, he must be the thing that we have made him. It has
been idly asserted that usury is a part of his nature. Yet, in his own
land, the Jew was the least guilty of this vice, among mankind. While
usury was the common practice of all other nations, and the chief source
of misery, ending in tumults and revolutions, it was unknown in
Judea. Even to take interest of any kind of one of the community of
Israel, was a solemn prohibition of their law. Among all the nations bor-
dering on the Mediterranean, they were also the least commercial. They
saw the wealth of the East borne by their doors, — yet they seem to have
felt no wish to share a traffic which has enriched in succession the chief
nations of Europe and Asia. They were in all their institutes and habits
an agricultural people. And, with the change of circumstances, they
would probably return to a change of habits so strongly urged by their
law, by their natural desire to throw off' the past imputation, and by the
original fondness of all mankind for that life of health, cheerfulness, and

1830.] Existing Disabilities of the Jews in the British Empire. 263

innocent indulgence, which is reserved alone for the " sitter under
his own vine, and his own fig-tree."

What public advantages may be derived from the admission of the
Jew into the full rights of the Constitution must be decided by the
future. But some good must result from turning into the various and
nobler channels of the Commonwealth the powers which have been
hitherto so rigorously and successfully exercised in the most unpopular
one. That for a long period the chief pursuit of the Jew will be
trade, and chiefly that branch of trade in which his foreign connexions
and personal knowledge give him such peculiar advantages, we cannot
doubt. But we can as little doubt, that by degrees the passion for mere
accumulation will be superseded by the more generous enjoyments of
wealth ; that the Jew, feeling himself a citizen, will feel a growing gra-
tification in contributing to the good and honour of his country ; and
that, among the rising generation, there will be found individuals not
insensible to the noble stimulants of public and patriotic life. Genius is
impartially distributed among the sons of men, and probably many a
powerful mind may have been buried in the routine of the counting-
house, or many a " fine spirit, finely touched," may have wanted only
the ft occasions clear" for the spreading of a wing which was fettered
and unplumed by the consciousness of exclusion. But let the results be
what they may, the true question with us is one of Duty ! To give the
Jew every freedom from personal or public injury is the dictate of our
Faith. We rejoice to see that the measure is about to be brought for-
ward in a substantial shape in the Legislature. We can anticipate no
rational objection to it in politics ; — we unhesitatingly disavow all re-
sistance to it on the ground of religion. In its success we shall congratu-
late the Jew on the acquisition of a just claim ; we shall still more
congratulate the Christian on the triumph of the unsullied principles of
Christianity !

THE MARCH OE INTELLECT,

HAIL ! thou March of Intellect !
Dear to every vagrant sect ;
Dear to all the New Light School-
Compound rich of knave and fool !
Dear to all " feelosophers" —
Asses of supremest ears !
Dear to every rambling scribe,
Roving Southward for his bribe !
Dear to all the race of Macs,
(With their fortunes on their backs) !
Dear to all the Irish O's,
Bursting out their patriot prose !
Scot unbreeched, unshod Milesian,
Coming, like the old Ephesian,
By the dagger or the flame,
Seeking a short cut to fame.

Hail ! thou March of Intellect !
Brougham will ne'er thy praise neglect,
While he lords it o'er the geese,
(Sage at sixpences a piece),

264 The March of Intellect. [MARCH,

Who in learned committees dabble,
Stewing science for the rabble ;
Teaching coalheavers the art,
(Dear to Jack Macculloch's heart),
Worthy of such men of weight,
How to carry on the State ;
Pouring on the barber's soul
Light that spreads from pole to pole;
Cutting from the tailor's mind
Pattern morals for mankind ;
Where the brawny butcher dozes
In the hum of kindred noses,
Stirring in his stagnant blood
Passion for poetic food,
Till he slices bone and chine,
To the tale of Troy divine ;
Pouring on the nightman's eye
Secrets of humanity ;
Whispering deep to travelling tinkers
(Souls confined too long in winkers)
Theories sublimely penned,
All the nation's flaws to mend.

Hail ! thou March of Intellect !
In thy summer-badges deckt,
May Apostates, out and in,
Ropes of sand eternal spin !
May the scoundrels be rewarded,
Still unpensioned, still unlorded !
May eternal itch of place
Sink them deeper in disgrace ;
Cheat them more, the more they stoop ;
To the lowest dupes, the dupe ;
Hourly more a laughing-stock;
Blockheads of the thickest block ;
Dragging up the self-same stone ;
Calling not their souls their own ;
Gulping down their hourly bile ;
Living on a great man's smile ;
Writhing on the tenter-hooks ;
Agonized by hints and looks ;

Still the tantalizing prize

Ever dancing in their eyes,

Forcing them to bear the chain,

Though it wring them heart and brain ;

Though the beggar in his lair

Well might shrink their feast to share ;

Though the liver of their life

Well might pray the speedy knife ;

Still, condemned the pang to feel,

Rolling round the fiery wheel ;

Stretching forth the eager grasp,

Still the cheating prize to clasp ;

Gnawed in soul by hourly care,

Denied the mercy of despair ! —

Till, when Scorn has done its worst,

The wretches see the bubble burst,

To poison or the pistol fly,

And vindicate the earth and sky !

1830.J [ 265 ]

THE PROGRESS OF PHYSICAL DISCOVERY PART II.

( Concluded from page 28.)

IN 1818, chemistry was enriched by two entirely new substances,
brought to light by two Swedish chemists. The former was found by
Arfvedson, in a stone called petallite : it is both metallic and alkaline —
that is, its oxyde is a fixed alkali, and it has received the name of lithion.
The latter was discovered by the celebrated Berzelius, in a manufactory
of sulphuric acid at Falun ; it is both metallic and acidifiable, of a grey
colour, yielding a red powder by trituration, and more analogous to sul-
phur than any other mineral. It bears the name of selenium, and has
hitherto been perceived in so extremely small quantities, that it seems
natural to believe that further researches may probably deprive it of its
rank as an elementary substance. Vauquelin's examination of Prussian
blue in this year is highly memorable, having led, among other results, to
the discovery of an acid, called cyanic acid. The experiments of MM.
Chevillot and Edouard upon that singular combination of oxyde of man-
ganese and potash — called, from its facility in assuming different colours,
mineral cameleon — led them to conclude that the intervention of oxygen
in the formation of cameleon tends to oxydise the manganese, and con-
vert it into a real acid ; so that cameleon is a manganesiate of potash ;
red cameleon being a manganesiate perfectly neuter, and green a manga-
nesiate with an excess of alkali. Another acid was detected also, in this
year, called pyromucic, by M. Hontou-Labillardiere. in the saline matter
produced by the sublimation of the mucic acid yielded by sugar of milk,
and which appears to have been confounded by Tromsdorf with succinic
acid. Fertile as this period had already been in acids, there was yet
another ascertained by M. Chevreul, in the continuation of his researches
into soap and fat, wThich was distinguished by the name of the delphinic.

The science of meteorology, from the irregularity of the atmospheric
phenomena, especially in our climate, is yet very far distant from the
rank of a positive science. Every additional observation, however,
increases its importance ; and we are especially indebted to that indefa-
tigable and enlightened naturalist, the Baron Humboldt, for his remarks
made this year in the torrid zone, in whose climate the atmospheric phe-
nomena are the most simple and regular. Baron Humboldt directed his
attention to the connexion between the declination of the sun and the
commencement of the rains in the north part of the torrid zone. As soon
as the sun approaches within one league of the tropic, the breezes from
the north are replaced by calms, or winds from the S.E. ; the transpar-
ency of the air diminishes ; the unequal refraction of its settings makes
the stars shine at 20 degrees below the horizon ; the vapours gather
together in clouds, and thunder is frequently heard. These phenomena
he explains by the inequality which exists between this part of the
torrid zone and the adjoining temperate zone. When the sun is to the
south of the equator, it is the winter of the northern hemisphere ; and
the air of the temperate zone is as different as possible from that of the
torrid. It flows constantly into the former in a fresh breeze, which car-
ries the hot and damp air into the height of the atmosphere, whence it
returns, re-establishing the equilibrium, and bringing with it moisture:
the average heat also is less by five or six degrees in the time of drought
than in the time of rain ; but the south-east winds do not act like those
of the north, because they come from a hemisphere abounding more

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 51. 2 M

266 The Progress of Physical Discovery. [

with water, and over which the current of superior air does not disperse
itself in the same manner as in the northern hemisphere.

There are few names more celebrated in chemistry than that of Ber-
zelius, Secretary of the Academy of Stockholm, whose work on the
Theory of Chemical Proportions, and the Chemical Influence of Elec-
tricity, was the first that fixed our ideas on those two fundamental
points — the relative disposition of the elementary particles of bodies
when arrived at a settled combination, and the impulsive force which
conducts them to that state, or which obliges them to change it and
re-unite themselves in new combinations, either among themselves or
with particles of other kinds. The theory of Berzelius supposes the
existence of homogeneous substances, formed of atoms or particles of
matter, not, indeed, absolutely indivisible, but upon which no mechanical
power can effect any further division; and when the chemical forces are
equally powerless, the atom is then, as Berzelius calls it, simple. In the
inorganic kingdom, the first order of composition results only from the
union of atoms of two kinds ; in the organic kingdom, on the contrary,
there are always at least three. The atoms composed of the first order
unite in their turn into atoms of the second, and those again into atoms
of the third and fourth ; but the tendency of atoms to unite diminishes in
proportion as their composition augments. For them to act, indeed,
beyond a certain degree of composition, circumstances are required over
which man has no controul ; and although nature may annually have
formed, and perhaps continues to form in the bowels of the earth minerals
of a very complicated composition, though chemically homogenous, art
is able to produce nothing similar in the rapid operations of chemical
laboratories. Berzelius, in tracing the causes which assemble or disperse
atoms, has greatly modified the doctrine of Lavoisier, which attributed
all combustion to a combination of oxygen with bodies, and the heat pro-
duced to the disengagement of the latent caloric which kept the oxygen
in a gaseous state before its combination. He showed that other causes
of a higher and more general nature were to be looked for, and it is by
means of the chemical action of electricity, in the discovery of which he
himself had no inconsiderable share, that he recognized these causes.
They consist in the electro-chemical affinities of bodies ; oxygen, acids,
£c. being of the negative character, and hydrogen, alkalis, and salifiable
bases, being what are called electro-positive. Thus the combination, or
mutual neutralization of chemical agents would be a direct effect of the
two kinds of electricity ; and heat and combustion produced by combina-
tion would be of the same nature as when caused by lightning or an
electric shock, and a stronger affinity would be only a greater intensity
of polarization. Berzelius's new Nomenclature, and his new System of
Classification of Minerals, which first became known to Europe, by
translation, in 1819, may be ranked with his System of Proportions, as
some of the most valuable additions to physical science made in our
time.

MM. Gay-Lussac and Welther, in 1811), discovered an acid, formed
by the union of sulphur and oxygen, intermediate, between sulphuric
and sulphurous acid. It was named hypo-sulphuric, and its salts, hypo-'
sulphates. Thenard succeeded in his endeavours to oxygenize water, so
far as to saturate it entirely, by making it absorb 616 times its bulk of
oxygen gas. Several animal matters, besides metals, possess the power
of thus acting upon water, which makes these researches important not

1830.] The Progress of Physical Discovery. 267

only to chemistry, but to physiology, on account of their analogy with
the mysterious phenomena of the animal secretions. Two new vegetable
alkalis, called strychnine and brucine, were, in this year, recognized by
Pelletier and Caventon ; a third, by Boullai, in the poppy of the Levant ;
and a fourth, by Vauquelin, in the Daphne-mezereum, which, together
with morphine, of which we have spoken, form an important acquisi-
tion to chemistry. They are composed of oxygen, hydrogen, and car-
bon, and are a striking instance of the opposite means by which nature
arrives at similar effects. Potash soda, and other mineral salifiable bases,
are metallic oxides ; ammoniac is a combination of hydrogen and nitro-
gen ; and here are saKfiable bases composed of merely hydrogen, carbon,
and oxygen, elements which enter into various other kinds of vegetables
which have no connection with alkalis.

In 1820, our countryman, Mr. Porrett, in his Researches upon Prus-
sian Blue, and its Combinations, discovered that the salt, known as
triple prussiate of potash, was composed of potash and a peculiar acid
which combines the elements of prussic acid and oxide of iron. M.
Roubiquet subsequently found that this acid contains no oxygen, and
that the iron is consequently in it in a metallic state ; he considered it as
made of hydrocyanic acid and cyanure of iron, and that its union with
peroxyde of iron is Prussian blue. In this year also, MM. Pelletier
and Caventon made a discovery of the highest importance in the class
of vegetable alkalis already mentioned, viz., the febrifuge principle of
quinquina, which is found in the colouring matter of the quinquina,
united to an acid which renders it soluble. It had, indeed, been per-
ceived before by Gomes, a Portuguese chemist, yet he was entirely
ignorant of its alkaline nature. This principle exists in the grey quin-
quina, and is called cinchonine ; the yellow quinquina contains a prin-
ciple slightly different, now in such familiar use under the name of
quinine ; and the red quinquina contains both principles in a considera-
ble proportion. If the Jesuits have immortalized their order, as it is
said, by the importation into Europe of Peruvian bark, these French
chemists have reaped no less honour by bringing to light, substances,
whose application to medicinal purposes has since become so valuable
and extensive.

In analyzing various plants of the colchican species, Pelletier and
Caventon, in this year, detected another alkaline substance, which they
named veratrine, making the list of vegetable alkalis now contain seven,
of which, four years ago, not one was known.

The researches of M. Chevreul on animal bodies produced an elabo-
rate report in 1821. We have before alluded to his steatine and elaine
principles, of the combination of which he considers organic bodies to be
the result, when united to each other, as an acid to an alkali, or a com-
burant to a combustible. If his observations should draw attention to
that chemical law, by which an energetic substance becomes able, by a
kind of force, to effect the formation of opposite substances with which
it unites, much light may. thereby be thrown on the physiology of living
bodies in this respect.

The works of Crawfurd and Lavoisier had caused the physiologists to
revive the opinions held in the seventeenth century by Mayow and Willis,
which attributed animal heat generally to the fixation of the oxygen ab-
sorbed during respiration, or, in other words, to the combustion which
takes place in this act. M. Dulong, in 1822, by the aid of the caloro-

2 M 2

2(58 The Progress of Physical Discovery. [MARCH,

meter for water, invented by Count Rumford, made repeated experi-
ments, which, though they did not succeed in shewing what does
produce animal heat, proved that it must be referred to some other cause
than the fixation of oxygen. The clearing away of false notions in
physics, as in all other things, is necessarily a preparatory step to the
ascertainment of truth.

Dr. Liebig, in 1823, occupied himself with those combinations of
silver or mercury with alcohol or nitric acid, which are known to ful-
minate so powerfully. This young German chemist precipitated the
fulminating principle in the form of a white powder, which is one of the
most complicated compositions that have yet been found, presenting a
metallic substance, with the ordinary elements of animal matter, viz.,
oxygen, hydrogen, and azote. Professor Doeberimer . of Jena, in this
year also, made a curious discovery of the property of Platina, when
passed through a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, to. effect the com-
bination of these two gases, and to produce a heat by which it becomes
itself red-hot. M. Chevreul, continuing his researches into the theory
of saporification, discovered two principal acids in butter, the butiric and
capric ; one in the fat of the dolphin, named phocenic ; and another in
the fat of mutton, called hircic. M. Payen also found, in the bulbs of
the Dahlia, a new substance, called Dahline, analogous in some respects
to starch and gelatine, and which is converted, by sulphuric acid, into
incrystallizable sugar.

Mr~ Dalton, during the last seventeen years, had been making experi-
ments on the mountains in the north of England, to determine the quan-
tity of dew contained in water in a spring situated in an elevated place,
and the degree of temperature of this water. In 1824 he ascertained the
following results : — that the quantity and density of vapour diminish as
you rise ; that, whenever there is a thick fog, the temperature of the
atmosphere, and the degree to which dew is produced, are the same ;
that, when a mountain is enveloped in clouds, we find, in rising, very
little variation between the atmospheric temperature and the point where
the dew begins to form ; and that the atmospheric temperature generally
sinks one degree of Fahrenheit to 240 feet of perpendicular elevation
when the heat of the day has reached its maximum ; and under the same
circumstances, that where the clew is formed, diminishes by one degree
to every 390 feet. As the dew-point and the atmospheric temperature
approach each other as we ascend, we arrive at a certain height where
they are the same ; and hence it happens, that the highest regions of the
atmosphere are often cloudy, and that the moss on the top of high moun-
tains is generally damp.

It had been some time known that the nature of bodies may be
changed by dilatation, but not until this year that compression has the
same effect. M: Legmuth verified this proposition by experiments on
sulphur, which, by compression, became grey, and detached itself by
small parcels, the separation of each of which occasioned a detonation
Kke that of the electric spark. The fact of the penetrability of glass by
water was this year ascertained, by sinking two hermetically sealed bot*
ties 1200 feet in the sea, which, on being drawn up> were found to be
filled with water by the powerful pressure of the surrounding liquid.

M. Savart having made a series of experiments on the vibrations of
solid bodies, brought to light the following results of high importance
with reference to the theory of molecular attraction : — Wherever an in-

1830.] The Progress of Physical Discovery.

strument gives a sound, it is the seat of molecular motion. In every
case of vibration the molecules move in a straight line ; and however the
system of bodies may be disposed, all the molecules move in right lines
parallel to each other, and to the right line by which the bow is con-
duced, which leads us to consider such a system as forming but a single
body, since the molecules all move in the same manner. But when we
reflect that each of these molecules is, in fact, a world of itself, and sub-
jected to laws as peculiar to itself as those which are assigned to the
several planets in their spheres, we cannot but be struck with the man-
ner in which the whole system of nature is, as it were, concentrated into
one point, and reflected in the properties of every one of its most minute
elementary particles.

In 1825 a new acid was detected by M. Braconnot, which pervades
generally the vegetable kingdom, particularly bulbous roots, fruits, and
grains. It is called pectic, and has the property of turning into jelly a
large mass of sugared water, though used in a very small portion.
Another vegetable alkali was found by Brandes in narcotic plants, and an
acid called pariglini, in Sarsaparilla, by Palletta of Naples. In this and
the preceding year, Sir Humphrey Davy made a most useful applica-
tion of his observations on electricity, by his method of preserving the
copper sheathing of ships from corrosion by the introduction of small
pieces of zinc or iron, whereby the copper is changed from a positive to
a negative state of electricity. M. Arago, in his experiments on the
thermometer., found, that in no time or place will a thermometer, raised
two or three metres above the sun, and sheltered from reverberation,
reach the 37th degree of Reaumur, (115° of Fahrenheit); that at open
sea, at no time or place, will the temperature of the air exceed 24° of
Reaumur, (86° Fahr.) ; that the highest degree of cold observed on our
globe, with a thermometer suspended in the air, is 40° Reaumur, (56°
below zero, Fahr.) ; and that salt water, at whatever latitude or season,
never takes a higher temperature than 24° Reaumur, (86° Fahr.)

M. Freycinet's observations on the pendulum, reported to the French
academy on his return from his voyage round the globe in 1826, present
the following result : — That the general flattening of the globe is sensibly
greater than that which had been deduced from the measures of the
meridian, or the theory of the moon — (a remark which has since been
confirmed by Captain Sabine) ; — that there is no reason to suppose that
the northern and southern hemispheres have different degrees of flatten-
ing ; and that, in some parts of the globe, as in the Isle of France, local
circumstances produce considerable irregularities in the oscillations of
the pendulum. A new acid was in this year discovered by that perse-
vering chemist, Mr. Farraday, called sulfo-naphtalic, from its being ob-
tained by the mixture of naphtaline, disembarrassed of naphta by sub-
limation, with three or four times its weight of cold sulphuric acid. A
mineral substance, that had been some years ago found in the salt-works
of Espartines, near Madrid, by a Spanish manufacturer, named Rodas,
was now ascertained by M. Casaseca to consist of sulphate of soda, with
a very small portion of sub- carbonate of soda, and was assigned the
name of thenardite. The substance called brome was now first detected
in sea water by M. Balard. It is liquid under the ordinary temperature
of the atmosphere ; its colour in mass is from a red brown to a red
hyacinth ; and that of its vapour is very like the colour of nitrous acid.
It is very volatile, and its odour is strong, and much resembles that of

270 The Progress of Physical Discovery. [

chlorine, to which its properties are, indeed, in other respects, similar.
Several new vegetable substances were perceived about this time — one
by Mr. Osborne of Dublin, in the saponarius officinalis ; and four by
Baup, viz. abietic acid in the resin of the pinus abies ; pinic acid from
the pinus maritima ; an extract from the Arbol a brea ; and elemine from
the Amyris elemifera. We should not omit also M. Bizio's discovery of
melaine in the ink of the cuttle fish ; a substance, black, light, without
taste or smell, heavier than water, and not affected by the air.

Hansteen's experiments- on the intensity of magnetism in different parts
of the earth, are very numerous and interesting. His magnetic lines
determine the intensity for each given place ; the line J50" passing a
quarter of a degree south of Paris ; 775 " intersecting Amsterdam ; and
820" Edinburgh. The magnetic law varies gradually between the
equator and the pole, being at 45° as 1-2, and at 86° as 1"7« M. Sava-
rig's researches on electro magnetism are important, though it would be
impossible to give here any notion of their extent. But one of the most
striking facts ascertained this year, was, though simple, that of an Eng-
lish lady, Mrs. Sommerville, who effectually proved the magnetic powers
of the violet ray of light, by drawing the ray upon only one extremity of
the needle, the rest of it being concealed with a screen, when the extre-
mity submitted to the action of the ray constantly became a north pole,
and the other consequently a south one. The blue ray has a slight
power of producing this phenomenon, but the red and orange rays>
singularly enough, have none whatever.

We cannot here forbear from noticing, though they are rather physio-
logical than physical, the very interesting investigations of Dr. Milne
Edwards, an English physician, residing at Paris, on the elementary
organization of living bodies. It appears from his " Recherches Mi-
croscopiques," published in this year, that the simple organic constituent
parts of plants and animals, (which, as far as they are capable of analysis
by us, are globules of the diameter of one eight- thousandth part of an
inch,) are capable when dissociated of independent life; that the death
of an organized complicated being does not destroy the capability of life
in its organic constituent parts, but that the decomposition of the entire
being gives life to these parts when separated. The constituent globules
can, it seems, only be deprived of life by being decomposed into their
ultimate chemical principles, viz. carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and azote ;
for, so long as organization remains, there is a capacity for life. If any
thing was ever calculated to excite wonder and surprise, it is this dis-
covery. That our bones and muscles — our fibres, hair, and nails — and in
short, the solid matter of all animal and vegetable bodies contain the ele-
ments of life for myriads of individual beings ready to spring into action
at the dissolution of the greater fabric in which they are merged, is one
of the most remarkable truths that physiological science has yet brought
to light. Well may each of us now exclaim, in the words of the poet,
though in a more literal sense : —

Non omnis moriar ; multaque pars mei
Vitabit Libitinam !

The experiments of MM. De La Rive and Marcet, in 1827, upon the
specific heat of the gases, ascertained — that under an equal pressure,
and with equal and constant volumes, all gases have the same spe-
cific heat; that all other circumstauces remaining the same, the

1830.] The Progress of Physical Discovery. 271

specific heat diminishes with the pressure, and equally as to all the
gases, following a progression slightly convergent, and in a proportion
much less than that of the pressure — and that each gas has a different
conducting power, that is, that all gases have not the same power of
communicating heat. Mr. Perkins's cylinder for the compression of
water, as applied to his steam-gun, is too well known to require descrip-
tion here ; and Mr. Oersted's researches on the relative compressibility of
different fluids at high temperatures have established the following rules
on that subject, viz. : 1st. That the compression of water is proportionate
to the compressing forces, that produced by an atmosphere being nearly
45 millionths of the volume ; 2nd. That relatively to the temperature of
water compressed as far as 48 atmospheres, no heat is disengaged by
this compression; 3rd. That the compressibility of mercury seldom
exceeds a millionth of its volume for each atmosphere ; 4th. That that
of sulphuric ether is about three times that of alcohol, twice that of sul-
phuret of carbon, and only once and one-third that of water ; 5th. That
the compressibility of water containing salts, alkalis, or acids, is less
than that of pure water ; and 6th. That the compressibility of glass is
excessively small and very inferior to that of mercury. Berzelius, in
this year, directed his attention to the component principles of indigo,
among which he recognized four perfectly sui generis, viz. a peculiar
substance of a glutinous nature ; a brown substance, neither acid nor
alkaline, having a great affinity for acids ; a red substance, which, with
alcohol, gives a beautiful red dye; and the blue of indigo, a matter
without taste or smell, and having neither acid or alkaline properties.
Liebig also produced from indigo, by the action of nitric acid, a yellow
bitter substance, which he judged to be an acid, and gave it the name of
carbazotic. Brome, which we have mentioned, has a strong analogy to
chlorine and iodium, and it is not, therefore, surprising that M. Serullas
should now have ascertained, that it forms similar combinations, and
produces hydrobromic aether, or cyanure ofbrome, in the same way as
cyanure of iodium is formed. It was this year first announced by Mr.
Walker, that for the excitement of electricity by contact there must
always be three bodies of a differently exciting power, and that all
phaenomena are subject to this condition. As, for instance, if two por-
tions of the same metal are put in contact, and electricity is produced,
it arises from there being three different states of temperature put into
action, and one of which is the result of the two others. What particu-
larly supports this idea is, that the electric currents are always the more
apparent, as a third more sensible state of temperature is produced.

The spirit of inquiry had not, in any degree, relaxed in 1828, nor is
there any semblance of its stagnation in the present year. We learn
from Schouw's Observations on the Winds the most perfect information
hitherto ascertained with regard to their direction in the northern parts
of Europe. It is a general rule, that the west winds are more frequent
than the east ; but the west winds become rarer as they approach the
centre of the continent, being more frequent in England, Holland, and
France, than in Denmark or Germany ; and more so again in the latter
countries than in Sweden and Russia. At London the east are to the
west winds as 1 to 1-7 ; at Amsterdam as 1 to 1-6; at Copenhagen as
1 to 1-5 ; at Stockholm as 1, to 1-4; and at St. Petersburgh as 1 to 1-3.
In the western and central parts of the north of Europe, the west winds
are more frequent in the summer than in the spring or winter, which is

272 The Progress of Physical Discovery. [MARCH,

not the case in Sweden and Russia ; and in the winter the west winds
are more southern, whilst they are more direct, or more to the north,
during the summer.

The celebrated Chladni, whose recent loss will be deplored, not only
in Germany, but by all who feel the importance of the study of the
supreme law of nature by the analogy of its different elements, shewed,
many years since, that the vibrations of sounds put into motion grains of
sand, united on a glass plate, in such a manner, that when the tones are
pure the grains unite in regular forms, and when they are discordant,
the grains trace upon the glass figures without symmetry. His latest
discovery, previous to his death, was that of the manner of the propaga-
tion of sound, by means of applying the theory of liquid waves to that of
aerial ones. When a sonorous bar of metal or glass is plunged into a
liquid surface, four currents are observed round this bar, two of which
are in the direction of the vibratory movement, and the others perpen-
dicular to the direction of the former. Two currents are excentric or
flying, and two concentric or returning, and between them is formed an
oval movement ; and from these phaenomena we may imagine what
passes in the waves of the air, and explain the interruption of sound in
certain directions where the waves take a transverse course, viz. when
they pass from the centrifugal to the centripetal movement. Nothing is
so highly satisfactory as this analogy when shewn to exist in different
elements, — an analogy which it has been the especial merit of the Ger-
mans, and of none more than Chladni, to inculcate as one of the funda-
mental principles to be borne in mind in the study of nature.

Schabler's examination of the temperature of vegetables has ascer-
tained the singular fact, that trees have always, at sun-rise, a higher
temperature than the surrounding air ; whilst in the afternoon, when the
air is become hotter, their temperature is less. This is the case not only
in summer, but also in the midst of winter, and even when the thermo-
meter is constantly below zero. Vegetables always keep up a moderate
temperature, which is best explained by their being bad conductors of
heat, and which, their being fixed in the ground, tends to keep in a
uniform state.

M. Robiquet had discovered, in liquorice root, a crystalline matter to
which he had given the name of agedoite, and Vauquelin had found, in
the juice of asparagus, a substance which he called asparagine. It was
now ascertained by M. Plisson, that these two are, in all respects, iden-
tical substances, and not other, or different. Berzelius's examination of
tannin, of gelatine and albumen, of copal, and gum lac, or liquorice
sugar and amber, are equally valuable with the former researches of
this distinguished chemist. In addition to the chromic acid of an
orange colour, already brought to light by Vauquelin, M. Kcechlin now
detected another acid in chromium of a green colour, imparting to acid
salts a greenish violet, and to neuter salts a green hue. The influence of
electricity, on the emission of odour, was perceived by M. Libri, who
found, that when a current of electricity crosses an odoriferous sub-
stance, its scent becomes weaker and weaker, and at last entirely disap-
pears ; and many substances, as camphor, for example, do not resume
their qualities of scent for a considerable time afterwards. M. Prevost
has lately advanced the theory, that whiteness is only a relative sensa-
tion, depending upon the predominating light. Two lights, that of the
day, and of a candle, when seen separately, appear white ; when brought

1830.] The Progress of Physical Discovery. 273

together, the one appears blue, and the other yellow. And the same
object lighted by either, or both at once, remains white. The light of
a candle, so bright when it dissipates darkness, appears yellow at mid-
day ; and, although moon-light gives to the night the sensation of white-
ness, yet, if we project upon a white body, a shade occasioned by the
interruption oPthe light of a candle which illumines the other parts of it,
the part only lighted by the rays of the moon appears of a greenish
blue — facts which, prima facie, confirm M. Prevost's doctrine, though
we are not aware whether it is yet generally received. A German
chemist, M. Osaun, has obtained also much celebrity by his preparation
of three phosphorescent substances, viz. phosphorus of antimony — of
realgar, and of arsenic, which powerfully absorb light. He has likewise
ascertained, that cold favours the absorption of light, as heat favours the
dispersion of it. Boiling water, it seems, destroys phosphorescence, and
phosphoric bodies, left in darkness after their preparation, are not
luminous, whilst they shine for a considerable time if exposed to the light
of the sun.

We are here compelled to stop in our very abridged notice of a few
among the many discoveries recently made in physics, which, if they
were detailed at length in the whole, " the world itself would scarcely
contain the books that might be written." The progress in the other
branches of natural history has been equally rapid ; in fact, in these
sciences the advance of one furnishes a safe index to that of the rest,
and it is more on that account that we have selected the physical branch,
than by reason of any peculiar pre-eminence it has attained over others.
Its pre-eminence, indeed, is that of its present over its former condition
— of its state at the end of the last century, compared to what it was a
century before ; and, at the present moment, in comparison with what it
was not thirty years since. If the last twenty years of the eighteenth
century were the aera of glory to Lavoisier and his distinguished school,
the succeeding years have produced a race of giants, whose knowledge
and power over nature have been absolutely unexampled. The vulgar
are now familiar with what, thirty years ago, were mysteries to the
learned ; and we cannot but be as clearly convinced of the vast distance
between the chemistry of the revolution and of the present day, as we
were whilst the illustrious Davy yet lived, that a greater than Lavoisier
was here.

Besides the prodigious increase of periodical and other works,
throughout Europe, upon natural philosophy, we hail the institution of
the society of Naturalists and Philosophers, which meets annually in
one of the principal towns in Germany, as an important sign of the
times. The divided state of Germany makes such meetings particularly
useful there, on account of the want of a capital as the centre of com-
munication ; but we find, from the Reports of the Assemblies, held at
Berlin in September 1828, and at Heidelberg in September 1829, that
they were attended by delegates, not only from all parts of Germany, but
from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, Russia, Poland, England, France,
and the Netherlands, amounting, on each occasion, to about 500. The in-
stitution is consequently become European ; and it may easily be conceived
how particularly advantageous must be the union of scientific men in an
annual congress, which enables them to communicate personally, and adds
so much to their zeal in the common cause during the ensuing year.

M. M. New Smew.— VOL. IX. No. 51. 2 N

274 The Progress of Physical Discovery. [[MARCH,

A benefit of another kind, too, may probably be reaped by the natu-
ralists of the western states of Europe, in their intercourse with those of
Germany. We mean, a more elevated and comprehensive method of
studying nature in general. Something is evidently wanted, both in
France, and in this country, to prevent the experimental system from
degenerating into materialism — to fortify physical investigators against
a degrading scepticism, which has already fastened itself upon too many
of them. This scepticism has arisen from considering things exclusively
under one point of view, viz., that of variety, or of their difference from
each other, and losing sight of the universal harmony of all material
existences with the human soul, and with each other ; of the one idea
which pervades all -nature, reflecting itself constantly through every part
of it ; in a word, of the unity of the world. A perfect comprehension
of this unity is indeed far from being attainable by man ; but every
advance in science brings us nearer to it, inasmuch as it enables us to
compare each newly acquired fact with those already known, and to
consider it in relation with the rest of the members of nature.

This philosophy, however, the Baron Cuvier, and other great natu-
ralists, will say, is nothing but the speculation of a poetical imagination,
and if intelligible at all, cannot possibly assist in the discovery of truth,
and is therefore vain. If truth is only found out by experience, how
can we be assured of the existence of what is called the principle of
unity ? The very essence of inductive philosophy is its rejection of all
dogmas assumed a priori ; and is not, it will be urged, this doctrine of
harmony as much an a priori assumption as any that is contained in the
Aristotelian System ? " Let us," they say, " stand fast in the liberty
wherewith Bacon has made us free, lest we be again entangled in
Aristotelian bondage."

The fallacy, however, of this reasoning, consists in taking for granted,
that because our knowledge with respect to matter can only be founded
on the induction of particular facts by the aid of our senses, so neither
can any thing belonging to our internal consciousness be admitted to
exist unless evidence of the same kind can be produced for it. Now,
without intending to inveigle our readers into a metaphysical disquisition,
we cannot imagine how any one can deny the reality of the ideas in his
own mind, without at the same time doubting his own personal existence.
There is no man, who conceives of matter at all, who does not conceive
of it under the idea either of unity or of variety ; that is, every man re-
gards it either as a connected whole, or as unconnected substances. The
materialists, not having in their minds the idea of unity or infinity, are
possessed by the opposite idea, that of heterogeneousness or variety; and
hence arises their incapability of conceiving in another and nobler man-
ner, and their disbelief of the existence of a certain immaterial principle,
though they are themselves under the influence of a principle of an
opposite tendency, but still equally immaterial.

We recommend those who are continually citing Lord Bacon as the
pilot by whose guidance all new discoveries are to be attained, to con-
sider well his explanation of that universal science, which he styles, Pki-
fosophia Prima, — the highway from whence the other roads part and
divide themselves, as the branches «f a tree from their common stem.
" It is," he says, " a receptacle for all such profitable observations and
axioms as fall not within the compass of any of the special parts of

1830.] The Progress of Physical Discovery. 275

philosophy or sciences, but are more common, and of a higher stage ;"
and he instances as examples, the Persian magic, which consisted in the
reduction of the principles of nature, to the rules and policy of govern-
ments,— and the resemblance of the quavering of a stop in music, to the
playing of light upon the water. The Philosophia Prima of Bacon seems,
in fact, almost as comprehensive as the Natural Philosophy of Schelling.
It is the parent of all knowledge ; and, so far from being confounded with
metaphysics, Lord Bacon took extraordinary pains to distinguish it from
the latter, and to place metaphysics as a branch of natural science.
Physics, then, are situated at a middle distance between natural history,
which classifies and arranges things, and metaphysics, which, in Bacon's
phraseology, describes tlieir tfixed and constant, as opposed to their varia-
ble and respective, causes. To attempt to assign to each of these its re-
spective importance is not our present business, we are only desirous to
state our conviction, that a just conception of the harmony of nature
must necessarily be founded upon metaphysics as well as the natural and
physical sciences, and that each branch is only valuable in so far as it
tends to such a conception. To seize every opportunity of impressing
this truth upon physical investigators, seems tenfold more important now
than in the days of Bacon, when he declared, " that natural history,
physics, and metaphysics, were like the three acclamations, ' Sancte,
sancte, sancte' — holy in the description of God's works — holy in the con-
nection of them, and holy in the union of them in a perpetual and uniform
law."

Those who gainsay the influence of imagination upon the success of
physical investigations, forget, that it is no part of the experimental
method to conceive any thing farther than experience has already de-
monstrated. The principle of gravitation would never have been known
to Newton had not his consciousness first imagined its possibility, which
excited him to prove, by experiment, its truth or falsehood. It is not,
therefore, solely to induction that we are indebted for this or any other
discovery. Former experience, indeed, forms the basis upon which the
imagination rears itself, which, in its turn, requires experience to render
it a substantial fabric ; but experience alone is as wholly incapable of
generating any thing new as an organized body, whose life has fled, is
of propagating its kind.

The operation of the imagination, then, is mysterious ; but is not life
also a great mystery ? Will the vital principle ever be disclosed to us
by chemistry, or the soul be detected by analyzation ? If we feel within
us the uniformity of the law of creation — the harmony of nature with
our own minds — the analogy of forms, of sounds, and colours — the rela-
tion that a noble poem bears to a fine picture or statue — the connection
between sadness and clouds — between rage and the stormy sea — between
joy and the sunbeam ; — if we perceive the resemblance of the history
of a nation to that of man — of the course of a river to the course of hu-
man life — of the succession of the seasons of the year to the succession of
our own infancy and manhood, our decline and decay ; — if, in short, we
have any notion of that kind of likeness which schoolboys call a simile,
we should think it absurd to require experimental proof of the resem-
blance, when we have a far more convincing evidence of it in the depth
of our own sentiments.

If we are asked, what are the qualities which peculiarly fit a man for

2 N 2

270 The Progress of Physical Discovert/. £MARCH,

the study of nature ? we say, 1st. enthusiasm of imagination ; arid
2nd. patience and caution in investigation. That large stores of know-
ledge may be possessed by those who have the latter quality only, is
undeniable, but it is the union of the two that mark the possessor of the
Philosophia Prima. We need only refer to the Baron Humboldt, whose
enlightened sentiments are only equalled by the immense mass of his
experimental observations on nature — to Schelling, whose name will
long live in the annals of physics as well as metaphysics, and whose sys-
tem of natural philosophy demands so much attention in the state of the
present age ; and, as a more familiar example, to the late Sir Humphry
Davy, whose researches were uniformly conducted in that enthusiastic
tone and temper, and that ardent love of nature, the influence of which
will, we trust, be widely extended.

If this spirit were more generally diffused among men of science, there
seems little wanting, but that we should tend continually more and
more to the perfection of the knowledge of nature. The zeal for in-
quiry is absolutely amazing ; and if the experimentalists should become
convinced that it is necessary that the whole of their moral being —
their sentiment as well as their understanding — should be employed in
this inquiry, we think we see the time approaching when the world
will be peopled by a race worthy of being styled philosophers indeed,
before whom the wisdom of even the present generation shall appear as
foolishness. The human mind moves forward with a velocity con-
tinually increasing, as it were, in geometrical progression ; and we should
be extremely rash in forming our judgment of the extent of knowledge
at the end of another century from the progress that has been made dur-
ing that which is past. If we pride ourselves that our generation is
wiser than our forefathers, let us not pretend to assign limits to the su-
periority which our posterity may attain over ourselves ; let us console
ourselves for our ignorance of what is still withheld from us, by the
hope, that the veil will be one day removed by our successors ; and let
us pray for the advent of that glorious period when all mankind shall
possess that intellectual greatness, that sublime capacity of thought,
through which, (in the words of an eloquent transatlantic writer,) " the
soul, smitten with the love of the true and the beautiful, essays to com-
prehend the universe, soars into the heavens, penetrates the earth, pene-
trates itself, questions the past, anticipates the future, traces out the
general and all-comprehending laws of Nature, binds together by innu-
merable affinities and relations, all the objects of its knowledge, and not
satisfied with what exists, and with what is finite, frames to itself ideal
excellence, loveliness, and grandeur !"

1830.J [ 277 ]

THE CORSICAN BANDIT.

I HAD passed the mountain which separates the smiling valley of
Ornano from that of Bastilica. Throwing the bridle upon the neck of
my little, ugly, headstrong, fiery, Corsican nag, I trusted myself
entirely to him for safe conduct as we descended a rapid slope together,
and crossed the thickets of a forest as yet unprofaned by the woodman's
axe. The beauty of the sylvan scenery— the balmy breeze, murmuring
gently, as if fearful of disturbing the serenity of nature— afforded me
some relief from the tattle of my talkative guide, whose tongue had
rung a perpetual 'larum-peal since the commencement of my excursion.
A shapeless garment, that it would have been a misnomer to have called
an upper-benjamin — a fusil, slung across his shoulders by a broad
uncouth belt — and the national cap, resembling a village- steeple, com-
pleted the equipment of the last-mentioned personage, who ambled on
in front of me, occasionally slackening his pace, and enlivening me,
according to the laudable custom of his tribe, with interesting episodes
of robbery, rape, assassination, and other bagatelles. I began to feel
fatigued with his incessant prattle j when, on a sudden, he made a dead
stop, seized his long brass-mounted fusil, and alighted in a twinkling.
With his nose in the wind, and his sunken grey eye peering suspiciously
around, he examined every bush and brake with the scrutiny of one
accustomed to such rural adventures as for a good hour had been his
theme. A slight rustling was heard amongst the foliage. " By the
Virgin," said my guide, " that must be a robber, or a wild boar : — here
goes ! " — and his hand was already on the trigger, when a frantic laugh
proceeded from the midst of the thicket. " Cecca !"* cried he, " I had
well nigh mistaken a Christian for a wild beast ; and, by Our Lady, no
great mistake this time \" A glance at the object which now issued
from the thicket enabled me to comprehend his meaning. A female, or
rather a half-naked human body, darted forwards, a rude goat-skin
mantle scarcely sufficing for the purposes of decency, or protecting from
the winds of heaven a form that had once perhaps been lovely. Her tattered
scanty garment but ill- concealed her limbs, torn by the brambles, and
emaciated by suffering. Her long, black, and matted hair descending
to her waist, veiled a bosom that might once have glowed with feeling,
with pity, or with impassioned fondness ; — once, perhaps, fair as Pyg-
malion's sculptured marble, and far less cold. The summer's parching
ray, the winter's blast, had wasted her bloom : the rose of health had
drooped with her fond hopes, and withered with her broken heart.
There was in her gait a step so hurried, so reckless ! — a smile so joyless
dwelt upon her lip, as if to mock the vacant expression of her dull, fixed
eye ! — and yet at times that dull eye beamed with a faint and feverish
ray of consciousness — a spark of renovated mind, ' ' false as the dream of
the sleeper," and transient as the sick man's hectic flush !

The maniac approached with heedless step, and with one of those
hideous yells of laughter whose mockery of mirth is more saddening
than the wildest extravagance of sorrow. Stopping in front of us, and
separating her hair on each side of her forehead — " Have you seen
Pietro ?" said she at length, gazing on me with ' 4 lack-lustre eyes," and
with a painful effort to draw upon her scanty stores of memory. The

* An abbreviation of Maria-Antonia-Francesca.

278 The Corsican Bandit. [MARCH,

light of pleasure for a moment brightened her countenance, and its fitful
flash resembled a glimmering of reason. " Have you seen him ?" repeated
she more slowly, and with less vivacity than before : — and her eye again
assumed its unmeaning, cheerless expression, benighted of intelligence,
and bereft of hope.

Poor wanderer ! I could understand thee ! I had for a season known
that sickness of the heart — that loneliness of suffering, which finds no
echo in the sympathy of the hacknied, selfish crowd. Coarse, rustic
hinds gazed upon thy agonies as on a holiday spectacle, or taunted thee
with their witless jests. Thou hadst undergone the tender mercies of
human kind — the inflictions of the experimental philanthropist, who wins
back reason to her throne with the sovereign panacea of the prison and
the scourge. But I could pity thy woes, for I had felt them : and could
the accents of kindness now speak thee comfort, I would bear with thy
frantic ravings ; — I would soothe thee in thy milder hours of tranquil
sorrow ; — and " weep with thee tear for tear !"

My rude companion approached her, and tapping her on the shoulder,
— " Ebbe, Cecca, non Thai mica truvatu ?"* said he, with insolent and
boorish familiarity. Maniac as she was, the ill-timed raillery stung her
to the quick : her lip quivered — her eye kindled. " No, che no 1'haggio
truvatu,"t replied she, gnashing her teeth with wild execration, and in
an attitude of menace which forced my guide, though armed, to recoil
several paces. But her ideas instantly taking another direction, she
paused. " Aggia pazienza," said she, " so io, so be duve lu truvero :"J
and, with another convulsive laugh, she fled, swift as the chamois of her
native hills, and was lost among the thickets.

During the rapid apparition of Cecca, astonishment and pity had
rooted me to the spot. My eyes, fixed on the path by which she had
disappeared, still followed her trance ; but the volubility of my guide
soon roused me from my emotion. — " You would see her once more ?"
said he, with an inquiring look ; and without waiting for my answer, he
led back the horses which had been grazing on the luxuriant herbage.
As we resumed our route, my guide acquainted me with the poor
creature's story.

Cecca was the daughter of a rich farmer, who lived in one of the most
elevated of the little villages forming the canton of Bastilica. The tough
old forester, who was an equal adept in the chase of the chamois and of
the marauding poacher, felt his bosom swell with conscious importance
as he boasted that his household could furnish, at a pinch, at least twelve
good men at arms. His daughter was the prettiest maiden in all the
canton ; and as she attended her devotions each Sunday, adorned with
her coral necklace, and the kerchief which vied in whiteness with the
bosom whose charms it concealed, the old man's heart warmed with a
father's fondness, and a tear of pride glistened in his eye as the glance of
many a village youth told how he envied him his darling treasure.
Cecca was his only child : her winning graces, her playful caresses,
enlivened his drooping age, and softened his regret that he had been
denied a son, to whom he might one day bequeath his antique chesnut-
trees, his hereditary animosities, and his double-barrelled gun. — " The

* " Well, Cecca, have you not found him ?" — [u for o in the Corsican dialect.]
•f- " No, I have not found him." — \Thaggio for Pho.]
% " Have patience ; I know where to find him."

1830.] The Corsican Bandit. 279

flower of the village lads/' said my guide, with a significant look that
informed me himself was included in the list — " the comeliest and the
bravest in the canton aspired to Cecca's hand, notwithstanding some five
or six envenomed feuds which were to be espoused with the bride, and
which formed part of her marriage portion. But, spite of their courage
and their address at the carbine, Cecca had neither eyes nor ears for any
of them. Her heart had long been devoted to Pietro, a rich proprietor,
who lived in the village just below her own, but between whose family
and hers a mortal hatred had for some time existed — the father of
Pietro having been killed by Cecca's. In despite of the vengeful recol-
lections which, in Corsica, are cherished with religious animosity ; — in
despite of the blood-stained shirt suspended over Pietro's bed, as a
memento of the still more bloody deed ; — in despite even of the ball
which had killed his father, and which the son had vowed to wear as an
amulet upon his heart till vengeance should be satisfied ; — in despite of
all, Pietro had been ensnared in the silken bondage of love. Perhaps a,
refinement of Italian vengeance, still more than Cecca's dark Italian
eye, had inspired him with the idea of entangling the affections of the
child of his bitterest foe. Perhaps, too, the very contrast between his
hatred for the father, and his impetuous passion for the daughter, added
fuel to the flame. Be it as it may, he loved and was beloved. For
many years, the two families, actuated by a spirit of mutual hostility that
defied all hope of reconciliation, had closed against each other the entrance
of their respective villages ; and more than one brace of whizzing bullets
had been exchanged between the vedettes of the contending parties. But
Cecca was a woman, and fertile in expedients : she was acquainted with
the shortest by-roads to the place of rendezvous, and Pietro could have
found his way thither blind-fold. Each night the lover glided unper-
ceived along the narrow pathway of the village to visit his beloved, and
the tell-tale guitar paid the homage of many an amorous lay to the shrine
of his divinity. Love is a feeble reasoner : the path that Cecca trod was
strewed with roses — so soft, so sweet, she scarce could feel the thorns.
To love was an easy task : — to obtain her father's consent, more difficult
than to level the mountain with the valley. Even had he consented,
Pietro had sworn that steel should never cross his beard till life had been
paid for life; — and Pietro was pf a race that, from sire to son, had never
violated an oath of blood. More than once poor Cecca had shuddered at
the violence of his imprecations against her father. More than once, her
gentle caresses had interposed " between the lion and his wrath :" — but
Pietro might grapple with his enemy in the forest — and Cecca might not
be there to soothe him with her caresses !

Cecca's apprehensions were but too well founded. Her father, informed
by some jealous rival of the lovers' nightly meetings, watched Pietro in
his path, insulted him with bitter taunts, and swore that, should he
again be found within the precincts of the village, a bullet should effec-
tually relieve him from his love-sick pains. Pietro's blood boiled with
indignation. He forgot Cecca ; he thought of his father's sad fate. —
" Poor lad !" observed my guide, " his hand was unlucky — but he had
his blow." Swift as the thought of vengeance that inflamed his soul, he
discharged his carbine at the father of his mistress: filial affection
turned aside the well-intended aim, and the old man, though within a
few paces of his assailant, escaped with a slight wound. Pietro made
for the forest, and from that moment commenced the wandering exist-

280 The Corsican Bandit. [MARCH,

etice of a Corsican bandit — that miserable career generally terminated by
the gen-d'arme's fusil, and, during its brief span, affording so many dis-
plays of energy and heroism worthy of a nobler cause.

Then commenced for Cecca a new existence. Confined to the nar-
row limits of the village by the suspicions of her father and the threats
of her relations, she felt that her heart was steeled by persecution ; and
the very sufferings she endured for Pietro rendered him still dearer to
her affections. Closely watched during the day, each night she quitted
her sleepless couch to bear some message of peace and love to one that
for her had sacrificed all. With feverish anxiety her eye watched the
moment of his coming, and, if he came not, her scalding tears moistened
the pittance of food which the fond girl had hoarded for the outlaw's
subsistence. Cecca alone was acquainted with the impenetrable asylum
where her lover had found a refuge. The thunder might roll over her
head ; the rain might drench her with its rushing torrents ; the loftiest
pirtes rent by the storm might impede her passage ; — still would she
climb the rugged path that led to Pietro's retreat among the mountains.
She scarcely knew if the night was bitter — if the blast was loud. Poor
Cecca ! Whilst my guide told his artless tale in tremulous accents, that
betrayed the emotions even of his rude nature, methought I could see her
still lovely — her features still glowing with the angelic expression — the
sublime of beauty which generous self-devotion lends. Methought I
saw her sweeping along the valley with the swiftness of the blast that
bowed her gentle head, or toiling up the steep whose flinty paths lace-
rated her delicate feet. Fancy conjured up her once gracious form,,
nightly cheering the sad repair of crime with one hour of peace — sharing
her lover's hard, damp couch — his cold, exhausted frame pressed to hers
— his icy forehead pillowed on her bosom — his aching heart soothed by
the voice of her he loved ! Oh ! can the tame and vulgar spirits that
love with cold precision — that measure out affection with the rule and
square of formal, selfish, and sordid propriety — can the beings with
hearts narrow as their vile systems, and hollow as their hopes — the
traffickers in love, that bargain with their dull god even on his altar —
can such conceive aught of the adoration, the world of tenderness, that
filled the souls of two fond outcasts, isolated from their species by their
affection and their guilt ; forced to conceal their unhallowed flame
among the ruder tenants of the forest, or in the solitude of the moun-
tain ; meeting with scorn the world's scorn ; impassioned without hope,
and devoted even in shame !

A sudden halt made by my guide roused me from my meditations.
We had arrived at a sort of rocky platform commanding a view of the
whole valley. At the extremity was a cavern, defended by a natural
rampart — a mixture of rock and bramble. At the entrance, I observed
two wooden crosses. There, as my guide informed me, was I to find
Cecca. There she reigned and revelled in the wild riot of " a mind
o'erthrown :" — on that spot her light of reason had been quenched for
ever. With emotion amounting almost to terror, I approached : — she
was not there. A couch of withered fern ; a mishapen cross, rudely
carved in the wall ; and a few faded flowers, were all that the cavern
contained. On the walls I could still observe the blackened marks of
balls. In mournful silence we seated ourselves on the fern : at length,
I requested the guide to continue his tale.

The lovers' mystery was soon discovered. Reproaches were spared,

1830.] The Corsican Bandit. 281

they would have served but to awaken their precautions ; and, like the
tame animal employed by the hunter to ensnare his fellow, Cecca was
destined to discover Pietro's retreat. The following night she was
allowed to escape as usual, and closely followed. — At this part of the
narrative, my guide, rising abruptly, and with his Italian vivacity, —
" There," said he, (f on that very spot where you are now seated, Cecca
too was seated with Pietro by her side." The full moon illuminated the
valley and the entrance of the cavern, the interior of which was wrapped
in profound obscurity.

It was one of those lovely summer nights whose refreshing breeze
purifies the air so sweetly after the heaviness of a sultry day. No sound
was heard save the distant murmur of the torrent, and the rustling of
the wind amongst the foliage of the pines. Cecca, exhausted with
fatigue, slept with her head reclined on the shoulder of Pietro, who,
fearful of disturbing the slumbers of his beloved, scarcely allowed him-
self to breathe. Presently a slight noise was heard, which an inhabitant
of the valley might have mistaken for that occasioned by the flight of
some night-bird, or by the rapid pace of the chamois : but the bandit's
practised ear was not to be deceived. In an instant Pietro was on his
feet, and the suddenness of the movement awakened Cecca. " Hark !"
said he. The noise had ceased. Pietro seized his carbine, and advanced
towards the entrance of the cavern, the path leading to which was soli-
tary as before : all was calm. The pale countenance of Cecca reposed
on the shoulder of her lover ; — " I can see nothing," said she." — " There
they are !" repeated he. •" By Saint Antonio, 'tis something more sub-
stantial than the breeze that agitates the foliage yonder !" At the same
instant, a flash lighted up the spot to which he pointed, and Pietro fell
to the ground. Quickly recovering himself, but too feeble to stand
upright, he raised himself on his knees.

Concealed by a projecting fragment of rock, he gave his well-fur-
nished pouch to Cecca, who, placing himself behind him, by turns
loaded each of his two fusils, which she immediately afterwards pre-
sented to him. Heedless of danger, the generous girl thought but of
her lover, whom she beheld pale and bleeding, leaning against the rock,
and at every instant becoming more faint. The unequal struggle
rapidly drew near its close. A ball grazed the cheek of Cecca, and
fractured Pietro's right arm. His eye inflamed with the expression of
hatred and desperate courage, he extended to Cecca his fusil, charged
with his last remaining cartridge. " Fire !" said he, pointing with his
finger to an advancing enemy, — " fire, like a true Corsican's wife; but
first take good aim." The aim was but too well levelled; — the enemy
of Cecca's lover fell weltering in his blood. Making a last effort, — " I
am revenged \" cried Pietro with a savage yell ; — " Cecca, 'tis your
father !" The wretched Cecca heard no more. Heaven, in pity to her
sufferings, deprived her of the gift of reason. Since that fatal moment
the maniac has wandered through the forest, half-naked, and impatient
of the slightest constraint. Forced occasionally, by the cravings of hun-
ger, to make her appearance in the village, she begs a morsel of bread,
which is never refused; and afterwards, guided by a sort of vague
instinct, returns to her miserable cavern, where she passes her nights. A
faint hope of finding her Pietro urges her sometimes to wander on the
high roads ; but, as my guide observed, " 'tis more a habit than ap
idea !"

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 51. 2 O

282 The Corslcan Bandit. [MARCH,

Poor houseless maniac ! thou hast indeed drank of affliction's cup.
Thy fair promise has been blighted. Thy morn of life has vanished.
Thy home, thy friends, thy lover, all are lost. Thou hast passed the
gradations of worldly benevolence ; but thou couldst not taste their
bitterness : Providence in its mercy has deadened thy heart to the stings
of close-handed charity, cold neglect, or the still more galling pity that,
looking down from its proud and prosperous elevation, insults the misery
for which it feigns to feel !

We descended slowly towards the valley. I was silent, and my guide
was less talkative than usual. We saw her no more ; but ever and anon
the breeze, which now sprang up, wafted to our ears the distant sound
of one of those lengthened Corsican airs — those sad mountain-melodies,
whose last notes, like the plaintive strains of an echo, are repeated from
the hills. I recognized a love-ditty, which I had often heard in the
course of my excursions, and which perhaps had been sung by Pietro :
" Specchiu delle zitelle della pieve,
" Piu biaricu de hi brucciu e de la neve," &c.*

It was the poor maniac !

CARTHAGINIAN COMICALITIES:
BY ONE OF THE PUN-IC SCHOOL.

Punning is a talent which no man affects to despise, but he who is without it. — SWIFT.

No. I. — TIM TIPPLE, THE TOPER.
TIM TIPPLE was a drunken wight,

In fact, a downright sot,
Whose friends with grief saw every night

Tim going fast to pot.

Yet still he kept his spirits up,

By pouring spirits down ;
And, whene'er he went out to sup,

He supped his cares to drown.
Tim drinking loved of every sort,

No matter where he went ;
For sailors' healths he drank in port, .

And soldiers' pledged in tent.
Of lisbon he would swallow much,

Like Lisbon's famed earthquake;
And Hollands drank with all the Dutch, —

With sextons, grave would take.

Old hock he loved — nay, if 'twas new,

He could it not decline ;
And yet 'tis said, that of the two,

He'd choose the elder wine.

With millers he'd toss sack each day,—

With gardeners, shrub at lunch ;
And oft he'd drink old car away

With showmen over punch.

In Wales, of mountain he'd his fill —

With parsons drank pure rum ;
With coachmen, lots of cape would swill —
With silent women, mum !

Mirror of young maidens of the parish,
Whiter than snow and the brochio. [

[A sort of cheese. J

1830.] Carthaginian Comicalities. 283

Of porter, Tim could carry much,

Though not as porters stout;
But ale he seldom dared to touch,

It ailed with the gout.

Yet Tim was called a bragging elf,

And lied beyond belief;
For oft-times he would pique himself

On drinking Teneriffe.

As happy as the king was Tim,

Nor feared his royal frown,
And boasted he would not give him,

Six shillings for his crown.

But yet Tim was a loyal chap,

And he, to shun all harms,
Would always take his nightly nap,

Fast locked in the King's Arms.

And that the king oft thought of him,

By many folks 'twas said ;
For every day this loyal Tim

Would run in the King's Head.

Though fat as any prize-show pig,

Tim's mind on wedlock ran ;
But, ah ! the girls thought him too big

To be a single man.

And Tim, who never in his life

Through courtship liked to wade,
Wished a maid ready for a wife,

But no wife ready made.

Poor Tim was taken ill at last,

No hopes could physic give :
Said he, " Alas ! my die is cast,

And long I cannot live."

The doctors came, and looked full wise,

Which proved Tim's ills no jest;
His pipe of port within him lies,

Turned water in the chest.

He, therefore, ere the ills he bore

Too much his health had sapped,
Or Death tapped at his chamber-door,

Must have his body tapped.

" Ah, no !" quoth Tim, " I'll ne'er agree

To be the butt and'scoff
Of fools, and have a cock in me,

To draw the liquor off.

" Besides, when I've a vessel tapped,

In one short week at most,
To fly away the spirit's apt,

Or else give up the ghost !"

As nought could Tim's resolve subdue,

'Gainst tapping in the side,
He day by day more weakly grew,

And in a fortnight died.

No pompous funeral he had —

No friend to shed a tear ;
Six tapsters were his mourners sad,

Six porters bore his bier !

2 O 2

[ 284 ] [MARCH,

SIERRA LEONE, AND THE SLAVE TRADE.

THE history of the settlement of Sierra Leone presents a stronger
instance of the fatal consequences of zeal, untempered by discretion,
than we recollect to have seen recorded in the annals of any country,
ancient or modern.

Experience has shewn that colonization is, under the most favourable
circumstances, a very difficult task ; and that to conduct and establish
the first adventurers in a manner conducive to their future welfare, and
consistent with the dictates of prudence and humanity, requires a rare
unity of purpose and foresight in the projectors, and of local and
general knowledge, combined with firmness and decision, in the im-
mediate conductors, — together with such individual disinterestedness in
all — as is seldom to be found in any body of men whatsoever.

In the instance before us there seems to have been a total want of all
the qualifications enumerated, although their presence to unite and con-
trol the first motley and heterogeneous collection of emigrants was
required in an eminent degree. Blind zeal seems, even as early as 1787,
to have been considered all-sufficient in the first instance, and incipient
personal interests, and a greater talent for humbug, seem to have been
the only additional qualifications brought forward by the second con-
ductors in 1791.

The subsequent progress of the colony exhibits such a mass of decep-
tive juggling, and of ambitious scheming for individual profit under the
guise of philanthropy, supported at the same time by such industrious
plausibility, that the eyes of the public, and, we may also add, of his
late majesty's government, seem to have been completely blinded to the
true condition of the settlement, and real views of the leading parties ;
and if any individual, whose local knowledge and acquaintance with the
actual state of affairs enabled him to detect and expose the current of
misrepresentation, attempted to draw aside the veil, — evil intentions were
imputed to him, his veracity and motives were impugned, and his single
voice was drowned in the clamour immediately raised by a designing
band of pretended philanthropists, and their well meaning, but ignorant,
supporters.

Its progress since 1807, when the British government were unfortu-
nately induced to take it off the hands of the Sierra Leone Company in
order to combine and render its management subservient to the pre-
mature, ill-digested, and, consequently, abortive attempts, to put a stop
to the foreign slave trade, — has been attended by such an extravagant
waste of public money, and constant destruction of human life, without
the slightest benefit either to this country or to the cause of humanity,
that the mind seeks in vain for any rational grounds upon which to rest
a justification of the past, or an excuse for keeping future possession of
this great charnel-field, the climate of which has proved equally fatal to
the brave and scientific European, and to the savage or semi-barbarous
native of Africa !

We shall endeavour to give a brief sketch of the rise, progress, and
present condition of this worse than useless settlement, stating such facts
as have come to our knowledge regarding the loss of life, and treasure
expended upon it ; premising that we shall consider ourselves at liberty
to revert to the subject whenever further documents are made public,
and that, when we have occasion to notice the conduct of individuals, it

1830.] '• Sierra Leone, and the Slave Trade. 285"

will only be in reference to their actions, considered in a public capacity,
leaving our readers to form their own judgment of the accuracy of our
conclusions.

The first idea of attempting to introduce civilization amongst the
savage tribes of Africa, by the establishment of a colony for that pur-
pose on their own coast, seems to have originated with Mr. Granville
Sharp.

Mr. Smeathman, a gentleman who had lived for some time at the foot
of the Sierra Leone mountains, had also, but perhaps for purposes of a
more practicable nature, entertained the idea of establishing a colony
there ; and the discussions which, about that time, took place before
Lord Mansfield, on the subject of slaves who had come to England,
gave an impulse to public opinion, which, with other circumstances,
increased the number of liberated Africans until they had become a
nuisance in the streets of London. Their patron, Mr. Sharp, in con-
junction with Mr. Smeathman, collected above four hundred of them,
and, with the aid and assistance of government, they were shipped off,
with about forty Europeans, — most of them kidnapped prostitutes, — to
Sierra Leone, in February, 1787; under convoy of a sloop of war.

Had Mr. Smeathman lived to conduct these unfortunate " civilizers
of Africa" to their destination, his practical experience and knowledge
of the country might have been of some service to them; but, unfortu-
nately, he died hi England before the sailing of the expedition, which
therefore proceeded under charge of the philanthropists ; and such was
the incapacity or misfortune of its conductors, that, before the end of
the first rainy season after their arrival in the country, scarcely one hun-
dred and twenty out of four hundred and forty-one remained alive, and
in one body ! This number was still further diminished, by famine,
disease, discontent, and desertion, to about forty ; " they plundered and
attacked one another, and sold all the stores that were left with them ;"*
and the whole were almost entirely annihilated in 1789, by the hostile
attack of one of the neighbouring tribes, whose enmity they had, perhaps
justly, incurred.

Hitherto, therefore, the result of the scheme was a frightful sacrifice
of human life and loss of property ; but, instead of having made any
progress towards conciliating or civilizing the natives, they seem to have
roused their jealousy and provoked their resentment.

About this period, principally through the zealous exertions of Mr.
Sharp, the Sierra Leone Company was formed, for the avowed purpose
of extending to Africa the blessings of " religious instruction, civiliza-
tion, and liberty." The members subscribed liberally for this laudible
purpose, and a charter was in due time obtained. Had their affairs been
conducted with that sound judgment, attentive discrimination, and unity
of purpose, which the association of so many respectable names, in a
scheme of philanthropy, would seem to have warranted, the disgraceful
close of the company's affairs, which took place in 1807, might have been
avoided j but, unhappily, in every scheme of this kind, individual mem-
bers are generally too much engrossed by their own affairs to pay that
attention which the strict discharge of their directorial duty would seem
to demand, and, in consequence, the management and details too often
fall into the hands of a few individuals, through whose eyes their asso-

* Parliamentary History, vol. 29, p. G51.

286 Sierra Leone, and [MARCH,

ciates are content to see, and who are the more disposed to abuse the trust
reposed in them, and to pursue their own individual interests, knowing
that the censure which may attach to the company's actions must fall
upon the members only in their collective capacity.

The company having nominated its directors at home, and its gover-
nor and council abroad, availed itself of the discontent created by the
non-fulfilment of promises, alleged to have been made to the liberated
negroes who bad served in the British army during the American war,
to invite them from the uncongenial climate of Nova Scotia to a country
said to be more suitable to their habits and constitutions. Lands, houses,
and every assistance was to be provided for them.

Above eleven hundred of these prematurely liberated slaves sailed for
Sierra Leone in the year 1792, under Lieutenant Clarkson, but on their
arrival they found that they had been deceived as to the state of the
colony — that no proper provision had been made for their reception ;
they accused the Philanthropists of having most shamefully violated their
promises ;* they could scarcely be persuaded or compelled to make any
exertion for their own support ; and, instead of assisting in the civilization
of others, soon became very unruly subjects themselves !

It might reasonably have been expected, that under proper manage-
ment, these people would have proved an invaluable acquisition to the
colony ; many of them were intimately acquainted with every species of
tropical agriculture, and disposed to make a good use of their know-
ledge. But if it be true, that " the Governor and Council were selected
rather from their views of religion than from any knowledge of coloni-
zation and government, and when they ought to have been engaged in the
discussion of parish boundaries, and the allotment of lands, they were
thinking only of the conversion of souls" we need not be surprised at the
total failure of all the great expectations of advantage to Africa by this
accession of "free labourers" Certain it is, however, that the dispo-
sition to be industrious, which they are acknowledged to have possessed
on their first arrival, seems to have been quickly destroyed ; and even
the survivors, now reduced to four or five hundred, are still character-
ized in the last report of the commissioners^ as being in effect the least
industrious class in the colony.

The next body of any consequence, in point of numbers, that joined
these " civilizers of Africa," consisted of 550 maroons in the year
1800. The history of the surrender and deportation of these unfor-
tunate people, from their native mountains in Jamaica to the severe
climate of Nova Scotia, would seem to indicate that government still
owes them reparation for the bad faith with which the terms of their
capitulation in Jamaica was observed. They seem to be the only race
whose numbers have not been permanently diminished by the pestilen-
tial climate of Sierra Leone ; for, although there was a falling off while
under the tender mercies of the Philanthropists, they have since reco-
vered under the British Government, and in 1826 they amounted to
€36 souls. They have always shown a disinclination to agricultural
pursuits ; but, nevertheless, in point of intelligence and industry, they
seem to have taken the lead of the other settlers.

The Sierra Leone Company having got quit of their original capital of

» Vide Commissioners' Report — Parliamentary Papers, 1817 — 312 — p. 10.
t No. 312, in the Parliamentary Papers of 1827-

1830.] The Slave Trade. 287

£250,000, and an additional sum of £100,000, besides about £109,000
from government, had, in 1807, become bankrupt in resources ; and we
pause to consider whether up to the date of their dissolution, they had
really accomplished even one of the " philanthropic" objects, which
was the ostensible end of their labours, or done any one thing beneficial
to Africa. True it is, that with a rapid diminution of their funds, every
succeeding year produced very plausible accounts of the " nourishing
state of the colony," the " great progress" made in " the establishment
of schools," and " propagation of the gospel in Africa ;" the " rapid im-
provement" in the condition of all classes in the colony, and the bene-
ficial effect of all this upon the neighbouring country. The testimony
of Governor Ludlam (whose letters, when unfavourable, seem to have
been systematically suppressed),* Mr. Grant, member of the council of
Sierra Leone, Dr. Thorpe, its chief justice, and various others, may be
adduced in proof that these reports were most shamefully deceptive ;
— these persons, as well as others, give very different accounts of the
matter.

Governor Ludlam, in his celebrated letter to Mr. Macauley, of the
14th April, expressly shews the inutility of the Company's schemes ; and
Mr. Grant, in a pamphlet published three years after the dissolution of
the Company, says, " Their agents in the colony and their servants of
every description, appear to have been almost uniformly selected from a
class of men whose want of education was not compensated by liberal
sentiments j and whose ignorance of the foundations of civil government
and morality, was ill supplied by an austere tincture of sectarian piety.
Instead, then, of courting the affections of the different chiefs by whom
they were surrounded, they managed to foment their suspicions, to
abuse their prejudices, to profit of their simplicity. It does not seem
to have occurred to them that their own ruin or expulsion might be the
ultimate penalty of this invidious and narrow policy. Uninstructed in
human nature, they conceived their first duty to be the religious con-
version of their neighbours ; and to deride and insult their speculative
notions, the surest means of effecting that conversion. It can, then, be
no matter of surprise, that they soon found themselves besieged with
the hatred and suspicions of the petty chiefs of their neighbourhood ; or
that they should not at this day (1810) have availed themselves of any
connection with the more powerful and enlightened potentates of the
interior, to explore the country or add to our general information by
discoveries in that quarter of Africa/'t And in regard to the progress
of industry in the colony itself, he states, " in the course of twenty
years passed under the Company's Government, and two more since the
transfer, the settlers at this hour depend on imported produce for the
whole of their subsistence. A small quantity of inferior coffee, and a
few common vegetable roots, constitute the whole sum of its agricul-
tural and manufactured produce.

" Sierra Leone is behind (and in a proportion that is not justified by
the comparative lateness of its existence) every other establishment on the
whole coast of Africa" //{

These assertions are amply confirmed by Dr. Thorpe, who, even at a

* Vide Thoughts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade, by the late Jos. Marryat, Esq.,
M.P. 1816.

f Recent Transactions in Sierra Leone, p. 52.
. $ Ibid. pp. 62, 63.

288 Sierra Leone, and [MARCH,

later period (viz. 1814), states, that " Sierra Leone itself produces
nothing exportable but a few bags of coffee for Governor Maxwell, and
a few bags of cotton for Mr. Kenneth Macauley, from the appropriations
of the unrewarded labour of the captured slaves" any other articles ex-
ported not being the produce of the colony, but brought from the
neighbourhood ; and these statements are more than fully confirmed by
the more recent investigation of the British Commissioners. At home
the Directors seem up to the last hour to have kept their seats, and to
have continued to swallow the ready-made reports fabricated for their
information ; and it was not until they discovered that the whole funds
received from subscribers, and from government, were exhausted, that
they found it necessary to retire, which they were enabled to do with
the less difficulty, as their confidential managers had already arranged
for the transfer of the whole concern into the hands of government, and
were ready to start a fresh scheme of philanthropy upon a similar foot-
ing, but under a different firm ! A number of the subscribers, chagrined,
no doubt, at this unexpected termination of their hopes, wished to insti-
tute an inquiry into the manner in which their funds had been squan-
dered, and how the affairs of the colony had, from the beginning, been
conducted; but this did not suit the views of the managing agents, they
were outvoted, and the company ceased to exist.

Let it not be supposed, however, that under the conveniently assumed
garb of philanthropy, the managing agents of the old company, or of
the new association, were guided solely by the enthusiastic views of the
original contributors. Subsequent exposures clearly evince designs of a
more ambitious and less philanthropical nature ; and, to their defeat
may be traced the rancorous enmity which the disappointed projectors
still bear towards our colonies in the West Indies !

In proof of the existence of these designs, the following is an
extract from the report of a court of inquiry held by Governor
Thomson : — " After considering the evidence produced before this
court, we have no hesitation in declaring, that there appears to
this court to have existed a plan, digested, concocted, premeditated,
organized, for procuring the abolition of the general slave trade of Africa
and the West Indies, and for establishing on its ruins a monopoly in favour
of this colony, and of such other settlements upon the coast of Africa, as
the persons concerned did expect should be committed to their manage-
ment; but with intent to promote the cultivation, of tropical productions by
slaves in Africa, in opposition to the cultivation by slaves carried on in the
West Indian colonies, with the advantage of having the raw .material, the
slave, at their doors, and of having thrown all competitors out of the
market. We have marked the unravelling of .the plot in the purchases
of many slaves before the transfer of the colony ; in the purchase of a
whole cargo afterwards ; in the letters, which here substantiate the fact,
that they who did not know that the period of the abolition of the slave
trade was the proper period to begin the direct purchasing of slaves
' did somewhat misconceive our ideas in England on the subject ;' in
the assertion of the Court of Directors that the money paid for the slaves
to the sailors of the ships of war, was a ' premium of apprenticeship ;'
and, above all, in the anxiety displayed both in times past and at this
moment, to introduce such measures as should prevent ' all attempts to
revise what has been done.'*— Need we add any further explanation of

* Recent Transactions in Sierra Leone, pp. 80 to IOC.

1830.J The Slave Trade. 289

their motives for concealment ? The purchase of slaves was at home
disguised under the name of " ransoming captives" or paying " an
apprentice fee," and the true character and intention of these measures
were carefully kept out of view.

Although Governor Ludlam was desired to correspond with the Colo-
nial Department upon the dissolution of the company in 1807, it would
seem, that owing to difficulties in obtaining a proper transfer of the com-
pany's charter, government did not identify itself properly with the
administration of the colony, by sending out a chief justice and
judge of admiralty, for several years afterwards. And such was the
confidence of ministers in the old agents of the company, that
before the arrival of Judge Thorpe, their ignorant and selfish proceed-
ings had deeply compromised government, particularly with Spain and
Portugal — verifying by this imprudence the modest assertion of Mr.
Zachary Macauley, in his letter (already quoted) to Governor Ludlam,
wherein he says e< I have no doubt that government will be disposed to
adopt almost any plan which we may propose to them with respect to
Africa, provided we will but save them THE TROUBLE OF THINKING ! !"
Is it possible for language to exhibit in a more humiliating, and even
ludicrous point of view, the ascendency which the " philanthropists"
had at this time acquired over the colonial department ? an ascendancy
which has since cost the country, as we propose to shew, many millions,
without the attainment of one useful object. Let any unprejudiced
person of common understanding read a few of the speeches made in
and out of Parliament by the Directors and others connected with this
affair, and compare their bold assertions and plausible representations
with the real facts, as they have since been discovered and stand con-
fessed, and we venture to affirm, without fear of contradiction, that he
must rise from the task with the most unfeigned astonishment and
immeasurable disgust. A motion made by Mr. Dent, 29th July 1807,
for repayment of the £109,000 lent to the company, on the ground
" that parliament was not bound to pay for the fanciful notions of any
class of men," was negatived, and every subsequent attempt at inquiry
into the past conduct of the company and their agents, was quashed.*

Out of the materials of the Sierra Leone Company, the African Insti-
tution with its special committee for Sierra Leone affairs, was principally
formed ; and for some years government continued blindly to follow
the advice of those members of the company who were supposed to be
acquainted with the affairs of the settlement, and with the best method
of civilizing Africa and putting an end to the slave trade.

One of the first errors committed through the influence of these advi-
sers was to frame the most absurd instructions for the guidance of our
cruizers in regard to vessels supposed to be engaged in illegally pro-
secuting the slave trade. The number of these vessels captured
between the years 1811 and 1813, amounted to sixty-seven, many of
them of great value ; and before Lord Castlereagh, by his despatch of
the 6th May 1813, put a stop to these unjust seizures and unwarrantable
condemnations, our national honour had been compromised; we had
roused the jealousy of the naval powers ; exasperated Spain in such
a manner,, that subsequently she refused £800,000, and a loan of ten

* Vide Parliamentary Debates, 1807, P- 1005— Mr. Thornton's Speech, &c. Also
Vol. XIX. pp. 745, &c.

M. M. Ncn Scries*— .Voi*. IX. No. 51. 2 P

290 Sierra Leone, and [MARCH,

millions of dollars for the immediate abolition of her slave trade ; — we
have had to pay her for our unjust seizures £400,000 ; to Portugal we
have had to pay on the same score about £350,000, besides £600,000 to
induce her to forego the slave trade north of the line.* And to the irri-
tation Created at that time by the ignorance and imprudence of the abo-
litionists and their agents, as much as to the jealousy of foreign go-
vernments and their desire to rival the British colonies by increasing
the number of labourers in their own settlements, we may attribute that
private determination on their part, which has since been brought into
full operation, to connive at that continuance of a contraband slave
trade, which, in spite of all our exertions is now carried on with greater
atrocity, and more activity than at any former period ;f and, to their
blind zeal and the culpable rapacity of their agents, we may ascribe a
great part of those horrors which have since been practised in carrying
on this dreadful traffic.

To return to Sierra Leone — the supply of slaves consequent upon the
seizure and condemnation of an immense number of valuable vessels,
kept up and increased the number of settlers, adding, at the same time,
in various ways to the immense fortunes acquired by certain individvals
connected with the association. Their agents, with a view to com-
mencing slave cultivation, obtained, as already stated, considerable
numbers of these slaves, under pretence of apprenticing them for fourteen
years (after the expiration of which period they may, according to act of
parliament, be apprenticed for a further term.) And, to render it pro-
fitable to establish plantations by the forced labour of these slaves, they,
in 1816, attempted to follow up their schemes by smuggling a bill
through parliament, introduced by a leading philanthropist, called the
African Goods Bill, which, if its concealed object had not been disco-
vered and defeated by the West-India Body when it had nearly passed
the House of Lords, would have enabled them to bring to England,
rum, and all other West-India commodities (sugar excepted) on the
same duties as those from the old colonies, and to compete with British
sugars, in the European markets, with African slave-raised sugars !

Nor was this the only scheme for promoting private interests under
the mask of philanthropy and pretence of civilizing Africa. Their
attempt to get possession of the forts of the African Company — their
endeavours to obtain British registers for ships condemned for carrying
on the slave trade — which could only benefit individuals resident at
Sierra Leone — and various other measures, clearly evince the disinterested-
ness of certain members of their body, and the blindness of government
in becoming the dupes of cant and hypocrisy. We need only adduce
one other instance of the deceptive nature of the " reports" promul-
gated at home, to show how little of the real state and progress of the
settlement can be known from these reports, Their ninth report,
dated in April, but not published till August 1815, states, in reference
to the liberated Africans, that it could hardly have been believed how
" comfortable" and useful they had in a few months become, and " that
they appear now to be as happy and comfortably situated and as likely
to rise in the colony, as any class of persons in it." Now, it so hap-
pened, that, at a meeting of the mayor and aldermen of Freetown, held

« Papers respecting the Slave Trade (and Convention with Portugal, 21st Jan. 1815)
p. 48.

•f Vide on this subject Monthly Magazine for February last, pp. 144, 145.

1830,] The Slave Trade. 291

in the month of December preceding, called, in consequence of a dis-
covery that these comfortably situated people had joined the neighbouring
savages in a conspiracy to massacre all the while people of the settlement ;
the civic authorities recommended that arms should be distributed, and
that the captured negroes — happy and rising people ! — should be shut
up in the fort after a certain hour of the evening. Circumstances
attended this proceeding, which made much noise in the settlement, and
the matter was, of course, fully known, but carefully concealed, by the
reporter at home !

Our limits will not permit us to scrutinize the measures of the manag-
ing members of this institution further at present, and we shall take
leave of them by repeating, in the words of Judge Thorpe, that " their
reports prove, that, in 1814, they were beginning to inquire into the con-
dition of Africa and Sierra Leone, though they had pledged themselves
to the performance of such wonders in civilization, cultivation, instruc-
tion, and morals, when the institution was formed in 1807 '," and that
the committee have not been able " to prove the institution had ever
performed a promise., carried into execution a profession, or done any
one thing beneficial for Africa, either before or after these representa-
tions."*

Eighty-five rebel slaves, sent from Barbadoes in 1819, were, during
that year, added to the colony ; and, in 1822, the disbanded pensioners
from the African corps and the West India regiments, amounting to
twelve hundred and twenty-two men, with their families, were also
brought to it. These, when added to the crowds of miserable Africans
liberated from the slave ships, runaways, and people from the interior
and other quarters, had, notwithstanding the constant mortality, in-
creased the amount of the population, in 1822, to above fifteen thousand.

In pausing to consider some of the methods adopted for civilizing and
improving the morals of the liberated Africans up to this periocl, we
must not for a moment lose sight of one of the only inducements Great
Britain has had to expend such enormous sums upon this modern Gol-
gotha— namely, that by the influence and example of a European settle-
ment planted in the country itself, and under the observation of its-
inhabitants^ managed by humane and philanthropic governors and godly
missionaries, industry, education, and a knowledge of the gospel, might
be introduced among the savage tribes of Africa ; that the most
important part of this scheme had been for the preceding thirty-five
years, under the particular direction of societies at home, possessing
great influence with the legislature, and laying claim to greater sanctity,
philanthropy, and humanity, than the generality of their countrymen ;
and that, during the whole of this period, they had boasted of their
eminent success.

Some years prior to the arrival of the first judge appointed by the
British government, and some time before the appointment of the mixed
commissions, the liberated Africans were entirely under the guidance of
these philanthropists ; and it is painful to find, that against one of their
principal agents, this judge should have found it his duty to prefer
before the secretary of state for the colonies a charge of the following
nature : — " That the aforesaid Mr. , in his capacity of superin-
tendent of the captured negroes, did coerce and chastise the said negroes

* Preface to a Letter to Mr. Wilberforce. Third Edition, p. 11.

2 P 2

292 Sierra Leone, and

most cruelly ; that he allowed them, at one time, to be almost starved,
and, at other times, suffered their hospital to be most shamefully neg-
lected ; that he permitted them to stray away from the colony, many of
them to be kidnapped and inveigled from the colony, and intrusted
them to persons who sold or placed them in slavery ; that he has neg-
lected to make suspected persons, to whom they were intrusted, account
for them, or enforce the penalties against those who had used them ill ;
that he has even entrusted them to a woman of infamous character, who
was known to prostitute them in the colony ; that he was known to have
debauched many of the girls, and to have lived with them in the most
profligate state." Yet, such is the fatal consequences of the climate,
that this miscreant — of " iron constitution" — has, from necessity, been
permitted to fill places of power and authority, and to amass an im-
mense fortune under the protection and auspices of leading philan-
thropists.

Is it matter of surprise, therefore, that, under such guidance, feeble
attempts to introduce order and improvement were constantly defeated ;
and that, instead of realizing the views of the projectors, the place has
become a sink of infamy and a den of pollution, even to the untutored
African ?

It will be recollected that, with a view of more effectually putting an
end to the contraband trade in slaves, and, at the same time, to prevent
the recurrence of those disgraceful blunders which took place during
the first years of the abolition, Great Britain, in conjunction with other
states, established in 1819 courts of commission, before whom are brought,
for adjudication, all vessels detained or captured while in the act of pursu-
ing this interdicted trade, and that a numerous squadron of British ships,
under active and zealous officers, is kept upon the African coast, and
elsewhere, for the purpose of hunting these slave traders. Many vessels
have, in consequence, been captured, and thousands of wretched beings
liberated from their pestilential holds. Yet, when we look at the dread-
ful mortality that takes place before the rescued slaves can be landed
and located, and when we consider attentively their subsequent condi-
tion, we cannot help feeling that our present measures, on the African
coast, at least, are diametrically opposite to real humanity.

The true state of matters there has been made plain by the reports of
commissioners sent out by parliament, and can no longer be glossed over,
or denied by the party usually denominated the saints, whether in or out
of parliament.*

The instructions to these commissioners are dated November, 1825,
and additional directions were given to them 18th January, 1826/f- to
which there is now appended a dispatch from General Turner,
wherein he states, " Should the trade in slaves continue to increase in
the manner it has done for the last two years, there is no doubt that the
number brought in here will increase also."^ — " They have been distri-
buted amongst the villages, where they have beenybr years supported in
idleness by the government." — " In the cases where they have been located
in the villages, and have received gratuitous maintenance, they can with
difficulty be induced to give a day's labour, even for good mages" —

* Parliamentary papers, 312, Sess. 1827, and 552, Sess. 1829.
•f- Parliamentary papers, 532, Sess. 1 f>2G.
$ Parliamentary papers, 38!>, Sess. 182«.

ia30.] The Slave Trade. 293

" The expense of this establishment has been very great." — " The whole
system is defective." — " There is not one person who has the slightest
knowledge of agriculture ; nor can I learn that there ever has been any
person employed in the colony who had any acquaintance either with
European or tropical agriculture." The General proceeds to state, that
by his exertions (exertions which, alas ! soon brought him to his grave,)
he had accomplished a saving of 17,000/. a year,* without reference to the
stores from England, although he had greater numbers to support than
at any former period ; and that he had diminished the number receiving
rations one half. Could there be a stronger proof of the necessity of
inquiry ? or of the serious waste of public property that had formerly
prevailed ? But the peculators know that dead men tell no tales ; and
that, while there are no living witnesses to confute them, the public
money is safe in their pockets !

The impossibility of sustaining the cares and anxieties of office
in such a climate, and amongst such a population, is too evident,
by the sacrifices that have already been made. The nature of
these difficulties cannot be more forcibly stated than in the ominous
words contained in General Turner's dispatch of the 25th January,
1826 : — " I am obliged to approve, sign, and become responsible for all
expenditures, on account of these people ; and it is quite impossible that
I can examine into these matters, which are very voluminous. I happen
to have very good health, and some acquaintance with business, but /
cannot expect, in such a climate as this, to be able to continue such labours ;
those about me have all suffered, and I have lost their services"

It appears, by the report of the commissioners,t that, with a view of
curbing the slave trade by interference in the interior of the country,
General Turner had procured an extension of the territory of Sierra
Leone in 1824, but that the influence of the European slave dealers had
defeated his measures ; and the commissioners recommend their discon-
tinuance, as tending to warfare with the natives !

Notwithstanding that the settlement has been in our hands since the
year 1787, no traces of agriculture are, generally, apparent. " The
spontaneous productions of nature alone present themselves ; and
although a more intimate acquaintance with the localities and nature
of the soil, in some measure accounts for this state of things, there is
still sufficient to justify and confirm the unfavourable impression which
this first view must produce of the progress in agricultural improve-
ment." J — " Near to Freetown stands a belt of thick forest, of considerable
depth, breeding miasma and fever" — " its immediate vicinity (Freetown,
viz.) wears an aspect of desolation."§ And all this with thousands of
labourers at command, for each of whom the country has paid a large
sum of head money, and an enormous sum in contingencies. Can there
be a stronger proof of the folly of the whole system ? The territory,
generally, is said to consist of granite rocks and a surface of gravel ; this
soil, says General Turner, already " begins to refuse to them" (the libe-
rated Africans) " a scanty subsistence ; and they have begun to wander
in search of better soil and easier maintenance : and the evident tendency
of this is, that they will retrograde in the woods into a state of nature and

» Expenditure, in 1824, was £40,907; in 1825. it was £31,965 ; and, in 1826, only
£17,671 !

f Parliamentary papers, 312, Sess. 1827.
$ Commissioners' Report.
§ Sierra Leone Vindicated, p. 105.

294 Sierra Leone, and [MARCH,

barbarism, or become vagrants about Freetown," — or, what we consider
still more likely, be caught by the nearest tribes, and massacred, or re-
sold to the slave-dealers ! !*

The second division of the reportf states the number of the popula-
tion, in April 1826, as follows :—

Europeans - - - - - - - -113

Nova Scotians - '--„— ... 578

West Indians and Americans ..... 141

Maroons .... '•* ... 636

Discharged soldiers - .... 949

Liberated Africans ------ -10,716

Kroomen, Mandingoes, Timanees, and others - - 3,113

16,246

It thus appears, that of the 441 original settlers in 17&7, the 1131 in
1792, the 85 rebels in 1819, and the 1,222 pensioners in 1822, in all
2,879, only J.,668 remain. And what is still more appalling, out of
24,434 slaves, landed from 1808 to 1827 inclusive, scarcely 12,000 re-
main, being about one half, exclusive of births ! ! We have already
seen, that it is not the poor and wretched alone that fall victims to this
climate — the whole of our governors, (except Sir C. Macarthy) have been
cut off. General Turner arrived in 1825 ; he died in 1826— and since
then, Sir Neil Campbell, Colonel Denham, Colonel Lumley, and other
brave officers, have followed him to the grave with frightful rapidity.
The Church Missionary Society state, " that, to the end of 1824, they
had lost by death, and removed, from ill health, 77 European, and
30 native, preachers and teachers in Sierra Leone/'J

(f The proportion of deaths amongst the officers, may be considered as
a tolerably fair criterion of the effects of climate. The total number of
officers upon the coast during the eight years subsequent to the cession
of Senegal and Goree, was 269, and the number of deaths 65, or one-
fourth of the whole. In 1824, the total number was 41, and the number
of deaths 26. In 1825, the total number was 51, and the number of
deaths 17/'

The European troops stationed on the western coast of Africa — June
1816 to December 1825 — exclusive of officers, was 5,823, — the number
of deaths was 1,912, or nearly one-third. But from the manner in which
the returns are made up the whole mortality is not shewn.

In one year 301, out of 346, died ! ! In 1825 there were 1,193 Euro-
peans— of these 621 died. " In the end of 1825, 108 young men,
between 17 and 30 years of age, who had enlisted in the Royal African
corps, and accompanied General Turner to the coast, were sent to the
Isles de Loss. When these islands were visited by the commissioners in
March 1826, 52 of them had died, and the remainder, with few exceptions,
were suffering from disease. Out of 350 cases of fever in the hospital
at Freetown, from 21st December, 1825, to 1st November, 1826, 160

• In fact, a recent traveller expressly tells us, " one of our companions had a slave
whom he said he had procured at Sierra Leone." — " I saw the poor slave carrying on his
head a burden (which he could scarcely carry), fastened to a rope, the other end fastened
to his leg, so that it was out of his power to run away."— Caillie^s Tombuctoo, vol. i.
p. 256. Colburn and Bentley, 1830.

f Pages 18, 19, 21.

J Missionary Register for May, 1826.

1830.] The Slave Trade. 295

have terminated fatally. At the Gambia, out of 112 admissions, only 12
have recovered."

" No cultivation, no sanatory regulations, I feel convinced," says Dr.
Barry, " will ever render these colonies congenial to European consti-
tutions, particularly to the common soldier, whose irregular habits are
too strongly confirmed ever to be eradicated : and the generality of the
men of that description who escape the first season, will drag on a
miserable useless existence, exhibiting in their diseased and broken con-
stitution, the most appalling spectacles of faded manhood."

Is it necessary to say one word more regarding the climate ?

With regard to the progress of civilization and moral condition of the
population, the African Institution, among other good news, told us, in
1816, that " the conduct of the settlers is said to differ very little from
that of the generality of English villagers/'* The Commissioners say,
" with the exception of those who have been brought up to trades — those
who have been educated and clothed for several years in the schools —
and those who are employed as domestics, the great bulk of the libe-
rated African population of Sierra Leone appears, at this day, as ill
clothed as any of the native tribes on that part of the coast, and are, in
this respect, very far indeed behind the Mandingoes, who occupy the
opposite bank of the river/' " Of two or three hundred women, frequently
assembled in the market-place, from 15 to 20 would be a large average of
those who have any other clothing than a piece of cotton or linen cloth
fastened round the loins, and reaching nearly to the knee. This is the
usual dress of the women, and of many of the labouring men in the
villages."!

We presume, when such is the market-day dress of the females, their
ordinary dress will be somewhat more scanty ; and, in fact, we find,
generally speaking, that the men use only a piece of clout before and
behind, and that full-grown young women go perfectly naked, with the
exception of a kind of stuffed cushion over certain parts, which only
serves to make nakedness more conspicuous. Even at the boasted
schools many of the children were nearly naked, and ff some of them
entirely so."J

To expect any thing like delicacy or propriety of conduct in such a
society, would evidently be absurd. We, however, find their moral de-
gradation at a lower point than we could possibly have imagined. And
" probably not a little" says the Rev. Mr. Raban, " may be ascribed to
the unchristian lives of too many of the European residents, whose ex-
ample, were they Christians indeed, would have an influence on the minds
of the natives which would be incalculably beneficial."

Concubinage is universal, and no punishment by loss of " caste" is
the- consequence of it. Prostitution of the most degrading kind is undis-
guised and regardless ; " disgusting assaults upon female infants" say
the commissioners, p. 98, " have of late been frequent." We forbear
from further detail, but could a certain noble lord, a staunch supporter of
the " civilizers of Africa" look in, for an hour or two, upon a " quality
ball/' or accompany some of the whites on a Sunday's excursion to the
Bullam shore, he would not find it hard to believe that, instead of being
likely to civilize Africa, the most untutored and unlettered African

* Appendix to 10th Report, p. 73.
•f Parliamentary Peport — 312, p. 49.
$ Parliamentary Report — 312, p. 69.

296 Sierra Leone and [MARCH,

would be more likely to learn corruption from the infamous and evi-
dently retrograding populace of Sierra Leone ! The Commissioners
(p. 47) may well say : — " It will probably be inferred from the preceding
part of this report, and it is with regret that we state it as our con-
scientious opinion, that the progress hitherto made towards the civiliza-
tion of the liberated Africans, as exemplified in their present habits and
condition, falls infinitely short of what might have been reasonably
expected from the liberal means dedicated to this benevolent under-
taking."

Such being the state of society, need we wonder that the different
African tribes, even those living within the pale of the colony, or occa-
sionally residing there, continue to be either pagans or Mahommedans,
adhering to their own superstitions and equally adverse to Christians and
Christianity;* and that so far from any thing having been attempted
towards the civilization of Africa by sending missionaries to spread
the light of the gospel, a white man, as in the case of Major Laing,
would, within eighty or a hundred miles of the colony, be considered a
curiosity ?

Much has been said in this country about the " fourteen" churches,
and numerous schools and other public buildings erected in the capital
and villages. Our limits will not permit us to particularize the state of
each, but we find the list of schools and churches composed of houses
" in bad condition," " out of repair," in a " ruinous state," and " aban-
doned," " not finished," and never likely to be so — one church so
ruinous that dogs and goats get in at any time, and " by no means,"
say the Commissioners, " kept in that clean and respectable condition
which one would look for in a place dedicated to divine worship," others
" never finished," and " out of repair," " a cattle house thatched
with grass," in which divine worship is also performed" — girls' schools
in a very inferior ' ' wattle house" several boys' schools no better —
" doors and window shutters much wanted" — other expensive buildings,
owing to the " bad construction" and te insufficiency of the workman-
ship," in a state of ruin. The large building intended for a church at
Freetown stands unfinished, the service being performed in the court-
house. It is said, that after having been used as a market-place, where
negroes were publicly flogged, it is now, or was lately, used as a govern-
ment commissary's store ! — It is evident the colonists " care for none of
these things." " The neglect of public worship is very prevalent among
the resident Europeans;" the congregation of Mr. Raban, the only
officiating clergyman of the established church, did not on any occasion
exceed twelve Europeans, fifteen persons of colour, the military, and
some school boys.

The superintendants' houses are, however, generally in good order,
and form a striking contrast with those for religious purposes. They
are generally on a very expensive scale. At the Banana Islands, they
are the only public buildings which, " like most of those built by the
superintendents for their accommodation, appear unnecessarily large,
thereby entailing expense, without ensuring the comfort which the climate
requires" " A mud-house is there used as a church and boys' school, but
it is by no means in a state to protect them from the weather." The Isles
de Loss were purchased in 1818, in the hopes of finding them a healthy

* CaffliK's Travels, vol. 1., p. 195, 25C.

1830.] The Slave Trade. 297

station for the military ; hopes which the event totally frustrated. The
officers' quarters, in Crawford Island, are out of repair, and going fast to
decay. The soldiers' barracks are ill calculated, either for the health or
the comfort of the men. The hospital is decayed and out of repair.
" It is perched upon the top of a hill, in so exposed a situation, that, at
times, there is only the option of shutting up the doors and windows, or
of exposing the ^patients to strong currents of wind, and occasional rains."
With regard to public instruction, " all these schools," twenty-two in
number, say the Commissioners (p. 67) " were visited and minutely ex-
amined." " An insuperable difficulty was experienced from the abso-
lute ignorance of most of the teachers !" The pupils, of course, were
tolerable scholars, except that they could neither spell, read, write, nor
count their own fingers ! ! " The noting of times and seasons, or even
the common modes of expressing them, has" — " formed no part of their
education." Some of the Mulatto children had made more progress,
but " few of them can spell the commonest word correctly." The whole
affair appears to be little better than a mockery !

We wish, for the sake of humanity, that in describing the situation of
the liberated Africans, we could draw a veil over the cruel destruction
of human life, which the Slave Trade and our impracticable plans for its
suppression — as well as our injudicious arrangements in regard to the
survivors — are daily creating on the seas and coasts of Africa. It is
necessary, however, to notice the subject, that our readers may be fully
aware of the fatal consequences of those measures, into which the legis-
lature were prematurely hurried by the blind zeal and heated imagina-
tion of a party, who still possess too much influence with the govern-
ment ; and who, impelled by the same fanatical irregularity of mind,
or influenced by men who seek the interest of their party under the
garb of philanthropy, are making exertions to hurry the country into
further errors. For, unless it is fully understood, it may be continued
and extended. We, therefore, call upon every humane person in the
empire to attend to the further facts of the case.

In consequence of the trade being now contraband, concealment has
become necessary ; and the smugglers, in order to escape our cruizers,
employ small fast sailing vessels, into which they put such an over
quantity of slaves, that pestilence and disease soon destroys great
numbers of them. There has been an instance where many, having
become blind, were thrown overboard alive — others in casks during the
chase, and the trade is, unquestionably, carried on with much greater
atrocity than at any former period. When actually captured by our
cruizers, their sorrows do not cease. All those captured on the African
coast must be taken to Sierra Leone, however distant, and the mortality,
during the voyage, is often dreadful.* In the instance of La Fortune,
prize to the Brazen, of 245 slaves then on board, 46 died on the passage,
and 77 in the harbour, when waiting for adjudication. In that of the
Rosalia, taken by the Athol, 92 out of 285 died before they reached
Sierra Leone. Many hundreds of these poor wretches die from previous
suffering and the want of proper medical atteudance, food, and lodgings,
immediately after being landed, before it is possible to have them
registered and located. Experience has shown that it is in vain to look
for voluntary labourers among the survivors, and they are, therefore,

* Vide Commissioners' Report.

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 51. 2 Q

298 Sierra Leone, and [MARCH,

" maintained in idleness by the government/'— compelled to labour by
fear of the whip — or to enter the army or navy ; for to say that they do
either voluntarily, would be a perversion of the term. " Some mild
coercive power seems necessary, but this power should not be, as in
some instances it appears inexcusably to have been, left in the hands of
persons likely to abuse it"* — and that it has been most shamefully
abused, there is abundance of evidence.

" The results of more than eighteen years' experience, as exemplified in
the condition of those liberated Africans located in Sierra Leone, seem
to justify the inference, that either the mode pursued, with the view of
improving their condition by agricultural pursuits> has not been judi-
cious, or that their character and habits are unfavourable to that kind
of improvement, or, perhaps, that both these causes have operated to a
certain extent. However this may be, THE RESULTS ARE IN THEM-
SELVES INCONTROVERTIBLE, AND LEAVE LITTLE ROOM TO HOPE,
THAT WITHOUT THE ADOPTION OF MORE EFFECTUAL MEASURES, the

adult class of Negroes will be induced to improve their present condition,
which probably appears to them, when compared with the past, a state of
considerable enjoyment"^

" Were the class of persons here alluded to available for the purpose,,
there is great reason to believe that a mild and well-regulated system of
coerced labour for a limited period, and exclusive, with a view to the advan-
tage of the Negroes, would be found the most effectual mode of attaining
the end proposed ; and it may be hoped, that its importance would
remove objections to the manner of arriving at it."J

" The punishment for minor crimes is hard labour and chains." — " It
is by no means uncommon at Freetown to see thirty or forty culprits
chained in pairs" (the chains round the middle) (< and employed in a
desultory kind of labour t"

In general when these wretched creatures, " the bad subjects of bar-
barous states," are landed — nothing in the human shape can exceed
their gross ignorance ; and, under all the circumstances stated, is it pos-
sible to expect that the slightest progress in civilization can be made
under the Sierra Leone system, or by the irregular discipline to
which they are there subjected ?

It is difficult to state precisely, and under distinct heads, the different
sums of money which have been taken from the people of this country,
and uselessly spent in the maintenance of this worthless place. The
pay-lists, vouchers, &c. are " so vague as not to justify even a loose
estimate of the expense incurred in each particular one." (Here this, ye
guardians of the public purse !) But estimating it by papers before the
Finance Committee, not yet published, it appears, from 1807 to 1829,
to be about £3,060,500 ! sterling!* And this, owing to various con-

* Commissioners' Report, p. 55 — idem 51.

•j- Parliamentary Papers, p. 55.

$ Ibid, p. 55.

§ Viz. Payments to the Sierra Leone Company £117,100

Army, ordnance, &c 1,040,659

Civil establishment, and public buildings 507,540

Captured Africans, and other charges 573,152

Same expences 1825 to 1829 822,100

£,3,060,531

1830-] The Slave Trade. 299

tingent charges which cannot be specified, is much under the mark.
This sum, when added to the expence of the mixed Commissions and of
our other attempts to put down the foreign slave-trade up to the year
1826, amounted to £5,708,908; and taking the three succeeding years
at £350,000 each, the total will be about £6,800,000 ! !

A gentleman who has made it his particular study to investigate these
matters, has estimated the sums paid by this country for liberated
Africans alone (including those paid to the United States, Spain, boun-
ties, maintenance, mixed Commissions, &c.), at nearly four millions, and
the total expense of all our slave-trade abolition measures, at upwards
of Jifteen millions sterling ! !* without estimating the great deterioration
of property in the West-Indies, the ascendancy given to the colonies of
foreign states, and the future expense which our rash and precipitate
conduct has entailed upon us. The country is now alive to the question,
and to the enormous sums of money which have been squandered in
measures which hitherto have only served to increase the sum of
human misery.

We have no doubt it is the earnest desire of his Majesty's Ministers to
cover up the errors of their predecessors : but how is that to be done ?

It is true that the occupation of the Island of Fernando Po may be
regarded as one step towards improvement, but it remains to be seen
whether Government will follow up this measure, or any other connected
with the colonies, with that firmness, justice, and manly decision which
should mark the councils of a great nation, or whether they will con-
tinue to listen to the advice of those men whose fanatical irregularity of
mind and maudlin ideas of philanthropy have already precipitated the
country into such an incalculable train of evils.

With regard to Sierra Leone, it would appear little short of madness
to retain it a moment longer than may be necessary to prepare for the
removal of such of the settlers as are inclined to follow us. The only
reasons that induced us to hold it have turned out nugatory. It is a
place of no political importance in any one point of view. The total im-
ports, taking as a criterion the average of nine recent years, amount to
about £85,000 a year : the revenue collected, about £5,000. The ex-
ports from the whole coast last year scarcely equalled in value one year's
ordinary expenditure.

Teake-wood, one of the principal exports, is not grown on the ter-
ritory, t>ut seems to be obtained by the agents of Messrs. Zachary Ma-
caulay and Babbington from native chiefs — Dalla Mahomadder, for
instance — who employ slaves to cut it down, and who buy more slaves with
the proceeds.-^ That^rm and its connections seem to have been the only
gainers by this scheme of " philanthrophy ;" but looking at all the cir-
cumstances, we envy neither their immense wealth nor the feelings that
must accompany it. According to the report,}: they have also lately
drawn the trade in gold dust from its usual channels, owing, say the
other British traders, to the undue influence which have been acquired
in the distribution of the government presents among the native chiefs !

It is evident by the Report of the Commissioners, mat in order to
retain Sierra Leone as a British colony, it would be : ecessary, at an

* Letter to R.W. Hay, Esq., byJaqies McQueen, Esq.
•f- Commissioners' Report, p. 81. J P. 70..

2 Q 2

300 Sierra Leone, and [MARCH,

enormous expense, to repair every public building in it, to erect new
barracks, hospitals, &c. at an enormous expense, to send out a numerous
train of civil and military officers and clergymen, and to adopt an en-
tirely new system of management. And after all this is done, we
might ask what good object could be gained ? would the climate be one
whit better ? or could any possible advantage accrue to the nation by
such a continual waste of men and money ?

Fernando Po, therefore, provided no circumstance of climate, or
otherwise, forbids the transfer, seems to be the only station within our
reach wherein the evil part of the abolition system is likely to be abated.
We should there have the liberated Arricans, and general population,
more under command ; there would be no necessity for concentrating
the population, and taking them from agricultural pursuits, to repel the
attacks of hostile neighbours ; we should, in time, be able, with the aid
of steam navigation, to open communications with the interior of Africa,
through the great rivers falling into the Bights of Benin and Biafra ;
and by rigid discipline, moderate coercion, and strict sanatry regula-
tions, we might hope, ultimately, to introduce that degree of industry and
good order, through which alone civilization can be effected. Let the
Maroons, the Nova Scotians, and all who might, now, or hereafter, be
desirous of placing themselves under our protection, have the means of
transportation to the island, as quickly as circumstances, and their own
safety, would permit — leaving Sierra Leone to the Kroomen, Fantees,
Timanees, Mandingoes and those other precious allies, whose courage and
attachment were soconspicuous when Sir Charles Macarthy was de-
stroyed ; and who, unless they preferred decorating some new King Tom
with the jaw-bones of their enemies, would soon be merged in the general
mass of the neighbouring savages, to whom philanthropic societies in
Europe are incomprehensible, and who know so little of the power of
the British nation, as to consider Mr. Kenneth Macaulay king of the
whites! !* The buildings, except such as may be necessary for the
defence of a factory, and " good will of the business," might at once
be left for the use of the Macaulay s — et hoc genus omne !

The measures that ought to be adopted for putting an end to the
foreign slave trade, are more difficult to decide, and require graver con-
sideration.

It is evident that if, in spite of the utmost exertions of a numerous Bri-
tish squadron, consisting, in 1826, of the following ships — viz. The Ferret/
Pylades, Martin, Champion, Diamond, Doris, Ranger, Bustard, Helicon,
Fly, Rainbow, Pandora, Harlequin, Tweed, Warspite, Volage, Gyrene,
Sparrowhawk, Hind, Druid, and Galatea — the colonies of France and
Spain have been more fully supplied with slaves than at any former
period, our efforts are unavailing; and will, so long as France and
America deny the right of mutual search, only serve to entail upon us a
further waste of men and money — the odious distinction of destroying
thousands of Africans by our false humanity, and of maintaining in
idleness a crowd of savages, who, as even Mr. Kenneth Macauley now
tells us, are not innocent people, torn from their happy and peaceful
homes, but beings " in the lowest state of ignorance and degradation,
many of them the bad subjects of barbarous states, enslaved for crime ! !"

If France would consider her own honour, permit the right of mutual
search, and join the maritime powers in declaring the slave trade piracy,

* Vide Caillie's Travels, pp. 215, 250.

1830.] The Slave Trade. SOI

we would venture to say, that three British cruizers, in a very short
time, would put an end to the whole traffic, save Great Britain two or
three hundred thousands a year, and enable us to do something effectual
towards the civilization of Africa; but if our government connot induce
France and Spain to aid us sincerely and truly in putting an end to this
traffic; and if Russia and other nations continue to hold out premiums
for its continuance by preferring, through their fiscal regulations, Spanish
sugars at a higher rate than British, of the same quality, what is to be
done ? Is Great Britain to go to war with Europe and America ? or,
shall we quarrel with the potentates of Africa for murdering our travel-
lers, or on some other pretence, declare the whole slave coast in a state
of riged blockade ?

It is evident, however, that hitherto the only results of the councils of
the " philanthropists," has been to embarrass the country, put money in
their own pockets, entail greater misery upon Africa, and advance the
prosperity of Foreign Colonies upon the declination of our own. A very
great part of the present internal distress is undoubtedly owing to exter-
nal mismanagement ; and we hope both houses of parliament will now
insist upon the full discussion and final settlement of a question, which
has, for many years, wasted our strength and resources, and rendered us
the laughing stock of the politicians of Europe, without in the slightest
degree benefiting Africa, or the cause of humanity.

GEORGE COLMAN S RANDOM RECORDS.

THE proverbial dilatoriness of this man of pleasantry, has kept the
public waiting his leisure for some years, and his facetious indolence
has at length indulged us only with a fragment of his career. We shall
write no review of his performance. It is only justice to let every man
tell his own story, and we shall let the deputy licenser do this justice
to himself. His story is a perpetual ramble through the most extrava-
gant recollections ; but jumbled in general with the easy gaiety that
entitles its narrator at sixty-eight to subscribe himself " The younger"
or any more jovial and juvenile appellative that he may please.

The first question which George discusses is, why he should write at
all. " When in the scale of man's waning temperature, his quicksilver
has fallen to the degree of pruna — that is, when he has ceased to flame,
is only a live coal — which, according to Wadstroem in his Metamor-
phosis Humana, is at the age of fifty-six — he has then become, (and he
should be ashamed of himself, if he have not become so sooner) what is
vulgarly a staid person, which by the by is a misnomer ; for at this
period, he cannot be expected to stay so long as when he was forty."
The treatment, then, recommended by this physician, is " after he has
been whipping his talent, spurring it, and using it worse than a post-
horse, not to turn it out to grass, but to get upon it deliberately and
daily, and amble it about for a morning's airing and gentle recreation."
This sensible system urges its prescriber to give the world his expe-
rience. ff It accounts for the propensity in old writers to scribble, pour
s'amuser, and therefore has become the fashion for dramatists; who,
when they are grown grey, find that narrating anecdotes is much easier
work then inventing plays—to turn autobiographers. Detraction, per-

302 George Colman' s Random Records. ^

haps, will affirm that they are past the greater effort, though equal to the
less ; as, upon FalstafFs principle, ' Your worn-out serving man makes
your fresh tapster.' " — Still some fits of conscience seize him, and he
takes refuge in example. " Gibber tells us that his principal object in
writing his life, is to prevent others from writing it after his death.
And now the motive for telling your own story is double. Since some
people of late take the life out of your hands before the breath is out
of your body, and that, without your leave, which does not appear to
me quite fair.

fc But the excuses of autobiographers are not yet worn out. Each cry-
ing, ' behold the maiden modesty of Grimbald/ till at last, my face-
tious friend and schoolfellow, Frederic Reynolds, with his usual honesty,
asserts (A. D. 1826), that he has written, by the adyice of his phy-
sician, to cure himself of the ( blue devils' " We have then a pleasant
story, not the worse for its being as old as James the First's — " Coun-
terblast against Tobacco." — " A little group of schoolboys took to the
pipe, and like little Whigs, to show their independence of his Majesty,
smoked day and night, like the kitchen chimney of a tavern. This, of
course, was concealed, as much as you can conceal a smell, from the
dominie. Till one luckless evening, when the imps were all huddled
together round the fire of their own dormitory, involving each other in
vapours of their own creation, in burst the master. ' How, now?'
quoth he to the first lad, ' how dare you be smoking tobacco ?' — ' Sir/
said the boy, ' I am subject to head-aches, and a pipe takes off the
pain/ — f And you, and you, and you ?' inquired the pedagogue, ques-
tioning each in his -turn. Each had something to say. One, ' a raging
tooth,' another, ' a cough,' another, ( the cholic.' — ' Now, Sirrah !'
bellowed he to the last boy, c what disorder do you smoke for ?'
All the excuses were exhausted ; when the urchin, after a farewell whiff,
said, in a whining, hypocritical tone — ' Sir ! I smoke for corns.'" George's
secret is, at last, disclosed in a letter which he desires his corres-
pondent to keep a ' profound secret.' It is, his having received a
very good offer from his bookseller. The reason is satisfactory. We
now plunge into the bustle of his biography. " Beginning your life — I
mean your paper, — is like beginning a journey in a post-chaise. You
never start at the time you intended. There is always something you
did not expect, to be said or done, before you set off ; some fiddle faddle
thing to be looked after, at the last moment. Now, just as I was step-
ping into my vehicle, that is, into this chapter, a sapient friend stopped
me, upon the very threshold of my existence, by warning me against
rushing upon my readers, without an exordium."

George Colman was born in 1762. His grandfather, Francis Colman,
married the sister of the famous William Pulteney, Earl of Bath's wife ;
this grandfather died in Tuscany, where he was English ambassador. His
father, then but one year old, was taken under Pulteney's protection,
educated at Westminster, Oxford, and finally placed in Lincoln's-Inn as
a student of law. The elder Colman was promised an estate by his
protector ; but the death of Lord Pulteney in 1763, broke up the EarFs
plan. The estate was left to General Pulteney's discretion, who appears
to have exercised it by keeping the property to himself, Colman,
receiving a legacy, and, subsequently, £6,000 by the death of his
mother. This narrative is gone through, to refute a story in the old
Margravine of Anspach's Memoirs, that the elder Colman was a natural

1830.] George Colman's Random Records. 303

son of the Earl of Bath, and cast off by him for preferring the drama
to Parliament and politics.

Young Colman's first perception of human cares was, like that of the
rest of the world, his going to school ; his remembrances show the
fierce vividness of the miseries that brand that period on the back and
brains of the rising generation. He was sent to the Mary-le-bone
Academy, then kept by Doctor Fountain, " a worthy, good-natured
dominie, in a bush- wig/' whom this inveterate punster calls " princi-
pium et Jons." His wife's head, however, seems to have attracted the
chief notice, as may be discovered from his laborious account of et the
messuage or tenement of hair, upon the ground-plot of her peri-
cranium."

' ( A towering toupee pulled up, all but by the roots, and strained
over a cushion on the top of her head, formed the centre of the building,
tiers of curls served for the wings, a hanging chignon behind defended
her occiput like a buttress, and the whole fabric was kept tight and
weather-proof, as with nails and iron cramps, by a quantity of long
single and double black pins."

The experience of a dramatist is worth recording, if it were for
nothing but its warning to all those who, gifted with the power of play-
making, or thinking that they have the gift, (which, for the purposes of
their ruin, is much the same,) embark on the troubled waters of the
stage. Let us hear the most popular dramatist of his time : or, if we
are to estimate popularity by the continuance and repetition of successes,
perhaps the most popular dramatist of England since Shakspeare. Con-
greve had but three successful plays. Wycherley perhaps no more.
Sheridan but three, and the Critic ; while Colman has gone on for years
in a perpetual production of comedies, all popular, and some likely to
survive his generation.

" Few avocations/.' says this man of success, " are, in my present
opinion, less eligible than that of the drama ; but it caught my fancy
when a boy, for I began not long after nineteen. At first, the very act of
scribbling gave me pleasure. But the novelty of the thing wore off, and
soon after my amusement became my profession. I felt the irksome-
ness of every task, and contemplated probable vexation in the event of
it. When you are labouring for fame, or profit, or for both, and think
all the while you are at work, that instead of obtaining either, you may
be d — m — d, it is not pleasant ! Nor is it agreeable to reflect, that a
handful of blockheads may, in half an hour, consign, first to disgrace,
and then to oblivion, your toil of half a year ; nay, that your own foot-
man, who is one of what is called the " Town," can, by paying a shil-
ling, hoot at your new comedy from beginning to end; and, having
broken your night's rest, your judge in the upper gallery goes to sleep
in your garret.

<f But these considerations apart, I verily think that the wear and tear
upon the nerves, occasioned by dramatic composition, may deduct some
years from a man's life. It has been my habit, I know not why, except
that the muse is more propitious after dinner, to write chiefly late at
night; and when I have grown heated with my subject, it has so chilled
my limbs, that I have gone to bed as if I had been sitting up to my
knees in ice."

Of the wonderful facility with which some aspirants have rode their

304 George Caiman's Random Records. [MARCH,

Pegasus, this " veteran stager," as he calls himself, doubts, very natu-
rally.

" Some few dramatists have told me, that they have written with
such ease and rapidity, that I have been astonished, or indeed have
scarcely believed them." He sarcastically adds, " My wonder and in-
credulity have generally ceased upon a perusal of those gentlemen's
productions." His conclusion is fair and forcible. " After all, success,
may tickle an author's vanity, but failure sadly mortifies his pride :
particularly in writing for the stage, where success or failure are so imme-
diate, and so marked ; and, to say the best of it, a dramatist's is a
devil of a life."

Here spoke the philosopher : the punster follows. " The theatre
upon Richmond Green (where he saw his first play, he being then in
petticoats), was built in 1765 by Mr. James Dance, better known as
Mr. Love, which was his nom de guerre when he came upon the stage,
a translation of his wife's maiden name Delamour. In .this change of
appellative, it is presumed that both husband and wife cordially agreed,
it least it is evident that there was no Love lost between them." The
anecdote of Dodd the actor, shews what helps a dramatic genius may
give a man in doubtful circumstances. Dodd lived in lodgings near the
Richmond theatre with a companion of his solitude, who assumed the
privileges without the rights of a wife. They were fond, but they
sometimes differed, to the full extent of matrimonial customs, and the
argument was often reinforced by " missiles rather than metaphors ; the
chairs, tables, and chimney-piece crockery, flying about the room,"
until they produced conviction. In one of those domestic fracas,
which happened at an early dinner upon a shoulder of mutton, while
Dodd clattered and the lady screamed, the landlord rushed upon the
scene of action, in hopes to prevent the further breaking of his pro-
perty : " How dare you, Mister," exclaimed Dodd, who was brandish-
ing the shoulder of mutton, " obtrude into our apartment while we
were rehearsing ?" — " Rehearsing 1" cried the landlord, while the bits
of china were crashing under his feet, " I could have sworn you were
fighting/' — " No, Sir," said Dodd, " we were rehearsing the supper
scene in Catherine and Pelruckio, or the Taming -of a Shrew." Dodd
directed him to examine the play-bill for the performance, which the
landlord answered by presenting his own, with a formidable list of
undone earthenware, headed, " Mr. Dodd, debtor to John Wilson, for
choice articles of rare and ornamental china, broken at the rehearsal of
the Taming of the Shrew"

Coleman was sent to Westminster School, then under Dr. Smith,
<e A very dull and good-natured head-master he was. Vincent, the
late dean, was second master, e a man of nous and learning, but
plaguily severe/ which is partially accounted for by saying that there
is ' no ratiocinating with the younger fry, and nothing is left for
it but an appeal to their tails/ And this last was Vincent's way of
disciplining his infantry, but he lost his temper, and struck and
pinched the boys in sudden bursts of anger, which was unwar-
rantable." One of the boys drew a caricature of him, which was
published in the print-shops with the following hexameter under it :
' Sanguineos oculos volvit, virgamque requirit/ We have the ' old
Westminster's ' verdict against Fagging, a practice whose absurdity can

1830.] George Caiman's Random Records. 305

be equalled only by its cruelty/ and whose continuance in any school is
the most unequivocal sign of the combination of blockheadism and
brutality in its managers. The public are beginning to be awake to
this .abominable system, which gives ruffianism every incentive, and
has broken the heart of many a boy, that might have been a hap-
piness and honour to society. — " Fagging may inculcate subordination on
the one side, but it encourages tyranny on the other. It may perhaps
crush the overweening spirit of the heir-apparent to an earldom, when
the son of a rich shopkeeper sends him on a message ; but it may also
fill the child of a dealer with notions of equality unfit for his future
commerce; and as great boys fag the smaller, it seems that might
overcomes right, which is the principle of the African slave-trade. At
all events, it must strike the impartial that blacking shoes, and running
of errands, are rather redundant parts of a liberal education !"

He might have added, that of all the systems hitherto devised to
make a boy miserable while he remains at school, and mischievous to
society when he conies into the world, a great school, on the present
general system, is the most complete. That it breaks down the sen-
sitive mind, while it hardens and ruffianizes the mind of ruder con-
struction ; that instead of giving boys the manliness that may be neces-
sary for their struggle through the world, it makes them at once sheep-
ish and self-willed ; and that so far from teaching them delicacy or
generosity in many matters, or a high spirited scorn of sycophancy, it
teaches them the most corrupt and basest uses of money, and the most
vulgar and palpable habits of subserviency to rank and fortune. The
profligacy and the tuft-hunting of our public schools are notorious ; and
it is impossible to doubt that the scandalous vices, and the scarcely less
scandalous servility of our public men and office-seekers of every kind,
the whole multitude who solicit their idle bread from the lavish ab-
surdities of the nobility, or the corrupt patronage of the State, are
plants from the hotbed of our public schools ! There are exceptions,
but the exceptions only prove the rule. The whole system cannot be
too speedily reformed.

" At Westminster he was drowned." An ominous commencement for
a poet, and portentous of his prowess in the art of sinking ! " This sub-
mersion in the River Thames took place not far from Westminster
Bridge, immediately opposite to the premises of the well-known Dicky
Roberts, who for many years afterwards furnished school-boys with a
capital opportunity of undergoing the same ceremony. This chance he
provided at a moderate price, by letting out sailing boats, wherries,
punch-hawls, and other aquatic vehicles, calculated to convert horizontal
into perpendicular motion.

" My young friend George Craustoun and I happened to be the only
boys who were then bathing : he swam like a duck, and I no better
than a pig of lead. It was low tide, and the channel of the river was
very near the bank from which I walked forward, up to my chin in the
water, and then turning round, I began to strike out with arms and
legs as an attempt at swimming, in order to regain the shore ; but
instead of approaching terra tfirma, the current, which was very strong,
carried me out of my depth into the channel. It is a false notion that
drowning people rise only three times, at least I found it so in my case,
for my alternations of rising and sinking were many. Craustoun had
wandered in the water to a considerable distance from me, but he had

M.M. New Series.— VOL, IX, No. 51. 2 R

306 George Caiman's Random Records. [MARCH/

seen my peril before I finally disappeared, and had to work up against
a strong tide to come to my assistance. At length he gained the spot
where I had gone down. I do not think that I had quite reached the
bottom. He was however obliged to dive for ms, when he caught me
by the hair, and with great risk of his own life, kind-hearted fellow as
he was, brought me to shore. But I was insensible, and on my return
to a perception of what was passing, I found myself stretched on my
stomach along the benches of a wherry drawn up on dry land, while
Dicky Roberts was applying hearty smacks with the flat end of a scull
to that part of my person which had so often smarted under the dis-
cipline of Doctor Vincent. This, no doubt, was Dicky's principle of
restoring the animal functions, though it may safely be presumed that
he had never studied Harvey on the Circulation of the .Blood."

We are not sure that we are doing any service to the world in elu-
cidating the theory of hanging ; but coming from so high an authority
in all that " comes home to the hearts and bosoms of men," we cannot
prevail on ourselves to deprive the curious in suspension of the fa-
vourite dramatist's opinion. " I think that the sensation of drowning must
be something like that of hanging : for I felt the sensation of tightness
about the throat which I conjecture must be experienced by those who
undergo the severest sentence of the English law. Yet, in the alarm
and agitation of the moment I was not conscious of any great pain. A
blaze of light flashed upon my eyes. This I imagine to have arisen from
the blood rushing to the brain, though it might be occasioned by the
sunbeams which were then playing in full force upon the water/'

The subject is so attractive to all, and may be so interesting to certain
individuals even of the class of marching intellect, that we must indulge
our philosophy in a few sentences on the funicular close of the troubles
of this very troublesome world. The sensation of drowning is a feeling
of suffocation, sharpened by the rapidly growing belief that we are going
to the bottom, there to lie. Of this sensation every one may have a fore-
taste who is absurd enough to dive, and may have the full fruition who
dives too long. No amateur of swimming, who feels himself ten or
twelve feet deep in a river, or arm of the ocean, with his last breath
bubbling out, is to be envied. Nor is the situation increased in its com-
forts, by the consciousness that his feet are entangled in a mesh of weeds
as inflexible as the Gordian knot, or encumbered by the branches of some
monarch of the woods, fallen a century before into the bosom of the
stream ; or that he is whirled along by an under-current, that twists
round him like a boa constrictor, pursuing the even tenor of its way to
the brow of a precipice fifty feet perpendicular, the boasted ornament of
my lord's demesne, and wonder of the country for fifty miles round.
The truth is, that drowning is a disagreeable mode of shaking off ( life's
coil/ and that hanging has little better to recommend it, except the
publicity. The declarations of those who have recovered from the ope-
ration of the law, in less expert times, go for little with us. They
generally make little of the affair. But, in the first place, their business
is bravado; in the next, they forget it in the first carouse, which is
generally evidenced by their putting themselves in the way of it again
on the first opportunity ; and thirdly, we are not in the habit of giv-
ing the deepest reliance to any thing that they say. ' Evita funem'
therefore, as the philosophic Seneca said , and the maxim is worthy of
his knowledge of the world.

1830.] George Colman's Random Records. 307

Westminster supplies a few oddities more. In the following we see
the incipient glories of one, who, if he had not been manager of a
playhouse, would have driven a mail-coach, or flourished in the four-in-
hand. " I was partner with a boy in a phaeton and pair, which we
sported in Tothill fields — the equipage was of rather rude fabrication,
consisting of unpainted pieces of rough wood, clumsily nailed together ;
and the cattle were a couple of donkeys, yclept Smut and Macaroni.
Those quadrupeds enjoyed no sinecure, being in constant requisition for
both draught and saddle ; and when one happened to be lame or sick,
the two proprietors rode double upon the other." Westminster, like
every ether great school, had its punster and its poet. " The punster was
the head master, Dr. Smith, who, when the cook, according to annual
custom, came to throw the annual pancake, on Shrove Tuesday, over
the high bar which crosses the interior of the building, in which he
always failed, by virtue of his office, and for the benefit of the anniver-
sary pun ; Dr. Smith regularly once a year cried out, at this exploit,
Tlav Kaxov, implying " all bad/' while the pun parit kakon, convulsed
the school with unusual and decorous laughter at the pleasantry of its
chief."

But the poet (the college baker,) deserves a still higher commemora-
tion. He comprehended all his desires of the goddess Fortune in four
lines, much more expressive than Horace's " Hoc erat in votis," or
Swift's,

" I often wished that I had clear,
For life three hundred pounds a year."

The verse is the happiest combination of pastoral feelings with civic
cupidity.

" If I had a field, a garden, and a gate,
I wouldn't care for the Duke of Bedford's estate ;
That is, I wouldn't care for his Grace's estate,
If I had Covent-garden, Smithfield, and Billingsgate."

But the world was now beginning to open. The Elder Colman kept
up an intercourse with the leading writers of the day ; and his son had
the advantage of being introduced at his table to Johnson, Foote, Gib-
bon, the Wartons, Garrick, Beauclerk, Reynolds, and others, chiefly of
the celebrated " Literary Club." On the dogmatizing of this club, he
makes the sensible observations that, — " Though it boasted certain indi-
viduals of the first order, it was rated too high ; or, rather, society rated
itself too low ; — for so pusillanimous in that day were educated persons
in general, that they submitted to the dominion of a self-chosen few. — Of
BoswelPs attempts to make Johnson amiable, by saying, that he had a
love for little children, ' calling them pretty dears, and giving them
sweetmeats,' George altogether doubts, and says, in his characteristic
style, " The idea of Johnson's carrying bonbons to give to children,
is much like supposing a Greenland bear to have a pocket stuffed with
tartlets for travellers." He was at length brought into the for-
midable company of Johnson at his father's house in Soho Square.

" On our entrance, we found Johnson sitting in a fauteuil of rose-
coloured satin, the arms and legs of which were of burnished gold.
The contrast of the man with the seat was striking. An unwashed
coal-heaver, in a vis-a-vis, could not be much more misplaced. He was
dressed in a rusty suit of brown cloth, with black worsted stockings;

2R2

308 George Caiman's Random Records. [MARCH;,

his old yellow wig was of formidable dimensions, and the learned head
which sustained it rolled about in a seemingly paralytic motion, chiefly
inclining to one shoulder ; whether to the right or left I cannot now
remember ; — a fault never to be forgiven by the Twaddleri, who think
these matters of the utmost importance.

" He deigned not to rise on our entrance ; and we stood before him
while he and my father talked. There was soon a pause in the col-
loquy ; and my father, making his advantage of it, took me by the
hand, and said, ' Doctor Johnson, this is a little Colman.' The doctor
bestowed a slight ungracious glance on me, and continuing the rotatory
motion of his head, renewed the conversation. Again there was a
pause ; again the anxious father, who had failed in his first effort, seized
the opportunity for pushing his progeny, with — ' This is my son, Doctor
Johnson.' The great man's contempt was now roused to wrath ; and,
knitting his brows, he exclaimed, in a voice of thunder — " I see him, Sir/'
He then fell back in his rose-coloured fauteuil, as if giving himself up
to meditation, implying ' that he would be no further plagued with
either an old fool or a young one/ " This was savage enough, and we
can scarcely wonder at the title conferred by the indignant object of
his rejection. — (f A new species of Barbarian, a learned Attila, come to
subjugate polished society/'

He had previously seen Goldsmith, and found him the good-natured
doctor that all the world found him. He was but five years old when the
doctor first took him on his knee, and was rewarded for it by a " blow
which left the marks of his little spiteful paw on his cheek/' For this
the striker was banished to an adjoining room, to enjoy the benefit of soli-
tary imprisonment. But Goldsmith himself came to liberate the prisoner,
brought him back to the dinner table, and finally completed the treaty
of pacification by showing him his skill in art magic. " He placed
three hats upon the carpet, and a shilling under each, which represented
England, France, arid Spain. ' Hey, presto, cocolorum,' said the Doc-
tor ; and, on removing the hats, the shillings were found congregated
under one. I was no politician at five years old, and, therefore, might
not have wondered at the sudden revolution which brought England,
France, and Spain, under one crown; but as I was also no conjuror, -
it amazed me beyond measure. From that time, whenever the Doctor
came to visit my father, a game at romps constantly ensued, and we
were always cordial friends, and merry playfellows. Our unequal com-
panionship varied somewhat in point of sports as I grew older, but it did
not last long. My senior playmate died, alas ! in his forty-fifth year,
some months after I had attained my eleventh."

Of Foote, of course he must know much ; but his avoidance of build-
ing on the foundations of other men is so punctilious, that his only
record is, of the player's wooden leg. — c< This prop to his person I once
saw standing by his bedside, ready dressed, in a handsome silk stocking,
with a polished shoe and gold buckle, awaiting the owner's getting up.
It had a kind of tragicomical appearance. And I leave to inveterate
wags the ingenuity of punning upon a Foote in bed, and a leg out of it.
His undressed supporter was the common wooden leg, like a mere stick,
which was not a little injurious to a well-kept pleasure-ground. I
remember following him after a shower of rain upon a nicely rolled
terrace, in which he stamped a deep round hole at every other step he
took, tul it appeared as if the gardener had been there with his dibble,

1830.] George Colman's Random Records. 309

preparing, against all horticultural rule, to plant a row of cabbages in a
gravel walk/'

With Garrick, his acquaintance commenced in boyhood ; and his
sketches of that extraordinary performer on and off the stage, are graphic
and forcible. " The frequent letters passing between him, at Hampton-
court, and my father, at Richmond, were so many opportunities for me
to take airings on horseback, attended by the servant, who carried the
despatches. On these occasions, I always, on arriving at Garrick's, ran
about his gardens, where he taught me the game of trap-ball, which
superseded our former nine pins. He practised too a thousand monkey
tricks upon me. He was Punch, Harlequin, and a cat in a gutter ; then
King Lear, with a mad touch, at times, that almost terrified me, and he
had a peculiar mode of flashing the lightning of his eye, by darting it
into the astonished mind of a child, as a serpent is said to fascinate a
bird, which was an attribute belonging only to this theatrical Jupiter."
To Garrick, he gives the palm of all the actors whom he has ever seen.
" He has only to repeat what others have said a thousand times —

( Take him for all in all,
I ne'er shall look upon his like again/ " .

The uncommon brilliancy of Garrick's eye was proverbial, and yet " he
had the art of completely quenching its fire, as in his acting Sir Anthony
Brainville, a personage who talks passionately, with the greatest sang
Jroid, and whose language opposing his temperament, breathes flame,
like Hecla in Iceland. In this part he made the twin stars look as
' dull as two coddled gooseberries/ — But his deaf man's eye evinced his
minuteness of observation and power of execution. There is an expres-
sion in the eye of deaf persons, I mean such as have not lost all percep-
tion of sound, which consists of a mixture of dulness and vivacity in
the organ of vision, indicating an anxiety to hear all, with a pretending
to hear more than is actually heard, and a disappointment in having
lost much ; an embarrassed look, between intelligence and stupidity— «
all this he conveyed admirably. On the whole, with all his superior art
in pourtraying Nature, it is to be lamented that he outraged her in one
character ; he over-acted the part of Garrick, he converted his compa-
nions into critics in the pit, practised clap-traps upon them, and had
the row of lamps in front of the proscenium eternally under his nose."

Of Gibbon the historian's prejudices and powers, the world has known
a good deal already, but no man has left fewer records of his effect in
social intercourse. His long residence abroad alienated him from English
society, even when he occasionally returned home. Colman has laboured
a portrait of him with more than the usual felicity of labour. " Gibbon
was a curious counterbalance to Johnson. Their manners and tastes were
not more different than their habiliments. On the day I first sat dowrn
with Johnson in his rusty-brown coat and black worsted stockings,
Gibbon was placed opposite to me in a suit of flowerecj velvet, with a
bag and sword. Each had his measured phraseology ; and Johnson's
famous parallel of Dryden and Pope might be loosely parodied in refe-
rence to himself and Gibbon. Johnson's style was grand, and Gibbon's
elegant : the stateliness of the former was sometimes pedantic, and the
polish of the latter was occasionally finical. Johnson marched to kettle-
drums and trumpets. Gibbon moved to flutes and hautboys. Johnson

310 George Caiman* s Random Records* [MARCH,

hewed passages through the Alps, while Gibbon levelled Walks through
parks and gardens.

" Mauled as I had been by Johnson, Gibbon poured balm upon my
bruises by condescending once or twice in the course of the evening, to
talk with me. The great historian was light and playful, suiting his
matter to the capacity of the boy, but it was done more siu>, his manner-
ism prevailed; still he tapped his snuff-box, still he smirked and
smiled; and rounded his periods with the same air of good-breeding, as
if he were conversing with me. His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was
a round hole, in the centre of his visage."

This last touch of description is not very complimentary to the histo-
rian of the Decline and Fall, but it is true ; and Colman, in giving it,
boldly shows, that he was superior to the mellifluous civility that flowed
from it on his young brow. Sheridan he met, of course, in all kinds of
life ; and he idly thinks it necessary to apologize for " thinking that
Sheridan did not excel in light conversation." The fact was notorious,
and easily accounted for. Sheridan was a wit — perhaps the most acute
and finished writer of good things in the whole range of the English
language. He sometimes said excellent things too. But wit is at all
times an exercise of the understanding, and is often the gift of the
gravest temperament. Humour is of a totally different calibre ; it is
light, obtrusive, and gay. The wit often becomes a silent man, from
a jealousy of his own reputation. The humorist, seldom having any
reputation to lose, which may not be regained by the next trivial plea-
santry, strikes at every thing, and is the best companion in common
society, for there the secret of success is to keep up the ball. In She-
ridan's instance there was the additional obstruction, that he loved wine ;
and a lover of wine is., by habit, out of spirits until he is at least half
drunk. The first hour after dinner found Sheridan much more disposed
to sleep than to talk, or to growl at every thing round him than to make
the most of the passing pleasantry. His planet seldom rose until the
third bottle began its gyrations. He then felt the reviving lustre, and
shone, when three-fourths of his fellow sitters were saturated and
sleepy. Even his shining was but brief. Brandy gave the effulgence,
which was but thinly supplied by claret ; and the flow of soul, which
had so tardily superseded the feast of reason, suddenly terminated under
the table.

" Many men of inferior powers were, in my humble conception, plea-
santer dinner companions — his son Tom, for instance. I admit, that
nobody, sitting down with him for the first time, and even ignorant of
his abilities, could have mistaken him for a common-place character, nor
would the evening pass, without some thoughts or turns of expression
escaping him, indicative of genius ; but he wanted the flickering blaze
of social pleasantry, the playful lightning of familiar discourse : his style
appeared to me more an exercise than desultory table-talk. I have heard
him late in the evening recapitulate nearly all that had been said at
table ; and comment on it with much ingenuity, and satire. But, to say
nothing of people's disliking to find their careless chat thus remembered,
and summed up, this was rather speechifying than conversing, and less
fit for a dinner party than for a debating society." The narrator pushes
his illustration of this parliamentary propensity to an extreme in which
we suspect him of exercising his own pleasantry. "The habit of

1830.] George Caiman's Random Records. 311

harangue grew so much upon Sheridan in his declining days,, that he
would, in answering the observation of any person in company, call him
" the honourable gentleman."

" The late Joseph Richardson, Sheridan's ' Jidus Achates^ was, with
all his good nature and good temper, a huge lover of this particular
kind of disputation. Tell Richardson where you dined yesterday, and
he would immediately inquire, ' Had you a good day ? was there much
argument ?' "

Erskine was of the Colman diners-out, and was then what he was
when he became more known, and what he continued to his last hour,
prodigiously fond of talking, and pre-eminently fond of talking of himself.

" My father often met Erskine in the street, and invited him to din-
ner on the same day. On those occasions, our party, which, when I
was at home, formed a trio, might as well have been called a duo, for I
was only a listener ; indeed, my father was little more, for Erskine was
then young at the bar, flushed with success, and enthusiastic in his pro-
fession. He would, therefore, repeat his pleadings in every case. This
I thought dull enough, and congratulated myself, (till I knew better,)
when the oration was over. But here I reckoned without my host ; for
when my father observed that the arguments were unanswerable — ' By
no means, my dear Sir,' would Erskine say, ' had J been counsel for A.
instead of B. you shall hear what I could have advanced on the other
side.' — Then we did hear, and I wished him at the forum."

To Bath Colman went like all " the other fine gentlemen about town"
for a season. Bath was then the haunt of the ultras of fashion, the
original Almack's, with only the difference, that it was on a larger scale,
and that, instead of being ruled by the sceptre of Lady Jersey, it sub-
mitted to the ruder supremacy of Beau Nash. It had its living absur-
dities, as well as its successor. ef The chief exquisite, or dandy, (maca-
roni was then the term,) who figured in the Upper Rooms, was the well
known Tom Storer, bien poudre, in a fine coat with gold frogs ; he
moved the minuet de la cour, in buckram solemnity, pale, tall, thin, and
ugly, making strange contortions of his legs when he turned a
corner."

Mrs. De Crespigny's masquerade, at which Colman exhibited as Prince
Arthur, extorts from him the very correct opinion, that " an English
private masquerade, where people are striving to be clever, is the dullest
of all dull vivacity — a public one is the most vulgar of vulgar dissipa-
tion." In the fury of his anti-masquerade ire he gives some lines,
written for the benefit night of Jones the comedian, whom, by a well-
deserved compliment, in which we believe the public fully join, he*
designates as " one whose domestic worth and gentlemanly manners are
equal to his histrionic talents." We give a fragment of them as being
among the smartest of their author's, and as hitherto unpublished : —

* # # * #

" Then pouring in, come punches, Turks, and tailors,
Heavy heeled harlequins, and inland sailors.
Jews without Hebrew, brogueless Pats from Cork,
And clodpoles without dialect from York,
Sportsmen, who've scarcely seen a furrow's ridge,
And ne'er shot any thing — but London bridge.

312 George Caiman' £ Random Records. [MARCH,

Here songsters squall, fat waltzers there advance,

To crush our toes with what they call a dance.

A dance, at which a well-taught bear would blush,

Till supper is announced, and then — a rush ;

The masks pour in impatient all to stuff .

Rolls stale, ham rank, pies mouldy, chickens tough,

Cold punch grown warm, dead porter, wine half rum,

And waiters ' coming/ who will never come.

The scramble o'er, the revel rises high,

With debauchees and dollies in full cry.

Till all in blazing sunshine reel away,

With fevered headaches to doze out the day."

In a visit to Oxford he makes some mention of the " Connoiseur." a
paper started in 1754, by his father, when he was but an under graduate,
and at the gay age of twenty- two. Bonnel Thornton was his coadjutor.
Thornton was a man of some ability, some pleasantry, and with a grow-
ing propensity to get drunk, which soon completed his literary career.
Thornton, as might be expected, generally shrank from his share of the
task, and Colman was driven to double labour. " When the onus fell
upon Thornton, he waddled out, like a lame duck in the alley, that is, he
was delinquent, and his partner was left to supply the deficiency. On one
of those occasions the joint authors met, in hurry and irritation, to extri-
cate themselves from the dilemma — my father enraged or sulky-
Thornton muzzy with liquor — the essay to be published next morning —
not a word of it written — not even a subject thought on, and the press
waiting ; nothing to be done, but to scribble helter skelter. ' Sit down,
Colman/ said Thornton, ' we must give the blockheads something/
My industrious sire, conscious of obligations to be fulfilled, sat down
immediately, writing whatever came into his head. Thornton, in the
mean time, walked up and down, taking huge pinches of snuff, seeming
to ruminate, but not contributing one word. When my father had
thrown upon paper about one half of a moral essay, Thornton, who was
still pacing the room, with a glass of brandy and water in his hand,
stuttered out, f Write away, Colman, you are a bold fellow ; you can
tell them that virtue is a fine thing/ — implying that my father wrote
nothing but common places. Thornton's worthless life had the natural
termination. He was seized with dropsy, and died, talking in a style
which it is only mercy to suppose was the language of insanity or in-
toxication.— " His relations surrounding his death-bed, he told them that
he should expire before he counted twenty; and covering his head
with the bed-clothes, he began to count — one, two — - eighteen, nine-
teen, twenty. He then thrust out his head, and exclaimed, e It's very
strange, but why ar'n't you all crying ? Teach my son, when I am gone,
his ABC. I know mine in several languages. But I perceive no
good that the knowledge has ever done me — so if you never teach him
his A B C at all, it doesn't much signify/ Within an hour after this
he died."

From Oxford George we went to see the wonders of the Peak; where he
set fire to the straw on which he lay in the boat that carried him through
the cavern : an accident which reminds him of the good luck of a
military officer, who could boast of having been nearly burnt to death,
hanged and drowned in the course of five minutes. This happy person,
who contrived to crowd so much adventure into so short a time, was on
board a transport with his regiment. " They fell in with an enemy's

1830.] George Caiman's Random Records. 313

fleet, and the engagement began. The transport by some accident was
set on fire ; it blew up, and he was flung into the sea. Unable to swim,
and expecting to sink immediately, -an English vessel threw out a rope
to him with a noose in it : in his hurry to fix it under his arms, it
slipped round his neck ; and when a friendly sailor tugged at him to
haul him on board, the endeavour to save his life almost put an end to
it. He was dragged upon deck, half singed, half drowned, and half
strangled. The triple escape may be considered as quadruple ; for he
ran the immediate risk of being shot in the action !"

The elder Colman had promised to pay a visit to Lord Mulgrave at
his seat near Whitby ; and from York they set out with Captain Phipps,
the captain's brother Augustus, Sir Joseph Bankes, and Qmai, the Ota-
heitan, all in one coach ; no bad imitation of the stowage of the Wrong-
head family in the journey to London. The coach was the ponderous
property of Sir Joseph, and it was as " huge and heavy as a broad- wheel
waggon. It carried six inside passengers, with somewhat more than
their average luggage ; for the packages of Captain Phipps were laid in
like stores for a long voyage ; he had boxes and cases crammed with
nautical lore, books, maps, charts, quadrants, &c. Sir Joseph's stowage
was still more formidable — unwearied in botanical research, he travelled
with trunks containing voluminous specimens of the hortus siccus, in
whity-brown paper, and large receptacles for further vegetable mate-
rials, which he might accumulate in his locomotions. The vehicle had,
also, in addition to its contingent loads, several fixed appurtenances with
which it was encumbered by its philosophical owner — in particular,
there was a remarkably heavy safety -chain (a drag- chain upon a newly-
constructed principle), to obviate the possibility of danger in going down
a hill ; it snapped, however, in our very first descent. It blasted, also,
an internal piece of machinery with a hard name — a hippopedometer,
by which a traveller might ascertain the rate at which he was going.
This also broke in the first ten miles of our journey, whereat the phi-
losopher, to whom it belonged, was the only person who lost his phi-
losophy/'

We are afraid that botany is not the most sublime of the sciences,
and that Sir Joseph, if not a little of a quack, was a very bustling
and boring gentleman in his chace of flies and his plucking of roses.
They were tormented by his indefatigable botany. " We never saw a
tree with an unusual branch, or a strange weed, but a halt was imme-
diately ordered, and out jumped Sir Joseph, out jumped the two boys,
Augustus and myself, and out jumped Omai after us all. Many articles
which seemed to me no better than thistles, and which would not have
sold for a farthing in Covent Garden Market, were plucked up by the
roots, and stowed carefully in the coach as rarities."

It is to be presumed, that a hedge-row in Yorkshire did not contain
many extraordinary discoveries in the botanical world even in Sir Joseph's
day, and that the gathering of horsermushrooms and thistles was as
much intended for the fame of Sir Joseph's love of science, as for the
benefit of mankind. But the finest display of zeal for science was to
come. " Among all our jumpings, the most amusing to me was, the
jump of a frog down Sir Joseph's throat ; having picked it up from the
grass, he held it in the palm of his hand till it performed this guttural
somerset, to convince his three followers, the two boys and the savage,
that there is nothing poisonous in the animal, as some ignorant people
M. M. Nen SerieZ—Voi. IX. No. 51. 2 S

314 George Caiman's Random Records. [MARCH,

imagine. As far, therefore, as enlightening the minds of a couple of
lads belonging to the rising generation of England, the frog took his
voluntary leap of self-destruction, like another Curtius, for the good of
his country !" After this, we may believe any thing that we are told of
the coxcombry of Sir Joseph's science. Peter Pindar should not have
let this exploit escape him ; it was even better than that celebrated expe-
riment which ended in — " Fleas are not lobsters, d — mn their souls !"

At Scarborough George for the first time saw the sea, with which he
was inclined to be disappointed, for he had always conceived it from the
poets, to be in a fine frenzy rolling, to rage in a perpetual storm. How-
ever, he was on more mature knowledge convinced, " as George Hanger
wrote of an army of many thousand men, that it was not to be sneezed
at." On the morning after his arrival, he walked down to the beach,
where he entered a bathing machine, to take his " maiden plunge."
He found Omai wading in the water, of whom he gives this curious
description. (( The sun-beams shot their lustre upon the tawny priest
(Omai's profession in Otaheite), and heightened the gloss he had received
from the water; he looked like a specimen of moving mahogany
highly varnished ; not only varnished, indeed, but curiously veneered —
for from his hips and the small of his back downwards, he was tattooed
with striped arches, broad, and black, by means of a sharp shell or fish's
tooth, imbued with an indelible dye." He invited young George to take
.a swim on his back. The offer was accepted. " Omai, who was highly
pleased with my confidence in him, walked a considerable way out
before the water came up to his chin ; he then struck out, and having
thus weighed anchor for this my first voyage, I found myself on board
the Omai, decidedly not as commander of the vessel, but as a passive
passenger, who must submit without an effort to the very worst that
might happen. My wild friend appeared as much at home in the waves,
as a rope-dancer upon a cord. But as soon as he had got out of his
depth, my apprehensions were aroused, and I began to think that, if he
should take a sudden fancy to dive, or to turn round, and float with his
face to the sky, I, who was upon his back, must be in a very awkward
situation. Every fresh motion of his arms and legs carried us some
yards further out ; after a time, however, we went on so steadily, that
my fears subsided. At last I felt not only quite at ease, but delighted
with my mode of vectigation ; it had, doubtless, one advantage over
sailing in a ship, for there was no rolling and pitching about, to occasion
sea-sickness, and I made my way as smoothly as Arion upon his dolphin.
I could not, indeed, touch the lyre, nor had I any musical instrument
to play on — unless it were the comb which Omai carried in one hand,
and which he used, while swimming, to adjust his harsh black locks,
hanging in profusion over his shoulders. Having performed a trip of
full three-quarters of an hour, the Omai came gallantly into harbour,
all safe — passenger in good health."

A pleasantry is next recorded of John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave,
(afterwards Duke of Buckingham). This " warrior, politician, courtier,
and poet, had fled from the plague of 1665 in London to his Yorkshire
estate ; there he rendered himself so popular, that on his return, his
tenantry attended him in a body to some distance, trying to extract a
promise of his soon coming to reside among them again, The request
was evaded for a while ; but the crowd at last forced an answer. ' My
worthy friends/ said the Earl, ' I shall make a point of coming among
you — at the next plague !' "

1830.] George Colman't Random Records. 315

After a lapse of forty-five years, George visited the seat of the Mul-
graves once more. It had flourished prodigiously in the interval, the
house had grown into a castle, and the grounds into woodlands and
forests. His time passed delightfully, except for the peculiar regard of
his noble host for his comfort. For two days he was laid up — by Friar
Bacon, on whom he had taken a ride to Whitby. " The fat of this
handsome pampered animal proclaimed him an old favourite, and the
width of his back distended my femoral sinews, as if I had been put to
the question by the Inquisition. My kind and noble friend had, I know,
been studying my comfort before he mounted me upon this corpulent
quadruped, whose ambling pace was smoother than the swing of a cradle ;
but, oh — his rotundity ! take him altogether, he was one of the mildest
tortures that ever stretched the limbs of an elderly gentleman." The
Mulgrave expedition passed off pleasantly, furnishing the wit with some
sketches of character for his next drama, and supplying the reader with
some odd anecdotes. The following slight exaggeration is new to us ;
he gives it in illustration of the sang Jroid with which the miners in the
alum-pits on the Mulgrave estate sling themselves down the quarry.
" A Scotchman slipped off the roof of a mansion in Edinburgh, sixteen
stories high (at the least) ; when midway in his descent, he arrived at a
lodger looking out of the eighth floor window, to whom, as he was an
acquaintance, he observed, en passant, ' Eh, Sandy, mon, sic a fa' as I
shall hae.' He declines saying anything more on the alum-works, from
the astringency of the subject, but refers the inquisitive to the Ency-
clopaedia. He now studied botany in the evenings, under the indefati-
gable Sir Joseph, who sliced cabbages, cauliflowers, and every thing
that came in his way, for the honour of science ; from which study his
.pupil declares, that he rose with the power of distinguishing between
" a moss-rose and a Jerusalem artichoke." Growing sick of science, he
naturally gives a passing rebuke to every project that withdraws a man
from the cultivation of the play-houses and fire-sides of London.
." What is," says this gay Utilitarian, " the endeavour of boring beyond
a frigid zone ? If by possibility a passage were obtained this year, it
would be blocked up in the next." He accordingly pronounces the
North- West passage as hopeless as " a turnpike road over the sands of the
desert, or a permanent bridge across the crater of ^Etna."' So much for
the glories of Captain Parry and the projects of Mr. Barrow. The
world has been long of the wit's opinion ; but he shines in description,
and he gives us an excellent roasting of a pig, au naturel, by Omai, in
the manner of the royal kitchen of Otaheite. ". One day we had a barbe-
cued hog — a huge whole monster. I took a prejudice against him while
roasting — he was put down to a blazing fire in the field, where he was
burned, and scorched, and blackened, until he looked like a fat pro-
testant at the stake, in the time of Bishop Bonner — we all had a flap
at him, with a rag dipped in vinegar, at the end of a stick, by way of a
basting ladle, otherwise he would have been done to a cinder." The
monster was better than he looked. " As to Omai's dish, in the eating
nothing could be more savoury/7 Sir Joseph too, that man of all arts,
figured as a cook. " Sir Joseph made very palateable stews, in a tin
machine, which he called by a hard name ; but which is now very
common/' But their experiments were sometimes more diversified than
successful, " One day we roasted a sea-gull, which was enough to turn

2S2

316 George Colman's Random Records. [_ MARCH,

the stomach of a cormorant. The raw dinner of a Hottentot would be
a refuge from it."

They then took to boring the burrows or tumuli in the neighbourhood,
from which they extracted some bones, potsherds, and copper coins,
which, he observes, " it was impossible to toss up ; they having neither
heads nor tails/7 Two or three of them were given to him as the reward
of his exploratory prowess, but they did not remain long with him. On
this he makes the pleasant, yet pathetic reflection : " From that time to
this, I have evinced no talents as a hoarder of coin. My attempts in
that way, indeed, have been generally made with a view to modern
English specimens, stamped with heads of the Brunswick line. Many
of those have, at different times, been in my hands; but somehow or
other, they have soon passed out of them again ; and I have never been
able to succeed as a collector."

On his tour homewards, he visited Sir Charles Turner, a famous
country gentleman — " who persecuted a fox with joyful inveteracy,
and was the most formidable Nimrod of his district. He showed
us a picture of a favourite white hunter, surmounted by himself,
in the act of leaping a five-barred gate, being the last of an uncom-
mon number of similar jumps, which this fine animal had accom-
plished, with Sir Charles on his back, during one day's chase. When
such paintings formerly met my view, they excited in me an admiration
for the rider, which I have long ago exclusively transferred to the
horse."

The observation is excellent; and a proof of the advanced rationality
of the writer. One trait more of this fox-hunting family. " Sir Charles
had a son, whom he was educating to be in all points his representative —
* a fine dashing fellow !' When I first saw him, he ran into a drawing-
room, full of company, with a live mouse in his hand. ' Bite off his
head, Charles,' said the father. The boy obeyed the word of com-
mand ; his dental guillotine instantly fell, and the mouse was executed."
This was a fine touch of country exploits. But he met a more interest-
ing subject in the neighbourhood. " In the village of Kirkleatham,
was an individual, who excited great interest in the visitors of the hall.
His looks were venerable, from his great age, and his deportment was
above that which is usually found among the inhabitants of a hamlet.
How he had acquired this air of superiority over his neighbours, it is
difficult to say, for his origin must have been humble. His eightieth
summer had nearly passed away ; and only two or three years previously,
he had learned to read, that he might gratify a parent's pride and love,
by perusing his son's first voyage round the world. He was the father
of CAPTAIN COOK !"

On the whole, the Random Records are pleasant specimens of old
George Colman, the younger. He might have given us more anecdote — for
who possesses so much ? and a little less loyalty in his panegyrics, for who
in this country has not heard all that can be said of the virtues of kings ?
His preface is a little ventre a terre, and his principles are those of the
" deputy licenser." But his book is a pleasant one after all. He pro-
mises to give more, and we hope he will keep his promise ; the present
volumes flutter only about the first twenty years of his life. What
flights of stronger wing, and broader sweep, may he not take in the forty
that have followed them ! Let him but begin !

1830.] C 317 ]

A CHAPTER ON OLD COATS.

I LOVE an old coat. By an old coat, I mean not one of last summer's
growth, on which the gloss yet lingers, shadowy, and intermittent, like
a'faint ray of sunlight on the counting-house desk of a clothier's ware-
house in Eastcheap, but a real unquestionable antique, which for some
five or six years has withstood the combined assaults of sun, dust, and
rain, has lost all pretensions to starch, unsocial formality, and gives the
shoulders assurance of ease, and the waist of a holiday. Such a coat is
my delight. It presents itself to my mind's eye, mixed up with a thou-
sand varying recollections, and not only shadows forth the figures, but
recals the very faces, even to the particular expression of eye, brow, or
lip, of friends over whom the waters of oblivion have long since rolled.
This, you will say, is strange. Granted ; but mark how I deduce my
analogy !

In that repository of wit, learning, and sarcasm, the " Tale of
a Tub," Swift pertinently remarks, that, in forming an estimate of an
individual's trade or profession, one should look to his dress. The man
himself is nothing ; his apparel is the distinguishing characteristic ; the
outward and visible sign of his inward and spiritual grace. What,
adds the satirist, is a lawyer, but a black wig and gown, hung up on
an animated peg, like a barber's caxon on a block ? What, a judge, but
an apt conjunction of scarlet and white ermine, thrown over a similar
peg, a little stoutsr, perhaps, and stuck upright on a Bench ? What, a
dandy, but a pair of tight persuasives to corns and gentility, exuberant
pantaloons, and unimpeachable coat and hat, trimly appended to a moving
stick, from a yard and a half to two yards high, grown in Bond Street, and
cut down in the fulness of time in the King's Bench ? What, a lord mayor,
but a gold chain stuck round the neck of a plump occupier of space ?
What, a physician, but a black gilt-headed cane, thrust, with profes-
sional gravity, under the snout of an embodied " Memento Mori ?" What,
an alderman, but a furred gown and white napkin stuck beneath the

triple chin of a polypetalous personification of dyspepsia ? Caxon the

barber held opinions similar to these. " Pray, Sir," said he to the
Antiquary, " do not venture near the sands to-night ; for when you are
dead and gone, there will only be three wigs left in the village."*

If then we look to the dress — of which the coat, of course, forms the chief
feature — as the criterion of a man, it is logically manifest that the appear-
ance of certain coats will renew the recollection of certain individuals ; or
suppose we substitute the word " coat" for " man," and it will be equally
manifest that a certain coat is bonafide a certain man. Now, whenever I
see an old coat, brown, rusty, and long-waisted, with the dim metal but-
tons at the back, sewed on so far apart, that if a short-sighted man were to
stand upon the one, he could scarcely — according to the ordinary laws
of probability — see over to the other ; I imagine, on Swift's principle,
that I see my fat city friend, Tims, who died of a lord mayor's feast, ten
years since come Martinmas. In like manner, whenever I behold a
gaunt, attenuated blue surtout, so perfectly old-fashioned in shape, that
I should hardly be justified in making an affidavit before Sir Richard
Birnie, that, to the best of my belief, it was younger than the Temple of
the Sun, at Palmyra; I think that I behold mine ancient college-

* Vide Sir W. Scott's novel of the Antiquary, Vol. I.

318 A Chapter on Old Coats. [MARCH,

churn, Dickson — the cream of bachelors — the pink of politeness — the
most agreeable of tipplers ; who expired last year of vexation, the neces-
sary consequence of his having been married a full fortnight to a Blue-
Stocking. Peace to his ashes ! — he always spoke respectfully of whisky
punch !

Old coats are the indices by which a man's peculiar turn of mind may
be pointed out. So tenaciously do I hold this opinion, that, in passing
down a crowded thoroughfare, the Strand, for instance, I would wager
odds, that, in seven out of ten cases, I would tell a stranger's character
and calling by the mere cut of his every-day coat. Who can mistake the
staid, formal gravity of the orthodox divine, in the corresponding weight,
fulness, and healthy condition of his familiar, easy-natured flaps ?
Who sees not the necessities — the habitual eccentricities of the poet,
significantly developed in his two haggard, shapeless old apologies for
skirts, original in their genius as Christabel, uncouth in their build as
the New Palace at Pimlico ? Who can misapprehend the motions of the
spirit, as it slily flutters beneath the Quaker's drab ? Thus, too, the sable
hue of the lawyer's working coat corresponds most convincingly with
the colour of his conscience : while his thrift, dandyism, and close
attention to appearances, tell their own tale in the half-pay officer's smart,
but somewhat faded exterior.

No lover of independence ventures voluntarily on a new coat. This
is an axiom not to be overturned, unlike the safety stage-coaches. The
man who piques himself on the newness of such an habiliment, is — till
time hath " mouldered it into beauty" — its slave. Wherever he goes, he
is harassed by an apprehension of damaging it. Hence he loses his sense
of independence, and becomes — a Serf! How degrading! To succumb
to one's superiors is bad enough ; but to be the martyr of a few yards of
cloth ; to be the Helot of a tight fit ; to be shackled by the ninth fraction
of a man ; to be made submissive to the sun, the dust, the rain, and the
snow ; to be panic-stricken by the chimney-sweep ; to be scared by the
dustman ; to shudder at the advent of the baker ; to give precedence to
the scavenger ; to concede the wall to a peripatetic conveyancer of eggs ;
to palpitate at the irregular sallies of a mercurial cart-horse ; to look up
with awe at the apparition of a giggling servant girl, with a slop-pail
thrust half way out of a garret window ; to coast a gutter with a
horrible anticipation of consequences ; to faint at the visitation of a
shower of soot down the chimney ; — to be compelled to be at the mercy
of each and all of these vile contingencies ; can any thing in human
nature be so preposterous, so effeminate, so disgraceful ? A truly
great mind spurns the bare idea «f such slavery ; hence, according
to the " Subaltern/' Wellington liberated Spain in a red coat, extrava-
gantly over-estimated at sixpence, and Napoleon entered Moscow in a
green one out at the elbows.

An old coat is the aptest possible symbol of sociality. An old shoe is
not to be despised ; an old hat, provided it have a crown, is not amiss ;
none but a cynic would speak irreverently of an old slipper ; but were
I called upon to put forward the most unique impersonation of
comfort, I should give a plumper in favour of an old coat. The
very mention of this luxury conjures up a thousand images of enjoy-
ment. It speaks of warm fire-sides — long flowing curtains — a
downy arm -chair — a nicely-trimmed lamp — a black cat fast asleep on the
hearth-rug — a bottle of old Port (vintage 1812)— a snuff-box— a cigar—

1830.] A Chapter on Old Coals. 319

a Scotch novel — and, above all, a social, independent, unembarrassed
attitude. With a new coat this last blessing is unattainable. Imprisoned
in this detestable tunic — oh, how unlike the flowing toga of the ancients !
— we are perpetually haunted with a consciousness of the necessities of
our condition. A sudden pinch in the waist dispels a philosophic
reverie ; another in the elbow withdraws us from the contemplation of
the poet to the recollection of the tailor ; Snip's goose vanquishes Ana-
ereon's dove ; while, as regards our position, to lean forward, is inconve-
nient ; to lean backward, extravagant ; to lean sideways, impossible.
The great secret of happiness is the ability to merge self in the contempla-
tion of nobler objects. This a new coat, as I have just now hinted, forbids.
It keeps incessantly intruding itself on our attention. While it flatters
our sense of the becoming, it compromises our freedom of thought.
While it insinuates that we are the idol of a ball-room, it neutralizes the
compliment by a high-pressure power on the short ribs. It bids us be
easy, at the expense of respiration ; comfortable, with elbows on the rack.

There is yet another light in which old coats may be viewed : I mean
as chroniclers of the past, as vouchers to particular events. Agesilaus,
king of Sparta, always dated from his last new dress. Following in the
wake of so illustrious a precedent, I date from my last (save one) new
coat, which was first ushered into being during the memorable period of
the Queen's trial. Do I remember that epoch from the agitation it
called forth? From the loyalty, the radicalism, the wisdom and the
folly it quickened into life ? — Assuredly not. I gained nothing by the
wisdom. I lost as much by the folly. I was neither the better nor the
worse for the agitation. Why then do I still remember that period ?
'Simply and selfishly from the circumstance of its having occasioned the
dismemberment — most calamitous to a poor annuitant ! — of the very
coat in which I have the honour of addressing this essay to the public.
In an olfactory crowd, whom her Majesty's " wrongs" had congregated
at Hammersmith, my now invalid habiliment was transformed after the
fashion of an Ovidian metamorphosis, where the change is usually from
the better to the worse, from a coat into a spencer. In a word, some
adroit conveyancer eloped with the hinder flaps, and by so doing,
secured a snuff-box which played two waltz tunes.

The same coat, on which subsequently, by a sort of Taliacotian pro-
cess, a pair of artificial skirts were grafted, accompanied me through
Wales, among mountains where the eagle dwells alone in his supremacy.
It was the sole adjunct who was with me, when I rambled along the
banks of the Sawthy, when the lark was abroad and singing in the sky,
or the shy nightingale flung her song to the winds from among the
hushed dells of Keven-gornuth. It was at my back when I climbed the
loftiest peak of Cader-Idris, and when with feelings not to be described,
1 looked down upon sapphire clouds floating in quaint huge masses at
an immense distance below me, and saw through their filmy chinks the
glittering of thirty lakes, the faint undulating line of a thousand billowy
ridges, or the blue expanse of the drowsy ocean, dotted here and there
with a passing sail, and bordered far away on the horizon by the dim
boundaries of the Irish coast. Moreover, it was at my back when I
plunged chin-deep into the isle of Ely bogs, in which picturesque condi-
tion I was shot at, (and of course missed) by a Cockney sportsman, who
had mistaken me for a rare and handsome species of the wild duck.

But by far the most singular adventure in which this old-fashioned

320 A Chapter on Old Coals. \ MARCH,

appanage ever bore a part, was one which took place at night-fall at a
lonely dwelling in the neighbourhood of the Black Mountains. I had
been sporting over those delectable wastes for the greater part of a day, and
having as usual shot nothing but an old furze bush, was making the best of
my way home towards the village inn where I had taken up my quarters,
when the shades of night somewhat suddenly and inconveniently dropped
around me. I say inconveniently, for I knew little or nothing of the
neighbourhood, and as is always the case on such occasions, took the
wrong by-path, which led me far down into a romantic hollow, in the
centre of which stood a lone, gloomy-looking hut. I think I never saw
so forlorn an object. Its every lineament spoke of solitude and murder.

While hesitating whether or not to pass this cut-throat tenement, a
light glanced suddenly forth from one of the fissures that time and
neglect had made in its walls. This decided me ; I felt that I now stood a
fair chance of gleaning some information respecting my road ; so
brandishing my gun like a quarter-staff — for I had consumed all
my powder — I strode resolutely forward, though not without certain
awkward misgivings, which a satirist might have tortured into apprehen-
sions, in the direction whence the light proceeded, and was fortunate
enough to secure a position, which, without being seen or heard, enabled
me to see and hear, all that took place within the hut.

And a most picturesque discovery I made ! Salvator Rosa would
have given his ears to have been beside me. At the further end of the
ruin, holding a lamp in his hand, whose wild fitful glare fell with strange
effect upon his dark swarthy lineaments, stood a brawny ruffian, with a
face eloquent of burglary. Near him was stationed another worthy,
younger, though equally ferocious in aspect ; with black grizzled hair ;
side-long look, like a fox on a poaching -tour ; snub nose, and mouth
from ear to ear. Both were speaking in under tones ; and as the
younger, in reply to some question put by his companion, stole a fearful
glance about him, I observed a spot of blood on his forehead, and that
his hands were stained with the same crimson hue. Horror-struck by
such a sight, I was just preparing to retreat, when the following sen-
tences, spoken at intervals in a whisper that sent a thrill through every
vein, rivetted me to the spot.

" Whereabouts did you catch her, Owen ?"

" Just in the lane by the pool side ; she was walking alone, so, as I
owed the old woman a grudge, I" — and here the wretch chuckled like a
fiend — " made no more ado, but grasped her by the neck, and cut her
throat !"

" We must go and fetch her away then to-night ; and above all, cover
up the blood with earth, or else"

What followed, I was unable to make out ; enough, however, had been
said, to convince me that I was standing within a yard of two deliberate
murderers. What a situation ! Alone, at night, in the wildest part of
the Black Mountains, with two such villains : I felt that one movement,
were it ever so slight, one sound, were it ever so fine, might reach their
practised ears, and prove my instant destruction. But I had little time
for reflection, for the ruffians making a sudden move towards the door, I
moved off also, nor ever once halted, till cut short in my career by a
projecting blackthorn, which had attached itself, after a very unconnu-
bial fashion, to my person. With the usual difficulty I procured a
divorce from this annoyance ; and after rambling about some hours, up

1830.3 A Chapter on Old Coats. 321

one lane, down another, coasting this moor, and crossing that, I at length
got into the right track, and arrived at my quarters with the sole incon-
venience of having my coat a second time dismembered, like Absyrtus,
by his kind aunt Medea.

But this was a trifle compared with the more momentous secret
that engrossed my whole thoughts. For two days and nights I did
nothing but ponder in my mind the way in which I could best disbur-
then myself of it. At first I thought of telling every thing to my land-
lord ; but when I reflected on the character of my communication, there
appeared a something so strange — so romantic — so altogether outre about
it, that — will the reader credit my weakness? — I actually had not the
courage to incur the hazard either of being laughed at, or scouted as a
fabricator.

But the mind, like the body, when overcharged, must find a mar-
ket for its surplus commodities. In other words, it must have a vent
for its uneasiness. I soon felt this to be the case ; and after bearing my
secret about with me a full fortnight, it became at length so wholly,
insupportable, that I resolved, come what might, to rid myself of the
burden ; and accordingly, by my landlord's advice — to whom I imparted
every particular — set out for Carmarthen, which was the nearest civi-
lized town, in order to put the whole affair into the hands of the proper
legal authorities.

It so happened, that the day of my arrival there was the second of the
assizes, and as the magistrate before whom I was advised to lay my
case, was in court, I made the best of my way thither, and arrived just in
time to hear the trial of two murderous-looking felons, in whose intelli-
gent faces I at the very first glance recognised my old acquaintances of
the hut. The wretches then were at length detected ! Thank God ! I
involuntarily exclaimed, and waited with throbbing heart the particulars
of the solemn charge. In a few minutes, the trial commenced. The
counsel for the prosecution drew forth their briefs ; those for the defence
looked ominous and full of apprehension ; the Judge shook his wig ;
the Jury frowned in horror ; the Court was hushed in awful expecta-
tion, and Owen Rees and Davy Thomas were formally called on to

plead Guilty or Not Guilty, to the charge of having, on the night of
the 20th of June — the very night on which I had overheard their
conversation, — " — stolen a Goose, the property of Sarah Stubbs, ALIAS
Long Sal, spinster" ! !

Shade of Martinus Scriblerus ! was ever sample of the bathos equal
to this?

NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL.

POLITICAL Economy is a science against which we, poor untaught,
un-Scotchified, and un-Jacobinical creatures, will never venture to lift
up our finger. First, because it is the " grand science" of the age. Se-
condly, because it is a science that every body, born to be a light of the
earth, or not born for that, or any other visible purpose, thoroughly
understands. Thirdly, because it is a science in which no one of its
illustrious lecturers, worshippers, and writers, ever contradicts the other,
or contradicts himself; calls his brother a blockhead, or proves himself
one ; insults common sense in mankind, or burlesques it in his proper
person. Fourthly, because it is, par excellence, a lecturable science, or

M.M. Nen) Series.—VoL. IX. No. 51. 2 T

322 Notes of the Month on [[MARCH,

science on which every body may lecture with rival profundity, novelty,
and example; it supplying the ignorant with instantaneous knowledge,
the stupid with intuitive sagacity, the narcotic with glowing eloquence,
and the silent among the souls of men with argument eternal. Fifthly,
because it is the peculiar science of those peculiar friends to England
and her establishments, the Edinburgh Jacobins, the Paris Jacobins,
the Dublin Jacobins, and the London Jacobins. Sixthly, because it is a
science comprehending all other sciences, and capable of being naturally
diversified and embroidered by digressions upon every subject compre-
hensible by the " energies" of man, or the boundless literature of a travel-
ling tinker or lecturer ; relieving a discussion upon poor-rates by an
episode on the seraglio, the new receipt for water-proof leather, the
history of Lady Ellenborough's Apotheosis, and the private memoirs of
Mademoiselle Jelk, the reigning ornament of the Adelphi. Seventhly,
because it is the science that feeds Mr. Maculloch's pen, and empties
Mr. Huskisson's pocket ; that has fixed the one in a professorship ; and
turned the other out of every thing but the seat for Liverpool, out of
which we predict that he will speedily be turned, never to return.

With this strong consciousness of the blessings of Political Economy,
let none suppose that we .would whisper a syllable in its dispraise.
Quite the contrary. As one of our poets of the Political Economist
school of poetry sings: —

Hail for ever, Huskisson !
Of the mightiest, mightiest one !
First of English, first of Scotch,
Fittest our finance to botch;
Fittest of all ministers
To awake the House's jeers ;
Fittest of all geese to write
Notes at " two o'clock" at night;
Fittest to get footman's warning,
Dated (i ten o'clock" at morning ;
Fittest thy own fall to spout,
When his Highness tossed thee out ;
Mighty soul of mighty mouse,
Fittest to amuse the House,
When with roars the laughing tribe
Heard thee all thy woes describe ;
Fittest for Maculloch's List —
Hail ! thou great Economist !

As to the effects of the Huskissonian principles (!) we sincerely absolve
that memorable statesman and philosopher from all blame; for the busi-
ness of statesmen and philosophers being solely with the origin of things,
the ultimas causes, or primary conceptions of those noble discoveries that
are to restore (or upset) mankind, they are fairly disengaged from all
human responsibility for the results. We are perfectly convinced that
Mr. Huskisson was so far from intending that twenty thousand Spital-
fields weavers should be thrown out of bread within the first week of his
triumphant theory, that he actually thought his activity would have had
quite the contrary effect : that twenty thousand more weavers would be
set to work, and that they would all have double meals. If in this he
made a " trifling mistake," it was any thing but a mistake of the heart.
But to our topic, gin ! Science leads one of the new school naturally to
think that the cultivation of French silks, gloves, &c., is a suitable object

1830.] Affairs in General 323

of encouragement to England ; and the cultivation of British gin is, as
naturally, the " remunerating boon," as " Science" says.

Science is vigorous in its proceedings, and the cultivation of that truly
British commodity has succeeded to a flourishing extent, which must
enrapture the eye of an economist. But to the fact. In the year 1825,
Science reduced the duties on British spirits, with the avowed purpose
of increasing their consumption. Many persons doubted the wisdom of
such a step, and foresaw its consequences. But the measure was recom-
mended by Mr, Huskisson ; and, being founded upon the most approved
principles of political economy, the apprehensions for the health and
morals of our population were treated — economically. The result, it must
be admitted, has completely answered the purpose of those who recom-
mended the expedient. The consumption of British spirits has, within
these few years, prodigiously increased. The police reports give the
most attractive evidence of the zeal with which the populace second the
zeal of the philosophers ; and we must give credit to Mr. Peel for his
provident invention of the blue devil police, whose chief office being, to
pick up those practical " economists" from the kennel, we understand
that they intend to apply for a new civic order of merit, which Lord
Alvanley says should be the " Spinning-ginny " and the name, the Blue-
ruins. But to the fact again. It appears, from papers laid before Par-
liament, that the average consumption of 1820, 21, and 22, amounted, in
round numbers, to 11,974,000 gallons; while the average of 1825, 26,
and 27, was 23,540,000 gallons. In the last of these years it was
24,346,460 gallons ! Of those, nearly twenty millions of gallons were
the manufacture of the United Kingdom, and produced a revenue of
4,107*5822. The public evidence of this brilliant change is palpable in
the enlarged magnificence and picturesque beauty of the gin-shops, in
the rapid conversion of all the minor sinning tribe of coffee-shops, wine
cellars, porter houses, &c. into vermilion arid gold-flourished and deco-
rated temples of the gin Goddess, and in the crowd of devotees that
bring their hourly offerings to the shrine, and continue their prostrations
all the way home.

Mr. Hodges has just announced a boiler that would float a seventy-
four ; and Mr. Deady has threatened to rival him before a month is over,
with a boiler that empties the Islington reservoir to cover its bottom to
the depth of one inch " imperial." The truth is, that the trade thrives,
and gin is " looking up," whatever its drinkers may do. The ordinary
statesman may go the way of so many other statesman, and sink into a
babbler at Brussels and Boulogne ; or repose himself in the majesty of
gout on his borough sofa, until he ceases to haunt back-benches, and
becomes divested of the power of scribbling a frank. But the tomb of
the philosopher deserves to be not unknown ; they should not " sleep
without the meed of some melodious tear," to whom during life, so many
owed "a drop i' the eye." Where is the feeling that would deny to
him a cordial recollection ? They should not sink into unregarded clay
to whom so many owed " spirit ;" they should not be pressed by the
common obscurity, whom the arts of decorating shop windows, andpfaint-
ing noses, hail as revivers and Raphaels.

All the world knows the reply of the Sultan Mustapha to Cromwell's
Ambassador, who wanted to make a protestant of the magnificent unbe-
liever : — " If I ever turn Christian it shall be Catholic, for I never heard

2 T 2

324 Notes of the Month on [MARCH,

of a protestant kingdom having good wine." The Turk was right in his
oinography, or as the Gresham professor of Greek has it, vino-graphy ;
and undoubtedly popery and potation (or as the Gresham professor of
Latin has it, " potus drinkabilis") go hand in hand with marvellous
coincidence of virtues ; thus we have Claret and confession, Port and
purgatory, Tokay and transubstantiation, Madeira and monkery, Bur-
gundy and bulls, and so forth.

But if there are men who have no vinous enthusiasm, we suppose every
body wishes to escape all hazards in the other world, and there the
papist distances all other men in the most steam engine style. Nothing
can be plainer on the face of the Romish budget, than that if a man is
roasted for a million of years, more or less, the whole is a matter of taste ;
for he might have escaped the torrefaction with the greatest ease, the
process being merely to pay a certain number of pence into the pocket of
a certain number of priests, to say masses for the culprit yet Catholic
soul. We give one of the registers of this wholesale anti-roasting
machine : —

"The sacred and royal Monte de Piedad, of Madrid, has relieved from
purgatory, since its establishment in 1721, till November, 1826, —

1,030,395 souls, at an expense of £ 1 ,720,437

11,402, from Nov. 1, 1826, to Nov. 1827 14,276

1,041,797 £1,734,713

The number of Masses, celebrated to accomplish this pious work, was
558,921, consequently each soul cost 1 9-10 Masses, or 34^. 4d."

This is one of the triumphs of the church; and we congratulate the Laz-
zaroni of Naples, the bandits of the Roman states, the Rockites of Ire-
land, and all the cut-throats, poisoners, and pilferers, from one end of
the popish world to the other, on this splendid facility of Elysium, this
golden or silver ladder to paradise.

" The honourable Mr. > being at variance with his father,

sometimes speaks very freely in reprehension of his conduct, but plumes
himself on allowing no one else to do so. A sprig of fashion, conversing
with him on his sire's undutiful conduct, broke out with " That fool of
a father !" — " Hold !" cried filial piety, " I will allow no man to call

Lord a fool of a father." — " It was a mere slip of the tongue,"

replied the other, " I only meant to say that father of a fool." Such are
the ways of newspaper mystification. The Honourable Mr. is a noble
lord, and the noble lord a very pleasant theatre-loving fellow, who is
keeping up the glory of Old England in ' far distant lands,' as the
romance writers say or sing. Happy England, that, if it produce
nothing else, produces fiddling ambassadors and greenroom lords. Will
the following paragraph explain ?

" Florence is still more gay than it was, occasioned chiefly by the
attraction of Lord Normanby's private theatricals, and the splendid
hospitality of his table. Young Charles Mathews designs all the dresses,
and suggests the subjects of the new and beautiful scenes with which
the theatre is decorated."

As to what Young Charles Matthews may do in the " designing way,"
we suppose nobody cares but himself. But if my lord should ever con-
descend to honour London with the light of his countenance again, we
hope lie will bring, at least, the Duchesa de Belgiojoco, or whatever her
exquisite name may be, in his suite. Five la Drame !

1830.] Affairs in General. 325

The election of the reverend gentleman, now parish sexton of St.
Giles's, has not yet passed away from the memory of mankind ; and
the industrious determination of so worthy a personage, to take care of
the bodies as well as the souls of men, will, we hope, recommend him to
the love of the bishops.

A Flanders mail announces the departure of a vessel, a few days
since, with " a cargo of rather a novel description, consisting of dead
human bodies, for the resurrection-men on the banks of the Thames.
The wits are merciless on the Election and have illustrated the event
with several intolerable puns. One of them observes, that though this
reverend person's office has excited a good mimber of enemies in the
parish, as well as a good deal of ridicule out of it, he is in the happiest
situation to make the laughers " grave men," and is ready to bury all
animosities. — Another observes, that his having played his game so well
is entirely owing to his having " spades" in his hand, which gave him
the command of king, queen, and knave. — Another, that, notwith-
standing the contrivances of his canvass, he may be relied on for
plain speaking, as no man is more likely to call a " spade a spade." —
Another, that if his knowledge of books be but shallow, no man can
look more profoundly into human nature. — Another, that his humility is
worthy of all admiration, for he is the very first of his cloth who
voluntarily chose his station six feet below the lowest of living mankind.
•—Another, that he deserves to be honoured for exploring a new source
of clerical substance. Another Wit has embodied his panegyric in
immortal rhyme.

STRANGER, loquitur.
Digger, in the shovel-hat,
Tell me what the deuce you're at ;

Digging, delving,

Sweating, shelving^

Night and day ;

Six feet in clay,

Tossing bones,

Picking stones,

Startling worm, and rousing rat ;—
Tell me, what the deuce you're at !

SEXTON, loquitur.
Digging, in this shovel-hat,
Here I lay St. Giles's flat.

What are all men,

Short or tall men ?

Flowers in May,

Sons of clay,

High and low,

Down they go.

Wives of farmers,

London charmers,

Are all laid

By my spade.

Winter, June-light,

Sunshine, moonlight,
See me neck-deep in the grave,
Leaving scarcely time to shave ;
Working on through deal and lead ;
Turning dust and bones to bread.
Ask you why I bustle here ? —
'Tis for fifty pounds a year !

326 Notes (/the Month on [MARCH,

This is all very captivating. But one of the best hits was the observa-
tion of a neighbouring rector of high classical attainments : — tf The
reverend sexton/' said he, " may in one instance be culpable — as, he
hides his talent in the earth ; but, in another, he is meritorious — for he
clearly is ' able to dig, and to beg he is not ashamed.' "

whether promoted or not, we cannot say. But the grave-digging
expedient we think better still, on the principle that when a man is at
the lowest, any change must be a rise. We wonder whether the Bishop
of London has ever seen this coadjutor of the doctor and the hangman
laying the dust.

The old proverb " Noscitur a sociis" is curiously exemplified in the
crowd of Byron's familiars, among whom Hobhouse arid Moore are
almost the only respectable survivors, as they were almost the only men
of respectable habits, for Hobhouse has long been sick of radicalism,
and Mr. Moore has, to his honour, made every amends in his power for
Mr. Little. But where are the set with whom he flourished his fantasies
in the face of the staring world — his Cambridge fellow rakes, his Italian
fellow libellers, and his Greek fellow banditti ? Even his English man
of business could not escape the fatality. Hanson was once a thriving
man ; he is now " across the Atlantic," we believe, in that delightful
land of refuge for the Rowland Stephensons. Byron was drawn in to
busy himself in Lord Portsmouth's marriage with Hanson's daughter.
Her thanks, it seems, was given to his lordship. A miserable exposure
occurred some few years ago, which ended in making her Miss Hanson
again. The " good girl," as he calls her, was not thought to be " a good
wife."

te Received many and the kindest thanks from Lady Portsmouth,
pere and mere, for my matchmaking. I don't regret it, as she looks the
Countess well, and is a very good girl. It is odd how well she carries
her new honours. She looks a different woman, and high-bred. I had
no idea I could make so good a peeress/'

It came out on the inquest into Lord Portsmouth's brains, that at the
time of making this match, he was " madder than the maddest of March
hares," and that all sorts of dexterity were used to make the " good girl"
a countess. But with this Byron was, we take it for granted, unac-
quainted, as he was then but a boy. Or if he knew it, he probably, in
the saturnine spirit of his poet days, looked upon it as a capital joke on
the aristocracy ; of which, worshipping the class, he seems to have
hated every individual.

The Universal-knowledge sixpenny system finds no advocates in us.
Nor have we yet been enabled, with all our inquiries, to discover a single
cobbler turned into a genius by the whole steam-engine-pamphlet pro-
cess. On the contrary, we will confess, that so strong are our preju-
dices, that if we should find our tailor proving by the differential cal-
culus, that three yards of cloth ought be charged to his customers as
six, we should seriously hesitate to employ him for the equipping of our
person ; that if our wine merchant demonstrated by the most refined
solution of Cubics, that the less wine and the more logwood there was in
his casks, the more Burgundy was the result^ we should be much

1830.] Affairs in General. 327

inclined to abandon the pleasure of getting vinous at his hand; and that
if our baker had satisfied his rational-material portion, (which men of old
called soul, but which later and wiser men know to be medulla, modified
with gin and water,) that three-fifths of pipe clay, and one of marble
dust to one of wheaten flour, make the most legitimate loaf, not the
subtlest metaphysics, from Hume to Maculloch, could prevent us from
calling him a rogue.

But such prejudices, ferocious and unphilosophical as they may be, by
no means leads us to the length of doubting that " innocent little men
and women," as Cumberland used to call boys and girls, may be much
benefited by books suited to their years. We acknowledge that we
read all kinds of things — that we are Helluones librorum, perfect Maglia-
bechis — true De Bures ; and yet among the various volumes that have
fallen in our way for assisting the early mind on its path to vigour, taste,
and intelligence, we have seen nothing superior to the little volume,
published by Harris, and named " Stories for Short Students, or Little
Lore for Little People," by the Rev. Edward Mangin, A. M.

'" Having had boys of my own," says the author, " to teach and to
amuse, my lessons are chiefly such as I thought would best suit them. I
have .endeavoured to find, or to invent, narratives of a brief and striking
description, and to tell my stories in the most simple words that pre-
sented themselves, to avoid perplexing my young reader by too many
circumstances in each tale, and to abstain from comment ; so as in general
to leave children at liberty to exercise the mind by drawing natural and
obvious conclusions for themselves." This we think an excellent con-
ception, and fully agree with the author, " that there is no act which
contributes more to the cultivation of the growing faculties."

The stories are nearly forty, and are all striking, from the force of their
incidents, and the simplicity of their style. Some of them are new to us,
as the anecdotes of Colonel Caillaud, and the French General Lally, the
village feeling for General Wolfe's mother, &c. &c., and are admirably
told ; with that true skill which belongs to a master of narration. But the
author's name was a sufficient sanction for the value of any work pro-
ceeding from his pen. The " Essay on Light reading" is well known as
one of the most graceful and interesting performances of its kind in the
language. But we must hope to see Mr. Mangin also remembering that
there are wants in the mature, which it is only for manly and accom-
plished minds like his own to supply, and that the public would be gra-
tified by seeing him turn some part of his literature and knowledge of
life to higher objects than the construction of even these admirable little
narratives.

The present volume is embellished with a considerable number of
pretty and expressive engravings, and it altogether forms one of the most
attractive additions to the Young Library. On one or two points we
differ with him. We cannot believe Shakspeare to have painted
Richard the Third blacker than he deserved, to make his court to
Elizabeth ; for Richard was, undoubtedly, an usurper, a tyrant, and a
murderer, whether his back were straight or crooked. Shakspeare, too,
did not live " decently with his wife and daughters for some years after
quitting the stage," but seems to have quarrelled with his wife, and
died within two years. — As to Washington, he was a great man, but a
rebel, and a violator of his oath to the king. The resistance of America
was unjustifiable in conscience. He died, not " a little after sixty," but

328' Notes of the Month on [MARCH;

at sixty-eight, after an illness of only one day, Dec. 14, 1799. — We again
commend this clever little volume.

The GEORGES have always been lucky. The first George left the
most pitiful sovereignty in Germany, to sit down in the finest sovereignty
in the world ; the second broke up a rebellion, half-a-dozen factions, and
kept two mistresses in order at a time; the third had half-a-dozen
escapes from maniacs, bent on reforming him with poison or the pistol ;
and the fourth has actually survived the vengeance of Lord Byron.
Why his Lordship should have " raged so furiously" against the royal
person, is beyond our comprehension ; but he certainly " levied war"
against our Sovereign Lord the King, if epigrams could sink, burn,
and destroy. He sends the blow home in a note given in the memoir :

" I have nothing of the sort you mention but the lines (the Weepers), if you
like to have them in the Bag. I wish to give them all possible circulation.
The Fault reflection is downright actionable, and to print it would be peril to
the publisher; but I think the Tears have a natural right to be bagged, and
the editor (whoever he may be) might supply a facetious note or not, as he
pleased."

But fiercer than all this was meditated, as we shall see. The Vault, the
epigram on the exhumation of Charles I., beginning with
" Charles to his people, Henry to his wife,"
was, by his own admission, tolerably strong :

<c I cannot conceive how the Fault has got about — but so it is. It is too
farouche ; but, truth to say, my satires are not very playful. I have the plan
of an epistle in my head, at him and to him ; and, if they are not a little
quieter, I shall embody it. I should say little or nothing of myself. As to
mirth and ridicule, that is out of the way ; but I have a tolerable fund of stern-
ness and contempt, and, with Juvenal before me, I shall perhaps read him a

lecture he has not lately heard in the C . From particular circumstances,

which came to my knowledge almost by accident, I could ' tell him what he
is — I know him well.' "

We have no doubt that he would have made a fine Court Review of it.
Possibly the following verses were some of his sketches — the primes
linos of the epistle that was to reverse the order of things. They are
capital for force, though we fear that they had not quite weight of
metal enough to overturn thrones :

" The Devil return'd to hell by two,

And he stayed at home till five ;
When he dined on some homicides done in ragout,

And a rebel or so in an Irish stew,
And sausages made of a self-slain Jew,
And bethought of himself what next to do>

e And,' quoth he, ' I'll take a drive.
I walk'd in the morning, I'll ride to-night;
In darkness my children take most delight,

And I'll see how my favourites thrive.

" ( And what shall I ride in?' quoth Lucifer, then —

f If I follow'd my taste, indeed,
I should mount in a waggon of wounded men,

And smile to see them bleed.
But these will be furnished again and again,

And at present my purpose is speed ;

1830.] Affairs in General 329

To see my manor as much as I may,

And watch that no souls shall be poach'd away.

I have a state coach at C House,

A chariot in Seymour Place ;
But they're lent to two friends, who make me amends,

By driving my favourite pace ;
And they handle their reins with such a grace,

I have something for both at the end of their race.' "

The French are proud of their being the gayest people on earth, and
tbey carry their gaiety with them on all occasions. To a dance or a
funeral, to the Opera or the guillotine, alike. A scene in Paris
lately exhibited this gaiety in a brilliant point of view. A horrid
miscreant was sentenced to the guillotine for the murder of his uncle.
His two accomplices shared his sentence, and the whole train of the
circumstances, the guilt, and the nature of the punishment, which though
brief, is one of the most startling, and even sickening and hideous to the
eye, that was ever invented by man ; were calculated to produce a deep
sense of awe and horror in the public mind. The result was quite the
contrary ; for the execution was one of the gayest things that has occurred
since the last Carnival, in Paris. The multitude were in roars of merri-
ment, from the beginning to the end. It reminded the elder people of
the pleasantries of the Revolution, when even the playhouse was deserted
for the Place de Greve, and the wives and mothers of the multitude took
their stations in the morning round the guillotine, knitting in hand, and
continued working and chatting all day, while the executioner's carts
unloaded the victims by dozens at the foot of the scaffold, and the axe-
above did its work with patriotic rapidity. In those days woe to the
bungling finisher of the law ! the least deficiency of expertness produced
a torrent of indignation from the circle on circle of industrious ladies ;
as the evidence of skill was applauded with smiles, bravos, and clapping
of hands !

Two of the criminals were overwhelmed with their situation. The
third and principal, Chaudelet, probably half mad, or drunk, gave the
tone to the pleasantry. On the attendant priests offering him the crucifix,
as is customary, " the reply of Chaudelet was a gesture of the most
horrible impatience and rage so violent that he loosed his hands. He
then recommenced his imprecations against the police, invoking the
vengeance of all true thieves on those vile scoundrels (canaille), particu-
larly him of the Quarter of St. Jean, ' that veritable Vidocq ;' and
comforted the spectators with the idea that, while they crowded to see
three honest fellows fauches (mowed), other honest lads were plundering
their (the spectators') houses." But the point which strikes us, is not
the frenzy of the wretched being, but the conduct of the spectators.
" The mob loudly applauded this pleasant sally, and were gratefully
rewarded for their approbation by Chaudelet' s repetition of a song, in
which the sentiment was embodied, aud which, while under sentence of
death, he had composed for the occasion." This had occurred on the
way to the Place de Grew, the usual scene of death, which was crowded
with the applauders. On the death of his comrades, Chaudelet was
brought forward. " ( Now, my dear friend,' said one of the priests to
Chaudelet, ' there is yet time to make your peace with God ! One word
of repentance !' A new burst of impiety, indecency, and apparent
mirth, was the reply to this exhortation. ' We lose time,' said he ;

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 51. 2 U

330 Notes of the Month en [MARCH

' look at my friends — they have been more fortunate than I !' and, saying
this, he ran up the steps of the scaffold with so much haste and grimace
as to provoke a loud laugh from the populace, one half of whom were
women ! and who had within the preceding three minutes seen two
fellow creatures perish." The fate of those wretched men was now
decided, but the " peuplegai" had another indulgence in contemplation.
The remains of the executed are put into a large chest, in which they
are conveyed to the place of burial for criminals. " The mob entreated,
but without success, for the further savage gratification of looking into
the case or chest. Disappointed in this, they merrily departed; and
this applies to fifty thousand men and women, in equal numbers, of
Paris! The laugh, the jest, and the song, were heard on every hand!" We
can have no vindictiveness against the French. But details of this kind
startle us by their evidence of the tremendous evil which may be waiting
its development only for the next great popular commotion in France.
The horrors of the " Reign of Terror" rise before our eyes, in such
scenes as those, and the question occurs with irresistible force — to what
is due this propensity to delight in blood, and extinguish in the heart all1
sorrowing and solemn emotions at the sight of things of crime and suffer-
ing ? We can find but one solution for the problem. The human heart,
naturally tenanted by fierce passions, requires a direction higher than
that of human laws or customs. But the religion of France is not capable
of giving this direction. A succession of pompous ceremonies, or blind
worship, with the populace, have made them singularly insensible to
the true power of Christianity on the heart. The same succession of
empty forms has made the higher orders, almost to a man, utter unbe-
lievers in revelation. They see only a pageant, they justly ridicule the
pageantry ; and they will not take the trouble to inquire whether there
may not be a system more pure, more devoted, and more authentic.
They have been taught to hear Protestantism scoffed at as heresy, or
have seen its profession punished as a public crime. Thus the only
hope of righteous intelligence is closed upon them ; and the higher ranks,
in general, give up life to intrigue, gaming, and utter waste of time*
means, and understanding. The lower, where they are not compelled
by the salutary restraints of poverty and the peasant life, to the rustic
virtues, are ready for every fury of unlicensed passion, and every frenzy
of popular overthrow. But all are " the gayest of the gay," and they
are equally gay at a feast and at a murder, in a Sunday play-house, and
in the presence of an execution. Christianity in France would give
them feeling without saddening their hearts ! and supply that rational
and generous cheerfulness, without which mirth is the most melancholy
thing in the world.

Perfectly satisfied that, if among the Saints there are some honest men,
they are generally foolish enough to give the management of their " Slave
Trade" affairs to rogues, we have pleasure in adding, as far as we can, to the
public contempt for the trickeries of this troop of politicians in general.
Some months ago the public were surprised, and the managers of saintship
were in a state of extacy, at the appearance of some statements in \heMorn-
ing Chronicle, temptingly headed " Cruelty as at present practised in the
West Indies, from an eye-witness" In due time it found its way back
to Jamaica, and was there published in a paper called the Watchman,\vhere
it met the eye of Mr. Evelyn, the collector of the Customs at the same port.

1830.] Affairs in General 331

This gentleman, from the conversations he had with Mr. Smith, collector
of the Customs at Savannah La Mar, was induced to suspect him as the
author of the letter in question, which Mr. S. subsequently acknowledged.
The result was, the appointment of a Committee to inquire into Mr.
Smith's statements. The Committee proceeded to procure the evidence
and depositions of everyperson who could in any manner give information
on the subject, among whom were the Rector of the parish, the Baptist
and Methodist Missionaries, the whole contradicting in the most un-
qualified manner the entire of Mr. Smith's statements. But this was
not all : the Committee examined Mr. Smith himself, to give him an
opportunity to prove his charges ; and how did he so ? By acknow-
ledging that he had not seen a single circumstance described — that he
had manufactured his letter partly from what he had heard from others,
whose names (very prudently, no doubt) he declined giving, and partly
from prejudices he had formerly imbibed in a great measure from the
work of Mr. Stephen !

The indignation of the West Indians was natural, and the result has
been a direct denial of Smith's calumnies.

The following is an extract from the Report of the Committee of
investigation : — " Your Committee, on reviewing generally the evidence
before them, conclude that Mr. Smith has not proved himself to
have been an ( eye-witness' to a single charge of cruelty, as by him
stated. Mr. Smith has, moreover, admitted before us that fhe had
procured his unfounded slanders partly from the calumnious produc-
tion of Mr. Stephen on Slavery,' and partly from prejudiced persons
in this country, but whose names he refused to give up."

As to Master Stephen, we charge him with no cardinal sins. But he
is a confoundedly cunning fellow, and has contrived to feather his own
nest and that of his family in a most comfortable style of public
plucking. One of the papers lately gave a list of places to the amount
of no less than 17,000/. a year, held by this pious and unworldly per-
sonage and his family ! Where is the reforming Duke in all this ?

As for Zachary Macauley, no one can doubt his being the pattern of
a saint, and a gloriously thriving one besides. He first pushed himself
into the Sierra Leone trade, by which we hope that he has lost nothing !
Then he pushed his boy into a Commissionership of Bankrupts ; then he
pushed him into Parliament for the Devonshire borough. In all this,
he is of course, not thinking of our very wicked world !

How long are the public to be bored by the fuss made about the
merits of actresses ? The stage is at this time in the deepest degradation,
in every sense of the word. Its authorship, in any true sense of the
name is utterly gone. No man now takes the trouble of writing any
thing original for the stage. There are some ingenious writers con-
nected with the principal theatres, but their efforts are limited to trans-
lation. But our present and more repulsive topic is — the state of
female character on the boards. One of the papers, which, to do it
justice, is among the most measured in its language, tells us —

There are reasons for every thing. A gentleman of some taste and judg-
ment lately expressed surprise at seeing Miss C brought so much before

the public, while other singers of talent were kept in the shade. " Ah !
said a person who is in the secret, every young lady has not a lord for a
friend. Her patrpn sends ten pounds worth of tickets into the house every

2 U 2

332 Notes of the Month on , [MARCH,

night she plays. This answers the purpose of the theatre, and makes her
worth her salary."

So much for the protegee system. We should like to know how
many pounds or farthings this noble ticket buyer gave to the poor
during the late frost !

Another gives us the information that Madame Sontag, who made so
many annual protestations of her being married to Count somebody or
other, varying from A, to X, Y, Z, in the Court alphabet, is now Sontag
again, pure as ever, the marriage having been merely a civil act, an
act by which we suppose there is a privilege for actresses to have as
many unions and separations as they please. Then comes another im-
ported ornament to our country, Mademoiselle Jenny Colon, the
admired of all the elite of English society. " It will be remembered
that last year the French drama at the English Opera House, was enli-
vened by the beauty and talents of Jenny Colon. When she came to
this country she was called Colon j she afterwards took the name of
Madame Colon-Lafont ; and, last of all, was designated Madame Lafont,
from a marriage which she contracted with the actor Lafont, who per-
formed here along with her. On their return to Paris, it would appear
that these loving parties did not live in that harmony which was to be
expected from their new matrimonial union, and that they resolved to
break or unloose those ties which had been bound in London. The mother
of the young lady, therefore, to suit probably the object of both, has
applied for and obtained for them a decree of nullity of marriage, on
the ground of the minority of her daughter, and of her own want of
consent to the match at the time it was contracted. The husband,
Lafont, made no opposition, so that Madame Jenny Colon-Lafont is, by
the authority of the tribunals, Mademoiselle Jenny Colon once more."
Then comes Malibran. We should like to know in what part of the
universe she has deposited Monsieur her husband ? But passing by the
foreigners who are entitled, of course, to do what they will with them-
selves or their husbands, what a showy circle of home exhibitors our
stage can furnish at this hour ! It is fulsome to mention the names of
those wretched women. They are known to every one. But can we
wonder at the loss of public respect for the stage when it has such
exhibitors? Without a total change of system, the drama must go
down into still deeper neglect, if that be possible : nor can it ever be-
come an object of National interest, until the managers come to the wise
and decent determination of purifying both their companies and their
theatres ; and equally expelling vileness from their lobbies, and their
green-rooms.

This season has been a singular contrast of frost and fire. There
have been more houses burnt within the last month, than in any six before.
Lord Rendlesham's enormous mansion in Suffolk was burned down a
fortnight ago. The loss is reckoned at 100,000/., of which not a shilling
was insured. We have no great pity for his lordship, who may be
consoled by the recollection that he saved the insurance, which might
actually have cost his purse the formidable sum of twenty pounds a
year. The newspapers tell us that his lordship and family were in
Paris at the time. Again we say that we have no pity for his nobility.
Why was he not at home among his tenantry, as he ought to be, distri-
buting charity among the people to whom he owed his own daily bread?

1830.] Affairs in General. 333

If English landholders will carry over their incomes to Paris, and make
a flourish there, while their countrymen are struggling with cold and
hunger, the sooner and the more severely they suffer for it the better.
If all the houses of those nobles, who run away to revel among
foreigners, leaving the poor people round them to get through the
worst season of the year without help, abandoning their natural station
among the gentry of their neighbourhood, and exhibiting nothing but
closed doors in return for the enormous rents poured into their coffers,
were burned down ; we should only think that the calamity was retri-
bution, and that we might easily dispense with the houses, when they
were good for nothing to the nation.

The unfortunate close of Lord Graves' s life has excited long and
furious controversy in the papers. The result has been, the withdrawal
of all charge against the Duke of Cumberland. The grounds of the self-
murder are to be looked for partly in the weakness of a temperament,
enfeebled by nervous disease ; but probably much more in the pernicious
self-will inculcated and inflamed by all the habits of high life. To a
man reared in the perpetual indulgence of all his inclinations, the first
shock of adversity is generally fatal; and even the most trivial perplexity
is exaggerated by this unthwarted and unexercised self-will, into the
most irresistible affliction. The history of suicides is seldom more than
the history of a pampered mind, suddenly disturbed by some vexation,
which a more familiar experience with the rough work of life, would
look upon as too trifling to be thought of. Lord Graves's pistol is the
natural resource of those Sybarites, whom we see lounging about the
world, borne by the labour of others, living in a languid anticipation of
every natural appetite, and urged into a fever of impatience from the
mere misfortune of never having been contradicted !

But the merits of those who were involved in public calumny by his
death, are of more importance to us ; and it is only due to " The Age"
(a paper which is rapidly compelling the attention deserved by vigorous
writing and sound politics), to say, that it was among the very first to
set the public mind right upon the subject, and strikingly to sustain the
truth of the case by the force and manliness of its vindication.

The destruction of the English Opera House afforded one of those
instances, which have so frequently occurred in the case of theatres,
that we can scarcely call them otherwise than providential. The fire
broke out at two in the morning. Two hours before, the theatre was
crowded, and many persons of high rank were present The conse-
quences of alarm must have been dreadful. But the confusion would
have been still greater behind the scenes, a place which towards the close
of the performance is generally filled with the theatrical attendants, &c.,
and where the first burst of the conflagration would have cut off all
escape.

The fire was probably commencing while the audience were in the
house. And from the complicated state of the avenues to the boxes,
pit, and galleries, the alarm must have occasioned a dreadful loss of
lives by the trampling of the people upon each other, and not improbably
by the enclosure of some part of the audience in the intricate passages
of the burning theatre. We regret Arnold's losses, as he is a very
respectable man ; obliging and honest in his general transactions, and a

334 Notes of the Month on £M ABCH,

good manager of his theatre. But heavy as his immediate pecuniary
suffering is, there are hopes that it may be in some degree compensated.
The Morning Post says—

t{ We are glad to find that no doubt is entertained but that the English
Opera House will rise, phoenix-like, from its ashes, in time to open, as origi-
nally intended, on the 1st of July. The business is in Mr. Beazley's hands,
who, arduous as the task may be, pledges himself, we understand, for its
accomplishment. It is confidently anticipated, that the present opportunity
will be taken to make the new street direct from Waterloo-bridge northward,
which will afford room for a handsome frontage to the new theatre. Govern-
ment, we hear, is favourable to the plan, and a noble lord on the other side
has signified that no opposition will be offered to it by certain noble pro-
prietors, whose interest, it was presumed on a former occasion, would have
been compromised in the selection of that line of road."

The Noble Lord on the opposite side is Lord Exeter. The opening
of a new street, which would lead to the new British Museum, would
be of important advantage to the whole line of building from the Strand.
If it were to pass through the Seven Dials, it would render to that
quarter of the town the same service which Regent-street rendered to
the squalid district in the rear of St. James's-square, and convert a sink
of abomination and insalubrity into decency and cleanliness. We hope
that Lord Lowther will look to this, and entitle himself to the epitaph
of Augustus, for his exploits in brick — " Luteam invenit, lateritiam
reliquit."

We are glad to believe that the destruction of the English Opera-house
will not ruin Arnold, as was at first stated. In addition to the theatre,
he had nearly thirty houses in the neighbourhood, of which those
destroyed were chiefly insured. Mrs. Arnold has also, we understand,
a good income in her own right. Arnold's loss by the fire is 66,000/.
His friends propose calling a meeting early in the week, at which the
Duke of Sussex will preside, to consider what steps, under all the cir-
cumstances, ought to be taken with respect to rebuilding the theatre.

The inferiority of the sons of celebrated men to their fathers, has been
often remarked, and the comparative obscurity of the sons of Alexander,
Cicero, Napoleon, Sheridan, Burke, and other leaders of their times,
certainly argues little for the theory of hereditary genius. But it would
seem that the degree of talent is much influenced by the mother ; for it
is a curious fact, that where the mother has been remarkable for intel-
ligence, the son has seldom failed of the possession of ability, even
where the father was undistinguished. We give some of the ex-
amples : —

Lord Bacon. — His mother was daughter to Sir Anthony Cooke, she
was skilled in many languages, and translated and wrote several works,
which displayed learning, acuteness, and taste. — Hume the historian,
mentions his mother, daughter of Sir D. Falconer, President of the Col-
lege of Justice, as a woman of " singular merit," and who, although in
the prime of life, devoted herself entirely to his education. — Sheridan. —
Mrs. Frances Sheridan was a woman of considerable abilities. It was
writing a pamphlet in his defence, that first introduced her to Mr. Sheri-
dan, afterwards her husband. She also wrote a novel highly praised by
Johnson. — Schiller; His mother was an amiable woman — she had a
strong relish for the beauties of nature, and was passionately fond of
music and poetry. Schiller was her favourite child. — Goethe thus

1830.] Affairs in General 335

speaks of his parents : — " I inherited from my father a certain sort of
eloquence, calculated to enforce my doctrines to my auditors ; from my
mother I derived the faculty of representing all that the imagination can
conceive, with energy and vivacity." — Lord Erskines mother was a
woman of superior talent and discernment; by her advice, her son
betook himself to the bar. — Thomson ; Mrs. Thomson was a woman of
uncommon natural endowments, with a warmth and vivacity of imagina-
tion scarcely inferior to her son. — Boerhaave's mother acquired a high
knowledge of medicine. — Sir Walter Scott; His mother, Elizabeth,
daughter of D. Rutherford, W. S., was a woman of accomplishment.
She had a good taste for, and wrote poetry, which appeared in print
in 1789. — Napoleons father was a man of no peculiar mind ; but his
mother was distinguished for her understanding. — Lord Morninglon,
the father of the Wellesleys, was an excellent musician, and no more,
but his lady was remarkable for her intellectual superiority. The
father of the Emmetts, in Ireland, was a babbler, but the mother was a
singularly intelligent person. The fate of two of her sons was unhappy,
from their republicanism, but the three were possessed of the most strik-
ing abilities. Sheridan s father was a weak creature, as his whole career
showed; the genius descended from the mother. — Young Napoleon is the
son not of his father's mind, but of Maria Louisa's — he is an Austrian.

The moral to be drawn from all this is, if men desire to have clever
sons, let them marry clever women. But the experiment may be peri-
lous for the present time ; and if they wish to lead quiet lives, they may
perhaps better let it alone.

The burning of the Argyll Rooms has deprived Welch of the prospect
of a showy season. Some Frenchmen, who are now the chief arbiters
in these matters of elegance, had constructed a series of soirees, which
were to be ultra- elegant, and more than ultra-exclusive. Private rooms
were to be provided, and fashionable luxury was to be ministered to the
peerage. Nothing under a coronet was to luxuriate in this paradise, and
Almack's was to deplore its faded supremacy. But what are the fates
of human fancy ? A few ashes from a stove (such is one of the stories),
" set their face," as a great law orator would say, against the brains of
Welch and his Frenchman; and in half an hour flew up into smoke and
cinders the fruit of the contemplations of so many men of genius.

The rooms were, by universal acknowledgment, the most graceless
specimen of building in the kingdom ; cold to sit in, difficult to see in,
and impossible to hear in. They were built in the year 1819, by a
committee of amateurs, under the superintendance of Mr. Wyatt, the
architect. The committee, from some cause, did not succeed in their
speculation, which subsequently rendered it necessary for them to sell
the building. The magnificent improvement which has taken place at
the west-end of the town, induced the Commissioners of Woods and
Forests to become the purchasers, and they afterwards let the building
to Welch, at a rent of 700/. per annum. To avoid payment of the
Assessed Taxes, no person slept on the premises. We hope that when-
ever they are rebuilt, the first stipulation will be, that they shall not
bear the slightest possible resemblance to any thing that they ever were
before. To rebuild them would be easy, for they would be a mere
shell. And we think that Beazley, the best architect of those transitory
fabrics, for nine or ten thousand pounds, would shoot up pavilions and

336 Notes of the Month on Affairs in General. [[MARCH,

boudoirs abundant and cushioned enough for the whole nobility of this
pleasant and private-box loving land.

One stipulation must be insisted on, that whatever comforts may be
provided for, within, there must be some fair means of escaping without.
The Argyll Rooms, the Lyceum, the Haymarket, the King's Theatre,
Drury Lane, Covent Garden, with all the Minors, must undergo the
fate of fire, in their due time. It is as much the natural destiny for
a theatre to be burned, as for a billet-doux to undergo the flame after
marriage to the object. Yet there is not a theatre in or near London, at
this hour, in which the falling of a candlesnuff would not put us in
hazard of our lives, except Drury Lane, which, at least for the boxes,
has a spacious entrance ; and Covent Garden, which has, in an inferior
degree, the same advantage. But let those who have screwed themselves
through the box passage of the little theatre in the Haymarket, imagine
their condition on a full night, with a tornado of flame bursting over the
pit, and gyrating round the dress circle ; with every door dashed open at
once, the passage stopped, and all the Irishmen in the house battling
their way over the prostrate audience, into freedom and fresh air.

Or let those who have painfully squeezed their way to the entrance of
the pit of the King's Theatre, then dived down the flight of wooden
steps, then climbed up the opposite row, until they seated themselves on
the benches, breathlessly congratulating their limbs that they had at last
surmounted the struggles of access, imagine that entrance in the condi-
tion in which it infallibly would be on the first announcement of the
flame by Signora Malibran, running forward with her wig and royal
diadern emulously blazing round her head ; followed by all the " votaries
of Terpsichore" pirouetting as if they were possessed by the foul fiend,
to get out of the way of the conflagration ; with all the gauze of the pet-
ticoats of Danseuses premieres and secondes, the De Varennes, the Brocards
and Noblets, floating in light round their heads ; and the whole host of
the Cupidons, male and female, darting like imps with their wings singed.
Woe then to the Marchionesses ! Woe to the pursy Lords, and the short
Ladies! Woe to the whole asthmatic generation of statesmen and lovers,
from Lord Westmorland to Lord Dudley ! Woe to the feeble of heart, and
the frail of limb ! Then would there be a quick end to flirtation ; and all
the nods and becks of ancient beauty would not bring an adorer to the
door of the most titled box in the first circle. The strong of arm would
carry the day ; and the future age would have to weep over the
memory of trampled Dandyism. Once more, we say, let Mr. Beazley
have the building of all the rebuildable houses; under a contract, if
they will, that he shall be bound to rebuild them once in every five
years, at a discount, and on the forfeiture of a certain sum for every
person above five thousand a year, walked over into the other world in
any of his passages in the combustion.

Wyse, the husband of Mrs. Buonaparte Lucien Cleopatra Wyse, and
Daniel O'Connell, the father of the whole promissory patriotism of
Ireland, have been lately exhausting the whole eloquence of Billingsgate
upon each other. Bushe, the Irish Chief Justice of the King's Bench, is
said to have dropped the following epigram from his notes, as he was
attending to a superhuman harangue on the subject : —

When Wyse's pounds and pence have gone ill,

'Tis clear that Wyse is not O'Connell.

When Dan to law and logic flies,

'Tis clear O'Connell is not Wyse.

1830.] [ 337 ]

MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN.

Life of Major General Sir Thomas
Munro, by the Rev. G. R. Gleig. 2 vols. 8vo.
1830. — Munro, the late governor of Madras,
was, doubtless, a man whose career was suf-
ficiently remarkable to deserve a particular
recording, especially when every person who
contrives to get himself a little talked about,
must be commemorated in two volumes
octavo ; but to be told all of a sudden, as
we were by Mr. Canning, that Europe never
produced a more accomplished statesman,
nor India, so fertile in heroes, a more skilful
soldier, was a piece of extravagant rhetoric,
which none but a biographer would have
thought of interpreting literally. To Mr.
Gleig, the phrases seem not more elegant
than the facts are true. He himself dis-
claims all pretensions to judge of the admi-
nistration of India, but he thinks the man
who should contend it is, in all respects,
absolutely perfect, must be a bold one, and
he is sure, notwithstanding his disclaimer,
nobody ever suggested more judicious ame-
liorations than the subject of his memoir.
The author's business is, obviously, to eu-
logize— or how came the papers to be put
into his hands ? and certainly he gives
proofs that no pains have been wanting on
his part to shew there was more than com-
mon reason for his unbounded panegyric.

To touch upon all the incomparable
points, which the biographer discovers in Sir
Thomas, is for us quite impracticable ; we
can only allude to a very few, but those
amply sufficient, to shew the man could
never have had a parallel. He was charac-
teristically firm and unchangeable — imma-
culate in conduct — perfect in tact — qualified
for any thing, equal to every thing, and
made for command. In every position,
and every combination of circumstances de-
manding these qualities, he was full of for-
titude, energy, and decision ; he was patient
in inquiry, sound and clear in judgment,
prompt in action — temperate, candid, placa-
ble— and so self-possessed, as never to be
taken by surprise. As a public functionary,
he lived but for the public ; he sacrificed all
his inclinations, his love of ease, his desire
for retirement, and never thought of him-
self. With all these noble qualities, his
modesty was far beyond the portion that
falls to the lot of official men. He never
obtruded his merits, and could, with diffi-
culty, even on peremptory occasions, be in-
duced to make them known. Though thus
absorbed by public duties, his literature, it
must be manifest, couldhavebeen equalled by
no civilian of his time. There was no subject
within the range of philosophy or science —
no question connected with poetry or the
belles lettres, which he was not prepared to
discuss ; and his capability and facility of
passing from one topic of discussion to ano-
ther, astounds his biographer, who, how-
ever, never conversed with him, nor even

M.M. New Series — VoL.IX. No. 51.

saw him. He judges from the materials
before him, and the reports of friends, who
were, of course, partial, and it may well
be supposed, incompetent. Metaphysics, it
seems, was the only thing for which he did
not encourage a taste, because he looked on
the different systems to be equally founded
in conjecture, and equally ending in doubt —
Mr. Gleig, apparently, as well as Sir Thomas,
conceiving metaphysics to lie in systems,
and not in the observance of facts. En
revanche, he was a profound mathema-
tician (let the reader weigh the words, for it
is obvious the biographer does not), an able
chemist, a judicious speculator in political
economy, and a keen and successful student
both of moral and natural philosophy.
Any thing more ? Oh, yes — his acquaint-
ance with European languages, ancient as
well as modern, was very extensive ; while
of those in use throughout the East, there
were few, comparatively, of which he knew
not something. Sir Thomas was never out
of the Deccan — what probability is there,
then, of his having studied the i language in
use' in the upper parts of India ? Persian, he
wrote and spoke like a native ; he was well
versed in Arabic ; Hindostanee was per-
fectly familiar to him ; and in Mahratta,
Canarese, and other of the vernacular
tongues, he could maintain with great ex-
actness, either a correspondence or a con-
versation, &c. Can any thing exceed the
absurdity of all this ? And yet it is with
all gravity written down by a gentleman who
has shewn himself capable of forming sound
judgments on common matters.

Amid all this unmeasured parading, Sir
Thomas Munro was, evidently, a man of
ability and acquirement — of activity and
rectitude — these are high distinctions among
official persons ; but we need not con-
clude, because nothing but sunshine ap-
pears, there were not occasional shades,
enough to bring him within the pale of our
common humanity. His career is not, we
imagine, so generally known, as to make a
slight sketch of it superfluous.

This hero of India, then, was born at
Glasgow, in the year 1761, and educated at
the grammar school and college of his na-
tive town ; and in his sixteenth year was
found reading Plutarch, for the purpose of
ascertaining Alexander's motives for in-
vading India. India was not, however, his
destination, but a counting-house, till his
father's failure — he was an American mer-
chant— at the commencement of the revo-
lution, turned his attention to that land of
promise for all Scotch lads. About the
period of his landing in India, the war with
Hyder broke out, and young Munro, joining
the army immediately, was actively engaged
till the peace in 1784. Another four years
were spent more idly in quarters ; but in.
1788, through the influence of his country*

2 X

338

Monthly Review of Literature,

[[MARCH,

man, Captain Read, he obtained an ap-
pointment in the Intelligence Department,
under his friend and patron. Two years
after, however, when Tippoo invaded Tra-
vancore, he resumed his military duties,
and continued thus employed till the peace
of 1792, when he again had the good for-
tune to join Captain, then Colonel Read, in
the Baramahl, a newly ceded territory, as his
assistant, in bringing it usefully under the
Company's dominion — surveying and leas-
ing. The civil department at the time,
was miserably defective — the military, gene-
rally, were found to be the better qualified,
and Munro's indefatigable diligence was
conspicuous among them. In this employ-
ment he continued till Tippoo's last explo-
sion in 1709, when with Colonel Read and
the force collected in the Baramahl, he
marched to Seringapatam — arriving too late
for the storming, but in time to be ap-
pointed joint-secretary with Malcolm, the
present discreet governor of Bombay, to the
commission for arranging the partition-treaty.
Instead of returning, after the commis-
sion terminated, to Baramahl, where he ex-
pected to succeed Colonel Read, he was di-
rected to proceed to Canara, a new acqui-
sition on the western coast, lying between
the Mahrattas and Travancore, an extent
of 180 miles, and reaching towards the inte-
rior, above the Ghauts. This province,
though not quite to Munro's taste, was,
however, a very important appointment,
and shewed the sense his superiors enter-
tained of his qualifications for bringing
order out of chaos. This task successfully
accomplished, he solicited a removal, and
especially sought a similar appointment in
the countries newly ceded by the Nizam,
as an indemnity for the pay of the troops
furnished by the Company. He obtained his
wish eventually, and held the office, almost
a regal one, till 1807, when, having then
been twenty-seven years in India, he re-
signed his employment, and returned to
England, in the hope of once more seeing
his parents, then far advanced in years, and
whose old age he had largely contributed to
make comfortable. Not content with inac-
tivity, he went as a volunteer on the Wal-
cheren expedition ; and was detained in
England longer than usual with East-In-
dians, partly by the business of the Com-
pany ; for in 1811, he attended, on their
part, the committee of the House of Com-
mons, and gave evidence on the state of
India. Soon after, the judicial system of
India seemed to call for inquiry, and Colonel
Munro was placed at the head of the com-
mission despatched for the purpose to India
in 1814. In this inquiry, he was actively
but ineffectually engaged till the Pindaree
warin 1817jWhenhe solicited the Governor
General for professional employment ; and,
notwithstanding Mr. G.'s account of his
extreme diffidence and modesty, obtained
it only by dint of importunity ; nor was
he very well pleased with his treatment

or appointments at any period of the two
campaigns. What he could do, he doubt-
less did ; but that was comparatively
little, and such as certainly calls not for
the magniloquence employed in celebrating
it. At the close of 1818, he once more
resigned his employments, and returned to
England, with no intention of revisiting
India again ; but scarcely had he landed,
when a successor was wanted for Mr. Elliott,
and General Munro was named Governor
of Madras. As governor of that Presi-
dency, he was detained beyond his wishes
by the apparent necessity of staying to see
ouf the Burmese war, for the conduct of
which his advice had been frequently taken.
The time for his return was already fixed,
when he fell a sacrifice to the scourge of the
country, cholera morbus, in 1820.

Mr. Gleig's labours occupy but a small
portion of the volumes — Sir Thomas's cor-
respondence and papers on India questions
filling, perhaps, seven-eighths of the pages.
Among the correspondence are a number of
letters from the Duke of Wellington, then
Major-General Wellesley — sufficiently re-
markable for their business-like language,
and the absence of all nonsense. A little
morceau caught our eyes, which may be
thought characteristic.

As for the wishes of the people, particularly
in this country, I put them out of the ques-
tion. They are the only philosophers about their
governors that ever I met with — if indifference
constitutes that character.

The Adventures of an Irish Gentleman :
3 vols. 12mo. 1830.— These adventures are
not at all conceived in the spirit of the day,
nor at all calculated to please the readers of
fashionable novels ; they do not contribute
to develope one complicated tale, nor,
though too full of entanglements of an ama-
tory kind, do they constitute a love-story, nor
will they read like one. They are not, more-
over, shaped to convey any peculiar set of
opinions, or point to any common object,
moral or political ; but are simply a succes-
sion of incidents befalling the same indi-
vidual, most of them of the extraordinary
cast, many of them low and coarse, but
still all of them occurring, or at least ac-
counted for, naturally enough. Though
taught to consider himself as the football
of fortune, the hero had, early, sense
enough to see that by far the larger portion
of the calamities of life were the results of
indiscretion. The style of narrative is
flowing and spirited ; the details indicate a
variety of information, and the proofs are
abundant of a large acquaintance with the
springs of actual life. We have seen no-
thing for a long time that more reminded
us of Smollett. The writer is plainly a ma-
ture and intelligent person.

The hero is the son of an Irish gentle-
man, of a class depressed by their political
condition, the want of gentlemanly edu-
cation, and the absence of gentlemanly

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

339

company — mixing, consequently, with de-
• pendents, and coarse in habits, reckless in
conduct, and overwhelmed with debt. At
-the early age of fourteen, already initiated
in the vices of manhood, the boy was
thrown upon the world by the imprudence
of his parent, who fell in a skirmish with
smugglers, with which he had officiously
mingled. The commander of the Revenue
cutter, who takes him under his wing, is an
admirable specimen of the naval officer not
very uncommon sixty years ago — a com-
mon sailor promoted by the good will of a
man for some personal service, and subse-
quently made commander by the influence
•of a sister, the mistress of a lord of the
Admiralty. The hand of the caricaturist
is perhaps a little too conspicuous. While
on shore, at Dublin, he is entrapped into a
garret, and escapes robbery and murder by
dashing a pewter pot at the head of the
woman, which unluckily finishes her ca-
reer. Flight on board saves him from
hanging, and he next figures in a ship-
-wreck off the Scilly Isles. Though liable
all his life to the most formidable mishaps,
he had a trick of falling upon his legs ; and
in this case fell into the protecting arms of
a clergyman, residing on St. Mary's — one
who, notwithstanding his professional po-
sition, believed himself the slave of fate,
though obviously to others the victim of
violence and imprudence. By the daughter
of this benevolent and singular person, he
was in a few weeks nursed into health
again, and into a warm attachment for his
youthful and beautiful nurse — with whom
and her parent all arrangements for mar-
riage were made, when she was bitten by a
mad dog ; and in spite of instant caute-
rization, died of hydrophobia. The disap-
pointed father, however, does not desert
the youth, but procures for him a com-
mission in an infantry regiment, where he
speedily gets into hot water, and finally
shoots the colonel, driven to it by tyranny
and personal vexation. The administration
of the regiment, and the petty but into-
lerable domineering of the commander,
with all the miserable manoeuvres and sor-
did trickeries of the subalterns in office,
are admirably shewn up ; but it is a scene
of other days — none such, by regulations
effectually enforced, can occur now ; though
of course an ill-grained commander can
produce annoyance enough, and roguery is
not easily baffled.

To escape the consequences of his duel,
though the colonel finally recovers, our
hero flies to Lisbon, where quickly new
adventures spring up. He is a very hand-
some fellow, and soon finds a marchioness
who thinks so too ; but unfortunately he
has a rival, a monk and saint, of little in-
fluence over the marchioness, but very great
with the inquisition, into the prisons of
which institution he speedily plunges the
youth. Here he is subjected to sundry
kinds of torture, and finally escapes burn-

ing or hanging, by the desperate expedient
of a companion arrested with him, who
professes himself to the grand inquisitor
as a freemason, whose death would be
revenged by the 35,652 brethren in Lisbon,
all ready to inflict the blow.

From Lisbon the scene shifts to Paris,
and nearly one-half the whole work is
there occupied with details of the French
revolution. The chief actors, from D'Or-
leans and Mirabeau to Robespierre, are in-
troduced, and characteristically exhibited.
Many of the more remarkable scenes of
the times also are presented, not only of
blood and reality, but those of trickery, and
perhaps of imagination. The author makes
liberal use of the Abbe Barruel — especially
in painting masonic mysteries. Escaping
finally from the guillotine and the prisons,
he returns to the shores of England, and
being in absolute want, he joins a society,
called a Marriage Society, the object of
which is to fit out young likely men with
dress, equipage and servants, for the pur-
pose of entrapping wealthy widows and
heiresses, on condition of receiving a cent-
age on property thus obtained. The so-
ciety of course exists only in the imagina-
tion of the writer, and is perhaps but a
clumsy conception. The hero fails, and
some of his associates are rather the dupes
of their own schemes than the dupers.
Arrived at the end of the third volume — ,
the limit prescribed by the existing fashion
and the commands of the publisher, the
adventures of the Irish gentleman are sud-
denly and abruptly brought to a close.

A Parisian dress of the days of Robes-
pierre is thus described — it is a curiosity in
its kind. A light grey coat, with a black
silk collar ; a yellow satin waistcoat, striped
with red ; pea-green breeches ; a sugar-
loaf hat, with a velvet band and a steel
buckle, decorated with a large three-co-
loured cockade.

Family Library, Vol. X. Allan Cun-
ningham's Lives of British Painters, Vol.

II. 1830 Mr. Cunningham has added

another acceptable volume of the Lives of
British Painters, written in the same spirit
of knowledge and wisdom, eloquence and
poetry, which characterized the former. It
contains the lives of West, Barry, Blake,
Opie, Moreland, Bird and Fuseli — a pleiad
of eminent persons, so completely unlike
each other, that if the writer's sole object
had been to search for variety, he could not
have discovered seven names better suited
for his purpose. No two of them approxi-
mate in any respect, as men, and as a con-
sequence perhaps, as artists, and the bio-
grapher is thus secured against the chances
of repetition. If we find any fault, it is
that, while he discriminates with great tact
and delicacy, he is too intent upon shew-
ing it by phrases of emphasis, and his want
of simplicity is thus forced too much upon
the reader's notice. His sentences run

2X2

340

Monthly Review of Literature,

[MARCH,

too frequently in the same cadence, and
read like a chant.

"West's story is materially defective with
respect to his dismissal from court, and his
breach and reunion with the academy. His
piety and quakerism conciliated the favour
of the late king, who kept him employed,
almost exclusively, from 1769 to 1801.
The king settled with him personally on
subjects and prices — paid him regularly a
thousand a year, and the balance, if any
were due, at certain intervals. In 1801, his
Majesty, though his illness was not ac-
knowledged, was unwell, and West was
abruptly informed by Wyatt that the paint-
ings for Windsor Chapel were suspended.
Surprised at this intelligence, West dis-
patched a sort of remonstrance; but the
letter, it seems, was never presented, nor
had the king known anything of the order
of suspension. On his recovery, West so-
licited an audience, but no explanation fol-
lowed— the king shook him by the hand,
and bade him go on with the pictures, and
he would take care of him. This was
West's last interview — he could never ob-
tain another, though, before this illness, he
had been admitted freely at all times. He
continued, however, to work at the paint-
ings, and received his £1,000 a year ; but
on the appointment of the regency, a new
order was forthwith issued for the suspen-
sion of both paintings and payments, with-
out the least explanation being given, or
the opportunity of obtaining one. Papers
were officiously circulated relative to the
immense sums West had had of the king
— £34,187, without the addition that this
was for thirty-three years labour. Wyatt
seems to have been at the bottom of this
unworthy treatment, and certainly he was
conspicuous in West's expulsion from the
president's chair ; but what is perhaps more
worthy of remark — it shews that through
the ten years, from 1801 to 1811, the king
was under more controul than the nation
knew of.

Of Barry's irascibility and violence, his
failures and his poverty, the world has
heard abundantly. Mr. Cunningham, as
indeed was indispensable, repeats much of
it, but he carefully reduces facts ,to the
standard of common sense. Though far
from being his best performances, Barry's
name is now almost exclusively coupled with
the Adelphi paintings. On these he chiefly
plumed himself, and seemed content to rest
his claim to celebrity. In them, however,
he shewed how thoroughly he had lost him-
self in the study of the mythological. He
had formed for himself an arbitrary system,
and left nature far behind him. To him all
the extravagancies thus heaped together ap-
peared noble specimens of the grand style—
forgetting, as Mr. Cunningham observes,
this grand style is often the simplest of all,
and can be comprehended without comment.
Barry's performance may bid defiance to all
Comprehension, and even his own written

descriptions but littk help the matter. The
Society of Arts, though any thing but ge-
nerous in their treatment of Barry, ad-
mitted the public for the benefit of the ar-
tist. Jonas Hanway left a guinea, in token
of his admiration, instead of a shilling ;
Johnson observed in them a grasp of mind
which he could find nowhere else ; Towpley
declared they were composed in the true
principles of the best paintings ; and Lord
Aldborough's praise Mr. C. is half-afraid
to transcribe, and well he may, for the lord
discovered in them all the properties com-
bined, not only of Raphael, Titian, and
Guido, but of all the most celebrated ar-
tists of Greece and Rome ; and in conse-
quence, offered Barry his house and pro-
perty till his fortunes equalled his merits.
Most persons will recollect with a smile the
river Thames borne by Tritons, and Dr.
Burney, in the costume of 1778, playing a
tune to Drake and Raleigh. " I do not,"
said a dowager, putting her fan before her
face, " like to see good Dr. Burney with a
parcel of naked girls dabbling in a horse-
pond."

Barry, it has been repeated a thousand
times, refused to paint portraits, and a
story is even told of his replying to an ap-
plicant, " There is a man in Leicester-
square who does it" (meaning Reynolds.)
But Mr. Cunningham tells us also, on Mr.
Southey's authority, that this was not the
fact, for that he would at any time have
painted them, and gladly. The truth is,
probably, Barry was never in favour or in
fashion ; he had a bad name for caprice and
rudeness, and sitters were afraid of him.

In his account of Opie, Mr. C., we ob-
serve, does not, like Opie's widow, attribute
his death to his exertions in preparing the
few lectures he read, nor is his respect for
the said lectures very considerable — they
seem to him to want vigour, a defect, he
adds, little to have been expected. The
censure we think not very just. Opie had
defects of another quality : he wanted
poetry, and some feeling of the grand and
heroic ; his virtues were good sterling sense
and independence, conspicuous alike in the
pen and the pencil.

The Bristol people, years ago, were sa-
tirized for their sordid propensities by both
Savage and Robert Lovell. On poor Bird's
death, three hundred gentlemen of the
town got up a public funeral at considerable
expence, and then sent in the bills to the
unfortunate widow. " If this be true,"
says Mr. C., " the sarcasms of Savage and
Lovell are merciful aud kind — but I believe
it rests on no sufficient authority ?" Then
why is it repeated ?

Mr. Cunningham is a little too fond of
dinner-table stories. This is particularly
conspicuous in the life of Fuseli, most of
whose good things are not merely coarse
things, but their very merit consists in their
rudeness. His repartees are manifestly
prompted by contrast, the easiest kind of

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

341

wit in the world ; for instance — a student
held up a drawing to him, with, " Here,
Sir, I finished it, without using a crumb of
bread." — " All the worse for your drawing,"
replied Fuseli ; " buy a two-penny loaf and
rub it all out." Fuseli was the hero of
Johnson the bookseller's well-visited table
for forty years.

The best sketches in the volume are the
lives of Moreland and Blake, especially the
latter. Moreland's habits are too revolting
for detail ; but the gentle visionary's story
is one to draw tears of admiration. Mr. C.'s
description of his purity, his contentment,
his elevation, his very hallucinations, are
the most fixing piece of writing we have
read for some time. But there is no mer-
riment in the illusions of madness, and
Mr. C. is too ready to smile.

The Country Curate., by the Rev. G. M.
GZeia, alias the author of the Subaltern,

$c. 2 vols. 12mo. 1830 There are few

men more capable of making the most of a
short tale or a single incident, than the
writer before us, whether ( author of the
Subaltern,' or Rev. G. M. Gleig, liben-
tius audit. He has no taste for any thing
but sketches, either because he has no pa-
tience for details, or no tact for discussing
perplexities, or no confidence of powers for
making them attractive; and, therefore,
wisely shuns the attempt. He observes
closely, and what he observes he paints dis-
tinctly— perhaps too distinctly — with too
hard an outline. He has the art of giving
more intensity to small matters than fairly
belongs to them, and thus occasionally raises
a sort of factitious interest, which rather
excites for the moment, than satisfies on
reflection. There is no possibility of blend-
ing poverty and sentiment, dirt and deli-
cacy, misery and fastidiousness to any use-
ful purpose. Mr. G. sighs over fine feel-
ings where they are not likely to exist.

The Country Curate consists of nine or
ten sketches, three of which are reprinted
from Blackwood's clever and amusing mis-
cellany— they embrace the Curate's own
story, and some extraordinary facts which
fall under his own eye during his official
ministrations. The Curate's tale is a me-
lancholy one— an early death, precipitated
by the ruin of the fond hopes of felicity with
a lovely girl, herself the victim of hope de-
ferred, operating upon a consumptive con-
stitution. The sketches, also, are all of the
graver cast, and tell of misfortunes, the
results of oppressions, or indiscretions, or
unbridled passions — of course, not equally
fitted for commanding the feelings of sym-
pathy, though with one exception, this is
obviously the author's purpose. All of them
have an air of life and reality about them — ,
the tale of the Poacher particularly so. His
Hut upon the Moor, and the scenery around
are described, some will say with the pencil
of an artist, and others, not unjustly, with
the pen of a surveyor. It is too minute ;

Miss Mitford would have produced an equal
effect with half the words. The poacher's
case is no common one, and is, with few
exceptions, matter of fact, and it had need
be, from the gravity of the tone which the
author takes in relating it. He is not
prompted to poaching by idleness, but driven
by necessity — to feed his family ; he is no
dealer in game ; he shoots and snares upon
principle — hares and partridges have no de-
finable owners, and he seizes them, as the
fox does, because he wants them. The old
man had been expelled from a small farm
rented by his ancestors for a century or more,
and subsequent sickness and distress com-
pelled him to apply for parochial relief. This
was harshly refused by the skin-flint and
unsympathizing farmers ; and returning, in
a state of excitement, to his desolate hut, he
found hares feeding upon his cabbages —
why should he not feed upon them ? He
followed the natural dictate of necessity —
and further necessity forced him to persevere ;
and yet, while these facts are dropping from
the author's pen, he oddly ascribes the old
man's poaching pursuits to an innate pro-
pensity— a thing of principle. The old
man was ready to work ; but work was not
always to be had, while his children were
always to be fed. His poaching became
frequent, and work became scarcer ; and
thus the habit was confirmed. The curate
expostulates in vain : the old man had
reasoned himself — no difficult matter, per-
haps— into the rectitude of the act. In all
other respects he was proverbially honest,
and the worthy curate, in spite of prevailing
prejudices, gave him what employ he could.
Unluckily the son shared in the odium of
his father, and took, of necessity, to the
same courses, which quickly terminated
fatally. The youth was shot in a struggle
with gamekeepers — an event which plunged
the old man into stupor, and accelerated his
death.

The tale itself is not, it will be seen,
very attractive, but the tone of earnestness
with which it is told, fixes irresistibly the
reader's attention. The writer expresses his
indignation at the system of grasping eco-
nomy, which threw the small farms into
great ones. To this cause, he assigns,
justly, much of the misery existing among
the agricultural labourers ; but with this he
couples another — our mischievous poor laws.
This, we take it, is a species of cant, picked
up from the fashionable economists, but
which will surely soon vanish. That the
poor laws are, in numerous instances, inju-
diciously administered, no man can doubt ;
but that the principle is bad — that they
create their own objects, is, we verily be-
lieve, a mere phrase, apparently smart, and
adapted and remembered chiefly for that
reason. Can the author see no causes for
misery among the poor but idleness, and a
disposition to lean upon the poor rates ?
Does he not mark how the rates have grown
with the taxes ? Does he not mark the effect

342

Monthly Review of Literature,

[MARCH,

of excise upon the prices of the necessaries
of life ? Does he not mark the practice of
the fanners of flinging the labourers upon
the rates, from the double motive of interest,
and power — tyrannizing thus over the indi-
vidual, and forcing their neighbours to con-
tribute to the payment of wages ? The
poor — especially the country poor — are essen-
tially and eminently industrious ; but all en-
.couragement is wickedly withdrawn from
them — they are ground to the earth — they
are stripped of their little farms — their com-
mons— their very gardens even, where they
exceed a few square yards ; and what is still
worse, they are unfeelingly by the landlords
given up to the tender mercies of the
farmers — for all which, they are indebted
merely to our blessed political economists —
men who regard the poor as machines, them-
selves as the inventors, and the rich as the
owners.

We have forgotten the tales— but in a
word— the c Smugglers' is well told — the
Miser has a touch of the tedious, and no
point of sympathy — the Fatalist is em-
phatically extravagant — the Parish Appren-
tice horrible — while the Schoolmistress,
and the Rose of Kent, both victims, one
of the villainy, the other of the indiscretion
of man, and their own undisciplined feel-
ings, are very beautiful pieces, but still
written in a spirit that inclines the author
to make mountains of mole-hills.

Memoirs of Rear-Admiral Paul Jones :
2 vols. I2mo. 1830.— To this day the general
impression is still that PaulJones was a pi-
rate, and one of the most desperate and
daring, whose hand was against every man
and every man's hand against him. His
attempts and his menaces on both firths of
Scotland, while in the service of the rebel
Americans, threw the whole coast into
alarm, and the government itself denounced
him as a lawless plunderer and traitor. So
thoroughly indeed became he the bugbear
and ogre of the north, and so obscured and
distorted was his story by the loyalty-prints
of the day, that we have had him very
lately the hero of two romances ; and now,
to the surprise of every body, comes forth a
legitimate history of the man regularly au-
thenticated from his own papers, journals
and correspondence. Some years ago, a
Mr. Sherburne, described as registrar of the
American navy, when America had not
even l half-a-dozen fir frigates with bits of
striped bunting,' published what he called a
life of Paul Jones from very imperfect ma-
terials, but still authentic ones. The story
of even these materials is not without in-
terest. At the end of the war, when Paul
was appointed by congress agent for prize-
money in Europe, he deposited .these pa-
pers, consisting of copies of his corres-
pondence with congress and Mr. Jefferson,
his log-books and account-books, and sun-
dry papers, with a friend at Philadelphia,
taking with him whatever he considered of

more real importance. The papers thus
deposited were, on his death, removed by
the direction of his sisters to a friend of
their own at New York. This person dy-
ing, they fell into the hands of his brother,
a baker of the same town, who appears to
have taken little care of them ; at all
events, on his death they were either torn
up or dispersed. One letter was found in
the shop, which led to further inquiry, and
finally to the recovery of many articles, es-
pecially to two log-books, one of them that
of the Bon Homme Richard, now in the
possession of Mr. George Napier, an ad-
vocate at Edinburgh. These papers con-
stituted Mr. Shelburne's materials. But
the papers from which the present life is
constructed were all the while in the hands
of his relatives at Dumfries, and were
known to be so ; for Mr. Shelburne him-
self, as well as others since, endeavoured to
obtain them, but were refused, as there was
then, it seems, some view on the part of
the family to the present publication. They
are thus described in the preface, " They
consist of several bound folio volumes of
letters and documents, which are officially
authenticated, so far as they are public pa-
pers ; numerous scrolls and copies of let-
ters, and many private communications,
originating in his widely-diffused corres-
pondence in France, Holland, America,
and other quarters. There is, in addition
to these, a collection of writings of the
miscellaneous kind likely to be accumu-
lated by a man of active habits, who had
for many years mingled both in the political
and fashionable circles, wherever he chanced
to be thrown. The Journal of the Cam-
paign of 1788 against the Turks, forms of
itself a thick MS. bound volume. A life
of Paul Jones, published by Mr. Murray
some time ago, was merely a reprint of an
abridgment of Shelburne's book.

We may now be supposed to be at last
in possession of all that can be known of
Paul Jones, and the compiler of this his
last life has performed his task in a free and
fair spirit- desirous of rescuing his hero
from calumny, but judging him frankly,
without attempting to screen his obvious
faults. Paul, to say the least, was an ex-
traordinary man — irresistibly impelled to
seek distinction by the native vigour and
restlessness of his genius. Of a very hum-
ble origin, at the early age of twelve (he
was born in 1747)? he was sent to White-
haven as a ship-boy, and before he was
twenty served as mate in a vessel of con-
siderable tonnage, and on one occasion, on
the death of the captain, brought home the
ship in safety. His trips were chiefly to
the West-Indies and America, till the af-
fairs of a deceased brother detained him
some time in America. This was at the
outbreak of the revolution — he quickly
shared in the prevailing enthusiasm, and
hanging pretty loosely to local attachments,
was ready for any •employment that pro-

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

343

mised renown. His offer of services was
accepted, and he was, in fact, the first per-
son who, with his own hands, raised the
flag of American independence. Though
constantly thwarted by the jealousies of the
American sailors, he was never daunted
or turned from his purpose ; and supported,
as he steadily was by Franklin and the
congress, he finally obtained a ship from
the French navy, the Bon Homme Richard.
In command of this vessel, with other
smaller ones, it is well known he beat the
Serapis and the Countess of Scarborough.
But with the French officers, his conflicts
and competitions were not a whit less ha-
rassing and vexatious than those with the
Americans had been ; and the treacheries of
many of them involved him in perpetual
dispute, and remonstrance, and disappoint-
ment. Full of ardour and self-confidence,
lie was constantly planning and urging ex-
peditions, till his importunities wearied
both America and France — the first had no
ships, and the last none to spare, and na-
tive officers must be preferred.

His successful conflict, however, with the
Serapis, spread his fame through Europe;
and Simolin, the Russian ambassador at
Paris, recommended him earnestly to the
empress for employment in the Russian
navy. Paul, as full of ambition as of ac-
tivity, caught at the splendid prospect, and
seemed able, from the prepossession in his
favour, to stipulate for independent com-
mands. But again realities mocked his
anticipations. He was appointed indeed
admiral of the fleet in the Black Sea, des-
tined to co-operate in the siege of Oczakow,
but he found himself cribbed and cabined,
and as usual, the object of jealousy. Po-
temkin especially, as intolerant of a rival
as himself, and armed with the command
in chief, cramped him at every turn, and
finally despatched him to St. Petersburgh,
under pretence of a separate command in the
Baltic. But this was all moonshine — he
found the empress difficult of access ; ene-
mies were busy — calumnies spread — scan-
dalous charges were got up against him, and
when he was finally admitted to the em-
press, he was met with a smile of apparent
cordiality, and presented with leave of ab-
sence for two years — in reality, exiled. He
withdrew to Paris, where he died in 1792,
to the last fondly clinging to the hope of a
recal to the service of Russia.

Though pleading the rights of universal
freedom as the justification for deserting his
native country, and entering the service of
America, the real motive was obviously the
chance for more profitable, or rather, more
conspicuous employment. Brought up in
the mercantile service, he had no chance of
advancement in the royal navy of England.
He was just as ready to quit the Americans,
when a brighter prospect opened upon him
in Russia. His fate led him, as a fo-
reigner, to be perpetually competing with
natives, and he had not the accommodating

art of conciliating rivals, nor authority
enough to subdue them — too impetuous and
overbearing, and urged on by the same
kind of confiding and insolent spirit that,
under more favorable circumstances, made a
Rodney and a Nelson.

Veterinary Surgery, or the Art of Far-
riery, on a new plan, fyc., by J. Hinds, V.S
1830 — There can be no doubt farriery has
materially improved in modern practice. It
is but a very few years since that every thing
in the shape of science was absolutely un-
known in the treatment of horses, medically,
or surgically. ' Stuff and oils' constituted
the materia medica, and the vocabulary of
the farrier — the first some drastic purgative
for fevers, the last some stinging or scorch-
ing embrocation for bruises and lameness.
Any acquaintance with the source of the
mischief was mere matter of accident, or
rough guess work. We remember, in the
country, the shoulder of a handsome mare
blistered and blanched, and made as bare as
your hand, for the cure of a corn. The
anatomy of the horse is now more carefully
studied, and the symptoms of disease more
closely marked, and of consequence less vio-
lent and precarious remedies hazarded ; but
these amendments make their way slowly
into the country. The volume before us
seems written with intelligence, and cer-
tainly if those who consult it find reason to
be as well satisfied with it as the writer him-
self is, it cannot fail of proving a valuable
possession. Mr. Hinds takes credit to him-
self for avoiding technical phrases, while he
expresses his apprehensions that his familiar
style, as he complacently terms it, may fre-
quently appear vulgar to more fastidious
ears and eyes than his — simpleton !

The Lost Heir, and Prediction. 3 vols.
1830 — The principal tale is very far from
being a transparent one — a fault in a novel
not easily redeemed, though the general
grace and occasional vigour of the writing
furnish some compensation. The fashion
of attempting to excite interest by the per-
plexities attendant on foundlingism, is by
far too prevalent; and, really, the writer
scarcely need have recourse to so stale an
expedient. He has a considerable range at
command; he. can talk with propriety of
Ireland, America, and France, and these
might surely supply materials capable of
sustaining some weight without propping
them up with vulgar mysteries. Of the low
Irish and the low American, he has given
some admirable scenes, and he represents
the pollutions and brutalities of revolu-
tionary France very satisfactorily, though
not with the vivacity, and perhaps the fide-
lity of Dr. Milligan in his Adventures of
an Irish Gentleman.

The Lost Heir comes upon the scene, at
a very early age, after the American battle
of the Brandywine, with his nurse in a
waggon, filled with the wounded, Germans,
French, and Swiss. Though escorted by a

344

Monthly Review of Literature,

party of dragoons, they are attacked by a
body of Indians, headed by an infamous
crew of English in Indian disguises, and
massacred — the nurse is left for dead, the
child is snatched up by an Irish soldier and
handed to his colonel, who discovers in him
a memorable likeness, and finally adopts
the orphan. The child is brought up as
his son — is educated in the military schools
of France, and is for the first time, as an
independent agent, conspicuous in the de-
struction of the Bastile. The colonel and
his old servant, accidentally in the neigh-
bourhood, are drawn towards the scene, and
being in the dress of the king's troops, are
instantly seized, and rescued from butchery
by the sudden appearance of the youth, whose
activity had given him influence over the
atrocious mob. The same influence ena-
bles him to rescue another officer, a friend
of the colonel's, severely wounded, whose
last words, scrawled on a sheet of paper,
referred to a Madame St. Leu at Sevres.

To Sevres, after the death of the officer,
to execute the supposed wishes of the dead
man, the youth goes in company with a
friend of the colonel — he himself is too
ill to go — where, luckily, they discover the
lady, and with her a lovely girl, her daugh-
ter. With this daughter the colonel's
friend is wonderfully struck, parentally, that
is, while the youth is shot through and
through with the sharper arrow of love. Of
course a mutual attachment springs up
between the young folks, but the course of
true love, as usual, is speedily roughened by
the appearance of another young, but very
mature gentleman, whose object is, it pre-
sently appears, at all hazards to marry the
lady ; for she is, he believes, the true heir
to the greater part of the property his own
father possesses. The hero of the tale is
himself compelled to join his regiment, but
being quartered at St. Cloud, he readily
effects frequent meetings with the charmer,
and in a few days marries her, very syl-
vanly, under the green wood tree, just to
put the seal irremovably upon the connec-
tion. These clandestine meetings the rival
speedily discovers, and being of an unscru-
pulous turn, he readily contrives to get the
youth denounced to one of the sections ;
and he is only saved from the guillotine
by the manoeuvres of Barbu — omnipotent
with the mob — a ruffian in appearance, but
one who had been a fellow-student, and
deeply indebted by personal services, was
eager to make a return. In prison, the old
Irish nurse, who had been left for dead, re-
appears as the wife of the gaoler, and she, in
collusion with Barbu, finally effects the young
man's escape — the very day in which his rival
had arranged with a band of hired wretches
to carry off the lady by force.

For the accomplishment of this scheme,
he, misled by appearances, had employed
this very Barbu, who, though no ruffian
himself, could command ruffians, to get

together the accomplices, and thus unwit-
tingly he let his rival into the secret of his
devices. Of course the plan was baffled —
Barbu, indeed, fell a sacrifice to the rage
of his disappointed employer, while he him-
self perished within a few hours by the ven-
geance of a husband whose wife he had
seduced. In the meanwhile, discoveries
more than we can enumerate, or even follow,
are preparing. Mad. St. Len proves to be
the young foundling's own mother, and in
the midst of his distraction at the thought
of having married his sister, she is disco-
vered to be the daughter not of Madame St.
Len, but of the lady of an Irish officer,
killed (the lady we mean) in America, and
substituted, unknown to Madame, in the
place of a dead child of her own. The Irish
officer is the very friend who accompanied
our hero to Sevres, and who was so parent-
ally struck by the young lady's appearance ;
and the colonel himself, he is Irish too, and
had once been betrothed to Madame St.
Len. The complexities and confusions are
most confounding, but all ends happily, and
we dare say, very clearly, and every body
finally understands which is which, and
who is who. The foundling proves to be
the Lost Heir, and, of course, the true heir
to the very property which his villainous
rival had been ready to commit any crime
to secure. Esto simplex munditiis.

The other tale, entitled Prediction, is the
fulfilment of an Irish foreboding — the result
of a threat of a Senachy, some 600 years
ago, who, being driven from the service of
his lord, declared that the last of his race
should be a priest, and bury the last of the
said lord's line. The story finds the two
families — the Senachy's, with one male only,
and he is brought up as a priest ; the lord's,
with two sons, and though the old predic-
tion is revived by an old crone, no fears are
entertained. With the two boys is brought
up a little girl, the only daughter of an In-
dian nabob ; and between her and the
second boy, gradually ripens an attachment
which nothing but death can blight. The
youth of the parties makes a little protrac-
tion expedient, and the two brothers travel.
In the meanwhile, the girl's father, an am-
bitious man and a protestant, gets into par-
liament, chiefly through the influence of his
catholic friend ; but no sooner is he secure
in his seat, then, finding it more to his ad-
vantage, he rails and votes against the catho-
lic interests. Of course estrangement be-
tween the two families follows, and ulti-
mately, by misrepresen tations and treacheries,
the poor young lady is induced to marry
another, in accordance with her father's
views. The consequences are dreadful — it
becomes a perfect raw-head and bloody
bones story; and before it finally closes,
all but the priest are dead by duelling,
burning, madness, or anguish — thus mak-
ing good with a vengeance the miserable
prediction.

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

345

Creation, a Poem, by Wm. Ball. \ 830.
• — There is no standing a whole volume of
809 pages of forced and extravagant senti-
ment, couched in language and measure
neither correct nor musical. If Mr. Ball
be in the isolated state he represents him-
self, he is to be pided, but what advantage
does he expect to reap from importunity
and whining ; and if the sorrows he de-
scribes be, as perhaps they are, all imagi-
nary— if he is merely courting poetic sym-
pathy, why smack his lines more of vitupe-
ration than complaint — more of rage than
of pain ? The world, bad as some think it,
forsakes nobody that is of use to it, or if it
does, no man is quite without family con-
nections or cotemporary friends, that will
stick by him, unless some misconduct of his
own cuts him off from such ties, and then
he must abide the penalty.

Jam alone ; although the world's cold hand
Presses to mine • alas! it hath no touch
To warm the falling pulse, or check the sand
Fast flowing — noJ The world is but a crutch,
Wherewith I sc-ek my way unto the grave :
It knows not, heeds not me ; it is a lord
That gives, capriciously, his labouring slave
Raiment or blows—* fetter or a sword.

We prefer Pistol's tone tenfold to this

miserable puling — " Why, then, the world's

mine oyster, which I with sword will open."

J am alone ; to mine no human heart

Heaves with lull sympathy; and should the

earth
Cape and devour rr,c, not one man would

start-
Save for himself, perchance I
And in such a perilous exigency, would
EOt Mr. Ball look to his own safety ?
I linger in this foolish scene of things —
And I am left alone to strain and grope
Thro' th e world's vile and frivolous turmoil.

For a poet, who professes devotional feel-
ings, these are very offensive sentiments, and
for a man capable of distinguishing one
thing from another, very ridiculous. Ob-
viously, Mr. Ball thinks he is doing no
foolish thing in writing this poem, and can
he be absurd enough to suppose the majo-
rity of the world he abuses is not at least as
wisely and as usefully employed ?

The first Canto, which he calls by a term
of his own, Induction, exhausting some of
the sources of his personal grumblings, he
addresses himself to the subject of Creation,
and lashes his powers into action with this
potent invocation to his l own mind.'
Oh! insubstantial thing, invisible,
Abiding darkly in this mortal shell —
Oh thou, " my Mind I" tb.ee and thy arming

powers

I summon and evoke ! I am thy lord —
A lord of nought besides, on earth or sea ;
But thee I call— thee I command : awake !
Arise, obedient — and with thee bring
Thy treasures and thy strength, commensurate
To what thou shalt perform, and I dispose.
Hear me, thou idle slave! — Arise — obey !
M.M. New Series VOL. IX, No. 51.

This separation of I and myself is par-
ticularly brilliant, and bodes much original
discussion, if the reader have patience to
search for it.

Forrester : 3 vols. 12mo. — The novelist,
apparently, must work by synthesis or
analysis — begin at the beginning and
complicate as he goes, or dash into the
thick of a story, and unfold his mystery
as he can. The mystery mode, if we trust
to the profession of novel readers, is the
general favourite — it is so delightful to be
kept in suspense. For our own part, and
we suspect it is the case with many who
profess the contrary opinion, we prefer the
right onward march of publicity — we like
to see at first the rise of events, and trace
the current of consequences, and care less
about the sensations which suspense pro-
duces, than watching the development of
character, and enjoying the spirited descrip-
tion of scenes and sentiments. The writer
cf Forrester, betrayed perhaps by the talk
of young ladies, has adopted the suspensive
process, and maintains it to his latest page,
for though flashes of discovery break in oc-
casionally upon the obscurity, the eclair-
cissement is fairly reserved for the final
close. Apparently he has no other object
in pursuing his tale than to unravel the web
his fancy has woven, and trusts for effect
solely to the ingenuity with which he can
handle a mystery. He thus on plan and
system lowers his aim to the level of a mere
story-teller, though really possessed of powers
which might prompt him to aspire to higher
views, and execute more glorious deeds.
The tale, as it is, is without a moral or a
purpose — it is built on no principle — has
no general views, illustrates nothing, and
teaches nothing ; it is a tale to idle over,
and nothing beyond. It exhibits little or
no practical acquaintance with life ; it un-
folds no class — no character— no peculiarity ;
and might, with the exception of the Har-
rov/gate scenes, have been written by one
who never stirred beyond the pale of his
own neighbourhood, and spent his time in
dreaming of possibilities, or at the best,
throwing the incidents he meets with in
novels into new combinations.

The story itself is of two young gentle-
men, who meet by accident in the travellers*
room in the town of Leeds — are struck at
first sight with each other, and form vows
forthwith, like a couple of girls, of eternal
friendship. They have neither of them,
apparently, any thing to do, nor is either
at liberty to tell the other his story. The
passing' of a Harrowgate stage determines
both to go to that fashionable spot. At
Harrowgate they join the table d'hote, where
they find, at the lower end of the table,
new arrivals, like themselves, two Yorkshire
families, an ancient baronet's and an up-
start squire's. The first has a wife and
daughter ; the last, a wife and two daugh-
ters. The next day comes a dowager ba-

2 Y

316

Monthly Review of Literature.

[MARCH,

roness and a niece. All the young ladies
are marriageable ones — all are possessed of
considerable attractions, and the friends of all
come speculating on suitable matches. This
indeed, it seems, is the general object of
Harrowgate visitors. The two heroes, both
gentlemanly-looking men, and one espe-
cially of a very superior cut, with the in-
dubitable air of good company upon him,
excite considerable sensation among old
mid young — the elders not of course liking
the mystery, while the younger are charm-
ed with it. The young gentlemen very
soon shew symptoms of particular admira-
tion, but neither, for some as yet unknown-
reason, can indulge his inclination, or give
a frank expression to his feelings. But
just as the least attractive of the two has
been all but sent to Coventry by the papas
and mamas, he is discovered to be really a
gentleman, in actual possession of large
property, and in expectation of another
still greater. With him, of course, every
obscurity soon clears away, and difficulties
vanish, and he wins without further toil
the lady of his love. But the other, For-
rester, not only can nobody, not even the
dowager baroness, though she knows the
peerage by heart, and every family of a
thousand acres in the country, find out
who he is, but he does not know himself.
He is under a sort of guardianship of a lord
who disclaims any relationship, and pro-
fesses to be only the agent of one who will
never declare himself. The youth of course
is anxious to discover his birth, and frets
tinder the curb. Every clue is withheld,
and every attempt to engage in any pro-
fession is checked and crossed by the watch-
ful lord, and his chief behind the scene.
At length, however, he encounters an old
man — an old soldier, who goes about doing
good, and is very successful in divers de-
tailed cases, who seems at the first glance
to recognize our hero, and being shewn a
pair of miniatures, which are believed to be
the portraits of the parents, gives a slight
hint that he knows something about them.
From this period commences the unrolling
of the tale, and it is but justice to add, the
interest is very well kept up, and the mystery
developed only piecemeal. Forester proves to
be the grandson of a peer of the realm, with
£70,000 a year, kept out of his rights by
the artifices of the nominal guardian, who
of course is next heir to the title, and ex-
pectant of the estate. The old peer is led
to believe the grandson was illegitimate, —
but all is satisfactorily disclosed by the in-

defatigable old soldier, and Forrester weds
the lady of his heart, after she has bravely
refused the offered hand of the gouty old
peer and his £70,000 a year.

The Young Wanderer's Cave, and other
Tales: 1830. — This series of tales is by
the author of the u Children's Fireside.""
They are cleverly and intelligibly told, but
why the principal tale is told at all is not
very obvious. A boy of fourteen, travelling
towards the north on a visit to his friends,
sleeps on the road at an inn, in a room
where a murder is committed. He is ar-
rested on suspicion, and thinking that,
though perfectly innocent, he shall certainly
be hanged, he contrives to make his es-
cape ; and after abundance of frights and
embarrassments, reaches the Suffolk coast,
where he hides himself in a cave, in the
hope of finding some means of crossing the
water to Holland. All his difficulties in

Srocuring food, and his expedients for fish-
ig, filching and cooking, are minutely de-
tailed— the main object of the tale being,
apparently, to teach children what they are
to do under similar troubles. At last a
high-tide sweeps him out of the cave to sea,
and he is picked up by the very boat on
board of which is the actual murderer in
custody. The poor boy is of course res-
cued from his fears, restored to his parents,
finds new and powerful friends, and be-
comes a man of substance — in recompense
for the self-possession and resolution he had
shewn in what was surely a very novel po-
sition.

Another story is aimed directly and for-
cibly at the fagging system of great schools,
and very strange it is that more effective
resistance is not made to the practice. The
obvious evils are poorly balanced by the
alleged advantages. Superior strength, ac-
tivity, and intelligence need not surely be
armed with authority and privilege. The
younger and feebler require protection, and
this at least the masters should furnish. It
is idle to say the eye of the master cannot
be everywhere, and the elder keep the
younger in order for him ; let him do his
own business, and if the concern be too
mighty for his personal controul, let him
abandon what he is thus confessedly unable
to manage. The honor and amour propre
of the bigger lads might be readily enlisted
in the suppression of the system, and they
become proud of protecting instead of op-
pressing.

1830.]

E 347 ]
FINE ARTS' EXHIBITIONS.

BRITISH INSTITUTION.

THE exhibition of the works of living
artists, at the rooms of the British Institu-
tion, is this year, as usual, the first in that
procession of pictorial wealth which every
London season has of late years sent forth,
in number and value tenfold beyond that
which any other country of Europe can
boast. The exhibition which we are now
about to notice leads the way ; then comes
the Exhibition of Associated British Artists
in Suffolk Place ; next, the beautiful and
unique shew of the Water Colour Artists in
Pall Mall East ; then the selections from
the old masters at the same institution, to
which we are about to refer ; and lastly, (not
to mention innumerable individual efforts
which are brought forward in various ways)
to crown the whole, we have the Royal
Academy Exhibition — THE exhibition par
excellence. The immeasurable sirperiority
of these collective displays over those of a
similar kind in other countries, indicating
as it does the very indifferent condition of
art generally, may be not very gratifying to
us as cosmopolites, and lovers of art in the
abstract ; but as Englishmen, and lovers of
our country, it is impossible not to feel, and
to be gratified in feeling, that in this, no
less than in every other department of intel-
lectual exertion, we transcend, beyond
question or comparison, all the rest of the
world. In every department of literature
— in eloquence — in all the ornamental and
useful arts of life — in the domestic policy
which leads to comparative freedom and
happiness, and in the foreign policy which
gives us weight and influence in other coun-
tries— in national and individual wealth —
and finally in that moral worth and wisdom
which gives value and virtue to all these, —
it is impossible not to perceive and to re-
joice in those germs of permanent national
prosperity and supremacy which the tem-
porary cloud that is now passing over us
cannot hide — can scarcely even obscure.

As we cannot but attach a high value to
the due appreciation of those arts the results
of which, while they stir and nourish, at the
same time refine and exalt the human mind,
we shall, henceforth, pay particular atten-
tion to all exhibitions that are worthy of
public notice in connection with our present
subject ; and we are happy to find that the
one now to be considered offers (together
with much to pass by unnoticed, and a little
to reprove) many points for just commenda-
tion.

We shall, without further general re-
marks, proceed to notice the leading works,
in the order which we find them placed be-
fore us.

No. 1. Italian Boys. A. Morton. —
This picture, by an artist of rising merit, is
perhaps, upon the whole, the best picture in
these rooms — we mean of course, among
those which put forth any variety of preten-

sions ; for assuredly it is not equally good,
as a whole, with some smaller pieces of
minor pretensions, in point of subject matter
and the care bestowed upon it. It repre-
sents a group of Savoyard boys (why they
are called " Italian" we don't know — its
effect, where it produces any, will be to ex-
cite associations mischievous to the preten-
sions of the work) collected together some-
what anomalously, as if for the amusement,
not of other people, but themselves. Their
<{ appliances and means" of trade, consist
of an organ, a learned poodle, a monkey,
and a cage of white mice ; and, setting
aside a dusky and muddy tone in the co-
louring, the whole are painted with consi-
derable knowledge of the resources of the
•art — with truth and spirit in the various
expressions — with skill and taste in the
composition, and with great force of effect
in the management of the light and shade in
some of the details. The fault of the pic-
ture is the monotony in the faces, which are
all alike ; and its misfortune is, the com-
parisons it not merely suggests, but, as it
were, insists on, between certain wondrous
productions of a similar kind by Murillo,
which comparisons it is, in truth, little able
to bear. Nevertheless, looking at the work
with a view to itself alone, it has great
merit.

JVo. 11. The Birth of Venus. Howard,
— This piece of elegant feebleness, and
another near it by the same artist, (" Morn-
ing," No. 16.) will serve to keep alive for
a little longer the memory of, and perhaps
the admiration for, that class of purely
poetical creations (so called), which, having
no foundation whatever in the passions and
affections of the human mind, have no more
chance than they have claim to maintain a
permanent hold upon public sympathy,
Mr. Howard's poetical works will (we hope)
keep their ground in public favour so long
as their original inventor continues to sup-
ply them ; but (we hope) not a day longer.

No. 13. The Sisters of Scio. Phalipon.
— Though by a foreign artist, and, there-
fore, not exactly in place here, we cannot
deny a passing word of commendation to
this pretty little bit of pathos, an engrav-
ing from which formed the most pleasing
embellishment to one of this year's annuals.
Its merit is, to shew by concealing : on the
principle of Mr. Newton's "Letter" of last
year — one of the most touching and effec-
tive strokes of art that we ever remember to
have seen.

No. 18. The Guardian ; No. 24. Girl
of Normandy; No. 25. The Duenna.
G. S. Newton, A.R.A — These three pic-
tures, though they are inferior to most of Mr.
Newton's late productions, are nevertheless
the gems of the collection ; and this, no less
for conception and sentiment, than for style
and execution. The first (The Guardian)
represents an aged man, turning the key (in

2 Y 2

348

line Aria' Exhibitions.

[MARCH,

imagination) on some fair human bird, who
would, as he suspects, fain take wing from
her present cage in search of another. It
is as a piece of rich and harmonious colour-
ing that this picture excels ; for the ex-
pression, though any thing but false or
feeble, is yet somewhat vague. It is not so
with either of the other two, which, what-
ever they may want in warmth and depth of
colouring, are made up of expression. The
" Girl of Normandy" has that peculiar and
almost Minerva-like beauty of countenance
which is scarcely to be seen out of Nor-
mandy, and the great charm of which con-
sists in the alliance between depth of ex-
pression and perfect regularity and confor-
mity of feature. " The Duenna" is valu-
able only for the pretty affectation of the
youthful figure, which, however, has more
of this artist's fault, that is to say of his pe-
culiar manner , than of his beauties. The
Duenna is not so good. Mr. Newton has
not seen, or at least not observed, so much
of old women as he has of young.

No. 32. A Study. M. A. Shee, P.R.A.
—This picture has at this moment an ad-
ventitious interest, which its merits alone
would not give it. It may be offered as a
good average example of the state of
portrait-painting in England at the present
day ; but as the first and only specimen
here presented, of the new president's talents
as an artist, it will not be looked at with
any overweening satisfaction.

No. 43. The Corsair. If. P. Briggs,
A.R.A. With the exception of a very
coarse and uncharacteristic portrait of Mr.
Kemble, (No. 176.) this is the only speci-
men which Mr. Briggs offers in this exhi-
bition; and we have no hesitation, though
some reluctance, in stating, that both pieces
detract from, rather than increase this ar-
tist's high and deserved reputation. As
good must and will, in all cases, whether we
seek it or not, grow out of evil, there can
be little doubt that the altogether unex-
pected loss we have just sustained, will give
an impetus to the progress of art which it
would not have received, if the admirable
painter, of whom we have been so suddenly
deprived, had continued to exercise his un-
questioned supremacy till what might have
been reasonably looked for as the natural
close of his brilliant career. Hopes will now
be excited among our artists, which nothing
"but the loss of Lawrence could have aroused ;
and one looks to Mr. Briggs as one of those
who possess the best foundation for such
hopes.

No. 53. The Stone-breaker; No. 60.
Highland Music. E. Landseer, A.R.A.
— These are doubtless very clever and meri-
torious productions ; but they do not (any
more than many other of his late pictures)
raise our ideas of this artist's talent, either
as regards extent or degree. The philoso-
phic gravity of the Stone-breaker is indeed
good : his look is as settled and inflexible
as that of the stones by his side. And the

varied expressions of the dogs, who are
howling in concert with the sound of their
Highland master's bagpipe, are conceived
with great truth and executed with infinite
skill. But (to say nothing of the growing
faults of manner which this artist's late
works have included) he must really not
hope ever to maintain, much less to extend,
his reputation by such " unconsidered
trifles" as these. As for his " Wounded
Deer," '• Dead Deer," and that class of his
works, we look upon them as worse than of
no value at all, since the best they can do is
to shew a superfluous degree of skill. That
skill, the results of which do not conduce to
pleasure, is worse than cast away : and we
cannot imagine that even the keenest and
most remorseless of sportsmen takes any
pleasure in contemplating the quarry that
lies dead or w'ounded at his feet. In fact,
the sight of pain and death, as such, is uni-
versally abhorrent to our nature; and the
representation of them, therefore, for the
mere purpose of representing them, is in
all cases a mistake, to say the least of it.

Aro. 67. Antwerp Cathedral. D. Roberts.
— This is one of those productions of the
pencil which excite pleasure in every class
of spectator, and which are as susceptible of
being appreciated by the mere tyro as by
the most practised connoisseur. It shews
great knowledge of, and skill in, effect, by
the manner in which the figures and other
adjuncts are made to conduce to the impres-
sion of the chief object. The student may
do well to observe the manner in which the
glazing of this very clever picture adds to
its general effect.

No. HI. Interior of a Painter's Study.
J. Hayter — A very clever and spirited
little work, with a skilful disposition of
light and shade, and much ease and breadth
in the handling.

No. 118. Belvidera, J. Boaden.—
There is as little of likeness in this portrait
of Miss Kemble as there is force or freedom
in the somewhat affected style of handling,
or beauty in the colouring ; and we notice
it here only to observe that when an artist of
rising and real merit, like Mr. Boaden,
fails in an attempt to delineate a public
person, it may do him more serious injury
than any moderate degree of success could
possibly have done him good. "We may
here add, that the late President's drawing
of Miss Kemble is the only one which has
the slightest pretensions to represent a
single trait of her fine and highly intellec-
tual and characteristic countenance.

No. 139. Don Quixote and Sancho

Panza. W. F. Witherington This is

a very clever little picture on a most ill-
chosen subject — that of Sancho conveying
his dilapidated master, on his ass, after the
grievous beating which had banished chi-
valry from the land for the time being.
Sancho is full of humour, and the ass is
capital ; but, as a whole, the scene is in^

,1830.]

Fine Arts1 Exhibitions.

349

efficient, because the subject is ill-adapted
to the art.

No. 146. Greek Girl. H. W. Pickers-
gill, R.A — We do not remember to have
seen this clever picture before ; but the mere
fact of our feeling uncertain as to whether
or not we now look on it for the first time,
argues that the work is one which will not
add to the high reputation of its author.
Nevertheless, the picture is one among the
half-dozen very best in these rooms. There
is at once power and ease in the design and
handling ; a delicate individuality in the
expression, and richness, without gaudi-
ness, in the colouring ; but there is not in
the latter that depth and harmony which
we look for in a large work of this class from
a first-rate hand, as that of Mr. Pickersgill
now undoubtedly is. Not that there is
anything opposed to harmony in the colour-
ing of this work : its defects are negative
merely.

No. 152. Lara. T. F. Green This

is a striking, or perhaps we should say, a
staring picture. There is a degree of power
in it; but it has the grievous fault of em-
bodying only the repulsive points of its
original. If the effect of reading "Lara"
had been at all like that of looking upon
this imaginary representation of him, the
poet would have lost his pains. One great
secret of genius is, the power of extracting
pleasure from pain, or of subliming the one
into the other. The artist has in this in-
stance given us all the pain, but has let the
subtle pleasure that the poet has inextrica-
bly bound up with it. escape him.

No. 163. The Sick Child. T. Webster.
— This is one of those somewhat childish at-
tempts at drawing mere amusement from
pictures, which is a prevalent fault of the
present day, so far as the mere choice of
subject is considered. There is much
cleverness in some of the details of , this
little work, particularly in the whole figure,
air, and expression of the village Escula-
pius; but that which is intended as the
chief point of interest and attraction, " The
Sick Child," is an offensive mixture of the
painful and the disagreeable.

No. 177. Battle of the Standard. J.
Wood. — This little attempt at the display
of energy and grandeur on a small scale,
has considerable merit, quite enough to
make us regret that this artist should still
continue so decided an imitator — almost a
copyist — of Etty.

No. 209. Interior of a Cottage, Ar-
gyleshire. A. Fraser — The first view of
this picture is as dark and forbidding as
the actual scene which it so ably represents ;
but, like that scene, as you look at it more
closely, it comes out with much force and
truth. The picture is, in fact, painted with
knowledge, feeling, and manual skill ; and
it makes us regret that we have not more,
and more elaborate works from the same
source, and on similar subjects ; for, in this
nstance, though the theme is, in the ab-

stract, common and trifling, there is no
charge of puerility against — on the con-
trary it offers a desirable and interesting
illustration of actual life and manners.

No. 240. Venus and Cupid. W. Etty,

R. A This elegant little production is

one of the most valuable and meritorious in
the present collection. The composition is
striking and effective, without being in the
least degree forced or theatrical ; the design
and its resulting expression (for, the face of
the Venus being hidden, the expression re-
sults from the general design) includes that
chaste voluptuousness which gives a classi-
cal air to the work ; and the colouring of
the flesh is, at least, equal to any of the
previous efforts of this accomplished and
elegant-minded artist. The fault of the
picture is, its affectation of an antique air,
which is shewn in the " geological speci-
mens" which are substituted in the place of
clouds, in the back ground.

No. 248. Study of an Author. C. R.
Leslie, R. A. — We notice this little por-
trait of Sir Walter Scott merely on account
of the name of the artist, for we cannot
think that it is at all worthy either him or
the illustrious person it represents. It is
feeble, meagre, and altogher unsatisfactory,
as relates to both parties.

Le Debris. G. Lance. — This will
probably be among the most popular works
in the exhibition, as it is certainly among
the most clever in point of mere execution.
It represents an after-dinner-table, covered
with the debris of a feast, which is left to
the enjoyment of a monkey, a mackaw, and
a black footman — the two former of whom
are quarrelling for a portion of the spoils,
to the great amusement of the latter. The
glasses, salvers, fruit, table covers, and all
the adjuncts of the scene, are painted with
great skill : au reste, we cannot but think
it skill, in many respects, cast away.

No. 326. Comus and the Lady. J.
Wood., — This is a more elaborate and am-
bitious attempt than we remember to
have seen from this artist's pencil, and it
has also less the air of an imitation than
most of his other productions ; but we are
not able to congratulate Mr. Wood on
having caught the spirit of the scene. He
has failed, however, in company with every
one who has yet attempted the subject, which
is one of extreme delicacy and difficulty.

No. 331. The Intruder. J. Ward,
R. A — The " Intruder" is a dog who has
found his way into a shed peopled with a
cow and calf, a hen and chickens, &c.
We are sorry to be obliged to pronounce
this elaborate work of Mr. Ward s a piece
of falsehood throughout — it is false in de-
sign, false in expression, false in colouring,
and false in general effect. There is no
doubt great cleverness, and great knowledge
of his art, mixed up with all these ; but
they are all overpowered by the obtrusive
mannerism which is displayed in the hand-
ling of this artist. The dog, however, and

350

Fine Arts' Exhibitions.

[MARCH,

the hen and chickens, are, on account of
their size, exempt from the effects of this
peculiar fault in Mr. Ward's style ; and
the consequence is that they are capital.
No. 338. Scene in the Play of Charles

XII. G. Clint. A. R. A Two portraits

at once so like, yet so unlike, as those of
Listen and Farren, as Adam Brock and
Charles XII., we have rarely seen, except
from the pencil of the same artist who pre-
sents us with these. In fact, we know of
no other painter who so invariably catches
the exact lineaments of the person he
would represent, and misses the spirit and
character of which those lineaments are the
types and interpreters It is true he rarely
paints any but actors and actresses — a class
of persons whose faces, for the most part,
" have no characters at all," but consist of
lineaments merely like a mask. This kind
of practise may do much to dull the deli-
cacy of perception which is so essential to
the portrait-painter in particular. In other

respects, this piece is among the most suc-
cessful of Mr. Clint's productions.

We do not find any other new pictures
in this collection a detailed notice of which
could justify us in transgressing our limits
further. We will add, however, that Mr.
S. Davies has a very clever and attractive
picture of " The Interior of the British
Gallery" (as it appeared last year we be-
lieve) ; that Mr. Rippingill has an elabo-
rate scene in which much humour and skill
are wasted upon an impracticable subject —
" Pilgrims approaching the Shrine ;"
(420) and finally, that Mr. Parris, the
artist to whom we are chiefly indebted for
the noble Picture of London at the Colos-
seum, has a very pleasing and highly
finished little picture called " The Bride-
maid" (494), which shews that he is capa-
ble of excelling in no ordinary degree in
the most pleasing and popular department
of his art — that of scenes of sentiment and
character from domestic life.

VARIETIES, SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS.

Substitute for Wheaten Flour. — A me-
dical gentleman, named Gouldson, residing
near Manchester, has discovered a mode
of separating and preparing the farinaceous
parts of such bulbous roots as turnips, car-
rots, parsnips, beet, &c., and of converting
it into fine flour. After a great variety of
experiments, carried on with perfect success
for nearly two years, this gentleman has
obtained a patent for his process which, if
his report is in every respect correct, and
that he really does produce good and nu-
tritious bread, equal both in quality and
colour to the purest white wheaten bread,
which is positively asserted, the discovery
may be considered to be of incalculable
value, for the quantity of farina to be ob-
tained fron the roots grown upon any given
quantity of ground, compared to that pro-
duced from the ears of wheat upon a similar
space, must be greatly increased — the pa-
tentee says, twenty times at least.

Kneading Dough by Machinery In

large baking establishments the kneading
of dough for bread or biscuits is attended
with very great labour, and being performed
by the hands and sometimes by the feet of
men not particularly attentive to cleanliness,
a convenient mechanical substitute for the
manual labour of kneading must, in every
point of view, be desirable. It is not a
little remarkable that at this time there are
recently import d from Paris no less -than
four differently constructed kneading ma-
chines, some of which have, and the others
are expected tj) become the subjects of
patents in this country.

Captain Kater's Collimator — A parti-
cular degree of ill fortune seems to attend
certain individuals. Doctor Pearson, the
respectable treasurer of the Astronomical

Society, invented and perfected a rock
crystal micrometer which had previously
been invented, used, and rejected in Paris.
Captain Kater, by a mechanical process,
arrived at his convertible pendulum ; Pro-
fessor Bohnenberger, of Tubingen, had
projected the same instrument from the-
oretical considerations fifteen years before.
Another invention of Captain Kater, which
some individuals have injudiciously consi-
dered as entitled to a medal from the Astro-
nomical Society, the floating collimator,
both vertical and horizontal, is an invention
of this same Professor Bohnenberger, of
Tubingen, and in a form upon which our
countryman has not yet stumbled, has been
used by Professor Gauss for several years,
and produced the most beneficial results.
In this case the telescope itself is its own
collimator — and a coincidence effected be-
tween the wires in its focus and the image
of those wires as seen through the telescope
in a vessel of mercury placed immediately
under it. To effect this a piece of parallel
plate glass is placed at an angle of 45° be-
tween the lenses of the eye piece, and re-
flects the light of a lamp admitted through
an aperture in the side of the eye piece
down upon the wires and also upon the
mercury, while at the same time, from the
sides of the glass being parallel, there is no
obstacle to direct vision through it of the
wires and the reflected image of them.

Rapidity of the Circulation of the
Blood — A solution of ferruretted hydro-
cyanate of potash, introduced into the jugu-
lar vein of a horse, entered the circulation
and arrived at the opposite jugular in an
interval of from twenty to twenty-five
seconds. It arrived in twenty-three to
thirty seconds in the opposite external tho-

1830.] Varieties.

racic vein ; in twenty seconds, at the large
saphena vein ; in fifteen to thirty seconds,
in the masseterine artery ; in ten to fifteen,
and in twenty to twenty-six seconds, in the
external maxillary artery ; and from twenty
to twenty-five, and from twenty-five to
thirty seconds, in the artery of the meta-
tarsus ; in each case on the side opposite to
that of the injection. This series of expe.
riments was made by M. E. Herring, of
Stutgard.

Chinese Canal. — A canal was opened in
1825 to the west of Sargan, in Cochin.
China, which connected that town with a
branch of the river Cambodja. Its length
was twenty-three miles, its width eighty
feet, and its depth twelve feet. This canal
was begun and finished in six weeks,
although it had to be carried through large
forests and over extensive marshes : twenty
thousand men were at work upon it day
and night, and it is said seven thousand
died of fatigue. The sides of the canal
were soon covered with palm trees, for the
cultivation of whicli the Chinese pursue a
particular method.

Metallic Ligatures applied to Arteries.— .
M. Lerut has lately been led to ascertain
the value of a suggestion thrown out some
years ago by Dr. Physik, of employing
leaden ligatures. The idea arose from con-
sidering that in numerous cases bullets,
buck shot, and lead, would remain in con-
tact with almost any tissue of the body
without producing irritation or unpleasant
consequences, and that for an indefinite
period. M. Lerut laid bare the right carotid
artery of a dog, and, after separating it
carefully from its accompanying nerve and
vein, passed under it a leaden wire which
was then firmly tied. Both ends of the
wire were cut off and the sharp point bent
down. The wound was then drawn toge-
ther by a few stitches and adhesive strips.
The animal was left at liberty, and being
examined after some days the stitches were
found ulcerated out and the wound open ;
it had filled up from the bottom with
granulations, but the edges were wide
apart. With tight dressing ,it healed
entirely in about ten weeks. A few weeks
after the animal was killed and examined :
a small cicatrix existed in the skin ; the
lead was found in the situation in which
it had been placed by the side of the
vein and nerve, perfectly encysted. The
artery had been removed entirely for the
space of half an inch. Not the slightest
trace of inflammation existed in the neigh-
bouring parts ; on the contrary, they appeared
perfectly natural. The lead was inclosed
in a dense cellular substance which formed
for it a complete cyst. In four other simi-
lar experiments not the slightest departure
from the former appearances occurred. In
every case the lead became inclosed in a
cyst and the neighbouring parts remained
perfectly healthy and natural. The lead
having answered so well, the experiments

351

were continued, to ascertain whether that
metal was peculiar in this respect, or whether
other metals were as innocuous in similar
circumstances. Trials with gold, silver,
and platinum had exactly the same results,
from which Dr. Lerut concludes that the
plan of tying the arteries with lead and
other metals is free from danger, and may
be productive of some peculiar advantages.

Iron Furnaces in England and Scot'
land. — The number of high furnaces in
1740 was but fifty-nine — this number has
been increased as follows : —

Tons.
1740 — 59 furnaces, producing 17,000

1788 85 68,000

1706 — 121 125,000

1806 250,000

1820 400,000

1827 284 690,000

Of the two hundred and eighty-four fur-
naces, last mentioned, ninety-five are in
Staffordshire, and ninety in South Wales.

Longevity in Russia. — There died last
year, in Russia, 604 individuals, from 100
to 105 years of age ; 141, from 105 to 110;
104, from 110 to 115; 46, from 115 to
120; 3 J, from 120 to 125; 16, from 125
to 130 ; 4, from 130 to 135 ; 1, of 137 ;
and 1, of 160.

Perkins's Steam Cannon The first

experiments made with Perkins's steam
cannon, at Vincennes, near Paris, were not
attended with very brilliant results, and it
appears that the last have not been more
fortunate. The enormous apparatus of
which this machine is composed was placed
at about forty paces distant from a wooden
figure, formed to represent the hull of a
man-of-war ; the projectiles thrown were
about four pound calibre, and remained
fixed in the thickness of the wood, a four-
pounder was afterwards fired off at the same
distance, and the ball penetrated the figure.
Other experiments may possibly give dif-
ferent results ; but even allowing that the
superiority of Perkins's cannon becomes
established, the complication of the machi-
nery, and its enormous proportions, will ren-
der its application to the arming of ships
almost impossible.

Quantity of Gold Coined in Mexico. —
The report upon the finances of Mexico,
communicated by the minister of that de-
partment to Congress, has shown the quan-
tity of silver and gold coined in the different
mints of that country since their establish-
ment; these data may be interesting to
mineralogists. The mint of Mexico itself,
which for a long time was the only one in
the kingdom, coined, between 1733 arid
1828, 64,064,779 perosa piastres, in gold,
and in silver, 1,323,851,510 pesos. The
other mints, which have been established
since the revolution, have together coined
in gold and silver the sum of 67,662,737.
making a total of 1,455,582,026. pesos,
equal to =£318,408,508. 3s. 4rf. sterling.

352

Varieties.

[MARCH,

Naval Force in France. — The naval
force in France consisted, on the first of
January, 1829, of 276 ships of the line, of
various ranks: — viz — 33 men-of-war, 41
frigates, C corvettes, 25 brigs of sixteen to
twenty guns each, 8 tenders carrying eigh-
teen guns, 15 brigs of sixteen guns, and 151
vessels of other calibre. The number of
vessels building is 80. The various sta-
tions will require for the present year, 1830,
should no extraordinary event happen, 128
ships of war : — viz. — 1 line of battle ship,
14 frigates, 79 other vessels of less calibre,
27 transports, and 7 steam vessels. The
following is the comparative pay of the
naval officers of the various powers, not in-
cluding mess allowances : —

Francs.
An English Vice Admiral . . . 36,000

A Dutch ditto 38,700

A French ditto 28,000

An English Rear Admiral . . 27,000

A Dutch ditto 24,250

A French ditto 12,000

An English Commander .... 12,911

A Dutch ditto 17,200

A Russian ditto 10,920

A United States Commander 7? 120

A French ditto 6,000

An English Commander of a

Frigate 7,475

A Dutch ditto 6,450

A Russian ditto 4,740

A United States ditto 4,212

A French ditto 4,200

On the Impressions produced by Light
on the Eye — The following are the con-
clusions to an essay on this subject by M.
Plateau. §1. I. Any sensation of light what-
ever requires an appreciable time for its
complete formation, and also the same time
for its complete disappearance. II. The
sensations do not disappear suddenly but
gradually diminish in intensity. III. As
a sensation fades the progress of its decrease
is slower as the effect is nearer to a close.
IV. Different colours, illuminated by day-
light, produce sensations differing little
from each other in their total duration.
The order of them in this respect begin-
ning with that which produces the longest
sensation is white, yellow, red, blue. V.
The total duration, from the tisne when
the sensation has acquired its greatest
power, to that when it is hardly sensible, is
very nearly 0-34 of a second. VI. Finally,
it results accidentally from the experiments
that the principal colours arranged accord-
ing to the intensity of sensations which
they are competent to produce, stand in the
following order — white, yellow, red, blue.

§ 2. I. New proofs confirm the order of
colours contained in the sixth result of the
first section. II. The visual angles, under
which M. Plateau can see the different
colours are as follows. —

In the Shade. In Sun Light.

White 18". 12".

Yellow 19" 13".

Red 31" 23".

Blue 42" 26".

The angles observed in sun light are nearly
a third of those in the shade. III. When
the sensations of two different colours suc-
ceed each other on the retina with a velo-
city less than that necessary to make the
two impressions appear as one, there gene-
rally appear certain shades v/hich are ex-
traneous to the two colours employed or to
their mixture ; by these means a fine white
can be obtained when the yellow and blue
colours only are used. IV. When two
alternating sensations succeed each other
with such rapidity that they produce but
one impression, the latter does not always
present a colour which would result from
the mixture of the former, thus combining
the effect of yellow with that of deep blue
in the way just mentioned, a grey colour
can be produced without the least appear-
ance of green. V. With the exception
perhaps of yellow, the sensations of certain
colours do not act in their combination
with other sensations in the order of the in-
tensity of their colours : their maximum of
influence exists in a certain pale tint, on
each side of which their influence dimi-
nishes ; thus the blue colour of maximum
power with respect to red and yellow is that
of the sky in its most coloured state.

Fossil Bones. — At Argant, near Vin-
gran, in the department of the Eastern
Pyrenees, a cavern has been discovered, con-
taining the fossil bones of various animals,
rhinoceri, horses, oxen, sheep, deer, and
some extinct ; others of species still exist-
ing ; but what is most remarkable, there are
not among them the bones of any carnive-
rous animals.

Improved Pianoforte Hammer — An
American has improved the hammer heads
of pianofortes by letting into the top of
them a piece of lead, pewter, solder, zinc,
tin, iron composition of metals, or com-
pound of metals; and the hammer heads
having one of these kinds or compositions of
metals inserted in the tops of them, and
then covered with leather, or any other
covering, produces, when struck against the
strings, a much stronger, fuller, and firmer
tone than that produced by the common
sort of hammers.

1830.] C 353 ]

WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS.

WORKS IN PREPARATION.

The Last Days of Bishop Hebor. By Rev.
Thomas Robinson, A.M., Archdeacon of Madras,
and late Domestic Chaplain to his Lordship.

A complete History of the Jews in Ancient and
Modern Times, in three volume:1. 8vo. By the
Rev. Geo. Croly.

The Family Cabinet Atlas, constructed upon an
original plan. It will furnish the information of
the large and more expensive Atlases, in a clear
and accurate manner, and yet be smaller than
any one hitherto published, being a volume of the
size of ' The Family Library.'

A volume of Practical Sermons. By the late
Pr. Graves, Dean of Ardagh.

A new Edition of Mr. Faber's Difficulties of
Romanism, entirely re-written and much en-
larged.

A Familiar Treatise on Life Assurances and
Annuities, comprising a Historical Sketch of Life
Assurance Offices, with Observations on the Du-
ration of Human Life, and Objects of Interest
connected with the Subject. By Robert Rank-in,
Secretary to the Bristol Union Life Assurance
Company. In 8vo.

The Listener. By Caroline Fry.

An Inquiry into the Production and Consump-
tion of the precious Metals, and on the Influence of
their Augmentation or Diminution on the Com-
merce of the World. By Mr. Jacob.

An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and
on the Sources of Taxation. By the Rev.
Richard Jones.

The Life of Petrarch, for Dr. Lardner's Cabi-
net Cyclopaedia. By T. Moore.

Derwentvvater, or the Fate of Ratclifte, a Tale
of 1715.

Plain Instructions for the Management of In-
fants. By John Darwall, M.D., Physician to the
Birmingham Dispensary. In l2mo.

A Descriptive Road Book for the use of Tra-
vellers in Germany. By Mr. Domeier.

The Traveller's Lay, a Poem. By Thomas
Maude, Esq. A.M. Oxon.

Protestant Truths and Roman Catholic Errors.
By the Rev. P. Wilson, LL.B.

The National Distress, with its Remedies, Real
and Imaginary, examined, in Three Letters to the
Mechanics and Artisans of Birmingham. By
Frederick Hill.

. A New Volume of Country Stories. By Miss
Mitford, author of " Our Village," &c. &c.

The Fallacies of Dr. Wayte's " Anti-Phreno-
logy" Exposed, in a Critical Review of his Ob-
servations to prove the Fallacy of the Modern
Doctrine of the Mind.

Matilda, a Poem, in Six Books. By H. In-
gram, author of the " Flower of Wye.''

The Rev. James Parsons, of York, has a vo-
lume of Sermons in the press.

The Pilgrim of the Hebrides, and Other Poems.
By the Author of " Three Days at Killarney."
Post 8vo.

The Commentaries of Gamboa on the Spanish
Mining Ordinances. Translated from the Original
Spanish.

Notices of Brazil in 1828-9. By the Rev. R.
Walsh.

M.M. New Series — VOL. IX. No. 51.

The Three Histories. The History of an En-
thusiast ; The History of an Eneryfe ; The His-
tory of a Misanthrope. By Maria Jane Jews-
bury.

Chronicles of a School Room, or Characters in
Youth and Age. By Mrs. S. C. Hall.

The Barony, a Romance. By Miss A. M.
Porter.

Travels in Russia, and a Residence in St. Pe-
tersburgh and Odessa in 1827, 8, and 9. By Ed-
ward Morton.

The Living Temple. By the Author of " Fare-
well to Time."

Discourses on the Millennium. By the Rev.
Michael Russell.

A short Analysis of the Criminal Law of Eng-
land, giving a general and comprehensive View
of Crimes, their Punishments, and the Statutes
that create them, with a few Remarks on the
Evidence and other Observations. By a Bar-
rister.

Steamers versus Stages, or, Andrew and his
Spouse. A Poem. Six Engravings on wood,
from designs by Cuikshank.

The Lives of the Bishops of Bath and Wells,
from the earliest to the present period. By the
Rev. S. Hyde Cassan.

The First Book of the Iliad ; the parting of
Hector and Andromache, and the Shield of
Achilles, Specimens of a new Version of Homer.
By Wm. Sotheby.

Essays on the Lives of Cowper, Newton, and
Heber, or an Examination of the Evidence of the
Course of Nature being interrupted by Divine
Government.

The Three Temples of the one true God con-
trasted. By the Rev. Samuel Hinds, vice-prin-
cipal of St. Alban'sIIall, Oxford.

Theological Meditations. By a Sea Officer.

The Second Edition of " Lectures on the Re-
ciprocal Obligations of Life ; or a practical expo-
sition of Domestic, Ecclesiastical, Patriotic, and
Mercantile Duties." By the Rev. John Morison.
Will be published early in March.

The Nature and Properties of the Sugar Cane ;
with practical directions for improving its Cul-
ture, and for the manufacture of its various pro-
ducts. By Mr. G. R. Porter

Mr. Barclay, Author of " The Present State of
Slavery in the West-Indies," has a work nearly
ready, on the Effects of the late Colonial Policy
of Great Britain, addressed to the Right Hon. Sir
George Murray, principal Secretary of State for
the Colonial Departments.

LIST OF NEW WORKS.

BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.

Memoir of the Life and Public Services of the
late Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, particularly in
the Government of Java. By his Widow. 4to.
21. 12s. 6d.

The Life of Herman Cortes. By Don Teles-
foro de Trueba. 18mo. 3s. 6d.

The Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, Vol. II.
8vo. 15s.

Memoirs of Madame Du Barri, mistress of
Louis XV. Written by Herself. Vol. I. I2mo. 6s.
2 Z

354

List of New Works.

[MARCH,

The Life of a Lawyer. By Himself. 12mo.
10s. 6d.

A General Biographical Dictionary. By John
Gorton. A New Edition. In 2 vols. 8vo., con-
taining 2,359 pages of close print. Price 36s.

Narrative of the War in Germany and France,
in 1813 and 1814. By the Marquess of London-
derry. 4to.

A Civil and Eccles'astical History of England*
from the Invasion of Britain to the passing of the
Roman Catholic Relief Bill in 1829. By C. St.
George. 2 vols. 12rao. 14s.

Tytler's History of Scotland. Vol. III. 8vo.l2s.

EDUCATION,

The History of France and Normandy, from
the accession of Clovis to the Battle of Waterloo.
By W. C. Taylor, A.B., author of " The Historical
Miscellany." 12mo. 6s.

The Writer's and Student's Assistant. 18mo. 2s.

A comparative Atlas of Ancient and Modern
Geography, for the Use of Schools, compiled from
original Authorities, and containing the latest
Discoveries. By A. Arrowsmith, Hydrographer
to His Majesty. Demy 4to. coloured outline, 30s.
in cloth, or full coloured 42s. half-bound.

A Compendious German Grammar. By G. A.
Bernays. 3s.

Aristophanes, in English Prose, viz. the Achar-
nians, Knights, Wasps, and Birds of Aristo-
phanes, with Notes by a Graduate of Oxford.
8vo. 10s. 6d.

The Ajax of Sophocles, illustrated by English
Notes. By Rev. J. R. Pitman, A.M. 8vo. 9s.

Family Classical Library, vol. II. 4s. 6d.

Conversations upon Comparative dironology
and General History, from the Creation of the
World to the Birth of Christ. 12mo. 10s. 6d.

A Dictionary of General Knowlege, or an ex-
planation of Words and Things connected with the
Arts and Sciences. By George Crabb, A.M. 9s.

LAW.

Remarks on Law Expences, with some Sug-
gestions for reducing them. By H. Dance. Is.

Seton's Forms of Decrees in Equity. Royal
Svo. 21 8.

Penruddock on the Criminal Law. I2mo. 5s.

Eagle on the Law of Tythes. 2 vols. royal
Svo. £1. 12s. 6d.

Atkinson's Conveyancer's Manual. Svo. 12*.

Strange'a Hindoo Law, 2 vols. Royal Svo.
Sis. 6d.

MEDICAL.

Clinical Illustrations of Fever, comprising a
Report of the cases treated at the London Fever
Hospital, 1828-29. By Alexander Tweedie, Mem-
ber of the Royal College of Physicians of Lon-
don, Physician to the Fever Hospital, &c. 8vo. 7s.

A Manual of the Economy of the Human Body,
in Health and Disease. 12mo. 8s. 6d.

Commentaries on the use and necessity of Lave-
ments in the Correction of Habitual Constipa-
tion, &c, through the Sympathetic Relations of
the lower Bowels. By James Scott, surgeon. Svo.
An Exposure of the Causes of the present De-
teriorated Condition of Health, and Diminished
Duration of Human Life( compared with that
which is attainable by Nature. By J. Pinney,
Esq. Svo. 10s. 6d.

A Treatise on Pathological Anatomy. By G.
Andral. Translated from the French, by R.

Townsend, M.D., and W. West, M.D. Svo.
10s. 6d.

Medico Chirurgical Transactions, Vol. XV.
Part 2. 10s. Cd.

Breland's Anatomy by Knox. Svo. I0s. 6d.
Ratier's Formulary of the Parisian Hospitals.
18mo. 5s.

England's Treatise on the Kidneys. Svo. 5s. 6d.
Marshall's Summary of Vaccination. Svo. 4s.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Notices respecting Drunkenness, and of the
various meaus which have been employed in dif-
ferent countries for restraining the progress of
that Evil. By a Medical Practitioner. 8vo. 6d.
On the Extent and Remedy of National Intem-
perance. By John Dunlop, Esq. Svo. 2s.
The Edinburgh Almanack, for 1830. 6s. 6d.
A Letter to his Grace the Archbishop of Can-
terbury, on tke Necessity of Reform in the Church
of England. By a Country Curate. Svo. Is.
Irish Priests and English Landlords. 18mo. 3s.
Arthur Russell, the Deaf 'and Dumb Boy.
18mo. ls.6d.

The Panorama of London, and Visitor's Pocket
Companion, in a Tour through the Metropolis.
By Thomas Allen. Illustrated with numerous
Engravings. 12s. bound.

Turner's Selections from Pliney's Natural His-
tory. 12mo. 4s. 6d.

Tne Anniversary Calendar and Universal Mir-
ror. Part I. 2s. 6d.

The present Condition and Prospects of the
Greek or Oriental Church, with some Letters
written from the Convent of the Strophades. By
the Rev. George Waddington. Svo. 6s.

Consolations in Travel, or the last Days of a
Philosopher. By Sir Humphry Davy, Bart.
12mo. 6s.

The Last Days of the Portuguese Constitution,
containing an authentic and detailed Account of
the Intrigues that raised Don Miguel to the So-
vereign Power. By Lord Porchester. Svo. 6s. 6d.
Transactions of the Agriculture and Horticul-
tural Society of India. Svo. 10s.

Arcana of Science and Register of the Useful
Arts for 1830. 5s.

NOVELS AND TALES.
Manners of the Day. 3 vols. 11. 11s. 6d.
. Fitz of Fitz-Ford; a Legend of Devon. By
Mrs. Bray. Svols. 11. 11s. 6d.

Sydenham, or Memoirs of a Man of the World.
Svols. ll. 11s. 6d.

The Lost Heir, and the Prediction. 3 vols.
11. 11s. 6d.

Tales and Illustration?. By Charlotte Elizabeth.
2 vols. 18mo. 6s.

The Dominie's Legacy. By the Author of ' The
Sectarian.' 3 vols. Post Svo. 24s.

The Christian Physiologist. Tales illustrative
of the five senses. Edited by the Author of ' the
Collegians.' Svo. 10s. 6d.

POETRY.

Julio Romano ; or, the Force of the Passions ;
an Epic Drama, in Six Books. By Charles
Bucke, author of " The Beauties, Harmonies,
and Sublimities of Nature."

Poetry of the Magyars, preceded by a Sketch of
the Language and Literature of Hungary and
Transylvania. By John Bowring. Svo. 12s.

Creation, a Poem. By Wm. Ball. Post Svo.
10s. 6d.
Spirit of English Tragedy. Svo. 6s. 6d.

J 830-3

List of New Work*.

355

RELIGION, MORALS, &C.

Sermons by the Rev. C. Townsend. 8vo. 0s.

Bel frage's Portrait of John the Baptist. J2mo.
3s. 6d.

Lectures on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.
By the Rev. C. A. Moysey, D.D. 8vo. 6s. boards.

D. Doiinoghue, on the Doctrine of the Church
of Rome. 8vo. 10s. 6d.

Six Sermons on the Nature, Occasion, Signs,
Evils, and Remedy of Intemperance. By Lymau
Bpchcr, D.D. With an Address to the Temperate
Members of Society. 18mo. Is.

Hamilton on the Redemption. 12mo. 8s, 6d.

Social Duties, or Christian Principles. 12mo.
3s. 6d.

PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS.

Patents sealed in February, 1830.

To George Vaugham, Cleveland Street, Mile
End Road, Mile End Old Town, Middlesex, en-
gineer, for having invented a machine or pump
for raising water or other fluids. — 23d January ;
2 months.

To George Stocker, and Alexander Stocker,
Yeovil, Somerset, gunsmiths, for having invented
a cock for drawing liquor from casks, which pro
duces a stop superior to that which is effected by
common cocks, and will continue in use for a
longer period of time. — 26th January; 2 months.

To John Arnold, Sheffield, Yorkshire, powder-
flask maker, for having invented an improved
spring latch, or makefast for doors. — 26th Janu-
ary; 2 months.

To George Frederick Johnson, Canterbury,
Kent, Tunbridge-ware manufacturer, for having
invented a machine or apparatus, which is in-
tended as a substitute for drags for carriage
wheels and other purposes.— 26th January ; 6
months.

To Thomas Bulkeley, Richmond, Surrey, doc-
tor of physic, for having invented a method of
making or manufacturing candles.— 26th Janu-
ary ; 6 months.

To James Cobbing, Bury St. Edmonds, cord-
wainer, for having invented certain improvements
on skaits. — 26th January; 6 months.

To Samuel Wright, Shelton, Staffordshire Pot-
teries, for having invented a manufacture of
ornamental tiles, bricks, and quarries for floors,
pavements, and other purposes. — 26th January ;
6 months.

To Robert Busk, Leeds, York, gentleman, for
having invented certain improvements in appa-
ratus used for distilling and rectifying.— 26th
January ; 6 months.

To John Revere, New York, America, now re-
siding in Saint James's, Westminster, M.D., for
having invented a new alloy, or compound metal,
applicable to the sheathing of ships and various
other useful purposes. — 28th January ; 6 months.

To Josias Lambert, Liverpool Street, city of
London, esq., for having invented an improve-
ment in the process of making iron applicable to
the smelting of the ore, and at various subsequent
stages of the process, up to the completion of the
rods or bars, and a new process for the improving
of the quality of inferior iron.— 4th February;
2 mouths.

To George Pocock, Bristol, gentleman, for cer-
tain improvements in making or constructing
globes for astronomical, geographical, and other
purposes.— 4th February ; 2 months.

To John Gray, Beaumorris, Aiiglesea, gentle-
man, for having invented a new and improved
method of preparing and putting on copper
sheathing for shipping.— 4th February ; 2 months.

To Charles Taverner Miller, Piccadilly, Middle-

sex, wax chandler, for certain improvements in
making or manufacturing of candles. — February ;
6 months.

To Joseph Clisild Daniell, Limphey Stoke,
Bradford, Wilts, clothier, for certain improve-
ments in the machinery applicable to the manu-
facturing of woollen cloths.— 6th February; 6
months.

To Melvil Wilson, Warnford Court, Throgmor-
ton Street, city of London, merchant, for an im-
proved method of preparing and cleansing paddy
or rough rice. — 6th February ; 6 months.

To Thomas Robinson Williams, Nelson Square,
Blackfriars Road, Surrey, esq., for certain im-
provements in power looms applicable to the
weaving of wire and other materials.— 6th Feb-
ruary ; 6 months.

To Edward Cowper, Streatham Place, Surrey,
gentleman, for certain improvements in the manu-
facture of gas.— I2th February; 6 months.

To John Frederick Smith, Dunstan Hall, Ches-
terfield, Derby, esq., for certain improvements in
preparing or finishing piece goods made from
wool/ silk, or other fibrous materials.— 12th
February ; 6 months.

To Joseph Marie Ursnle La Rigandelle Du
Buisson, Fenchurch Street, city of London, mer-
chant, fora new method of extracting, for the pur-
pose of dyeing, the colour from dye woods, and
other substances used by dyers.— 12th February ;
2 months.

List of Patents which having been granted in
the month of March, 1816, expire in the pre-
sent month of March, 1830.

2. Francis Tevril, London,/or his ^new wheel
guard.

— Johp Wood, jnnior, Bradford, and Joshua
Wordsworth, Leeds, for improved spinning
machines.

— Bryan Donkin, London,/or processes for
obtaining and applying an increase of tem-
perature.

— George Frederic Muntz, Birmingham, for
his method of destroying smoke, and obtaining
a valuable product therefrom.

9. John Leigh, Bradbury, Gloucester, for Ms
improved spinning macJiinery.

14. Pierre Francois Montgolfier, London, for
his improved hydraulic ram.

— John Stead, Sheffield, for his improved
stage-coach.

— Marc Isambard Brunei, London, for a knit-
ting machine.

— William and Daniel West, Bombay, for a
method of producing and applying power and
motion to presses and other mechanical appa-
ratus.

2 Z 2

356

List of Patents.

[[MARCH,

14. Pierre Francois Montgolfler, and Henry
Daniel Dayme, London, for a motion acting by
Ihe expansion and contraction of heated airy
applicable to raising water and moving mills.

— James Dowson, London, for his improved
means of producing a communicating motion
to bodies in water, by the reaction upon the
water of suitable apparatus.

— John and William Filken, and Joseph Bar-
ton, London, for a new truss.

18. Pierre Pelleton, Manchester, for his new
method of making sulpheric acid (oil ofvitr^l).

20. Emo Tonkin, London, for a globe-reflect-
ing stove for light and heat.

23. Samuel Jean Pauley, London, for an ar-
ticle for making clothing without seams, also
for air cushions, fyc.

— Emerson Dawson, and John Isaac Hawkins,
London, for their improved grates and stoves,
and apparatus for supplying them with fuel.

— Joseph Bowles, London, for his improve-
ments in or on oil mills.

— James Younie, London, for his discovery
for the prevention or cure of smoky chimnies.

23. Robert Cameron, junior, Edinburgh, for a
machine for manufacturing paper on a new
principle.

— Samuel Brown, Westgate, Nor folk, for his
improvements upon the swing and wheeled
plough carriages and shares.

— Henry Osborne, Borderly, Warwick, for his
method of producing cylinders of various de-
scriptions.

— John Merryweather, Lincoln, for his method
of propelling boats and vessels through the
wafer.

— Abraham Rogers, Halifax, for an improved
heating apparatus for steam engines and
' houses.

— Leberecht Stanhausen, London, for an im-.
proved castor for tables, fyc.

— John Forby, Sheffield, 'for a new and im-
proved a"ger.

— William Macnarnara, London, for his
method of manufacturing glass.

— Uriah Haddock, Holloway, for his paint,
colour, and cementjor preserving the exterior
of houses, ships, fyc.

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS.

M. LAFFON DE LADEBAT.

FOR the chief points of the succeeding
brief sketch, we are indebted to a more
extended notice in the Revue de IS En*
cyclopedique, but we may here be per-
mitted to remark that we were personally
acquainted with M. Laffon de Ladebat ;
and that, several years since, when he and
his estimable friend, the Abbe" Sicard (the
successor of the Abbe de 1'Epee, at the
Parisian Institution for the Education of
the Deaf and Dumb) were in London, we
had the honour of shewing them the lions
of the metropolis. With the view from the
top of St. Paul's — it happened to be a
bright clear day — they were greatly de-
lighted. Our observation was, " You may
now behold, at a single coup d'ceil, the
habitations of more than a million of hu-
man beings. Paris, with all its splendour,
cannot present such a spectacle as this !" —
" True," replied the venerable Abb£ Sicard,
" and, thus, for the first time in my life, I find
myself elevated above the cares and sorrows
that harass and perplex more than a mil-
lion of my fellow -creatures !" The Abbe
was led to expect an interview with our
Queen : in the hope of this, he remained in
England till the last moment that his pri-
vate affairs would allow, but without suc-
cess. However, on the very day after he
left London, Her Majesty (Queen Char-
lotte) sent a carriage for him to his resi-
dence in King Street, Holborn.

Andre Daniel LafFon de Ladebat, a man
distinguished by his virtues and his suffer •
ings, in the stormiest periods of the Revo-
lution, was born at Bordeaux, on the 30th
of November, 174G. His family was one
of the most ancient and respectable in that
city. He completed his education at the

University of Franeker in Holland ; and,
on his return to Bordeaux, he was received
into partnership with his father, who was
then at the head of a great commercial es-
tablishment. In 1775, he married Mile.
De Bacalan, and retired to an estate near
Bordeaux, where he found leisure to culti-
vate the study of political economy, agri-
culture, and the fine arts. He published a
work on the Freedom of the Commerce of
India ; undertook to reclaim a vast portion
of waste land in the Upper Medoc ; was
one of the founders of the Bordeaux Aca-
demy of Painting ; and became a member
of the Academy of Arts and Sciences in that
city, as well as of the Agricultural Society
of Paris.

Devoted from his earliest years to the
principles of salutary improvement, and,
from his rank, called forth into the Assem-
bly of the Nobility of the province of
Guienne, he most energetically distin-
guished himself in asserting the ancient
privileges of that body. By one division
of its members, he was, in consequence,
sent in character of Commissary, to the
National Assembly to protest against the
projected limitations and restraints.

In 1791, M. Ladebat was President of
both the Academies of Bordeaux. From
the implicit confidence reposed in him by
his fellow-citizens, he was, in the month of
October, in the same year, returned as a
member of the Legislative Assembly, in
which he presided over the Committee of
Finance during the whole session. Stand-
ing forward in its support, at a period when
the very existence of the monarchy was
threatened, he, on the 20th of June, 1792,
repaired to the Tuileries, where he was ho-
noured by Louis the XVI. and his Queen,

1830.}

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons.

357

with the most unequivocal expressions of
their gratitude for his devoted attachment.
From the 23d of July to the 10th of Au-
gust, when the unfortunate Louis and his
family took refuge in the hall of the Assem-
bly, he was President of that body. It was in
consequence of his most powerful friendship
that, during the horrid massacre of Septem-
ber, the Abbe Sicard was snatched from the
jaws of death and the hands of the common
executioner. In the December following,
M. Lade'bat was arrested and confined on
the charges of favouring the escape of some
of the Swiss Guards, and receiving funds
from the Civil List ; but, having recovered
his liberty, he was appointed to the direc-
tion of the Finance department. In 1794,
he was again arrested, and immured in the
prison of the Carmelites ; but, so eminent
were his talents, that his enemies felt the
absolute necessity of his services, preserved
the man who had been doomed to the scaffold,
and once more restored him to his family.

In September, 1795, M. de Ladebat was
elected by the departments of the Seine and
the Gironde, a Member of the Council of
Ancients, in which, evincing his usual wis-
dom and moderation, he was a frequent
speaker on financial subjects. On the 20th
of May, 1797, he was elected Secretary to
that Assembly ; and, on the 18th of May,
he was called to the President's Chair. On
the reading of some addresses from the
Army of Italy, he ventured to propose the
cashiering and arrest of General Buona-
parte. On the memorable 18th Fructidor
(September 4, 1797), all his endeavours to
frustrate the insidious plans of the Direc-
tory having failed, he and several of his
colleagues were seized and imprisoned in
the Temple; and, two days afterwards,
they were sent, in iron cars, to Rochefort,
whence they were conveyed, in a frigate, to
the burning deserts of Sinamari. There,
amongst the numerous friends whom M. de
Ladebat speedily saw perish around him,
was the virtuous and eloquent Francon
Ducoudrey. Many of the exiles effected
their escape ; but M. Ladebat refused to
participate in their plans ; and, at the very
moment of their departure, it appeared so
certain that he was on the point of falling a
victim to the epidemic disease of the cli-
mate, that, when his companions reached
France, they reported his death, which was
generally believed. Of seventeen indivi-
duals who had been thus expatriated, he
and M. de Marbois alone remained to com-
bat with the harassing and iniquitous vexa-
tions to which they were subjected by the
Commissioners, who, under the Directory,
governed the colony. However, amidst his
misfortunes during twenty-one months of
exile, he unceasingly devoted himself to
his studies, and, from much valuable and
important information which he collected,
he prepared a pamphlet relating to the state
of the colony. Unfortunately, other cares,
and other labours, afterwards prevented its
publication.

One of the first acts of the Consular Go-
vernment was to recal the exiles of the 18th
Fructidor. The liveliest interest and the
warmest feeling greeted the return of Messrs.
Ladebat and Marbois, the victims of Direc-
torial tyranny ; but they were not equally
rewarded for their unmerited sufferings.
Several of the departments of France gave
their suffrages in favour of Ladebat, as a
candidate for the senate ; but Buonaparte
refused to confirm his election. Marbois
was appointed to the most distinguished
situations; but, Ladebat was left to pine in
obscurity. After his long services in the
financial department, his administration of
the public revenue was attacked by his ene-
mies; but, by a severe and laborious inves-
tigation, he was, in 1813, most honourably
acquitted. However, the eventful restora-
tion of the Bonrbons did not repair the mis-
chief or assuage the sufferings which the
Imperial Government had so cruelly ne-
glected.

In 1815, M. Ladebat came to England
to recover some property which he had
deposited in the Bank twenty-two years
before. During his stay in London, he
collected a mass of information respecting
the finances, and the commerce of the coun-
try, its public schools, charitable institu-
tions, &c. After his return, he presented
to Louis XVIII. an interesting work on
the French finances.

M. Laffon de Ladebat's political career
was now at an end ; but, with unremitting
ardour, he applied himself to meliorate the
condition and promote the welfare of so.
ciety, by taking an active part in the con-
duct of many moral, religious, and other
institutions. He was one of the Directors
of the Institution for the Relief of the Infant
Blind ; he was a member of the Consistory
of the Reformed Church ; also of both dis-
trict Committees for the Propagation .of
Primary Instruction, both Catholic and
Protestant ; and, for three years, he pre-
sided over the Benevolent Protestant So-
ciety, established for mutual assistance.

Nowithstanding the native vigour of his
mind, and his exercise of the truest Chris-
tian resignation, M . Ladebat was bowed to
the earth by a succession of private and do-
mestic calamities; and at length, after a
short illness, he recently expired in the
eighty-third year of his age. His remains
were interred in the cemetery of Est, near
those of his excellent wife, the companion
of his pleasures and his cares for forty years.
His four sons followed him to the grave;
and his funeral was attended by an immense
assemblage of persons of all ranks, various
deputations from societies, both religious
and philanthropical, to which he had be-
longed, joining in the mournful procession.
In the funeral address, delivered by his
pastor, M. Frederick Maurod, at the inter-
ment, it was stated that, for the last eleven
years, the deceased had, on the anniver-
sary of the day on which he had been bereft
of his beloved wife, repaired to the spot,

358

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persona,

[MARCH,

where he* earthly remains had been depo-
sited, and there paid a fervent, heartfelt
tribute of undying affection to her cherished
memory ! He had often expressed a sincere
wish to die on that day ; and, by a striking
and marked dispensation of Providence, it
had pleased God to call him from this world
of care on that very day, and almost at the
same hour ! ! !

THE EARL OF HARRINGTON.

Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Harring-
ton, Viscount Petersham, and Baron Har-
rington, was a descendant from Sir John
Stanhope, of Elvaston, in Derbyshire, half
brother of Philip, first Earl of Chesterfield.
His Lordship was Governor and Constable
of Windsor Castle ; offices in which, upon
his demise, he was succeeded by the Mar-
quess of Conyngham. He was also a Ge-
neral in the army, Colonel of the First Re-
giment of Life Guards, G.C.H., &c. Few
are the individuals who have been so for-
tunate as this nobleman in their family
connexions, public employments, or high
and illustrious patronage.

His Lordship, born on the 20th of March,
1753, was the son of William, second Earl
of Harrington, by his Countess, the Lady
Caroline Fitzroy, eldest daughter of Charles
Duke of Grafton. In 1769, before he had
completed his seventeenth year, he entered
the army as an Ensign, with the rank of
Lieutenant in the Coldstream Regiment of
Guards ; within four years he was promoted
to a company in the 29th Regiment of
Foot ; and, early in 177C, having exchanged
his light company for the Grenadier Com-
pany of the same regiment, he sailed for
North America, where he served in all the
principal engagements during the cam-
paigns of that and the following year. In
1777? his Lordship was aid-de-camp to Ge-
neral Burgoyne ; and, after the unfortunate
close of the campaign, by the surrender of
the British army at Saratoga, he was sent
to England with the General's dispatches.

Soon after his arrival in London, his
Lordship (then Lord Petersham) was ap-
pointed Lieut. -Colonel in the 3d regiment
of Foot Guards. On the death of his father,
in 1779, he succeeded to the Earldom.
The same year he married Jane, one of the
daughters of Sir John Fleming, Bart. ; by
whom he had a family of ten children, and
in whose society he was blest with a more
than usual portion of domestic happiness,
until the period of her Ladyship's death, in
the year 1824. In 1780, the Earl of Har-
rington sailed for Jamaica, with the 85th
Regiment of Infantry, a regiment which he
had himself raised, and to which he had
been appointed Lieut. -Colon el Command-
ant. Soon after his arrival at Jamaica, he
received the provisional rank of Brigadier
General, with the command of the flank
companies of all the regiments on the island.
In the course of twelve months, however,
his regiment, one of the finest corps ever
raised, was reduced to a skeleton, by the

dreadful mortality of the climate ; and, to
preserve its remains, they were sent home
in some of the French ships taken by Lord
Rodney, in his engagement with the Count
de Grasse, in April, 1782. His Lordship's
own health was seriously affected ; and he,
too, with his lady, who had borne him com-
pany in the expedition, returned to Eng-
land. On his arrival, he was most gra-
ciously received by his late Majesty, who
appointed him one of his Aides-de-camp,
with the rank of colonel in the army.

On the death of Lieutenant-General Cal-
craft, of the 65th Foot, in 1783, the Earl of
Harrington succeeded to the command of
that regiment, with which he immediately
sailed for Ireland. This was under the
Viceroyship of the Duke of Rutland, whose
friendship and confidence his Lordship en-
joyed.

It was during Lord Harrington's com-
mand of the garrison at Dublin, that Gene-
ral Dundas's new system of tactics, after-
wards generally adopted throughout the
service, was first tried in his Lordship's
regiment.

The 65th Regiment having been ordered
to America, in 1785, the Earl returned to
England, where, with the advantage of one
of the finest military libraries in the king,
dom, he enjoyed a brief but delightful period
of retirement. On the death of Lieut.-
General Tryon, in J 788, his Lordship was
nominated to succeed that officer, in the
Colonelcy of his old regiment, the 29th ;
an appointment which he had formerly ex--
pressed a desire to obtain, and it was now
conferred upon him as a special mark of
royal favour, and in kind remembrance of
his former wish. In fact, he would have
received the command on the death of
Lieut.-General Evelyn, had not General
Tryon been appointed before his wish was
known.

The 29th Regiment, then just returned
from America, was subsequently stationed
at Cheltenham and at Windsor, during the
King's residence at those places. It was,
indeed, a peculiar favourite with his Ma-
jesty, as the circumstance of its remaining
three years in garrison at Windsor, afforded
sufficient proof.

In the winter of 1792, the King con-
ferred an additional mark of his regard
upon the Earl of Harrington, by appointing
him Colonel of the First Regiment of Life
Guards, with the gold stick. At the pro-
motion of General Officers, in 1793, he was
made a Major-General. His appointment
of gold stick, rendered nugatory his Lord-
ship's wish to serve with the Duke of York
in his campaigns on the Continent ; but
the King was pleased to employ him on a
private mission to His Royal Highness.

In 1798, his Lordship was promoted to
the rank of Lieut. -General ; for a short time
he was on the staff of Great Britain ; sub-
sequently he had a command in the Lon-
don District; and, in 1803, he attained the
rank of General.

1830.] Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 359

In 1 806, Lord Harrington was dispatched the Queen rarely, if ever, had a private

to Berlin, with the view of arranging a party at Buckingham House, at which Lord

treaty with the King of Prussia — an object and Lady Harrington were not present,

in which the Earl of Harrowby had previ- With reference to dress, appointments,

ously been unsuccessful, and which was and the general economy of a regiment, the

again defeated by Buonaparte's memorable Earl of Harrington was considered to stand

victory on the plain of Austerlitz. unrivalled ; the regulation sword, first

In 1807, Lord Harrington was, for a adopted in the Coldstream Guards, and

time, Commander-in-chief in Ireland. His afterwards in the army generally, was intro-

next appointment was, 1812, to be Gover- duced by his Lordship ; and, in military

nor and Constable of Windsor Castle. affairs generally, his late Royal Highness,

The Earl of Harrington was many years the Commander-in-chief, is said to have

a member of His Majesty's Privy Council, paid extraordinary deference to his opinion.

He was a great favourite with the late and Lord Harrington died at Brighton, on

the present King, the Duke of York, and, the 15th of September, and was succeeded

indeed, with all the members of the Royal in his titles and estates by his eldest son,

Family. His Countess was equally a fa- Charles, Viscount Petersham, a Colonel in

vourite with the late Queen Charlotte, to the Army, &c.
whom she was lady of the bedchamber ; and

MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT.

i

THE frost being succeeded by a general thaw in the first week of the current month,
agricultural operations, so long suspended, were universally resumed ; and the lands have
been since worked into a proper state for the reception of the earliest seed process, namely,
for beans, peas, and oats. Upon the forwardest lands, these seeds are already in the
ground, on others, much ploughing remaining undone, those crops will necessarily be
backward. During the month of January, scarcely a plough was stirring, until the two
or three last days, and then in very few places. With regard to working the lands, how-
ever, for the seed furrow, there does not appear a deficiency to that degree which might
have been expected in times like the present ; the great misfortune, and it must tell
heavily in future produce, is the universal and smothering mass of weed vegetation which
the ordinary mode of culture can never eradicate from the soil. The wheats, winter tares,
clovers, and turnips, have been variously affected by the frost. Upon warm and sheltered
soils, there seems little cause of complaint, particularly of the early sown wheats, great
part of which exhibit a healthy appearance ; but on lands of a less fortunate description,
and where the cover and protection of snow came too late, the corn, its seeds just bursting
out to vegetation, and grasses, are lamentably cut up, and the remaining turnips, of a very
poor crop, clung and withered, and rendered of very little use as cattle food. The naked
frost has yet been of the greatest service in clearing the land of slug and grub, of which
two mild winters had occasioned a multitudinous increase.

From Scotland, our accounts report a more favourable state of the lands and of the pro-
gress of their husbandry, most satisfactorily joined with an almost absence of complaint
on the painful topic of agricultural distress and want of employment for the labourers.
Rents are generally higher in the- North than in the South, and far more frequently con-
tracted for as corn rents, that is to say, regulated by the price of wheat. A considerable
breadth of ploughing, to our surprise, seems to have been performed in the North, during
the last month, and their seed business is, in general, more forward than with us in the
South, whilst their corn and seeds are stated to have received little injury from the frost,
excepting in a few exposed situations, where they appear to be destroyed to a considerable
extent. Their turnips are nearly exhausted, and potatoes, from the constant demand for the
London market, being too dear for the use of stall-feeding, their resource seems to subsist in
the great quantity of stained and inferior barley, which also contributes to keep down the
price of fodder, although now so greatly reduced in quantity. The last year's wheat in
Scotland is now estimated at half an average crop, and, probably, it has been more held
for a market there, than in the South, on the speculation of a considerable improvement in
price, before the next harvest. Great quantities of barley, it is stated, reached the markets,
as a provision for the Candlemas rents. The fairs and markets for store-stock are over-
loaded, as with us, with the exception of milch cows, which find a ready sale, as do fat
cattle and sheep. Welfare, bonny Scotland ! the Tweed makes a magical distinction, as
well as a local division, much in favour of his northern border, in various respects.

From a few quarters, we have somewhat more favourable accounts of the state of the
markets for store stock, but, generally, no improvement can yet be boasted : the same with
respect to wool, of which far less expectation can be reasonably entertained. The fall of
lambs has been successful, and the weather more favourable than for the earliest dropped.
The short crop of turnips, and the damage received from the frost, will, by and by, be
severely felt by this stock, fodder being so nearly exhausted. Sheep, for market, are said
to have done very poorly on the present crop of turnips, to which, no doubt, their exposure

360 Agricultural Report. [MARCH,

to all the rigours and changes of winter, must have contributed its share. But, established
and inbred habit never sees but one side of a question. During the frost, wood-fuel was
becoming alarmingly scarce in the Western counties.

The prices of corn and fat cattle have advanced somewhat considerably in the London
markets, and a further and gradual advance is by no means improbable, more especially with
regard to prime articles, which always obtain their due attention in an English market.
This will, no doubt, be eventually followed. by a concomitant favourable change in the
price of lean stores. In the mean time, the markets have been extremely favourable to
the purchasers of stores. Much nonsense has, of late, circulated through the public prints,
on the remote national disadvantage probable to accrue from the number of horses annu-
ally taken from the country by foreign purchasers : a subject, of which the writers seem to
possess but a superficial view. The horses are generally sold at good prices, and it has
become a considerable and beneficial branch of commerce, the increase of which will much
enhance the profits of the steed. Complaints are made of some landlords who have
refused to make any return of rent at their audits ; and far more strange reports are
abroad, of farms given up from distress, being retaken and leased at the former rents.

Smithfield. Beef, 3s. 6d. to 4s. 8d — Mutton, 3s. Gd. to 4s. 8d — Veal, 3s 8d. to 5s. lOd.
Pork, 3s. Od. to 5s. Od. best, dairy — Rough Fat, 2s. l^d.

Corn Exchange Wheat, 48s. to (fine forign) 80s — Barley, 23s. to 36s — Oats,

18s. to 30s. — Fine Bread, the London 4 Ib. Loaf, lO^d. — Hay, 44s. to 100s. per load.
Clover, ditto 65s. to 115s — Straw, 40s. to 48s.

Coals in the Pool, 29s. 6d. to 37s. 3d. per chaldron.
Middlesex, February 22.

MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT.

SUGAR. — The demand for Muscovadoes has been more limited than usual ; the esti-
mated sales are 2,200 hogsheads and tierces. There is little alteration in the refined
.market. Of the fine grocery goods, there is rather a better supply this week, but there
has been less business done. Foreign Sugars. — No parcels of foreign sugar sold this
week by private contract ; a few hogsheads of Poito Rico are exported at about 20s. —
East India Sugar. — Few sales are reported ; the Mauritius Sugar, low to mid. yellow, of
which the great proportion of the arrivals consist, sell at a reduction of Is. to Is. 6d. ;
the other qualities were unvaried.

COFFEE — Parcels, suitable for home consumption, have sold at rather higher prices
this week, the request is more general ; the quantity of Mocha Coffee thrown on the
market lately has been extensive, the prices are 5s. lower ; the Mysore, at nearly the same
reduction ; low to good Mocha, 76s. to 106s. ; good Mysore, 46s. to 46s. 6d. Ceylon, at
former prices, good old. 32s. ; the only purchase by private contract is 100 bags fine old
St. Domingo, at 34s. 6d. The British Plantation at previous prices ; fine old Havannah
sold at 35s.

. RUM, BRANDY, HOLLANDS. — The only purchase of Rum this week is a parcel of
Leewards 4 to 5 over at Is. lt)|d. — In Brandy or Geneva there is no alteration.

HEMP, FLAX, AND TALLOW The demand and prices of Tallow continue to

improve. In Hemp and Flax there is little alteration. The letters from St. Petersburg}!
are dated the 3d instant. Exchange lOd. 9 a 16 a lO^d. Tallow 89 90. Bought 500
to 600.

Irish Provisions. — There is little alteration in the Provision Market this week ; the
request for fine Butter still increases. Bacon steady, 36s. on board, and heavy landed
at 38s.

Bullion per Oz Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. Od — Foreign Gold in Bars,

£3. 17s. 9d. — New Doubloons, £0. Os. Od — New Dollars, £4. 8s. |d — Silver in Bars
(standard), £0. Os. Od.

Course of Foreign Exchange. — Amsterdam, 12. 3 — Rotterdam, 12. 8 — Ham-
burgh, 14. 34— Paris, 28. 30 — Bordeaux, 26. O^d — Frankfort-on-the-Main, 155. 0^ —

Petersburg, 10 Vienna, 10. 16 — Madrid, 35. Of — Cadiz, 36. 0 — Bilboa, 35. OJ—

Barcelona, 35. 0* Seville, 35. 04 — Gibraltar, 37. 0| — Leghorn, 47. 0£ — Genoa,

26. 0 Venice, 4?. 0£ Malta, 44. O.i — Naples, 39. O^.— Palermo, 118. 01 Lisbon,

44. 0 — Oporto, 44. 0 — Rio Janeiro, 24. 0 — Babia, 25. O.^-Dublin, 1. 0| — Cork, 1. 0£.

Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Slock Companies, at the Office of
WOLFE, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhitt — Birmingham CANAL, Q sh.) 290/. —
Coventry, 900J. — EUesmere and Chester, 102/. — Grand Junction, 286/. — Kennet and Avon,
271/.— Leeds and Liverpool, 450J — Oxford 650/.— -Regent's, 22|/.— Trent and Mersey,
(\ sh.), 780/. — Warwick and Birmingham, 270/ — London DOCKS (Stock), 80/. — West
India (Stock), 188^ — East London WATERWORKS, 115/. — Grand Junction, 52^1. —
West Middlesex, 75/. — Alliance British and Foreign INSURANCE, 9f/ — Globe, 164/.

Guardian, ^]\L Hope Life, 6 |/ — Imperial Fire, 113/ — GAS-LIGHT Westminster

chartered Company, 557 — City, 190/. — British, O/. — Leeds, 195J.

]830.]

[ 361 •]

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES^

Announced from January 2'3d, to February 22d, 1830, in the London Gazette.

BANKRUPTCIES SUPER-
SEDED.

Thompson, N. Dartmouth, master-
mariner

Hucker, J. Glastonbury, stocking.ma-
nufacturer

Bir.cs, T. P., H. White, J. H. Allen,
Newcastle-und.-r-Lyne, silkmcn

Chandler. Dewsbury, grocer

Bayley, W. Macclesfidd, silk-manu-
fuehrer

GastrdI, J. Brhtol, haberdasher

BANKRUPTCIES.

[ This Month, 164.]

Solicitors' Names are in

Parenthesis.

Arnold, C. Wakot, bookseller. (Ma-
kinso.i and Co., Temple ; Hellings,
B^th

Abbot, J. Norwich, bookseller. (Dicas,
Austin-friars

Archer, W. Scuthwark, cheesemonger.
fHutchinson and Co., Crown-court

Ayles, T. Weymonth, ship-builder.
(Alexander and Son, Carey-street

Bryson, T. Jewin-street, commission-
aeent. (Lloyd, Thivies'-inn

Bartlett, W and T. Reading, canvas-
manufacturers. (Glynes, Vine-street

Blount, E. Liverpool, iron-merchant.
(Vincent, Temple ', Birkett, Liver-
pool

Burton, T. Hillingdon, brick-maker.
(Pooie and Co., Gray's-inn

Bannister, J. P. Henrietta-street,
stable-keeper. (Burgoyne and Co.,
Oxford-street

Beard, J. G. Liverpool, brass-founder.
(Chester, Staple-inn ', Hodgson,
Liverpool

Bird, J. Leominster, victualler.
(Lloyd, FuTnival's-inn ; Herbert,
Leominster

Brown, W. Eeeston, cloth-manufac-
turer. (Jacques and Co , Coleman-
street; Ba'tye, Bristol

Bentley, E. Leicester, grocer. (Emley
and Co., Temple; Robinson and
Co., Leicester

Belt, R. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, mer-
chant. (Clayton and Co., Lincoln's-
inn ; Clayton, Newcastle-upon-
Tyne

Breeds, B. Hastings, merchant.
( Heathcote, Coleman street

BJundell, J. B., J. Piper, and J. T.
Gritton, Bankside, iion-merchants.
(Kearsey and Co., Lothbury

Boulderson, J. Penryn, miler. (Fol-
let, Temple ; Roberts, Helston

Bond, W. Horstead, bricklayer.
(Hammond and Co., hatton-garden;
Daveney, Norwich

Bonell. W. Bedmmster, lath-render.
( Pool and Co , Gray's-inn ; Wil-
liams, Bristol

Buckley, J. Ashton-under-Lyne,
gingham-manufacturtr. (Clarke and
Co., Lincoln's-ini,-fields ; Higgin-
bottom, Ashton-under-Lyne

Cocks, G. and J. Hart, Great Yar-
mouth, general-merchants. ( Lyth-
goe, Essex-street ; Wright, Norwich

Croft, E Louth, tanner. (Shaw,
Ely-place ; Wilson, Louth; Hawoih,
BlacKburn

Clark, rt. Blackburn, draper. (Norris,
and Co., John-street

Cooper, H. Upper Clapton, paper-
manufacture. (Allen and Co.,
Great James-street

Curtis, J. Oxford, plumber. (Turner,
Percy-street

Carr, J, Barnsley, linen-manufac-
turer, (Strangways and Co., Bar-
nard s-inn ; Gill, JCnaresborough ;
Mercer, Barnsley

Croft, W. P. M. Pimlico, lodging-
house-keeper. (George, Wardrobe-
place

Crake, M. Norton-street, builder.
(Beaumont, Golden-square

Cooper, W. and T. W. Reader,
Dartford, brewers. (Richardson and
Co., Bedford-row

M.M. New Series.— VOL

Cove, J. Hornchurch, fellmonger.
(Towne, St. Helen's-pl.xe

Cotton, T. Nelthorp, boat-builder.
(Hollies, sr. bwlthin's-lane ; Tims,
B anbury

Creed, T. and T. Keen, Fore-street,
haberdashers. (Davies, Devonshire-
square

Dickson, J. Liverpool, merchant.
(Blackstock and Co., Temple ;
Birkett, Liverpool

Dixon, G. Cockfield, brewer. (New-
burn, Walbrook ; Newburn, Dar-
lington

Dubbins, E. Brighton, plumber.
(Wadeson and Co., Austin-friars

Darby, C. H. Cheapside, tailor.
(Hutchinson and Co , Crown-court,
Threadneedle-street

Dixon, J. Lincoln, dr per. (Willis
and Co., Tokenhouse-yard ; Het»,
Lincoln

Dale, W. Pickering, draper. (Kurd
and Co., Temple ; Wood, Man-
chester

Dewar, J. and T. Carmichael, Ber-
wick-upon-Tweed, corn-merchants.
(Bromley, Gray's inn ; Gilchrist,
Berwick-upon-Tweed

Dickson, I. Cooper's-row, wine-mer-
chant. (Hodgson and Co., Salisbury-
street

Dixon, T. and T. F. Fatcliffe-cross,
sail-makers. (Cox, Poultry

Dawes, S. Cheapsipe, warehouseman.
(Robinson, Pancras-laue

Dunn, J. St. George in the East,
George-tavern, (Vandercom and
Co., Bush-lane

Everett, J. Doncaster, painter. (Gales-
worthy, Cook's-court j Heaton,
Doncaster

Elgie, M. Worcester and Ledbury,
scrivener. (Gates and Co., Lom-
bard-street

Evans, R. Leamington Priors, wine-
merchant. (Stratton and Co.,
Shoreditch

Emery, j. Vauxhal'-bridge-road, car-
penter. (WiUs, Sloane-st-eet

Edwards, W. Woodchester, baker.
(Ward, Charles-street

Foster, J. Derby, grocer. (Austen
and Co., Gray's-inn ; Green, Derby

Fisher, J. Ipswich, miller. (Ayton,
Kedford-row ; Brome, Ipswich

Fisher, J. Portsea, mercer. (Platt
and Co., New Eoswell-coui t j Mar-
tel', Portsmouth

Foster, M. Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
lead-merchant. (Thomson, Poultry ;
Fenwick, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Falkner, E. R. S. Southwell, school-
master. (Hall and Co., New Bos-
well-court ; Andrew, Nottingham

Garret. S. Langley-streer, and Lam-
beth, currier. (Thomas, Dean-
street

Griffi:h, T. Liverpool, linen-draper.
(Blackstock and Co., Temple ;
Payne, Liverpool

Gorst, J. R. and R. Baxendale, Liver,
pool, coach and harness-manufac-
turers. (Adlington and Co., Bed-
ford-row ; Frodsham, Liverpool

Goold, M. Swindon, dealer. (Meg-
gison and Co., King's-road j
Crowdy, Swindon

Goater, T. Cliddesden, timber-mer-
chant. iBousfield, Chatham-place ;
Mann, Andover

Hobson, J. LeadenhaH-street ; wine-
merchant. (Bartlett and Co., Ni-
. chol.'.e-lane

Holbein, J. Horileydown, corn-dealer.
(Sadgrove, Nicholas-lane

Hooper, H. Maiden-lane, hosier.
(Kirkman and Co., Cannon-street

Harris, P. Newton, flannel merchant.
(Rowles, King's Arm's-yard

Harvey, O. V. Penzance, mercer.
(Coode, Guilford-street ; Millet,
Penzance

Hall, H. Liverpool, linen-draper.
(Norris and Co., Bedford-row j
Toulmin, Liverpool

Harliag, j. Chorley, grocer. (Cervelje,
Great James-street ; Topping and
Co., Chorley

IX. No. 51. 3 A

Hayward, W. Braintree, tailor.
(Springall and Co., Gray's-inn

Hone, W. Reading, liveiy-stable-
keeper. (Rigge and Co., Cook's-
court j Weedon, Reading

Hall worth, J. Manchester, grocer.
(Deane, Palsgrave-place ; Booth-
royd, Stockport

Hagley, L, and J. Frome-Selwood,
silk-throwsters. (Williams, Gray's-
inn ; Messiter, Frome

Hacker, F. Hornsey-road, builder.
(Smith, Walbrook

Hammond, P. Sheffield-rroor, grocer.
(Walter, Symond's-inn ; Wake,
Sheffield

Hall, R Newc.istle-upon-Tyne, hatter.
(Flex-.ey, New Boswell-court ;
Laml>ert, Newcastle

Haw. A. and G. H. Stiff, Jermyn-
street, cheseemongers. (Conway,
Castle-stieet

Horner, R. Thornton-in-the-Clay,
nurseryman. (Wiliamson, Gray's-
inn j Simpson, New Malton

Hindhaugh, J. Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
innkeeper. (Meggison and Co.,
King's-road i Brockett and Co.,
Newcastle

Jones, R. S'.-.eerness, grocer. (Fisher
and Co., Queen-street

Jones, A. Lover Brook-street, che-
mist. (Bostock, George-street

Jackson, J. Tavistock-street, man's-
mercer. (Gore, Walbrook-buildings

Jackson, H. jun. Liverpool, grocer.
(Chester, Staple-inn; Gandy, Li-
verpool

Johnston, T. and R. Upper Thames-
street, coal-merchanis. (Smith and
Co., Cooper's-hall

Keighley, w. Bristol, woollen-draper.
(Parker and Co., Bristol

Knii)b, E. Liverpool, draper. (Vincent,
Temple ; Brabner, Liverpool

King, E. Liverpool, clothier, (Bebh
ar.d Co., Bloom bury-square ; Arm-
strong, Liverpool

Lewis, T. Wandsworth, boarding-
schoolmaster. (Horncastle, Great
Suffolk-stieet

Makin, B. Liverpool, merchant.
(Baxendale and Co., King's-armsr
yard ; S^aclcleton and Co., Liver-
pool

Maxfidd, W. M. Leeds, silk-mercer.
(King, Bedford-place

Miiler, W. Tredegar-square, builder.
(Robins, Bedford-row

Moody, J. Trowbridge, auctioneer.
(Berkeley, Lincolu's-inn ; Bush,
Trowbridge

March, S. Kennington, lace-manufac-
turer. (Clarke, Basinghall-street

M'Leen, J. Liverpool, victualler.
(Bebb and Co., Bloomsbury -square ;
Armstrong, Liverpool

Mayor, T. and J. Freckleton, mer-
chants. (Wiglesworth and Co.,
Gray's-inn ; Suttleworth and Co.,
Preston

Moody, S. and R. Romsey, plumbers.
(Kelly, Temple; Sharp and Co.,
Southampton

Mackintosh, J. Jewin-street, sail-
maker. (Blunt and Co., Liverpool

Macraith, W. and D. Maccaig, Wind-
mill-street, t..ilors. (Bailey, Ber-
ners-strcet

Morrison, M. A. Bath, milliner.
(Williams and Co., Lincoln' s-inn-
fields ; Mackey, Bath

Mant, T. Ipswich, boarding-house-
keeper. (Whiteley, Tokenhouse-
yard

Macleort, D. Water-lane, cork-mer-
chant. (Baker, Nicholas-lane

Neale, T. Exeter, haberdasher.
(Brutton and Co , New Broad-
street ; Erutton, Exeter

Neil, T. W. Battle-bridge, varnish-
manufacturer. (Fyson and Co.,-
Lothbury

Ormsby, J. and W. S. Morgan,
Brighton, wine-merchants. (Hens-
man, Bond-court

Ogden, E. Rochdale, innkeeper.
(Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane;
Elliot, Rochdale

362

Pittway, E. Tewkesbury, butcher.
(Bousfield, Chatham-place, Win-
terbotham and Co., Tewkesbury

Pedrorena, M. de, South-street,
merchant. (Oliverson snd Co.j
Frederick 's-place

Phelps, S. and T. Barclay, Fore-
street, anchorsmlths. (Dods, Nor-
thumberland-street

Pemberton, J. H. and E. L. Wil-
liams, West Smithneld, drapers.
Ashurst, Newgate-street

Pollard, J. Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
merchant. (Meggison and Co.,
King's-road ; Donkin and Co.,
Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Pierce, E. Trammere, victualler.
(Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane ;
Mather, Liverpool

Purnell, H. Cardiff, linen-draper.
(Jenkins and Co., New-inn ; Clarke
and Son, Bristol

Peck, S. Liverpool, merchant. ( Per-
kins and Co., Gray's-inn; Korest
and Co., Liverpool

Pashley, W. Gainshurgh, coal-mer-
chant. (Spurr, Warnford-court ;
Spurr, Gainsburgh

Potts, J. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, mer-
chant. (Meggison and Co., King's-
road ; Donkin and Co., Newcastle-
upon-Tyne

Robinson, W. Jun. Liverpool, mer-
chant. (Chester, Staple-inn j Daven-
port, Liverpool

Rothwell, W. and S. Elton, bleachers.
(Appleby and Co., Gray's-inn j
Goundy, Bury

Rigg, T. Liverpool, butcher. (Chester,
Staple-inn ; Gaudy, Liverpool

Ridout, J. C. Bristol, dealer. (Poole
and Co., Gray's-inn ; Williams,
Bristol

Ricards, R. Billingsgate, fish-sales-
man. {Smith and Co., Cooper's-
hall

Riley, W. Regent-street, and Pancras,
painter and glazier. (Philippe,
Gray's-inn

Robinson, W. St. Helens Auckland,
horse and cattle-dealer. (Perkins
and Co., Gray's-inn ; Wilson and
Co., Stockton

Rodday, H. Regent's Quadrant.
(Pritchard, Rowland-street

Robins, J. Ivy-lane, bookseller.
(Evans, Gray's-inn

Richardson, G. New Sarum, man-
milliner. (Gibbins, Furnival's-inn j
Coombs, Sarum

Roderick, E. Aberystwitft, linen-

Bankrupts.

[MARCH,

draper. (Jenkins and Co., New-inn ;
Clarke and Son, Bristol

Simmons, J. M. Lewes, linen-draper*
(Farrar, Godliman-street

Stone, T. wednesbury, innkeeper.
(Hunt, Craven-street; Caddick,
West Bromwich

Spencer, W. Coventry, riband-ma-
nufacturer. (Austen and Co.,
Gray's-inn ; Troughton and Lea,
Coventry

Stratton, j. Tottenham-court-road,
timber-merchant.( Williams, Alfred-
place

Shields, R. M. Liverpool, grocer.
( Bebb and Co., Bloomsbury-square ;
Armstrong, Liverpool

SwamieJ, J. Radwell, farmer. (Meggi-
son and Co., King's-road

Stedman, G. Walton, merchant.
(White and Co., Great St. Helens ;
Bacon, Walton

Smithson, S. Leeds, grocer. (Smith-
son and Co., New-inn; Dunning,
Leeds

Smith, J. R. Tamworth, calico-
printer. (Lowes, Southampton-
buildings; Newton and Co., Stock-
port

Snow, J. Worcester, scrivener.
(Townsend, Gray's-inn

Stunt, W. H. Wellington-street, dyer.
Castle, Brewers-street

Tippet, J. Bristol, ship-builder.
(Brittan, Basinghall-street ; Be van
and Co., Bristol

Turton, W. Bushbury, coal-merchant.
(Norton and Co., Gray's-inn;
Corser, Wolverhampton

Tongue, W. Birmingham, toyman.
(Holme and Co., New-inn ; Parker,
Birmingham

Thurston, j. Southampton-mews,
horse-dealer. (Lewis, Bernard-street

Tutt, E. Mary-le-bone-lane, oilman.
Starling, Leicester-square

Taylor, G. A. Clithero, cotton-spin-
ner. (Hurd and Co., Temple ;
Charnley, Preston

Tarver, J. Wolverton, carpenter.
(Meyrick and Co., Red Lion-square;
Burbury, Warwick

Travis, J. Soyland, innkeeper. (Em-
met, New-inn ; Alexander, Halifax

Tessier, P. Teignmouth, merchant.
(Paterson and Co., Old Broad-street

Winson, R. and W. Leeds, linen-
drapers. (Thornbury, Chancery-lane

Watson, A. Cannon-street, boarding-
house-keeper. (Hodgson, Broad-
street-buildings

Whitelock, J. Stanton New Mill,
Durham, miller. (Shaw, Ely-
place ; Walter, Newcastle-upon-
Tyne

Watson, H. Ongar, cattle-salesman.
(Wigley, Essex-street

Walker, W. sen. and W. jun. Knares-
borough, linen-drapers. (Dawson
and Co., Ne« Boswell-court

Wilbraham, G. Leadenhall-street,
gun-manufacturer. (Chambers,
Finsbury -chambers

Wilkinson, H. J. Leicester, printer.
(Eyre and Co., Gray's-inn

Wright, J. Huddersfield, dyer.
(Strangways and Co., Bernard's-
inn ; Stead and Co., Halifax ;
Stott, Leeds

Wilkinson, G. Wem, schoolmaster.
(Blackstock and Co., Temple ;
Brabner, Liverpool

Woods, J. Bartle Quarter, maltster.
(Hurd and Co., Temple; Trough-
ton and Sons, Preston

Williams, . D. Brecon, shopkeeper.
(Bridges and Co., Red Lio:i-square ;
Hare and Co., Bristol

Ware, W. Exeter, timber-merchant.
(Adlington .and Co., Bedford-row ;
Furlong. Exeter

Wise, T. Coleshill-street, victualler.
(Willis, Sloane-street

Whitehead, J, W. Battle-bridge,
linen-draper. (Burra and Co.,
King-street, Cheapside

West, M. York-gate-yard livery-
stables, horse-dealer. (Tod, Gray's-

Wheatland, W. Askham, chair-
turner. (Dawson and Co., New
Boswell-court ; Mee and Co.,
East Retford

Weaver, D. Winsley, limber-mer-
chant. (Philpot and Co., South-
ampton-street; Burley and Co.,
Shrewsbury

Williamson, S. jun. Salford, grocer.
(Chester, Staple-inn ; Hinde, Liver-
pool

Wallace, 'J. Manchester, wine-mer-
chant. (Cervelje, Greatjames-street ;
Harrison, Liverpool

Woortroffe, G. sen. Upper Stamford-
street, and G. Woodroffe, jun.
Waterloo-road, cabinet-manufac-
turers. (Evans, Gray's-inn

Young, C. Whitechapel, brewer.
(Fisher, Walbrook-buildings

Young, J. Manchester, hosier. (Tay-
lor, Clement's-inn ; Chew, Man-
chester.

ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS.

Rev. A. B. Hoden, to the Vicarage of Brevvood.
—Rev. T. Boydell, to a Minor Canonry in Chester
cathedral. — Rev. H. J. Rose, to the Rectory of
Hadleigh, Suffolk. — Kev. T. Clarkson, to the
Living of Beyton, Suffolk.— Rev. C. Murray, to
the Rectory of Ashe, Southampton. — Rev. J.
Storer, to be Principal Official in Royal Peculiar
of Bridgnorth Deanery.— Rev. W. Vaughan, to
the third portion of Pontesbury Rectory. — Rev.
H. S. Debrett, to the Rectory of Broughton, Lin-
coln. — Rev. W. Black, to the Chaplaincy of
Somerset Hospital, Froxfield, Wilts, in conjunc-
tion with the Rectory of Huish, same county. —
Rev. J. Barlow, to the Rectory of Little Bowden,
Northampton. — Rev. R. Walpole, to the consoli-
dated Rectories of Beechamwell St. John, and
St. Mary, Norfolk.— Rev. J. James, to the Per-
petual Curacy of Eyton, Herefordshire. — Rev. H.
Moule, to the Vicarage of Box, Wilts,— Rev. W.

Farwell, to the Rectory of St. Martin's, Looe,
Cornwall.— Rev. R. W. Jelf, to be Canon of
Cbristclmrch. — Rev. J. Williams, to the Per-
petual Curacies of Llanfaes and Penmain.— Rev.
S. P. J. Trist, to the Vicarage of Vergan, Corn-
wall.—Rev. W. Y. C. Hunt, to the Rectory of
Tamerton Folliott, Devon. — Rev. Lord C. Pau-
let, to the Rectory of Walton Deloil, and the
Vicarages of Wellesbourne and Watton, War-
wick.— Rev. C. James, to the Rectory of Even-
lode, Worcester. — Rev. J. Evans, to be Rural
Dean for the Deanery of Lower Carmarthen. —
Rev. J. Walker, elected to be a Scotch Bishop.—
Rev. Dr. Dealtry, to be a Prebendary of Win-
chester.—Rev. J. Edwards, to the Rectory of
Newington, Oxford.— Rev. R. Black, to be morn-
ing preacher at the- National Society's chapel*
Ely-place.

1830.]

[ 363 ]

POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS.

The Right Hon. Charles James Herries has
been appointed President of the Board of Trade.
—The Right Hon. T. F. Lewis, to be Treasurer
of his Majesty's navy. — Lord Ellenborough, the
Right Hon. R. Peel, the Earl of Aberdeen, the
Right Hon. Sir G. Murray, the Duke of Welling-

ton, the Right Hon. H. Goulburn,the Right Hon.
J. Sullivan, Lord Ashley, the Marquis of Graham,
the Right Hon. T. P. Courtenay, and G. Bankes,
esq., to be his Majesty's Commissioners for the
Affairs of India.

CHRONOLOGY, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, ETC.

CHRONOLOGY.

February 4. Parliament opened by his Ma-
jesty's Commissioners, the Lord Chancellor, the
Puke of Wellington, Earls Rosslyn, Aberdeen,
and Mayo, when the Lord Chancellor read the
following speech :— " My Lords and Gentlemen,
We are commanded by his Majesty to inform you,
that his Majesty receives from all foreign powers
the strongest assurances of their desire to main-
tain and cultivate the most friendly relations of
this country.— His Majesty has seen with satisfac-
tion that the war between Russ'a and the Otto-
man Porte has been brought to a conclusion. —
The efforts of his Majesty to accomplish the main
objects of the Treaty of the 6th July, 1827, have
been unremitted.— His Majesty having recently
concerted with his Allies measures for the pacifi-
cation and final settlement of Greece, trusts that
he shall be enabled, at an early period, to commu-
nicate to you the paiticulars of this arrangement,
with such information as may explain the course
which his Majesty has pursued throughout the
progress of these important transactions. — His
Majesty laments that he is unable to announce to
you the prospect of a reconciliation between the
Princes of the House of Brairanza.— His Majesty
has not yet deemed it expedient to re-establish,
upon their ancient footing, his Majesty's diplo-
matic relations with the kingdom of Portugal.
But the numerous embarrassments arising from
the continued interruption of these relations, in-
crease his Majesty's desire to effect the termina-
tion of so serious an evil. — Gentlemen of the
House of Commons, His Majesty has directed the
estimates for the current year to be laid before
you. They have been framed with every atten-
tion to economy, and it will be satisfactory to you
to learn that his Majesty will be enabled to make
a considerable reduction in the amount of the
public expenditure, without impairing the effi-
ciency of our nuval or military establishments. —
We are commanded by his Majesty to inform you,
that although the national income, duringthe last
year, has not attained the full amount at which it
had been estimated, the diminution is not such as
to cause any doubt as to the future prosperity of
the revenue. — My Lords and Gentlemen, His
Majesty commands us to acquaint you, that his
attention has been of late earnestly directed to
various important considerations connected with
improvements in the administration of the law.
— His Majesty has directed that measures shall
be submitted for your deliberation, of which some
are calculated in the opinion of his Majesty to
facilitate and expedite the course of justice in
different parts of the United Kingdom, and others
appear to be necessary preliminaries to a revision
of the practice and proceedings of the superior
court?.— We are commanded to assure you, that
his Majesty feels confident that you will give
your best attention and assistance to subjects of
such deep and lasting concern to the well-being of
his people. — His Majesty commands us to inform
you, that the export in the last year of British
produce and manufactures has exceeded that of
any former year. — His Majesty laments, that not-
withstanding this indication of active commerce,
distress should prevail among the agricultural
'and manufacturing classes in some parts of the
United Kingdom,— It would be most 'gratifying to

the paternal feelings of his Majesty to be enabled
to propose for your consideration, measures cal-
culated to remove the difficulties of any portion of
his subjects, and at the same time compatible
with the general and permanent interests of Lis
people. — It is from a deep solicitude for those
interests, that his Majesty is impressed with the
necessity of acting with ex'treme caution in refer-
ence to this important subject.— His Majesty feels
assured, that you will concur with him in assign-
ing due weight to the effect of unfavourable sea-
sons, and to the operation of other causes, which
are beyond the reach of legislative control or
remedy.— Above all, his Majesty is convinced
that no pressure of temporary difficulty will in-
duce you to relax the determination which you
have uniformly manifested to maintain inviolate
the public credit, and thus to uphold the high
character, and the permanent welfare of the
country."

5. The Argylle Rooms completely destroyed by
fire.

7. The hard frost broke up, after having con-
tinued, with more or less severity, for upwards
of 40 clays.

9. One convict executed at the Old Bailey.

— Select committees formed in both Houses of
Parliament, to inquire into the state of the East
India Company's affairs, and the nature of the
trade between Great Britain and China.

10. In the Court of King's Bench Mr. Alex-
ander was sentenced to one year's imprisonment,
and to a fine of .£300 for the three libels published
in The Morning Journal, of which he had been
found guilty ; and Mr. Isaacson to pay a fine of
.£100 ; and Mr. Marsden to enter into recogni-
zances for good behaviour for three years.

— Committee appointed in the House of Com-
mons to inquire into the laws and usages of Select
Vestries.

11. Report presented to the Common Council of;
the city, by the Coal and Corn Committee, stating
that they had a conference with his Majesty's
ministers on the high price of coals, who promised
every consideration to it.

— The Solicitor General, in the House of
Commons, obtained leave to bring in five bills, to
make some reform in the Court of Chancery.

16. The English Opera House, and houses con-
tiguous, totally burnt to the ground by an acci-
dental fire which took place a little while after
the French company's performances had ceased,
about 1 o'clock in the morning.

18. Sessions commenced at the Old Bailey.

— A motion made in the House of Commons,
by the Marquess of Blandford, " that a Reform
in that .House was expedient," and negatived by
160 votes against 57, although one of its members
(Sir, Francis Burdett), said, " I first purchased a
seat in this House for money — I purchased it
against the law.''

23. Sessions at the Old Bailey terminated ; 11
3 A 2

364

Chronology, Marriages, and Deaths.

persons received sentence of death, 58 of trans-
portation, and 41 of imprisonment.

Feb. 23.— Meeting held at the Mansion-house of
thecitizensof London, presided hy the Lord Mayor,
to consider on the alarmingly distressed state of
the country, when several resolutions were una-
nimously passed, and a petition voted to both
Houses of Parliament, praying " their immediate
attention to the very great distress that univer-
sally prevails, brought on by enormous over-
whelming pressure of taxation, and the long,
bloody, and extravagant wars waged and carried
on against the liberties of the people of America
and France, during the reign of George III."

MARRIAGES.

At Newbattle Abbey, Col. Sir W. M. Gomm, to
Elizabeth Anne, eldest daughter of Lord R. Kerr.
— Capt. H. Gaseoyne, son of General Gascoyne,
M.P. for Liverpool, to Elizabeth, third daughter
of the Archbishop of Tuanu— Hon. F. 3. Shore,
second son of Lord Teigntnouth, to Charlotte
Maria, second daughter of the late G. Cornish,
esq.— B. Knox, esq., Third Guards, to Louisa,
only surviving daughter of the late Admiral Sir J.
Button, K.C.B.— T. Hankey, Jan., esq., to Miss
A. A. Alexander, late of Philadelphia, United
States, half sister to the Lord Chief Baron. —
S. R. Bosanquet, esq., of Forrest-house, Essex,
to Emily, eldest daughter of G. Courthorpe, esq. —
At Plymouth, James Cottle, esq., to Sarah Wil-
mot, eldest daughter of the late John Harrington,
esq.— Capt. Patten, son of the late Admiral Pat-
ten, to Miss Rosina Niele. — Sir John Philimore,
to Baroness Katherine Harriet de Regersfeld— At
St. James's, Signer Campanile (of Rome), to
Ersilia, eldest daughter of Francis Cianchettini,
esq. — At Coggeshall, Robert, second son of
Charles Barclay, esq., M.P., to Miss Rachel Han-
bury. — At St. George's, Hanover-square, the
Rev. R. W.Shaw, son of Sir J. G. Shaw, bart.,
to Miss Sophia Cornwall, grand-daughter to the
first Lord Gardner.

DEATHS.

At Whiteford-house, Cornwall, Lady Louisa
Call, wife of Sir W. P. Call, bart., and daughter
to the late Earl of Granard.— Catharine, wife of
T. Reade, e»q., and only daughter to Sir John
Hill, so well known in the republic of literature.
—In his tent, Launton, Oxfordshire, upwards of
JOO years of age, James Smith, king of the wan-
dering people called gipsies. By his tribe he was

looked up to with the greatest veneration and re-
spect. His remains were followed to the grave
by his widow fwhoae age is more than 100), and
by several of his tribe, con -isting of most of his
relatives, and many of his children, grand-chil-
dren, and groat-grand children, whose grief was
excessive. The widow tore her hair, and tittered
the most frantic exclamations, and begged to \>e
allowed to throw hercelf on the coffin, and be
buried with her tousband. — At Methley-park, the
Earl of Mexborough. — At Spring Hill, Lieut. -
General Sir John Henn Maxwell, bart. — At
Bishopton, Frank Wilkinson, 105, known by the
name of •' the wild miller," as, in former days,
lie travelled the country with his Lorse and bell,
asking for corn to grind. — At St. James's Palace,
Sir Frederick Augustus Barnard, 87, librarian to
George III.— At Butt House, Lord Tamwortb.—
In the Isle of Wight, Lord Henry Seymour, 84. —
In Hanover-street, Lord Graves. —At Fulford
Park, the Countess of St. Germains. — The Hon.
Charlotte Arbuthnot, aunt to Viscount Arbuthnot.
— Near Exeter, Lady Collier, widow of the late
Sir G. Collier, bart.— At Cromer, G. T. Wynd-
ham, esq. — In Warren-street, W. Lake, esq., last
surviving son of Sir Atwell Lake, bnrt. — In Hill-
street, Col. Burrows, 81. — At Brighton, the Hon.
Mrs. Charlotte Chapman, 83 ; daughter of the
6th Lord Falkland, and great aunt to the present
(9th) Viscount Falkland.— At Calverton, General
Sir J. C. Sherbroke, 70, formerly Governor of
Canada.— At Mirfieltf Hall, Miss C. Cartwiight,
93, sister of the late celebrated Major Cartwright..
—At Bath, the Hon. V. Knox, brother to Viscount
Northland.

MARRIAGES ABROAD.
At Paris, Viscount Charles de Montque, to
Caroline Susanna Spencer, daughter of Hon. M.
Spencer, and niece of the Duke of Marlborough.
— At Demerara, L. Fitzgerald, esq., to Sarah An-
tonia, eldest daughter of Lieut.-Col. Goodman.

DEATHS ABROAD.

At Vienna, General Von Petersdorff, 84.— At
Versailles, General G.Monerieff.— At St.Vincents,
Sir Charles Brisbane, bart., Governor of that
island. — At Boulogne, Lord Sernpill. — At Paris,
Mr. M. St. Culham.— At St. Lucia, Major Gene-
ral Stewart, Governor of that island. — At Paris,
the celebrated M. de Lavallette, aid-de-camp to
the late Napoleon Buonaparte.

MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES.

NORTHUMBERLAND.— Feb. 15. A county
meeting was held at Morpeth, for the purpose of
taking into consideration the depressed condition
of the country, when a petition was unanimously
passed to the House of Commons, representing
the great distress, privations and difficulties,
which affect the Agricultural, Commercial,
Manufacturing, and Shipping interest of Nor-
thumberland, by the weight of the taxes, free
trade, &c., and begging a due inquiry may be
made, BO that means may be taken for obtaining
relief.

A destructive fire took place at Newca-tle, in
the night of the 28th of January, which destroyed

several houses, and did damage to the amount of
^25,000.

DURHAM.— A roast-beef and plum-pudding
dinner was given lately at Darlington to 64 old
men in indigent circumstances, whose united ages
amounted to 4,224 years, averaging 66 each ; it
was paid for out of a fnnd formed by the accu-
mulation of a small annual income of between
three and four pounds, left many years ago to-
wards a dinner for the parishioners on St. Paul's
day. This dinner having been discontinued, the
money was more rationally disposed of in the
manner above described.

1830.]

Cumberland and Yorkshire.

365

The congregation of Monkwearmouth church
have presented a massy silver salver, to their late
lecturer, the Rev. E. Neale, B.A., in testimony of
his able and orthodox ministry, and as a memorial
of the grateful feeling which they entertain for his
services.

No less than 1,129,824 chaldrons of coals, im-
perial measure, were shipped from the port of
Sunderland last year.

CUMBERLAND. — A meeting of the free-
holders took place at Wigton, called by the High
Sheriff, to take into consideration the distressed
condition of the country, when petitions to the
legislature was unanimously resolved on. About
4,000 persons were present.*

The ship-owners of Maryrort and vicinity have
forwarded a petition to parliament, praying to be
rescued from their nearly insolvent state, by the
protection of the shipping of Great Britain,
against that of other nations, which alone can
enable them to compete with foreigners.

YORKSHIRE.— The llth Report of the Direc-
tors ot the Pauper Lunatic Asylum for the West
Riding, contains details which are particularly
satisfactory. Notwithstanding the appropriation
of .£1,000 to improvements, there still remains a
balance of nearly £3,000 in favour of the institu-
tion. There are 255 patients in the house. Since
the opening of the asylum, 556 sufferers, under
this most lamentable of human maladies, have
been restored to society in a sane state, and 103
much relieved. — Yorkshire Gazette.

The last report from the committee in favour
of the unemployed poor of Leeds, dated at the
Court House, states that 2,085 families, compre-
hending 8,432 individuals, had been relieved.

Business at Huildersfield is growing worse and
worse, and unless speedy relief is afforded, hun-
dreds of virtuous and respectable families in this
district will become the victims of our destructive
policy. Never did Huddersfield present such a
gloomy and wretched appearance ; never had it
so much cause. — Leeds Intelligencer.

Feb. 3- A public dinner was given on the oc-
casion of opening the splendid Bradford Ex-
change buildings. After the Royal Family,
"The Ladies" were toasted, and then followed
" the immortal memory of Bishop Blaize," (it
being the anniversary of this great author of the
combing trade), which introduced some remarks
from Mr. Rand, who wished he could congratulate
the company on the nourishing state of the coun-
try ; " but the melancholy fact exists," he said,
«• and is acknowledged by men of all parties, that

* Mr. Blamire addressed the meeting. «' All
parties," he said, "were suffering; merchant,
manufacturer, tradesman, agriculturist, miner,
mechanic, and labourer, all in distress and misery,
n consequence of an enormous and overwhelming
debt : and nothing could relieve them but a great
reduction of taxation." Mr. Jamrs (late M.P.
for Carlisle), observed, that, they heard much of
the poor rates ; but the little paupers did not
drain the nation to the extent of the great
paupers : and there was scarcely an article for
which the poor man had not to pay a tax — for
malt, beer, leather, soap, candles — indeed for al-
most everything that he saw, touched, and smelled
— for the very air he breathed. Nothing could
save the country but a large remission of tax.
ation — the knife and sponge must be both applied,
the latter partially, the former with an unsparing
hand."

loth commerce and agriculture are labouring
under very severe depression."

A meeting has been held at Leeds of the stuff
manufacturers, operatives, and others, to con-
sider the propriety of petitioning the legislature
on the effects produced by the rapid increase of
the Power Loom, when several resolutions were
entered into for curtailing its extensive use, and
a petition unanimously resolved on to be de-
livered to the House of Commons, by their towns-
man, Mr. Sadler, who was respectfully requested
to support its prayer.*

There are in the small town of Beverley, nine
societies for the promotion of knowledge.

A new national school for boys was opened at
Pontefract, on the 19th of January ; when an ap-
propriate speech was delivered by the Rev. J.
Atkinson, incumbent of the endowed lectureship
in that town.

The Hon. E. Petre, Lord Mayor of York,
though a Roman Catholic, has chosen the Rev.
G. Hodson, a clergyman of the church of Eng-
land, for his chaplain, during the year of his
mayoralty.

On the 2d of February, the Yorkshire Philo-
sophical Society held their anniversary meeting,
at their New Museum, which was then publicly
opened. It is one of the most elegant buildings
in the kingdom ; and the collection of fossils is
probably the best in this country. The museum
is also rich in zoological specimens.

Petitions to both houses of parliament, against
the renewal of the East India Company's charter,
were agreed to at a public meeting at Leeds, held
on the 6th of February. Similar petitions have
been agreed to at public meetings held at Brad-
ford and Huddersfield.

A young man named John Smith, of Bielby,
near Porklington, has constructed a very inge-
nious and curious piece of mechanism. It is a
species of clock for measuring distances. The
works are contained in a box, which can be fas-
tened to the axle-tree of a waggon ; and the con-
trivance reflects great credit upon him, as he has
had no mechanical education, but has worked at
the farming business all his life, and has executed
this machine, after his daily labour was done. —
Yorkshire Gazette.

Mr. Belli well, of Greenhurst Key, near Tod-
morden, has manufactured a beautiful cotton
russet cloth, and also yarn for stockings, from the
wool produced by the moss crop plant found upon
his estate there.

NORFOLK.— At a vestry meeting held at Ken-
ninghall, Jan. 15, for the purpose of taking into
consideration the better employment of the sur-

* The chairman in addressing the meeting,
said: " Unprecedented distress and want of em-
ployment has called us together. Many of you
have arrived at the middle of life ; others of you
are in declining years ; and some few of you bear
the marks of old age ; and I appeal to you,
whether you ever experienced distress to that de-
gree which you are now experiencing Irom the
want of employment?" — (Universal cries of
"No! no! never ///) — The following is resolu-
tion 8 : — " That we are now arrived at a period
wherein justice, policy, and humanity, loudly call
for prompt legislative measures, which would
have the salutary effect of obviating any burst of
popular frenzy that may arise from the accumu-
lated masses of human misery so unhappily pre-
lent, disgraceful to the national character, and
far surpassing any former precedent."

3G6 Provincial Occurrences : Norfolk, Somersetshire, Sfc.

plus poor, it was resolved — " That all unemploy-
ed labourers shall inform the overseer of their
want of work, that their names may be presented
by him at the next vestry meeting, to be held on
the Monday morning in every week, at 10 o'clock,
that they may there be let at the best price that
can be obtained for them for th« current week.
[Here follow the names of the churchwardens,
overseers, surveyors, and eight other indivi-
duals.]*

SOMERSETSHIRE.— The expenses for this
county from Dec. 1828, to Dec. 1829, amounted to
.£24,22/ . 7s.0£d.— full .£20,000 of which was con-
sumed in the law and punishment of crimes!

In Castle Carey, the population is under 1,900,
and there are 1,000 names on the poor-hook, re-
ceiving more or less of parish pay!!!

GLOUCESTERSHIRE.— Jan. 28. A meeting
of the inhabitants of the city of Bristol took place
at the Guildhall, when it was resolved to petition
Parliament, " praying the reduction of the taxes
upon malt, beer, sugar, tea, coffee, candles, soap,
and other necessaries of life, so as to bring their
prices within the means of purchase by the la-
bouring part of our population." At the same
time the petitioners submit the necessity of " tax
upon absentees."

HEREFORDSHIRE. — The Herefordshire
Agricultural Meeting was most numerously and
respectably attended on Monday last, when the
whole of Broad-street was filled with the cattle
exhibited. Sir J. G. Cotterell, Bart, was in the
chair, supported by Sir Robert Price, Bart. ; se-
veral other landed proprietors, a long list of te-
nantry, and many principal graziers and dealers
in cattle from different counties. A discussion
took place on the depressed state of agriculture.
There seemed a general concurrence that govern-
ment had represented this depression to Par-
liament in terms far below its actual and uni-
versal pressure. The misfortunes of the country
were attributed to the principles of free trade, and
the state of the currency. The agriculturists of
this and every other county were advised to
unite as one man, and by firm and legal proceed-
ings compel the ministers to adopt measures for
the relief of the suffering country.

DEVONSHIRE.— A meeting was held at the
town-hall, Callington, on Tuesday, for the pur-
pose of considering the propriety of renting, en-
closing, and cultivating about 190 acres of com-
mon in the neighbourhood, for the purpose of
giving employment to the poor. W. D. Horndon,
Esq. was in the chair, and Mr. John Morshead
laid before the meeting a plan for dividing the
common into allotments, to separate the property
of each of the proprietors. The plan was ap-
proved, and is, we understand, to be acted on
forthwith.— Plymouth and Devonport Weekly
Journal.

WORCESTERSHIRE. — The extraordinary
event of the perpetrators of two murders having

* This is extracted from the Norfolk Chroni-
cle, Feb. 13, and signed T. B. JBeevor, who thus
apostrophizes the editor on the occasion, " Is
this England, Sir? Is it in that land of boasted
Happiness and Freedom that I see it advertised,
that ' The unemployed poor are to be let for
the highest price that can be obtained for
thcmf"

been discovered, after a lapse of upwards 23 years,
has created a great sensation in this county ; and
three persons of the names of Clews, Banks and
Barnett, have been committed to jail to take their
trial for the murder of the murderer of the Rev.
Mr. Parker, who having occasioned much ill-will
and angry feeling in the parish, had been shot by
a man of the name of Hemmings, paid for the
purpose ; and afterwards he himself had likewise
been murdered by those persons who had hired
him to murder Mr. Parker.

BUCKS.— The Duke of Buckingham, as Lord
Lieutenant of this county, has published an im-
portant.letter, addressed to the magistrates of the
county, upon the glaring evils which result from
the system of paying for the labour of the poor
out of the Poor's Book.

" You will (he says to the Clerk of the Peace)
be pleased to read this letter to the magistrates,
on the first day of their meeting. I need not say,
that feeling myself thus called upon to press my
opinions upon their notice, I shall feel it equally
my duty to be at their orders, and to assist them
in any manner in which they think that I can be
of use to check this growing and great evil."

LEICESTER.— A memorial has been presented
to Mr. Keck, as member for the county, on the
causes of the general distress ; " things," say
the memorialists, " have arrived at such a pass
that something must be done."

SUSSEX.— The expenditure for the better re-
gulating, paving, improving, and managing the
town of Brighton, and the poor thereof, from June
30 to Dec. 31, 1829, amounted to .£1,536. 4s. 5d.

SUFFOLK.— At the late sessions, the Grand
Jurors expressed their deep regret at the alarm-
ing and distressing situation of the country, and
intreated the magistrates to use their exertions to
convene a meeting of the county, in order that the
state of the sufferers may be considered and laid
before parliament. In consequence, a requisition
was signed to the High Sheriff for that purpose ;
and on Feb. 6, a meeting, convened by the High
Sheriff, was held at Ipswich, to take into con-
sideration "the unparalleled distress of all classes
dependant on agriculture;" and notwithstanding
the inclemency of the weather, nearly 4,000 per-
sons assembled, including the county members
and a great many respectable owners and occu-
piers of land. A petition was voted to Parlia-
ment, calling its attention " to the causes which
are bringing our agricultural population and its
dependants in all trades to pauperism and ruin,
and to the wants of the country encumbered with
such enormous taxation !! !''*

Rendlesham Hall has been destroyed by fire ;
the damages are calculated at £ 100,000, unin-

* Sir Thomas Gooch regretted, " that the dis-
tress of the country was not expressed in the
King's Speech in terms adequate to what it really
is. Taxation must be reduced to what it was in
1792— the debt is .£800,000,000 1 We must there-
fore strike at the root of all extravagance ! we
must all sink or swim together ; as landlords,
tenants, and labourers were all in the same boat."
(Here a person in the crowd said, " You ought
to have known that before !") — " I will never as-
sist," continued Sir Thomas, " in laying one
farthing more of taxes on the country."— (" You
have done enough already/' said another plain
dealer.)

1830.] Essex, Cheshire., Warwickshire, Shropshire,

367

sured. The noble owners, Lord and Lady Ren-
dlesham, are at Paris.

ESSEX.— A meeting of the freeholders of this
county has been held at Chelrasford, on the ge-
neral distress that prevails all through the king-
dom, when it was resolved to petition Parliament
on the subject.* Some thousands attended the
meeting, convinced, as Mr. Conyers observed,
" that it was their duty to state to ministers that
distress existed in its most afflicting shapes in
every village and hamlet, and not existing only in
some places."

CHESHIRE.— In consequence of a requisition
to the High Sheriff, signed by gentlemen of all
parties, a county meeting was held at Norwich
on the present distress which prevails throughout
the kingdom, and a petition unanimously agreed
to ; to the House of Lords, to be presented by the
Lord Lieutenant, and to the House of Commons
by the county members.f The petition particu-
larly recommends " a rigid system of economy
in every department, the distresses which exist in
every part of the country commanding the most
serious attention I"

By the abstract of the expences for this county
for the last year, it appears that the total amount

* The petition states, " that inordinate and un-
equal taxation is the great and paramount grie-
vance of the country," and it suggests a reform in
the House of Commons — an entire repeal of the
duties on malt, beer, hops, and all those taxes
which more immediately bear upon the labour
and industry of the country — abolition of all sine-
cure places and offices, and pensions without ser-
vices— reduction of salaries — simplification and
equitable application of the poor laws — revision
of our jurisprudence, with a view to intelligi-
bility, economy, and promptitude in administra-
tion—commutation of tythes — remuneration of
the clergy, apportioned to tlieir labours to make
them easy and respectable, but not intolerant and
luxurious— and the overthrow of the many des-
tructive monopolies which characterize the pre-
sent artificial state of the nation."

f Mr. Davenport (M.P.), mover of the petition,
said : " Gentlemen, 1 hope we shall all be una-
nimous in adopting a petition which shall carry
conviction to that callous body to which it is ad-
dressed, and shew them that, in Cheshire, at
least, a county meeting is not a farce ! Cheese,
the staple commodity of this country, has fallen
30 per cent, within six months ; the quantity made
in the county has been estimated at 12,000 tons
annually, and taking the loss to be only .£20 per
ton, there is a loss on this one article of agri-
cultural produce alone of .£240,000 ! !! The work-
ing classes are in many places bordering upon
starvation ; poverty and crime abound every-
where, and at the county sessions last week, two
children were prosecuted for stealing a bit of
bread from a shop window, being unable to resist
the cravings of hunger ! ! I Gentlemen, if, as some
say, government can do nothing for us, I should
like to know what we pay them for? They can
do something for us by retracing their steps, and
not persevering in their present course. Suppose
any one of us were to ride into a bog, does he
stick there ? or make the best of his way back
again ? Similar representations will come before
Parliament from other quarters; but I must con-
fess, while the House of Commons is constituted
as it is at present, 1 have but very slender hopes
of any efficient relief. All inquiry is resisted, all
allusion to the cause of distress put down by
clamour. I have heard the speeches of Mr. At-
wood in the House of Commons received with an
uproar that would disgrace a pot-house; and yet
this is the system which we are told ' works well,'
and needs no amendment ! ! !" — Chester Chro-
nicle.

was .£42,264. 14s. 3d., .£24,000 of which was ex-
pended in jurisprudence and the etceteras of
crime ; upwards of .£6,000 for the work at the
Lunatic Asylum, and near .£4,000 for repairs of
county bridges and causeways. — Chester Chro-
nicle.

WARWICKSHIRE.-Many parishes in this
county have commenced local petitions to the
legislature on the unparalleled distress which
prevails amongst all the industrious classes of the
country, and praying a repeal of the malt and
beer taxes.* Amongst the number, are Leaming-
ton, Weston, Wappenbury, Huningdam, Eathorpe
Marton, Frankton, Leek Wotton, Lillington, Cub-
bington, Ryton-upon-Dunsmore, Baginton, Bub-
benhall, Stretton, Princethorpe, Woolston, Bran-
don, Bretford, &c.

Mr. Fyler said, in'the House of Commons, Feb.
8, that he could bear testimony to the existence of
extreme distress in those parts of the country with
which he was acquainted. In the city and county
of the city of Coventry, and in many parts of
Warwickshire, and in other places, there were
thousands in such a state of distress as not to
be able to support themselves. In one district of
the county of Warwick, a parish, containing a
mixture of manufacturers and agriculturists, the
population amounted to 7,100 persons, on a space
of 6,500 acres. Of these, there were 2,000 re-
ceiving parochial relief; 2,100 not receiving re-
lief, but not able to contribute any thing to the
rates, the whole weight of which was borne by
500 heads of families, the representatives of the
other inhabitants.

SHROPSHIRE.— The petition to the Legisla-
ture from Oswestry, which has been circulated
through the several parishes of the county, states,
*' That the unexampled difficulties of the agricul-
tural interest are become so great, that it will be
impossible for the occupiers of land to continue
to cultivate the same under the existing distress ;
and, unless some speedy relief be afforded, not
only the yeomanry of the kingdom, but also the
whole of the labouring! and industrious classes
dependent on them for employment and support,
must be reduced to utter ruin!!!'*

WALES — At a very numerous and respectable
meeting of the nobility, gentry, clergy, and free-
holders of the county of Flint, held at Mold the
8th February, in pursuance of a requisition to the
High Sheriff of the said county, to take into con-
sideration the general distress which so unhappily
pervades all classes in this country, it was una-
nimously resolved to petition Parliament there-
upon, representing the great and unprecedented
distress now prevailing through the country, in

* " By the Parliamentary returns of last ses-
sion,'' say they, " the population of 1/87 was
7,400,000 persons, who then consumed 3,400,000
quarters of malt ; whereas, the population had
increased in the year 1828 to 13,500,000, who con-
sumed but little more than 3,000,000 quarters of
malt, being an actual decrease of nearly 300,000
quarters, with a population nearly doubled !!!"

f The sum of eight millions, forming nearly one-
half the whole revenue of Excise, is collected
from the malt and beer duties. Well, therefore,
may the people complain of oppression, and ine-
quality of taxation, when the amount imposed
upon the necessaries is seven times greater than
on the luxuries of life. By repealing the above
duties, upwards of 200 penal clauses would be
got rid of, together with one-half the enormous
expensive Excise establishment !

368

Provincial Occurrences : Wales and Scotland. [[MARCH,

its agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and
mines — the overwhelming mass of taxation now
becoming intolerable, and the regret of the pe-
titioners at finding his Majesty's ministers treat-
ing with indifference the distress of the country,
&c. &c.«

The petition for the repeal of the malt tax,
adopted at the meeting held at Cardiff, on the
16th ult.,has received upwards of 700 signatures,
comprising nearly all the respectable farmers in
the vale of this county.

A meeting for the purpose of petitioning par-
liament for a repeal of the Malt and Beer Du-
ties, was held in the town hall at Narberth, Pem-
brokeshire. After expatiating on the distresses of
the country in general, but more especially on
those felt by the inhabitants of the county of
Pembroke, which the Chairman shewed clearly
arose from over-taxation, a resolution was car-
ried to petition both Houses of Parliament for a
total repeal of the Malt and Beer Duties.

SCOTLAND.— Public meetings are still taking
place in various parts of the country, with the
vie'V of devising some means for alleviating, if
possible, the distresses under which the indus-
trious classes, particularly those engaged in ma-
nufactures, are at present labouring. An univer-
sal, but we sincerely hope only transitory para-
lysis, appears to have smitten the whole body of
our industry; and from Truro to Kirkwall one
cry of distress and suffering has been raised. —
A meeting was lately called at Renfrew, for the
purpose of considering the present distressed
state of the landed, manufacturing, and trading
interests ; and, after several gentlemen had de-
livered their sentiments, a set of resolutions, em-
bodying the views of the meeting, both in refer-
ence to the extent of the depression under which

* The Hon. L. Kenyon said : " If people in high
places found it convenient to slur over the dis-
tresses and sufferings of the people, the people
themselves should lay their griefs before their
representatives as became freemen and British
subjects; the distress was universal: it did not
affect the working classes alone, but was extend-
ing to all the other classes ; throughout the, em-
pire one general cry of distress prevailed, and that
too after fourteen years of peace!" Mr. Mather
said : " it was impossible the country could go on
with the present taxation and the present prices.
As a proof that the revenue was rapidly declining,
he need only mention the fact that in his last ride
in this district, the collector of excise did not re-
ceive as many hundreds as he ought to have re-
ceived thousands. He was very glad to see that
the higher classes were at length alive to the dis-
tress among the lower, and now that it was fast
approaching their own doors, he hoped they would
exercise that weight and influence which they
possessed with the legislature in calling aloud for
a remedy !" Sir J. Williams, Bart, stated, that
in conseauence of the low price of ore, 400 men
employed in the works in which he was concerned
were discharged, and the mine shut up! ! ! This
evil he attributed to " free trade," without re-
ciprocity, or rather with the reciprocity all on
one side! Sir E. P. Lloyd, M.P. congratulated
the county upon the assemblage of the most
wealthy and intelligent of its gentry then before
him, and upon the alacrity with which they had
answered the call of their High Sheriff on this
important occasion. The petition would have his
most cordial support in parliament, and that of
their excellent county member also (Sir Thomas
Mostyn), which the hon. Bart, had intimated to
him in a letter that day.

these interests were labouring, and the means
necessary to be adopted for affording relief, were
unanimously agreed to. In the course of his
Speech, Sir William M. Napier, of Napier, in
order to show the necessity for the adoption of
measures of relief, caused the clerk to read a let-
ter, which he had received from Kilbarchan.
(dated Feb. 3), from Messrs. Semple, Young, and
Crawford, master manufacturers of that place.
It stated, "that tor the last four months their
men (operative weavers), earned no more than
5s. per week, subject to such deductions as
mountings, dressing, beaming, oil, candle, fire,
&c., which amount to no less than about Is. 9d.
per week. Alas, then I what must become of the
poor operative weaver, with his wife and chil-
dren, having ouly 3s. 3d. nett money to subsist
upon for a whole week !!!"— Worth Briton.

His Majesty has been pleased to grant a charter
to the Royal Bank of Scotland, on the authoriz-
ing an addition of .£500,000. to the capital, to be
paid up within five years. When the last addi-
tion of .£500,000 was made to the capital of the
Bank, it was divided amongst the proprietors, and
the whole sum paid from the undivided profits,
without the proprietors being called on for any
part of it. — North Briton.

IRELAND.— Extracts from a Pastoral Ad-
dress just put forth by the Catholic Bishops to the
Clergy and Laity of Ireland :— " .... Only last
year, and this country was agitated from end to
end, and from its extremities to its very centre.
The dominion of the passions prevailed over the
dominion of the law ; and men born to love each
other, contended to almost the shedding of each
other's blood ; the public interests were neglected
or forgotten ; the ties of kindred were broken ; the
power of government was weakened, the laws
themselves were paralysed, and religion, which
used to silence passion, and consolidate the pub-
lic peace, was unable freely to discharge her func-
tions. It was at this time that He, by whom Kings
reign and legislators decree just things, arose, and.
as it were, said to the sea, < Be still, and to the
north wind, do not blow.' Our gracious and be-
loved Sovereign, walking in the footsteps of his
Royal Father (whose memory be ever cherished!)
commiserated the state of Ireland, and resolved to
confer upon her the inestimable blessing of reli-
gious peace. This great boon became the more
acceptable to this country, because, among the
counsellors of his Majesty, there appeared con-
spicuous the most distinguished of Ireland's own
sons — a hero and a legislator — a man selected by
the Almighty to break the rod which hadsconrg'
ed Europe — a man raised up by Providence to
confirm thrones^ to re-establish altars, to direct
the councils of England at a crisis the most
difficult, and to staunch the blood and heal th»
wounds of the country which gave him birth HI
. . 4 An enlightened and wise Parliament perfected
what the Sovereign and his counsellors com-
menced, and already the effects of their wisdom
and justice are visible and duly appreciated by
all the wise and good! The storm which almost
wrecked the country has subsided, whilst social
order, with peace and justice in her train, pre-
pares to establish her sway in this long-distracted
country !!!"

THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE f

OP
POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES.

VOL. IX.] APRIL, 1830. [No. 52.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT.

THE proceedings of the British Senate — the name at least is lofty-
have only confirmed all our opinions. Some of our contemporaries had
conjectured that the Horse-Guards' Ministry could not stand ; that the
palpable mediocrity of all its component parts must sink it • that a
British King would grow weary of throwing the public respect for the
kingly character, as a shield, between an insulted people and an apostate
cabinet, and that the good name of Parliament itself would be redeemed
by some act of that indignation, which in such times belongs to justice
and virtue.

We, on the contrary, pronounced that all this theory was Utopian ;
that every measure of the cabinet would be carried ; and, utterly scorn-
ing the official ability of Ministers, utterly hating their principles, poli-
tical and personal ; and burning upon them the deepest brand of
ignominy for that one odious measure of tergiversation, duplicity, and
apostacy, by which they have made themselves memorable for ever
in the history of a protestant people ; we said, unhesitatingly, that the
Ministry would stand.

The vices of a cabinet may produce its own dissolution. Or, the most
eager ambition will sometimes grow ashamed of reaching its height by
steps of ignoble materials. The pride of the chief incendiary may revolt
from the use of vulgar evil, fling away the reeds and twigs that every
marsh could have cheaply furnished, and feed his flame with more costly
sustenance. The great leader may at length disdain the miserable mob that
he drives into the breach as food for the sword, and feel that the honours
of the conquest will be tarnished by such contemptible associates of the
toil. But we expect no such things ; for there may be ambition without
dignity, pride without delicacy in its choice of means, and the haugh-
tiest determination to carry things in the last resort by force, coupled
with the most crouching readiness to avail itself of the most paltry con-
trivances. It is not in the page of poetry alone that the master spirit
of ruin extinguishes his kingly shape and stature, squats down into the
toad, and insinuates his evil in dreams into the sleeping ear of vanity
and folly, to spring up a giant armed. The page of politics has
exhibited the whole process in every age. We have there the whole
picture of the haughty aspiration and the mean compliance, the thirster

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370 Proceedings of the British Parliament. Q APRIL,

for honours, content to slake his thirst in the lowest depths of the
muddiest pool ; the man for whose capacity of overthrow, the ruin of
all that earth has noblest and most venerable, was not large enough, turn-
ing himself with pliant subtlety to work the fall of the weakest and
most tottering fragment that encumbers the champaign of- human
nature.

We, of course, do not apply this language to the premier and the
clerks composing his cabinet. But we repeat our conviction that no
circumstance has occurred to give the nation the satisfactory hope that
the present ministry will be cast out by the present parliament. There
has been no true sign of parliamentary loss of strength. The paucity of
votes for the Treasury, on the first night of the session, was to be
accounted for on the well understood principle of " looking before you
leap" — " seeing which way the wind blows," and all the other homely
but practical maxims which the necessity of keeping up .an appearance
of ten thousand a-year, when a man has but a fourth of the rental, turn
into the daily wisdom of so many worthy gentlemen.

The extinction of the twin sinecures of Messrs. Bathurst and Dundas,
a few nights ago, was one of those little explosions of public feeling,
which no habits of submission can thoroughly counteract. It was the
scandal of seeing two noblemen determined to fasten their families on
the public purse, which they had already so enormously laid under
contribution to themselves ; it was the scorn of this avidity for public
money, that suddenly excited the House to beat down the sinecurists
by a large majority against Ministers. But WTC must not argue this
into a symptom of failure in the present administration. We see an
advance regular and progressive to all its objects. By those we mean
exclusively the objects of the premier ; for we discharge all the other
sitters in the cabinet alike of the good and evil of their leader's views ;
we believe with the most perfect confidence that there is not a man
among them, who has any power of influencing those views, who more
than guesses at them, who dares venture a hint in his presence at them, or
who looks upon himself as any thing more than an upper clerk with an
inordinate salary, or feels that he holds either office or pay by any
tenure beyond the will and pleasure of the premier.

The progress of the premier is easily described. His first object was
to secure a cabinet totally dependent on himself. This was to be con-
trived but in one way. If, like his predecessors, his purpose had been
to establish a strong cabinet, a government to which, individually, as
well as generally, the nation could look up ; he would have, like his
predecessors, sought out for the best men. But it was of more import-
ance to him, to have a cabinet on which the nation must look down ;
that being the cabinet which he could rule without fear of a murmur,
without the chance of a rebellious doubt starting up in its bosom, or
the character of a British minister being burthened by the indepen-
dence of a British senator. He made a cabinet to his heart's content. And
he deserves credit for the completeness of its fabrication. We strongly
doubt whether among all the ranks of Englishmen he could have com-
piled such another ; and are ready to believe, like the Roman, in the
divinity of Fortune. There is not a man among them who has ever
been known to the country, without disappointing every hope; and
as for the unknown, their ready prostration since, justifies the choice of
their imperious master. But this principle of selection shows the use

Proceedings of the British Parliament. 371

to which a man may turn his experience. The premier knows that no
man fights with such reckless fidelity as the deserter. He has secured
them by bonds, stronger to such men, than chains of iron. If they do
not serve him through all extremities, whom can they now be suffered
to serve ? Can they take refuge from the bitterest scorn of their master,
or from the most repugnant work of his passions or his caprice, in the
lines of any portion of the commonwealth ? Which of them can go
back to Protestantism and the Constitution, with a chance of being
suffered even to hide their heads among the most obscure of the friends
of the British empire ? Can we imagine any man of them, however
self-condemned, and heart sick of the military insolence of head-
quarters, venturing to cross the House, and daring to supplicate for-
giveness, much less confidence, from the supporters of the Constitution ?
As well might Verres have returned to Sicily.

But the first measure was complete in its kind. The Premier had got a
cabinet, such as he could have got no where else, and had tied and bound
them to his fortunes by a remorseless self-interest. His next purpose
is to get a parliament as remorselessly bound. How this is to be effected
is not for us to tell ; but we will forfeit every claim to public reliance,
if the Premier shall be defeated on the most trivial point of any
measure on which it pleases him to express his sovereign will, until the
last breath has gone forth from the lips of the present parliament.

Had this servility any share of the deferential homage paid to
great ability in council ? Have the minds of those men been prostrated
before some of those illustrious emanations of consulting wisdom, or
dazzled by the sudden flashes of that intellectual brilliancy which pene-
trates through the clouds and obscurity of the Commonwealth, and
makes the national hemisphere thenceforth clear and open ? We con-
fess, in the most perfect sincerity, that we can discover nothing of these
palliatives — that the idol has exhibited no power which should entitle
him to the worship even of such men. We call upon the most
strenuous advocates of the Minister, to point out to us any one act of
polity, foreign or domestic, which proves a leading mind.

What is the state of our foreign relations ? At the death of Mr.
Canning, little more than three years ago, England was, unquestionably,
at the head of Europe ; all the great questions were submitted to her
as by right ; she was the supreme arbiter, whose suggestions passed for
law ; the paramount state, whose friendship was regarded as the first step
to security, and from whose displeasure the proudest state on the con-
tinent would have shrunk, as from something scarcely less than certain
ruin. But what is her situation now ? Russia is incontestibly at the head
of European affairs ; and the whole of that influence which the policy of
Pitt and his successors had conquered from mankind, by sagacious
counsel, by indefatigable effort, by generous hazards for all, and by the
still nobler instrumentality of labours for the diffusion of moral wisdom
and political benevolence through the civilized world, is transferred to
the brute supremacy of arms ; to a power, reigning over deserts and half
savages, remote from the intelligent part of Europe, almost relegated
by a decree of nature into barbarism, the last land to which a philoso-
pher would have turned his glance for the sparkling of that crown
which was to lord it over the jewelled diadems of Europe; Russia has been
suddenly brought forward into the centre of continental interests ; and
.the throne of England, magnificent with the spoils of a thousand years

3 B 2

372 Proceedings of the British Parliament.

of empire, and wrought with the trophies of a thousand battles, and the
still more splendid trophies of immortal conquests of the mind, has
been cast down to make room for this new and wild erection of a despotic
and savage supremacy.

The fact is beyond all denial, no matter in what language it may be
told, or by what national pride we may attempt to disguise it from
ourselves. Under the present cabinet, England has become a secondary
power ; and, as if to rebuke us for having put our trust in a military
name, this humiliation has been inflicted on us by arms, whose purpose
our cabinet could not blunt, whose progress it dared not oppose, and
whose final objects it can now learn only by conjecture, as it can resist
only by deprecation. — Three years ago Holland was our firm ally. It
has now turned to the general hope or terror of the continent. The
family connexion, which, in ordinary cases, is of the slightest possible
political strength, has now been framed into a principle of public
policy; and Holland, trembling for Belgium, and forced to choose
between the alliance of England and Russia, has made her choice, and
forms one of the steps to the universal throne. Prussia, a few years
since, connected by the closest bonds with England, has made her choice,
and is now less an ally than a vassal of Russia. Austria, as much a
natural ally of England as Cornwall is a province of it, has shaped her
policy to the time ; and we shall see her, on the first demand for her
services, submissively marching under the general banner, and receiving
her hire in the seizure of the frontier provinces of Servia. Such are
the fruits of the policy, the vigour, and the boasted coup-d'ceil of a
military cabinet.

One transaction has been lauded by the creatures of the cabinet, as a
compensation for this mass of failure. The Premier has placed Prince
Leopold on the seat of sovereignty in Greece. The value of this service
to England is still in the womb of time. Its direct result may be to
increase the bitterness of the continent against a country which exhibits
the exact degree of those qualities most provocative of contemptuous
jealousy — a passion for meddling, divested of the power of effective in-
terference. To any hope arising from the individual character of the
new made sovereign, we are utterly insensible ; unless that hope is to
be founded on the thorough knowledge of his being the last man
upon earth capable of looking to any thing but his own objects. The
experience of twelve years has turned the name of this man into
general neglect among ourselves. How shall we conceive that he will be
fitter to earn respect among a people on whom he is forced, who must
feel his presence a proof that they have only shifted masters, and who
can know nothing of him beforehand, but as a most unpopular pensioner
of England, and nothing afterwards, but as a royal tool, a permitted
agent of the governments of Europe ?

Of the personal character of Prince Leopold it cannot be necessary to
speak in England. He has contrived to live down every thing in the
shape of that public regard which connected itself with the husband of
the Princess Charlotte ; his use of his enormous pension has become a
proverb ; and, with a magnificent income, eminent rank, and first-rate
opportunities of establishing himself in the very highest place of the
most honourable popular opinion, all he has effected is that we shall be
rejoiced to get rid of him. But he is to be a pensioner still, a burthen
on the country to the amount of 50,000/. a year ; and after having paid

1830.] Proceedings of the British Parliament. 373

to this foreigner no less a sum than 600,000/., we are to go on paying
this intolerable sum, year after year,, while he lives.

So much for the wisdom of the choice ; so much for the economy of
the government ; and so much for the reviving influence of England
through the establishment of its notorious pensioner as a sovereign.

That Prince Leopold should have been selected for the throne of
Greece has astonished every one. Of all the connexions of royalty in
Europe, no man had ever exhibited humbler pretensions to be intrusted
with the great concerns of states. His life here was utterly obscure ;
he lurked in perpetual privacy ; he took no part ' in public affairs ; he
took no interest in the country which was to him a hundred-fold worth
the land where he was born. Among the nobles he was, comparatively,
unknown ; among the people unseen ; to the nation a general stranger,
except in the matter of his receiving twice the pension of any member
of the blood royal. The caprice of Nature, that so often places the
crown of a brave or a good king on the head of an imbecile descen-
dant, was not here to account for the chance that has astonished Europe.
Yet the choice may not have been without a reason. There may have
been a settled system in the mind of individuals whom no man must
venture to name but with a prostration, unless he have the inextinguish-
able familiarity of an Irishman, or the privilege of a cabinet councillor.
That system may have been making a regular progress for the last few
years. Every anomaly of that conduct of public affairs which has
perplexed the wise, and irritated the great body of the nation ; every
extraordinary instance of hazardous concession, and every equally
extraordinary instance of the rigid exercise of power ; the whole
process of insidious retreat and haughty advance, of violence and cun-
ning, may have had a determined reference to one principle, and on
that principle the dismissal of Prince Leopold to take care of his own
concerns fifteen hundred miles off, may be accounted for. On this point
we say no more. Time will give the solution, and to time we leave it
for the discovery of the principle in its full action.

The parliamentary proceedings have been signally unimportant on
the part of Ministers. The whole activity was on the side of oppo-
sition; and the striking and most gratifying circumstance in those
debates was, that this trial of ministers was not the exploit of Whig-
gism, but of those acknowledged friends of the Constitution who are
equally above the Treasury and the Whigs ; who equally scorn both, and
are looked on by both with equal alarm. Thus we have Sir Francis
Burdett battling for the moral principles of Mr. Peel, and the pliant
dulness of Mr. Peel's associates. The first debate of any interest was
a Whig attack on the Duke of Newcastle for ejecting some of his
tenantry who had broken their covenants with him, and had com-
menced dabbling in election affairs. The ludicrous part of the business
was, that the Whigs, the most notorious boroughmongers in the land,
and whose parliamentary influence is wholly dependent on boroughs,
should have suddenly felt their sensibilities thrown into agony by the
return of Mr. Sadler for a borough in the interest of the Duke of
Newcastle. The Coryphoeus on this occasion was Mr. Thompson.

" Mr. Thompson was anxious that the petition should be referred to
a select committee, for several reasons, — first, because the Duke of New-
castle did not pay to the Crown the just value of these lands ; secondly,
because he had used his influence in a manner injurious to the public ;

374 Proceedings of the British Parliament. [APRIL,

thirdly, because that influence enabled a peer to return a member to
the House of Commons."

The singular statements contained in this member's speech were
instantly contradicted by the competent authorities, Lord Lowther,
the chief commissioner of woods and forests, distinctly stating that the
whole story of the Duke's overwhelming number of voters in Newark
was a dream, and that his crown lease was no bargain. Sir Francis
Burdett then explained one of those rather hasty declarations, in which
the baronet's eloquence is apt to indulge. He had dashed out a
philippic on boroughmongering in general, and on the Duke of New-
castle as a particular instance. The Duke had answered this public
charge by no little secret negociation through inferior channels, but
gave it the most direct denial imaginable, and in the most public man-
ner, by a printed letter. Sir Francis now stated that he had talked of
the purchase, (a purchase by the by for his own seat) '•' without intend-
ing any offence to the noble Duke;" and there the matter ended.
The motion was flung out by a majority of 194 to 61.

It would be amusing to inquire by what peculiar process Mr.
Brougham, Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, Sir James Mackintosh,
young Zachary Macauley, and a whole tribe of the most inimitable
patriots and champions of popular election, have made their way into
the Honourable House. We suspect that the influence of the peerage
is recognized without much real anguish by those " free and indepen-
dent" ornaments of the Legislature ; at least we are prodigiously at a
loss to discover in what shape the national voice has summoned them
to the honours of representation.

A more important motion was brought forward by Sir Charles
Wetherell on the late trials for libel. The subject has been already
largely discussed by the public ; but the manly and vivid statements
of this eminent person, combining the fullest legal knowledge of the
topic with a singularly powerful and animated appeal to the Common
Sense of the country, gave the whole debate a new interest. Some of
the charges on the press he turned alternately into stern scorn and
contemptuous raillery. — " The Duke of Wellington had been accused
of ambition," said Sir Charles. " Was he not too ambitious ? Were not
all ministers ambitious ? It had been said that the Duke was coldly
received at Windsor. And this was a libel ! ' Coldly received by
the King at Windsor !' Had ever any thing like this been heard of in
England since the iniquitous times of the Star Chamber ? Was there
any man in that House, lawyer or not lawyer, learned or unlearned,
soldier or civilian, layman or not layman, member or not a member, who
would stand up and say that that most iniquitous and infamous tribunal,
the Star Chamber, in the very zenith of its power, had pronounced any
sentence, or any charge of libel, so puerile and so ridiculous as, that a
Alinister had been coldly received by his Sovereign at Windsor ? (Much
cheering.) * * * But what said the jury to this libel? No set
of men without shoes and stockings — (Laughter] — without hats or coats
— ( Laughter) — without shirts — even sansculottes — ( Continued laughter)—
no jury, however ignorant, naked, or destitute, could have been packed
together to find it a libel. The Duke was called imperious ; and who
could say he was not most justly called so ?" After thus settling the
main question, he touched in a brief episode upon the guilty measure
which has made the session of 1829 so fatally memorable. His sketch

1830.] Proceedings of the British Parliament. 375

is a masterpiece of manly indignation. Under the appearance of
merely stating the doubts of party men, he brands the perverted and
worldly principles of the time with indelible scorn.

" The jury had added to one of their verdicts a recommendation to
mercy, on account of the agitation of the times ; and who living recol-
lected times of such vehement agitation ? — There was the Prime
Minister of the country on the one side, declaring that the Bill for the
relief of the Roman Catholics was necessary to its salvation. On the
other side uprose the Primate and Metropolitan Bishop, and declared
it would be its destruction. Then the Chancellor on the Woolsack was
to be heard declaring, that the country must stand stock-still if the Bill
was not carried ; and on the other side, an Ex-Chancellor followed him,
and predicted the ruin of the country, if it was granted. One part of
the Right Reverend Bench of Bishops prophesied the overthrow of the
Protestant Constitution ; another assured us of the additional securities
to its stability which it was about to receive. A Chief Justice of Ire-
land said the connexion of England with Ireland would be infallibly
shaken if the Catholics were refused a participation in the rights of the
Legislature ; an English Chief Justice assured us that it would tend to
the overthrow of all Protestant Institutions. Then the Secretary of
the Home Department, and the leader, as he called himself, of the Pro-
testant interest, — who, not more than nine months before, had declared,
with great solemnity of tone and manner, that there was no possibility
of forming a cabinet unless under the principle of a division of opinion
on the Catholic Question — was the first to come down to the House,
and declare that that measure could, in his opinion, no longer be
resisted ; while a noble viceroy and a great commander, whose leg was
chopped off at Waterloo, had the further ill luck to see the Vice-
regal stool chopped from under him in Dublin. (Laughter.) All these
things were symptoms of the agitation of the times ; all the bonds of
society were loosened ; all ancient institutions were overturned ; all
friendships were affected."

But as if for the most complete commentary on this power-
ful animadversion, who should start up, but Sir Francis Burdett,
and to defend whom ? The Attorney-General ! Those who have
only heard of the baronet's name, will exclaim, can such things
be ? Sir Francis Burdett, the furious assailant of all Attorney-Generals
since his first possession of a seat ; Sir Francis, the man of the mob,
the Member for Westminster, the writer of the Manchester letter ; Sir
Francis, of the Tower, of his Majesty's jail of Newgate ; of the " Siege
of Piccadilly !" But we, who have seen, in late years, a little more of
human nature, and of Sir Francis, felt no surprise whatever to hear these
his recorded words. — " I did not expect a most grievous charge
would be brought against my learned friend, and sorry I should have
been, had my conscience compelled me to vote against him ! But I am in
no such unpleasant situation ! If the thunder of the prologue had been
equalled by the subsequent parts of the acts of this drama, it would,
indeed, have appeared by the vote we must have come to that this
House did cast blame upon my learned friend ; but I feel the greatest
satisfaction in knowing that we shall be compelled to do no such thing.
The motion, indeed, Sir, appears to me not meant for any other pur-
pose than to purge the bosom of the learned gentleman of the perilous
stuff that weighs upon his breast/'

376 Proceedings of the British Parliament. [ APRIL,

The threatened motion upon the Irish church, so long expected, and
so vehemently denied, was brought forward by Sir John Newport. It
had, at least, the merit of being on a par with the wisdom, the wit, and
the sound principles of that very trifling and long-disappointed patriot.
However, of him we shall say no more. He is whig only to the extent
of his powers ; and therefore, even as a whig, harmless. The business
was rapidly taken out of his hands by the Irish Secretary ; the little
baronet having, in fact, been only suffered to lead the way, on the terms
of those camp followers who fill up the trench with their bodies, and are,
if good for nothing else, good to be walked over by the effective com-
batants.

Lord Francis Gower's motion was to the following effect : — " That an
address be presented to his Majesty, praying for the appointment of a
committee to inquire into the state of the parish benefices of Ireland — into
the annual value of the several parishes — into the contingencies of their
respective churches and chapels — into the possibility of dissolving the
existing unions, and into several other details."

On the passing of the Popish Bill, the Minister had been loudly
called on to say, whether the atrocious measure was to be followed
by any attack on the property of the Church ? But the minister was only
" unable to express his astonishment that any member of the British
Legislature should conceive the possibility of his being guilty of any
thing of the kind." Mr. Peel protested, with what Sir Charles Wetherell
so keenly calls his <f usual solemnity of tone and manner" — that, however
he might have received new illumination within the last month ; yet,
upon the subject of the establishment, he was fixed as fate. Mr. Goul-
burn was horrified ; and Mr. Herries would have fainted, but for the
indignant glow that rushed to his heart, and " gave him assurance that
he was still a man." Now, mark the sequel. Within six little months
the measure comes before the House, not by one of those little fractional
attempts, which have so long characterized at once the will and the
impotence of whiggery, but in complete form ; no little writhing spawn
of the slime of whiggery — but the serpent winged, the crested adder — .
rising in its full dimensions, and flourishing its exuberant coils.

We must, of course, give credit to the simplicity of the premier and
Mr. Peel; as meaning, by "inquiring into the state of the parish benefices,
the annual values, the contingencies of the churches, the possibility of
dissolving unions, and the several other details" nothing more than the
construction of a common-place office report on the existing establish-
ment ; or a gentle recommendation to the Clergy to be better men arid
more zealous members of their church, and to patronize all ancient
. curates, residing under all negligent diocesans.

But if we are to seek any elucidation in the daring sincerity of the
public champions of reform, let us hear what those champions say.

" Mr. Hume thought it was high time that the whole establishment of
the Irish church should be revised and reduced, so as to accord with the
state of the country. He should vote for Sir John Newport's motion ; but
he did not do so from supposing that this motion was adequate to the
circumstances of the country. Inquiry must, in his opinion, go much
further ; and he hoped to see the establishment reduced to two or four
bishops ! He should like that sixteen or eighteen bishops were swept off at
once, and he heartily believed that, in this respect, the population of
England and Ireland would go along with him. Instead of repairing

1830.] Proceedings of the British Parliament. 377

the cathedrals, if they could not be converted into parish churches, he
would pull them down. Why should the people be compelled to keep
structures of brick and mortar, of which they made no use? Instead of
appropriating the revenues of benefices, as they became vacant, to cleri-
cal purposes, he would cause them to be paid into the Consolidated
Fund."

We find, on the other hand, all the most unvarying friends of the
Constitution in Church and State, reprobating the measure.

Sir Robert Inglis declared, that " it is totally uncalled for," the Irish
church being remarkable for its advance in every high qualification of a
Christian church, since the Union ; the period when the English ministry
had ceased alternately to perplex it by idle legislation, and corrupt it by
official influence.

" Mr. Traiit declared that the object of the commission was to reform
what needed no reformation. If the church of England was to be pulled
down, let it be pulled down by honest hands !"

Then uprose Mr. Peel, smooth as ever, and delivered his sentiments
with " his usual solemnity of tone and manner /"

te Mr. Peel observed that the proposed commission was merely for the
purposes of inquiry. Did the honourable member for Dover (Mr. Trant)
professing his anxiety to maintain the interests of religion, conceive that
he could impose upon any man by the cry of the church in danger ? Did
the honourable member not know — was he so totally ignorant of all that
was passing around him, as not to know that the crown had already ap-
pointed a commission to inquire into the whole State of the Ecclesiastical
Jurisdiction of this country ? That commission had not yet extended to
Ireland. With reference to the appropriation of the revenue of the
church, the question ought to be approached with the utmost delicacy,
and an enlarged view ought to be taken of the effect of an unequal dis-
tribution of that revenue upon the promotion of learning and religion.
When any attempts were made upon the revenue of the church, he would
resist them ; but he would not permit the sarcasms of the honourable
member for Dover to prevent his acceding to a motion, which, he
believed, was not couched in the spirit of hostility to the church, and
which would tend to promote its best interests ! !"

We know nothing that can be added to this speech ; it is incom-
parable in its kind, or beyond comparison with any thing, but the
speeches of the Right Honourable Robert Peel. What friend of the
" March of Intellect" but must congratulate this statesman on his dis-
covery, that the cry of the " church in danger" was an absurdity ; or,
but must rejoice in the gallant sincerity with which he pleads guilty to
that obsolete folly which made his creed during every year of his poli-
tical existence until the last ; when, indeed, his great friend and
master had the cruelty to tell him, " that his political existence was
terminated ?" But let us not do this politician the injustice to pass over
the evidences of his skill on this occasion. In the first place, " the
commission is only for inquiry !" not for action, of course ; not for any
already projected series of measures. It is, we suppose, for the gentle
and laudable purpose of supplying the unfurnished pigeon-holes of the
council chamber with summer reading for the Lord Ellenboroughs of
this world. But then comes a little opening of the subject—" With
reference to the appropriation of the revenues of the Church, the ques-
tion ought to be approached with the utmost delicacy" So then, is it to
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378 Proceedings of the British Parliament. [APRIL,

be approached, after all, the qualification being, that the approach be
made with delicacy ?" We hope that we are not misunderstanding the
Right Honourable Gentleman ; but more is to be said still. " An
enlarged view is to be taken of the effect of an unequal distribution of
that revenue upon the promotion of learning and religion." Then
comes a clause, which we must not pretend to explain. The Commis-
sion is to extend to " several other details/' We have heard of an oath
with an fc et ccetera," and have heard also of the postscript of ladies'
letters containing the marrow of the correspondence ; and these
", several other details" appear to us of much the same comprehensive
nature. Yet the Minister's justification of his Irish measure, by the
commission lately issued on the English Ecclesiastical Law, seems to us
the worst part of the business. No man could know better that the
English commission strictly referred to the cure of those delays and
expensive formalities in the Ecclesiastical courts, which were, in every
sense of the word, a nuisance ; and which every man, who wished well
to the course of justice, must desire to see abolished. The attempt to
found the extraordinary measure of bringing the Irish church on its trial
before a ministerial jury, on the merits of a limited measure required by
public justice and personal convenience, is but we shall be con-
tent with saying, that it is of a piece with the diplomacy of the Minister.

To turn to Foreign Politics. The French Chambers have exhibited
so refractory a spirit, that their session has been suddenly prorogued.
Their outcry was for the dismissal of Prince Polignac, and that, chiefly
on the ground that he had been appointed at the suggestion of the
British premier. Whether the charge be true or false, its popularity
shews the light in which our cabinet has contrived to place itself with
the influential part of the French people. And this disgust is the more
remarkable, from the recent advances to a more friendly intercourse
between the French and English generally, and from the obvious
importance of the close connexion of the two Governments, as the bar-
riers against the hourly growing and formidable ambition of Russia.

But it is among Englishmen themselves that the liberties of their
country, and eventually of Europe, must find their security, or be
undone. With freedom in the people, and honesty in the Government,
the British Empire is impregnable ; with corruption and the spirit of
place in the people, and with artifice and dissimulation in the govern-
ment, the strength of Britain must be but a rope of sand. No matter for
its show of strength, the more gigantic its defences against the enemy
abroad, the more surely will they fall by their own weight, and crush its
defenders at home. The future projects of the cabinet we can have no
power to restrain ; we have scarcely the means to conjecture. But let
them be what they will, we must adhere to the one grand and saving
maxim, that upon the national virtue must, in the last resort of every
people, depend the national salvation.

1830.] [ 379

THE FIEND OF THE FERRY.

IT was on a morning in the month of June that we found ourselves
wandering about a little village on the banks of the Thames, two or
three miles below Kingston. The day might be said to be an exotic.
There was a rich, deep, clear Italian sky — a broad, bright river re-
flecting it. The roads had been sprinkled by a shower during the
night. The sunshine animated every thing, and yet the heat was not
excessive. There was little shadow to be seen — the light penetrated
through the hedges, and gave a transparent effect to their green leaves.
The scene, the climate — time, space — all seemed to have been touched
by a wand. And, I verily believe, there was indeed a spirit of enchant-
ment at work at that hour, which will account conveniently enough for
the marvel and the mystery I am about to record.

We were in the most exuberant spirits — like school-boys let loose
without a task. Dr. Johnson, when he put the final full-stop to his
dictionary ; — a play-wright, when — after three years of nervous agony,
and wishing theatres, managers, actors and all, in Erebus, a hundred
times over — he sees the curtain drop in the midst of applause, and the
bowing actor, who comes forward to announce his second night, swept
off in a tempest of acclamation ; — a pedestrian, walking the thousandth
mile of his wager, and having half a day to do it in — could form but
a faint idea of our enjoyment. Whether this arose from the pleasant,
rambling, unpremeditated kind of way in which we had spent the pre-
vious day, or from the effect of the delightful weather and the scenes
that surrounded us, need not be determined. But there we were, full
of such true mad-cap merriment, that had we lighted upon old Jack
Falstaff, we had infallibly committed robbery for very sport, and made
an Eastcheap of the first inn we could take by storm. Nothing escaped
us that morning ; we

" Found puns in trees, pranks in the running brooks,
Laughter in stones, arid jokes in every thing."

In this mood we strolled about, careless of the way we were going,
and ripe for romantic incident. At last, we resolved upon crossing the
river, and were informed that we were near a ferry, to which we imme-
diately directed our course. A joke, however, sprung up in the interim,
and took us half a mile out of the way in running it down. We then
perceived that we had missed the path, and were about to return, when
we were overtaken by a being — but I will not, at this period of our
history, attempt to describe him ; as, in fact, we took but very little
notice of him at this encounter. We merely inquired the way to the
ferry, received the desired information, and, as the stranger walked on
before us at a pretty quick pace, we soon lost sight of him.

We proceeded in the path pointed out to us, when some odd, joke-
engendering name, over a shop door, called off our attention, and
we were once more at a loss. A debate ensued amongst us ; one
contending that we were to go down the lane — and another, by the
clump of trees. Our embarrassment was, of course, only productive of
more mirth, and we at length agreed to follow the movements of a
peripatetic pig, which was lounging about in a state of self-enjoyment,
and looked as though he longed to make one of our party. The

3 C 2

380 The Fiend of the Ferry. [APRIL,

turned the corner of the lane, and we followed ; but we had no sooner
done so, then we beheld, coming towards us, the identical traveller who,
but a few minutes before, had passed us on the road, as he directed us
to the ferry. His return excited no surprise; but the tone of his voice
when he addressed us, by saying — " You are going wrong — I told you
to keep the road round the ruined wall — " awakened a new and rather
startling sensation. The note was hollow and heavy. It was that of a
bull-frog with a cold — a muffled drum, determined to be melancholy —
a speaking trumpet, troubled with an asthma — a funeral bell in a fit — a
bass-viol imitating Sir Anthony Absolute. Its modulations reminded
one of the creaking of a dungeon-door. He spoke as if he had a thun-
derbolt sticking in his throat, that occasioned a sort of supernatural
hoarseness. We have heard comic songs and cabbages cried in the
most eccentric of tones — we have communed with hackney-coachmen,
and heard the notes of watchmen at all hours of the night : but these
— they were merely the roarings of a nightingale, or the hoarseness of
a cricket, compared to the full, deep, internal and sepulchral sound
that issued from the mouth of our travelling finger-post, as, with
an eye darting reproach, and a lip mingling something like scorn with
its civility, he said — " You are going wrong — I told you to keep the
road round the ruined wall !"

As he paused a minute to explain the way to one of our party, I had
an opportunity of observing him. He looked like a romance in one
volume. He was above the middle size, rather thin, and with nothing
remarkable in his dress but a wide slouched hat, and a pair of boots
that seemed to have been made for a satyr. His face, however, as well
as I could judge of its character through the dark shadow flung across
it by the overhanging-brim of the hat, betrayed one of those expressions
which, to use a phrase no less convenient than original, are " more
easily conceived than described." It was compounded from a whole
library of horrors. He had taken his nose from the " Monk," and his
eyes from " Melmoth." The Minerva press was in his mouth, and
Mrs. Radcliffe frowned fiercely from his vaulted brows. " The Italians"
slept in the hollow of one cheek, and " The Robbers" in that of the
other. He was a composition of Middleton and Michael Angelo — the
spear of Satan, and the broomstick of Hecate.

Having re-directed us, he hurried off in a contrary direction to that
prescribed for us, and was quickly relieved, by a turn of the road, from
our gaze. Our boisterous mirth had received a check ; we stood looking
at each other and began to collect opinions. Every one agreed that
the stranger had slipped from a bracket at Abbotsford, and that he was
certainly the property of Sir Walter Scott. However, we tried to
forget him, and again set forth in search of the mysterious ferry. This
was even now not very easy to find ; for we were so startled by the
face and manner of the stranger that we had once more forgotten his
directions.

To put an end to our doubts and difficulties, we applied to a pretty
little country-faced girl, whom we saw at a shop- window, tore-direct our
erring steps. This she did with so much grace and good-nature, that, in-
stead of proceeding, we staid to make a whole catalogue of inquiries. A
pretty maid in a village is equal to a beauty in town ; the charms that
would escape observation in a crowd, coming singly upon us, amidst
the sweetness and simplicity of nature, seem to partake of the character

1830.] The Fiend of ike Ferry. 381

of surrounding objects. You look upon a ruddy cheek as a part of the
scene — as a sample of rural loveliness, open to admiration. There is no
difference between a blue eye and a blue sky, out of town — we gaze
upon both alike, with the same freedom and the same fondness. You
are admiring nature, and must enjoy what she presents to you, whether
it be a milk-girl or a mountain. In short, we got into such a chat with
our ruddy little directress, that we had nearly forgotten the ferry alto-
gether, when we were suddenly reminded of it by the re-appearance of
the wandering wonder — the hie et ubique, and the hinc illce lachrymce
of our tale. This time we fairly started ; I believe one or two of us
turned pale ; but I know we all experienced a feeling of curiosity not
unmingled with a kind of awe. At this encounter the Wanderer did
not speak ; he turned a keen and searching glance on us, intimating
that we had disobeyed his directions, and were trifling with him imper-
tinently ; and then, pointing to the path we were to take, glided
hastily past the window, and disappeared.

This silence, and the emphatic motion of his finger, alarmed us even
more than the sepulchral tone of his voice. We prepared now to seek
out the ferry in good earnest — though it were for no other reason than
to have the Thames between us and our perambulating acquaintance.
We bid, therefore, a hasty adieu to the village damsel, and hurried
towards the river, of which, in a few minutes, we came in sight.
Another cause of delay arose, however ; for, just at this moment, a
heavy shower came on. We were driven for shelter into the village
church-yard, and took refuge under a dilapidated porch. Determined
to preserve the gaiety with which our march commenced, even amidst
the gloom of the weather, which had been but a moment before so mild
and animating, we drowned, as well as we could, all recollection of the
portentous predestrian ;— although it was impossible not to associate the
sudden and singular change in the heavens — the transition from a clear
calm sky to a tempestuous range of clouds — with the coming arid con-
duct of a being whom we were secretly disposed to consider something
more than mortal. As we stood under the porch, our attention was
drawn to the epitaphs that surrounded us. We admired the piety of
some of these, but the poetry of others was of an order so perfectly
novel and original, that I fear we read them with any thing but a feel-
ing of seriousness. We could not but be struck with the number of
" affectionate husbands" and " indulgent fathers," that were mouldering
around us ; " faithful wives" were as plenty as blackberries. What a
saddening reflection to think how good the world was formerly, and that
people should so seldom become amiable until they are dead ! In addi-
tion to these mournful truths, we found so many subjects for pathetic
puns and moral pleasantry, that I thought it time to quit the scene and
pursue our way, particularly as the shower had abated. We proceeded,
therefore, along the paved path towards a little gate that led into the
public road ; and, in passing close to the white-washed wall of the
church, we stopped to look in at a low, small, grated window. The
object that first caught our notice was a door standing open at the oppo-
site end of the church ; and the next moment we discerned the figure
of a person issuing thence, the sight of whom almost chilled our senses.
We could not be deceived in that figure, although his back was towards
us ; but as he passed from the portal he turned his head, and fixed such
a look of recognition upon us, that we stood in mute astonishment, staring

382 The Fiend of the Ferry. [APRIL,

at each other. It was the supernatural stroller — the sub-human Captain
Barclay — the possessor of ubiquity — the very " truepenny" of our
terrors !

After a minute or two we began to try our surmises upon the cause of
his visit to the church. Had he sought shelter from the storm ? — it
might be, as the door was left open. Or had he come to reprove, per-
haps to punish, our ill-timed merriment ! — we wished that we had been
less critical upon the epitaphs ! Anxious to escape from the spot, we
hastened towards the gate ; and came within sight of it just in time to
see the self-same figure, with the face turning round to recognize us,
hurrying through it, and pointing towards the river. We were once
more riveted to the earth — completely satisfied now that .we were haunted
by a vision — an ignis-fatuus — a vampire ! We listened, but we could
hear no sound of footsteps, although his boots were so heavy, that Hoby
must have employed a crane to lift them from his window, and have sent
home with them a steam-engine, of a forty-bootjack power, to pull them
off. And here a thought struck us that threw a light on the mystery.
Why did he wear those prodigious boots, unless he possessed feet to fill
them ? if so, those feet must be cloven ones. Again, we reflected, that
with a hat like his, slouched over the brows, horns might be very easily
concealed ; — and as for a tail, it was doubtless tied in a double knot, and
put into his coat pocket. Our minds were made up — there was no
room for doubt. All idea of merriment was suspended. If a bon-mot
sprang up, it was instantly nipped in the bud j if a pun burst forth, it
died for want of a publisher.

We hurried to the bank, eager to cross the river, and to elude our
pursuer. On reaching it, we were informed by the boatman that he
should start in a minute or two, having other passengers. There were
several already in the punt ; but of these, occupied as we were with our
own feelings, we took no particular notice. We entered, and were
requested by the boatman to go towards the head to make more room.
But in doing so — spirit of mystery ! what a sight met our eyes ! We
were standing in the same boat, commencing the same voyage, with a
creature compounded, not of clay, but of sulphur and smoke ! We were
within six paces of the wanderer ! We were about to cross the water
with the spirit of fire ! We had the evil one for a compagnon du voyage !
What sensations were ours ! Nor were our terrors in the smallest degree
allayed by the ghastly grin which we observed playing on his lips as our
eyes met his. He distended his mouth, as he surveyed us, into a horrible
exaggeration of a smile. What might this mean ? If we could believe
him human, it might be interpreted as an expression of self-satisfaction
at having reached the ferry first, and transacted business, at various
parts of the village, while we were idling about. We endeavoured to
comfort ourselves with this supposition, and turned to look at a poor
idiot boy who was angling at a little distance, and complaining that he
had not had a nibble for several minutes. Alas ! he little imagined the
cause — the fish were as frightened as we were.

At length the boatman put off. At the same instant a tremendous
peal of thunder burst immediately over our heads, and another shower
descended. We felt our worst fears confirmed. It was evidently the
intention of the fiend-passenger to sink the boat as soon as it had
reached the centre of the current. He had decoyed us to the ferry on
purpose, and we had no means of escape. We were afraid to mention

1830.] The Fiend of the Ferry. 383

our suspicions, or to ask to be put back on shore. The ferry-man
looked grim ; we felt that we were gazing, for the first time, on old
Charon — that we were crossing the Stygian stream ! We contemplated
our fellow-voyagers with feelings of commiseration. Instead of human
beings, we beheld only a congregation of ghosts. We saw one spirit
pulling up the shadow of a shirt-collar, that had the appearance of
being wet ; and another was holding the apparition of an umbrella over
its head. I pitied one lady who seemed to take great pride in an im-
mense vapour that hung over her, in the shape of a bonnet ; and who
was enraptured with a rainbow that encircled her waist, which she mis-
took for a riband. I observed a beau casting an admiring eye down
his aerial leg, and criticising the cut of a pair of transparent trowsers ;
while an attorney's clerk, standing near him, was buttoning up a black
cloud, which he was fondly imagining to be a coat. We felt for them
all — it was afflicting to see them fancying themselves within a mile of
Hampton-Court, when, in fact, they were only crossing an imitation of
the Thames. The ferryman continued to toil, and the boat approached
the centre. How we envied the ghost of a duck that glided past !
How we longed for cork-jackets ! We ventured a glance at the mighty
Mystery — the great Agitator. He was pretending to take something
that seemed to be snuff out of the spectre of a box. He even affected
to sneeze — the sound was answered by another peal of thunder. This
we took for the signal — we awaited our fate, firm and collected. The
boat, however, to our intense surprise and relief, passed the middle
current in safety — the waves rolled harmlessly by — the vessel made a
zig-zag movement through them, and, in a few minutes more, actually
touched the shore on the opposite side. At the same moment the rain
ceased — the clouds cleared off— a stream of sunshine burst on the river
— and the glories of nature were once more visible through the dark-
ness and dismay that had enveloped her.

I need not say how agreeable our astonishment was. We determined,
however, to fix an eye on our superhuman fellow-passenger. We saw
him, as the boat landed, take out the phantom of a penny-piece, which
he placed in the boatman's hand, who seemed quite contented with the
illusion. He turned, and saw that we were watching him ; he smiled,
as if in mockery of the terror that was still visible in our aspects ; he
then nodded to us with much fiendish familiarity and demoniac polite-
ness, and in the next moment sprang upon the shore. After lingering
a minute or two, we followed his example. We beheld him glide along
a winding path, extending from the bank, till his garments melted
almost into mist. We followed. He turned off into a lane, and was
hidden from view. We still rushed resolutely forward. When we
reached the lane, hardly expecting to obtain a glimpse of the object of
our search, we paused to peep down it; and there, seated on a stile at
two yards' distance, we descried the dreaded demon, with the image of
a clasp-knife uplifted in one hand, and in the other (never shall we
forget the feelings with which we surveyed that scene) the semblance
of a huge piece of bacon upon an acre of bread ! This was a termina-
tion to our adventure so perfectly unanticipated, that we stood, for a
second or two, petrified ; but I must admit, at the same time, that we
felt disappointed. We could not have suspected him of such plough-
man predilections. We should have rather expected to find him
banqueting upon a seraph, cut into sandwiches — or picking the bones of
a cherub.

384 The Fiend of the Ferry. Q APRIL,

As the fiend looked up from his feast, which he seemed to enjoy with
the relish of an epicure, we felt that we were in danger of forming his
dessert ; and darted off accordingly like a herd of deer that had sur-
prised a lion at dinner. Never, since that eventful hour, have we en-
countered the mysterious object of our terrors ; nor can we find, upon
subsequent inquiry, that he was known in the neighbourhood. All
trace of him vanished with the tempest ; he went out like a Congreve
rocket. We feel as if we had seen the Wandering Jew ! Surely — will
the surmise be pardoned ? — surely it could not have been our old dra-
matic and demonized friend, Mr. Obi Smith — that prince of terrors and
trap-doors! We leave the suggestion for the consideration of the reader.
It is the only one we can possibly offer respecting our extraordinary
acquaintance, the Fiend of the Ferry ! B.

LADY BYEON AND MOORE.

THIS document, which has made its appearance within these few
days, (first published, we believe, in the Literary Gazette), belongs to
the history of his late lordship's career in a very peculiar manner. It
is very well written, and whatever singularity there may appear in its
coming forth at so distant a period from the transaction, is amply
accounted for by the revival of the subject in Moore's volume. We
discharge the biographer of any intention of offending any one, yet his
details having been learned from the aggrieving party, it was scarcely
possible that they should not have, in some degree, pressed upon the
aggrieved. And even now, Lady Byron takes up the pen neither to
impeach her late eccentric lord, nor to exonerate herself, but to defend
those parents whom it is a duty to defend, and whom her simple and
clear statement fully relieves from imputations, sedulously and subtlely
enough thrown upon them by his lordship, and certainly not at all
softened by his lordship's friends.

The charges made in this letter are extraordinary. What they were, it
is repulsive to conjecture ; and impossible even for strangers to ex-
press with public propriety. That the harshest rumours of Lord Byron's
habits were common during his life-time, every one knows. That his
foreign life had produced upon his reckless nature the injurious effects
which, in a more or less degree, they produce on the morals of every
voluntary absentee, is unluckily clear from the whole tenor of his later
writings ; and that his final withdrawing from his country, was less to
shun personal perplexities, or to enjoy Italian sunshine, than to give a
free way to his career, at a distance from the restraints of English public
opinion, and the salutary fear of the English press, is matter of perfect
notoriety.

But on those points we touch with infinite reluctance. It is more pleasing
to us to vindicate a man of genius. Though unhappily, the only way in
which Lord Byron can be vindicated is, by throwing the scandal of his
conduct from his heart upon his understanding. We think, in contradic-
tion to Lady Byron, that he was, at times, nearly insane. Perhaps not so
to the degree which would justify the interference of either family or
physician ; but certainly with those flying touches of frenzy, of which
his uncle, and some other of his relatives by the paternal side, his
father's profligate conduct, and his mother's virago temper, seem to have
afforded sufficient examples. There are allusions in his play of " Man-

1830.] Lady Byron and Moore. 385

fred," that would blacken for ever the moral reputation of any man alive,
if the offence were not to be diluted by the lunacy of the writer.

On the whole, Lady Byron seems to have perfectly justified her
parents, which was her principal purpose; and deeply as she has
suffered for her headlong determination to choose a husband, whose
known vices she overlooked in his poetic fame ; she is now entitled to
rest from those perpetual references to her conduct,, which have so long
amounted to a virtual persecution.

REMARKS, OCCASIONED BY MR. MOORE*S NOTICES OF LORD BYRON*S LIFE.

" I have disregarded various publications, in which facts within my own
knowledge have been grossly misrepresented ; but I am called upon to no-
tice some of the erroneous statements proceeding from one who claims to be
considered as Lord Byron's confidential and authorised friend. Domestic de-
tails ought not to be intruded on the public attention ; if, however, they are so
intruded, the persons affected by them have a right to refute injurious charges.
Mr. Moore has promulgated his own impressions of private events in which I
was most nearly concerned, as if he possessed a competent knowledge of the
subject. Having survived Lord Byron, I feel increased reluctance to advert to
any circumstances connected with the period of my marriage ; nor is it now
my intention to disclose them, further than may be indispensably requisite for
the end I have in view. Self-vindication is not the motive which actuates me
to make this appeal, and the spirit of accusation is unmirigled with it ; but
when the conduct of my parents is brought forward in a disgraceful light, by
the passages selected from Lord ^Byron's letters, and by the remarks of his
biographer, I feel bound to justify their characters from imputations which I
know to be false. The passages from Lord Byron's letters, to which I refer,
are the aspersions on my mother's character, p. (548. 1. 4 :

" ' My child is very well, and flourishing, I hear, but I must see also. I feel
no disposition to resign it to the contagion of its grandmother's society.'

" The assertion of her dishonourable conduct in employing a spv, p. 645.
1. 7, &c.

" ' A Mrs. C. (now a kind of housekeeper, and spyofLadyN.'s), who, in
her better days, was a washerwoman, is supposed to be — by the learned — very
much the occult cause of our domestic discrepancies/

" The seeming exculpation of myself, in the extract, p. 646, with the words
immediately following it:

" ' Her nearest relatives are a ;' where the blank clearly implies some-
thing too offensive for publication. These passages tend to throw suspicion
on my parents, and give reason to ascribe the separation either to their direct
agency, or to that of ' officious spies/ employed by them. From the follow-
ing part of the narrative, p. 642, it must also be inferred that an undue influ-
ence was exercised by them for the accomplishment of this purpose : —

" ' It was in a few weeks after the latter communication between us (Lord
Byron and Mr. Moore) that Lady Byron adopted the determination of parting
from him. She had left London at the latter end of January, on a visit to her
father's house, in Leicestershire, and Lord Byron was in a short time to follow
her. They had parted in the utmost kindness — she wrote him a letter, full of
playfulness and affection, on the road ; and immediately on her arrival at
Kirkby Mallory, her father wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that she would
return to him no more/

" In my observations upon this statement, I shall, as far as possible, avoid
touching on any matters relating personally to Lord Byron and myself. The
facts are : — I left London for Kirkby Mallory, the residence of my father and
mother, on the 15th of January 1816. Lord Byron had signified to me in
writing (Jan. 6th) his absolute desire that I should leave London on the ear-
liest day that I could conveniently fix. It was not safe for me to undertake
the fatigue of a journey sooner than the 15th. Previously to my departure, it
had been strongly impressed on my mind, that Lord Byron was under the

M.M. New Series.— Voi>. IX. 3 D

386 Lady Byron and Moore. \_ APRIL,

influence of insanity. This opinion was derived, in a great measure, from the
communications made to me by his nearest relatives and personal attendant,
who had more opportunities than myself of observing him during the latter
part of my stay in town. It was even represented to me, that he was in dan-
ger of destroying himself. With the concurrence of his family) I had consulted
Dr. Baillie, as a friend (Jan. 8th) respecting this supposed malady. On
acquainting him with the state of the case, and with Lord Byron's desire that
I should leave London, Dr. Baillie thought that my absence might be advisable,
as an experiment, assuming the fact of mental derangement; for Dr. Baillie,
not having had access to Lord Byron, could not pronounce a positive opinion
on that point. He enjoined, that in correspondence with Lord Byron, I should
avoid all but light and soothing topics. Under these impressions, I left Lon-
don, determined to follow the advice given by Dr. Baillie. Whatever might
have been the nature of Lord Byron's conduct towards me from the time of my
inarriage, yet, supposing him to be in a state of mental alienation, it was not
for me, nor for any person of common humanity, to manifest, at that moment,
a sense of injury. On the day of my departure, and again on my arrival at
Kirkby, Jan. 16th, I wrote to Lord Byron in a kind and cheerful tone, accord-
ing to those medical directions. The last letter was circulated, and employed
as a pretext for the charge of my having been subsequently influenced to ' de-
sert' my husband. It has been argued, that I parted from Lord Byron in per-
fect harmony : that feelings incompatible with any deep sense of injury had
dictated the letter which I addressed to him ; and that my sentiments must
have been changed by persuasion and interference, when I was under the roof
of my parents. These assertions and inferences are wholly destitute of foun-
dation. When I arrived at Kirkby Mallory, my parents were unacquainted
with the existence of any causes likely to destroy my prospects of happiness ;
and when I communicated to them the opinion which had been formed con-
cerning Lord Byron's state of mind, they were most anxious to promote his
restoration by every means in their power. They assured those relations who
were with him in London, that ' they would devote their whole care and atten-
tion to the alleviation of his malady/ and hoped to make the best arrangements
for his comfort, if he could be induced to visit them. With these intentions
my mother wrote, on the 17th, to Lord Byron, inviting him to Kirkby Mallory.
She had always treated him with an affectionate consideration and indulgence,
which extended to every little peculiarity of his feelings. Never did an irritat-
ing word escape her lips, in her whole intercourse with him. The accounts
given me after I left Lord Byron, by the persons in constant intercourse with
him, added to those doubts which had before transiently occurred to my mind,
as to the reality of the alleged disease, and the reports of his medical atten-
dant, were far from establishing the existence of any thing like lunacy. Under
this uncertainty, I deemed it right to communicate to my parents, that if 1
were to consider Lord Byron's past conduct as that of a person of sound mind,
nothing could induce me to return to him. It therefore appeared expedient,
both to them and myself, to consult the ablest advisers. For that object, and
also to obtain still further information respecting the appearances which
seemed to indicate mental derangement, my mother determined to go to Lori-
don. She was empowered by me to take legal opinions on a written statement
of mine, though I had then reasons for reserving a part of the case from the
knowledge, even of my father and mother. Being convinced, by the result of
these inquiries, and by the tenor of Lord Byron's proceedings, that the notion
of insanity was an illusion, I no longer hesitated to authorise such measures as
were necessary, in order to secure me from being ever again placed in his
power. Conformably with this resolution, my father wrote to Mm on the 2d
of February, to propose an amicable separation. Lord Byron at first rejected
this proposal ; but when it was distinctly notified to him, that if he persisted
in his refusal, recourse must be had to legal measures, he agreed to sign a
deed of separation. Upon applying to Dr. Lushington, who was intimately
acquainted with all the circumstances, to state, in writing, what he recollected
upon this subject, I received from him the following letter, by which it will be

1830.] Lady Byron and Moore. 387

manifest that my mother cannot have teen actuated by any hostile or ungene-
rous motives towards Lord Byron : —

" ' My dear Lady Byron, — I can rely upon the accuracy of my memory for
the following statement. I was originally consulted by Lady Noel on your
behalf, whilst you were in the country ; the circumstances detailed by her were
such as justified a separation, but they were not of that aggravated descrip-
tion as to render such a measure indispensable. On Lady Noel's representa-
tion, I deemed a reconciliation with Lord Byron practicable, and felt most sin-
cerely a wish to aid in effecting it. There was not, on Lady Noel's part, any
exaggeration of the facts, nor, so far as I could perceive, any determination to
prevent a return to Lord Byron : certainly none was expressed when I spoke
of a reconciliation. When you came to town, in about a fortnight, or perhaps
more, after my first interview with Lady Noel, I was, for the first time, in-
formed by you of facts, utterly unknown, as I have no doubt, to Sir Ralph and
Lady Noel. On receiving this additional information, my opinion was entirely
changed : I considered a reconciliation impossible. I declared my opinion,
and added that if such an idea should be entertained, I could not, either pro-
fessionally or otherwise., take any part towards effecting it. Believe me, very
faithfully your's.

f STEPH. LUSHINGTON/

' Great George Street, Jan. 31, 1830.'

" I have only to observe, that, if the statements on which my legal advisers
(the late Sir Samuel Romilly and Dr. Lushington) formed their opinions, were
false, the responsibility and the odium should rest with me only. I trust that
the facts which I have here briefly recapitulated, will absolve my father and
mother from all accusations with regard to the part they took in the separation
between Lord Byron and myself. They neither originated, instigated, nor
advised that separation; and they cannot be condemned for having afforded to
their daughter the assistance and protection which she claimed. There is no
other near relative to vindicate their memory from insult. I am therefore com-
pelled to break the silence, which I had hoped always to observe, and to solicit
from the readers of Lord Byron's Life an impartial consideration of the testi-
mony extorted from me.

" A- 1. NOEL BYRON.'
, " Hanger Hill, Feb. 19, 1830."

ANCIENT AND MODERN SYSTEMS OF SLAVERY.

THE existence of slavery in all countries of the world, from the earliest
periods to the present time, is one of those extraordinary and indefinable
results of the progress of human society, which at once confounds theo-
retical reasonings, and puts investigation and regular definition at de-
fiance.

It is easy to conceive that even in the earliest ages, when mankind
first began to perceive the advantages of living in a state of community,
subject to conventional regulations or fixed laws, individuals may have
been induced to resign, for a time, their natural liberty, through the
pressure of some particular evil, or with the view of obtaining some
present or future good ; and there can be no doubt, but that as civili-
zation acquired influence, and humane ideas began to prevail, many
persons guilty, or supposed to be guilty, of crimes against the social
compact, or who had been taken taken prisoners during war, instead of
being made to suffer death, have, as a less cruel, and more expiatory
punishment, been reduced to a temporary or permanent state of
bondage.

We find, for instance, that even the most civilized nations of the

3 D 2

Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. £ APRIL,

•present day have their galley slaves and coerced labourers ; and to come,
still nearer home, those numerous convicts condemned to labour in the
hulks in chains, or who are sentenced to a state of servitude in New
South Wales, or elsewhere, are neither more nor less than persons
reduced to a state of slavery for their crimes. Again, can we shut our
eyes to the fact, that even in England, there are always throughout the
country numbers of persons, who by indolence or misfortune, are obliged
to surrender their liberty, in exchange for food and clothing, and whose
labour is either sold to the highest bidder, or who are employed by their
respective parishes in the most degrading offices of slaves, such as
sweeping and cleaning the streets, dragging the filth in carts, &c., as
may be seen weekly even in certain metropolitan parishes — St. Luke's
for instance ? We fear, we cannot with justice, class such persons in
any other manner than with those who have been obliged to surrender
their liberty under the pressure of evil, or with the view of obtaining
some particular good !

But, to attempt to trace the progress of slavery until it became in
various countries of the world, a hereditary state or condition of man-
kind, is not the object of the present article. We merely propose to give
a slight sketch of the treatment of slaves in ancient Rome, and in modern
Africa ; and we shall hereafter state shortly a few facts relative to their
condition in that land of freedom, the United States of America, taking
the most recent travellers in the latter countries as our guides, so that our
readers may judge for themselves, how far our own colonists have suc-
ceeded above all other people in mitigating the evils of slavery, so as by
fradual degrees, to raise their labourers in the scale of intellectual
eings, and to fit them for ultimately becoming useful and industrious
freemen, instead of remaining, like their African ancestors, in a state of
the most dark and cruel barbarism.

Let it not for one moment be supposed, that we are advocates for the
continuance of slavery : for on the contrary we declare with Mr. Cole-
ridge, that we are not aware of any other bias in our minds, " except
that which may be caused by a native hatred of injustice, and a contempt
and disdain of cant and hypocrisy/'*

We may premise, that however much slavery may be considered at
variance with the spirit of Christianity, every one acquainted with sacred
history must know, that after the miraculous emancipation of the Jews
from their slavery in Egypt, their lav/giver expressly permitted the
holding of heathen slaves, and even the subjection to perpetual bondage
of individuals amongst the chosen people themselves.

It is also very remarkable that from the beginning to the end of the
New Testament, there is not a single command directly condemning the
state of slavery, although during the time of the apostles, it existed
throughout the Roman Empire, and slaves were treated with the greatest
severity ; but on the contrary it seems, as in the case of Onisimus, the
runaway slave of Philemon, that the right of the master over his slave,
is specially sanctioned, and many directions as to the duty which even
Christian slaves owe to their masters, are there expressly set forth.

The treatment of slaves in ancient Rome has been so misrepresented
by the anti-colonial party in this country, in pursuance of their odious
schemes against our West-India colonists, that we consider it necessary
to show from undoubted authorities, the nature of Roman slavery ; and

* Six Months in the West Indies.

1830.] Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. 389

although none of the classic writers give a distinct description of the
treatment of Roman slaves, we find by incidental remarks, that masters
had an absolute power over their slaves, whom they might scourge or
put to death at pleasure ; and that this right was exercised with so much
severity, especially during the most corrupt ages of the republic, that in
the end, laws to restrain it became necessary.* Tacitus tells us that
(A.D. 57-) a decree of the senate, relative to revenge and security,
declared that if any one was slain by his slave, execution should be done
on the whole ! And it appears that (A.D. 61,) four hundred slaves in
one family, without distinction of age, sex, or undoubted innocence, suffered
death, in consequence of the assassination of their master, Pedonius
Secundus, by one of their number, from motives of private revenge.*
Such were the mild laws of the Romans ! It further appears that some
slaves served as door-keepers, attended by a dog — both chained. J That
slaves were allowed a beggarly quantity of food, and if by presents
or otherwise, they became possessed of property, they were obliged to
make presents out of their peculium to their masters, § when beaten,
they were suspended with a weight tied to their feet, and the common
capital punishment up to the time of Constantine was crucifixion.
Vedius Pollio, a friend of Augustus, used to throw them into a fish-
pond, to be devoured by lamprey s.|| At one period, their masters could
compel them to fight with wild beastslf and incredible numbers were
destroyed as gladiators.

" The common lot of slaves in general," says Dr. Taylor,** (quoted by
Parkhurst,) " was with the ancients, in many circumstances very deplo-
rable. They were held pro nullis, pro mortuis, pro quadrupedibus : for
no men, for dead men, for beasts ; nay, were in a much worse state than
any cattle whatever. They had no head in the state, no name, tribe, or
register. They were not capable of being injured; nor could they take
by purchase or descent ; had no heirs, and therefore could make no will
of course. Exclusive of what was called their peculium, whatever they
acquired was their master's. They could not plead, nor be pleaded, but
were excluded from all civil concerns whatsoever ; were not entitled to
the rights and considerations of matrimony, and therefore had no relief in
case of adultery ; nor were the proper objects of cognation, or affinity.
They might be tortured for evidence ; punished at the discretion of
their lord, and even put to death by his authority ; together with many
other civil incapacities which I have not room to enumerate."

" So truly deplorable/' adds Parkhurst, " was the legal state of these
unhappy persons under the Roman government."tt
• If such was the condition of the domestic slaves, the prcedial were
systematically treated with severity the most shocking. They appear
to have been habitually worked in chains. Seneca speaks of Vasia
spatia terrarum pervinctos colenda, and Lipsius, one of his commen-
tators, observes H " the ancients cultivated, for the most part, all their
lands by bound (or linked) slaves." Juvencius confirms this distinctly ;

* Adams' Rom : Antiq. p. 37-

f Annal XIII. 32. XIV. 42, et Segg.

% Columel, praef. Senec. de Fras. iii. 37.

§ Terent. Phorm. 1. 1. 9.

|| Juv. ut Sup. Cic. in Verr. v. 3, 64, &c.
51 Plin. ix. 23. S. 39. Dio. liv. 23.
** Modestin. ad leg. Cornel, de Sicar.
ft Elements of Civil Law, pp.428, 9.
:££ " Allegatus Mancissii rura fere omnia colebant Antiqui."

390 Ancient and Modern Systems of * Slavery. [APRIL,

stating that " they" (the slaves) " usually ploughed the land, carried
earth, and performed the other labours of the field, in chains."

At night they were shut up in prisons — many of them built under
ground.* In old age, they were, even by the Roman Cato, says Arch-
bishop Potter,t " turned out to starve, or allowed to die of hunger.
f A master of a family should sell his old oxen, all his sheep that are
not hardy : he should sell his old waggons, and his old instruments of
husbandry ; he should sell such of his slaves as are old and infirm,
and every thing else that is old or useless/ " Up to the time of the
Emperor Claudius, " the custom," says Rees, " of exposing old, use-
less, or sick slaves, in an island of the Tiber, there to starve, seems to
have been pretty common in Rome." Masters were restrained from
liberating more than a very small number of their slaves ; and even
after manumission the most unjust severity was exercised towards
them — such was the system which has, most impudently, been held
forth by the " philanthropists" as having been superior to that now
prevalent in the British West Indies !

Every additional account of the present state of society in the in-
terior of Africa confirms the melancholy fact, that throughout the whole
of that vast continent a state of unmitigated slavery has from the earliest
ages been universal : — that it existed prior to the visits of Euro-
pean slave traders ; that it now exists, and will undoubtedly continue,
although not a single native should in future be carried off from the
coast.

We are very far, however, from asserting that the abolition of the
slave trade would be an evil ; on the contrary, we maintain that until
it is entirely put down, the door will remain shut against the intro-
duction of improvement, especially among the brutal and ferocious
tribes on the coast.

We have already made an attempt to expose the system of humbug
which has for the last forty or fifty years been practised upon the people
of this country under pretence of civilizing Africa.^ We do not
believe that that measure can be in the slightest degree accomplished
by the Sierra Leone system, under all the disadvantages to which it is
incident, or by any similar measure; although by maintaining com-
mercial settlements and keeping up a friendly and protective inter-
course with those tribes who seem most inclined to cultivate the arts of
peace, and by making it their direct interest to maintain good govern-
ment and to cultivate humanity, we may by degrees pave the way for
the introduction of more efficient means of improvement.

Without going fully into the subject at present, however, we shall en-
deavour to show from the statements of the two latest travellers in Africa,
whose works are now before the public, the actual state of society in
the interior of that wretched country. We are well aware that a veil. •
has been thrown over the observations of some former travellers in
regard to the actual state of the Africans, to meet the taste of the
public in regard to the Slave Trade, but as we happen to know some-
thing of the manner in which books of travels are in general compiled,
we have little difficulty in separating the actual observations of the
traveller from those sentiments which emanate from the compiler.

We can scarcely, however, say, that this observation applies to this

* Rees' Cycl. -f Antiquities, b. i. c. ID*.

% Monthly Magazine for March last.

1830.] Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. 391

narrative of Mr. Caillie,* now before us. That hardy and enduring
Frenchman left his country for the African coast in the year 1816,
when a mere youth, and joined the unsuccessful expedition under
Major Gray and M. Portarrieu. Being obliged to return to France
for the recovery of his health, he again sailed for Senegal in 1824, and
being strongly imbued with that restless spirit which has cost so many
of our countrymen their lives, he obtained some trifling assistance from
Baron Roger, and set out for the interior, that he might take up his
residence among the Braknas Moors, to learn the Arabic language and
something of their religious ceremonies. In the vicinity of N'pal, he
found fields of considerable extent, cultivated with the greatest care by
slaves, and that slavery was universal, the slaves performing the whole
drudgery of the field and of the camp. " They (the Braknas) treat
their slaves with great barbarity, calling them by insulting names,
beating them, and requiring a great deal of service in return for very
little food, and having no other garment than a sheep-skin. I some-
times protested against the cruelty with which these wretches were
treated. f They are slaves, they are infidels,' was the reply ; ' you
see that they never pray ; they know neither God nor the prophet.'t
On a journey, the slaves carry on their heads whatever cannot be
laid on oxen ; they are ill-treated, ill-fed, and beaten at the caprice of
their masters ; they are seldom addressed by any name but that of
slave. In short, there is no species of vexation which they are not
obliged to endure."

After submitting to the greatest privations and being nearly starved
to death amongst these beastly people, M. Caillie returned to St. Louis,
in the hope that he should be able to obtain assistance from the governor
to enable him to follow out his schemes, but having met with a refusal,
he proceeded to Sierra Leone. General Turner, and afterwards Sir
Neil Campbell, also declined to assist him ; but having remained in that
colony until he acquired a sum equal to about two thousand francs, he
purchased suitable goods, and resuming his Arabian dress, departed
for Kakondy, on the Rio Nunez. Here he resided for some time.

He experienced kindness from several European residents, and gives
an amusing account of various idolatrous tribes on this part of the
coast. Having made such arrangements as he considered necessary,
he set out for the interior in April, accompanied by some Mandingoes,
slaves, and Foulahs — most of the party carrying enormous burdens.
In his progress he passed whole villages of slaves, and further on " as
we crossed the chain of mountains, I saw the poor negroes with loads
on their heads, leaping from precipice to precipice," J &c. " The slaves
were dreadfully fatigued, they work entirely naked, exposed to the
heat of a burning sun. The presence of their masters intimidates
them, and the fear of punishment expedites the work, but they make
themselves amends in his absence."§

Continuing to pass through the Mandingoe and Foulah country, as
an Arab, and approaching the Niger, he every where found the natives
ignorant, selfish, irritable, and vindictive. || " The Mandingoes," says

* Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo, &c. in the years 1824 and 1825, by
Rdne' Caillid Colburn and Bentley. 1830.
f Ib. pp. 102, 106.
J Ib. pp. 181, 182, 190.
§ Ib. pp. 210, 332.
j| Ib. p. 242.

392 Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. Q APRIL,

M. Caillie, " are certainly not fond of the whites, and they hold the
name of a Christian in abhorrence."* These people, be it observed,
have long been in communication with Sierra Leone ! — " The slaves
being regarded by the Mandingoes as their principal wealth, are not
ill-treated, their food is the same as that of their masters, though some-
times it is not quite so abundant ; they are dressed in a coarse pagne,
which they wear to the last rag. They are, however, made " to work
hard," and " when it is suspected that a slave intends to run away,
irons are put on their legs."t Their masters are described as being
" vindictive, inquisitive, envious, liars, importunate, selfish, avaricious,
ignorant, and superstitious ;"J a tolerable catalogue of bad qualities
considering the success which has been so much boasted regarding the
progress of civilization among these tribes, who are in communication
with the British settlements.

Leaving Kankan, and travelling towards the Kong mountains, M.
Caillie says, " Among the female slaves who accompanied our caravan,
I observed, with pain, girls of twelve or fifteen years old carrying
heavy loads of colats on their heads. The poor creatures were unable
to endure the fatigue, and sometimes let their burdens fall."§ At Tan-
grera, he saw slaves at work, quite naked, and the perspiration running
down their bodies. At Chesso, having clubbed with his companions to
buy a goat, " the negroes, an hour or two after supping upon it, fell
to eating the head, half-roasted on the ashes ; and after they had gnaw-
ed the bones, they gave them to the slaves." ||

Arriving at Jenne, he was well received by the resident Moors. He
found it an extensive place, well supplied with goods, and carrying on
a great traffic. " I observed some shops pretty well supplied with
European commodities, which sell at a very high price. They also
deal in slaves, whom they send to Tafilet, and to other quarters, as
Mogador, Tunis, and Tripoli. I have seen men leading those unfor-
tunate beings about the streets, and crying them for sale, at the rate of
twenty-five, thirty, or forty thousand cowries, according to their age."
Of the treatment of the domestic slaves, in the families of Moors at
Jenne, he gives a favourable report ; and he found these Moors, (who
firmly believed him to be a countryman of their own,) much superior to
his first friends, the Braknas. Embarking for Timbuctoo, in a large
canoe, "the cargo consisted of various kinds of provisions, twenty
slaves, women and children, the stoutest of whom were in chains."^ He
saw slaves cultivating the ground ; and about fourteen days after leaving
Jenne, those in the boat had their chains removed. " They appeared
perfectly happy. They tried to walk, but it was with difficulty that
they could move a few steps : for the chains which they had worn since
they left Jenne, had wounded their feet. All the negro sailors who
navigate the river are slaves." The slaves gave offence to the natives,
who are Mahommedans, by dancing at sunset, during the Ramadan, and
were each ordered five lashes on the back !

M. Caillie's voyage from Jenne to Timbuctoo, occupied the time from
the 13th March to the 20th April. He was well received by the Moor
to whom he had been recommended. But the appearance of the city
did not come up to his expectations. He found slavery every where
prevalent on the banks of the river ; and its navigation, and the country

* Caillie's Travels through Central Africa, &c. p. 265.

f Ib. p. 346. + Ib. p. 353. § Ib. p. 364. || Ib. pp. 413, 458.

f Ib. p. 475 ; Vol. II. pp. 6, 7-

1830. ] Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery.

in the vicinity of Timbuctoo, apparently in possession of predatory
tribes of Soorgoos or Tooaricks. " The slaves at Timbuetoo are well
clothed, and fed, and seldom beaten. They are, nevertheless, regarded
as merchandize, and are exported to Tripoli, Morocco, and other parts
of the coast."* He saw two female slaves, who had arrived in the same
boat with him, led about the streets for sale. They were dressed to the
best advantage, to make them loo*k young. " When I passed them, they
looked at me and smiled. They did not appear in the least mortified
at being exhibited in the streets for sale. They thought that things
should be so, and that they had come into this world to be bought and
sold ! !"t " The slaves are never allowed to go out of the town after
sunset, lest they should be carried off by the Tooaricks, who forcibly
seize all who fall in their way. The condition of these unhappy beings
is then more deplorable than ever. I saw some, in the little canoes,
almost naked ; and their masters were constantly threatening to beat

After remaining a fortnight at Timbuetoo, M. Caillie, on the 4th of
May, 1828, joined a caravan, about to cross the desart for Tafilet, in the
neighbourhood of Morocco. Our limits will not permit us to recount
all the barbarities practised upon the slaves during this journey.
Suffice it to say, they were constantly treated with the most incon-
siderate cruelty. Between Timbuetoo and El-Arawan, a central city
in the desert, much frequented by the caravans, M. Caillie passed the
spot where Major Laing was murdered by the Moors of the tribe of
Zawat, of which circumstance a detailed account is given.§ Leaving
El Arawan, on the 19th of May, the caravan, consisting of about fourteen
hundred camels, with slaves and merchandize, again pursued its way
through the desert. " Nobody suffered more intensely from thirst than
the poor little slaves, who were crying for water. Exhausted by their
sufferings and their lamentations, these unhappy creatures fell on the
ground, and seemed to have no power to rise ; but the Moors did not
suffer them to continue there long when travelling. Insensible to the
sufferings which childhood is so little fitted to support, these barbarians
dragged them along with violence, beating them incessantly, till they had
overtaken the camels, which were already at a distance." ||

Of the ultimate destination of these unfortunates, M. Caillie leaves us
in ignorance.

Owing to the selfish and unfeeling conduct of his guide, Sidi-Aly, the
traveller endured his full share of misery and privation during the
journey through the desert; but he finally succeeded in' reaching
Morocco, and in placing himself under the protection of the French
consulate at Tangier, from whence he was forwarded to his native
country, where he has obtained the reward offered for the discovery of
the mysterious city of Timbuetoo.

Let us now return to the African coast, and, again landing there, follow
the footsteps of honest Richard Lander, the attendant of our lamented
friend, the late Captain Clapperton, and the only European survivor of
the unfortunate expedition in which that intrepid traveller and his com-
panions, Captain Pearce, and Drs. Dickson and Morrison, perished,
keeping in view that our principal object is to shew the state of society,

* Cailld's Travels through Central Africa, &c. p. 55.
t" Ib. p. 63. $ Ib. p. 65. § Ib. p. 82. || Ib. p. 114.

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX, 3 E

394, Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. [APRIL,

as regards the treatment of slaves, in what we may designate their
native country.

The expedition left England on the 27th of August, 1825 : on the
21st of October they reached Sierra Leone. " The day after our arrival,
I went on shore, and sauntered alone through Freetown, visiting the
church and other public buildings. I was grieved to see that sacred
edifice converted into a market-place, and buyers and sellers indecently
disputing and wrangling in the temple of God. The colony was rather
sickly, and the great number of deaths which had recently taken place,
sufficiently attested the extreme unhealthiness of that immense f charnel-
house/ "*

The Brazen sailed for Cape Coast on the 27th : on the 7th of the
following month they had a visit from the King of the Kroomen. " He
wore a necklace of gris-gris, (charms or amulets), made of leather, in
the merits of which he seemed to repose implicit confidence, believing
himself the most fortunate of men in having it in his possession ; and as
long as this was the case, he asserted neither demon nor 'human being
could in anywise injure him."t

One of his attendants, equally superstitions, was displeased that
Lander would not prove the virtues of the amulet he wore, by discharg-
ing a loaded musket at his breast ! We would not specially notice these
superstitious opinions, so universally prevalent throughout Africa, were
it not that the implicit reliance of the natives upon their efficacy, is
another proof of the failure of all our attempts to enlighten even those
natives who are in immediate communication with settlements formed,
and kept up principally with a view of dispelling these delusions.

The expedition arrived at Cape Coast Castle on the 14th September,
and on the following day proceeded to Accra, Papoe, and Whydah,
where Dr. Dicksoii was put on shore.

Subsequently the Brazen proceeded to Badagry, at which place the
other travellers were disembarked on the 29th November.

The number of slave vessels captured, seen, and heard of by the
Brazen during this short voyage, amply confirm the statements we have
repeatedly made of the great extent to which the contraband slave
trade is still carried on.

After an abundance of feasting and foolery with King Adolee of
Badagry, the expedition was escorted up a branch of the Lagos river
by that beastly savage and a guard. The travellers seem at first to
have imprudently exposed themselves to the dews by sleeping in the
open air ; and next day, the extortion of the native chiefs, and the want
of bearers to carry the luggage, commenced. Sickness in a few days
began to assail our countrymen ; and, in less than a month from the
time of their landing, Captain Clapperton and Lander left the town of
Engwa the only survivors !

Passing through a beautiful country and a variety of villages, they
rested two days at Chiddoo, to allow the Captain and Mr. Houtson (who
had joined them since leaving Engwa) to recover from the severe indis-
position which had assailed them.

On the 12th of January they proceeded, attended great part of the
way by crowds of natives, and going over a rocky ridge, on which is
situated the town of Cheki, they passed several Fellatah villages to Soc-

* Records of Clapperlon's last Expedition to Africa, By Richard Lander. Colburn
and Bentley, 1830.

t Ib. p. 24.

1830.] Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. 395

cassoo; and the natives supposing they were on a mission to restore
peace between the King of Yariba and some slaves who had rebelled
and set his authority at defiance, they were every where well received.
Continuing to traverse a populous country, " on the road we met
several hundreds of men, women, and children, with heavy loads on
their heads, who had been travelling the whole of the night, and who
appeared so greatly fatigued as to be scarcely able to drag their lazy
limbs after them. They were carefully watched by overseers (one to
each fifty) who were all armed, and made the weary travellers quicken
their pace by threats of punishment, whenever they observed them
loitering behind."* Our travellers were well received at Katunga
by Mansola, the King of Yariba, who appointed a thievish gorman-
dizing old eunuch to provide for their wants. Here they were detained
in a friendly manner about seven weeks. Mr. Houtson returned to the
coast, where he died shortly afterwards.

Leaving Katunga on the 6th, they passed through several villages
Avhich had been pillaged and burnt by the Fellatahs, and entered the
city of Khiama on the 14th, which they quitted on the 18th, and
joined a Houssa caravan, with which they travelled to Wow-wow, the
capital of a province of the same name, enjoying a considerable trade.
Manchester and some other English goods being plentiful.

One of their customs would, we fear, scarcely please the Anti-slavery
Society : " when a husband dies, the wives who have not born him
children are sold."\ In crossing the Menai, a branch of the Quorra, to
Boussa, the spot where Mungo Park and his companions perished, was
pointed out, and the manner of their death circumstantially detailed. J
" The day after their arrival at Tabria, the Fellatahs left Coulfa for Soc-
cassu, with a thousand slaves, some of them prisoners taken in a civil
war which was raging in Nyffe. The health of our travellers had been
so much impaired, that they found it necessary to remain some time at
Coulfa to recruit.

At Kano, one of the most considerable cities in Soudan, they first
heard of the war between the Bornouese and Fellatahs, which induced
Captain Clapperton to proceed to Soccatoo, the capital, leaving Lander
with the presents for the Sheikh of Bornou, at Kano. That city, one
of the most considerable in Soudan, is intersected from east to west by
a large morass, the common receptacle of all the filth of the place.
" The dead bodies of slaves are frequently cast into this morass, ex-
posed to the action of the air, or visits of birds of prey ; and it is
truly shocking to observe their mangled members in a state of decom-
position, and their fleshless bones bleaching in the sun in the very
heart of the city. This painful and disgusting spectacle I was often-
times obliged to be a witness to ; a week rarely passing without one
or more of these unregretted corpses being flung into the common
receptacle." — " I saw a slave at Kano, whose fore teeth were cut and
pointed ; the man's appearance was most ferocious ; and so sullen and
reserved was he, that he refused to answer any interrogations that were
put to him; I was inclined to think that he had perpetrated some
flagrant crime, as he was so far on his way to Bagadry, whither he
would not have been sent if his character were not of the very worst
description." §

The Sultan, Bello, having determined to possess himself of the

* Records, &c. p. 101. - f Ib. p. 13H. $ Ib. p. 117. § Ib. p. 218.

3 E 2

Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. [_ APRIL.,

presents intended for the Sheikh of Bornou, caused it to be intimated
to Lander that it was his master's desire that he also should come to
Soccatoo, for which place he set out on the 25th November, and fell
into the power of the Fellatah Sultan in the end of December.

Speaking of the laws and customs of the country, Lander points out
several crimes which are sufficient to reduce free men to slavery.

" Slaves guilty of theft, or, indeed, of almost any other crime, are uni-
formly decapitated in Yariba, without the benefit of trial."* " Slavery,
from time immemorial, has flourished in every nation, and amongst every
people in the interior countries, and seems to be implanted so deeply in
the soil, that the slightest hope cannot be entertained of its being speedily
outrooted. Those sent to the sea-side from the interior are invariably
the scum and refuse of the country— freebooters, lawless refractory fellows,
adulterers, and even murderers." "I have often seen disobedient slaves,
and slaves offered for sale, singing in chains and dancing in fetters, suf-
fering at the same time under a loathsome disease, and an accumulation
of misery, the very thoughts of which would melt, even to tears, a sym-
pathizing English philanthropist" (not, we fear, unless the slave had in
the first place been sent to our West India Colonies, then, we grant, the
regular philanthropists would make a noise indeed ; but so long as slaves
remain in their own country, King Adolee, or king any body else, may
flay them alive, or cut off their heads by the dozen, without any of the
present African "philanthropists" interfering!) "In their toilsome
journeyings from one part of the country to another, the captured slaves
undergo incredible hardships, yet when they arrive at the end of their
march, all their woes are buried for ever in a calabash of pitto or olee,
and they are as merry and thoughtless a day or two afterwards as they
ever were." On the coast, however, things wear a different and far less
agreeable aspect ; the slaves there are mostly captured from the neigh-
bouring states, and suddenly losing their darling amusements, become
melancholy and pensive on shipboard," &c. Honest Richard, or his
compiler, makes some further observations, wrhich appear quite at va-
riance with the whole tenour of the events that came under his notice.
" Upon the whole," says he, " I should consider the situation of the do-
mestic slave of Africa (their relative feelings compared) to be more
enviable than that of the household servant of Europe, inasmuch as a
feeling of dependence never enters the mind of the former," &c. (they
want the anti-slavery reporter to enlighten them J) — and he talks of the
condition of the slaves of the European planter, and of their writhing
in agony under " the excoriating lash of the unfeeling planter," as wisely
as if he really had been for years in the pay of the Anti-colonial society.
It is true, he says, he visited St. Domingo in his youth, and was ser-
vant to Major Colebrooke, one of the commissioners of inquiry sent to
the Cape of Good Hope, but this we believe to be the utmost extent of
his knowledge of colonial subjects, and that he is as little acquainted with
the treatment of slaves in the British colonies, as with Plutarch and the
Athenians character, learnedly put as the commencement of his next
chapter.

The treacherous sultan, Bello, having succeeded in obtaining posses-
sion of the presents and letter intended for the Sheikh of Bornou, seems
afterwards to have paid little attention to our travellers. On the 13th of
April, Captain Clapperton sunk under the united influence of clisap-

* Records, &c. p. 284.

1830.] Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. 397

pointment arid disease ; his grave was dug by four slaves, who kept
quarrelling and fighting during the time that poor Lander was reading;
the funeral service. On the 4th of May, Lander, after being plundered
of the remaining property, by order of the sultan, was allowed to depart,
and shortly afterwards joined a- caravan proceeding to Kashna. He had
nearly perished in the " gooher bush," and thus relates the cruel death
of fifty slaves who had been brought as a present to the sultan, but were
rejected by him. " The young Fetallah, to whom I owe my life, came
to me on the 7th, and informed me that the whole of the slaves of the
King of Jacoba being missing, a party of horsemen had been sent in
quest of them, and were just returned with the shocking intelligence of
having seen thirty-five of their dead bodies lying along the road, and
that hundreds of vultures were already hovering over them ; the other
fifteen could not be found, but were strongly suspected of having shared
in the same fate. These unfortunate creatures had the task of carrying
loads on their heads the day before, but being unable to keep up with
the pace of the camels were necessarily obliged to be left behind, and
thus perished miserably of thirst and fatigue."*

Arriving at Kano on the 25th of Slay, he left it on the 29th,
proceeding to Coulfa, in Nyffe. On our journey we met, on the 8th
of June, on their way to Soccatoo, as a tax paid to Sultan Bello from a
neighbouring country, thirty slaves — men, women and children, who
were all ill with the small-pox. The males were tied to each other by
the neck, with thongs made of twisted bullock's hide, but the women
and children were unconfined ; notwithstanding the loathsome disease
that hung upon those poor wretches, they all appeared merry, thought-
less and happy, as though they had been enjoying their freedom in per-
fect health !" The inhabitants of Bowchee go perfectly naked, " they
sell their children as slaves to the greatest strangers in the world, with
no greater remorse of conscience than if they had been common articles
of merchandize."t And he relates a very pathetic occurrence which
took place under his own eye, — of a mother selling her daughter for a
necklace of beads ! At Cattup, " slaves as well as bullocks and sheep,
are exposed in the market, which is held daily."J

Forced to turn aside to satisfy the curiosity of the King of Zeg-Zeg,
who received him kindly, he again resumed his journey for the coast,
attended by one male and two female slaves, whom he had purchased or
received in presents to supply the place of hired people, upon whom he
found by experience that no dependance could be placed ! He reached
Coulfa on the 14th of August, where he was kindly received amidst
lamentations for the death of his late master. Leaving Coulfa on the
20th, and crossing the Niger two or three days afterwards, he entered
Wowwow on the 24th, and was detained there till the 3d of Septem-
ber, when proceeding through Khiama to Katunga, Mansolah, the king,
again received him kindly, visited him with five hundred of his two
thousand wives, each armed with a small spear, and lamented the death
of Clapperton, singing a dirge for that event. Lander affirms that it is
the law of the country to send all the most beautiful young girls as
wives to the king." <f Cats are becoming so scarce in Yariba, by reason
of the bitter persecution that is carried on against them unceasingly by
the half starved slaves., that they are seldom seen, and in the course of a
few years, in all probability, these useful animals wiil be wholly exter-

* Records, &c. Vol. ii. p. 95. f Ib. p. 114. $ Ib. p. 1N>.

308 Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. Q

urinated."* These wretched people (the slaves), both from necessity and
inclination, eat lizards, rats, and the most abominable offal. Aged and
infirm people are exposed with indifference in the country, to die or be
devoured by wild beasts, as it may happen. Slaves are called by all
manner of names of beasts, birds or reptiles, such as " woman vulture,"
" snake," &c.

Leaving the filthy feeders of Katunga, Lander arrived at Engwa on
the 8th of November. On the 21st he reached Badagry, having every-
where been well treated on his way back to the coast.

The shocking brutality and pitiless conduct of the savage and blood-
thirsty Badagrians, is painted in the most horrid colours by Lander. It
is one of the principal marts for selling slaves to the Portuguese. " It
not unfrequently happens that the market is either overstocked with
human beings, or no buyers are to be found ; in which case the mainte-
nance of the unhappy slaves devolves solely on the government. The
expense incurred by this means is oftentimes murmured against by the
king, who shortly afterwards causes an examination to be made, when the
sickly, as well as the old and infirm, are carefully selected, and chained
by themselves in one of the factories, (five of which, containing upwards
of one thousand slaves of both sexes, were at Badagry, during my
residence, there) ; and next day the majority of these poor wretches are
pinioned, and conveyed to the banks of the river, where having arrived,
a weight of some sort is appended to their necks, and, being rowed in
canoes to the middle of the stream, they are flung into the water, and
left to perish by the pitiless Badagrians. Slaves who, for other reasons,
are rejected by the merchants, undergo the. same punishment, or are left
to endure more lively torture at ' the sacrifices :' by which means, hun-
dreds of human beings are annually destroyed." t The account Lander
gives of the Fetish-hut and Fetish-tree, are truly horrid. Thieves, and
other offenders, together with the remnant of the unpurchased slaves,
who are not drowned along with their companions in misfortune and
misery, are reserved by the Badagrians, to sacrifice to their gods ; which
horrid ceremony takes place once a month. Prisoners taken in war are
also immolated to appease the manes of the soldiers of Adolee slain in
battle." The atrocious manner of their murder is too horrid for
description, and yet all this takes place within reach of British influence.
But the Anti-slavery Society, who are, in some measure, to blame for
a part of these atrocities,:]; prefer urging upon our government measures,
which, if adopted, would destroy that degree of comfort and civilization
which the expatriated Africans and their descendants now enjoy in our
colonies, and cause great loss to their countrymen, instead of turning
their attention to this legitimate object of humanity — the mitigation of
horrid barbarities in Africa itself. The Portuguese, or Brazilian slave-
trade, is no longer legal either north or south of the line ; and if the
African Society were to turn their attention to the means of utterly
abolishing it, they would deserve the thanks and support of the true
friends of humanity, instead of sinking into that contempt and insig-
nificancy which is the certain result of their present pursuits !

To return to Lander, after being placed in great danger by the jealousy
of the Portuguese slave agents, and obliged, by the fanatical natives,
to undergo the trial by poison, he at last succeeded in getting away from

* Records, &c. p. 207. f !•'• P- 250.

% Our reasons for this assertion are stated in the Magazine for last month; pp. 289, 209.

1830.] Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. 391)

this part of the African coast, and, landing at Cape Coast Castle, saw his
faithful slaves comfortably settled there. He afterwards embarked with
Pasko, a rascally African, who had attended the expedition from its
commencement, in the Esk sloop-of-war, and, after a circuitous voyage,
reached England in April, 1828. We were much pleased with the gentle
simplicity of his manner and address, both previous to his sailing, and
after his return from Africa. He has since proceeded on a second
expedition (accompanied by a younger brother), to endeavour to trace
the course of the Niger from Fundah to Benin. We wish him every
success, and will hail the second arrival of ' Nassarah Curramee' (the
little Christian) in his native country with the greatest satisfaction.

The correctness of our views in regard to the total inadequacy of the
measures hitherto adopted for the suppression of the slave-trade, and
the civilization of Africa, through our establishments at Sierra Leone, is
amply confirmed by the present state of society in the interior, as de-
scribed by the travellers from whose books we have made extracts.

M . Caillie, in particular, having assumed the character of an Arab,
had a good opportunity of ascertaining the actual opinions of the super-
stitious and deceitful natives, in regard to the English character and
religion. He found them everywhere wedded to Islamism, or their
native superstitions ; and that their only motive for occasionally visiting
the settlements on the coast was, to extract as much as possible from the
' Kafirs.'

We have already so fully stated our opinions on this subject,* that
it seems unnecessary to enlarge further upon it. The truth of the pre-
dictions contained in the full and candid, but long suppressed, explana-
tory letter of Governor Ludlam to Mr. Zachary Macauley, dated Fort
Thornton, April 14, 1807, are now in most points fully confirmed.
Speaking of the probable consequences of the Abolition of the Slave
Trade, he truly states that " under a luke-rvarm government, smuggling
may be practised to any extent :" and we have seen the extent to which
it is practised by foreigners ! We, moreover, do not hesitate to state
our opinion, that if his Majesty's Ministers remain luke-warm as to its
being so continued, and do not speedily adopt measures to avert the
destruction of the agriculture of our own colonies, even British subjects
will not be deterred by any consequences from assisting foreigners in the
continuance of this now cruelly conducted trade. " To abolish the
Slave Trade," says Governor Ludlam, ef will not prevent the Africans
from remaining a savage and uncivilized people. To abolish the Slave
Trade is not to abolish the violent passions which now find vent in that
particular direction. Were it to cease, the misery of Africa would arise
from other causes ; but it does not follow that Africa would be less
miserable : she might even be less miserable, and yet be savage and
uncivilized. " This will, doubtless, be acknowledged : and it may be
asked, why I repeat so obvious a truth. I answer, because the writings
of the abolitionists have a contrary impression. They speak of the
darkness in which we have kept Africa, and of the happiness which wre
may now look forward to, as if it were an unquestionable fact that
Africa would have been civilized, had it not been for the Slave Trade :
nay, further, that civilization, Christianity, and happiness, are now to
be looked forward to as the natural effects of abolition !" We recollect

* Vide " Sierra Leone and the Slave Trade," Monthly Mag. for March last, p. 204.

400 Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery. [_ APRIL,

a forcible expression of Captain Clapperton, when conversing on the
subject of the introduction of the Christian religion, after his return
from his first expedition, which shows the opinion he entertained of the
progress it was likely to make in Africa, opposed to Islamism : " Give
me thirty thousand bayonets," said he, "and in a few years I will
produce you some millions of Christians, but as to any other methods of
conversion" — ! ! Such was the judgment he had formed of the mental
qualities of the Africans.

" In the next place I would observe," says Governor Ludlam, " that
the administration of every African government must become extremely
severe, if not extremely bloody. When so effectual a punishment as
slavery is done away, which yet, as it sheds no blood, is readily executed
on petty criminals and in doubtful cases, severe punishments and more
terrible examples must be introduced. Every ancient institution, the
power of every hereditary chief must now be sustained by blood,
instead of slavery: — the injured party must make war, and kill his
neighbour's people for revenge, since he cannot sell them for satis-
faction !'*

We must defer till another opportunity the observations we intended
to offer on a further report of proceedings at Sierra Leone, recently
published ; and also on the present condition of slaves in the United
States of America. We think enough has been said to prove the cruel
character of slavery in Ancient Rome and in Modern Africa. We
would earnestly recommend to the African Institution and others, to
turn their attention to the evils which afflict humanity in the latter
quarter of the globe, and to the means of finally abolishing the contra-
band trade in slaves.

We trust his Majesty's ministers now see the errors into which their
predecessors were led by the abolitionists ; and that so far as it is pos-
sible to relieve the country from useless expenditure, and to induce
France and other powers to adopt effectual measures for putting an end
to the Slave Trade, it will be done. But these measures will be incom-
plete, unless at the same time means are adopted to sustain the industry
of our colonies, so as to dimmish the temptation to raise foreign sugars
by means of new slaves.

So far as we can at present judge, it is through the great rivers falling
into the Bights of Benin and Biaffra that any effectual communication
with the interior of Africa can be opened, and we are glad to perceive
that by recent accounts from Fernando Po, operations were diligently
continued to improve the salubrity of that island, and render it fit for
the reception of the population which we shortly expect to see removed
to it.

We hope, in a few years, especially should Lander return and be able
to point out the entrance to one or more of the principal rivers, to see
steam-boats and other vessels starting from Fernando Po, provided with
proper accommodation to screen the passengers from the malignant
effects of the heat and moisture, penetrating a considerable way into the
interior and more healthy parts of Africa, where, in time, such factories
might be established as would not only open fresh sources of commerce,
but might contribute more effectually to just ideas of the power of the
islwfend the civilization of the natives, than all those expensive
;Wrnents on the coast, which have caused us such an immense loss
en nnd money.

1030.] [ 401 ]

COLONEL VERNON ; OR, THE WARNING VOICE : A TALE OF THE

CIVIL WARS.

BY THE AUTHOR OP " THE LOLLARDS j" " OALTHORPE ;" ' e THE WITCH-
FINDER/' &C.

" BRIEF is the date of human happiness, and they who boast that
felicity is theirs, should evermore be prepared for an awful change."

It was the venerable Herbert who spoke, and it was while the
bride, deeply impressed with the solemnity of the marriage vow,
which she had but that moment pronounced, faintly replied to the kind
speeches of congratulating friends, that these words were poured into
the ears of Isabel. In the cloudless brow of the bridegroom, and in
the beauteous eyes of the bride, he saw, that, happy then, they looked
for long years of uninterrupted bliss. The esteemed pastor wished to
bring down their transports to the sober level of reason. He reminded
them that when solemnizing marriage rites, the Jews, in memory of the
destruction of their temple, break a goblet, to show how soon the
brightest objects on earth are annihilated. He cautioned them against
being too sanguine, that, fortified by a just and salutary apprehension,
should sorrow approach, they might endure without dismay. The
kind spirit of him who spoke, beamed in his countenance, and the
gentle tone of admonition falling

" Soft as the dew from heaven descends,"

from the revered lips which had just pronounced the nuptial benediction
was as respectfully received as it was piously intended. Yet those on
whom it was bestowed, felt that if ever it were permitted for mortal to
calculate on happiness, they might indulge the hope without presump-
tion.

Theirs was the union of affection, of affection founded on reason ; as
its basis was a long and intimate knowledge of each other's minds and
virtues. High and powerful connections each could claim, and all ap-
proved of the union of the families of Vernon and Bolingbroke.

The civil war which eventually cost Charles the First his crown and
life, was then raging : but even this circumstance, however sad for the
nation, seemed fortunate for Colonel Vernon. His valour in the field,
had already gained him the fame of a loyal subject and a gallant soldier,
nor did he doubt but the perfect triumph of the royal cause, would even-
tually yield him additional laurels and higher honours.

Days and months of domestic happiness and professional success, were
his, and he would sometimes recal to Isabel the warning voice of the
venerable churchman, by the exulting remark, " We have known
happiness, but not the awful change/' The growing fame of Vernon
pointed him out as a fit person to be entrusted with the command of
Bletchington House, then deemed a fortress of some importance.
Isabel had often seen her husband depart for the field, and lamented
that she could not accompany him ; but it was possible for her to share
the danger and the glory of his present duty, and she determined not to
separate from him. The garrison was so well provided, that Vernon
anticipated no catastrophe. He consented to her being his companion,
and Isabel with her infant, just then beginning to walk, took up their
abode in Bletchington House.

Nothing could exceed the ardour felt by Vernon and the men under
his command. The knights in the olden time, panted not with i£bre

M.M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 F

402 Colonel Vernon ; or, Q APRIL,

romantic eagerness, to gain the victor's prize from the presiding beauty
of the tournament, than did he and his soldiers to prove their valour in
the presence of Isabel. An attempt was made to carry the place by
storm, but it was repulsed with such loss, as taught the soldiers of
Cromwell, that they had to deal with no common foe. Every summons
to surrender, was answered with stern defiance, and despairing of success
by other means, the rebels at length turned the siege into a blockade.

Great was the exultation within the walls when this was known.
Long before the ample stores providently collected, could be exhausted,
Vernon was satisfied that the king would arrive. All were animated
by the same resolution : all were determined to resist to the last ex-
tremity. We will not give in detail the incidents which occurred, and
the conversations which passed, while exultation resolved itself into
sober confidence, and while confidence became mingled with doubt,
nor those which followed, when doubt gave way, not to fear for his
personal safety, for that Colonel Vernon could not know, but to excru-
ciating apprehension for the fate of his men and the cause of his
monarch. Suffice it to say, that the relief expected, arrived not — that
with all the care he could use, food became scarce and the garrison
began to murmur that they were content to lay down their lives in the
field, but not to submit to be starved to death.

One appeal he determined to make to the enemy. The royalists had
on some occasions humanely allowed the females and children who
were in besieged places to withdraw. This favour he now solicited.
Before giving an answer, the puritans said it would be necessary to
ff seek the Lord in prayer " and a messenger of their own would an-
nounce the result.

With some satisfaction he learned on the following morning, that
a Round-head messenger claimed to be admitted. He immediately
gave orders that the puritan should be conducted, blindfolded, to the
apartment in which he sat. This was done, and the soldier of Cromwell
stood before him.

The bandage removed from his eyes, the man who was of godly
repute, and who, according to the whim of the time, had a most godly
name, being called " Fight-for-the-faith- Fletcher," with little ceremony
thus delivered himself.

" Forasmuch as thou, William Vernon, being a man of blood and a
great backslider, hast often in battle proved a slayer of God's prople,
the Lord of Hosts shalt stir up a scourge for thee, according to the slaughters
of Midian, at the rock of Oreb, and none of the ungodly shall pass hence
but as captives to the servants of the Lord"

" Enough," said Vernon haughtily ; " return, and say to your com-
mander that should our situations ever be reversed, I despise the
example which he has thought fit to set, too much to follow it."

The puritan calmly replied,

" Let the high praises of God be in the mouths of his saints, and a two
edged sword in their hands, to execute vengeance upon the heathen and
punishment upon the people : to bind their kings with chains and their nobles
with fetters of iron, to execute upon them the judgments written : this
honour have all his saints"

" Away, madman and blasphemer !" Vernon indignantly exclaimed,
and Fight-for-the-faith- Fletcher was removed.

The distress within the walls became horrible, and the heart of

1830.] The Warning Voice. 403

Vernon seemed bursting in his bosom, when he saw Isabel, once so gay,
so lovely and so bright, reduced to a pallid and emaciated spectre.
Long silent, her eyes alone seemed to reproach his stern decision, but
eventually duty as a mother, made her plead with nature's eloquence,
not for herself, but for her child. She pointed to the famished soldiers,
and called on her husband not vainly to sacrifice them. Thus to act, she
argued, was not loyalty but fatuity, as it destroyed those who might
otherwise become at a future day the defenders of their king. He lent
a deaf ear to her touching representations ; but at last her imploring
voice, the clamours of his starving men, and perhaps the feelings of a
parent, unconsciously moving him to save his offspring, vanquished reso-
lution. He consented to capitulate, and obtained what, under the cir-
cumstances, seemed very favourable terms. On giving up the place, his
soldiers were allowed to march out with the honours of war, and having
grounded their arms, to go where they pleased. Bitter was the anguish
and regret of Vernon, when the true cause of this moderation became
apparent, and when it was made known to him that a strong body of
royalists, were on their way to relieve Bletchington House, who within
the next four and twenty hours, would have compelled the Parliamen-
tary force to retire.

Though Isabel shared the sorrow of her husband, at learning that the
king's forces were so near, she still exulted in having saved his life.
From the extremity of suffering, previously endured, she doubted if he
could have survived another day. The expediency of surrendering the
place under such circumstances, was, to her mind, so indisputably
established, that, even when a court martial had been called at Oxford,
she looked forward to the result without dismay, and confidently antici-
pated an honourable acquittal for Vernon.

The court did not close its proceedings till midnight. No messenger
announced the result to Isabel. The absence of special intelligence was
satisfactory. That Vernon should be exonerated, was a matter of
course.

And when it was signified to her on the following morning, that the
prisoner desired to see her, she still felt assured his detention was but a
matter of form, and approached him with a smile.

" It is past," he sadly remarked ; " your fond anxiety to save my life,
has destroyed me."

" Destroyed you, Vernon ! Can the court doubt ?"

" No, Isabel ; they do not doubt. Their decision has been pro-
nounced : it is recorded, and I am lost."

" How ! Are you not restored ? Is it possible that their decision
can be unfavourable ?"

" It is even so ; and I am proclaimed a coward to the world !"

" And if the world be mean and miserable enough to credit the
calumny, then, my Vernon, leave such a world."

" I must leave it."

" And do so without regret ; for it merits not your care. Renounce it
for ever — despise the phantom fame, and live but to love and Isabel."

" He who is bereft of fame and honour, can have no occasion for life.
You, Isabel, must feel this. Start not, then, while I announce what I
judged you must have previously learned : — I am sentenced to die !"

Isabel was little prepared for the awful intelligence, that the court had
condemned Vernon to death.

3 F 2

404 Colonel Vernon; or, Q APRIL

" Can it — can it be possible !" she exclaimed, " that my Vernon is to
die, and to die for having saved the brave men under his command ?"

" Such is my fate — summon your fortitude in the last sad hour ; and
in the days which are coming, when this poor form shall rest beneath the
peaceful sod, remember Vernon."

" Oh ! speak not thus ! Tell me not that there is no hope of mercy."

ee Nay, Isabel, court no vain delusion : before yon sun declines, I shall
be no more. Had it been my lot to fall in the field, my last moments
would have been cheered by the thought that my death, even if not
illustrated by triumph, was that of a soldier; but it is sad to suffer
as a culprit : to know that my Isabel will be pointed at as the widow
of a recreant, and that my boy will succeed to an inheritance of shame/*

ff The thought is madness, and I, / am the wretched cause of all ! —
But for my voice — my fatal eloquence — it had been yours to live to
hope, to happiness, and to glory ! But will the monsters give no pause
for further inquiry ?"

" By my especial desire the preparations for the final scene have been
expedited. Be firm — be yourself, my Isabel ; and let it be some conso-
lation to that bleeding heart, to reflect, that if Vernon have failed in his
duty, he yet can prove that he fears not to die."
. " But tell me not that we meet for the last time."

" Subdue agitation, nor let your emotion shake me in this important
hour. — When the fatal ball shall have done its part, if the enfranchised
soul may seek what it loved on earth, mine shall still hover near you ;
when the evening star beams with lustre on that bright eye, let it repre-
sent my spirit ever waking to guard Isabel from harm ; and when the
gentle breeze of spring softly agitates those ebon ringlets, believe that it
is Vernon thus signifies his presence."

" Oh ! misery !"

et And when life's duties performed, my Isabel reclines on the bed of
death, I, so faithful love dare hope, will still be near to sustain the faint-
ing sufferer, to usher her into a new state of being, and to join her unsul-
lied spirit as it journeys to heaven."

" Yet tell me not that we part so soon, — that yet a few moments and we
must separate for ever/'

" No : it shall not be for ever. In a happier state of being, above
the sky, among the spirits of the perfect just, we yet shall meet. Our
love was never earthly in its character, and it shall prove immortal."

It was at this moment that Herbert, who, as one of the king's chap-
lains, was then in attendance at Oxford, entered.

" Reverend Sir, you are welcome," said Vernon. " It was you who,
in the most blissful moment of my existence, wisely admonished me, that
I should hold myself prepared for an awful change, and much I thank
you for coming now, to fit me for my passage."

Herbert turned aside to conceal the tears which he could not repress.

" My object," he at length said, " in coming hither, was to assist this
fair one through the trying scene of the day. A holy man waits in
another apartment to administer to you all the sacred consolation, which
religion can yield to a weak mortal in his last hour."

" And must he go now ?" Isabel wildly demanded. " If the mur-
derous sentence is to be executed, let me perish by his side."

" This may not be," cried Vernon. " Were it even permitted by
authority, the solemn duties which devolve on the only remaining parent

1830.] The Warning Voice. 405

of a fatherless child, would bind my Isabel to life, if she love the name
of Vernon. Now, dearest, take my last embrace. Restrain your tears,
and still that throbing bosom. Be assured on you my thoughts will rest
while life remains, and for you, my prayers will ascend, even in that
moment, when my emancipated soul leaves its mortal home."

Scarcely conscious of what she did, Isabel clung to her husband in
frantic agony.

" This is not well," he exclained, with sternness. The altered tone of
his voice thrilled her.

" Take the dear one/' he added, with relenting tenderness, gently
putting her from him. Herbert received the interesting charge.

" Stay, Vernon," cried Isabel.

" It must not be," he replied, " or want of courage will be said to
disgrace my last hour. Our adieus have been exchanged, the parting
blessing has been breathed, and I have nothing now to do on earth —
but — to die, as becomes a soldier and a man."

While speaking he withdrew ; and when Isabel, who had for a moment
raised her hand to her forehead, to conceal her tears, would have looked
on him again, she saw him not.

" Is he gone !" she exclaimed. " Is that generous heart to be stilled
for ever, and by command of that sovereign, for whom, on the battle
field, its best blood had cheerfully been shed ?"

" Daughter, it is deemed necessary that the severe rules of military
discipline should be upheld, even at the expence of human life."

" But shall he be the victim of relentless principle who only acted
on the suggestions of prudence, where valour could nothing avail.
Oh, Sir ! there has been base slander at work ; the king is deceived.
Yet why, feeling this, do I tarry here ! I will to his majesty ! No force
shall bar me from him. I will prove that Vernon has been calum-
niated."

She advanced towards the door. Herbert opposed her progress.

" Nay, Madam, this may not be — you must not seek the king. Believe
me, all that you would say in Vernon' s favour, has already been said."

" Sir ! you are cruel, thus to bar my passage. Who could plead for
the devoted soldier like his wife ?"

" He might be heard with more attention, whose representations would
seem to flow from a love of truth, rather than from affection."

"Yet let me go. Oh, this is monstrous ! not to permit a wretched
wife to sue for mercy !"

" Were I not sure the effort must be vain, I would support your pre-
sent resolution. But the king's mind, I say it not on light grounds, is
made up, and he is not to be moved."

" My anguish will touch his heart, and Vernon may live."

" Believe me sincere when I say it — were I not certain, certain as that
I stand here a breathing sinner, that your seeking the royal presence
cannot, by possibility, benefit your husband, I would not restrain you."

" Sir, you forget that the wisest and holiest of men have erred, and
your reason, in other matters most excellent, may here be defective.
Then never tell me that the king may not be induced by tears, by reason,
and by startling facts, to change his purpose."

" Again, I say, the effort cannot serve Vernon. Therefore be calm."— *

" Calm ! nay, speak not thus. Man of God ! can musing on heaven
have dissolved in thy heart all sympathy with earth. Shall a wife be

406 Colonel Vcrnon ; or, £ APRIL,

serenely resigned, while it is possible that her tears and prayers may save
him to whom her faith is pledged, from being murdered ?"

" This language you must not hold. Vernon has been sentenced by
a competent court, and even his death should not be named a murder."

" Nay, but it is murder — the foulest murder, and may avenging
furies pursue those who have willed it ! may a God of justice, hurl
his red lightning on the blood-hounds ; and may each wretched mon-
ster's dying prayer for mercy, be visibly rejected, that the sinner, even
here, may see the world of torments in which the great actors in a world
of crime, will find their eternal home. For the king "

" Hold !" exclaimed Herbert, who had previously attempted, but in
vain, to interrupt the course of her despair. " Sin not against Heaven,
by impiously arraigning its vicegerent on earth. Late repentance,
were this persisted in, would overtake thee, and gnaw thy bosom's
inmate with remorse. His majesty is all goodness."

" If it be so, then why am I, with coldly cruel admonition, and even by
force, restrained from seeking to know and to acknowledge it ?"

" For reasons good, which I now attend to unfold, if your impetuous
sorrow will give them audience."

" I want not to know the reasons by which heartless men, can bring
themselves to approve of shedding guiltless blood."

" Nor are such likely to gain utterance from my tongue. Yet will J
vindicate the goodness of my king : he would not suffer the innocent to
perish, and his ear is ever open to the voice of supplication."

" Yet but now you said, that with respect to my beloved Vernon, his
mind was made up, and that nought could save his life."

" Daughter, I told you that to petition the king would be of no avail.
This do I now repeat, and with fullest confidence — with irrevocable firm-
ness ; because and now, poor mourner! let thy heart be prepared

— for the words which linger on my tongue will thrill it to its core."

" Ha ! is it so ? — Because — so thou art about to say — Vernon, my
brave husband, has already met his cruel fate. Break, wretched heart !
— my husband is no more !"

" It is not so — he still lives."

" But is now, even in this moment, to die !"

" He lives, and is — so I hope — destined long to survive."

" Indeed ! Blest sound ! Welcome chains and dungeons, so his life
be spared \"

" He will be restored free as he has ever been, enthralled only by
those chains which love and Isabel, have twined around his heart."

" Thy voice is gentle, but still I tremble at thy words. Yet thou— •
thou who art a holy man, would not mock a weak sufferer. But I fear
my feelings delude me, and that I have imagined sounds to come from
thy lips, which were not uttered."

" Be tranquil and be happy ; Vernon is not to suffer."

fe Oh, blissful tidings ! Then let my heart swell with rapture ! But
say what meant your speech lately ? Even now it tingles in my ears,
as it burst on my startled sense, when, like the life-devouring kamsin
of the desert, it seemed to burn and blast me as it came, while you
announced, that the king would not be moved."

" This did I tell, because he had already pardoned Vernon."

" Bless him, Heaven !"

" It became my duty, being in attendance on his majesty, to make him

1830.] The Warning Vdce. 407

acquainted with all the sad incidents which had caused the loss of
Bletchington House ; and eventually I satisfied his royal mind that,
faithful to his duty, Vernon had only capitulated, when that duty for-
bade him to sacrifice the lives of gallant men by useless resistance."

" I cannot thank you, Sir, with my tongue, for my bounding heart
is striving to burst forth to do that office. Yet tell me, if Vernon be par-
doned, why is he not here ? and why — I shudder while I recal it — why
was he taken hence ?"

" As yet he knows not that he is to be spared. The king suspects
that your beauty and distress, had some undue influence on his mind, and
therefore willed that, to make a salutary impression on the young
soldier, all the preparations should go on for the execution. It is only
at the last moment, that his pardon will be announced/'

" Indeed ! My poor Vernon ! Then even now he thinks that we
shall meet no more ? O ! what a storm of joy, will he prove — !"

Here the sound of a drum was heard : it ceased abruptly.

" What means that sound ?" inquired Isabel.

" That is the muffled drum. The sound is now repeated, and will be
so at intervals ; such being the custom at a military execution."

" I hear soft, but solemn music/'

" That is the psalm tune, which makes part of the ceremonial when
the prisoner approaches the awful spot, destined to be his grave/'

" The sounds are mournful, but yet soothing. Ah ! what had they
been, had I not learned that Vernon is not to die ? Though ever intre-
pid, I know his fond heart is sad at leaving me. Yet I repine not that
he is deceived, reflecting how vast, how pure, his joy will be anon,
when he shall learn that he is not to be consigned to the gloom of the
sepulchre ; but that, restored to those he loves, he may still look on the
green fields, the blue sky, and all the glories of nature."

" Objects still more dazzling and sublime," said Herbert, " I hope
will occupy his mind — the goodness of that Deity, who "

" Who spares his being ! O ! yes, kind Sir ! reprove me not for
dwelling on objects, glorious to the mortal sense ; for to contemplate
these will be devotion ; as what can my Vernon see of the Creator's
magnificence, which will not remind him of his mercy ?"

" So would I hope."

" Sir, methinks it is past hoping. My breast glows with ineffable
delight, and is overflowing with rapture. But hark ! I hear a step.
He comes ! Now, my soul, give thyself up to bliss !"

" Yet still, my child, remember, that they who boast felicity "

" Not now, Sir — not now. Say not that I can be too happy, when
Vernon, snatched from death, returns to greet his Isabel. Surely, in
this blissful moment, exultation is reason — is religion."

One entered.

" Colonel Sidney !" Isabel exclaimed, " I thought — I expected "

" To see Vernon, Madam. That pleasure will be yours immediately.
I came to announce it, in order to prepare you. Such at least is the
excuse I make to myself for leaving him as I did. But, to confess the
truth, the scene was too much for me, and I should have cried like an
urchin under the whip at school, had I not beaten a retreat."

" And what is now doing ?"

" You shall hear. The scene was made as terrible as possible. First,
his coffin was carried before him, and placed on the edge of a grave, which

408 Colonel Vernon; or, [Ai»BiL,

had been prepared to receive it: so at least we wished Vernon to
believe. Then the muskets were loaded with ball, and, by com-
mand of the general, it was my duty to see that this part of the
arrangement, came under the prisoner's observation. Two pistols were
prepared as for the provost — to dispatch him if the muskets should
fail."

" Poor Vernon ! and he — how did he bear it ?"

" Nobly. I did think, such a dismal array would have produced
some effect — but no, he was true heart of oak. To him all these things
seemed matter of course. The muffled drum beat, and the fifes struck
up the hundred and fourth Psalm. On a former occasion, when the
burial service was thus performed for the living, I saw him tremble, and
a tear fell for the poor deserter, then about to die. But, in his own case,
no emotion could be traced. His step was firm — his air serene."

The sound of muskets was heard.

" Heard ye that roar ! Even now, fortified as I am, well knowing
that my Vernon is safe, a shuddering thrill runs through my frame.
Great God ! what had my feelings been, if the sentence had really been
carried into effect ! had that awful sound announced the shedding of
rny husband's blood. But what has caused that firing ?"

" Doubtless, Madam, it was the last experiment on the firmness of
Vernon. I did not know the thing was to be carried quite so far. But
all must be over now. I hear a confused murmur — footsteps come this
way. I fly to meet my friend."

He left the room.

" This suspense, or rather this state of anxious expectation, has been
much protracted, Sir/' Isabel remarked. " Would that it were termi-
nated ! But now they are coming. How full of rapture is this moment !

" Lady, remember."

" You would say, that human happiness cannot be of long duration."

" And mortals should ever look for an awful change."

" Nay, this is a gloomy thought — bear with me, Sir ; but I will not
cherish it in this hour of transport."

Sidney reappeared, but he 110 longer seemed himself. Joy and satis-
faction but a few moments before had heightened the healthful glow of
his manly cheek. Now, pale and aghast, his countenance exhibited but
the unequivocal expression of horror and ineffable dismay.

With a faltering voice, he at length broke silence :

ff To the mysterious decree of Heaven we all must bow."

" Spare this excruciating preparation, Sir. Where — where is he ?

where is Vernon ? Does he live, or — or " and she paused without

power to give utterance to the awful alternative which then, like the
vivid lightning's sudden and partial illumination of the night- troubled
ocean, burst on her mind. " But no j; this is a new device to try my
love and fortitude."

" I know not how to answer — but the tidings cannot be withheld."

" Speak. Does he live ?"

" He lived when I quitted his side, but I am forced to add, a fatal
accident has unhappily occurred."

" Annihilate me ! Tell me all. He lived, but was about to expire ?"

" The men have fired, and my gallant friend "

" Has fallen," exclaimed Isabel. "I know it. The dark presenti-
ment Came over me with funereal gloom. Oh ! Sir," she added, while her

1830.] The Warning Voice. 409

streaming eyes turned to the sympathising Herbert, who, scarcely less a
mourner than herself, was overwhelmed with amazement and anguish at
the catastrophe — "was it well thus to sport with the affliction of a heart-
broken wife?"

" Trust me, fair one," replied the minister, in a voice tremulous from
age, but more so from emotion — " of such conduct I am incapable, and
at this moment, even, I know not what has fortuned."

" Unfold it all," cried Isabel, addressing herself to Sidney ; " but if
he still live, let me go to him."

" With aching heart," said the colonel, " I obey. Arrived at the place
of execution, the gallant old general shed tears of joy at remarking
the intrepid bearing of Vernon. ' Firmness like this/ he whispered,
' entitles him to immortal glory ;' and his heart glowed with exulta-
tion at the thought, that instead of giving the signal of death, it would
be his duty to produce the royal pardon."

"And then — and then — why was it not produced ?"

"It had been ordered that the men should reserve their fire till a
white handkerchief waived, a signal which they were not to behold at
all. The preparations were complete, the last word of command had
been given, when the general drew from his bosom the pardon. The
delight he experienced at displaying the paper, which was to save his
young friend, caused him to produce it with a flourish of triumph.
Unhappily this was mistaken for the signal, and — and "

" My Vernon perished !" sighed Isabel.

Sidney described the anguish of the general, at learning the fatal
mistake, but Isabel heard him not. Her tears had ceased to flow — her
eyes were fixed — for now they rested on Vernon himself, who, sustained
by two of his friends, was borne into the apartment. His eyes were
still bright, but the ghastly hue of his countenance, told more than even
the blood, which flowed from his breast and throat, that but a
moment intervened between him and eternity.

Pale and breathless, Isabel approached him. He faintly extended
his hand, to receive her touch, but his eyes closed, as if the feeble effort
had exhausted the last remains of life.

" Speak to me," she exclaimed, " let me hear thy voice once more."

" Beloved Isabel !" Vernon murmured, "I — I — " Here his voice failed.
The wretched wife listened for the close of the sentence ; he was silent.
A dreadful doubt came over her — a more appalling certainty suc-
ceeded— a certainty that she was a widow.

" He is no more \" sobbed Isabel ; " and I am the author of his
death."

She clasped the mangled and bleeding remains of Vernon, and
remained motionless. When the bystanders separated her from the
corse, she uttered no cry — she shed no tear — she made no sign of woe,
but a composure was stamped upon her countenance more fearful than
anguish, more terrible than despair. The cry of her infant, which was
brought to her, produced a momentary convulsion. It indicated recog-
nition, and told that the ear of the mother was still alive to the cry of
her offspring, though reason had fled for ever. The good Herbert
essayed, but in vain, to administer the consolations of religion.

Looking on the hopeless desolation before him, he reverted to his
former warning, and mournfully repeated —

" Brief is the date of human happiness ; and they who boast that
felicity is theirs, should evermore be prepared for an awful change !"

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 G

[ 410 ] [APRIL,

RECOLLECTIONS, FROM THK PORTFOLIO OF A LOVER OF
LITERATURE.

CHURCHILL the poet's epitaph, by Wilkes, is a model for succinct
expression. 'Its vigour shames many of the sesquipedalia affairs which
spread the wisdom of fools and the virtue of knaves over so many square
yards of marble : —

CAROLO CHURCHILL
Amico jucundo

Poetse acri
Civi optime de patria merito

Johannes Wilkes

The spirit of an inscription, whether for the living or the dead, should
be simplicity. The following is too long, yet it is beautiful : —

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT, WHOSE SUPPOSED PARENTS WERE VAGRANTS.

When no one gave the cordial draught,

No healing art was found,
My God the sovereign balsam brought,

And Death relieved the wound.

What though no mourning kindred stand

Around the solemn bier, —
No parents wring the trembling hand,

Or drop the tender tear, —

No velvet pall, no work of art,

My infant limbs inclose, —
No friends the winding-sheet impart,

To deck my last repose, —

Yet hear, ye. great ones ! hear ye this !

Be wise, ye guilty proud !—
A spotless life my coffin is,

And innocence my shroud.

My name unknown, obscure my birth,

No funeral rights are given ;
But though denied man's house on earth,

I tread- God's courts in heaven.

The celebrated Pulteney (Earl of Bath) was not known as a poet ;
yet, even in the tumults of public life, he had not altogether forgotten
the original tastes which, perhaps, for his happiness, he might have
more wisely pursued, than the distracting, and finally the disappointing,
career of ambition. His epitaph on the stone that covered the grave
where his father, mother, and brother were laid, is a striking evidence
that the man was fit for something better than the leader of an intem-
perate faction : —

Ye sacred spirits ! while your friends, distressed,
Weep o'er your ashes, and lament the blessed,
Oh! let the pensive muse inscribe that stone,
And with the general sorrows mix her own —
The pensive muse ! who, from this mournful hour,
Shall raise her voice, and wake the string no more..1
Of love, of duty, this last pledge receive —
'Tis all a brother, all a son, can give.

1830.], Recollections, $c. 411

It may seem a matter of no extraordinary difficulty to give a plain
answer to a plain question; and yet it is an art which it evidently
requires some trouble to learn. In all half-civilized nations, the
inquirer for the most simple thing is met by an enigma for an answer ;
and, among the peasantry of Scotland and Ireland, civilized as the
general communities may be, the system often seems to be studied eva-
sion. This- dialogue is the model of thousands in the sister isle : —

" Is-this the nearest road to Cork ?"

" Is it to Cork you are going ?"

" Yes, but my question is, as to the nearest road ?"

" Why, this road is as near as that on the other side of the hill; for neither
of them is anyroad at all." -

ff Then which way ought I to go ?"

" Oh, that depends on your honour's own liking. Perhaps you wouldn't
like to go back again ?"

" Certainly not. But, one word for all, my good fellow — do you know
anything about any kind of road here ?"

" There now, if your honour had asked that before, I could have told you
at once."

" Out with it then."

{f Why the truth is, your honour, that I am a stranger in these parts ; and
the best thing you can do is to stop till somebody comes that knows all about
the way."

" Stupid scoundrel ! why did you not say so at first ?"

" Stupid ! that's all my thanks. But why did not your honour ask me
if I belonged to the place ? that would have settled the business. Take a
fool's advice, and stop where you are."

Mr. C. Croker, in his clever description of the south of Ireland, gives
characteristic sketches of the peasantry, which every traveller will realize.
The Irishman has the curious habit of conversing confidentially with
every thing. " Did' you give the horses a feed of oats at the village ?"
said one of the tourists to the driver, who had for the last hour found no
slight 'difficulty in urging on his wearied hacks. " I did not, your
honour," was the reply ; " but sure and they know, I promised them a
good one at Limerick."

A curious example of this understanding between man and horse, was.
given in a ride from Cork to Mallow. The tourist had advised a farmer
with whom he rode, to quicken his pace, as there were signs of a storm.
The man's answer was, " Sure and so I would, for the pleasure of your,
honour's company ; but I promised the baste to let him walk ; and more
blame to me, if I belie myself to any one, let alone the dumb baste !
For says he to me, c I'm tired, and I'll not go a step faster ; and you
can't make me, moreover!' And says I, ' I scorn it; and so take your
own way !' "

I know few things finer in the northern incantations, or in the Fury
scenes of antiquity, than some fragments of an Irish legend of the war
between Eagan and " Conn of the hundred battles," probably some
Scandinavian Nelson. The night before the final struggle, Eagan
received the announcement of his destiny from these Irish Volkyriur :

" When Eagan came back from the council, three witches stood before him,
with fiery-looking eyes, and long grizzly hair hanging down over cadaverous
countenances. The eyebrows of those fiends were large, rough, and grim,
crowinar into each other, and forming two arches of matted bristles. Their.

3 G 2

412 Recollections, from the Portfolio of \_ APRIL

cheeks were hollow, shrivelled, and meagre; their blasting tongues held
ceaseless gabble : and their crooked, yellow, hairy hands, and hooked fingers,
resembled the talons of an eagle. Thus, on small, inbent, and bony legs,
they stood before Eagan.

" ( Whence came ye, foul ones ?' asked the chief.

" ( We come from afar by our powers,' they replied.

" e I demand to know your powers,' said Eagan, leader of the mighty
bands.

ff We make the sea run higher than the mountain-tops by our breath ; we
bring snow on the earth by the nodding of our hoary heads ; we spread flame
through cities by our words ; we change the shape of all things — of man and
of ourselves — by the rolling of our eyes !'

" f Enough !' exclaimed the mighty Eagan ; e I demand your names !'

*e ' Our names are— Ah, Larm, and Leana, daughters of Traden the magi-
cian. We have come from far countries, to warn you of death. Eagan shall
fall by the keen-edged and bone-cleaving sword of the ever victorious ' Conn,
of the hundred battles/ '

" ' On your own heads may the warning alight, ye hags of hell ! May your
forebodings sink into the air, and find no answer in the mountains ! May the
trees bear the curse of your evil words, the poison of your tongues fall on the
i ocks of the valley, and your hatred be buried in the billows of the rolling
sea!'

" ( It is the will of Fate that we speak : we have spoken without haste or
hire !' Muttering their spells, they vanished from before Eagan.

" That night came the three to the tent of the King of Spain's son ; and
to him they too boded ill ; and thence they came where the hosts of f Conn
of the hundred battles' lay on the field, and they roused the hero with their
words : —

" f In thy arm be thy strength ; in thy sword be thy safety ; in thy face be
thy foes ; in thy step, thy prosperity ! The pride of Ireland is against thee,
in life and in motion. Be thou restless as the treacherous light, that shines
in the eye of the benighted traveller !' "

Dean Tucker is one of the curious instances of a man's slipping out
of recollection. Who now mentions his name ? Yet he was one of the
most active, and even of the most public, minds of England not fifty
years ago ; a scholar, a most acute and stirring politician, and a most
subtle and scientific metaphysician ; yet the author of " Search's Light
of Nature," and the pamphlet on the American question, has strangely
passed away. I remember an epigram which commemorated his domes-
tic troubles, with a lash at Warburton, who had married a daughter of
Allen, of Prior Park (a genuine " Wife of Bath"} — a match which, to
the shame of the times, got him his bishopric.

THE DEAN, loquitur.

" My wife, Father William, is ugly and old,
Asthmatic, chest-foundered, and lame." —

THE BISHOP.

" My wife, Son Josiah, no man needs be told
Is as bad in the other extreme."

THE DEAN.
' I have put mine away." —

THE BISHOP.

" The deed I applaud,
Fet, applauding, can only admire ;
For, you are bound only by man and by God,
But my obligations are prior"

1830.] a Lover of Literature. 413

An epigram on the Treasury repairs, contains the true spirit of
epigram, brief and easy sarcasm : —

From sunset till daybreak, while Walpole's asleep,
New watch are appointed the Exchequer to keep ;
New bolts and new bars fasten up every door,
And the chests are made three times as strong as before.
From the night till the morning, I grant you, all's right ;
But who will secure it from morning till night ?

The building of Somerset House renewed the popular clamour against
Scotch ascendancy, in the early part of the last reign. The Adams
actually employed none but Scotchmen in the whole construction. This
produced a vast quantity of sneering at the partiality of Sandy for his
countrymen. These lines were popular : —

Four Scotchmen, scoundrels all, and Adams,
Who keep their coaches and their macfams,
Have gathered frae the North to hum us,
And now would steal our river from us.
Auld Scotland ! many a day, 'twas said,
Thy teeth were sharp for English bread ;
But, steal our bread and water too !
'Tis true 'tis hard — 'tis hard 'tis true !
Ye friends alike of George and James,
Throw down your hods, and leave the Thames !
The princess* fond of raw-boned faces,
May give you all our posts and places.
Take all, to fill your purse and pride,
But dip your oatmeal in the Clyde !

The Constantinopolitan Greeks, though in the very jaws of the
Turkish tiger, and hourly becoming more obnoxious to hazard in the
present state of a tyranny, rendered doubly jealous by defeat, yet retain
that singular buoyancy of spirits, which made them remarkable among
ancient nations. Songs, poems and predictions administer to this indes-
tructible spirit, and the Turco-Greek is the firmest believer in every
absurdity sanctioned by an allusion to his future triumph. But on one
prediction he fixes with peculiar reverence ; and there are some circum-
stances connected with it, which might justify much interest even among
a less imaginative and sanguine people. The prediction is said to have
been found engraved on the tomb of Constantine the Great. It con-
sisted merely of consonants, to which the vowels had been supplied,
as the legend says, by Gennadios the patriarch of Constantinople, imme-
diately after the conquest by Mahomet the Second. It is certain, that it
has been circulating among the Greeks of Constantinople for upwards of
a century. Walsh, in his clever and amusing narrative, attempts to
account for it, on the supposition that it may have been composed
about the time of Peter the Great's first entrance into the Hospodariates,
and his offers of protection to the Greeks. But for this he assigns no
grounds, and the story of this strange prediction is still in clouds.

Inscription on the tomb of Constantine the Great.

" On the first of the Indict, the kingdom of Ishmael, he who is
called Mahomet shall overthrow the race of the Paleologi, and shall

* The late king's mother, supposed to admire Lord Bute.

414 Recollections, from the Portfolio of [ APRIL,

gain possession of the seven-hilled (city). He shall reign within it ;
shall subdue very many nations, and shall make the Isles desart as far
as the Euxine. He shall make desart those that border on the
Danube. On the eighth of the Indict, he shall subdue the Peloponnesus.
On the ninth of the Indict, he shall lead his forces against the countries
of the north. On the tenth of the Indict, he shall overthrow the
Dalmatae : again he shall turn back for a time ; he next stirs up a mighty
war against the Dalmatse, and is a little broken, and the peoples and
tribes, with the assistance of the western nations, shall engage in war
by sea and land, and shall overthrow Ishmael ; his descendants shall
reign with less, little, very little (power) ; but the yellow-haired race,
with all those who help them, shall overthrow Ishmael, and shall take
the seven hilled (city) with all its privileges. Then shall they kindle
a fierce intestine war until the fifth hour, and thrice shall a voice shout,
( stand, stand, and fear !' Make anxious haste, and on your right
hand you will find a man noble, admirable, and courageous. Him ye
shall have for your lord, for he is my friend, and in accepting him, my
will is fulfilled !"

To a reader conversant with poetry, few things are more wearying
than the paucity of the images that describe female beauty. When he
has found in one poet that woman's cheek emulates the rose, or her eye
the diamond, that her bosom is living snow, and that ivory and pearls are
dusky to her teeth, he has exhausted nearly all the stores of poetic resem-
blance, and must be content to feel such delight as he may, in the repeti-
tion. Even if he wander through the love poetry of all the European
nations, he will be but little relieved by variety. The rose, the lily, and
the pearl, are the resource of all ; yet to this there seems one exception in
the ancient poetry of Ireland. In the enumeration of his mistress's charms,
by an Irish bard, who lived almost two hundred years ago, I find her
bosom finely pictured by the " gently rising and falling waves of a sunny
lakej" — an image which transfers the thought from mere colour and
form, to the more striking beauty of life, and the loveliness of motion.
The radiance of her eyes, is "as the soft dew shining in the light
of dawn," an image of singular softness and serenity ; and the flowing of
her hair upon the wind, is "as the springing and glittering of the streams
down the sides of the mountain." This image strikes me as bringing
admirably before the eye, the wild and shining luxuriance of the
mountain girl's locks, as she is seen bounding forth in the vividness
of young life and sportive beauty. A shape like " the pine for
straightness," and a lip like "the wild strawberry," and words "smooth
as the pebbles polished by the flowings of the brook," are as new, and
perhaps not less poetically expressive, than those already given ; but
one of the most striking comparisons that fancy ever supplied, is found
in a little poem from the " Translations of ancient Irish Poetry, by Miss
Brooke," that of the sparkling eye of a lovely woman, to " a star in a
frosty sky."

On her soft cheek, with tender bloom
The rose its tint bestowed ;

And in her richer lips' perfume
The ripened berry glowed.

Her neck was as the blossom fair,

Or like the cygnet's breast,
With that majestic, graceful air,

In snow and softness drest.

1830.] « Loner of Literature. 415

Gold gave its rich and radiant dye,

And in her tresses flowed ;
And, like a freezing star, her eye

With Heaven's own splendours glowed.

The translation of ancient poetry into modern verse is often an insecure
mode of transmitting the original ; and it is possible that for the common-
places of the rose and the snow, we may be indebted to the translator.
But the last couplet vindicates itself. It has the native force of origi-
nality. Even where a common comparison is used, it is frequently
heightened by some unexpected and vivid conception. " The bright
eyes of my love," says Carolan, " are to her face, what the diamond is to
a ring of other jewels, throwing its beams around, and adorning the
setting."

-I shrink instinctively from the laboured " characters " of eminent men ;
but there are phrases and single sentiments that give the whole stamp
and colour of the man's mind at once. On the return of Cortez to
Spain after the conquest of Mexico, he happened to be coolly received
by Charles the V., whose mind was probably too much engaged with
the religious wars at his doors to think of conquests or converts three
thousand miles off. " Who are you ?" haughtily said the emperor. — " I
am the man," said Cortez, with still superior haughtiness, " who gave
you more provinces than your forefathers gave you cities."

The last words said to be spoken by Cromwell are invaluable as a
key to his whole career. He had, during the progress of his illness,
boldly predicted that he should recover. Some of his immediate
councillors, who saw the inevitable result of the disorder, ventured at
last to recommend that he should speak less confidently on the subject,
to save his character for prediction. But the Lord Protector judged
on principles fitted to act upon the multitude. He refused to
qualify his words : " If I recover," said he, " the fools will think me a
prophet, and if I die, what matter then if they call me an impostor I"

The secret of Dante's struggles through life, was in the reckless
sarcasm of his answer to the Prince of Verona, who asked him how he
could account for the fact, that in the households of princes, the court
fool was. in greater favour than the philosopher. " Similarity of minds,"
said the fierce genius, " is, all over the world, the source of friendship."

I know nothing more characteristic of the strange mixture of levity
and daring that we sometimes find in the French character, than Crebil-
lon's answer to the observation, that his tragedies turned too much upon
fierce and fiendish passions. " What was I to do ?" said he, " Corneille
had taken the heavens, and Racine the earth ; I had nothing left me
but the infernal regions."

Horace's " Hoc erat in votis j" Swift's

" I often wish that I had, clear
For life, three hundred pounds a year ;"

and the pleasant and acute definition of competence — " a little more
than we have," have been often praised. Yet why should Ariosto's
inscription on his house in Ferrara be without its praise ?

416 Recollections) from the Portfolio of [APRIL,

" Parva, sed apta mihi ; sed nulli obnoxia, sed non
Sordida, parta meo, sed tamen aere domus."

" Commodious, neat, exciting no public invidiousness, suited to him, and
purchased by the fruits of his own labour ;" the description admirably
comprehends all that reason and taste could desire.

In our sceptical age, we begin to get rid of all those old maxims,
which were less the work of prejudice, than of experience, with
our forefathers. Our "liberality," now disavows the old estimate of " one
Englishman to three foreigners." But the very highest authority on
such subjects, and at no distant period from the present time, has re-
asserted it in the broadest manner. " I always/' said Nelson, " was of
opinion, have always acted up to it, and have never had any occasion to
repent it, that one Englishman is equal to three Frenchmen/' He
gave the proof of this opinion, at the siege of Bastia. The general had
abandoned the siege : Nelson was indignant. " What Dundas could
have seen to make a retreat necessary," said his letters, " I cannot com-
prehend. A thousand men would certainly take Bastia. With five
hundred and the Agamemnon, I should attempt it. My seamen are
now what British seamen ought to be, almost invincible. They really
mind shot no more than pease." Nelson made the attempt : he had but
twelve hundred men in all, soldiers, marines and seamen. He stormed
Bastia, and took prisoners, 1,000 regulars, 1,500 national guards, and
4,000 of the Corsican levy !

The expression of Bossuet, to one who found him preparing one of
his famous orations, with the Iliad open on his table, is finely charac-
teristic of the lofty and magnificent genius of the man. " I always
have Homer beside me, when I make my sermons. I love to light my
lamp at the sun !"

Parr was a poor creature after all. This might have been known,
even from his perpetual eagerness to be talked about, an unfailing sign
of a paltry mind. Let a public man be however vicious or mis-
chievous, Parr seemed to think only how far his publicity could draw
up the Doctor from his obscurity, and he instantly fastened himself on
the demagogue, by a pamphlet, a harangue, or the commencement of a
correspondence of wearying, but unwearied, panegyric. Fox was of
course his idol, and to Fox he prostrated himself in all shapes of adula-
tion ; yet to the confidence of that clever profligate, and perfectly vicious
mob-leader, Parr was never admitted, and scarcely suffered to be of his
acquaintance. Still the Doctor was indefatigable ; he coursed round the
reluctant Whig, bore the contumely, and gained his ends by the mere
notoriety of the fact, that he was determined to cling to Foxism, as
long as he could cling to any thing. Publicity is easily gained on those
terms, and Parr gained the publicity of a patient scribbler of pamph-
lets, that no man living had the patience to read through. His whole
career was imitation ; in private, he aped Johnson's " bow-wow man-
ner/' and laboured to be sententiously formidable. He failed by substitut-
ing ponderousness for strength, the pomp of Johnson's words for the
vigour of his thoughts. Person described him to perfection in a sen-
tence : " Parr was a Brummagem Doctor, Sir ;" — as like Johnson as
Brummagem plating is like plate. Among his other vanities, was that

1830.] a Lover of Literature. 417

of dressing like a Bishop ; a result of his old principle, of enjoying the
shadow, if he was hopeless of the substance. Towards the close of his
days, the probable accession of the Whigs to pov/er, made him conceive
some hope of reaching the Episcopal Bench. The hollowness of his old
contempt for professional distinction, was now ludicrously proved by his
actually drawing up a " code of conduct" for himself, a set of principles,
to be put in execution, as soon as he felt the mitre on his brow, and
which he had the absurdity to let loose to the world. But he was
doomed to feel the mortifications of vanity in this instance, as in so
many others, and died uncanonized by the lawn sleeves.

He was an able scholar, so far as an extensive knowledge of Greek
and Latin deserves the title ; but he altogether wanted the force of un-
derstanding, which makes knowledge a part of the intellect. He was
neither a wiser nor a better man for his knowledge ; and his mind more
resembled the miscellaneous and dead accumulation of a large library,
than the active and well furnished energy of living literature.

But one of the most humiliating and characteristic habits of the
man, was his ravening for flattery. A curious instance transpired of
his supplying this appetite himself. On the death of the late eccentric
Lord Ched worth, his lordship's nearest of kin contested the singular
will by which he had alienated his whole fortune, amounting nearly to
600,000/., to Wilson his solicitor, and Penrice his surgeon. The plea on
the part of his family was, that his lordship was not of " sound mind,"
for a long period before his death ; and Dr. Parr, who had contrived to
fasten himself during his residence in Norfolk, on this very outre noble-
man, to speak in the tenderest terms, was brought forward to attest his
insanity, which the Doctor did without hesitation. On this, the counsel
for the Legatees produced an unlucky series of correspondence, which
the Doctor had kept up with his lordship, at the very period when, ac-
cording to his deposition, he was "non compos." This, of course, settled
the opinion of every body as to the value of the testimony. But the
laugh of the court was universal, on the reading of one letter, in which,
to Lord Chedworth's offer of sending him a silver goblet, the
Doctor replied by sending back an inscription, which he proposed to
have engraved on it. It was in the following modest terms :

Samueli Parr, LL.D.
Viro ob ing-enium peracre et perelegans,
Eruditionem multiplicein et reconditam,

Singularem Libertatis Amorem,
Et mentem simulationum ornnino nesciam,

Hocce summae suse observantiae,
Et constantissimac erga'eum benevolentiae,

Monimentum,

Johannes Baro de Chedworth,
Anno Sacro, 1803.
D.D.D. ,

It is unfortunate that the pains which have been taken to such a
remorseless extent, with the biography of this self-praised old coxcomb,
had not been exerted on recovering those fragments of Person's career;
which still exist scattered in the memories of his fellow scholars.
Person, between nerves and drink, was shaken into something not far
from lunacy towards the close of his brief life. But the details of his
modes of acquiring his extraordinary knowledge, his style of thinking,
while his mind continued in its vigour, his actual acquirements, and his

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 H

418 Recollections, from Ike Portfolio of [AriiiL,

conversational acuteness, would form a most valuable memoir. His
remark on Bentley's prodigality of knowledge, is like Caesar's remark on
the glory of Hannibal. " When I was seventeen years of age, I thought
I knew every thing : when I was twenty-four, and read Bentley, I
found I knew nothing."

His remark on Gibbon's style, contains the essence of all the criticism
that can be written on the subject. " Gibbon is too uniform ; he writes
in the same flowery and pompous style upon all topics. He is like
a fashionable auctioneer, who has as much to say on a ribbon as on a
Raphael."

. The maxims of solitary students are seldom good for any thing,
except perhaps to shew into what absurdities men will plunge headlong,
when they have no better guide than their own wisdom. The only valuable
maxims, are those which experience of the world, forces on men of the
world. Sir Joshua Reynolds continually deprecated Imitation, as the
ruin of rising ability, as an impediment which if talent raises for itself, at
once and for ever limits its progress. " Then we have a host of
players of the Garrick school," said he, " and not one of them can ever
rise to eminence, because they are of the Garrick school. If one man
always walks behind another, how can he ever equal him, still more get
before him."

The waste of time in learning the classics at the public schools
of England has been justly reprobated ; and the question, what
use do ninety in a hundred ever make of their classical knowledge in
public or general life, can be answered only by the words — No use what-
ever. Yet some of our abler public speakers have given an elegance to
debate by happy quotation. Chatham's famous quotation on the proposals
for peace between England and America will long be commemorated.

" At tu prior tu parce, genus qui duels Olympo."

Pitt's quotations were generally from Virgil, and chosen with peculiar
taste. In the debates on the French war, Fox inquiring haughtily
whether the Cabinet made the restoration of the Royal Family an object
of the war, Pitt rising, with great dignity declared, that speaking as a
private person, their restoration was deeply in his wishes, and that its
accomplishment would be considered by him, as among the most distin-
guished triumphs of his life ; finely concluding, amid the plaudits of
the House, with the words of the Trojan hero —

" Me, si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam
Auspiciis, et sponte mea componere curas ;
Urbem Trojanam primum, dulcesque meorum
Reliquias colerem ; Priami tecta alta manerent,
Et recidiva manu posuissem Pergama victis."

It may sometimes teach a man wisdom, to see how egregiously able
men have sometimes erred through mere prejudice. The knowledge of
this teaches us to distrust the dogmas of any man, and listen only to
his reasons. In particular, politicians even of the highest general saga-
city, are continually liable to be misled, and misled upon the plainest
topics which touch upon their passions. An oppositionist naturally
talks himself into a persuasion of national ruin. Home Tooke was a

1830.] a Lover (if Literature. 419

man of remarkable sagacity, singularly well acquainted with the state of
England, and familiar with the course of public transactions in all
times and nations. But in his delight at the progress of the French
Revolution, he boldly predicted that the same formidable process must be
inevitably undergone by this country. On a man of more unprejudiced
mind, the whole aspect of the empire must have irresistibly impressed
the directly opposite conviction : but Home Tooke wished, and there-
fore believed. He was perfectly certain that the overthrow of ranks,
at least, must come within a short period. " I trust," said he^ in the
utmost sincerity of familiar intercourse, (( we shall live to see the day,
when the distinctions of title will be abolished, and we may eat our
mutton without being teazed with such childish objects as ribbons,
stars and garters."

He perpetually predicted the immediate downfall of the whole system
of the country, and sneered habitually at the attempts to revive credit.
On hearing of the bankruptcies, frequent at that period, he could not
dissemble his rebel gratification. " You are not going," he would say,
" you are gone ; it is not a slight hurt, but a mortal gangrene."

The society of princes is hazardous to their inferiors, from the diffi-
culty of paying them either too little deference or too much. To natter,
without the appearance of intending to natter, is the delicate point.
" Zimmerman," said Frederic the Great, sourly, to the celebrated phy-
sician, " I suppose you have in your time helped many a man into the
other world !" Zimmerman turned with the quick retort, " Not so
many as your Majesty." The king stared at this freedom — " nor with
so much honour to myself," happily continued the bowing physician.

Great elegance may be shewn in inscriptions for grottos, fountains,
&c. What can be more graceful than the motto on the sun-dial in the
gardens of Schcenbrun, near Vienna, " Horas non numero nisi serenas."

A fountain in Paris has this inscription, which it would be difficult to
surpass, for moral feeling or poetic beauty.

" Quae tibi donat aquam, latet hospita nympha sub imo;
Sic tu, quum dederis dona, latere velis."

Striking pleasantries seldom occur in conversation, even among acknow-
ledged wits : and still seldomer in public life, as may easily be conceived
from the eager mirth which is excited at the bar, or in the senate, by
the dullest of dull jests. Yet the late Mr. Windham now and then
said some happy things. In the debate on the Walcheren expedition,
when the ministers stated that its object was to take Antwerp by a
coup-de-main, — <( Take Antwerp by a coup-de-main" said Windham
contemptuously j " Antwerp, with every inch of the road covered with
dykes, batteries and inundations ? Why, they might as well talk of a
coup-de-main in the Court of Chancery F The oddity and force of the
illustration excited great applause.

He made a capital simile on the state of the ministry, soon after the
Whigs had seen Percival fixed in power by the Prince Regent. " We
waste powder and shot upon them/' said he, " they are like wildfowl
in a lake : we may knock them down fast enough, but the difficulty is
to get them out."

3 H 2

420 Recollections, from the Portfolio of [APRIL,

Classical quotations are sometimes among the most dextrous modes of
pleasantry, by their covering the natural coarseness of humour under
the drapery of learning.

At a dinner of the late Lord Redesdale's, there happened to be some
fault found with the batch of claret on the table. When the wine came
to Jekyll, he stopped the bottle, and some one called him Fabius
Cunctator. At last the point was explained to the noble host, who
ordered a new experiment on his cellar, which produced some first-
rate wine. " Aye," said Jekyll,

" Cunctando restituit rem
Ergo magisque magisque viri nunc gloria claret"

Dundas, the father of the present Lord Melville, sometimes enlivened
even the privy council by his quotations. Hardy and Tooke's affair had
involved many stirring people, who, however, when the government
laid its grasp upon the ringleaders, were glad to make terms as well
as they could. Among the rest, Felix Vaughan, a barrister of consi-
derable ability, but urged by ill-success in his profession into attempting
shorter ways to fortune, suddenly retracted ; " Ah," said Dundas, on the
matters being stated at the council,

" Felix, quern faciunt aliena pericula cautum."

John Warton gave for epitaph on John the painter, who was hanged
on board the Arethusa frigate,

" Extremum hunc, Arethusa, mihi concede laborem."

Malone was a trifler, as any man may believe from his notes on
Shakspeare, but what could be better than his motto on the pamphlet
against Ireland's forgeries ? It was from VirgiFs description of Sal-
moneus imitating the might of Jove :

<e Demens, qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen,
^Ere, et corni-pedum sonitu simularat equorum."

Cardinal Pole's quotation in answer to Sandolet, who praised the
ancient philosophy, is beautiful. - " Pagan philosophy was good for its
day," said the Cardinal, " but the scriptures are now our light. Your
philosophy past and present reminds me of Virgil's Tenedos :

" ' Notissima fama,

Insula, dives opum, Priami dum regna manebant,
Nunc, tautum sinus, et static malefida carinis.' "

Moore's words to the Irish melodies are sometimes tender and poeti-
cal ; though they are generally too full of concetti, and too fond of ram-
bling into obscure allusions, to touch the heart. But the original poetry
of Ireland is sometimes tender and natural in the highest degree.
Nothing can be finer in the poetry of passion, than some of the love-
verses of Edmond Ryan, better known in the old remembrances of
Ireland, as Edmond of the Hills, from his unhappy and wandering life.
Ryan had fought for James II. ; and his estate was confiscated after the
defeat of that most worthless of kings. His remaining life was spent at
the head of bands of outlaws, struggling for subistence, and sometimes
desperately avenging his wrongs on the heads of the possessors of the

1830.] a Lover of Literature. 421

forfeited estates. One of his wild poems is addressed to some proud
beauty who had forgotten him. After a long recapitulation of her
charms, the outlaw bursts into the following powerful and pathetic
complainings. They are the very anguish of poetry:

" Why art thou false to me arid love,

While health and joy with thee are vanished ?
Is it because forlorn I rove,
Without a crime, undone, and banished ?

Why do I thus my anguish tell ?

Why pride in woe, and boast of ruin ?
Oh, lost treasure, fare thee well !

Oh ! loved to madness— to undoing !

Yet, oh hear me fondly swear,

Though thy heart to me is frozen — r •*'»•;• *f-n

Thou alone of thousands fair,

Thou alone shouldst be my chosen.

Every scene with thee would please,

Every care and fear would fly me ; * .^

Wintry storms and raging seas

Would lose their gloom, if thou wert nigh me.

Such, oh Love ! thy cruel power —

Fond excess and fatal ruin !
Such, oh Beauty's fairest flower !

Such thy charms, and my undoing !"

THE CLUB ROOM.

Brooks' s at Midnight. — Lord Friezland and Sir Francis Fickle at Coffee. — •
The card tables removed. — The other members gone, and a waiter
waiting in the corner of the room, yawning at himself in the mirror. —
Subsequently come in to supper, Harry Megrim, The Honourable Fre-
deric Sheep, Marquis Shilelah, Tom Rakely, Earl Icicle, Sir Joseph
Blunderbuss, Sir Robert Ribbon, Joseph Saveall, and Sir Ronald Radical.

Lord Friezland. I told you how it would be ; we had the miserable
cabinet on its knees, the whole patronage and power of the crown within
our grasp; the minister within six. hours of resignation, and yet we
threw all our chances away, blockheads as we are.

Sir Francis. Never was truer word spoken : but when was Whiggism
more lucky from the beginning of time ? It has been our fate to be
tantalized once in every twenty years with some chance of power, and
just as we have thought ourselves ready to step into office, we have seen
the whole prize gone to the dogs ; after having allured us to the exact
point, where we showed that we had neither personal consistency, nor
political honour. But how could your lordship have suffered this into-
lerable and most ridiculous overthrow to take place ?

Lord Friezland, I suffer it ! I protested against it in the strongest
manner ; I declared my determination to make no more speeches ; and
upon my soul, there were puppies enough among us, who more than
hinted, that I could not do the cause a more acceptable service. But
the world is now not what it used to be. I remember the time when the
lights of this contemptible generation would not have been counted for
more than farthing candles. Envy and ignorance are the twin inspirers
of this degenerate day.

4-2 'Die Clnb Room. Q APRIL,

Sir Francis. I have no doubt that there is a vast deal of both to be
found on the floor of any assemblage in the land. But I think ignorance
of your lordship's powers is by no means common. You have too
strong a sense of your senatorial duty, to let any topic pass without a
speech, and the first half dozen words you utter, are quite enough to
satisfy all your hearers of the speaker's faculties. (Confounded old
fool.) (aside.)

Lord Friezland. My dear Sir Francis, there is not a man on either
side of either house, whose opinion is more valuable. Your judgment
of men and things is with me decisive. I acknowledge I have a pecu-
liarly clear mode of coming to the point, a singular quickness in detect-
ing the weak points of my adversary's argument ; and if I must say so, a
remarkably forcible, impressive, and eloquent mode of delivering my
own. As we are here in confidence, I allow I sometimes realize to myself
more than all my recollections of Charles Fox. But envy, Sir Francis —
a prophet is not honoured in his own country — there is a cursed quan-
tity of conceit in this world, and it always makes a point of fleering at
eminent men.

Sir Francis. My lord, you certainly do the world a little injustice in
this point. I don't believe that there is a single member of either Peers
or Commons who envies you. (Inveterate blunderer ! aside.) But to
what has our failure been due in the beginning of the session ? I
thought the minister fairly thrown over; he had evidently been at his
wit's end from the close of the year. His anxiety was even ludi-
crously palpable. Galloping from one county to another, showing his
face, where no face could be more unwelcome, at every noble lord's and
honourable friend's who had a roof over his head, and a copse large
enough to cover half a dozen pheasants ; dining here, dancing there,
shooting in this place, speech-making in the other ; flying about with
more than the activity, and more if possible than the bows of Sir Henry
Halford, and for nearly the same purpose—to feel the pulse of every
man foolish enough to come within reach of his fingers. And what was
the fruit ? After all, a beggarly account of empty benches ; a pitiful
parade, with three fourths of it made up of the Treasury people, the
whole awkward squad of the Downing-Street police. We had him at
our feet ; how in the name of every thing burlesque, did we ever suffer
him to get on his legs again ?

Lord Friezland. Ask Megrim. I wash my hands of the business :
we had conferences and confabulations enough to have settled ten
empires. The unfortunate Piccadilly Duke was so harassed, by our
perpetual divans in his house, that at last, after trying to yawn us out
night after night without effect, his only resource was to order an
abatement of the supper. He reduced his table with such rapidity, that
before the week was out, we talked politics over a single bottle of port,
and a beef-steak ; and it was not until we were run down to a salad,
and toast and water, that we beat a retreat, and left the fates of nations
to themselves. The business then fell into Megrim's hands, who of
course botched it.

Sir Francis. The fittest man in the world for the purpose : I should as
soon expect truth from an American captain, as success from anything
touched by the hand of Harry Megrim. That fellow's public life might
be headed page by page with its several failures. He takes up the African
question ; and from that moment clouds gather upon it. He takes up the
Law Reform ; from that moment, the chance of Reform is extinguished.

1830.] The Club Room. 423

He busies himself in popular education ; the whole thriving scheme, in
which a whiggish eye would have seen the happiest prospect of those
" shocks that kingdoms are heirs to," broke down at once. He found
the rabble willing to be as wise, and a great deal more impudent than
their masters. The thing was growing up in the most turbulent pros-
perity ; but he thrust forward his ill-omened visage, and the very cheer of
his voice was the night-raven's croak to rabble supremacy. Where are
the mechanics' institutions now ? where is sunk the glory of the Birk-
becks, the Loches, the ingenious regenerators of mankind at two-pence
a thousand ? Megrim can best tell, for he gave the death-blow. Where
too his university, that new Temple of Reason, the Gower Street
Pantheon, where every name was worshipped but one ; the Babel that
was to awe the skies, the grand-junction Acropolis, where the Minerva
of the mob was to pour out from the skirts of her garments an annual
flood of muddy metaphysics into every channel of the national mind ;
where mathematics were to clothe the unbreeched in the robes of legis-
lation : where political economy was to teach the pauper to manage the
property of the state ; where the Edinburgh Review was to be the Pan-
dect, and broad Scotch the only language permitted in the House.
Megrim unwittingly performed the public service on that occasion ; he
took the management, promised to raise the tree to the clouds, and
while he was flourishing his axe round the sprays and branches, it
slipped from his hand, and cut the root in twain.

So much for the luck of the most disastrous slave of ambition that
ever perplexed debate, or spun cobwebs to catch popular applause.
Whiggism wanted but this man to sink it in utter ruin. The nature of
its leaders for the last few years was an irresistible evidence of its decay.
It is only when party is at the last gasp, that it consents to rank itself
under rashness and impotence. The broken regiment scatters from the
field under the command of a corporal ; the dying man flies to the des-
perate resources of the charlatan ; the drowning man catches at a straw.
A faction never knows how to perish with dignity ; and the fooleries of
its expiring hours, are the natural atonement for the mischiefs of its
day of vigour.

Lord Friedand. Yet Megrim is clever. I admit his infinite ill-luck,
intractable self-opinion, and matchless contempt for every man's sense
but his own; but he can talk, which is more than nine-tenths of the
clamorous boobies that come to our benches for their education, can do,
for their souls. But here he comes ; let him answer for himself.

Enter Megrim ; he flings his hat on one chair, his cloak on another, and
himself into a third, in a state of exhaustion.

Lord Friezland. (aside to Fickle.) He brings some new specimen of
his luck. A six hours' speech, perhaps, with a division of one and the
teller for his motion.

Fickle (aside). He would make an excellent sitter for any artist who
wanted to sketch the man who "drew Priam's curtain at the dead of
night " — what's the news, Megrim ?

Megrim (starting from a reverie}. What good news can you expect ?
Can you raise men out of nothing, mind out of mile-stones ? Confound
their clodpole brains ! The whole affair is — we have had another rub
to-night, and were beaten horse and foot. Whiggism is no more. I
shall order home a new blue jacket to-morrow, with my number on the
c«ipe,and apply to the police-colonel for orders, when and where to do duty.

424 The Club Room. [APRIL,

The Westminster constables have it all to nothing, and I see no reason
why I, or any man, should cling to the empty cause of whiggism, the
often roasted rump of the Greys and Grenvilles. But here come the
set. I have ordered supper in the next room for the Privy Council of
his " Majesty's Opposition/' as Hobhouse, in the plenitude of his grim
pleasantry, will call us. Allans, Messieurs !

The supper-room ; the company all talking together.

Sir Robert. Capital speech of Wetherall's ; he cut up our quondam
friend in the highest Newmarket style ; distanced him a mile from the
post, and came in without a hair turned.

Earl Icicle. Aye, " though his sins be. red as scarlet, they shall be"—-
what is the rest of the quotation ? Is there any body here who goes to
church ?

RaJcely. I know no one, but Saveall; he makes a regular peregrination
through them all, and has actually got the look of a churchwarden by
the operation. Piety will be the death of him !

Saveall. No, I disclaim all merit of the kind. Recollect, I was bred
at Aberdeen ; but if I have been seen in those places, to which Rakely
alludes, it was with no old woman's prejudice. I natter myself that I
know every shilling that every rafter of them would sell for, and that I
have compiled a body of information on the general subject of church
property, that will make a figure, of more than speech, before another
session is over.

Shillelah. Hang politics ; let us be honest for once. (Waiter, calls}.
Have you any whiskey ? smuggled I mean. Let it be from the north
or the south, mountain dew, Inishoween, Peat-reek, or Essence of
Moonlight, anything but Parliament ; the name itself is a nausea.

Waiter. My lord, I beg pardon : but we have nothing of the kind,
but " Queen's own." The house-steward laid in a large stock of it, in
her Majesty's time, by desire of the committee.

Fickle, and all with a general 'sigh. Alas ! poor Caroline !

Sir Robert Ribbon. Aye, she was a capital card ; but the game was
too short. However, we made the most of it while it lasted. I wonder
how much Colburn or Murray would give me for writing her life.
" Life and Times of her late Majesty, Caroline, Queen of England,
Baroness of Como, friend of Bergami, protectress of Whiggery, and
patroness of Billy Austin^ with Anecdotes amusing and scandalous, of
public Parties, and private Individuals of the Cabinet and the Coulisses,
by Sir Robert Ribbon, Knight of the Great Bear, the Blue Badger, and
the Queen's Garter, £c." The thing would do. What do you think
of the title ? showy, expressive, and catching.

Megrim. Why, Bob, I knew you to be clever enough at making titles
before, but I had no idea of your magniloquence. It must do. It is a
capital specimen of the art of taking in.

Shillelah. Hang politics again, I say. Is Fife married yet, or going
to be married ?

Sheep. Poh ! poor Fife may be cleared of any such mal-a-propos.
He is as innocent as the new born babe ; yet he is looking out for a
spouse.

Blunderbuss. Is he ? then, as we used to say on board the Bellona, " he
will much easier get his spouse, than find his match."

Sheep. Poh ! Sir Joseph, I meant, that lie was looking out for a hus-
band for his protegee, that being his lordship's favourite pursuit, and

1830.] The Club Room. 425

one which exactly suits his head and habits. Another Hughes Ball ii
of course to be easily found.

Friezland. That I deny, unless in some of those fashionable novels,
which know as much of high life, as of human nature, and resemble
both in their pages, as much as the figure head of your good ship, the
Bellona, resembles the profile of the Venus de Medicis. Rakely, where
is this Hughes Ball now ?

Rakely. Enjoying, I should think, the (Es triplex of travel, or the
comforts of solitude and soupe-maigre.

Megrim. Where Brummel is, and where the whole generation of
dandies go, as naturally as convicts to New South Wales ; at Calais or
Boulogne, speculating on the English coast through a telescope, and
rejoicing in the delights of a nostril, filled with the scents of a sea-shore
of mud; a stomach groaning over French cookery ; and a mind going out
like a single candle, over a solitary newspaper in a dingy coffee-house.
But d-propos de bottes, who wrote old Joan's pamphlet ?

Sir Ronald. Our friend Sheep is suspected ; but I make it a point not
to listen to aspersions on any member of the club, without full proof:
and where is the man of sense among us, who ever thinks of taking the
trouble to vindicate a minister out of power, a friend under a cloud, or
above all, a dead man, who naturally can be no use hereafter to any of
us ? But, we are growing grave ; here's a health to the Viscountess : 110
woman on earth could make a fitter wife for a public man ; for none
could give him better reasons for hating the indolence of domestic retire-
ment. Like the Spartan mother, who bade her son come back either
with his shield, or upon it ; her order was, come back with a place, and
a quarter's salary in advance, or stay away as long as you please. But
Friezland is concocting some surprise : no man looks an extempore
better. His eye rolls on these occasions, as if it were in search of his
understanding, and his tongue stammers out the joke by instalments.
Suppose my lord, you give us a song ?

Lord Friezland. Poh ! nonsense : I was thinking of other things ;
Allen's last article in the Review, on the impossibility of a devil ; by the
by, a little bit of jealousy on Allen's part, who will not consent to
a division of the name. " He bears no brother near the throne," as the
poet says. But, as to a song, I have lost all voice, let me see how long ;
aye, ever since the year I was married,

Blunderbuss. And just in time, Friezland: for you never dared to
make use of it from that day to this. But sing you must, or we shall
have an harangue fom Bob Ribbon, for I see him mustering his memo-
randums ; your notes, or any notes in place of his. (Aside to Friezland.)

Friezland (aside). Oh; in that case, I must try, for the sake of the
table. Sir Bob has a faculty of " rending the general ear with horrid
speech " that always bring me conviction in the shape of sudden sleep,
and a headach next morning. Well then, as I must give you what I can,
you shall have a song, which I heard in the Oxford common room, from
one of the fellows, who, if rotundity of belly, and rubicundity of nose,
are signs of merit, must rise to a high rank in his profession. The song
is of the classico-comico-conundrum school, and does infinite honour to
the University. It is on Mathews's last exhibition before the heads of
the House. He had given the Yankee, the At Home, the Early Adven-
tures, and so forth, to the great delight of those most potent, grave and
reverend Signors.

Fickle. Silence, gentlemen ! Sir Ronald, hang it, will you be eternally
M.M. New Series*— VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 I

426 The Club Room. [APRIL,

prating about the battle of Vimiera. Megrim, for mercy's sake, spare
the ear of my Lord Icicle, you will never thaw it. Shilelah, drink your
native whiskey and fall asleep. Silence ! I say ; Lord Friezland's
song.

(Friezland sings.)

SAPPHICS.

TO THE GLORY OF CHARLES MATHEWS.

Prime mimorum ! thou rare mimic Mathews !
Quern jocus circumvolat, blithe as May-day,
Te canunt gownsmen giddy, and the grave too,

All over Oxford !

Tu potes proctors, comitesque bull-dogs,
Ducere, et red-coats celeres morari;
E'en the stern masters tibi blandienti

Smilingly cedunt !

Quin et each high Don, sociique vultu
Titter invito 'mid the gay assemblage ;
Shouts of applause rise rapid, dum catervas

Carmine mulces !

Tu, merry fellow, velut es levamen

To the pale forms, whose final doom approaches —

Who cito cor am solio Minerva

Shuddering shall stand !

Fell are her priests ! quum vitulos prehendunt,

Singulos eheu, lacerant in pieces ;

Hi tamcn mites sweetlv gaze at Mathews,

Full of his frolics !

Serus in Lunnun redeas, diuque
Gratus intersis pojntlo togato,

Leave the dull Cockneys ; with us be At Home. —

Go it in Oxford !

All, in acclamation. Bravo — capital — you see what a man can do,
when he's beyond ear-shot of his wife. Encore.

Icicle. We must change your name. It may be Vassal among hus-
bands ; but among freemen, and the gods of the club-room, it shall be
Apollo, or Stentor, or both together.

Megrim, to Fickle, in close conversation. The fact is, we are driven to
the wall. The year sees an end of us ; from its beginning to this
hour, every step has been deeper in the mire. The fellows about me are
totally restive, with that last characteristic of supereminent absurdity,
an idea that they are the cleverest haranguers and every thing else
alive. I freely acknowledge that I see no remedy, short of a coalition
with the rabble, or a surrender at discretion to the adversary.

Fickle. But why, in the name of all that's rash, did you suffer your
set to bring forward a parcel of measures in which success was impos-
sible ?

Megrim. Why, Sir, am I to be eternally plagued with this cross-
examination ? It is not yet lawful to knock out people's brains in the
first paragraph of their speeches ; and nothing short of the Act would
have stopped them. Could any persuasion on earth silence you ? It
would be as easy to stop the Thames from running under London
Bridge, as to stop any of my exemplary recruits from blowing

J830.J The Club Room. 427

off their cartridges in each other's faces, or driving their bayonets
into each other's rear. I protested against both motions, and every
motion that they have made from the beginning. I took one of them
by the button, and asked him whether, in the name of common sense,
he believed that any man in the nation, cared three straws about the
sitter on the throne of Portugal? or believed that Don Miguel was a hair
blacker or whiter than Don Pedro? or cared whether Don Miguel married
his niece, or his grandmother ? or whether the whole dynasty were food
for the crabs of the Tagus, and the Emperor of Morocco was seated
drinking port wine in the palace of Lisbon ?— on he would go, and was
met by a rebuff in the teeth, and in the shape of his own share of the
orders for some prominent blunder. What I could do, I did. I remon-
strated with him, before the debate, and I abandoned him when up
to the neck in it. His fate is decided, and he has to thank himself
for the consequences.

Fickle. Then the Greeks ?

Megrim. May every pang of absurdity, may every bitter conscious-
ness that the ridicule of all mankind can inflict on the human heart, be
his lot who first broached that question. It has been our ruin. It has
perplexed us in private ; it has scandalized us in public ; it has driven
from us all the honest part of the nation ; and it has made us the com-
mon centre, the point of rendezvous, to every knave, from the wall of
China to the Pacific. Is it to be supposed that we were asses enough
to escape this knowledge, or that we had ears for nothing better than for
flaps to our eyes ? We saw the whole evil that dabbling in the cause
must bring. Yet, in one corner, we had a romancer of seventy, who
got mad with the memory of the Trojan war ; another, who took to the
blue skies and green mountains, and dreamed himself into every hole in
Parnassus ; a third, who had wit, wisdom, or knowledge enough for a
seller of beer, settled with himself that he was born for a maker of
codes ; a fourth, into whom all the birch in Windsor forest could never
have whipped the declension of a noun substantive, determined to figure
as a restorer of learning, and bustled about setting up a college; a
fifth, a tenth, a five hundredth, determined that he must be fit for some-
thing there, because he was fit for nothing here : and the whole rushed
forward with a clamour for Greece, as rational as if it had been the ac-
claim of so many travelling donkeys. What was to be done ? If I led,
I made myself a fool ; if I followed, I made myself a slave ; if I stood
still, I was left alone.

Fickle. Of the break down in the Greek affair there can be no
doubt ; and as little, that every tumble of this kind is so much strength
given to the enemy. But if we are to join, what are the terms ? (They
whisper.)

Rakely. (Observing them, to Blunderbuss, aside.) What can those two
fellows be about? They can't be picking each other's pockets, for
neither of them ever keeps a loose shilling about him ; at least, as long
as he can make five per cent, of it ; nor conspiring to pick the nation's
pockets ; for they know that they are far enough from that, and, be-
sides, that the affair is in other hands.

Blunderbuss. Nonsense ! They are trying to pick each other's brains ;
and they will find the task as hopeless, for the same reason. They
might as well expect a regular account of Navarino from Codrington, or

3 I 2

428 The Club Room. [APRIL,

a civil answer from Melville. But is the story true, that Ellenborough
goes to the Admiralty ?

Shilelah. No. He goes at present only to Doctors' Commons. Though,
since Danceing Schwartzbergen has relieved him of all domestic
concerns, he has the more leisure on his hands ; and, I suppose, he
would make quite as good a First Lord of the Admiralty, as he makes
a President of the Board of Controul, and that he would make as good
a Commander-in-chief, as either.

Sheep. But, how the deuce did they let him off for the Elephant let-
ter ? I am certain that it was his writing.

Megrim. Unquestionably. For no man in existence but himself
could have written it. But the sentiment came from a higher quar-
ter. The controul of a judge is not an unpalatable topic, even though
the secret may be blustered out by a booby. And you may rely upon
the maxim, that, if colonies and conquests are good for any thing,
they are good for experiments of this kind. I knew that Ellenborough
would not be sent to Coventry to correct his law or his language ; I
knew that he would be defended ; and I knew, also, that what the whole
tribe of geese, on one side, thought a glorious opportunity for ruffling
their feathers and cackling about, would be only a new ground for
favour to the man of curls and carmine.

Rakeley (tossing away a newspaper). The thing is among the most
superlative instances of human blindness. However, one should re-
member that Harley-street, No. 73, is at the Antipodes ; that the talk
of the servants' hall never reaches the drawing-room ; that the eternal
chatter of every club-room, conversazione, concert, and dinner-table, by
some luck, hereafter to be explained, necessarily steers clear of the only
man who has a right to hear, see, and understand, the matter. Have
you read Adams' speech on the Divorce Bill before the lords ?

Megrim. Yes ; and a very good speech it is. But what is the won-
der ? Her ladyship's love was going on only a twelvemonth. — In the
face of day, and in the heart of London ; within half a dozen doors of
her honoured papa's house ; between the hours of twelve and three ;
her pha?ton and grooms in waiting ; all the footmen in the street expect-
ing her ladyship's arrival as regularly as the postman's ; Schwartzenberg
himself, in full costume, leaning out of his window to give the fair one
the due diplomatic reception. Yet the affair never transpired, from
May, 1828, until March, 1829. Nothing could be more perverse. But
you know the principal, on those occasions, is always presumed to be the
last acquainted with his misfortune.

Saveall. What damages does he get ? Something handsome, I take
it for granted, to reconcile him to the loss of so valuable a wife.

Sir Robert. Oh, sorrow is too fatal to the complexion, for him to
suffer it to sit upon his brow. Schwartzenberg is a foreign prince, and,
on the double title, exempt from every thing but a horsewhip : he
having, as a foreigner, no possession beyond his moustaches and his
laced coat ; and, as prince, entitled to the privilege belonging to the
rank in all countries, of paying nothing.

Friezland, to Sir Ronald. Napier's book — I have just finished the
second volume, notes and all. It appears to me one of the most pro-
mising performances of the month. His admiration of every thing
French is quite in my style of thinking. The discovery that every
thing we did was wrong, though we succeeded, and every thing the
French did was right, though it failed ; that the French troops were

1830.] The Club Room. 429

better officered, disciplined, and conducted, than ours, though they
were always beaten ; and that ours were but a herd of unruly clowns,
wild asses, or uncollared bull-dogs, is what I have been endeavouring
to impress on this infatuated country for the last five-and- twenty
years.

Sir Ronald. The work is coxcombry from the first page to the last.
The man's dedication itself is enough to settle his pretensions to " taste
or common sense." To the Duke of Wellington — by one who feels, —
what ? in the name of all that is rational — is it respect for his Grace,
or honour for the British soldier; or, what is better than either, a
British sentiment for the triumph of England in the best cause ? No ;
but he feels — " why the soldiers of the tenth legion were attached to
Caesar."

Megrim. My dear general, recollect the fearful strength of the
temptation to a " Staff-man," to show to wondering mankind that he has
actually been at a grammar school, nay, has soared so far above the
ordinary reach of mortals, as to have read Caesar's Commentaries, even
in a translation.

Icicle. Besides, as a mere matter of taste, the whole work is a labour
for effect. He cannot give the statement of a quarrel between two don-
key drivers, without throwing it into the picturesque ; he fabricates his
camp rabble into heroes of romance ; and makes his campaign under the
walls of Ciudad Rodrigo, or Badajos, more like a campaign under the
walls of Troy. Of his tactics I can, of course, pretend to no professional
judgment; but they appeared to me too perplexed for professional use,
or for any use but to puzzle himself — to have all the merit of an ancient
oracle, an obscurity expressly calculated to save the credit of the shrine,
let the event turn out what it may. Did you know Moore ?

Sir Ronald. Thoroughly ; and lamented him as a brave officer and a
friend. But his true vindication is not to be found in the rash and
headlong panegyric of Napier's book. Extravagant praise necessarily
excites jealous inquiry ; and if any stain can rest on Moore's manly
memory, it will be from the breath of the giddy protection that flings
itself with such fierce folly on his tomb.

Friezland. He was a capital topic for the debaters on our side, for all
that. While he seemed likely to beat the French, we abused him ; and
when the French hunted him to Corunna, we abused the ministry.

Sir Ronald. Moore had but one fault. Brave as he was in the field,
he was the coward of a newspaper. He could never face the rumours of
the coffee-house. If the art of printing had been extinguished for the
year of his Spanish campaign, he would have marched upon Madrid,
have, ten to one, beaten the French, and Napoleon along with them,
roused the Spanish nation by the million, and shortened the war by half
a dozen years ; but every arrival of the post from England was worse
than the march of a new French corps d'armee to him. His error was
first — the six weeks wasted at Salamanca. Napier pleads that he was
kept in ignorance of the state of Madrid, by Frere's letters. But had he
not a whole crowd of idle aides-de-camp to send to Madrid and gain
intelligence for himself?

Then came the news of Napoleon's advance upon him. This threw
him on his route to the mountains ; and the first impression on his mind
was, evidently and fatally, how he should carry his army untouched to
the parade in Hyde-park. Napier pleads, that the retreat was hurried
through Gallicia by ignorance of the roads ; but in the six weeks wasted

430 The Club Room. [APRIL,

in waiting for Frere's letters, he might have measured every bridle path
in Gallicia, fathomed every ditch, and undermined every bridge, if he
so pleased. His hesitation ruined all. Napier pleads Wellington's
approval of this melancholy march, as one — " In which there were but
two things objectionable, his not going straight forward when he had once
begun to move; and his not making a previous examination of the
country." But of what else does any man complain ? If he had known
the country, he might have marched as much at his ease as he ever
marched to the Horse Guards. If he had gone on with his retreat,
without being tempted to delay, in the vain expectancy of a battle with
Soult, he might have reached Corunna without the loss of a man.

Friezland. But he must have taken to the ships after all.

Sir Ronald. No more than we need at this moment. Napier absurdly
takes it for granted, that he must have been driven out of Spain ; and
confuses the story in his own sublime manner. But there was Corunna,
a strong fortress, which might have baffled the French with Napoleon at
their head, and which, garrisoned by British troops, would have baffled
them, if they carried the whole battering train of the grande armee at
their backs, In Corunna we ought to have made our stand, if we had
been beaten in the field. Soult had not a single battering gun in his
whole army. And if we had chosen to stand in Corunna, he must have
run out of the country.

The proof of all this is, that Romana, with his five thousand naked
and almost unarmed- fugitives, did make a stand in Corunna; that Soult
dared not attack even its famishing and fugitive garrison ; that he was
forced to abandon Gallicia almost as rapidly as he entered it; and that
Romana's miserable force fought him, step by step, until they hunted
him over the borders of Gallicia.

Blunderbuss to Megrim. Aside. That merciless old proser. I'll lay fifty
pounds to his rent-roll, that he brings you round to the battle of Vimiera,
and lays you flat in the ditch where he, at "the head of the gallant

forty," but you know the whole story by this time, if eternal

repetitions could drive it into you.

Megrim Then stop his next charge, or we are all dead men, if men can
die of yawning. What object Nature has in permitting such pre-eminent
old bores as old generals to infest the earth, after the war is over, alto-
gether surpasses my comprehension. Give us a song, if it were for
nothing but to rout the general in the moment of a victory, that is sure
to cost some of us our lives.

Blunderbuss. You shall have it as free as my broad pennant on board
the Bellona. The tune is by my boatswain, the best whistler in the
fleet ; the words are by myself.

Megrim. Then, as Rogers says of Horace Twiss, " you will be double
d-rnn-d, for you sing your own song." But, no modesty, Sir Joseph ;
you know you're among friends.

Blunderbuss. Waiter, another dozen of claret. Now, Megrim, none
of your good humour ; I hate the horrid grimace of your civilities. Look
the hyaena that Nature made you.

SONG. — " THE GIANT'S WEDDING."

I sing a song, a wedding-song — not like a maiden speech, Sirs —
Beginning with a whisper, and ending in a screech, Sirs ;
The modest preface to some fudge, which fools call an Address, Sirs —
As much to do with Mister Bull, as breeches with Queen Bess, Sirs !

1830.]

The Club Room. 431

CHORUS.

So here's long life to Downing-street, the Treasury, and Mint, O !
And if you think the truth I blink— why, call me Peel or Pinto !*

My song's about a giant stout, with such a monstrous throat, Sirs,
He'll swallow statesmen by the score, the conscience and the coat, Sirs :
His back's so strong, he bears along two Houses on his head, Sirs ;
And twenty million pair of hands supply his daily bread, Sirs !
Chorus.— -So here's long life, &c.

His pen's so large,' its least discharge can blind St. Stephen's sight, Sirs ;
And all men cry, " The time's gone by when black was known from

white, Sirs:"

His ink's so thick, they say Old Nick invented the japan, Sirs ;
But then 'tis odd how soon a clod, touched with it, struts a man, Sirs!
Chorus.— So here's long life, &c.

He had a love— an Irish dove— and to her wrote a line, Sirs ;
Some said 'twas false — but that affair is neither your's nor mine, Sirs :
Some said his priest, to say the least, suggested the amour. Sirs ;
I say no more — his pistol's-bore my silence shall secure, Sirs !
Chorus. — So here's long life, &c.

The lady's scorn some years had torn the Giant's tender heart, Sirs ;
To gain the prize, his two huge eyes outwept a water-cart, Sirs :
He plucked the falchion from his side, and flung it on the floor, Sirs —
There lay it like the mizen-mast of a royal seventy-four, Sirs !
Chorus. — So here's long life, &c.

This lady gay was fresh as May, and merry as the spring, Sirs,

And on her little finger wore a precious emerald ring, Sirs :

'T would raise your smiles to talk of miles — but, keeping within bound,

Sirs,

The poets sing this emerald ring was just a thousand round, Sirs !
Chorus. — So here's long life, &c.

He told some lies., he breathed some sighs, he made a loving speech, Sirs,
Among her rogues, broadcloth and brogues he scattered on the beach, Sirs;
The lady feared his sword and beard, yet listened to his tongue, Sirs,
Although 'twas just six thousand years since people called her young, Sirs !
Chorus. — So here's long life, &c.

Then all was gay, just half a day — they quarrelled before night, Sirs;
The Giant swore his love was o'er, and might should do for right, Sirs:
They made their couch — but I'll not vouch how many lay beside them ;
Ten thousand men were rumoured, when the sexton came to hide them.
Chorus. — So here's long life, &c.

But ever since, he's called a prince, and strides from- sea to sea, Sirs ;
Some say he'll dine on Germany, with China for his tea, Sirs :
One foot upon the Yankee's neck, and one upon the Turk's, Sirs —
A dozen thrones, a hundred years, are cut out for his work, Sirs.
Chorus. — So here's long life, &c.

They say that as he's not quite tall enough to reach the moon, Sirs,
Ten million silk- weavers are hired to build him a balloon, Sirs —
From which, before a week is o'er, he'll march upon the sun, Sirs :
So ends my song, which, though not long, I hope will have a run, Sirs !"

CHORUS.

So here's long life to Downing-street, the Treasury, and Mint,' O !
And if you think the truth I blink — why, call me Peel or Pinto !

* " Ferdinaml-Mendez-Pinto, thou liar of the first magnitude !"

432 The Club Room. [APRIL,

Shilelah. Capital ! Bravo, it does honour to the declining brains and
remorseless throat of one of our best poetasters, singing his own strains.
You see, Gentlemen, a man may be good for something though he lives
in fear of his wife. But, for Heaven's sake, no more politics. Can
any one tell me the meaning of this purchase of mine, not half an
hour old, from McLean's ; and masterly in style, colouring, and con-
ception ; the very touch of Lawrence, with the very tints of Titian ?
I borrowed that last flourish from my friend Frankland Lewis's in-
auguration speech to the clerks in the Navy Treasurer's office. (Shewing
a caricature.}

Megrim. It is exactly what I like ; excessively clever, and prodigi-
ously impudent. Pray, my Lord Marquis, will you condescend to
explain — first, the title — A Political Reflexion. — Aye, I see, a figure
looking in a mirror that " shews the age its very form and pressure."
But who is the figure ? — A soldier of rank, I presume, from the super-
fluity of sash and lace about his person. He is holding a crown over
his head, and examining, in the glass, how far it might become him. The
countenance is long, rigid, and hook-nosed ; the expression a mixture
of fright and fierceness, full of evident eagerness to make the experi-
ment of wearing the " baby circle," yet with a keen retrospective
glance, as to the effect which it might have on the personages in the
room. Whom do you conceive that red-coated personage to be ?

Shilelah. Can't possibly tell ; except it be meant for the Attorney
General. It might do for Lawyer Scarlet I

Sir Ronald. The name is just the thing for an administration of our
cloth. Since the Premier could not make one of his drummers or
aides-de-camp barristers at the word of command, he was delighted to
find a name that might so far console him for the thing. But the other
figures, my Lord Friezland, can you find them out ?

Friezland. To tell you the truth, I always find out problems best,
after they have been found out by somebody else. For these sixty
good years I have enjoyed an easy life and a fair reputation, by never
taking the trouble to have either an idea or a will of my own. In
party I have been a Jacobin, because to scoff at every thing, saves all
the inconvenience of inquiring into the merits of any. I have said,
" No," to all the measures of races of ministers, as different in their
politics as Richelieu from Robespierre, for words of one syllable are to
politicians what they are to children, — the best employment for those
who cannot manage more : and I confess that my capacity never
amounted to the safe use of two syllables together. Yet, by the help
of a good table, a tolerable memory, and an indefatigable common-place
book, I have passed muster among the " Illuminati" of my time ; and
if I am called a goose by some, and a mule by others, I pass for a
patriot with the mob, and certainly mount above par in the aristocracy
of Whiggism.

Saveall. Ton my life, my lord, the confession is the counterpart of
your visage, — very ample, innocent, and absurd. But your dinners are
meritorious ; and we can forgive your sincerity for the sake of your
soup ; which is the reverse of what I can say for my countrymen. But
who is the fat fellow lying in the cradle, with a projecting toe muffled
up in the full costume of the gout ; his finger in his mouth ; and his
honest face in the enjoyment of an uneasy sleep ?

Shilelah. Can't possibly tell. Perhaps Lyndhurst — he has the gout,
as becomes the bench ; has his finger in his mouth, as becomes a mem-

1030.] The Club Room. 433

bcr of a profoundly puzzled ministry ; and, I suppose, thinks that he Was
asleep when he gave up the rolls for the infinite bore of the woolsack ;
or wishes, like another Othello, he could taste that sleep he enjoyed
before. The lady watching beside his slumbers, too, confirms the idea.
Her attitude of attention, and her hushing him to rest, all are in favour
of the interpretation.

Megrim. Poh ! The lady is as old as my grandmother ; as round as
the dome of St. Paul's ; and as loving as the great key of the tower,
that love which keeps fast all that it has once got hold of. But the
room is evidently a nursery. The floor is strewed with play-things,
a little wooden life-guardsman, a little grenadier, a yacht, fit for
the navigation of a slop-bason, a giraffe, three inches above the life-
guardsman and his steed, and a baby palace, six inches long by two. —
Pray, Icicle, what put Frankland Lewis in place ?

Icicle. The grand deity of fools, luck ! He had been haunting the
Treasury until the very messengers used to lose their appetites at the
sight of his spectral visage. He had hung himself on the skirts of every
set of men that have worked their way up the Treasury stairs for the
last thirty years, and had contrived, byindefatigability of pushing, to reach
the enviable distinction of being notoriously a gentleman who, if not
fit for every thing, had made up his mind, on the two points, that he
would do for every thing, and that any thing would do for him. Yet a
man of this kind is a convenience in the train of a ministry. Sure to be
forgotten, of course, in the first five minutes of his absence ; and, from
his perfect conviction of this, sure never to be five minutes out of the
way ; a minister is as certain of having him at his call as any of the
messengers that stand on the staircase. The first tingle of the bell
brings him up to the door ; and there stands the bowing receptacle of
the great man's commands. A letter is to be sent to some sulky peer,
five hundred miles off, in the wilds of Inverness. The man is there
who will jump into the mail in the next quarter of an hour, and,
without drawing bit, lay the letter on the library table of the per-
son purchasable. If we have a wrangle with the Chan of Tartary, or
the Emperor of Madagascar ; there is the flying pacificator. If a com-
mission is to be dispatched to the Cape for the purpose of stopping
John Bull's clamours for an indefinite time (no commission that knows
its business ever making a report in less than from fourteen to twenty
years, and ministers, all the while, referring all complaints to " its
honourable board;") there is the willing commissioner, or the willing
clerk, or the willing any thing. If the Irish government are of opinion
that the children in the charity-schools are not whipped enough, and
thereon apply, ft as in duty bound," to the superior wisdom of their
masters and makers in Downing-street ; there stands the man who is
proud and ready to go on the " flagellation committee," or the " pota-
toe-bread council," or the (( mud-cabin board/' or the " human expor-
tation inquiry ;" and as ready to go to Canada, or Columbia, or Caca-
fogo Island, or the Devil's A — e-a-Peak, or the Moon, by the first
vessel for that voyage, as to Ireland.

Saveall. Those are merits, I allow ; but you see how little they have
served me. I defy all the Frankland Lewises, or Monk Lewises, since
the conquest, to have been more eager to catch service ; and what is
my reward ? Three pint pots, which I verily believe to be pewter,
though the unwashed rascals (who, I suppose, stole them, for a display

M."M. New Series— VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 K

434 The Club Room. [APRIL

of their bounty) swore furiously that they were plate; one hundred
pounds stock in the Greek loan, which I was forced to buy for the
honour of the cause, and of which I cannot get rid to this hour ; an
attack from that scowling dunderhead Palmerston, whenever I open
my mouth ; and the pleasure of seeing myself laughed at in every
newspaper of common reputation, as a broken down popularity-
hunter.

Sir Robert. Oh, hang it : are you worse off there than every man
among us ? Whiggism is shelved : as much a dead letter as Lord Gren-
ville's speeches, or Tierney's memory ; it is on half pay, or worse, with
no pay at all : a d — mn — ble condition for man or cause to be in, as
some of us know to our cost ; down to the lees, sunk in the bottom of
the Slough of Despond ; and to be dipped in by no man who is not
ambitious of covering his name with mire eternal; down at a dis-
count that would beggar the whole dynasty of the Rothschilds ; and
sunk into a depth of public scorn, a palpable obscure, that would
blacken the visage of Beelzebub. It is gone ! like my legion — my — f

Fickle. Heavens, how eloquent ! — What a Southwark Cicero ! (Yawns,
and falls back in his chair.)

Sheep (starting up to his assistance). Some water, there ! By Jupiter,
the baronet has got a locked jaw ! This comes of your confounded
habit, Ribbon, of rehearsing your borough harangues among gentlemen.
Fickle will die — he gasps — he changes colour — he is speechless !

Friezland. Then it is all over with him. For when once Sir Francis
holds his tongue, you may rely on it, that he has lost the power of
talking. Well, Megrim, you must say something about him when
you move for the new writ, and we can put Blacking Hunt in his room.

Megrim. I make a panegyric on Fickle ! Not a syllable. He was
the greatest bore that ever bored a party. Giddy as a goat, and con-
ceited as a peacock. An aristocrat by all the habits of his idle life ; a
democrat, by his craving for the breath of the rabble. As youth gave
him none of the generosity or manliness that belong to early years, so
age gave him none of its wisdom or dignity. With a large fortune, he
never made himself a public benefactor by any memorial of public be-
nevolence, by any zeal for the arts that embellish life, or any patronage
of the literature that does honour to a country. His whole career
was a miserable pursuit of a miserable ambition ; for this he began by
dabbling in the mob, and closed by humiliating himself to the very dust
of the minister's shoes. Commencing public life by stimulating the
rabble, and ending it by a ridiculous submission to power ; there he lies,
the emblem of a departed demagogue !

Shilelah. Ha, ha, ha ! Excellent ! You never did any thing better
in your life, Harry ! I knew you hated the fellow, by your excessive
civility to him ; but I did not think that you could have approfondid,
ns Alvanly says, the infinite littleness of his character. But, now, tell
the truth for once ;^ was not tips a part of your intended oration on
Tierney ?

Rahely. By the by — the world thought that poor Tierney was
rather scurvily treated. Not a syllable said about him ; yet .he was
the ultimus rebellium, the last of the Foxites.

Blunderbuss. So much the better. They were a set of scoundrels,
with principle in their mouths and place in their hearts. Why, old
Charley himself had no more notion of public honour, than a ship's
purser has of giving up a perquisite, or a clerk in the Admiralty of

1830.] The Club Room. 435

letting loose a fee. Remember how the patriot fire blazed in him when
the fleet was in rebellion ; how he harangued when the Nore was
blocked up with mutineers ; he saw the country shaking, but what was'
that to him ? he saw the ministry likely to shake too, and bellowed
accordingly. But we escaped him at last; we were not gone far
enough on the road to ruin, to put power into his gambling hands ;
and the rogue was gallantly turned into the hold, after all. Sheridan
acted nobly then — he saved the Whigs from being disgraced for
ever.

Friezland. Ah, poor old Red-nose ! Sheridan had something in him
that made him always a bad Whig ; party had not frozen him up ; he
Avas generally a knave, and of the most incorrigible kind ; he seemed
the fitter, of course, for our faction. But, confound the fellow, he had,
now and then, a compunctious visiting ; a sudden sense of what was
due to human nature ; a sting of honour, that made him the most in-
secure dog possible for Whig objects. He was clever, useful, but not
always tractable, and, of course, never trustable.

Rakely (to Megrim aside). In the name of all that is marvellous,
where did Friezland get that ? His brains are no more capable of en-
gendering three words of that speech than poor down-in-the-mouth
Durham, or that little bubbling emblem of his own soup-kettle, Taylor ;
he must have stolen it from the " Age," that inveterate —

Megrim. Hold your tongue on that subject, Rakely, or tell the truth.
The " Age" has hit both of us too hard to be a favourite with either.
But I see nothing cleverer from John-o'-Groat's house to the Land's End.
It never minces the matter, to be sure ; it lays on us all, most devilishly,
I admit ; it flogs right and left, and does not care a pin's point whether
it strips the skin off my shoulders or yours ; lays a radical Whig bare
from shoulder to flank, or scarifies an apostate Tory, until his nearest
and dearest friends fly from him as a pickled monster. But it does its
business heartily ; where others only half do it, like miserable turn-coats
and trimmers as they are j it cuts to the quick, and I, for one, can tell
you, that the fear of its just vengeance has crushed, in the bud, more
sprouting rascality than all the harangues of the very worthy and very
mealy-mouthed gentlemen of his Majesty's opposition. As to its old
character of ribaldry — that day is gone by, evidently, to return no
more. It has higher things to do, and it does them powerfully. You
see how justly it abused us, the other day, for not saying something
about our old champion Tierney.

Rakely. What could we say of him — a Whig, that pretended to keep
up appearances, as they are called ; that made faces at what he thought
rash and silly measures : nay, I have been informed, actually went to
church on Sundays ? Did you ever hear Rogers's lines on him ?

Megrim. Nonsense, of course, if they were his. But let us have no
more burthens laid on the little banker's head. That unfortunate Nes-
tor, as Byron laughingly nick-named him, has been made the scape-
goat of every desperate waggery ; the foundling-hospital-basket for all
bastard wit; the Parnassus-hulk for all the convicts against com-
mon sense that have been driven out of general society.

Saveall. Every man is liable to imputations of the kind ; though, I
believe, I have escaped that of ever having said a good thing. But, to
do Rogers justice, he bears the general laugh, like a hero of ninety ;
talks of Byron, without, at least, any visible rage at his lordship's per-

3 K 2

436 The Club Room. [APRIL,

petual sneers ; and withers down to a tranquil oblivion on a retired
allowance of a pun a day.

Megrim. Has the grand question of the authorship of that pre-emi-
nent performance " THE NEWSPAPER" been ever settled between him
and Canning's representatives ? If they can but set a pair of hostile
bibliopoles in a passion about it, it may bring half a dozen thousand
pounds for the copyright of what's not worth sixpence to any man,
woman, or child, beneath the stars. Saveall, recite it for us ; you get
hold of every thing that can be turned to money.

Saveall. On one condition — that the Club give me an order for a copy
for every member on its publication. Now, you are to imagine a vault,
grim as a blue-stocking drawing-room on a night of full conversazione.
Three little Luciferians, real imps ; not little Oscar Byrnes, or cat-
visaged emanations from the Vestris ; but real demons, with regulation
tails and claws, dancing and screaming ; in the centre of the room a little
steam engine, the machinery of solid fire, the furnace, fed with dried
dowagers' tongues, and the boiler bubbling up with a mixture of ink
and aquafortis.

THE NEWSPAPER.
^Dance of Imps, and Grand Chorus, *2

Black with gall from toe to thumb,
Queen of Darkness — Scandal ! come !

[^The ground opens, and the Queen rises, undressed, in the new Almack's
costume. In one hand an opera-glass, and in the other a lady patroness's
card. As she rises, a thick vapour ascends, which subsides in a shower
of caricatures.^

Spirits — scarlet, black, and blue !

Little liars, ever new !

Ye that through the West End wing,

Giving every tale its sting ;

Catching whispers from the tongue

Of moral dames, no longer young ;

Telling what rich fool is dipt;

Telling what gay belle has slipt ;

Small conveyancers of sneers ;

Setting mankind by the ears ;

Telling who to France has fled,

Fearful of a husband's lead ;

Telling who, in Crockford's hall,

Lost last night the deuce and all, —

Now your daily mischief spin !

Inky imps ! begin, begin !

^The imps stir the fire; the boiler throws up a vapour, in which are seen
hovering, paragraphs, inuendos, epigrams, and fragments of the Court
Circular.^

FIRST IMP chaunts.

Spirits ! tell me, one by one,

Who are doing — who are done.

SECOND IMP.

Full five hundred noble youths,
With their fingers in their mouths,—
Twenty guardsmen, — twenty lancers, —
Lords of barbs, and opera-dancers, —
Folly's destiny fulfilling,
Stand this hour without a shilling !

1830.] The Club Roam. 437

FIRST IMP.

Spy that shivering in the Square,
Watch the rout's slow emptying stair,
From the footmen catching names
Of its mob of naked dames —
While policemen, in a passion,
Curse the sleepless hours of fashion —
Bring the plunder thou hast gathered,
From those pigeons all unfeathered ;
Picture to the nation's eyes
Bedford's more than prize-ox size ;
Cowper's opera petticoat ;
Bayley's open heaven of throat ;
All the legs of all the Seftoris;
All the married — all the left ones.

Chorus.

Double, double ! life's a bubble !
Flirting is no sort of trouble !

FIRST IMP.

Imp that, privileged to puff,
Deal'st in panegyric stuff;
Giving Majesty a hint —
Plain, or else the devil's in't !
How would fit a bishop's wig
Philpotts, of all prigs the prig :
From the stable and the bar,
On the bench a shining star ;
How Sir Thomas's turned coat
Still is worth a five-pound note ;
How the " last delightful novel"
(By some scribbler in some hovel)
Owns its author in a lord
(Rascal, worthy of a cord !) —
Nay, the world are whispering
That its writer is — a king ;
, Brodum's balsam, Canning's speeches;
Stultz's patent dancing breeches ;
Scudamore on love and gout ;
Lessons to teach fools to spout ;
Classic Hamiltonian Greek,
Taught to infants in a week ;
Patent medicines — half a dose
Paints a death's-head like a rose.

Chorus.

Double, double ! man's a bubble !
Humbug is no sort of trouble !

FIRST IMP.

Imp, in charge of human tricks,
Tell us how go politics ?

IMP chaunts.
Bonaparte lies alone
On his St. Helena throne ;
You may nose him in the wind,
But his worse is left behind.
Cromwell slumbers many a day
In his house of wood and clay —
Bloody, bold, and hollow-hearted !
But his model's not departed.

438 The Club Room. [Amu,,

Time alone the tale will tell,
Whether in a dungeon's cell,
Whether in a desart isle,
Whether in a royal pile,
Shall that model yet be seated ; —
Whether curst, and feared, and hated,
By what doom of guilty fame,
Shall be smote that model's name.
But the world still rolls along ;
Fools beget a foolish throng ;
Blockheads, only made for slaves —
Blockheads, native prey of knaves !

Chorus.

Double, double ! earth's a bubble !
Trimming is no sort of trouble !

SCANDAL.

Now the charm is featly wound,
Take to scoundrels above ground —
Soon to be your nearer neighbours —
Take your mischief-making labours !
On the types the paper lay,
Black enough to cloud the day ;
Then speed it on your wings unfurled,
And spread the poison through the world !

THE CAPTAIN OF RIFLES.*

THERE have been half a dozen narratives of the 'ad ventures of — a
young Rifleman, an old Rifleman, a French Rifleman, a German, and
so forth. And they have all had some claim on public interest ; for of
all the eccentricities of a soldier's life, the Rifleman takes by right the
first share.

But of all those self-historians our Captain of Rifles tells his tale the
best, for he is a remarkably pleasant fellow ; he takes the world's
roughnesses with the gayest nonchalance, and has a natural fund of
humour, which is by no means the worse for its being perfectly in the
camp style. His book has one fault, the rarest fault in books, it is too
short. For we feel convinced that he might have indulged us with fifty
pleasantries for one that he now gives us, and that we might have had
to thank him for beguiling the cares of a month, instead of tantalizing
us with the amusement of a day.

After seeing his first shots fired in Walcheren, the young Rifleman
" retired upon Scotland," to get rid of the ague, which was all that
we got by our conquest.

In 1810, he heard that his company in the 95th was at Spithead
under orders for the Peninsula, rushed from his heathy hills to take
a share in the Spanish glories, and landed in Lisbon.

There he made the discovery which every stranger has made for the
last five hundred years, that Lisbon is a very showy city from the river,
and that it would require the whole river poured through its streets to
make it endurable by the senses of any living thing but a pig or a
Portuguese.

* " Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands,
from 1809 to 1815." By CAPTAIN J. KINCAID. London. Booiic.

1830.] The Captain of Rifles. 439

After wandering for a few hours among the streets, — " in the vain
hope that he had got among a congregation of stables and outhouses/'
he opened his eyes to the novelties of the population.

" The church, I concluded, had on that occasion indulged her nume-
rous offspring with a holiday, for they occupied a much larger por-
tion of the streets than all the World besides. Some of them were
languidly strolling about, and looking the sworn foes of time, while
others crowded the doors of the different coffee-houses ; the fat, jolly-
looking friars cooling themselves with lemonade, and the lean, mustard-
pot-faced ones sipping coffee out of thimble-sized cups, with as much
caution as if it had been physic.

" The next class that attracted my attention, was the numerous col-
lection of well-starved dogs, who were indulging in all the luxury of
extreme poverty on the endless dung-heaps. There, too, sat the
industrious citizen basking in the sunshine of his shop-door, and
gathering in the flock, which he so bountifully reared on his withered
tribe of children. There strutted the spruce cavalier, with his upper
man furnished at the expense of his lower." We know nothing in the
descriptions of Portuguese society more expressive.

This was the time of the retreat to the lines of Torres Vedras, and
the rifle company being ordered from Figueras to join the retreating
force, moved upon Coimbra. To their astonishment they found this
city of twenty thousand souls, without a living body. Wellington had
ordered the whole population to follow the army. But the disappoint-
ment was a sore affliction to the Rifles, who expected good living there ;
" a company of rosy-cheeked, chubby youths, who, after three months'
feeding on ships' dumplings, were thus thrust, at a moment of extreme
activity, in the face of an advancing enemy, supported by a mouldy
biscuit, and a pound of raw beef, drawn every day, fresh from the
bullock."

The Rifleman prefaces his tale with a candid declaration that he
means to talk of nobody but himself and his own regiment. — " Every
man may write a book for himself, if he likes, but this is mine. And,
as I borrow no man's story, neither will I give any man a particle of
credit for his deeds, as I have got so little for my own, that I have
none to spare. Neither will I mention any other regiment than my
own, for there is none that I like so much, and none that so much
deserves it ; for we were the light regiment of the light division, and
fired the first and last shot in every battle, siege, and skirmish, in which
the army was engaged during the war. In stating the foregoing reso-
lution, however, with regard to regiments, I beg to be understood as
identifying our old and gallant associates the 43d and 52d, as a part of
ourselves, for they bore their share in every thing ; and I love them,
as I hope to do my better half (when I shall come to be divided)."

The first exploit of his detachment was one which Don Quixote
would have envied, and Sancho Panza panegyrised. — ce October 1, 1810.
We stood to our arms at daylight, this morning, on a hill in front of
Coimbra ; and as the enemy soon after came on in force, we retired before
them through the city. The civil authorities, in making their own
hurried escape, had left a jail-full of rogues unprovided for ; who, as
we were passing near them, made the most hideous screaming for relief.
Our Quarter-master-general humanely took some men, who broke open
the doors, and the whole of them were soon seen trowling along the

440 The Captain of Rifles. [APRIL,

bridge into the wide world, in the most delightful delirium, with the
French dragoons at their heels."

After this specimen of the varieties of human happiness, they
reached a small town where the commissaries were destroying some
stores which they were unable to carry off. The Rifles came in for
shirts and shoes, while the streets were running with rum, which the
soldiers were drinking as they marched along. Some years after, the
commissariat attempted to charge the men with the price of the shirts
and shoes. But they were favoured with a soldier's answer; that
" one half of them were dead, and the other half would be d — mn-c[
before they would pay any thing."

At Torres Vedras, the Rifles were happy : they were, of course, in
advance of the lines, and lived during the day in the little town of
Arruda, retiring, however, to a bivouac among the hills at night.
They here indulged in the free luxury of out-post life. — " We cer-
tainly lived in clover while we remained here; every thing we saw
was our own, seeing no one who had a more legitimate claim, and
every field was a vineyard. Ultimately it was considered too much
trouble to pluck the grapes, as there were a number of poor native
thieves in the habit of coming from the rear every day to steal some ;
so that a soldier had nothing to do, but to watch one when he was
marching off with his basket-full ; when he would deliberately place his
back against that of the Portuguese, and relieve him of his load, without
wasting any words about the bargain. The wretch would then follow
the soldier to the camp, in the hope of having his basket returned,
which it generally was, when emptied."

Massena abandoned his position in front of the lines on the 9th of
November, leaving, as is usual with the French, a little evidence of
stratagem in " some straw-stuffed gentlemen" to occupy the usual
posts of his sentries. " Some of them were cavalry, some infantry,
and they seemed such respectable substitutes for their spectral prede-
cessors, that in the haze of the morning, we thought that they had
been joined by some well-fed ones from the rear." Massena had now
retired to Santarem, where he remained four months longer doing
nothing. His conduct in this whole campaign was utterly inexplicable.
He first stopped to storm the heights of Busaco, when he might have
walked round them ; in this attempt he lost 10,000 men killed and
wounded. His next business was to have rushed on to Lisbon at all
risks, as upon his reaching it depended the success of the campaign.
But he halted in front of the lines of Torres Vedras, though he reached
them before they were completed, while the British were yet in the
hurry of their first occupation, and while it was more than probable
that in lines of so many miles extent, he would have found some
unguarded or feebly defended post. This he neglected, but sat down
to look at the British fortifying them day by day, and receiving rein-
forcements, while his own army was dwindling down by hunger and
disease. Such was his position through the whole month of October.
On his withdrawing from the front of the lines in November, it was
the natural surmise, that to avoid the further loss of men in an
unfriendly country, where all hope of effective service was now at an
end, he would have made the best of his way over the frontier. On
the contrary, the spirit of lingering seemed to have taken full posses-
sion of this once famous Enfant gate dc la victoire, and at Santarem lie

1830.] The Captain of Rifes. 441

lingered until the 6th of March, without firing a shot, with his army
perishing, his enemy conquering him by the mere force of want and
the weather, and his reputation ruined in Europe. Massena on his
return to France was thrown into total obscurity by the public scorn
for his conduct in this campaign, and suffered the penalty richly
deserved by a long course of military violence and robbery and remorse-
less rapine.

The French are cruel alike in advance and retreat, and their hatred
of the Portuguese brought out their cruelty in the deepest colouring.
They murdered and burned wherever the sword or the torch could be
applied. One scene of atrocity among many of the same kind on the
march, is strikingly yet simply described. After a perpetual firing on
the French rear-guard from day-break till evening — " daylight left the
two armies looking at each other, near the village of Illama. The
smoking roofs of the houses showed that the French had just quitted it,
and, as usual, set fire to it ; when the company to which I belonged was
ordered on piquet there for the night. After posting our sentries, my
brother officer and myself had the curiosity to look into a house, and
were shocked to find in it a mother and her child dead, and the father
with three more so much reduced by famine, as to be unable to remove
them from the flames. We carried them into the open air, and offered
the old man our few remaining crumbs of biscuit ; but he told us that
he was too far gone to benefit by them, and begged that we would give
them to his children. We lost no time in examining such of the other
houses as were yet safe to enter, and rescued many more individuals from
a horrible death.

<c Our post that night was one of terrific grandeur. The hills behind
us were in a blaze with the British camp fires, as were those in our front
with the French ones. Both hills were abrupt and lofty, not above
eight hundred yards asunder, and we were in the burning village in the
valley between them, the roofs of houses every instant falling in, and
the sparks and flames ascending to the clouds ; the streets were strewed
with the dying and the dead — some killed in action, some murdered —
which, together with the half-famished wretches whom we had saved
from burning, contributed to make it a scene well calculated to shake
a stout heart, as was proved in the instance of one of our sentries, a
well-known devil-may-care fellow. I know not what appearances the
burning rafters might have reflected on the neighbouring trees at the
time ; but he had not been long on his post, before he came running into
the piquet, and swearing, by all the saints in the calendar, that he saw
six dead Frenchmen advancing upon him, with hatchets over their
shoulders !"

The pursuit continued with incessant vigour, the French rear occa-
sionally facing about, and commencing a fire on the pursuing light troops,
to give time for their main body to take up a position. On one of these
occasions, our Rifleman's history was near being brought to a conclu-
sion. Seeing some of the 60th running along a deep road, which would,
in another moment, have exposed them to the fire of the French line ; he
ran forward to warn them. A ball struck him, and he lay for dead long
enough to attract the attention of one of the 60th, who, in the usual
spirit of military activity on such occasions, began to strip him, and had
unbuttoned his jacket, when, luckily for him, a volley from the French
drove the 60th off the ground. On recovering, his first feeling was for

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 L

442 The Captain of Rifles., [APRIL,

his head, from which the cap had been knocked away some yards. The
cap, however, had saved his life, and he escaped with a contusion. The
variety of military life makes even its hazards almost pleasanter than the
monotonous indulgences of peace. The evening of this day of danger
almost compensated for its hardships. The itifles got a good dinner, one
of the rarest occurrences of the whole campaign. " There is nothing,"
says this lively soldier, " so gratifying to frail mortality as a good dinner
when most wanted and least expected ! It was perfectly dark before
the action finished. But on going to take possession of the fires which
the enemy had evacuated, we found their soup kettles in full operation,
and every man's mess of biscuit lying beside them in stockings — the
French mode of carrying them ; it is needless to say how unceremo-
niously we proceeded to do the honours of the feast. It ever after
became a saying among the soldiers, whenever they were on short
allowance, ' Well, we must fall in with either the commissary or the
French to-day, I don't care which/ "

The pursuit goes on, enlivened by touches of character. — " The
French were beaten over the Mondego, and the light division followed
them. But the late Sir A. Campbell, commanding the next division,
would not suffer any of their baggage to cross the bridge, in the idea
that it might impede his march. He, however, received no order to
march, and we were thereby prevented from getting anything to eat for
the next thirty-six hours. I know not whether the curses of individuals
are recorded under such circumstances; but if they are, the gallant
general will have found the united hearty ones of four thousand men
registered against him for that particular act."

The following day had its incident and its remark. " March, 19th.
We this day captured the aid-de-camp of General Loison, with his
wife, who was dressed in a splendid hussar uniform. He was a Por-
tuguese, and a traitor, and looked very like a man who would be hanged.
She was a Spaniard, and very handsome, and looked very like a woman
who would quickly get married again."

At length the enemy, on approaching the Spanish frontier, made a
stand, and the consequence was, an attack on a large scale. But a sud-
den change of the weather misled some divisions of the British ; and, in
the confusion, the attack was left to a part of the light division. Their
success was among the most extraordinary instances of gallantry, in a
war full of brilliant examples. — " Even the second brigade of our
division could not afford us any support for nearly an hour ; so that we
were thus unconsciously left with about fifteen hundred men, in the
very impertinent attempt to carry a formidable position, in which stood
as many thousands.

" The weather, which had deprived us of the aid of our friends, favoured
us so far as to prevent the enemy from seeing the amount of our paltry
force ; and the conduct of our gallant fellows, led on by Sir Sydney
Beckwith, was so truly heroic, that, incredible as it may seem, we had the
best of the fight throughout. Our first attack was met by such over-
whelming numbers, that we were forced back, and followed by three
heavy columns, before which we retired slowly, and keeping up a
destructive fire, to the nearest rising ground, where we re-formed, and
instantly charged the advancing masses; sending them flying at the
point of the bayonet, and entering their position along with them, where
we were assailed by fresh forces. Three times did the very same thing

1830.] The Captain of Rifles. 443

occur. In our third attempt, we got possession of one of their howitzers,
for which a desperate struggle was making, when we were, at the same
moment, charged by infantry in front, and cavalry on the right, and
again compelled to fall back. But fortunately, at the moment, we were
reinforced by the arrival of the second brigade ; and, with their aid, we
once more stormed the position, and secured the well-earned howitzer;
while the third division came upon their flank, and they were driven
from the field in the greatest disorder."

Thus ended the battle of Sabugal, April 3, 1811 ; and in two days
after, the triumphant army entered Spain. On that day month was
fought the battle of Fuentes d' Onor, an ineffectual attempt of Massena to
retrieve his lost laurels. There are now and then burlesque things, even
in the horrors of battle. The light division covered the right of the line,
the battle raging chiefly on the left and centre. — " We were lying by our
arms under a burning sun j some stray cannon shot passing over and
about us, whose progress we watched for want of better employment.
One of them bounded along in the direction of an amateur, whom we had
for some time been observing, securely placed, as he imagined, behind a
piece of rock, which stood about five feet above the ground, and over
which nothing but his head was shown, sheltered from the sun by an
umbrella ! The shot in question touched the ground three or four times
between us and him, he saw it coming, lowered his umbrella, and with-
drew his head. Its expiring bound carried it into the very spot where
he had that instant disappeared. I hope he was not hurt ; but the
thing looked so ridiculous, that it excited a shout of laughter. We saw
no more of him."

But, after all, life — even military life — is not made up of battles, the
domestic feelings intervene, and even the Rifleman, with his "green
one incarnadined" by victory, stoops delighted to the details of homely
life — food, fire, and lodging. — " Our regiment had been so long quartered
in Fuentes, that it was like fighting for our firesides. The padres house
stood at the top of the town. He was an old friend of ours, and an old
fool : for he would not leave his house until it was too late to take
anything with him. But, curious enough, though it had been repeatedly
in the possession of both sides, and plundered, no doubt, by many expert
artists, yet none of them thought of looking so high as the garret, which
happened to be the repository of his money and provisions. He came to
us, the day after the battle, weeping over his supposed loss, like a
sensitive Christian ; and I accompanied him to the house, to see if there
was not some consolation remaining for him. But when he found his
treasure safe, he could scarcely bear its restoration with becoming
gravity. I helped him to carry off his bag of dollars, and he returned
the compliment with a leg of mutton."

There is one plague in the Peninsular, which draws, perhaps, as much
blood as the bayonet, yet which draws it not less in the piping times of
peace, than amid the havoc of war. To this enemy many a bold Briton
paid the tribute of his patriotic gore, the peninsula being, in every
age, its strong hold. — " On taking possession of my quarter this
evening," says the Captain, " the people showed me an out-house,
which they said I might use as a stable, and I took my horse into it ;
but, seeing the floor strewed with what appeared to be a small brown
seed, heaps of which lay in each corner, as if shovelled together to take
to market ; I took up a handful, out of curiosity, and truly they were a

3 L 2

444 The Captain of Rifles. [APRIL,

curiosity : for I found that they were all regular fleas, and that they were
proceeding to eat both me and my horse, without the smallest ceremony.
I rushed out of the house, and knocked them down by fistfuls, and never
yet could comprehend the cause of their congregating together in such a
place."

If the traveller should have any desire to investigate the phenomenon
for himself, we give him the name of this head-quarters of the flea tribe.
It was the village of Atalya, at the foot of the Sierra de Gota.

To the British troops, all seasons seem to have been nearly alike —
the fiery summer and the frosty winter. The campaign of 1812 com-
menced the 8th of January, by the investment of the strong fortress of
Ciudad Rodrigo. The whole detail of that extraordinary capture is
admirably given. — " There was a smartish frost, with some snow on the
ground ; and when we arrived opposite the fortress, about mid day, the
garrison did not appear to think we were in earnest : for a number of
their officers came out, under the shelter of a stone wall, and amused
themselves in saluting and bowing to us in ridicule." This was genuinely
French, and a proof of the native buffoonery of that facetious people.
" But," as the Captain observes, with some natural scorn, " before the
day was done, some of them had occasion to wear the laugh on the
opposite side of the countenance."

The proceedings to change the mirth of those gay Messieurs were
rapid : — " We lay by our arms till dark, when a party of a hundred
volunteers from each regiment, under Colonel Colborne of the 52d,
stormed and carried the Fort of St. Francisco, after a short, sharp
action, in which the whole of its garrison were taken or destroyed.
The officer who commanded it was a chattering little fellow, and
acknowledged himself to have been one of our saluting friends in the
morning. lie kept incessantly repeating a few words of English, which
he had picked up in the assault ; and the only ones, I fancy, that were
spoken, viz. '* dem eyes and blest eyes," and in demanding the meaning of
them, he required that we should also explain, why we stormed a place
without besieging it; for, he said, that another officer would have
relieved him of his charge at day-light, if We had not relieved him of it
sooner." This capture was of great importance. — " The enemy cal-
culated that it would have kept us at bay for a fortnight or three weeks,
whereas its capture the first night enabled us to break ground at once,
within breaching distance of the walls of the town."

The service of this celebrated siege was severe. It fell to the first,
third, and fourth divisions, who took it alternately for twenty-four
hours. — " It continued to be dry, frosty weather, and as we were
obliged to ford the Agueda up to the middle, every man carried a pair
of iced-breeches into the trenches with him." — " January 12. My turn of
duty did not arrive till eight in the evening, when I was ordered to take
thirty men, with shovels, to dig holes for ourselves, as near as possible
to the walls, for the amusement of firing at the embrazures for the rest
of the night. The enemy threw frequent fire-balls among us, to see
where we were, but as we always lay snug until their blaze was extin-
guished, they were not much the wiser, except by finding, from having
some one popt off from their guns every instant, that they had got
some neighbours whom they would have been glad to get rid of."

The next turn for duty was of a more passive kind, but curious in
its way, and curiously observed on : — " I was sent to take the command

1830.] The Captain of Rifles. 445

of the Highland company, which we had at that time in the regiment.
I found them on piquet, half of them posted at a mud cottage, and half
of them in a ruined convent close under the walls.

" We could not show our noses at any point without being fired at ;
but as we were posted there merely to protect the right flank of the
trenches from any sortie, we did not fire at them, and kept as quiet as
could be, considering the deadly blast that was blowing around us.
There are but few situations in life where something may not be
learned, and I stood indebted to my twenty-four hours residence there
for a more correct knowledge of martial sounds than in the study of
my whole life before.

" They must be an unmusical pair of ears that cannot inform the
wearer whether a cannon or a musket played last ; but the various
notes from their respective mouths admit of nice distinctions. My party
was too small, and too well sheltered to repay the enemy for the
expense of shells and round shot, but the quantity of grape and mus-
ketry aimed at our particular heads, made a concert of first and second
whistles ; while the more sonorous voice of the round shot, travelling to
our friends on the left, acted as a thorough bass : and there was not a
shell that passed over us to the trenches, that did not send back a frag-
ment among us as soon as it burst."

Two practicable breaches were soon made. On the 1 9th of January
the assault was made, at eight in the evening, by the third and light
divisions ; the latter being appointed to the left breach. The storming
party, consisting of three officers, and a hundred men from each regi-
ment of the division, rushed forward at the signal. The enemy were
prepared for them ; and the space which the troops had to pass was
instantly in a blaze with fire-balls, and swept with grape and mus-
ketry, which, as the captain justly observes, " are the devil's own
brooms."

As he was one of the officers employed on this party, he gives us
the following reflections, worthy of him equally as a soldier and a phi-
losopher : — " The advantage of being on a storming party is consi-
dered as giving the prior claim to be put out of pain ; for they receive
the first fire, which is generally the best ; not to mention that they are
expected to receive the earliest salutation from beams of timber,
hand-grenades, and other missiles. But I experienced no such pre-
ference, for, as every ball has a considerable distance to travel, I have
generally found them equally ready to pick up their man at the end, as
at the beginning of their flight ; luckily, too, the other proportions
cannot always be adjusted at the moment ; so that, on the whole, the
odds are prettynear, that all concerned come in for an equal share of
whatever happens to be going on."

The assault was triumphant. The struggle at the breach was brief;
and, in less than half an hour from the advance, the fortress, one of the
strongest in the Peninsula, was captured.

The next morning, the fifth division took charge of the town, and the
rifles, and other regiments of the light division, marched out. Yet they
had provided for themselves handsomely, short as the tiA was.
" Lord Wellington happened to be riding in at the gate at the time
when we were marching out, and had the curiosity to ask the officer of
the leading company what regiment it was ? for there was scarcely a
vestige of uniform among the men ; some of whom were dressed in

446 The Captain of Rifles. [ APRIL,

Frenchmen's coats, some in white breeches and huge jack-boots, some
in cocked hats and queues j most of their swords were fixed 011 their
rifles, and stuck full of hams, tongues, and loaves of bread, and not a
few were carrying bird-cages. There never was a better masked
corps."

The reflection that follows this glorious achievement is manly and
natural, though expressed with the characteristic oddity of the writer.

" There is nothing in life half so enviable as the feelings of a soldier
after victory. Previously to a battle, there is a certain sort of some-
thing that pervades the mind, not easy to be described. It is akin to
neither joy nor fear, and probably anxiety may be nearer to it than any
other word in the dictionary. But when his battle is over, and crowned
with victory, he finds himself elevated for a while into the regions of
absolute bliss ! It had ever been the summit of my ambition to attain a
post at the head of a storming party — my wish had now been accom-
plished ; and I do think, that after all was over, and our men laid
asleep on the ramparts, I strutted about as important a personage, in
my own opinion, as ever trod the face of the earth. But as the sun
began to rise, I began to fall from my heroics, and when he showed
his face, I took a look at my own, and found that I was too unclean a
spirit to worship, for I was covered with mud and dirt, and with the
greater part of my dress torn to rags."

The Spaniards and Portuguese had, by this time, become completely
tired of finding apartments for their guests, and had adopted all kinds of
contrivances, to prevent them from making te the house their home." An
usual contrivance was to say that some epidemic was in the family.
The gallant Rifleman, pleasantly records a surprising cure on one of
those occasions: — "I received a billet, on a neat little house in El vas,
occupied by an old lady and her daughter, who were very desirous of
evading such an incumbrance." They accordingly kept the house fast,
and resisted for a long time, a series of kicking at the door, until it had
nearly given way. The old lady then tried her invention, came down,
and whispered in the captain's ear, that there was a fever in the house,
of which her daughter was lying dangerously ill. The captain instantly
declared that he was a medico (doctor), and might be of use to the
young patient. He now made his way up stairs, " where there was a
very genteel-looking young girl, the very picture of Portuguese health,
"lying, with her eyes shut, in full dress on the top of the bed clothes,
where she had just hurriedly thrown herself."

The nature of her illness was of course rapidly determined, and the
medico proceeded secundum artem. " I walked up to the bedside, and
hit her a slap on the thigh with my hand, asking her at the same time,
how she felt herself. Never did Prince Hohenlohe perform a miracle
more cleverly ; for she bounced almost as high as the ceiling, and
flounced about the room, with a countenance, in which shame, anger,
and a great portion of natural humour were so amusingly blended, that
I was tempted to provoke her still further by a salute. Having thus
satisfied the mother, that I had been the means of restoring her
daughter to health, she thought it prudent to put the best face upon it,
and invited me to partake of their family dinner : in the course of
which I succeeded so well in eating my way into their affections, that we
parted with mutual regret, the ladies telling me, I was the best officer
they had ever seen."

1830.] The Captain of Rifles. 447

In this gay strain, he runs through the peninsular campaigns, fighting
and falling in love alternately. The sieges of the great fortresses, the
famous march to the frontier of France, and the battles of Vittoria, the
Pyrenees, and Thoulouse, are spiritedly described. The peace at length
sets him loose in 1814 ; and he is shooting at woodcocks in Scotland,
when news arrives of Napoleon's return. He rejoins his battalion,
fights at Waterloo, which he describes capitally, and thus triumphantly
closes one of the most attractive, eccentric and animated volumes that
has been produced by the British campaigns.

NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL.

OUR grand Reforms are going on in a grand style of excision. Clerks,
enjoying the extravagant salaries of twenty shillings a week, are forced
to submit to the pruning knife, or the sabre, we forget which ; and serve
their insulted country at the rate of ten. Diggers and delvers, at the
rate of a shilling a day, are allowed the honour of contributing to the
preservation of their country by the offering of six-pences, and there is
still a hope, that by further judicious reforms of this vigorous, and yet
easy kind, our beloved country may yet be saved.

But we should wish to know, whether the gallant officers in possession
of trivial places from fifteen hundred to five thousand pounds a year
and upwards, continue to receive their half-pay, and all those little emo-
lumentary adjuncts, termed allowances, forage money, office money, &c.,
which make so pleasant an addition to the establishment of a military
gentleman emulous of serving his country, on the best possible terms for
himself. We believe that those gallant gentleman have not sacrificed
a single shilling, and that they receive their half-pay as regularly in
their sumptuously furnished apartments in the Horse Guards and
Downing Street, as if they were lounging out their mornings in an attic
in Whitehall, and lounging out their evenings at the United Service.

We should also like to know, how many of the holders of good things
in the shape of Military Inspectorships, Commissioners of Clothing, &c.,
have been mulcted of their half-pay, since they began to feel the
public purse dropping its liberality on them in the shower of pensions
and sinecures ?

Now for another branch.

Officers' Widows. — The question whether officers' widows should
continue to enjoy pensions after marrying again, is now under the con-
sideration of Government. It is urged that the practice is, in fact,
rewarding one man for the services performed by another, and encou-
raging improvident connections which lead to misery, while they per-
petuate one burthen on the country and create another.

All this may be very well ; though in the scantiness of the widow's
pension, whose general sum is thirty or forty pounds a year, there
seems to be no very powerful temptation for fortune hunters. But, we
may be suffered to ask, is there any idea of reducing the allowance of
the paymasters of those widows' pensions ? whose salaries amount to a
thousand a year each ; the whole actual business being of the simplest
nature, and done by clerks, and the whole trouble of the paymasters
being to sign the receipt for their own quarter's salary, and put the
money in their pockets.

448 Notes of the Month on [[APRIL,

We should also like to know, whether, when those poor devils of
officers' widows are forced to give up their petty provision, the widows
of the placemen about Whitehall are to be allowed to keep their pen-
sions, and marry whom they please, thus to fasten upon the public
purse ? That there are such individuals, and tolerably well known to
the public, we believe. And we ask, what is justice, if it be not even-
handed ?

But the more unfortunate consequence of this regulation will be, not
a saving to the country, nor the prevention of those marriages, which
have been here with such ludicrous pomp called " rewarding one man
for the service of another j" but an increase of prevarication, a temp-
tation to perpetual falsehood imposed on those widows. They will
marry, if they like ; as what woman was ever capable of thwarting her
inclination for any thing, from prudential motives ? Not a sixpence will
be saved ; but a vast many protestations of perpetual widowhood will
be wrung from the unfortunates, who have plunged into second matri-
mony, with a full determination to let go the public allowance on no
condition whatever. We hope that oaths will not be required, for though
a promise is equally binding in honour, yet the oath is a more formi-
dable mode of meeting the temptation ; and in the multitude of instances,
the temptation would carry the day. We hope so foolish an attempt
will be abandoned. It must be nugatory on any considerable scale, and
even on the smallest, it will be only a temptation to weakness and
poverty to commit falsehood.

Mr. Nash's conduct in the purchase of the Crown Lands has been
brought before the House. But the most effective part of Colonel
Davies's speech, was his denunciation of Mr. Goulburn.

" He could not easily conceive how a man, like the individual alluded
to, should be at his time of life so sordid as to be impelled to the com-
mission of such fraudulent acts as these by the thirst of gold ; but it was
an extraordinary sight to him, and one difficult to assign a cause for,
why the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be so regardless of his
good name as to wish to bind it up with the tainted mass of this man's
character. He pledged himself, if the House now gave him permission
by sanctioning the present motion, to prove from documents he had
since obtained possession of, that the party whom he thus accused had
been guilty of many acts which the House would feel itself bound to
reprobate, although sanctioned by the countenance and support of the
Chancellor of the Exchequer ; and, in this instance, he would take care
not to suffer his object to be defeated by permitting the Committee to
bind him in his accusation to a precise phrase, as they had on the
former occasion, which had, he acknowledged, been the means of secur-
ing his defeat/'

Mr. Goulburn was immeasurably shocked, that any body should
think him capable of doing any thing that a perfect gentleman and pure
senator should not do. He rose in becoming indignation, charged the
motion, as tending by " the light of a side wind," as that classical orator
the Attorney-General says : or by " running counter to the corner stone,"
as that not less clastical orator Mr. Brougham expresses it ; to censure
the last year's committee, which committee had given its verdict on the
matter by declaring " that Mr. Nash was innocent, but had done
wrong," which strikes us as a rather enigmatical species of acquittal.

1830.] Affairs in General 449

He next defended Mr. Nasli's conduct, on the ground that he was
then sick in his bed ; which again strikes us as a curious ground of
defence. But let us hear this nervous orator's own words.

" Mr. Nash was, it would appear, to be hunted session after session,
until the gallant member could find at last some set of men weak enough
to coincide with him in his views. Nor would the House sanction such
a course, when, in addition to its manifest injustice, he informed them
the victim now singled out to satiate his resentment was an aged man, in
so dangerous a state of illness as would ensure him the commiseration
and sympathy of every man within those walls. If any member ima-
gined that the charges made against him, as a man destitute of probity
or honour, were well founded, Mr. Goulburn trusted he would speak
his mind out fully, in order that he might have, before the subject was
ultimately decided, an opportunity of defending himself from charges
which he fondly hoped would not be levelled against him by any other
man within those walls. Under such aspersions as he had heard made
against him to-night, it was impossible he should, even at the hazard of
life and all he held dear in it, suffer his character to remain for a single
hour without attempting its vindication."

Now of the delicacy of this indignant gentleman's virtues, far be it
from us to doubt ; for the law of libel assumes a tenfold frown, when
we dream of disputing the virtue of a placeman. But this Mr. Goul-
burn is our supreme disgust. This was the man whose miserable medi-
ocrity of understanding, would have kept him to the last hour of his
life among the sweepings of office, but for his affected zeal for the cause
of Protestantism. This was the man, who regularly lost his breath, and
apologized for forgetting the half of his speech, by his overwhelming
horror at any attempt to bring Popery into the legislature. This was
the man whose Protestantism was so founded on a rock, was so rigidly
righteous — an Aristides who courted unpopularity by the sternness of
his honesty, a Fabricius who could no more be turned from the path of
honour, than the sun from his course ! that he was sent over to Ireland,
expressly to be a check on the slippery genius of the Irish Administra-
tion ; to be a drag-chain upon the precipitous politics of that very silly
and prattling cabinet ; to be ballast for the top-heavy bark of the Irish
government, with such a monkey tribe perched upon the shrouds.

Yet this was the man, whom, in a few months after the strongest
protestations of sincerity in the noblest cause that could move the heart
of honour, we saw sneaking to the ministerial foot, and unsaying every
syllable that he had ever said before. ,

With respect to Mr. Nash, we have not heard that he has been com-
pelled to disgorge any of those purchases which the committee, lenient
as it was, pronounced to be wrong. His canal shares, and his Charing-
cross purchases, are, we believe, still in his possession. He has been
" badgered a little for them," as the Marquis of Lansdowne phrases it;
but he is willing to bear the burthen, if we still let him keep the re-
ward. But this we hope will not be suffered, notwithstanding his being
in his sick bed, and in the bosom of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

We hear extraordinary things of the financial difficulties of the crowd
of Institutions that have started up with such rapidity during the last
half dozen years. But the Horticultural Society takes the lead, at least,

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 52. 3 M

450 Notes of Ike Month on

in publicity. Yet even this publicity was accident* Committees, audi-
tors, secretaries, the full machinery of check and supervision, had long
been in motion ; yet not one of these vigilant persons seems to have had
an idea of the fact, that they were on the eve of bankruptcy, till some
anonymous billet in a newspaper gave them the intelligence.

Then all was wonder and speech-making. After a succession of
meetings, a grand meeting of the members of the society was held a fort-
night since, in the hall of the institution, Regent- street, for the purpose
of receiving the report of the committee appointed to inquire into the
state of the society's debts, &c. — The debts were shown to be 19,7#0/.,
and the assets were estimated at 16,500f. It was thought 1,000£ per
annum might be saved by retrenchment. Mr. Sabine's resignation was
announced.

How the debts of any society under heaven could hare amounted
to 19,000/. without any of its governing members knowing the
circumstance, appears to us among the oddest things imaginable. —
The president was in such astonishment at the discovery, that he has
remained in a state of astonishment ever since. The committee and
Mr. Sabine were equally thunderstruck j and, till now, seem to have but
very imperfectly recovered their faculties. Yet an account of receipts
and disbursements was furnished, in a very clerk-like style, every year,
at the general meeting ; though, from Mr. Gordon's speeches, we
cannot perceive that the intelligence made its way into it, that the
society owed 19,000/., and was 3,000/, worse than a beggar. Of course
we have no idea of charging any fraudulent intent in this on any of the
parties ; for of fraud no evidence strikes us. But the negligence some-
were is perfectly unaccountable. The whole business always exhibited
a most nourishing aspect in the reports transmitted to the newspapers.
The monthly meetings sent away every member in raptures at the
prodigious celebrity and infinite expansion of that Horticultural Society,
which was to fill every cottage in England with grapes and Newtown
pippins, and astonish the ends of the earth with the British pomona.
On those days it was perilous to walk through Regent- street, at least s6
long as Sir Watkin Williams was in sight, to hold one by the button,
and panegyrize the exquisite buttermilk raised from his last specimen of
mangel wurzel ; or Mr. Frankland Lewis, with both his pockets full of
raw potatoes, to rush out in the spirit of liberal distribution to all who
on that day had the calamity to be his friends.

The horticultural dinner was always a superb affair, so far as mutual
congratulation, and hobnobbing to fructification, subscription, granula-
tion, and the eternal countenance of grandees, were concerned. There
was not an assembly on earth in which was felt more zeal in getting
drunk for the good of grafting. And when the meeting at last gave
way, there was not a member, whether slumbering in his bed, or pre-
ferring the more congenial repose under the table of the society, but felt
visions of Pomological (the Greek- Latin hybrid belongs to Mr. Phillips)
glory dazzling his nightmare, and unborn orchards crowding on his
soul.

But then comes the explosion — terrible and strange. The apples
were apples of Sodom. The prosperity was all rind; and accounts
unexamined, bills unpaid, and debts unconjectured, made the core.
The golden pippin was dust, and the silver pomegranate was ashes.
And the members went away, like the feeders on the Sardonic herb,

1 830.] Affairs in General 45 1

with their mouths so distorted between smile and sourness, that many
of them have never since recovered their usual blandness of physiog-
nomy. Sir Watkin has fled the town, swearing, in the purest Armoric,
against ever trusting any thing more versed in this world's ways
than one of his long-bearded, caprine compatriots. Frankland Lewis
took refuge from despair in a sinecure, and vows never to touch a
potatoe in its state of nature, as long as he can call himself a placeman.
Mr. Sabine has retired to his Hortus Siccus, and, abandoning contem-
porary fame, is preparing an exculpatory address to all future mankind,
which Jekyll, remorseless punster, calls, like Madame Roland, " un
appd a la posteriti"

Through good and evil we have fought for the Thames tunnel. We
have made our pilgrimage to its shrine, braved the depths of Deptford
to see it, and never grieved over the loss of that which, as Pope tells,
ran between Swift and the love of a shirt or a supper, which ousted
Marlborough of his fame, and which, in our own degenerate day,
stripped Lord Melville of his privy councillor's gown, and had nearly
stripped Blenheim of its ancient monarchs of the grove. In humbler
language, we paid our shilling, and were glad. The sight was, in the
simplest ratio of profit, worth the money ; and we hope that our word
will go so far with the world as to stir it up to defy even the perils of
a navigation through the streets of Deptford, to see the tunnel, and see
in it the most singular evidence of the powers of human ingenuity and
intelligent labour that the world can boast of — a work ten times the
value of the Pyramids, the wonder of the old world ; and ten times
tnore requiring invention and intelligence than the route of the Sim-
plon, the wonder of tha modern.

te The annual meeting of the proprietors of this undertaking was
lately held at the City of London Tavern. It appeared from a report
which was read, that little or no progress has been made towards a
completion of the work ; but that they do not despair of its accom-
plishment whenever the prosperity of the country may be such as to
encourage loans or subscriptions of money for the purpose. Upwards
of 26,000 visitors have, during the last year, been admitted, paying the
usual price, which has assisted very much towards the expenditure."

We say to them, that the time will certainly come, when their admi-
rable work will be felt to be, what it is, a national object — an honour
to the country, which the country will be proud to sustain, even if it were
solely as the triumph of its talent; — but which will be to the proprietors
a magnificent source of revenue from the moment of its completion.

It was lately announced that " Kean had engaged for his spouse I and
himself, for a year, one of those new fangled demi-gothic cottages on
the banks of the Regent's Canal, near the Hampstead-road ; where he
has been seduously occupied in perfecting himself in the character of
Henry the Fifth, which he stands pledged to perform at Drury-lane
Theatre." This is one of the odd helps to genius that great men adopt
in difficult cases. Mr. Bayes is recorded as having always written
tragedy upon a regimen of stewed prunes. Morland's summons to his
genius was the brandy bottle. Young brought himself into training for
his " Night Thoughts" by a candle in a scull. Rabelais swallowed
green peas ; and Person got drunk with " Mountain Dew." The

3 M 2

452 Notes of the Month on £ A PHIL,

idea of a demi-gothic cottage, for the study of Henry the Fifth, did
credit to the actor's taste ; and the association between the gallantry of
the warrior, and the cusps and mullions of the building in which his
spirit was to be raised again, was in the best style. However,
Kean failed in the experiment, and we are sorry for it. He is a man
of ability, and, as such, his failure ought to be a matter of regret ; un-
less it should have been through that negligence which so often mars
the fame of genius ; or that contempt for his audience, which, however
it may sometimes be so natural to feel, it must always be so impolitic to
display. But there is power in Kean still ; and if he would but assume
the manliness to throw off some of those habits, private and public, which
have sunk his reputation, it might not, even now, be too late for him to
recover his popularity.

Sir Thomas Lawrence's will is a curious document. We hate that
perpetual affectation of sanctified language which makes one of the most
disgusting characteristics of our canting day. But there is, after all, a
certain decorum to be observed, unless we would set at defiance the cus-
toms of society, and, what is of a much higher value, the opinions of all
wise and right-minded men. In the will of Sir Thomas Lawrence,
which, we must take it for granted, has been given word for word to the
public, we cannot discover a syllable that might not have been written
by a man who believed, that when the breath was out of his body, there
was an end of him here and hereafter. Yet, men as remote from super-
stition, or unmanly fear, as the most daring infidel alive, have generally
taken occasion of a document, which so seriously reminds man of his
precarious tenure here, to commence their wills with some testimony to
their acknowledgment of a religious belief. The bequeathing of pro-
perty has been generally preceded by some solemn and natural recom-
mendation of that only possession which remains alike to rich and poor —
the immortal part of our nature — to the great Source from which it
came, and to which it hopes to reascend. But, in the will of this
celebrated man, there is, unhappily, not a syllable that can sustain the
idea of his having supposed himself to be above the plant, or the pebble
at his feet.

We speak of this, not as actually doubting of his belief, nor as desir-
ing to fasten upon the memory of a man of genius, and general know-
ledge of life and literature, a charge not less fatally hostile to his character
for common understanding and common morality, than to the loftier
hopes that belong to things beyond the grave ; but with regret, as a
negligence, as a wasted opportunity for clearing his name, and as, per-
haps, an encouragement to weak and empty minds to sanction their
own insults to the general wisdom of the pure and the virtuous, under
the shadow of his genius.

In a professional point of view, the abstract of his will gives an inter-
esting statement of his collection and its intended disposal : —

" The will has been proved in Doctors' Commons, by his sole execu-
tor, Mr. Knightly, and probate granted for personal property, under
forty-jive thousand pounds. Sir Thomas states that his collection of
drawings by the old masters, are, he confidently believes, the finest in
Europe, and worth twenty thousand pounds ; but he directs them to be
offered to ' his Most Gracious Majesty for eighteen thousand pounds.'
In case of his declining to take them, they are to be offered to the Bri-

1830.] Affairs in General 453

tish Museum, Mr. Peel, and Lord Dudley, in succession ; and if not
purchased by either of those parties, are to be advertised in ' all the
capitals and principal cities in Europe for twenty thousand pounds, and
afterwards sold by public auction.' Two volumes of paintings, by F.
Bartolomeo, are to be offered in precisely the same manner, except that
the National Gallery is substituted, for the British Museum, for 800/.
A series of original drawings of Cartoons by Leonardo da Vinci, for his
Last Supper, for 1,000/. ; the Wife of Potiphar accusing Joseph, by
Rembrandt, for 1,500/. ; and two small paintings, by RafFaelle, for
1,000/. ; all to be disposed of as above stated. His collection of Archi-
tectural Casts he offers to the Royal Academy, for 250/. — they cost him
500/. ; his magnificent set of Sevre Porcelain, given to him by the King
of France, he leaves to the Academy, to be used on all great occasions.
He recommends to his executor, his dear friend William Young Ottley,
Esq., to make the sale catalogue of his various works. After the pay-
ment of his just debts, he leaves the entire residue of his wealth to his
sister, nephews, and nieces."

How has it happened that we have no " Life of Lord North ?" while
the world is bored in all quarters with all kind of lives — the plodding,
the powerless, the puppyish ; women that never were young, and boobies
that never were old, the faded refuse of courts, and the bustling cox-
combry of club-rooms. " Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor," might
be the indignant exclamation of the premier's ghost to his lounging and
caricaturing descendants. North's ministry was the most interesting
period of the late stirring reign. All the elements of party were in hot
and rapid motion ; all the elements of power were shaken ; all the vigour
of democratic talent, strengthened and elevated by the grace and habitual
dignity of the most accomplished nobility of an accomplished time, was
in full display, and England stood between the new and the old worlds,
like the tutelar genius, or the destroying angel of both, as she looked on
them in peace or anger.

If we had leisure for such things, we ourselves should give the work
to mankind ; but we are busy watching the fortunes of the Emperor of
China, estimating the working of our new constitution for Columbia,
and luxuriating with the indulgence of Attic taste over the brilliant
eloquence of Mr. Peel.

But if the world's ear is dead to the magnificent tossing and roaring of
those billows, on which the skiff of the western republic made her escape
into port, but which so soon roared and thundered round the great war-
ship of France, bursting over her decks, dashing away at every heave
the gilded and royal ornaments and the noble crew, and finally plunging
her, in mingled flame and blood, down to the depths from which she has
not been raised by the hand of man ; why does no lover of the keen
exposure of party revive the more than satiric sagacity of the minister
who dragged Fox from his bad eminence by a word, stripped the mask
from that most subtle of political swindlers, and shewed the most ostenta-
tious partizan of the populace at his feet, kneeling for office and infamy
together ?

Or, why does no lover of the mere pleasantry of the wittiest man of
his time, collect those sparkles of wit, which in his day flashed perpetually
through the debate and through general society ? This we feel to be a
charge upon our own souls. But what can we do, with the care of

154 Notes of the Month on [ APRIL,

empires pressing upon us, with the aspect of affairs in Greece robbing
our pillows of sleep, and complaints of the robbery of thirteen houses at
Peckham in one week, making us tremble for the fame of our dearly
beloved Peel police ? We must abandon the " noble Lord in the blue
ribbon" to those minor biographers, who perplex mankind with the crush-
ings of quartos into duodecimos, and give us the Life of a Conqueror,
or the thousand years of a dynasty, for five shillings.

One of the newspapers charges Kenny, the dramatist, with having
succeeded to other reversions of old radical Holcroft, besides his wife.

" A well-known dramatist is at his old tricks again. Some time since,
an opera was represented as a new one which turned out to have been
acted forty years ago. Lately he has presented a farce to the same
manager, which cannot be original, as there is something very like it to
be found in a comedy written by the first husband of the playwright's
lady. The comedy we allude to is The Road to Ruin."

To this charge we demur on several grounds. In the first place,
unless a dramatist of the present day makes oath before a magistrate, that
his play is not plunder from begining to end, we have a right to pre-
sume that not a syllable of it is his own. In the next, if Kenny can
produce a good comedy, farce, or interlude, out of all the works, played,
or portfolied, of old Holcroft, we look upon him as doing more than any
man of common sense ever expected ; or any man on earth, but himself,
could do. And, thirdly, if his play resembles any play that we have
seen for the last half dozen years, it has every claim to the title of the
Road to Ruin — a title which, we sincerely propose, shall in future super-
sede the moral sentences of all kinds that used to stare upon us from the
top of the stage ; and though Veluti in Speculum, might be the proper
motto for the King's Theatre during the epicene reign of the late soprano,
we yet proclaim, that the " Road to Ruin" is, for all time to come, the
true and only motto for all theatres minor and major, and all places of
public entertainment whatever ; always excepting the chapel of St. Ste-
phen at Westminster, where the motto shall be limited to the "Con-
tested Election" Committee Rooms.

We had not heard any thing of our friends of the State-Paper Office
for the last month, but we knew that they could not be idle. And now
the light breaks in upon the wondering world.

" The State-Paper Office. — The treasures of the State-paper Office,
from which the industry of Mr. Lemon has drawn so much to interest
the present age and all posterity, have long been exposed to destruction,
being kept in a common dwelling-house, which house, by the way, was
likely to fall. It is at length decided that a new State- Paper Office shall
be built ; the plans of Mr. Soane have been approved, and, under the
superintendence of that admirable architect, the building will shortly
be commenced." The house is to cost £23,000 !

Why, in the name of all that is spider- woven and moth-eathen, are we
not to let the course of nature, always wise, be fulfilled, and the old
house fall upon the old papers ? The dead never buried their dead in a
more appropriate sarcophagus. If the State- Paper Office have ever pro-
duced from the utmost profundity of its cobwebs, any thing better than
scraps of scraps, illegible nonsense, or the most useless waste paper with
which office clerk ever wiped his pen, we will be " a soused gurnet."

ia30.] Affairs in General 455

The " Milton discovery," magnified as it was through both ends of the
trump of fame, has turned out an absurdity, and has long since sunk
into the waste paper of which it was made. The Elizabethan letters,
and the two or three other trifles that from year to year were squibbed
before the public eye, to remind it that there was so meritorious an
establishment as the State- Paper Office in existence, have all gone out,
and now we are to have a New Building, to remind us that the officers
of this inimitable national establishment ought to have suites of new
apartments therein. Verily, this is a building age. Let the people cry
out against the intolerable burthens that are crushing the dwellers in
the drawing-room into the parlour, as old Home Tooke once said, and
the dwellers of the parlour into the kitchen ; they are answered by a
supercilious declaration from head-quarters, that the last imaginable
retrenchment has been made. But let the most gewgaw fancy be set in
a ferment to discover some new means of extravagance, it has only to
be a building fancy, to find itself welcomed with the fraternal embrace of
the high and mighty. Five hundred thousand pounds have been already
flung away in turning old Buckingham house, a decent and comfortable
old brick house, into new Buckingham palace, a ridiculous, uncomforta-
ble, and unkingly plaster of Paris house ; and before its royal tenant
will ever lay his head upon his pillow in this plaster of Paris house, it
will cost five hundred thousand pounds more. And John Bull will have
the double delight of paying, and being laughed at by every stranger
between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.

But the architect is the reconciling charm. If we should ever be
tempted to be king — an office too troublesome for the most outrageous
extent of our patriotism — the true temptation to us would come in the
shape of the unlimited power to march from Windsor at the head of a
legion of Irish bricklayers, and knock down, as a propitiation to the
offended Pallas Minerva of our isle, every furlong of lath and plaster,
Roman cement and mortar marble ! that has ever assailed the public eye
under the direction of modern art. If ever a generation of blockhead archi-
tects were gifted with supremacy over the public purse, that supremacy is
now in the hands of that generation. There may be able architects in
embryo ; there may be Wrens and Inigo Joneses hidden in the holes
and corners where nature keeps her curiosities; but never was any period
of any country more brutified by monstrosities in brick than the reign of
his majesty.

If we were called on to point out the most memorable instances of
human absurdity, we should be strongly inclined to select them from the
works of the law-makers.

" By the French law, a father can dispose of but half his property by
will, if he leaves but one child ; of one-third, if he leaves two children ;
and of one-fourth, if he leaves three or more children behind him."

The consequences of this precious law are, that a son may be as pro-
fligate as he will without regard to his father's displeasure, as he must
receive the same portion, be he good or bad — that a father will not expend
any thing, if he can help it, on the advancement of his son in profes-
sional life or otherwise, inasmuch as no allowance will be made for that
expenditure in the general distribution of the property — that the infirm
son, who cannot provide for himself, is put on the same footing with the
son who can — and that the father is deprived of one of the great motives

456 Notes of the Month on Affairs in General. £ APRIL,

to the increase of exertion, by knowing that he labours equally for the
ungrateful and the grateful, and that the distribution of the fruit of his
labours is taken out of his hands. So much for the law of equality.

Another, and perhaps more injurious result, in a public point of view,
is the breaking down of property into fragments. No right of eldership
exists, to make a head of a family. The French peer can leave his eldest
son but the major at or small property annexed to the title. In England
the law by which the estate descends to the elder is productive of the
best consequences on general society. By constituting a head of the family,
families are kept together. The younger members of them have a sup-
port in the respect felt for the head, and in the influence which his for-
tune or rank gives him in the country. The great establishments, parks,
and mansions, of the landholders of England, which are among the
highest ornaments of the empire, and are of still more importance as
centres of public feeling, of hospitality, of protection to the poor, and of
manly habits and honourable feelings in the upper ranks, are kept up
by this heirship. And, what is of higher value still, the landed interest,
in which is the true strength of England j the peerage, and the general
aristocratic branch of the public body, without which the constitution
must be either a despotism or a democracy, altogether originate in the
right of eldership. There may be occasional hardships in the inequality
of an elder and a younger brother's fortune ; but the occasional hardship
is counterbalanced by a crowd of advantages, the possession of which
gives England a body of the manliest and most patriotic landed gentry
on earth, and the absence of which is hourly crumbling down the nobi-
lity of France, and will, in the course of half a century, turn its whole
population into a mob, unless common sense be vindicated, and the State
righted by a revolution.

We have to regret the recent death of a very intelligent and valuable
member of society, the Honourable Douglas Kinnaird. Uniting the
accomplishments of a scholar with the habits of a man of the world,
no individual was more qualified to enjoy or to gratify the extensive
circle of friends, distinguished by rank and talent, to whose intercourse
he was entitled equally by his birth, his fortune, and his acquirements.
Largely acquainted with literature, he was peculiarly attached to the
Drama, and a few years since took an active part in the concerns of
Drury-lane Theatre, while it was under the management of a com-
mittee. He was the intimate friend of Byron, with whom he kept up,
perhaps, a longer and more confidential correspondence than any of his
Lordship's surviving friends. He was one of the principal partners in
the Bank of Ransom and Co., Pall Mall, a firm not less known for its
opulence than for the extent and liberality of its dealings.

1830.]

[ 457 ]

MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN.

Narrative of the War in Germany and
France, by the Marquess of Londonderry ,
4to. ; 1 830. — This is an animated narra-
tive— though not very lucid in arrangement,
nor always clear in the details — of the two
memorable campaigns, which terminated in
the first dethronement of Napoleon. The
story is limited pretty closely to military
matters, and the writer, full of professional
prepossessions, makes his pages ring with
valour, and glory, and laurels ; and drains
the vocabulary of all its laudatory terms to
pour them upon the gallantry of the allies.
The author, then General Charles Stewart,
was despatched by his brother, Lord Castle-
reagh, to the King of Prussia, to re-open
our diplomatic relations, and to act in com-
munication with Lord Cathcart, who was
with the Emperor of Russia, and Mr.
Thornton, ambassador at the court of Swe-
den. Though invested with no military
command, he was warranted by the general
nature of his commission, and impelled by
martial ardour to mingle in the mtlees of
the field, and observe the conduct of all —
his very business was to gather materials
for the series of despatches, which constitute
the staple of the present volume.

During the suspension of hostilities in the
summer of 1813, the Prince Royal of Swe-
den joined the allied troops, and as England
subsidized him to the amount of two mil-
lions, some right was thus acquired of look-
ing sharply after his conduct. Bernadotte
was of course an object of suspicion, and,
with General Stewart, nothing short of see-
ing him in actual conflict with the French,
was likely to remove unfavourable impres-
sions. He recorded his feelings at the first
interview, in a phrase of some emphasis and
fancy — " he clothed himself," says he, " in
a pelisse of war, but his under garments
were made of Swedish objects and peace."
Subsequent facts confirmed the plain truth
of this remark ; Bernadotte took no part in
the second campaign — the invasion of
France — but kept his troops in Holstein,
manifestly with the view of securing that
country as his share of the general spoil,
which he anticipated would soon be to be
divided. His conduct previously to the
battle of Leipsic, General Stewart hints was
very equivocal ; and takes credit to himself
for forcing him, if not to a change of pur-
poses, certainly to a more complete com-
mittal of himself in hostility with the
French, and does not hesitate to maintain
that he might have done more than he did
on one of the busy days before the battle of
Leipsic. On the 16th, two days before that
battle, encouraged by Blucher, he ventured
to dispatch a note to him, written in pretty
abrupt terms, urging him to march forth-
with, or he would repent of it for ever. This
note led to an interview a day or two after ;
Bernadotte took him aside, and in a low

M.M. New Series VoL.IX. No. 52.

tone said — " Comment ! General Stewart,
quel droit avez-vous de m'ecrire ? Ne rap-
pelez-vous pas que je suis le Prince de
Suede, un des plus grands generaux de
rdffe ? et si vous etiez a ma place, quepen-
seriez-vous si quelqu'un vous ecrivoit comme
vous m'avez ecrit ? Vous n'etes pas accrt-
dite pres de moi ; c'est par mon amitie que
vous ties id ; et vous m'avez donne beau-
coup de peine." The general excused him-
self on the urgency of the case. " Eh
bien," replied Bernadotte, " voulez-vous que
nous soyons amis ? Vous savez, mon ami,
F amitie que je vous porte ; pourquoi ne pas
causer ensemble des dispositions militaires ?-
Dites-moi vos pensies ; mais ne m'ecrivez
plus, je vous en prie de grace." He was
with difficulty dissuaded from entering into
a capitulation to allow Davoust and his
troops to return to France ; , and actually
dismissed the French officers, who were his
own prisoners, insisting on his right to do
as he pleased with them. Throughout the
whole campaign he was tenacious of his own
plans, and exceedingly disposed to think
himself treated with less respect than was
due to his military reputation. The details
relative to Bernadotte indeed are by far the
most attractive portion of the volume.

A summary is given of a conversation of
some interest between Napoleon and Gene-
ral Meerveldt. Meerveldt had been taken
prisoner a day or two before the battle of
Leipsic, and, after the battle, was dismissed
on parole, and charged with propositions of
peace to the Emperor of Russia. In a per-
sonal interview, Napoleon told him he would
give up Dantzic, and other towns, and retire
behind the Saale ; resign Hanover to En-
gland, ensure the independence of Holland,
and separate Italy from France. But En-
gland, he added, would never make peace
without insisting upon what he would not
consent to, a limitation of the French navy.
General Meerveldt then inquired if he would
resign Erfurth as well as the other for-
tresses ? Napoleon hesitated. The general
then said, the resignation of the protectorate
of the Rhine was necessary. Napoleon re-
plied, it was impossible ; but on being told
that Bavaria had withdrawn from his pro-
tection, and that other members were nego-
tiating with the allies, he exclaimed — " Then
the protectorship of the confederation ceases
of itself. As to Spain, it was a question of
dynasty — je n'y suis plus — therefore, that
question is decided."

At the close of this volume, when gather-
ing up all his reminiscences, the marquess
states there are " two points he wishes to
record as deeply rooted in his memory."
We were amused with them — perhaps some
of our readers will also be. " I was the
only individual present, when I saw En-
gland's king clothe his august ally, the
Emperor of Russia, with the robes of the

3 N

458

Monthly Review of Literature,

APRIL,

garter. The graceful manner, and inde-
scribable amiability with which the one
performed his task, and the difficult and
awkward mode in which the other ulti-
mately managed to get into and put on the
magnificent paraphernalia, cannot easily be
forgotten — indeed, the scene surpassed de-
scription.** This is one of the " points" —
the other is thus described. " It was on
the steps, at the ftte at Guildhall, that I
knelt down and kissed my sovereign's hand
on his appointing me the ambassador to the
court of Vienna, and at the same moment
nominating me one of his lords of the bed-
chamber— a circumstance entirely unlooked
for, and unexpected by me."

The delighted marquess has not yet ex-
hausted his materials — he contemplates ano-
ther volume, embracing the details of the
campaign of 1815, and the transactions of
the Congress of Vienna.

Fit* of Fitzford, by Mrs. Bray, 3 vols.,

\2rno Mrs. Bray resides at Tavistock,

and is, of course, within reach of Dartmoor
and its wilds, and its tors, each of which
has its own legend, and one of these, of a
very painful cast, she has re-embodied, and
spread the details over the usual quantum
of sheets. With considerable practice in
writing, she is moreover a very intelligent
and clever woman, and capable of describing
with full effect whatever falls under her own
eye — she is fond of landscape and scene-
painting, and in this her taste is good, and
her execution true — domestic scenes also,
and coarse dialogues, with some humour in
them, suit her admirably ; .but, unluckily,
she has the ambition to cope with charac-
ters of wilder energy, for which, being quite
out of the pale of her experience, she is com-
pelled to draw upon others, or to fores her
imagination — a thing which will not bear
forcing. Of these, in the novel before us,
she has two, and one of them tearingly ex-
travagant; but being obviously made to
pattern, she is not chargeable for the original
conception, and need only plead guilty to
the minor offence of adoption.

The scene and story are laid in the neigh-
bourhood of Tavistock, and in the reign of
Elizabeth. Fitz is the only son of a retired
judge, of good property, who amuses his
leisure with advising his friends, and dab-
bling, in company with the schoolmaster, in
astrology. Old Fitz's nearest neighbour is
another judge (Glanville), who has a very
lovely girl under his guardianship; and
between this lady and young Fitz arises an
attachment, from which springs a flood of
misery, which deluges many of the pages.
The story of old Judge Glanville's daughter
is a very miserable one. She had given
her affections to a man of ruined fortunes,
but was compelled by her father to abandon
her lover and marry a rich old miser. The
consequence was a speedy elopement. After
some considerable interval, her retreat was
discovered, and «he was forced back again

to her husband ; and finding no other effec-
tual means of freeing herself from her odious
shackles, she, with the aid of her female;
attendant, poisoned him, and paid the pe-
nalty of her " treason," according to the
fashion of the times, in the flames, to which
she was condemned by the official sentence
of her own father — such is still the tradition
of the neighbourhood. His young and
beautiful ward is, though the judge knows
nothing about the matter, his own grand-
child— the offspring of his daughter's adul-
terous connection. She had been bequeathed
to his care and kindness by a very intimate
friend, was endeared to him, and regarded
as his own child. Of her mother's story
she knew nothing. The person whom she
supposed to have been her father, had, on
his death-bed, when committing her to
Glanville's protection, charged her to listen
to the advice and injunction of one Stand-
wich, as the dictates of a parent. This
Standwich presents himself to the reader in
very equivocal positions — at the head of
outlawed miners — connected with pirates —
and the fanatic agent of schemes for the
rescue of the Queen of Scots — sometimes in
the mail of a soldier, and again in the frock
of a priest. By gradual disclosures he proves
to be the very seducer of the old judge's
daughter, and of course the father of his
ward, over whom he had long in secret ex-
ercised the authority of a parent, without
avowing his paternal rights. A match be-
tween her and young Fitz, he resolves at all
hazards to prevent — old Fitz had been his
evil genius — the main instrument first in
tearing from him the object of his affections ;
and finally, in plunging her into the flames.
By dint of threats and mysteries he gets the
youth despatched to the Flemish wars,
where he is quickly wounded and taken
prisoner, and Standwich contrives to inter-
cept all letters, and confirm the reports of
his death. In the meanwhile, the poor
young lady, much against her will, is pre-
vailed upon, by the dark promptings of
Standwich, to consent to give her hand in
marriage to a neighbouring knight, the
friend of Fitz. On the day of celebration,
however, in spite of all impediments, young
Fitz presents himself alive again to the
bridal party, and of course a sad scene of
confusion follows. The marriage, never-
theless, goes on ; and the disappointed Fitz,
after fevers and sufferings, recovers some
degree of equanimity, and engaging in pub-
lic business, is honoured with the command
of the Castle of Lidford. While in this
command, the treasonable practices of
Standwich are discovered, and he is finally
seized and committed to the custody of
Fitz. Despairing at last of escape, he com-
municates to his daughter his paternity ;
and she, prompted also by despair, at length
claims the pledge Fitz had made in happier
days, to aid her in case of need. Fitz visits
her in the absence of her husband, and in-
telligence of the visit is conveyed to him by

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

459

the jealousies of a lady, who has figured
before in the story, but we had forgotten
her. By the demon-like manoeuvres of this
lady, a meeting is brought about between
the enraged husband and Fitz — swords are
drawn — and, provoked beyond endurance,
Fitz runs him through the body — and
shortly after, in the hot fit of a fever, and
the recollection of a sort of a prophecy of his
father's, does the same for himself.

The story hangs loosely together, and
there are more agents than business. Stand-
wich has more instruments than he requires ;
there is a Jew who quotes half the bible ;
and a desperate virago who has a finger in
every thing, and effective in nothing. An
old schoolmaster has some humour, and we
looked to see him again; but the writer,
apparently, had too much on her hands,
and perhaps forgot him.

Library of Entertaining Knowledge,
Vols. I., II., III., IV.— Without doubt
the term useful would be the more appro-
priate epithet for this collection of sterling
information, in which the imagination and
all its vagaries are studiously excluded. To
be sure it is no easy matter to make every-
body fix the same sense to the same word,
and doubtless the " Diffusion Society"
think it as much becomes their gravity, to
identify the utlle with the dulce, as Cicero
did with the honestum* But every man to
his taste — the books are valuable books,
under whatever title they pass into the
hands of their readers. The first volume,
called the Menageries, is occupied with
quadrupeds solely, not arranged after any
recognized system, but according to the
writer's convenience or sense of the " en-
tertaining ;" leaving the forms to be learnt
from the wood-cuts, which are very respect-
able, but not of equal quality. The text is
confined to descriptions relative to the habits
and propensities of animals, varied and il-
lustrated with abundance of familiar anec-
dotes, for very many of which the very
intelligent compiler himself stands sponsor.
The second volume concerns vegetable sub-
stances, and embraces trees and fruits — the
main objects pursued are to point out the
uses of the first, and to tell the history and
cultivation of the other. The third is filled
with accounts of men who have successfully
pursued knowledge under difficulties — col-
lected expressly for the purpose of exciting
emulation. The diligence of the writer has
suffered few remarkable cases to escape him ;
and the only faults we find are the abundance
of the instances and the brevity of the no-
tices— singly they whet without satisfying
the appetite, and collectively they blunt and
confound its perceptions. The fourth, fan-
tastically entitled Insect Architecture, is
replete with accurate and specific informa-
tion relative to the more striking instances
of Insect economy. It of course forms only
one division of the subject of Insects, and
will be followed, according to the announce-

ment, by a volume of Insect transforma-
tions.

If the treatises on mathematics and sci-
ence, x published under the auspices of the
same society, were written with half the
simplicity, with half the desire to inform,
that distinguishes this series of Entertain-
ing Knowledge, they would fulfil the hopes
so confidently, but, as it proves, so delu-
sively, held out to us. Many of the trea-
tises we allude to are of a very superior cast,
but for that very reason calculated only for
the cultivated and accomplished — precisely
for those who do not want them — who have
already free access to the gates of science, if
they choose to walk in. What is wanted
for the uneducated — for those who are
wholly unused to abstractions, is the easy,
even more than the cheap.

The Diary of Ralph Thoresby, F.R.S.,
author of the Topography of Leeds, by the

Rev. J. Hunter, F.S.A., 2 vols., 8vo

Thoresby was one of the most indefatigable
collectors on record, and one of the most in-
discriminate— nothing came amiss — " cu-
riosities, natural and artificial," two terms
which embrace the universe, were equally
and eagerly swept into his net. Inheriting
from his father the nest-egg of a museum,
it was the pride and pleasure of his exist-
ence to add to its treasures, and next to
adding, of course, to exhibit them to won-
dering gazers. His actual grasp was limited
only by his narrow means — he was a mar-
ried man with a family, and in business as
a clothier, but not very successful, and no
wonder ; for if his body was in the market,
his soul was in his library. His collections,
however, as such things will, grew insen-
sibly, and attracted visitors far and near ;
and he was thus by degrees brought in con-
tact or correspondence with all the men of
his day eminent in the line of antiquari-
anism. His native town, an ancient and
extensive one, presented a fertile field for
the range of his inquiries ; and his scribing
labours, at least those which appear in in-
dependent publications, were mainly spent
in scanning its antiquities, and illustrating
its records. His " Ducatus Leodiensis" is
a choice specimen of the topography of the
old school, where every acre and house are
described with the solicitude of a surveyor
— every parochial tradition and event, great
and small, is recorded ; and every family of
any local distinction since the flood, be-
pedigreed. His own museum constituted
magna pars of the town, and accordingly
the Museum Thoresbyanum occupies more
than half of his goodly folio. The interests
of the world seemed centered in Leeds, and
his Vicaria Leodiensis furnishes " learned
men, bishops and writers," enough to stock
a kingdom. Numbers of his correspondents
had the benefit of his assistance — Bishop
Gibson, in his Camden — Calamy, in his
Memoirs of Puritan Ministers — Stevens,
in his Monasticon ; and the works of Oba-

3 N 2

460

Monthly Review of Literature,

[APRIL;

dlah Walker, Bishops Nicholson and
EL'arne, make frequent acknowledgement
of favours. At his death, or soon after,
his collections of letters from celebrated
persons found their way to the British Mu-
seum ; but his own museum, to the oppro-
brium of the town, was dispersed, partly by
auction, while his personal correspondence
and his diary went no one knew whither.
The portions of the diary now published,
with the correspondence which will imme-
diately follow, were discovered a few years
ago in a garret in the city, and rescued by
Mr. Upcott, of the London Institution,
whose corrasioHS of the autographic remains
of eminent persons exceed those of any man
living. During the printing, another vo-
lume of the Diary was found in the library
of Christ's Hospital.

The Diary commences witli the year
1678, when Thoresby was in his twentieth
year, and was continued, probably without
any interruption, till 1724, within a year of
his death. Two gaps, one of eight, and the
other of six years, are supplied briefly by a
." review," in his own hand, which he seems
to have made every ten years ; and a third
of about five years, for which there is no
substitute. This is not, we think, very
deeply to be lamented ; nor can we at all
sympathize with the editor in his regrets.
Satis superque. Thoresby's life was un-
eventful and uniform ; he records no public
matters ; or if now and then he alludes to
them, it is only with a prayer that evils may
be averted. The whole Diary, in short, is
strictly of a private character, presenting
frequent notices of his family circumstances
and temporal concerns ; but chiefly record-
ing his studies, his readings, his correspon-
dence, his times, and his religious exercises.
It was designed, he observes incidentally,
not for the inspection of others, but for pri-
vate direction and reproof. Nothing so at-
tractive as a peep into such a sanctum, where
the individual is anything above mediocrity,
with an unfettered spirit, and disposed to
expatiate. Thoresby had no intellectual
superiorities ; he was evidently an honest,
well-meaning man, not calculated for the
tumults of life or the tricks of business ;
and therefore wisely, at the end of twenty
years of unproductive conflict with more
successful competitors, abandoned the at-
tempt, retired on a slender competency, and
devoted the rest of his days to his museum
and his pen. For a diary prosecuted nearly
fifty years, the uniformity of the tone is
most remarkable ; no one can question his
identity ; he was the same man from first
to last ; his habits as steady and unchang-
ing in youth as in age; his pursuits the
same ; the same piety, the same profound
respect for the clergy, the same fondness for
sermons and securing the "heads" of them,
the same constant attendance on public
prayers, the same observance of private;
the same credulity — the same bonhnmrnie
— the same phraseology and sentiments,

coupled with a complete absence of all
desire to point his inquiries in any direc-
tion but that which, by some early bias,
they insensibly took and kept. Any thing
like enlightenment the reader must not
look for; he had no general or original
views ; he never broke out of the lines of
prescription ; and the bigotry of his senti-
ments, inseparable from narrowness of
spirit, is softened only by the kindliness of
his nature.

His self-censures, which frequently recur,
chiefly concern the waste of time — that is,
of time abstracted from his particular pur-
suits. " Can find time for anything but
what I should do," he observes in one place,
when he had spent some part of an evening
at a tavern. " Too merry for our circum-
stances— too many profane words, and much
precious time spent idly, if not sinfully" — .
upon an occasion when he had entertained
some friends (JEt. 24). Once on a Sunday,
when on a visit, after attending service —
" the rest of the day and evening spent very
unsuitably to the duties of the day, though
we enjoyed the modest parson's good com-
pany and Squire Dyke's ; evening, sat too
late, or rather early, with the young gen-
tlemen, and was foolishly cheerful, and vain
in my expressions ; too compliant, &c."
(jEt. 37') Going once to a play, he notes
— " Curiosity took me there, but fear
brought me back ;" the first, and he hopes
the last time he shall be found upon such
ground. At his parish church once some
sensible stranger preached — " I was espe-
cially vexed at these words : ' Precise per-
sons, now-a-days, will cry out of innocent
plays and honest comedies, &c., when in the
meantime themselves are the greatest actors
in the world ;' a speech, in my opinion,
very unbecoming a minister of the gospel at
any time, much more in the pulpit ; leading
to the encouragement of those insatiable
devourers of precious time." Yet very
much of this precious time was spent, ap-
parently, in very frivolous employments —
copying tomb-stone inscriptions especially ;
or, when the forenoon, which he mentions
without any disapprobation, was employed
in cementing the broken pieces of a large
ancient figure of Seneca's head, that worthy
philosopher (^Et. 24, when he probably
knew nothing of him but by report) after
writing some pedigrees. Once he went a
hunting, " the first time," he writes, " and
I think the last, being of Sir Philip Syd-
ney's mind, next to hawking I like hunting
worst." One Sunday, ladies of rank were
introduced to see his collections of " rarities
and coins :" — ;" which with reluctance I re-
fused, because of the unseasonableness, with
pioffer of service the next day, whereby I
avoided the outward breach of the com-
mand. But alas," he adds, " my vain
thoughts, like tinder, are easily inflamed ;
and any good notion, like a spark, quickly
extinguished."

" Showing collections" often occurs —

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

461

much of his time must have been thus oc-
cupied : now and then he complains, but
gratified vanity peeps out notwithstanding.
(July 7, 1810.) " Showing to Mr. W.,
vicar of Halifax, and in the evening to 'a
stranger, brought by Captain Neville, as a
kinsman of Dr. Sacheverell's, but supposed
to be the Doctor himself, incognito ; the
hand is not unlike, and the motto suitable,
* Dulce et decorum pro patria patij " — every
visitor inserted his name and a " motto" in
Thoresby's album. A few days after — " Show-
ing collections to Dr. Gibson, of Covent Gar-
den ; in company were two of Richard Crom-
well's daughters (one was Dr. Gibson's wife),
who took notice of what related to that family.
Thus I am exposed, like a common inn-
keeper, to guests of all complexions ; the
last was Dr. Sacheverell's kinsman, then
two of Oliver Cromwell's grand-daughters
(one of which seemed to have his height of
spirit] ; but as much as moderation is de-
cried, one betwixt both extremes is, in my
opinion, to be preferred before either."

Thoresby was a great discerner of provi-
dences. In his early years a mutual attach-
ment between himself and a young lady was
broken off by her friends, and they parted
in tears. She married a richer man, not
much to her comfort, and died early. " The
kind providence of God which foresaw this
(her early death), and how unfit I was for
such a trial, prevented it (her marriage with
him) in mercy." His affection survived
the affront, or her premature death would
have been ascribed to the guilt of jilting.
Ascriptions of this kind are frequent. After
attending evening service, he was " unwil-
lingly engaged with Mr. D. and Mr. C.,
unsuitably to the day, and in return lost
a silk handkerchief — a just punishment for
unsuitable discourse." Recording a tre-
mendous storm — " this thunder-storm,"
he adds, (' was ordered by Providence for
the detection of a murderer;" and then de-
tails the story — the man took shelter in
somebody's house, and was recognised.

Speaking of the comet of 1682, he adds :
" Lord, fit us for whatever changes or alte-
rations it may portend ; for, though I am
not ignorant that such meteors proceed from
natural causes, yet are frequently also the
presages of imminent calamities."

His public devotions were.unfailingly paid
— but not always with discretion. He com-
plains once of the ridicule thrown upon him by
his fellow-townsmen, for begging the prayers
of the congregation for his safety, when set-
ting out on a journey. Some good-natured
friend " fished out" who the prayers were
for. In such formalities he had the utmost
confidence. Being once about to return
from London, he says: — "I was at the
prayers at St. Lawrence Church, and re-
quested of a devout gentleman I had ob-
served most constantly there, that they
would please to continue their prayers for
those upon their journey till Friday next —
it is a good provision against dangers, to

have a stock of prayers going forward for
us."

He qnce met Whiston in company —
" wretchedly heterodox ;" and once dined
with Locke at Lord Pembroke's. Speaking
of " Locke's Essay," he observes—" Some
passages to be cautiously admitted, as where
he says that revelation is not so sure as our
reason or senses (Thoresby not distinguish-
ing evidently between revelation and testi-
mony) ; and the famous Bishop Stilling-
fleet taxes him with some odd notions, if
not heterodox, about the resurrection."

The short incidental notices which occur
here and there of known persons are amus-
ing ; but the judgments pronounced upon
them are of no sort of value, from the calibre
and prepossessions of the man.

Murray's Family Library, Vol. XI.—
It is not, we think, more than a twelve-
month, or two at the most, since we ex-
pressed at some length our opinion of Mr.
Washington Irving's History of Columbus.
The eleventh volume of the " Family Li-
brary" contains an abridgment of that vo-
luminous work, compressed by the author
himself. Nothing could have been better
imagined — the original was decidedly too
long, and nobody better than himself could
know, if he consulted his own recollections
in the composition, where, in particular, he
had bestowed his tediousness. We like
the degree of compression too, that is, down
to about one-fourth or a fifth ; and we are
quite sure, the same process, and in the
same, or even a more liberal measure, might
be very advantageously applied to more mo-
dern works than our pages, if we could
spare them, would contain. Nothing worth
preserving in the original work is lost, and
the price of the abridgment is less than a
tenth.

Sydenham, or the Man of the World,
3 vols., \2rno. — This is a story of the times,
and by implication at least lays claim to a
large acquaintance with the higher classes
of life, though without affording indispu-
table proofs of personal intercourse with the
scenes and sets, which the author shews up,
private or political. The whole, we sup-
pose, might be readily picked up without
his mixing in the circles of fashion, or the
houses of parliament — without being a guest
at L — or H — house, or a member of
Brookes's. The sketches, as to views, mo-
tives, and effects, correspond very accu-
rately with the common talk which floats in
the atmosphere of club-rooms and every-day
society. If descriptions like these before
us, professing to throw open boudoirs and
drawing-rooms — the whole interior of fa-
shionable follies— are to carry weight, they
require authenticating — the writers should
communicate their 'names — let us know
their condition and rank in life — where and
with whom they associate, what are their
opportunities, and then we can appreciate
their communications. None but our

462

Monthly Review oj Lileralurc,

[APRIL,

country friends can enjoy these anonymous
disclosures — their capacities of faith are
unfathomable and insatiable.

Sydeaham, however, is a young man,
with large estates and a baronet's title —
cool and mature — intelligent and cultivated
— with ambition not merely to shine by re-
flexion, but to be his own sun — to be influ-
ential wherever he circulates, or in whatever
direction he bends his efforts. Coming
early to his property, he fell, on his first en-
trance into society, into that class of fashion-
ables over which Brummel was known to
reign ; and by treating the monarch with
something like his own indifference, piqued
him into extraordinary attentions, and be-
came prime favourite, or prime minister.
Frequently as that prince of coxcombs has
been of late exhibited, Sydenham presents
the most complete portrait of him we have
seen — furnishing, indeed, the most amusing
part of the work. The declension of his
power, and his final abdication, are de-
scribed with something like the solemnity
of history ; to avoid a collision with the
leaders of two parties, he chose to cut both,
and make overtures to a third — a very ex-
clusive set — quite another caste ; and being
there repulsed — the news spread — the spell
broke — his authority vanished like a dream,
and he himself withdrew. The author is
doubtless too young to have known any-
thing personally of Brummel, but the recol-
lections of many are still fresh, and he will
be thought to have conceived him well. A
very different story, however, is told of
Brummel's exile.

Confident in the maturity of his know-
ledge, and trusting to his facility of expe-
dient for extricating himself from embar-
rassments, Sydenham ventures boldly to the
very brink of danger — to study character.
He affected to fall into the snares of a
matchless match-maker — and though drawn
further in than he meant to go, he finally
baffled the matron's manoeuvres, and the
brother's bullying, with admirable ease and
tact. With more difficulty he escaped the
arts of a noble lord, who threw his wife in
his way — brought the cause into court, and
was nonsuited. During the first burst of
eclat, he withdrew from town, and visited
his mother in Bath, where an opportunity
is taken to shew up a coarser set — visitors
of his mother's at " tea and turn out."
By and by a contest for the county intro-
duces him in electioneering scenes and in-
trigues. Though defeated, with the loss of
twenty thousand pounds, he obtains a seat
readily for a borough by family influence,
and now turns his attention to political dis-
tinction. He is eagerly courted by both the
leading parties, but eventually joins the
whigs — to be one of " all the talents."
This was at a period when a great tory
leader had gone over to the whigs, and
hopes rose high through this new ally of
expelling the old tories. The new ally
(Canning), however, and the old leader of

opposition (Brougham, without disguise)
soon clash, neither will give way to the
other. The old leader, consequently, coa-
lesces with the tories, and with some of his
friends takes office; while the new whig,
baffled by this treacherous desertion, breaks
into vituperation — is coughed down by the
house he so recently commanded — goes
home, takes to his bed, and dies. The
whole tissue of the intrigue is laboriously
unravelled, and Brougham, Canning, Tier-
ney, Sheridan — together with Devonshire
House and its once brilliant mistress — are
all dissected with considerable skill and ef-
fect. The intrigue is wholly, of course,
imaginary, but the incidents are all trace-
able in the last twenty or thirty years, only
thrown into new combinations. B
for a few months has the lead of the Com-
mons, and is then consigned to the bench
and the peerage — this is prophetic.

Records of Captain Clapperton's last
Expedition to Africa, by R. Lander, 2 vols.,
small 8vo; 1830 — Lander's Journal, it
will be recollected, was printed with Captain
Clapperton's. His sole purpose in present-
ing that Journal to the government was, he
says, to account for his conduct after his
master's decease, and for the property left,
by that event, in his hands at Soccotoo. It
was drawn up in haste by himself, with no
other aid than that of a younger brother —
it was incomplete, ill-expressed, and more-
over not the medium for recording the ob-
servations which he also, as well as his
master, had made during his journey and
sojourn. He has now had time to get up
his recollections more voluminously, and
trimming and dressing up the original jour-
nal in a holiday suit, has aimed at " de-
picting in true colours the customs and ce-
remonies of the powerful nations or tribes,
inhabiting that vast tract of country lying
between Badagry and the beautiful king-
dom of Houssa."

Young as Lander still is — now only
twenty-six — he has led a stirring life. At
eleven he went, as a servant boy, to St. Do-
mingo ; and returning, after an absence of
three years, to England, was in the service
of several persons for another four years,
and with one or other of them visited several
parts of Europe. In 1823 he accompanied
Major Colbrook to the Cape, and the settle-
ments of South Africa. The following year
he was again in England, and again in ser-
vice, when hearing of Captain Clapperton's
new expedition, he solicited to be taken into
his service, and was, with the qualifications
he obviously possessed, readily accepted.
Every person attached to the expedition, ex-
cept Clapperton and his man, it is well
known, quickly perished ; and the distinc-
tions between master and servant, in their
solitary state, were of course soon abandoned
— Lander became the companion of his em-
ployer. Arrived at Kano, Captain Clapper-
ton found it impracticable to get to Bornou,

1830.]

Domestic and Fv reign.

403

and leaving Lander witli the baggage, pro-
ceeded forward to Soccotoo, distant about
two hundred and fifty miles. The Sultan
received Clapperton with civility, but
• quickly, without communicating his inten-
tions, despatched messengers to Kano, to
bring Lander, with all the baggage, to Soc-
catoo. At war with the Shiek of Bournou,
and jealous of any intercourse between him
and Clapperton, he resolved to intercept
whatever was destined for him ; and, in
spite of Clapperton's remonstrance, insisted
upon the letter, with which Clapperton was
furnished by the government, for the Sheik.
The commotions of the country forbade for
a time any further prosecution of the pur-
poses of the mission, and before the oppor-
tunity of proceeding occurred, Clapperton
fell another sacrifice to the climate ; and
Lander, left by himself in a remote country,
had no alternative but to make his way
home, as well as he could. The Sultan
stripped him, before he suffered him to de-
part, of every thing of value, and gave an
order for a sum of cowries to be paid him
at Kano — but the bill was, if not protested,
treated with little respect. Partaking largely
of his master's enthusiasm, Lander made
an attempt to return by the way of Fundah,
a place on the Niger, with the view of fol-
lowing the stream to Benin — as if no fur-
ther doubt hung over the course of the river.
He was, however, driven from his purpose
by the jealousies of the chiefs on his march,
and obliged to return by the old track, but
was everywhere well received, and his jour-
ney to the coast was accomplished without
danger or alarm. He arrived there three
days after the death of Parke's son, who was
setting out to ascertain the place of his fa-
ther's death, but perished for want of com-
mon prudence and acquaintance with the
climate. In his progress to Soccatoo, Clap-
perton had visited the spot where Parke was
reported to have been killed, but no journal
or papers could be heard of — they had either
been destroyed or conveyed no one knew
whither. The inhabitants of Boussa were
exceedingly reserved, Lander says, on the
subject, and uniformly gave equivocating
or evasive answers to our inquiries as to the
manner in which it had occurred. They
seemed indeed overwhelmed with shame, at
the part they or their fathers had taken in
the dreadful tragedy, and did all in their
power to shift the blame from the shoulders
of themselves and their countrymen.

Lander's account of the Falatahs is of
some interest, with that of their founder,
Danfodio and his son Bello, the present
sultan : but the details will not come within
our limits, and will not bear compression.
The volume, on the wflble, is amusing
enough, and adds, besides, considerably to
our knowledge of Central Africa. He has
made the most of his personal adventures.
Zam, the fat lady of Wou-Wou, in despair
at last of persuading Lander to accept at
once of her hand, and the means of depos-

ing the king, and reixyning in his stead,
begged him on his return to assure his
countrymen that any white man would be
acceptable, and she would transfer to him
her affections, her spacious person, and her
regal views. At Katunga he found himself
unable to refuse the offer of four princesses,
and the command in chief of the army, and
the office of prime minister ; but declined
taking possession till he had been home. At
Badagry, the hostility of some Portuguese
exposed him to the necessity of swallowing
Fetish water, and he escaped the conse-
quences of this perilous ordeal, only by
hastening to his hut, and contriving to throw
it up again.

Lander is already on his way back to
Africa. The government have commissioned
him and his brother — the scribe — to attempt
to reach Fundah, and trace the river from
thence to Benin.

Darnley, by the Author of Richelieu,
3 vote., l'2mo — Once read, as novels are,
and thought of no more, how is it that men
of talents spend their efforts upon anything
so ephemeral ? Because the employment is
profitable — a successful novel pays better
than any production that can be executed in
the same time by the most facile operator.
But this will not last ; the same fate awaits
it, as has overtaken many other modern ma-
nufactures— too many labourers crowd to
the loom, and, large as is the demand, the
supply is rapidly exceeding it. Goods of
the same quality will not, we know, obtain,
the same prices this season as the last. This
depreciation will go on — speculators, vide-
licet publishers, will venture less and less ;
the cheapest hands will be retained ; the
best, who stick out for old prices, will turn
their labour into other channels, and then
we shall be deluged with flimsy cottons —
content with show instead of substance.

Such a novel as " Darnley" a few years
ago, would have filled London with won-
derment; now it is only what every one
looks for — it is but one of a score, equally
good, in a season. Though, as a tale, no-
thing very remarkable, it is interwoven with
historical personages, and tells well as the
story of private and unrecorded events,
mingling with characters within the know-
ledge of all of us. The author has made
himself familiar with the principles and
habits of the time, and mixes up his tale
cleverly and naturally with known facts and
circumstances. Darnley is the only son of
a nobleman, who, falling under the royal
displeasure, had been stripped of his title
and estates, and the son was compelled to
seek for honours and renown in foreign
countries. He wins his spurs in the con.
flicts of Flanders and France. Of course,
amidst his successes, the thought of En-
gland, and the hope of recovering his here-
ditary distinctions fill his bosom, and
prompt all his exertions. He returns in-
coynilo — resolved to conciliate Henry's fa-

464

Monthly Review of Literature,

vour by stealth and manoeuvre, as he dares
not present himself in his own name and
quality. By the generous assistance of the
noble Buckingham, he is furnished with
the means of making a handsome appear-
ance, and a lucky incident gives him a
favourable introduction. Henry was fond
of tilting, in disguise as a private person,
and at the time Darnley reached Greenwich
— then the royal residence — had an expe-
dition of this kind in view with Lord De-
vonshire. At the critical moment, he meets
with a disabling accident, and a dexterous
courtier suddenly presents Darnley as a
competent knight to supply his place. He
is accepted, performs his part to admiration,
and rapidly makes his way to the heart, or
at least to the transient and capricious fond-
ness of the monarch. No time indeed was
to be lost, for Darnley had his foes. The
man who held his paternal estates was
aware of his return, and of his intimacy
with the king — he had indeed intercepted
him on his landing, and thrown him into a
dungeon, but had unwittingly let him slip
through his fingers. He makes up, how-
ever, for his negligence. Wolsey, whose
absence of a month or more had been very
favourable for Darnley, returns from York,
and Sir Pay an, Darnley 's foe, presents him-
self, to announce a conspiracy, at the head
of which he places Buckingham, and this
very Darnley as chief associate, now insi-
diously wooing, the king's confidence, the
better to betray him. Forthwith the Car-
dinal orders his barge, and hastens to
Greenwich, prompted by the double hope
of crushing Buckingham, his old enemy,
and Darnley, the new favourite. Henry,
however, with a feeling of kindness —
Darnley had rescued him, a day or two be-
fore, from being smothered in a pool of
mud, while hawking — refuses to allow of
his immediate arrest, and even gives him a
timely hint to escape to the continent. In
Flanders, on the borders, he has the good
fortune to save the life of Francis, and
through him he is finally restored to Henry's
favour, at the celebrated meeting of the two
monarchs in the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
"We have not half sketched the tale ; and
have forgotten the ladies — neither of them
very significant. One is attached to Darn-
ley, and the other to Lord Derby ; and
Wolsey desires to marry Darnley's mistress
to Lord Derby. The game of cross-pur-
poses is sufficiently embarrassing ; but the
current of love finally runs smooth, and each
lady falls to the lord she loves best. The
scenes about the palace and the park — the
fttes within, and Henry's pursuits without
— are 'graphically given, lively and effec-
tive.

The British Naturalist; 1830 — The
bold and commendable purpose of the very
able writer of this little volume, is to make
everybody his own naturalist — to lead him,
that is, to study living subjects, and aban-

don dead systems. His purpose he prose-
cutes by connecting the animal he meets
with, with the place where he meets with it,
and the food it feeds on, and inquiring why
it is there, rather than anywhere else. " The
plant and animal," as he says himself, " is
taken in conjunction with the scenery, and
the general and particular use, and, when
that arises naturally, the lesson of morality
and natural religion." He traces the moun-
tain, for instance, from its base to the sum-
mit, and talks of the bear and the wolf,
which once among us inhabited it ; and the
wild cat and pine martin, which still do :
the gnats in the pools — the heathberries —
the Alpine hare — the ptarmigan — the eagle,
and the mechanism of the eagle's eyes, &c.
With the same purpose he visits the lake,
the river, the sea, the moor, and the brook.
The volume is but a small one, and con-
tains but a specimen of the author's views.
Materials are in preparation for extending
the work, not only to a series of volumes of
the British Naturalist, but to follow, or
alternate those, with the Foreign Naturalist.
Such a work, pursued in the spirit with
which it is so well begun, will be sure to
make its way — to the extinction, we hope,
of the present mode of regarding and study-
ing natural history, which has little else to
do with animals, but their skeletons.

History of France and Normandy, by
W. C. Taylor, A.B — Mr. Taylor is the
author of a little volume, also recently pub-
lished, entitled " Historical Miscellany,"
embracing sundry portions of history, for
the most part usually neglected in school
books. This " History of France," com-
mencing with the accession of Clovis, and
brought down to the Battle of Waterloo, is,
in like manner, destined for a class-book,
and is accompanied with recapitulatory
questions at the end of each division, after
the fashion of Pinnock's histories. The
portion which relates to Normandy, and the
wars of our Edwards and Henries, is stated
to have been carefully compiled from the
old cotemporary chronicles, as, if not more
faithful, at least better conveying the spirit
and manners of the age, and thus throwing
more light on the motives and characters of
those whose deeds are recorded. The
whole is written with spirit, and the exer-
cise of sound judgment and discretion is
everywhere visible. It bears, perhaps, too
many marks of haste — but, in so narrow a
compass, it could be nothing but a sketch,
and a very good sketch it is.

Sketches from Nature, by J. M'Diarmid.
— So very miscellaneous is this little volume,
that not even the comprehensive word
" Nature" will embrace the contents — nay,
one piece actually details the process of the
sculptor's art — and a very distinct one it is,
by the way. A considerable portion is oc-
cupied with sketches of animals, descrip-
tive of their habits, accompanied by nume-
rous and well-attested anecdotes ; and this,

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

465

together with descriptions of two or three
remarkable spots, as the Mall of Galloway,
and Colonel M'Dowall's fish-pond commu-
nicating with the sea, and filled with tame
fishes, seems to have suggested the general
title, " for want of a better." Mr. M'Di-
armid is, we believe, a printer at Dumfries,
and editor of a paper in the same town ;
and has had occasion professionally to fur-
nish obituary tributes to several persons of
local reputation, some of which are here re-
printed. Captain Clapperton was born in
the neighbourhood, and claimed a similar
tribute — his is a very animated sketch. In-
deed, every part of the volume gives proof
of cultivation and intelligence — the author
is a very clever person, and his volume of
scraps a very readable one.

Weeds and Wild/lowers, ly the late
Alex. Balfour; 1830 — Mr. Balfour's name
and some occasional pieces of his, were not
unknown to us, but his story was wholly so
— it is one of some interest, and told by
the editor of these relics in a very sensible
manner. The son of parents in a very
humble station, he was brought up a weaver,
but early smitten with the love of books, at
the termination of his apprenticeship he
took to school-keeping in his native village.
After a few years he removed to Arbroath,
as clerk to a merchant and manufacturer.
His employer dying, he entered into part-
nership with the widow, and on her retiring,
in 1800, extended his business, in con-
junction with others, by government con.
tracts for ship-canvas. His success was
considerable, till in the year 1815 — a year
memorable for commercial distresses — the
firm was involved in the bankruptcy of a
London house, and he was suddenly thrown
from comparative affluence into a state of
dependence. His resource was the superin-
tendence of a house of business for two or
three years, till he was struck with paraly-
sis, and rendered incapable of locomotion
for the rest of his days — he died a few
months since. From a very early period he
had dabbled in literature, and was, with few
interruptions, in frequent communication
with the provincial periodicals. Long prac-
tice gave facility of composition, and the
last painful years of his life were soothed,
and his family chiefly supported, by his lite-
rary efforts. Besides his constant contribu-
tions to Constable's Magazine, and two
other Scotch periodicals, he was the author
of three or four novels, " Campbell," " The
Probationer," and « The Highland Maid,"
the latter of which the editor describes as
a tale of interest, and one which, under
more favourable bibliopolic auspices, would
have certainly worked its way to popularity.
Of his poetry, the most remarkable is
" Characters omitted in Crabbe's Register,"
in which he has most successfully caught
the spirit and tone of Crabbe. The volume
before us has another specimen or two of
the same kind, which it would be difficult

M.M. New Series.— -VoL.IX. No. 52.

to characterise justly, otherwise than by
saying they are wholly Crabbe. The tales
are simply and agreeably told — one descrip-
tive of some German dreams, and another
of the equivoques and embarrassments pro-
duced by the close resemblance not only of
two sisters, but a brother also—not at all
Germanish, but scarcely less improbable.

Field Sports of the North, by L. Lloydy
Esq., 2 vols. 8vo. — Be the subject what it
may, any book written not for writing's
sake, but because the writer has something
to tell, and really knows what he is writing
about, must fix an intelligent reader's at-
tention. The prominent topic of these
volumes is bear-shooting, and the author's
shooting grounds were the wide provinces
of Wermeland and Dalecarlia. He has
spent some years in Sweden, and knows the
country thoroughly ; but the present work
is limited merely to a description of his
sporting tours in the years 1827-8. Nothing
shootable came amiss — wolves, foxes, elks,
capercalis (cogs de bois), but the bear was
the prime object of pursuit; and of that
animal he has furnished a great deal of
minute information — no naturalist ever
probably had his personal experience, and
no one certainly has conveyed particulars so
numerous of the bear's habits and pecu-
liarities.

Bears are not so abundant in Sweden as
to be found with facility. In the south-
ern parts, cultivation, which is spreading on
every side, has fairly expelled them ; and
even in the less populated districts of Wer-
meland and Dalecarlia, the appearance of a
bear is a signal for the neighbourhood to
assemble for its destruction. This is done
on a very large scale — 1,500 men some-
times co-operate — it is a sort of parochial
levy, and every parish contributes a certain
quota for the chase. The turn out is called
a scall, or battu — the party will enclose a
space of fifty miles, which takes one man
for every fifty and sixty yards ; and then
advancing, gradually narrow . the circle.
The game is thus, of course, enclosed, and
driven to one spot, when the sportsmen,
placed in what is called the shooting line,
await the arrival, and make the best use
they can of their opportunity. Engaging
such numbers of people, the hunt is, of
course, quite an event ; its approach is an-
nounced from the pulpit; the government
give a bounty, and the bear itself, valuable
for its flesh and its fur, affords an addi-
tional prize.

The author's facilities enabled him to
settle a variety of questions relative to the
habits of this formidable animal. Some
doubts have been entertained as to the period
of gestation, and the condition of the young
at their birth. No bears, it has been said,
have been found with cubs in their wombs ;
but Mr. Lloyd had ocular proof in one of
his own killing. She carries her young six
months, and brings them forth in January

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Monthly Review of Literature,

[[APRIL

or February, perfectly formed. The cubs,
when first born, are very small — the size of
puppies — not, however, unshaped lumps,
which the mother licks into form, but
really bears in miniature.

The notion of the bear's sucking its paws
for food is now generally exploded, but Mr.
Lloyd furnishes some hints which may very
well account for the blunder. He does suck
his paws. Mr. Lloyd thinks he gets a new
skin on the balls of his feet every year, and
suggests, with some probability, the suck-
ing may facilitate the operation.

Through the summer, the bear is lean ,*
but, as the berries get ripe, he grows fat.
Towards the end of October, he ceases to
feed, and eats nothing through the winter.
His bowels and stomach become quite
empty, and contracted into a very small
compass, whilst the extremity of them is
closed by an indurated substance, called
Tappen, composed, it seems, of the last
substances, such as pine-leaves, and what
he collects from the ant-hills, of which he
has eaten. Undisturbed, he sleeps through
the winter, and retains his fat — no percepti-
ble difference is found, let him be shot at
what part of the winter he may. The fat
about the intestines, which is never consi-
derable, is used medicinally, and also for
the hair, in Sweden. Such are its virtues,
that some one, Mr. Ross, perhaps, to ex-
press his full sense of them, has said, " If
you rub a deal box with it over night, it
will be converted into a hair trunk by the
morning."

The rustic Swedes speak of the bear as
having thewit of one man, and the strength of
ten ; and the author tells endless anecdotes
illustrative of both qualities. He brought
up some young ones — " they were most
amusing fellows, though they soon became
too formidable for play-things. They could
climb with great facility. Indeed, every
now and then," says Mr. Lloyd, " if my
window happened to be opened, they would
ascend the side of the house, and thus get
access to my room. Bears are not unfre-
quently domesticated in Wermeland. I
heard of one that was so tame, that his
master, a peasant, used, occasionally, to
make him stand at the back of his sledge,
when on a journey ; but the fellow kept so
good a balance, that it was next to impos-
sible to upset him. When the vehicle
went on one side, Bruin threw his weight
the other way. One day, however, the
peasant amused himself by driving over the
very worst ground he could find, with the
intention of throwing the bear off his equi-
librium ; by which, at last, the animal got
so irritated, that he fetched his master, who
was in advance of him, a tremendous thump
on the shoulder with his paw. This fright-
ened the man so much, that he had him
killed immediately."

Cloudesly, by the Author of " Caleb
Williams," 3 vols. 12mo — With Mr. God-

win*s metaphysical spirit, a tale of some
master passion is the very thing best calcu-
lated to shew his strength. No man can
more nicely discern the complexities and
shades of feeling, or describe them more
intensely. His forcible diction and vivid
conception combine to impress the reader
deeply. The mere construction of the tale
is, we allow, a secondary matter, and the
author, it is obvious, does not regard it as
a principal one ; but, nevertheless, a little
more regard to this point would have more
concentrated the interest, and could have
done no harm.

The recorder of the tale, at an early age,
from family circumstances, was sent to sea
in the merchant's service ; but, falling ill,
was left, at some port in Russia, in the care
of some good-natured person, and, by him,
eventually placed in an inferior post in
Peter's new university. After a while, he
was removed into the office of Beren, the
Empress Anne's favourite, and was, for
a time, much distinguished by him ; but,
at last, offending that potent personage, he
fled from his implacable revenge, and re-
turned to his native village, to a friend with
whom he had kept up a correspondence
during his services in Russia. His letters
had been shewn to a nobleman's steward —
they embraced, probably, the whole history
and statistics of Russia — and by him to his
lord, a melancholy moody peer of the
neighbourhood. By this lord, Meadows
was speedily sent for. He had a special
occasion for a youth of his activity and in-
telligence ; and, finding him apt, made him
forthwith his confident, and employed him.
Here begins the tale, for it is the conduct
of this lord, and his confederate in guilt,
Cloudesly, which forms the staple of the
story. This Lord Altin, with an elder
brother, had served under Prince Eugene.
While in this service, the elder married a
Greek lady, whom he had rescued from
violation, and fell in a duel, a short time
before the birth of her first child. The
younger brother, the Lord Altin of the
story, had a strong thirst for the peerage,
and the opportunity seemed suddenly placed
within his grasp. If the shock killed the
lady, or if she produced a girl, the title and
estates were all his own. If a boy came
into the world, could not he be disposed
of? Cloudesly, his brother's servant, and
he, quickly understood each other, and
when the mother actually gave birth to a
boy and died, Cloudesly took the child with
five hundred pounds a year, and his em-
ployer the title and property. The destruc-
tion of the child was not thought of — his
removal seemed secured — and Cloudesly
fixed himself in Italy, and brought up the
child as his own. The child proved, as
the child of a nobleman should, of a noble
spirit ; and his guardian, to soothe his own
conscience, educated him as a gentleman,
with a strong feeling, all along, that he would
finally recover his rights, and a determina-

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

467

tion, finally, of aiding him in the recovery.
The more successful were his cares for the
child, the more stinging was his remorse ;
and at last, finding the state of his feelings
intolerable, he went over to Ireland, and
had an interview with the peer, whom he
found in a far more pitiable condition than
himself. Lord Altin had married, and
death had carried off his wife and all his
children, save one. He felt it to be the
penalty of his crime. He was still, how-
ever, resolute not to abandon what he had
sacrificed honour and peace to obtain.
While Cloudesly was meditating an appeal
to public justice, a letter from a friend, in
whose care he had left Julian, now a young
man of eighteen, informed him, the boy
had quitted his roof, and was supposed to
have joined some profligate acquaintance,
connected with banditti. The next news
Lord Altin hears, was Cloudesly's death,
without any information of what was be-
come of Julian. The intelligence threw
the peer into agonies, and his new confi-
dant, Meadows, is dispatched to Italy to
discover his retreat. This was finally ac-
complished. The youth had, indeed, asso-
ciated with a company of robbers, com-
manded by a ruined nobleman of lofty
abilities and qualities, and had been ar-
rested with a party, and was in imminent
peril of being hanged. He was rescued by
the arrival of Lord Altin in person — he had
lost his last child, and was ready to make
all the reparation in his power to the son of
his brother. He makes a clear conscience,
and the scene closes. Tiie tale must be
ready not skimmed.

The Christian Physiologist ; or Tales of
the Five Senses, by the Author of the Col-
legians* 1830. — This is a mixture of phy.
siology, divinity and romance — a whimsical
union we do not remember to have met with
before. The triple purpose of the artist seems
to have been to strike out some new and taking
application of his recent studies in anatomy
and natural theology. Knowledge, he dis-
covers, should be the handmaid of virtue
—-Christian virtue ; but the handmaid, it
seems, now-a-days, chooses herself to be
mistress, and, as usually happens in such
cases, treats the expelled lady very scurvily.
More, in plain language, the author com-
plains— more is thought of knowledge than
conduct ; and, therefore, he resolves to con-
tribute his mite toward putting matters in the
right orderagain. Accordingly, he selects for
his especial department, the five senses — to
point out, apparently, how the knowledge of
their uses should subserve to the virtuous
employment of them. These, therefore, he
first describes after the manner of Joshua
Brookes ; or, perhaps, some more fashion-
able demonstrator of anatomy ; and to each
sense tacks, what appears to him, an appro-
priate and illustrating tale. Thus, after
detailing the parts and purposes of the eye,
he tells how an old Irish woman once went

blind, just at the time her darling son was
returning after a long absence; how a
very skillful surgeon removed the cataract,
and enabled her to recognise her said son, a
few days after; and how she was very
grateful to God, the surgeon, and his
needle. Then comes, in the same way, the
hearing, with all the bones of the ear, down
to the stirrup ; and a tale of a youth born
deaf and dumb, who suddenly, without the
aid of any surgeon, in a fit of strong emo-
tion, is seized with intense pain in his ears,
followed by the discharge of a thin liquid
that bursts in his throat. Multitudes of
sensations rush in by the new inlet. The
youth conceals the fact from his parent,
takes lessons in talking privately, and, on
some grand occasion, surprises the wonder-
ing old man with a grand display of the
use of his tongue. The cure of a volup-
tuary, by exposure to a little difficulty about
eating and drinking, and the sight of misery
and oppression, illustrates the sense of
feeling. Smell gave him some trouble, he
acknowledges, and the best he could do, after
roundly abusing perfumes, was to tell of ft
maniac, who went mad from a lady's burn-
ing in his arms, self-consumed — the effect
of habitually bathing in camphoretted spirits
of wine. She took fire, as they say old wo-
men used to do from drinking brandy. By
the way, we remarked Mr. Donovan, in a
volume of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, quotes
numerous instances. They all occurred,
we observed, a long way off, and most of
them a long while ago. The fact wants
authenticating sadly.

Cabinet Cyclopedia, vol. 4. ; Sir Wal~
ter Scoffs Second Volume of the History of
Scotland. 1830 The managers Of the Ca-
binet Cyclopsedia have shewn no little tact in
securing the services of Sir "Walter Scott,
and still more in placing him in the fore-
front of the battle. No imaginable ma-
noeuvre could with half the certainty have
fixed attention upon the new undertaking.
The public will, probably, be much their
debtor — not for Sir Walter's history, for
that had been resolved on before the Cyclo-
paedia was thought of, and would have come
forth in some other shape — but for drawing
from others, what, without their prompting,
would never perhaps be accomplished.
The reigns of Mary and James, till his
accession to the English throne, occupy the
greatest part of this volume. The ease and
simplicity of the narration are admirable,
and not less remarkable is the soundness of
judgment every where visible, or the temper
with which every question is discussed.
Mary puzzles him ; circumstances con-
demn her, while the absence of legal evi-
dence acquits her. He cannot pronounce a
peremptory verdict, and makes a Scotch
return of non proven, which indicates lack
of evidence for guilt, but enough of it for
doubts of innocence. Hume, whom he calls,
of course, with some reference to the case,

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Monthly Review of Literature,

the acute, being told of a new work, in
which the author had made a well-argued
defence of the queen — " Has he shown,"
said he, " that the queen did not marry
Bothwell ?" He was answered, of course,
in the negative. " Then," replied Hume,
" in admitting that fact, he resigns the
whole question."

Sir Walter traces, perhaps, too curiously,
some of James's peculiarities, and espe-
cially his timidity, to the consequences of
the brutal assault upon Rizzio, committed
in his mother's presence before his birth.

A weakness in his limbs, which he never en-
tirely recovered, gave him a singular, odd, un-
gainly, and circuitous mode of walking, diame-
trically opposite to that which we connect with
the movements of majesty. The same shocking
scene, probably, gave rise to a nervous timidity,
by which James was affected to a ludicrous de-
gree. It was remarked of him, that different
not only from the disposition of his fathers, but
from that of his mother Mary, who could look with
an unshrinking eye upon all the array of war,
James wanted the most ordinary personal cou-
rage, a virtue, and one is sometimes tempted to
suppose the only one, of that age. The king
could never behold a naked sword without shrink-
ing, and he turned away his head even from that
very pacific weapon which he was obliged to
draw for the purpose of bestowing the accolade
on a knight dubbed with unbacked rapier and
from carpet consideration. The same species of
timidity ran through his whole mind and actions,
like an extensive flaw in a rich piece of tapestry,
defacing and rendering of little value that which
would have otherwise been rare and precious.
Thus, while nature had given him a sound and
ready judgment, and a wit, which was sometimes
even brillant, she withheld from him that accurate
knowledge of propriety, which is manifested, in
applying to its proper place, or using in its fit
time, either what is serious or what is humorous,
without which tact or sense of propriety, wisdom
sinks into a vender of proverbs, and wit into a
mere buffoon. To remedy, if possible, these na-
tural defects, James's education had been se-
dulously cared for ; his tutor, George Buchauon,
being not only one of the best scholars of the age,
but capable of rivalling the purest classics in the
composition of their own beautiful language. In
this art he accomplished his pupil James, just up
to that point where strength and vigour of
thought is demanded to give animation to lan-
guage, but unfortunately he could conduct the
royal student no farther. The ordinary subtleties
of scholastic learning were easily comprehended
by a mind which delighted in ingenious trifling,
but a timorous disposition cannot form ideas of
dignity and resolution, nor, of course, can a
timorous mind frame, or a hesitating tongue give
utterance to, a daring conclusion.

Stricture of the Rectum, $c., 3d. Edn.,
by Frederick Salmon. 1830. — Books of all
professions find their way, occasionally, to
pur sanctum, and Mr. Salmon's volume
struck us, some time ago, as remarkable for
the vigour of the composition, and the
clearness with which he discussed his sub-
ject. The particular classes of disorders,

which it concerns, are notoriously very
widely diffused, and being, as they are, at
once painful and formidable, it deeply con-
cerns the world to have the causes well
sifted, for the purpose of getting the cura-
tive process placed upon the basis of full
knowledge and rational principle. A third
edition, within a very short period— for a
medical book — proves we were not mistaken
as to its apparant value. Mr. Salmon re-
gards piles as a salutary consequence of
stricture, and fistula in ano, as a necessary
one. Of these diseases, however, stricture
is not the only source, and he deprecates
misconstruction on that point. With Mr.
Salmon's extensive practice, in this particu-
lar department, his opinions must be worth
weighing.

Reminiscences of Henry Angelo, Vol. II.
— Angelo's book will amuse numbers. It
is essentially coarse, as may be supposed,
relative as it is, for the most part, to odd
and eccentric persons — to such as have won
the laurels of notoriety, by profligacy, folly,
foppery, pretension, or impudence— to de-
merips and swindlers among high and low.
Angelo's profession brought him acquainted
with many of the young nobility and bucks
about town — with people of the theatres
especially, and stage-struck amateurs.
With some talents for acting, he was one,
regularly, of Lord Barrymore's corps, and,
for the same purpose, impressed, occasion-
ally, for the service of the Margravine of
Anspach. These distinguished persons are
accordingly brought forward frequently
upon Angelo's stage. His admiration for
lords is of the profoundest kind, and he
favours the public with a list of at least a
hundred of the peerage whom he has taught
to handle the foils. The Chevalier d'Eon
figures — Weltjee, the Prince's cook at
Carlton House, Old Grimaldi, Peter Pin-
dar, Dr. Kitchiner, Antony Pasquin, Lady
Hamilton, — her whole story, by the way —
Graham, his earth-bath and celestial-bed
quack, Matthews, Lord Byron — with scores
of others of the last forty or fifty years.

We quote an adventure of Dr. Johnson
in his Scottish tour, not recorded by Bos-
well. It is a favourable specimen of Ange-
lo's manner, and sufficiently ludicrous.

Dr. Johnson's Pudding. — Last summer I made
another excursion to Scotland, with the intention
of completing my series of views, and went over
the same ground described by the learned tourists,
Dr. Johnson and Boswell. I am in the habit of
taking very long walks on these occasions, and
perceiving a storm threaten, I made the best of
my way to a small building. I arrived in time at
a neat little inn, and was received by a respect-
able-looking man and his wife, who did all in
their power to make me comfortable. After eating
some excellent fried mutton-chops, and drinking
a quart of ale, I asked the landlord to sit down,
and partake of a bowl of whisky-punch. I found
him, as the Scotch generally are, very intelligent,

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

469

and full of anecdote, of which the following may
serve as a specimen :

" Sir," said the landlord, " this inn was for-
merly kept by Andrew Macgregor, a rotation of
mine ; and these hard-bottomed chairs (in which
we are now sitting) were, years ago, filled by the
great touris-ts, Doctor Johnson and Boswell, tra-
velling like the lion and jackal. Boswell gene-
rally preceded the doctor in search of food, and
being much pleased with the look of the house,
followed his nose into the larder, where he saw a
fine leg of mutton. He ordered it to be roasted
with the utmost expedition, and gave particular
orders for a nice pudding. ' Now,' says lie,
' make the best of all puddings.' Elated with
his good luck, he immediately went out in search
of his friend, and saw the giant of learning slowly
advancing on a pony.

" ' My dear Sir,' said Boswell, out of breath
with joy, • good news! I have just bespoke, at a
comfortable, clean inn here, a delicious leg of
mutton; it is now getting ready, and I flatter my.
self we shall make an excellent meal.' Johnson
looked pleased — ' And I hope,' said he, ' you have
bespoke a pudding?'

" ' Sir, you will have your favourite pudding,'
replied the other.

-" Johnson got off the pony, and the poor ani-
mal, relieved from the giant, smelt his way into
the stable. Boswell ushered the doctor into the
house, and left him to prepare for this delicious
treat. Johnson feeling his coat rather damp,
from the mist of the mountains, went into the
kitchen, and threw his upper garment on a chair
before the fire ; he sat on the hob, near a little
boy who was very busy attending the meat.
Johnson occasionally peeped from behind his coat,
while the boy kept basting the mutton. Johnson
did not like the appearance of his head ; when
he shifted the basting ladle from one hand, the
other hand was never idle, and the doctor thought
at the same time he saw something fall on the
meat ; upon which he determined to eat no mutton
on that day. The dinner announced, Boswell ex-
claimed, ' My dear doctor, here comes the mut-
ton ; what a picture ! done to a turn, and looks so
beautifully brown !' The doctor tittered. After
a short grace, Boswell said—

"•' I suppose, Sir, I am to carve, as usual;
what part shall I help you to ?' The doctor
replied —

" ' My dear Bozzy, I did not like to tell you
before, but I am determined to abstain from meat
to-day.'

" ' Oh dear! this is a great disappointment,'
said Bozzy.

" ' Say no more ; I shall make myself ample
amends with the pudding.' Boswell commenced
the attack, and made the first cut at the mutton.
' How the gravy runs ;' what fine-flavoured fat-
so nice and brown, too. Oh, Sir, you would have
relished this prime piece of mutton.'

" The meat being removed, in came the long
wished for pudding. The doctor looked joyous,
fell eagerly to, and in a few minutes nearly
finished all the pudding. The table was cleared,
and Boswell said,

" ' Doctor, while I was] eating the mutton you
seemed frequently inclined to laugh ; pray, tell
me, what tickled your fancy?'

" The doctor then literally told him all that had
passed at the kitchen fire, about the boy and the

basting. Boswell turned as pale as a parsnip,
and, sick of himself and the company, darted out
of the room. Somewhat relieved, on returning,
he insisted on seeing the dirty little rascally boy*
whom he severely reprimanded before Johnson.
The poor boy cried : the doctor laughed.

" « You little, filthy, snivelling hound,' said
Boswell, 'when you basted the meat, why did
you not put on the cap I saw you in this morning?'

" ' I couldn't, Sir,' said the boy.

" ' No! why couldn't you?' said Boswell.

" ' Because my mammy took it from me to boil
the pudding in!'

" The doctor gathered up his Herculean frame,
stood erect, touched the ceiling with his wig,
stared, or squinted — indeed, looked any way but
the right way. At last, with mouth wide open
(none of the smallest), and stomach heaving, he
with some difficulty recovered his breath, and
looking at Boswell with dignified contempt, he
roared out, with the lungs of a Stentor—

" ' Mr. Boswell, Sir, leave off laughing; and
under pain of my eternal displeasure, never utter
a single syllable of this abominable adventure to
any soul living, while you breathe.' And so,
Sir," said mine host, " you have the positive fact
from the simple mouth of your humble servant."

A Concise System of Mathematics, by
Alex. Ingram. Second Edition — Multuin
in parvo is a merit more frequently claimed
than deserved — this little volume does de-
serve it, si quid uliud. It is an enlarge-
ment of Mr. Ingram's " Concise System
of Mensuration,"— enlarged by himself, we
suppose, though some vague terms in the

advertisement seem to make it doubtful

the publishers talk of their efforts and in-
quiries. Though theory is not neglected,
practice is the main object of the book,, and
among the improvements enumerated are
facilities for land-surveying, with numerous
examples of common cases. The guaging
part is entirely recomposed, and adapted to
the imperial standards — and so is also the
mensuration of artificer's work, and a new
head has been added to the latter, on the
strength, flexibility, and fracture of timber.
Large additions are made in the shape of
tables, especially of logarithmic tables, of
numbers from one to ten thousand of loga-
rithmic sines and tangents for every minute,
and of natural sines and tangents for every
five minutes of the quadrant. The pub-
lishers boast of completeness and cheapness,
and it is, apparently, well entitled to the
praise of both merits.

A Compendium of Modern Geography.
— A very handy and competent compen-
dium. We remember looking closely over
the first edition, and suggesting some cor-
rections as to the pronunciation, directed by
the usher, of the names of certain places.
Some of these he seems to have adopted —
at least the requisite changes are made, and
it is not a custom to trouble reviewers with
acknowledgments. The principal amend-
ments or additions apply to the descriptive
tables which embrace the chief places in
each country, a general index at the end to'

470

Monthly Review of Literature.

[APRIL,

every place mentioned in the volume, the
amount of population, from the last census,
and that of many towns in foreign countries,
the course of rivers, the altitude of moun-
tains, &c. The work seems scarcely sus-
ceptible of further improvement in the same
bulk. We can no longer talk of the quarters
of the world — the grand divisions of the
globe are now, it seems, among all geo-
graphers, sevenths.

Companion to the Globes, $c. by R. T.
Linnington — This is a third edition of a
very well arranged book. Its chief value
arises from compression — we do not observe
any material deficiencies, compared with
similar " Companions," of double the num-
ber of pages. Ccet. par. this is one good,
and the lower price is another.

Gorton's Topographical Dictionary,
Part I. — If this work be executed in the
manner which its importance demands, it
will be an acceptable publication ; but more,
much more local inquiry, instituted for the
occasion, is requisite than is likely to be
made. Advantage will be taken, we doubt
not, of the latest printed information, and

the specimen before us is a very favourable
one. A number of particulars not usually
introduced into our common gazetteers, are
attended to, — population, post-towns of
every village, the bearings and distances,
with the whole contents of the Liber Regis,
corrected down to the period of publication,
where the facts can readily be got at, that
most mean. A more rapid publication
would surely be desirable ; three years and
a half is a long period to wait for its com-
pletion. The two sheets and a half might
appear once a fortnight, or double the quan-
tity once a month. Alderney, we observe,
is stated to be only thirty miles from the
nearest point of the English shore. The
editor must keep his eyes open.

Easy Rhymes for Children from Five
to Ten Years of Age, by the Author of
Cato, or the Adventures of a Dog, fyc. —
This is a well written little work, and one
that we strongly recommend to be put into
the hands of children, as being likely to
produce much benefit from the cautionary
as well as moral and entertaining tendency
of the tales.

FINE ARTS' EXHIBITIONS.

SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS.

THE seventh annual exhibition of this
Society, which has just been opened to the
public at the rooms in Suffolk-street, is very
far, indeed, from supporting those favour-
rable hopes which we have lately been in-
duced to entertain, relative to the progress
and prospect of art among us. It would
do but little credit to the least refined of
continental capitals ; to the capital of (say
what we will) the most refined nation in
the world. Of the four hundred and
seventy-nine paintings in oil, which form
the staple of the exhibition, and by which
alone the condition of art may be judged
and estimated, it is not too much to say,
that nine-tenths are many degrees below
mediocrity ; and that at least half of these
are so utterly worthless as to make it almost
ludicrous (if it were not lamentable) to
look upon them as candidates for public
favour. We are at all times extremely loth
to point out particular objects of art for
dislike or reprobation, because we may give
pain, by so doing, with little chance of
benefitting either the sufferers or any one
else ; for people are not to be criticised,
still less shamed or abused, out of their
self-love. And if we were to attempt the
task of pointing out all the instances of failure
in the case before us, we should have little
else to do but reprint the catalogue of the
collection. In order, therefore, to avoid the
charge of being either tedious in referring
to many, or invidious in selecting a few,
we shall merely ask the spectator to enter
the great room, and commence his inspec-
tion with the commencement of his cata-

logue ; and if he can proceed but two steps
in his examination without twice turning
aside, with feelings of mingled sorrow and
contempt, then we shall see more occasion
than we do at present, for descending to
individual censure. In the mean time, we
shall address ourselves, as usual, to the
more useful and agreeable task of pointing
out to public notice the few objects in this
exhibition which claim that distinction at
our hands ; and we cannot do even this^
without premising, that it is only by com-
parison with their wretched rivals, that even
the greater part of these acquire a title to
distinct notice.

A7o. 5. A Caravan at Rest. R. B. Da-
vis. This is the largest and most conspi-
cuous work in the room ; and, with many
grievous faults and deficiencies, it is among
the best. The scene represented is that of
a party of Bedouin Arabs, selling horses;
and the life and action of the picture arise
out of the various points of view in which
the animals and their owners are exhibited.
The tone of this picture is glaring, and, we
must think, false, and many of its details
are feeble and inappropriate ; but the com-
position is good, and the general effect is
lively and striking.

No. 15. Interior of a Highland Cottage*
A. Fraser. This is one of the best of seve-
ral of those pleasing little scenes of domes-,
tic life and nature, with which our exhi-
bitions have lately abounded, and in which
we succeed better than in any other depart-
ment of the art.

No. 22. Portrait of a Lady. S. Howell.
Among the many portraits in this collec-

1830.]

Fine Arts' Exhibitions.

471

tion, this is one of not more than half-a-
dozen that will bear to be mentioned in
terms of common respect. It is a promis-
ing work ; there is an airiness and grace of
style about it, and a light vivacious mode
of handling, the want of which are the bane
of this important class of art in the present
day.

No. 29. The Empty Wallet. J. Inskipp.
This is one of several pictures by the same
artist, all of which evince considerable
knowledge of art, power of hand, force, and
originality of conception ; if, indeed, that
can be called original, which is evidently
grounded on a previously-existing style —
that of Sir Joshua Reynolds. We should
be disposed to say, that the little pieces
now alluded to, comprising Nos. 29, T\,
201, 225, 302, 435, are, in point of force
and truth of delineation, worth nearly all
the rest of the collection put together. Still
they are far from what may reasonably be
looked for at the artist's hands ; and what
they are especially deficient in, is that great
secret of art — the agreeable. The very
best of these little studies (for they have
the air of studies merely, and can scarcely
be regarded as works exhibiting any com-
pleteness in themselves, except the two
least meritorious, " The Sportsman," (201)
and " The Legend," (225) by far the best
of them; and, at the same time, the least
agreeable) is " The Harvesters," (435).
But in all there is great truth of character
and force of style.

No. 40. Welcome Friends. J. Knight.
This is, without exception, the best picture
in these rooms ; and it is one that would
have deserved particular commendation in
whatever company it might have appeared.
It represents the meeting of old (and young)
friends in a Highland cottage ; and the
conception of character and delicately true
delineation of that character, in the three
old people, are excellent ; the breadth of
handling, throughout, is strikingly superior
to that of any other artist of the day, who
devotes his efforts to similar scenes, Wilkie
alone excepted ; and, finally, the colouring
is clear, rich, and harmonious. The com-
position, however, is very defective, particu-
larly in relation to the principal seated
figure, who is taking a hearty hand-shake,
with one hand, and a glass of ale with the
other, at one and the same moment. The
young couple forming the right hand
group have little to recommend them, and
have, indeed, no business in the compo-
sition. This is by no means so good a pic-
ture, on the whole, as the same artist's
" Auld Robin Gray ;" but it has great
and peculiar merit, nevertheless.

No. 55. Reflection. E. T. Panis. This
is a female figure, full of grace and senti-
ment, by the artist of the Colosseum pano-
rama. It is seldom that two so opposite
styles proceed from one hand, as that which
aims at mere distant effect, and that which

works out its object by careful and elaborate
finishing, as in the instance before us.

No. 74. Plunder. G. Lance and H.
Slons. This is among the most striking
and best executed pictures in the collection ;
but it aims at that incongruous mixture of
incompatible qualities, which shews either
a mischievous or an insufficient degree of
confidence in the artists who have planned it.
It represents a wounded and bleeding sol-
dier, on the field of battle, watching, sword
in hand, a pile of plunder, in the shape of a
whole coach load of gilt tankards, cups,
plates and dishes, &c., which seem to have
been just deposited on the spot, by Messrs.
Rundle and Bridge, while the still proceed-
ing battle is seen in the distance. And
the mischief is, that the great merit of the
work consists in the extremely clever man-
ner in which all this " plunder" is exe-
cuted. This is elevating into a leading
and distinguishing feature what should be
passed by with a hint merely ; or it is at-
tempting to invest with a moral interest that
which appeals to the senses alone.

No. 139. Naples. W. Linton. The
artist has shewn much taste and skill in
depicting this favourite scene of all artists —
this common-place of the painters' art— the
Bay of Naples ; but if he has contrived to
give an original character to it, he has suc-
ceeded at the expense of truth and nature.
The scene has a formal, artificial, and clas-
sical air, which is not to be found in the
lovely original. Nevertheless, the picture
is one of the three or four most meritorious
works in the collection.

No. 143. Interior of a Polish Synagogue.
S. A. Hart. There is considerable breadth
and force of style in this picture, and some
brilliant colouring. By means of a better
chosen subject, the artist (whose name is
new to us) might produce a striking and
original work.

No. 161. Portrait of Marquis Clanri-
carde. J. Lonsdale. This is one of the
only three strikingly good portraits in this
exhibition, the others being, one we have
noticed above, by S. Howell (22), and a por-
trait of A. White, Esq., by J. Simpson
(197). The present work is full of viva-
cious truth of character, and is without that
crying sin of portrait-painting, an affectation
of unmeaning refinement, and of unnatural
force of intellectual expression.

On entering the north room, we find it
extremely difficult to restrain the expression
of that almost unmingled disapprobation
which nearly the whole of its contents are
calculated to call forth. The general want
of merit, or rather the positive presence of
the direct opposite of merit, is so conspi-
cuous, and almost universal, that it might
well be deemed invidious if we were to par-
ticularize. We shall, therefore, merely state,
that we find scarcely any thing in this and
the south room which will bear even a mo-
derate degree of commendation, except a
pleasing Moonlight Scene, by Hofland (269);

472

Fine Arts' Exhibitions.

Q APRIL j

two or three clever and agreeable pieces, by
J.Wilson ; some very excellent architectural
scenes, by Roberts ; and a scene, which is
much better executed than conceived, by
W. Kidd, from the novel of Rob Roy (450).
The extremely clever pieces, by Inskipp, in
these two rooms, we have noticed above.
', Our limits compel us to take an abrupt
leave of this exhibition, with an expression
of regret, that it has called forth so little
praise at our hands, and that it deserves so
much more censure than we have either the
space or the inclination to bestow upon it.

Mr. Haydoii's Eucles and Punch.
These two new productions of Mr. Haydon,
display great, various, and most valuable
powers 4 and if they include faults which
are nearly as conspicuous and manifold as
their beauties, they are at least not faults of
omission or of ignorance, but of a mistaken
or a perverse notion of the claims and capa-
bilities of art. In Seeking to accomplish
more than his subjects, respectively, were
susceptible of, Mr. Haydon has, in some
degree, missed the general effect aimed at ;
and in over-informing his individual figures
and expressions, he has injured their truth,
at least, if not their individuality. In the
Punch, the funeral and the wedding are
superfluities, at best ; perhaps they deserve
to be ranked as injudicious and injurious
obtrusions ; the latter of them, however,
we can well forgive, on account of the two
admirable expressions to which it has given
rise, in the coachman and the black footman.
They are pieces of conception and execution
that would have excited marked attention,
if they had occurred (as they almost might)
in some of Hogarth's best works. The
figure that best pleases us in the Punch, is
that of the admiring countryman ; and the
only two which do not please us at all, are
". the young men of fashion."

In the Eucles there is great power of exe-
cution displayed : perhaps in the instance of
the figure whose back is to the spectator,
more than has before been exhibited by any
living artist, Mr. Haydon himself included.
There are few things in Rubens superior to
this figure. The colouring, too, is excel-
lent, and the composition is at once elabo-
rate, simple, and complete.

These two works will undoubtedly raise

the reputation, and, we hope, the fortunes,
of this distinguished artist ; but they still
leave us much to hope from his future exer-
tions.

Howard's Outline Illustrations of Shak-
speare. The sixteenth and seventeenth
numbers of this excellent and most interest-
ing work are, in most respects, answerable
to those which have preceded them. No. 1 6
includes Othello and Titus Andronicus.
The first of these dramas affords full s cope
to that simplicity of composition which is
so well adapted to the outline mode of de-
lineation ; and in all the plates of Othello,
the two chief characters (the Moor and
lago) are admirably characterized and dis-
tinguished. The address of Othello to the
assembled senators, is full of a grand sim-
plicity; in the first insinuations, of lago
(plate 4), the whole design, expression,
and composition is capital ; and the death-
scene of Desdemona is beautifully impres-
sive and pathetic, even in its incipient pre-
paration. The scenes from Titus Andro-
nicus are infinitely more crowded and com-
plicated, so much so, as to sometimes need
the effect of light and shade.
. No. 17 includes Romeo and Juliet, and
Timon of Athens. In the illustrations of
the first-named of these plays, we must con-
fess ourselves disappointed — probably on
account of the exaggerated associations
which most of us are happy enough to have
connected with this divine composition,
from reading and learning to appreciate it,
in early life. Putting all stage recollections
out of question, neither the Juliet, nor the
Romeo, nor any one of their looks, move-
ments, and expressions, are exactly answer-
able to our ideal of the star-crossed lovers.
The scene of the balcony, however, where
the couple are taking leave, after Romeo's ba-
nishment, is full of passion and poetry ; the
scene in the tomb, where he is gazing on
her supposed corpse, is intent and striking ;
and the two next, the concluding ones, are
designed with equal skill and originality.
The Timon is treated with unusual brevity,
and on account of the absence of female cha-
racters, it affords inadequate scope to the
artist's skill. Much, however, is effected,
and all with unusual originality of feeling
and conception.

» A *ss "ft

1830.]

[ 473

WORKS IN THE PRESS AND NEW PUBLICATIONS

WORKS IN PREPARATION.

Practical Theology ; comprising, Dis-
courses on the Liturgy and Principles of
the United Church of England and Ire-
land, Critical and other Tracts. By John
Jebb, D.D., Bishop of Limerick. In 2vols.
8vo.

The Life of Richard Bentley, D.D.,
Master of Trinity College, and Regius
Professor of Divinity in the University of
Cambridge. By the Rev. James Henry
Monk, D.D. 4to.

The Oxonians, a Tale. By the Author
of " The RoueV' In 3 vols.

The Doom of Devorgoil, a Melo-Drama ;
and Auchendrane, or the Aryshire Tra-
gedy. By Sir Walter Scott. 8vo.

Panorama of the Maine, from Mayence
to Frankfort, drawn from nature by F. W.
Delkeshamp, accompanied with a descrip-
tion of the places on each bank of the
river, and a minute account of Frankfort.

Murray's Family Library, Vol. XI. ;
containing the First Volume of an Abridg-
ment of Washington Irving's Life of
Columbus. 5s.

Partings and Meetings, a Tale founded
on Facts.

Letters on the Physical History of the
Earth, addressed to Professor Blumenbach.
By the late L. A. de Luc, F.R.S., Professor
of Philosophy and Geology at Gottengen,
translated from the French.

Memoirs of the late Right Rev. John
Thomas James, D.D., Lord Bishop of Cal-
cutta, gathered from his Letters and Memo-
randums. By Edward James, M.A., Pre-
bendary of Winchester.

A Statement of the Nature and Objects
of the Course of Study in the Class of
Logic and the Philosophy of the Human
Mind, in the University of London. By
the Rev. John Hoppus.

The Undying One; and other Poems.
By the Hon. Mrs. Norton. In one vol.
post 8vo.

The Life and Correspondence of Admiral
Lord Rodney.

Fiction without Romance ; or, the Locket
Watch, a Novel. By Mrs. Polack.

A Transcript from a Curious Manuscript,
discovered under the Foundations of the
Ancient Manor House at Abbotsleigh,
Somerset, to be called the Royal Book;
or, Oracle of Dreams.

A Treatise on Optics; containing the
Theory of Impolarised Light. By the Rev.
Humphrey Lloyd.

Personal Narrative of an Officer in the
English Army of Occupation in France.
In 2 vols. small 8vo.

Correspondence and Diary of Philip
Doddridge, D.D. Edited from the Ori-
ginals. The Third and concluding Vo-
lume.

M.M. New-Series VOL. IX. No. 52.

The Game of Life, a Novel. By Leitch
Ritchie.

Three Courses and a Dessert ; with Fifty
Engravings, from Original Drawings. By
George Cruikshank. In one vol. 8vo.

Oxford English Prize Essays, now first
collected. In 2 vols. 8vo. By the Earl of
Eldon, Mr. Grattan, Lord Sidmouth ;
Bishops Burgess, Coplestone, Heber, and
Mant ; Professors Millman, Sandford, and
Robertson ; Rev. R. Whately, &c. &c.

A Treatise on the Elements of Algebra.
Designed for the Use of Eton School. By
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Tales of Scottish Life and Character. In
3 vols. post 8vo.

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Carwell ; or, Crime and Sorrow. In
one vol. post 8vo.

Conversations for the Young, on Sub-
jects tending to illustrate the Nature of
Religion. By the Rev. Richard Watson.

LIST OF NEW WORKS.

LAW.

Tucker's Records of the Supreme Court
of Newfoundland. 8vo. 15s.

Atkinson's Forms in Conveyancing. 8vo.
24s.

Swan on the Ecclesiastical Courts. 8vo.
5s.

A Treatise on the Police and Crimes of
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8vo. 12s.

A Contre Projet to the Humphreysian
Code, and to the Projects of Reduction of
Messrs. Hammond, Uniacke, and Twiss.
By John James Parke, Barrister. Royal
8vo. 15s.

The Executor's Account Book. By
W. H. Brady. 4to. 12s.

The Commentaries of Gamboa on the
Mining Ordinances of Spain, translated
from the Spanish. By Richard Heathtield,
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MEDICAL.

The Anatomy of the Bones of the Hu-
man Body ; represented in a Series of
Engravings, copied from the elegant Tables
of Sue and Albinus. Nos. 1 to 9. 4to.
Is. each.

Lectures on the Theory and Practice of
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8vo. 8s.

A Phrenological Bijou ; or, Vade-Me-
cum of Mental Science, &c. 5s. Gd.

A Clinical Report of the Royal Dispen-
sary for Diseases of the Ear, from 1816 to
1830 ; containing an Account of the Num-
ber of Patients admitted, cured, and re-
3 P

474

ListofNnv Works.

[[APRIL,

lieved. Illustrated with Cases and Practical
Remarks, relative to the various Affections
of the Ear. By Mr. Curtis, Surgeon
Aurist to the King.

A Synoptical Chart of Diseases of the
Ear ; shewing their Order, Classification,
Seat, Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment.
By J. H. Curtis, Surgeon Aurist to the
King. 2s. 6d. on a sheet.

Illustrations of some of the Principal
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Seymour, M.D. In 8vo. With a Folio
Atlas of Fourteen Lithographic Engrav-
ings, 11. Is.; India Proofs, 11. lls. Cd.
bds.

Introductory Lectures to a Course of
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sity of Edinburgh. By G. Ballingall, M.D.
8vo. 8s.

Observations on Cases relative to Dislo-
cations of the Shoulder-Joint, with a variety
of Methods for Reduction ; and an Appen-
dix, containing, as Notes, Extracts from
various Writers on Surgery, &c. By R.
Roberts. 8vo. 7s. Gd.

Observations on the Functional Disor-
ders of the Kidneys, which give rise to the
Formation of Urinary Calculi ; with Re-
marks on their Frequency in the County of
Norfolk. By Win. England, M.D. 8vo.
5s. Gd.

Sketches of the Medical Topography of
the Mediterranean ; comprising an Ac-
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Malta. By John Henmen, M.D. 8vo.
20s.

Plates of the Arteries of the Human
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References, translated from the original
Latin, with additional Notes. By Dr.
Knox. Nos. 1 to 6. 4to. coloured, Is.
each.

MISCELLANEOUS.

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Maxims, Reflections, &c., after the man-
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Problems in the Different Branches of
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The Life of a Lawyer. Written by
Himself. 10s. Gd.

Lardner's Cyclopaedia, Vol. IV., con-
taining the Second Volume of Sir Walter
Scott's History of Scotland. 6s.

The Stolen Boy, a Tale for Children.
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The Miscellaneous Works of Joseph
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The History of the University of Edin-
burgh. With an Appendix, containing an

•Kl Ijf

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nected with the University. By Alexander
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Life of the Rev. David Brainerd, Mis-
sionary to the American Indians. 12mo. Gs.

The Universe as it is ; or, the Detection
and Refutation of Sir Isaac Newton, and
proved Fabrications of the Solar System.
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Architectural Notes on German Churches,
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Weeds and Wild Flowers. By the late
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The Seventh Edition of the Encyclo-
paedia Britannica. Edited by Professor
M. Napier. To be Published in 120
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Sketches of an Artist, from Nature, Old
Masters, and Recollections. Executed in
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Containing 25 Sketches, printed on India
paper. Imperial 4to. 9s. Published
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An Essay on Superstition, &c. By W.
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NOVELS AND TALES.

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Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the
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POETRY.

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The Descent into Hell, a Poem. 8vo.
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Mount Sinai, a Poem. By William
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The Voyage, a Poem. By E. Ostler,
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Scottish and Border Minstrelsy, Ancient
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Prayer, a Poem. By Frederick Edwards.
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POLITICAL.

An Authentic Account of Mr. Canning's

J830.]

List of New Works.

475

Policy with respect to the Constitutional
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The National Distress, with its Reme-
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On Financial Reform. By Sir Henry
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On the Revenues of the Church of Eng-
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The Affairs of the Nation, presented to
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~-»k»jr RELIGION AND MOHALS.

The Worship of the Serpent traced
throughout the World, and its Traditions
referred to the Events in Paradise, proving
the Temptation and Fall of Man by the
Instrumentality of a Serpent Tempter. By
Rev. John Bathurst Deane. 8vo. 12s.

A Supplement to an Inquiry into the In-
tegrity of the Greek Vulgate, or Received
Text of the New Testament. By Rev. F.
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The Veracity of the Five Books of Moses.
By Rev. I. L. Blunt. 8vo. 5s. 6d.

The Doctrine of the Universal Pardon
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Dialogues on Natural annd Revealed
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Office for the Visitation of the Sick. By
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Essays on the Lives of Cowper, Newton,
and Heber. 8vo. 10s.

-!/iru»lv.-J SCHOOL BOOKS.

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;,-:ȣ An Atlas of Modern Geography, con-
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In 30 4to; maps, coloured. With an Indfcx.
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Iconology ; or, Emblematic Figures Ex-
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A Comprehensive Grammar of Sacred
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A Classical Grammar of the English
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Family Classical Library ; Vol. III.
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TRAVELS.

Travels in Kamschatka and Siberia, with
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P. Dobell, Esq. Counsellor to his Imperial
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8vo. 21s.

Travels in the Morea, with Maps and
Plans. By W. Martin Leake, F.B.S.,
&c. 3 vols. 21. 5s.

Letters from Nova Scotia, containing
Sketches of a Young Country. By Capt.
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Notices of Brazil in ]828 and 1829. By
the Rev. R. Walsh, LL.D. 2 vols. 8vo.
34s.

The Annals and Antiquities of Rajast
Han, or the Central and Western Rajpoot
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Royal 4to. 41. 14s. Gd.

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Northern Field Sports, including a Per-
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PATENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL INVENTIONS.

Patents sealed in March, 1830.

To John Braithwaite and John Ericsson,
New Road, Middlesex, engineers, for hav-
ing invented an improved method of manu-
facturing salt. — 27th February ; 2 months.

To Enoch William Rudder, and Robert
Martieneau, Birmingham, Warwick, cock-
founders, for having invented certain im-
provements in Cocks for drawing off liquids.
— 27th February ; 6 months.

To Charles Random Baron de Bercnger,
Targate Cottage, Kentish town, St. -Pan-
i-ras, Middlesex, for having invented im-

£~

provements in fire-arms, and in certain
other weapons of defence. — 27th February ;
6 months.

To William Gressenthwaite, Esq., Not-
tingham, for having invented an improved
method of facilitating the draft or propulsion
or both of wheeled carriages. — 27th Feb-
ruary ; G months.

To Henry Hurst, Leeds, Yorkshire,
clothier, for having invented certain iin-
provjnents in manufacturing v/oollen cloth.
_27th February. ; G months. A

To Moses Poolc, Lincoln's Imi/gent.,

3 P 2 -t,*,^^/* *

476

List of Patents.

[APRIL,

for a certain combination of or improve-
ments in springs, applicable to carriages,
and other purposes. — 27 ch February; 2
months.

To Joseph Chessebourough Dyer, Man-
chester, Lancaster, patent card manufac-
turer, for certain improvements on, and
additions to, machines or machinery for
conducting to, and winding upon, spools,
bobbins, or barcells, rovings of cotton, flax,
wool, or other fibrous substances of the like
nature. — 2?th February ; 6 months.

To William Grisenthwaite, Esq., Not-
tingham, for having invented certain im-
provements in steam engines.— 27th Feb-
ruary ; 6 months.

To Robert William Sievier, South-
ampton Row, Russell Square, St. George's
Bloomsbury, Middlesex, sculptor, for hav-
ing invented certain improvements in the
construction of rudders for navigating ves-
sels 27th February ; 6 months.

To Simon Thompson, Great Yarmouth,
Norfolk, mariner's compass maker, for
having invented certain improvements in
piano-fortes. — 27th February ; 6 months.

To William Howard, Rotherhithe, Sur-
rey, iron manufacturer, for having invented
certain improvements in the construction of
wheels for carriages. — 27th February; 6
months.

To Philip Chilwell I)e la Garde, Exeter,
gentleman, for having invented certain im-
provements in apparatus for fidding and
unfidding masts, and in masting and

rigging of vessels 27th February; 6

months.

To Thomas Prosser, Worcester, archi-
tect, for having invented certain improve-
ments in the construction of window sashes,
and in the mode of hanging the same. —
Cth March ; 6 months.

To Thomas Richard Gappy, Bristol,
sugar refiner, for having invented a new
apparatus for granulating sugar. — . 6th
March ; 6 months.

To Ralph Stephenson, Colridge, Staf-
ford, potter, for having invented improve-
ments in machinery for making bricks,
tiles, and other articles. — (Jth March ; 0
months.

To James Ramsay, and Andrew Ram-
say, Greenoch, North Britain, cordage and
sail-cloth manufacturers, and Matthew Orr,
Greenoch, aforesaid, sail maker, for having •
invented an improvement in the manufac-
ture of canvass and sail-cloth for the making
of sails — 20th March ; 6 months.

To George Scott, Water Lane, London,
engineer, for having invented certain im- •
provements on, or additions to, windlasses
and relative machinery, applicable to naval
purposes. — 20th March ; 6 months.

To John Alexander Fulton, Lawrence
Poultney Lane, Cannon Street, London,
merchant, for having invented an improve-
ment in the preparation of pepper. — 20th
March, 6 months.

To William Erskine Cochrane, Esq.,
Regent Street, Middlesex, for having in-
vented an improvement, or improvements,
on his patent cooking apparatus. — 20th
March ; 6 months.

To Benjamin Rotch, Furnival's Inn,
Middlesex, barrister at law, for having in-
vented improved guards, or protections, -
for horses' legs and feet, under certain
circumstances — 20th March ; 12 months.

List of Patents which, having been granted in
the month of April, 1816, expire in the pre
sent month of April 1830.

William Lewis Brimscoinb, dyer, for a ma-
chine for fulling cluths.

Joseph Turner, Yorkshire, mechanic, for an
improved rotatory engine.

John Woodhouse, Brom«grovp, civil engineer,
for a method of forming the ground for road*
and pavements.

Wm. Atkinson, Rentinck Street, architect, for
a method of forming blocks u-ith tricks and
cetmnt in form of Ashlar -stone for building.

Wm. Stenson, Colcford, engineer, for an im-
proved engine, by steam or other power.

Win. Lasalle, Hristol, apothecary, for the im-
provement of gig and cards in clothing manu-
factories.

Gco. Bodley, Exeter, f minder, for an improved
metallic engine to work either by steam or

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS.

GENERAL GNEISENAN.

General Count Gneisenan was a native of
Prussia, and was universally regarded, not
only as one of the bravest, but one of the
most able and most scientific generals of
the age. His military knowledge was re-
markably extensive ; his eye was quick and
keen ; cool and clear headed, his judgment
was distinguished by its soundness ; and
comprehending, in an instant, as it were,
the capabilities of every thing around him,
lie possessed extraordinary promptness and
firmness of decision. Under the most dis-
astrous reverses — even when resorting to
measures apparently verging upon rash-

ness — his presence of mind never failed
him ; his orders and instructions were uni-
formly given with the utmost decision, pro-
piety, and calm intrepidity. At the close
of the late war he served in the capacity of
head of the staff to the Prussian main army,
under Marshal Blucher ; and it was a com-
mon saying amongst the officer, " Gneise-
nan plans our operations, and Blucher
carries them into effect." . To his skill in
the higher branches of military tactics no
greater compliment than this could be
paid.

This distinguished officer was born in
the year 1760 ; and from his early youth he

1830.]

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons.

477

applied himself unremittingly to the study
of the military sciences ; a study to which,
throughout his life, nearly all his leisure
hours were devoted. On the attainment
of his twentieth year, he entered the service
of the Margrave of Anspach, as an officer,
and went with the troops of that prince to
America, to assist the English in the war
against the colonists.

It was not until the year 1792 that
Gneisenan attached himself to the service
of his native country. His regiment was at
that time quartered in Silesia. Ten years
afterwards he obtained a company ; in 1806
he was made a major ; and, in 1807? thg
king of Prussia sent him from Konings-
berg, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel,
to take the command of Colberg, which,
through his exertions, was one of the few
strong-holds of Prussia that did not sur-
render to the force of Buonaparte, before the
peace of Tilsit.

During the siege of Colberg he was pro-
moted to the rank of colonel. After the
treaty of Tilsit he left the army, apparently
in disgust, and came over to England ; but,
in point of fact, he was sent to this country
on a secret diplomatic mission.

Colonel Gneisenan returned to Berlin in
1810, and was for some time employed in
the war office. In 1813, he was appointed
major-general, and quarter-master-general,
in which capacity he commanded the me-
morable retreat of the combined Russian
and Prussian forces, from the scene of their
discomfiture by Buonaparte, at Lutzen, to
Breslau. During the armistic that suc-
ceeded, he exerted himself in forming the
national militia of Prussia, called the
Landwher.

His next appointment was that of chief
of the Prussian staff, to which we have
already alluded. After the armistice he re-
mained with Blucher's army, and the de-
struction of the French Marshal Macdo-
nald's corps on the Katzback, the subsequent
crossing of the Elbe, and the glorious
results of the battle of Mockcrn, near
Leipsic, on the 16th of October, 1813,
were ascribed chiefly to his able advice.

Raised to the rank of lieutenant-general,
Gneisenan, in 1814, contributed greatly to
the victories of the allies at Brienne, and
Paris, as he had done in the battle of
Montmirail. It is said to have been chiefly
his opinion which determined the bold
march upon Paris.

For these and former services the king
of Prussia now raised Gneisenan to the
dignity of a count, appointed him general
of infantry, and gave him landed estates in
Silesia, the rent roll of which exceeded ten
thousand dollars a year.

It was chiefly General Gneisenan who, in
1815, enabled the Prussian army, which
had been defeated by the French in a san-
guinary engagement, near Ligny, on the
16th of June, to resume the offensive in the
course of two days, and to advance to the
assistance of (lie Duke of Wellington at

Waterloo, with whom he, under Blucher's
command, pursued the enemy up to the
very gates of Paris.

Count Gneisenan assisted at the subse-
quent negociations in the French capital ;
and, after the conclusion of the general
peace which followed, he was appointed
governor of the Prussian provinces on the
Rhine.

In the following year, however, his name
having been often mentioned by M.
Schmaltz, in his Memoirs of the Secret
Societies in Germany, Count Gneisenan
demanded an inquiry into his conduct ;
and, as the king conceived it unnecessary to
to grant this, he solicited leave to retire.
His majesty accordingly allowed him to
retire on full pay, and to reside wherever he
might choose, simply on the condition of
relying upon his services in the event of a
war.

A few years afterwards Count Gneisenan
was appointed a Prussian field-marshal, and
governor of Berlin.

The count married in 1796, and had by
his lady, who survives him, seven children,
the eldest of whom is an officer in the Prus-
sian foot guards. He occasionally resided
on his estate in Silesia, where he died, in
the autumn of 1829, in his 69th year.

THE REV. THOMAS BELSHAM.

The Rev. Thomas Belsham, the Unita-
rian minister of the chapel in Essex-street,
Strand, died at Hampstead in the early
part of November, in the 80th year of his
age. This gentleman was the brother of
William Belsham, the furious Whig histo-
rian, who died a year or two since. Ir)
early life, he was some time tutor at the
dissenting academy at Daventiy ; but in-
clining to Unitarianism, he removed to the
New College, Hackney, whence he suc-
ceeded Dr. Priestley in 1794, at the UnU
tarian Meeting-house near that village.
There he continued till 1 808, when he was
chosen to occupy the pulpit of Essex-street
chapel, vacated by the death of the Rev.
Thomas Lindsay.

By his sect and party, Mr. Belsham was
regarded as an able and powerful advocate
of the Unitarian doctrine. He was the
author of several sermons ; — A Charge at
the Ordination of Thomas Kenrick, at Exe-
' ter, 1785 — A Review of Mr. Wilberforce's
Practical View of the Christian Religion-
Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind",
and of Moral Philosophy — A Summary
View of the Evidences and Importance of
Christian Revelation — Letters on Armi-
nianism and other Topics on Metaphysics
and Religion — Biographical Memoir, and
a Sermon on the Death of Mr. Lindsay —
A Calm Review of the Scripture Doctrine
concerning the Person of Christ — Letter to
Lord Sidmouth on the Bill relative to Prp-
testant Dissenting Ministers — The Rights
of Conscience asserted, with respect to the
Interpretation of the Toleration Acts — Me-
moirs of the late Rev. Thomas Lindsay, 6cc.

[ 478 ] [APRIL,

,aIA

.

MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT.

THROUGHOUT the present month, the weather has been generally favourable for the
occupations of agriculture, and the advantage seems to have been taken, in all parts of the
country, with an eager diUigence and assiduity, in order to recover the lost time occa-
sioned by the frost. The oat and pulse crops, with few exceptions, may be said to be
finished ; and, upon forward soils, some of them are appearing above ground. Barley,
upon some good light lands, was judiciously put in early, the obstacles and press of business
considered ; and such lands are in good progress of culture for mangold and turnip sowing.
The former is the most tender of the roots in use, and the least able to endure frost, and
is generally found to succeed best from early planting. After all, the turnips prove to be
less injured by the frost than had been expected, receiving greater damage from a single
casual frosty night subsequently, no doubt, on account of the renewal of vegetation by the
change of temperature. It is generally found that the rutabaga, or Swedish turnip, has
been more affected by the frost than the common English ; whence it is supposed, that
foreign root, originally chosen for its presumed superior hardness as well as nourishment,
has at length degenerated on our soil. There is not much complaint yet of a short quantity
of turnips. Notwithstanding the weather has been favourable to agricultural labour,
repeated variations of temperature have had an ill effect on the health of many ; sore
throats have been frequent, with fevers of a very malignant type ; and even the small pox
has prevailed in some parts, to an alarming degree.

The wheats, on the best lands, begin to exhibit a luxuriant and healthy appearance,
thickly planted ; on poor, exposed, and neglected soils, a too large proportion, they are
backward, thin, and weak, which has given rise to an opinion that a general good crop
must not be expected. This, however, will materially depend on the nature of the
coming seasons. The grasses have stood remarkably well, and there is great expectation
of a general crop. Last year's seeds, with one or two exceptions, have failed, and the
clovers are scarce and of very bad quality. Winter tares continue to improve. The
Stock of potatoes, a never failing and most important article of national consumption,
will not only prove sufficient, but the quality is far beyond expectation. Apples, two and
and sixpence the bushel ; and did we want a distinctive characteristic for the year twenty-
nine, it might well be styled the apple year. It has been found difficult to obtain oats
fit for seed, and the price of such has been high.

Hoeing the wheats has been necessarily backward ; on many farms it will be totally
omitted, and, on but few, will be efficiently performed, from the almost general foul and
neglected state of the land ; indeed, farming operations, in most parts, seem to be
hurried on, with more attention to getting through at any rate, than solicitude on the
score of good husbandry, to which the times are not propitious. The accounts from
markets and fairs, and of the general state of the country, are so various, and often contra-
dictory, that it is by no means easy to form, or safe to hazard, a decisive opinion ; yet, on
a general view, there appear to be indications of a favourable change both in agricultural
and manufacturing concerns ; whether we ought to be sanguine enough to hope for a
degree of prosperity^ under our present system, adequate to the removal of that heavy
and almost unaccountable load of distress which so bitterly oppresses this land of wealth,
of overflowing plenty, and profusion, is an uncertain and fearful proposition. The great
fairs have been fully, and well attended, and in some, store cattle have gone off briskly
and at improved prices, sheep being in limited numbers and in demand ; in others, the
old leaven has prevailed — vast herds of store cattle and flocks of sheep, uncalled for and
unsold. Fat stock has every where met with a quicker sale, though at reduced prices.
The national stock of cattle, as of every thing else, population included, with the almost
single exception of home-grown bread corn, has been indeed superabundant. Our
letters from the stall-feeding districts, speak of a general hesitation as to purchase, the
feeders having suffered so severely in their last year's accounts. The cheese and butter
trade is in a state of great depression — the former especially. Much wort has been sold,
or rather parted with, for the sake of raising the needful ; though, according to a single
account from a great sheep district, some has been sold at an advance of fifty per cent.
In fine, there can be no doubt of a riddance anon, of this embarrassing surplus of the
necessaries of life, from the very nature of things.

Accounts still continue to afflict us, of a universal want of money in the country — this
medium has been converted into stock, and the sale of that stock must produce its return ;
at least, so much of it as bad markets have left, the other portion becoming the property
of the public at large. This, if no cause of merriment to the losers, is the legitimate
merry-go-round of political economy. But the heaviest cause of affliction is the immense
number of unemployed labourers, no doubt arising, iu great measure, from the' "Irish
invasion."

1830.]

Agricultural Report. 479

Alas ! that we cannot apply to our own coloni (husbandmen) the fortunati nimium
bona si sua norint. The great majority of our farmers are in a most depressed state,
utterly unable to pay the present rents, and poor's rates increasing ; yet, strange to
report, many farms, given up from distress, have been let at the old rents. Complaints
are reiterated of the hardness and severity of landlords, to which Sir Robert Sutton is a
noble exception ; from his beneficient consideration towards his tenants, he has deserved
well of the country. The general depression of price, on articles of produce, is calculated
at from fifty to sixty per cent. Hops are a steady article, and considerable speculation
in them is stirring. The fall of lambs may be deemed successful ; but it is said that
many ewes and lambs have been lost from the too free use of salted hay and of turnips.
Sheep, rabbits, and deer, require much dry food. The rot has prevailed much among
sheep and deer. Barley, from the inferior quality and low price, is one of the most losing
articles to the grower ; not one half of the last crop will be malted. Scotia, that northern
land of promise, has had so favourable a winter, that even tender garden plants have
received little or no injury. — Who would not be a Scot !

Smithfteld—Beef 3s. Od. to 4s. 2d — Mutton, 3s. 4d. to 4s. 6d.— Lamb, 6s. 6d —
Veal, 3s. 4d. to 5s. 8d — Pork, 3s. Od. to 4s. 8d., best dairy fed, 5s. Od. to 6s. Od — Rough
Fat, 2s. lid.

Corn Exchange — Wheat, 46s. to 94s. (best foreign)_Barley, 26s. to 38s — Oats,

18s. to 31s Fine Bread, the London 4 Ib. Loaf, 10|d — Hay, 55s. to 95s. per load. —

Clover, ditto 63s. to 115s — Straw, 46s. to 56s.

Coals in the Pool, 25s. 6d. to 34s. 6d. per chaldron.
Middlesex, March 22.

•

MONTHLY COMME ^lAL REPORT.

.

SUGAR.— The demand for West India Muscovadoes has been steady ; the estimated
sales for the week have been 2,000 hogsheads and tierces. The prices are without the
slightest alteration. In refined goods there is rather more business : there is little altera-
tion in the currency. In the refined market, the low descriptions of lumps, from 70s. to
72s., have barely supported the quotations of last week, having been only in limited de-
mand ; but the better descriptions of shipping qualities, say low single loaves and
Prussian lumps, have been all taken out of the market. The refiners are very firm in
their demands, and, in some instances, have obtained a slight advance. The sales of
crushed Mediterranean have been small this week ; although offers continue to be made in
the finer descriptions, there has been less doing — no alteration in the quotation to be
noticed — Foreign Sugar — A limited parcel of good white Pernamo has been taken 33s.
to 34s. The public sale of 543 boxes of low soft yellow Havannah, met with few offers ;
only one or two lots sold, 23s. 6d. to 25s. ; 97 chests of Havannah, in good order, sold at
26s. 6d. ; the Brazil not sold __ East India Sugar. — Fifteen thousand bags of Mauritius
sugar, sold this week at public sales, went off, with great briskness, at full prices; brown,
45s. to 48s. 6d., white, (low to good) 25s. to 29s., yellow, (fine) 22s. 6d. to 23s. 6d.
ritf^JCoFFEE. — The public sales of coffee have been rather extensive; the East India
descriptions, of which 3,400 were in one sale, they were mixed, Java, Cheribon, and
Sumatra. Yellow coffee went off at high prices ; Havannah and coloured Brazil went off
ffteely.

J>*s -RuM, BRANDY, HOLLANDS. — Some proof Leewards, and rather over sold at Is. lOd.
In Jamaica there are few sales reported. Brandy continues firm— price for Geneva is
2s. 6d. — British spirits are advanced lid. per gallon since the duty of it has been
levied. >

HEMP, FLAX, AND TALLOW. — The tallow market is steady without briskness. In
Hemp and Flax there is no material alteration. Letters from St. Petersburgh are dated
the 2d. March. Exchange lOd. 13. 32. Tallow 39. a 90. Bought 2,000.

Course of Foreign Exchange — Amsterdam, 12. 8 — Rotterdam, 12. 8 — Antwerp,
12. 8 — Hamburgh, 14. 3£— Paris, 28. 85 — Bordeaux, 20. 15 __ Berlin, 0 __ Frankfort-
on-th<r-Main, 15G. 0 — Petersburg, 10 — Vienna, 10. 21 — Madrid, 35. Of __ Cadiz,
35. Of — Bilboa, 35. Of— Barcelona, 35. 0± — Seville, 35. 0£ __ Gibraltar, 47. 0£ —
Leghorn, 47- 0£ — Genoa, 26. 10 — Venice, 47- 0± — Malta, 48. 0^ — Naples, 39. 0£.—
Palermo, 1 1 8. 0£ — Lisbon, 44. 0£ — Oporto, 44. 0 — Rio Janeiro, 22. Oi — Bahia, 25. Q.
Dublin, 1. OA — Cork, 1. 0£.

Bullion per Oz — Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. Od — Foreign Gold in Bars,
£3. 17s. 9d. — New Doubloons, £0. Oa. Od __ New Dollars, £0. Os. Od __ Silver in Bars
(standard), £0. Os. Od.

480 Commercial Report. [APRIL,

Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of
WOLFE, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Corn/till — Birmingham CANAL, (± sh.) 2901.— .

Coventry, 850/ Ellesmere and Chester, 100/. — Grand Junction, 286/. Kenuet and Avon,

274/ Leeds and Liverpool, 452£/.— Oxford, 635/.— Regent's, 224/._Trent and Mersey,

( j sh.), 780/.— Warwick and Birmingham, 2JO/ — London DOCKS (Stock), 77|/._West
India (Stock), 190/. — East London WATER WORKS, 115^ — Grand Junction, 52£/. —

West Middlesex, 75/. — Alliance British and Foreign INSURANCE, 101 Globe, 166/.

— Guardian, 26f/. — Hope Life, 6f/. — Imperial Fire, llo/. — GAS-LIGHT Westminster
chartered Company, 55/ — City, 190/ — British, 0/._Leeds, 195/.

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES,

Announced from February 23d, to March 22d, 1830, in the London Gazette.

BANKRUPTCIES SUPER-
SEDED.

Sir Walter Boberts, bart., Cotirtlands»
Withecombe Rawleigh, Devonshire,
and Fowey, Cornwall, banker

j.Connop and T, L. Evill, Token-
house-yard, dyers

J. Glover, Derby, tailor

j . Walker, Clehanger, Hereford, mil-
ler

R. Moode, Romsey, p'umber

j. Schofield, Middleton, dealer in
coals

F- Ince and E. Elliss, Dudley, coach-
builders and harness-makers.

BANKRUPTCIES.
[This Month, 128.]

Solicitors' Names are in
Parenthesis.

Atkinson, H. Doi.ca:ter, druggist.
(Wiglesworth and Co., Gray's-inn ;
Nicholson, Wath

Arnold, W. J. Great Tower-street,
wine-broker. (Hill, Cross-lane

Armstrong, W. Birkenhead, draper.
(Adlington and Co., Bedford-row .
Frodsham, Liverpool

Armitage, G. Aldmonbury, woollen-
cloth-manufacturer. (Clarke and
Co., LincolnVinn-fields ; White-
head and Co., Huddersfield

Bryant, E. South Bank, Regent's-
Park, surgeon. (Gadsden, Furni-
val's-inn

Bristow, W. Horstead, builder. (Aus-
tin, Gray's-inn ; Staff', Norwich

Baker, J. Birmingham, grocer.
(Holme an J Co., New-inn; Barttett,
Birmingham

Cowling, T. Gunthorp, and M. Bow-
ling, Kent-street, Southwark, mer-
chants. (Hicks and Harris, Gray's-
inn ; Brown, Burton-upon-Hurn-
ber

Bagnall, T. Westwell, biker. (King,
Serjeant's-inn ; Price, Burford

Barren, T. Preston, money-scrivener.
(Adlington and Co., Bedford-row ;
Southward and Co., Preston

Bell, J. W. Pinner's-hal , merchant.
(Dyer, Took's-court

Brown, P, Prince's-place, Commer-
cial-road, draper. ( Farrey, New-
gate-street

Binney, T. Wakefield, Binney, R. and
Binner, M., Morton, corn factors.
(Adlington and Co., Bedford-row }
Taylor, Wakefield

Burden, T. Gloucester, grocer. (Brit-
tan, Basinghall-street ; Bevan and
Co., Bristol

Barrett, J. C. Northampton, corn-
factor. (Vincent, Temple

Buckley, J. Manchester, and C.
Nunn, Old Change, gingham-manu-
facturers. (Swam and Co., Frede-
rick's-place

Clarke, R and J. Tucker, Black-
friar's-road, oil and colour-men.
(Parker, Furnival's-inn

Cruickshank,W. and E. L. WMteheart,
Lewisham, corn-dealers. (Williams,
Alfred-place

Clayton, J .GoWington, miller. ( Lloyd,
Bartlett's-buildings, Cay and Co.,
St. Ives and St. Neots

Crumpton, T., Shrewsbury, cord-
wainer. (Clarke and Co., Lincoln's-
inn-fields

Cattell, J. W., Huggin-lane, silk-

Co., Gray's-inn

Cunliffe, J , Rainhill, miller. ( Black-
stock and Co., Temple; Currey,
Liverpool

Clacket, H., Dover, grocer. (Rixon
and Son, Jewry-street

Coleman, C. W., Bond-street, auc-
tioneer. (Robinson and Son, Half-
moon-street

Chambers, J., West Kent, draper.
(Hall and Co., Seijeant's-inn ;
Brough, Boston

Dandy, G ., T«r!ton, corn-dealer.
( Ellis and Co., Chancery-lane ;
Bray, Preiton

Deans, J. B., Bath, grocer. (Fisher,
Castle-strtet

Dawson, J., Keswick, ironmonger.
fChisholme and Co., Lincoln's-inri-
fields ; Fisher and Co., Cocker-
mouth

Dench, H., Seymour-place, uphol-
sterer. (William?, Alfred-place

Davies, T., Glandlyar, linen-draper.
(Jenkins and Co., New-inn ; Clarke
and Son, Bristol

East, S., Lavenham, innkeeper.
(Harris and Co., Beaufort-build-
ings

Edwards, B., Yeovil, currier. (Sat-
chell, Little St. Thomas Apostle ;
Watt's Yeo/il

Evans, D., Lanwenno?, grocer.
(Smith and Co., Red-lion-square }
Franklyn, Bristol

Flutter, T., Hemietta-street. linen-
draper. (Wauth, Great james's-
street

Friedafcergh, M , Paternoster-row,
meiiicine-vender. (Hughes, George-
street

Foster, E., Blackroad, Lancashire,
shoe-maker. (Milne and Co.,
Temple ; Hopwood, Wigan.

Gibbons, D. and G., Chrhtopher,
jun., Bristol, millers. (Williams,
Gray's-inn ; Watts and Son, Bath

Green, B., Field-end, York, n iller.
(Clarke and Co., Lir.coln's-tnn-
fields ; Whitehead and Co., Hud-
dersfield

Gonalez, F., Copthall-court, mer-
chant. (Patterion and Co., Broad-
street

Gough, w., Windsor, coach-maker.
(Rhodes and Co., Chancery-lane

Gelson, G., Blackftiar's-road, tim-
ber-merchant. Sheffield and Co.,
Prescot-street

Guetrier, S., Fcntonvllle, bookseller.
(Parker, Fun.ivtf's-inn

Garlick, j., Bahall, flour-dealer.
(Heming and Co., Lincoln's-inn-
fielas ; woodcock and Co., Coven-
try

Gooch, T., Crawford-street, linen-
draper. (Broukh, F.eet-strtet

Holt, G., Walton-on-the-Hill, school-
master. (Appltby and Co., Gray's-
inn ; Whitehead, Manchester

Holt, W., Kearsley, shopkeeper.
(Mayhew and Co., Carey-street;
Hampson, bolton-Je-Moor

Hardy, W., Kirby, Moorsi'.'e, tailor.
TSanrtan and Co., Old Jewry ; Ja-
comb and Co., Hud'ler=field

Hyams, J. P., brandy-merchant.

(Taylor and Co., Temple ; Miller,
Liverpool

Hartop, R., Hoyland, iron-master.
(Holme and Co., New-inn; Birks,
Barnsley

Hindle, R. F., Boroughbridge, inn-
keeper. (Dawson and Co.. New
Boswell-court ; Gray, Borough-
bric'ge

Howarth, J. and G., Spot'and,wursted-
manufactuters. (Emmett, New-
inn ; Craven, HalirYx

Hyde, j. and H., New Birmingham
and Gainsborough common-carriers.
(Winter and Co , Bettfo; d-row

Heighington, G , Sheffield, wine-rrer-
chant. (Michael, Red-lion-square}
Burbeare, Sheffield

Hyde, j., Manche ter, cottOTma-
nutacturer. (Scott, Lincoln's inn-
fields ; Gieent>a:gh, Manchester

Hibbard, J.West,We^t Kinnald Ferry,
wood-<ealer. (Bell, Bedford-row ;
Cartwright, BaWtiy

Holmes, M., Leeds, builder (Wigles-
worth and Co., Gray's-inn ; Soulhy,
Leeds

Hayton, J. B. and T. F. Bell, King-
sto:i-upon-Hu:l, brokers. (Shaw,
Ely-place; Brown, Hull

Hosking, V., Claines, builder. (Platt
and Co., New Boswell-ccurt ; Hyde,
Worcester

Isaacs, L. and J., Manchester, fur-
riers. (Kowlin-on, Liverpool

Isaacs, L. and J., Manchester, fur-
riers. (Makinson and Co., Tem-
ple ; Makinson, Manchester

Isherwood, J., Bolton, victualler.
(Hurd and Co., Temple ; Waiker,
Manch s.er

Ireland, T., Manchester, dyer. (Milne
and Co., Temple ; WaUer and Co.,
Manchester

Jones, E., Liverpool, victualler.
(Taylor, C^ement's-inn ; Davenport,
Liverpool

Johnson, H., Trowell, coal-dealer.
(Hurd and Co., Temple; Greasley,
Nottingham

Jenner, J., Lindfield, wine-merchant.
(Squires, Holland-place

Johnson, O. T., Hu.ldersfiejd, wool-
stapler. (Clarke and Co., Linco.n's-
inn fields; Whitehead and Co.,
HuddersfielJ

Jackson, T , Walworth, master-ma-
riner. Hewitt, Token-house-yard

Jacob?, L., Chelsea, broker. (Spyer,
b road-street-buildings

Kay, H., Leeds, victualler. (Battye
and Co., Chancery-lane; Hargreavea,
Leeds

Kirkhouse, T., Merthyr-Tydfil, gro-
cer. (Brittan, Ba->ingti<iU-street ;
Bevan and Co , Bristol

Lawson, W. J., Lombard-street, bill-
broker. (Clayton, John-street

Lloyd, H., George-street, jeweller.
(Wills, Ely-place

Lee1;, i., Oldham, cotton-spinner
(Milne and Co , Temple; Racclirte,
Oldham

Lees, j , Newton-moor, cotton-spin-
ner. (Makinson and Co., Temple ;
Atkinson and Co., Manchester

Lonsdale, J. and A., Manchester,
silk-warehousemen. iHurd and Co.,
Temple ; Hailfield and Co., Man-
chester

Lauriere, J., St. James's-strset.
jeweller. (Roc, Gray's-inn

1830.]

Bankrupts.

Morris, G., Jun., Norwich, ilater,
(Clarke and Co., Lincoln's-inn.-
field* ; rowley, Norwich

Moulton, W., Warwick, grocer. (Tay-
lor, John-street ; Poole and Co.,
Kei ilwor.lv, Hayncs, Warwick

Moulton, T., Warwick, grocer.
(Shaipe and Co., Bread-street ;
Poole and Co., Kenilworth j Haynes,
Warwick

Mortlock, J., Bury Sr. Edmond's,

. innkeeper. (Clarke and Co., Lin-
colnVinn-fMds; Kingsbury and
Co., Bungay

Mellor, J., Almondbury, dyer (Bat-
tye and Co., Chancery-lane ; Ste-
phenfon, Hclmfirth

Mullowny, J., I'risfol, merchant.
(Pearson, Temple ; Daniels, Briftol

Morris, £., Wrexham, tower. (Wil-
liams and Co., Chester

Nathan, I. and B. Nathan, West-
minster-road, music-se.ler. (Pa-
terson, Mincinp-lane

Pope, J., Great Yarmouth, cabinet-
maker. (Dax and Co., Bedford-
row , Waters, Great Yarmouth

Percival, W , East gate, Lincoln,
farmer. IGeorge, Wardrobe-place

Fau in, H., Berwick, innkeeper. (Burn,
DoctorVcomrnons

Pearce, W., Bodmin, cherrist. (Tay-
lor, Ciement's-inn ; Chapman, De-
vonport

Pettiier, H., High Koiborn, cheese-
monger. Brough, Fleet-street

Pocock, G. A., Dai t ford, printer.
Tooks, Dartfcrd

Polti, L., Bristol, carver. (King,
Castle-, treet

Peiqueur, L-, Paddington-street, up-
holsterer, (smith, Basinghall -
street

Perkins, C., Worthing, coach-pro-
prietor. (Waufh, St. James's-street;
Edmunds, Worthing

Pratt, H. C., Norwich, linen-draper.
(Brutton and Co., New Broad*

•treet; Rackham and Co., Nor.
wich

Raync, J. and C., Newcastle-upon»
Tyne, seed-crushers. (Plumptre,
Temple ; Cram, Newcastle-upon-
Tyne

Roobard, J., Kensington-gravel-pits,
brewer. (Branscornbe, Fleet-street

Rtndell, E. P., West Coker, sail-
cloth-manufacturer. (Williams,
Gray's-inn ; Watts, Yeovili

Robins, T , St. John's-square, silver-
smith. Eyre and Co., Gray's-inn

Reid, W., Ball-alley, watchmaker.
(Spyer, Broad-street buildings

Rose, J., Old Jewry, auctioneer.
(Birkettand Co,. Cloak-lane

Roberts, C., Leeds, clock-maker.
(Jones, John-street; Hick, Leeds

Raven, G., Gr. vine-street ar.d Sid-
mouth-street, apothecary. (Sawyer,
Stap e-inn

Smi h, T., Bride-lane and Lambeth,
wine-merchant. (Gellatly, Lime-
house

Smith, H. T. and J.,- York, drapers.
(Appieby and Co., Gray's-ii.n;
Whitehead, Manchester

Button, E. P. Clement's-inn, money-
scrivener. (Conway, Castle-stteet

Shepheaid, J., Beaumont-mews, corn-
dealer. (Sale, Aldermanbury

Sampson, P. S.. Brighton, bookseller.
(Wootton. Token-house-yard

Simon, J., Regent-street, hosier.
(Burkitt and Co., Cloak-lane

Steel, J ., Southwark-bridge-road,
builder. (Hewitt, Token-house-
yard

Smith, E , Nottingham, baker. (Yal-
lop, Basingr.all-street ; Parsons,
Nottingham

Somerfield, P., Walsall, victualler.
(Turner and Co.,Bloomsbury-square j
Heeley, Walsall

Sweet, G., Uplowman, rr.alster.
(Holme and Co., New-inn ; Wal-
dion, Wiveliscombe

481

•ambruck, M., Fithftuarft, draper.

(Brittan, Basinghall-street ; D»-

niels, Bevan and Brittan, Bristol
Thompson, W., Rochester, glass-dea*

ler. (Rochford, Borough
Thredder, H. V. jun., Barking,

smack-owner. (Stratton and Co.,

Shoreditch
Wagner, J., Piccadilly, tailor. (Tribe,

Clifford's-inn
Westlake, G., Great James-street,

boarding house-keeper. (Nias, Cop-

thall-court
White, J., Taunton, upholsterer,

(Norton and Co., Gray's-inn j Win*

ter, Taunton
Walker, W., Drury-lane, looking-.

glass-manufacturer. (Walton and

Co., Girdler's-hall
Wallace, W., Workington, shipwright.

(Falcon, Temple; Thompsons,

Workington
Wilde, W., Oldham, cotton-spinner.

(Eliis and Co., Chancery-lane)

Hampson, Manchester
Wilkinson, T., Audenshaw, gingham-

manufacturer. (Adlingtcn and Co.,

Beciford-row ; Chew, Manchester
Woodward, C., Manchester, inn»

holder. ( Appleby and Co., Gray't-

inn ; Whitehead, Manchester
Wainwright, M. and W. Wainwright.,

Leeds, woolen-cloth-manufacturers.

(Fisher, Walbrook-buildings
Ward, W., Ccventiy, ribbon-manu-

facturer. (Heming and Co., Lin»

coln's-inn,ne!ds ; Woodstock and

Co , Coventry
Wood, J. E., Shrewsbury? tanner*

(Philpot and Co., Southampton*

street j Kough, Shrewsbury
Wainwright, M. and W., and J.

Johnson, Cateaton-street, woollen*-

waiehousemen. (Fisher, Walbrook*

buildings
Wilkinson, R., Epworth, woollen*

draper. (King, Castle-street j Ma*

ton and Co., Doncaster.

ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS.

Rev. Dr. W. Carey, Bishop of Exeter, trans-
lated to the Bishopric of St. Asapb. — Rev. J.
Bull, D.U., to the Vicarage of Stareton, North-
ampton.—Rev. Dr. Bull, to theCanonry of Christ
Church. — Rev. Dr. G. Barnes, to the Archdea-
conry of Barnstaple. — Rev. W. S. Carey, to the
Rectoiyof Lezant, Cornwall. — Rev. J. Matthews,
to the Vicarage of Fenton and Sherburn, York.
— Hon. and Rev. J. S. Cocks, to be a Canon of
Worcester Cathedral. — Rev. J. Natt, to the Vicar-
age of St. Sepulchre, London —Rev. Dr. Chan-
dler, to be Dean of Chichester — Rev. G. H.
Deane, to the Vicarage of Eckington, Worcester.
— Rev. J. Jackson, to a Prebend in the Collegiate
Church of Brecon.— Rev. C. Tripp.tothe Rectory
of Bundleigb, Devon. — Rev. J. Heath, to the
Vicarage of Wigrnore, Hereford.— Rev. T. Deanf
to the Perpetual Curacy of Little Malvern, Wor-
cester.— Rev. F. Faithful, to the Rectory of
Headleigh, Surrey.— Rev. W. Firth, to the Rec-
tory of Letcombe Basset, Berks, — Rev. J. Brown,
to the Rectory of West Lynn, Norfolk.— Rev.
J. B. Schomberg, to the Rectory of Betton, Suf-

folk.—Rev. J. Ashby, to the Rectory of W>nham
Magna, Suffolk.— Rev. G. Rooke, to the Vicar-,
age of Embleton, Northumberland.— Rev. C. C..
Clerke, to be Archdeacon of Oxford. — Rev. A.
Crowdy, to the Vicarage of King's Somborne,
Hants.— Rev. T. W. Peile, to be Domestic Chap-
lain to Earl of Westmoreland.— Rev. C. Hoi-
loway, to the Rectory of St. Simon and Jude,
Norwich.— Rev. S. T. Gully, to the Rectory of
Berrynarbor, Devon. — Rev. C. Morgil, to th»
Rectory of Chilbolton, Hants.— Rev. T. W.Booth,
to the Vicarage of Friskney, Lincoln. — Rev. C.
Taylor, to the Vicarage of Almeley.— Rev. J. H,
Seymour, to the Rectory of Northchurch, Herts.—
Rev. E. Woodcock, to the Vicarage of Chard,
stock.— Rev. M. Blennerhasset, to the Rectory of
Lyme Intrinseca, Dorset. — Rev. W. Church, to
the Rectory of Woolstborpe, Lincoln. — Rev. L. E.
Towne, to the Rectory of Knipton, Lincoln— »'
Rev. C. Nairne, to the rectory of Shadoxhurst»
Kent.— Rev. W. A. Norton, to the Rectory of
Eyke, Suffolk. — Rev. R. Meiklejohn, to th«
Church and Parish of Strathdon, Aberdeen.

CHRONOLOGY, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, ETC.

CHRONOLOGY.

February 26. Protest of Lord Eldon , entered
on the Journal of the House of Lords, on their
Lordships' refusing a committee of inquiry into
M.M. New Ser^s — VoL.IX. No. 62.

the causes of the present distress so severely felt
in almost all parts of the kingdom. It was also
signed by the following peers : Stanhope.
Churchill, Richmond, Northwicn, Teynham, and
Radnor.

482

Chronology, Marriages, and Deaths.

[APRIL,

23. A Romish Catholic White Sheet spectacle
performed in the Protestant Church of Mary-le-
bone by a Mr. T. Vince,- for having slandered the
character of a fair vocalist (Miss Wells).

March 2. Motion made in the House of Com-
mons, that Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham
be enabled to send representatives to Parliament
—for 140 ; against 188— majority 48. Same day,
a petition presented, praying the elective fran-
chise might be extended to Sheffield and other
large towns.

4. Motion made in the House of Commons, that
the right of electing members at present enjoyed
by East Retford, should be transferred to Bir-
mingham—for 119; against 152— majority 33.»

* The towns thus thought unworthy of being
represented by even one member, boast a popu-
pulation of 435,000 Englishmen, viz. Sheffield
80,000; Leeds 83,0(10 ; Manchester IbG.OUO; Bir-
mingham 106,000!!! A contrast from the county
of Surrey: Garten, a mean village, is famous as
being one of the most rotten boroughs in Eng-
land : evev since the reign of Henry VI. it has
sent two members to parliament, who are now
returned by its constable annually chosen at the
lord of Che manor's court, by seven electors! !!
Gatton Park (that canies with it the entire
property of the borough!!!) was purchased by
W. Petrie, Esq. of R. Ladioke, Esq. for
.^110,0.10. and by him sold to Sir M. Wood,
Bart. Bletchingley (within six miles of Gatton
Park borough) has about 90 votes, and the
Reigate (about one mile from Gattm Park) voters
a're only those who have freeholds in the borough.
These three very populous places send six
members to Parliament, while London, West-
minister, and Soutiiwark, with a population of .a
million of inhabitants, sent eight I ! t But the
present Earl Grey, in his petition of May 6, J/93,
has thus recorded (in the Journals of the House
of^ Commons) our immaculate representation 1
" That the House of Commons does not fully and
fairly represent the People of England — that the
Elective Franchise is so partially and unequally
distributed, that a majority of your Honourable
House is elected by less than a two- hundredth
part of the male population. That the rigU of
voting was regulated by no uniform or rational
principle. That Rutland, the smallest, and York-
shire the largest county, return the same number
«f representatives, that Coinwall, which by the
last census (then taken) appears to contain a po-
pulation of 188,260, returns as many members to
£ur Hon. House as the counties of York, Rut-
id, and Middlesex, which by the same census
contain 1,693.3/7— and that Cornwall and Wilts,
containing 373,3/6 persons, send more Borough
Members to Parliament than Yorkshire, Lan-
cashire, Warwickshire, Middlesex, Worcester-
shire, and Somersetshire united, which contain
2,971 ,2.,0. That /O of your Hon. Members are
returned by 35 places, where the elections are
notoriously mere matters of forms. That in ad-
dition to the 70 so chosen, 90 more of your Hon.
Members are elected by 46 places, in none of
which the number of electors exceeds 50. That
in addition to the J60 so elected, 37 more of your
Hon. Members are elected by 19 places, in none
of which the number of Electors exceeds 100.
That in addition to the 197 Hon. Members so
chosen, 52 more are returned by 26 places, in
none of which the number of voters exceeds 200.
That in addition to the 249 so elected, 20 more are
returned for counties in Scotland, by less than
JOO Electors each, and 10 for counties in Scotland
by less than 250 each. That in addition to the 279 so
elected, 13 districts of Burghs in Scotland, not
containing 160 voters each, and two districts of
Burghs not containing 125 each, return 15 more
of your Hon. Members. That in this manner,
S9t of your Hon. Members are chosen, which
being a decided majority of the entire House of

March 4. Sir C. Wetherell moved, in the House of
Commons-, for papers relative to the late e x ojficio
prosecutions, which he condemned as at; uni-on.
stitntional and needless attack on the Public
Press, and the liberty of its advocates.— The
Home Secretary of State said, he never heard of
the libels until his Learned Friend had thought fit
to appeal to the law, and vindicate its authority
by these prosecutions.— The Attorney-General de-
fended himself, and the motion was agreeil to.

— In the House of Commons, petition pre-
sented from Mayo, stating that the Rev. John
O'Rourke, Protestant vicar, had been absent
fron his parish thirteen years, during which time
many persons had embraced the Catholic faith ! I!
Same day, an address was voted to his Majesty,
prayi ig the appointment of Commissioners from
the Privy Council of Ireland, to inquire into the
abuses of the Church!*

8. Field Marshal Prince .Leopold visited the
King on the subject of Greece.

— A meeting took place in the garden of the
Eagle Tavern, City-road, for the purpose of
forming a V Political Union." Not less than
25,000 persons were in the garden, and at least
10,000 more were unable to gain admittance.
Mr. O'Conneil was in the chair, and ftlr. Hunt
moved the resolutions, which were seconded by
Mr. French, and carried unanimously. The meet-
ing dispersed quietly.

10. A deputation from the central f committee,
which advocates the interests of the British com-
munity in the inquiry now pending be-fore com-
mittees of both Houses of Parliament, on the
subject of the East-India Company's monopoly,
had a very satisfactory intcivicw with the Pre-
sident of the Board of Control, in which his Lord-
ship assured the members of the deputation, that
he was quite unbiassed on the important questions
before the committees, and that it was most ne-
cessary that evidence should be produced on be-

Commons, are enabled to decide all questions in
the name of the whole people of Great Britain.
That 84 individuals do, by their own immt dia,te
authority, send 157 of your Hon. Members to
Parliament. That in addition to these 157 Hon.
Members, 150 more, making in the wh< le 307,
are returned to your Hon. House, not by the col-
lective voice of those whom they appear to repre-
sent, but by the recommendation of 70 powerful
individuals, added to the 84 before-mentioned,
and making the total number of Patrons alto-
gether only 154, who return a decided majority
of your Hon. House. That no 1 ss than 1;'>0 of
your Hon. Members owe their elections to the in-
terference of Peers. That the means taken by
candidates to obtain, and by the Electors to be-
stow, the honour of a scat in your Hon. House,
evidently appear to have been increasing in a
progressive degree of fraud and corruption I ! I"
* Sir J. Newport instanced the case of rne
clergyman, an unbeneficed curate, who had per-
formed the duties 45 years for .£40, JEM, .£60,
.£70, and lastly .£69. 4s. Six bishops had passed
him by, and yet his character unimpeached I J !
Notwithstanding1 this, the riches of the Church
of Great Britain and Ireland are known to sur-
pass all the riches ot all the other parts of the
world together ; but tiien some of the bishops
have £20,000, .£30,000, and .£40,000 per annum I! 1
f Formed by deputies that have arrived in
London from Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol, Man-
chester, Leeds, Birmingham, Plymouth, Dublin,
Staffordshire, Newcastle-under-Lyne, Newcastle-
upon-Tyne, Sunderland, Stockton, Sa'ldleworth,
Hull, &e. &c., in consequence of the various
petitions sent into Parliament upon that subject.

1830.]

Chronology, Marriages, and Deaths.

403

lialf of the general Interests of the empire. Hit
Lordship also informed them, that regulations
•would be adopted, permitting British subjects to
reside in India, and to hold land on leases in that
country, for the purpose of cultivntion. Ac.

12. Petition presented to House of Commons
from the Merchants, Traders and Manufacturers
of the City, complaining of the general distress.*

15. Budg' t brought forward in the House of
Commons., and the beer, the cider, and the leather
taxes repealed.

22. The Lord Chancellor proposed the first read-
ing of a bill for the purpose of facilitating the
administration of justice! f

23. Motion in the House of Commons for in-
quiring into the disti ess of the nation negatived
by 255 votes against 87, after a four days' debate.

26. House ot Commons decided that the Hon.
R. Dundas, and the Hon. W. Bathurst, (two Mi-
nisters' Sons), should not have each a sinecure
(one of .£500, the other £450!), by a majority
of 18; for them 121 ; for the country 139!!!

MARRIAGES.

At St. George's, Hanover Square, the Hon.F.
Spencer, thiid son of Earl Spencer, to Elizabeth
Georgiana Poyntz, second daughter of W. S.
Poyntz, Esq., M.P., Chichester, and sister to
the Marchioness of Exeter. — At Godalming, the
Rev. Dr. Wilson, to Miss Sunnier, sister to
the Bishops ol Chester and Winchester. — At
Twickenham, G. E. Pocock, Esq., eldest son of
Sir G. Poeock, Bart., to Augusta Eliner, niece
to the Earl of Coventry.— At W aimer, Lieut.
W. W. P. Johnson, R.N., to Eliza, eldest daugh-
ter of Rear-AdmiralT. Harvey.— At St. George's,
Hanover Square, Grant ham Munton, youngest
son of Vice-Admiral Sir Joseph S. Yorke, M.P.,
to Marian Emily, eldest daughter of Sir H. C.
Montgomery, Bart.— At Bathwick, Rev. J. S.
Jenkinson, second son of General Jcnkinson, to
Harriet Caroline Augusta Grey, third daughter
of the Hon. Sir G. Grey, Bart. — At St. George's,
Hanover Square, the Hon. T. L. Corry, M.P.
Tyrone, son of Earl Belmore, to Lady H.A. A.
Cooper, daughter of the Earl of Shafteshuvr.

» iVlr Alderman Waithman, in delivering the
petition, which wa* supported by two other City
members, said, (on an attempt being made TO
" cough him down," as the phrase is,) thai he
stood there on a letter footing than many mem-
bers of that House, having been returned, free
of expense, by 12,000 freemen!!! He therefore
thought it right to represent the real state of the
affair! If the House was determined to remedy
our i!i tresses, th y should insist on a reduction of
taxation, beginning at the top, and not stop till
they reached the bottom ; t icy should begin w th.
the army and navy estimates !" — On one of the days
when the general distress question was agitated,
Aldermmi Waithman said, in allusion to (he at-
tempts to cough him down, " that it reflected
little honour on sprigs of nobility and young
g-ntlemen who had received a university edu-
cation, to attempt to put down a plain man who
was doing what he conceived to be his duty; it
was true he knew little, and what he did know
was acquired during hours which were devoted
by others to cards and the bottle!''

•f His Lordship stated," that the sum in the
control of Chancery amounts nowto.£40,000,OftO!''
— " Ti.ere is " said his Lordship* " in the Court
of Chancery a large fund, which 1 cannot describe
better than by liking it to tbe unclaimed dividends
in the Bank; it had its origin wore than 100
years ago, and it now furnishes an income of
.£50,000 or .£60,000 a year."

DEATHS. :

Lady Augusta de Ameland, formerly Lady An*
gnsta Murray, and consort of the Dukeof Sussex;
At Roll's Park, 72, Admiral Sir Eliab Harvoy
M.P. for Essex.— In West Square, Nathaniel
Brassy Halhed, Esq., 79, formerly M.P. for Ly-
mington. — Lady Macaregor Murray, 82, relict of
Sir J. M. Murray, Bart., of Macgregor. — At
Dunham Massey, Lady Louisa Grey, sister to the
Earl of Stamford — Frances, second daughter of
T. Wood, Esq., and cousin to Earls Ox'.ord and
Stradbrooke.— At Edinburgh, Dr. R. Anderson,
editor and biographer of an edition of the British
Poets.— In Berner's-street, Lady Bensley, 70.—
At Clandon, Mary, Countess of Onslow.— At
Blandford, Cornelia, wifeot the Hon. A.Stuart.
—In Pall-Mall, East, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaml.
—In Russel Square, W. Hay, esq., 88. — At
Stitchell House, Lady Amelia Ann Pr'mgle.—
Sir Robert T. Farquhar, hart., M.P., and late
Governor of the Mauritius.— At .East Moul-
sey, Admiral Sir Edmund Nagle, 73, Groom of
H.M.'s Bed-chamber.— At Stapleton Park, Hon.
Miss Catharine Ann Petre. — In Bury, Mrs.
Smyihe, sister to Lady Stafford.— Mr. D. Adams,
an eminent medico electrician, and mathematical
instrument-maker to George III.— C. M. Williams,
esq., of the firm of Williams and Co., Birchin-
lane, and nephew of R. Williams, M.P. for
1. orchester.

At Ballynagh, in the county of Cavan, much
lamented, the Rev. James Pollock, aged 82. This
gentleman was 54 years a Curate in the diocese
of Kilmore : he lived in the administration of four
Bishops, to one of whom he was Curate when
his Lordship was Dean. He commenced his cle-
rical duties in the times of moderation, when the
salary was .£50 a-year, but afterwards for a
season enjoyed the more ample provision of «£/5 !I
When age and infirmities, of which he had not
a few, interposed to prevent his performance of
the extensive duties of his parish, he, of neces-
sity, as well as to make way for a more active
functionary, consented about two years since to
retire, and was therefore again set down with
his early and old Irieiul, a stipend of .£50 per
annum, and so died!!! — Oxford Herald,
March 27.

MARRIAGES ABROAD.

At the British Embassy, Paris, Viscount Stuart.
to Emmeline, grand-daughter to the Bishop of
Norwich.— At Madras, the Hon. Sir R. Palmer.
Chief Justice, to Margaret Eliza, eldest daughter
of C.'l. R. B. Fearon.

DEATHS ABROAD.

At Cracow, Mrs. Jakahouski, 59, daughter of
J. Forstcr, esq., R.N., Warkworth.— At Mon-
treal, Hon. Sir J. Johnson, 88, superintendant-.
general of Indian affairs in British North Ame-
rica.— At New Strelitz, his Serene Highness the
Landgrave of Hesse, 86. — The Do vager Grand
Duchess Louisa of Weimar, 73.— At Paris, Car-
dinal de Clement Tonnerre.— At Paris, Count
Bozun de Perigord ; he was governor of the
chateau de St. Germain, and brother to the Prince
de Benevente, alias Talleyrand, before the re-
volution Bishop of Autun. — At Boulogne, Maria,
Ramsay, relict of the late Major W. Ramsay,

3 Q 2

484

Chronology, Marriages, and Deaths.

[ APRIL,

and «i*ter to Lady Dryden.— At Paris, 78, tbt
Duchess de la Rochefaucault.— At Naples, 92,
General Actoun ; he had been in the Neapolitan
service ever since 1792. — At Spanish Town, Ja-
maica, aged 151, Mrs. Judith Crawford. She had

the powers of her bodily strength, as well as her
faculties, until within a few years since. She
remembered the dreadful earthquake of 1682. —
At Paris, 79, M. de Lally Tolendal.— At Hieres,
Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, 67.

MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES.

NORTHUMBERLAND.— At these assizes two
prisoners were sentenced to death. Mr. Justice
J. H. Park, in his address to the grand jury,
•aid : " The police of this town in regard to pre-
ventive justice, he could say from his own ex-
perience of 40 years, was admirably conducted."*
He congratulated them on there being only 5
cases in the calendar; and he congratulated them
the more, " because in the town where they now
were, there was more vice among a small num-
ber of people than ever he witnessed on a similar
occasion !"

The Corporation of Newcastle hare appointed
a deputation to go to London, to remonstrate
against an application made to government, by
the inhabitants of North and South Shields, for
additional *' Custom-house facilities."

A very fine mummy has been presented to the
Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle.

DURHAM.— Three culprits received sentence
•f death at these assizes ; there were very few
prisoners in the calendar.

. The church-yard of Sunderland is now lit-up
with gas ; and the light is so vivid, that no person
could move across the ground without being seen.

The Marquis of Teesdale has presented the
committee for making the road from Alston Moor
to Gretna Bridge, with the sum of .£1,200, to be
appropriated by them in employing the distressed
miners of Teesdale, who are out of employment.

At the Durham assizes, Mr. Justice Park in-
•tructed the jury to acquit a prisoner charged
with stealing a sheep, because the animal was
a ewe, and it was not described as such, but merely
us a sheep.

During the late severe frost, which prevailed
over the whole kingdom, the thermometer was
generally from 4 to 5, and sometimes as much as
8 degrees higher in Durham and its neighbour-
hood than it was in Oxford and London.

* Notwithstanding this eulogium on the pre-
ventive police, we find the following instance of
early crime recurring at the same assizes: — Jane
Wilkinson and Mary Mutton, two very little
children, were charged with breaking into the
dwelling house of L. Sloddart, and stealing there-
from a flannel shirt, cotton handkerchief, and
two towels. They both pleaded guilty. His Lord-
ship recommended them to plead not guilty, as
there was another charge of housebrealuiig
against them, and if found guilty of both offences
he should find it right to send them out of the
country probably for their lives. They still per-
sisted in their plea. They were then arraigned
for breaking into the house of Eleanor Fenwick,
and stealing therefrom a bombazeen gown, and a
coat and waistcoat. To this charge they also
pleaded guilty. His Lordship said, that as the
prisoners, young as they were, had been the sub-
jects of 4 or 5 criminal charges before this, he
thought it his duty to the public to sentence them
for the first offence, to which they had now
pleaded guilty, to 7 years transportation, and for
the second offence to a further transportation of
• 7 y«aw.— Tync Mircury, March 2.

At a meeting held at Blampland on the 18th of
March, it was resolved to petition Parliament on
the distressed state of the mining districts.

CUMBERLAND.—" In looking back on the
proceedings of the recent assizes," savs the Car-
lisle Patriot, " we should almost, we think, for-
get our duty, and our responsibility, if we did uot
indulge in a few obssrvatiuns, to which the most
ordinary reflections naturally give rise. The first
is, the defective state of the police in some parts
of this county, and the second, the great increase
of crime amongst youth. But another and a still
more deplorable fact cannot be overlooked, the
increase of juvenile offenders. Nearly one half
of the prisoners at the late assizes were under 21
years of age I Two under 18 were convicted of
horse-stealing, and two under 15 of house-break-
ing I !! These facts ought to impress upon all
who duly regard the well-being of society, the
duty of encouraging every endeavour to train up
the rising generation to habits of religion and
virtue. Persons in authority, and in responsible
situations, have much to answer for where this
subject is neglected. It is incumbent on all who
have the power, and more especially on the
Clergy and Magistracy, to repress every kind of
vice and impiety, and to exterminate the haunts
and seminaries of profligacy and villany ; thus
preventing rather than punishing crime!"

YORKSHIRE. — A meeting of the gentry,
clergy, shopkeepers, and other inhabitants of the
town and neighbourhood of Huddersfield was held,
March 11, at the Court-House, to consider the
propriety of petitioning Parliament to investigate
the cause of the General Distress, and if possible
to adopt such measures as may give permanent
relief. It was determined to petition Parliament,
and Lord Wharncliffe was requested to present
that of the House of Lords, and Lord Milton that
of the Commons. Various resolutions passed, one
of which was : " That the Distress mainly re-
sulted from long and expensive Wars, occasioning
an immense load of Debt, and Taxation to an
insupportable amount." In another, advice is
given to abolish all Sinecures, and reduce Sa-
laries and Pensions, under whatever denomina-
tion, civil and military [Fjeld Marshalism, of
course, in a time of profound peace, not to be
forgotten!] Huddersfield and the out-townships
contain nearly 90,000 persons, of whom the pro-
portion of 1 to 6| are deeply distressed. — Leedt
Intelligencer.

A public meeting was held at Rotherham,
March 17, at which a series of resolutions was
passed in favour of a still more extensive re-
mission of taxes. The meeting was remarkable
for the good sense that distinguished the speeches
of that class of the community " who gain their
bread by the sweat of their brow." There was.
very little of that " humming and hawing "

1830.]

Norfolk and Somersetshire.

485

phraseology 10 notorious in more august as-
semblies!

At a meeting held, March 18, by the inhabitants
of Leeds, convoked by the Mayor, it was resolved
to petition parliament for a further reduction in
the public expenditure, and also for a full, free
and equal representation of the people in the
House of Commons, without which no retrench-
ment can be permanent, and likewise for abo-
lishing all useless places and pensions.

Some of the leading whigs of Yorkshire have
drawn up and circulated a protest and petition to
Parliament, in which they call for a direct tax
upon the funds to the amount of £1 ,000,000, toge-
ther with the raising of the standard of gold to
j£6, and of that of silver to 7s. 9d. or tos. per
ounce.

Great efforts are making in the West Riding to
obtain the removal of the assizes for that Riding
from York to Wakeh'eld, on the ground of the
saving of time and expense to suitors and pro-
secutors residing in that district.

There were no lees than 111 applications for
relief to the Court of Insolvent Debtors, held at
Waketield, for the West Riding of Yorkshire, on
the 5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th of March.

NORFOLK. — At the recent adjourned sessions
for this county, Lord Suffield delivered a charge
to the Grand Jury, in which, noticing the present
distress, he strenuously recommended the plan of
Cottage Husbandry, as a means of curing one of
the causes of the general distress, the amount of
the poor's rate, and the paramount importance of
the moral degradation of the poor labourers.
The answer of the Grand Jury to his Lordship
tended to infer that all our distress is owing to
high rents, tithes and taxes, in addition to the
poor rates.*

A Common-hall has been held at Norwich, the
Mayor in the chair, " to take into consideration
the cause of the unprecedentedly distressed situ-
ation of the country, and to petition the Legis-
lature for a reduction of that taxation which
operates so powerfully upon the middle and lower
classes, and to enforce the most rigid economy
into every department of the state ;" when 13 re-
solutions were passed, and a petition founded on
them unanimously carried. Trie meeting was at-
tended by nearly 2,000 persons, and was held in
St. Andrew's Hall.f

* The Grand Jury thus conclude their answer :
•' From various causes it is quite apparent that
his Majesty's Ministers are not disposed to ease
the burthens which now weigh so heavily upon
us ; on the contrary, they have evinced a much
to be lamented disposition to turn a deaf ear to
the petitions of the people. From the Legislature
therefore we have no expectation, and the only
hope of relief to the yeomanry of the country
must be placed in the landholders, and in the
landowners only. If the plan suggested by your
Lordship for the relief of the poor should be
carried into effect, and should be found to answer
the proposed end, it would benefit the agriculturist
only to a certain extent, and that benefit would of
necessity ultimately accrue to the landlord, in the
better rent he would be enabled to obtain for his
land. The only burthens of tithes and taxes
would still remain xvithout the slightest means in
the power of the tenant of relieving himself from
them."— Norfolk Chronicle.

f The speeches made upon this occasion were
eloquent, and repeatedly cheered, the Norfolk
Chronicle informs us. In one of them it was
stated, " that the distress was real, was oppressive,

SOMERSETSHIRE.— The poor at Shepton-
Mallet are not only unemployed, but their con-
dition is wretched in the extreme ; beyond the
power of the few, who bear themselves above the
reverses of the times, to alleviate, except in a
very small degree. Their wretchedness is such,
that they have lost all respect for character ; they
have no excitement to industry, to prudence, or
economy; and what means have they but that of
thieving to mitigate their miseries? Several of
them have been sent to the Swan River, at the
coat of the parish. There are about 3,(tOO re-
ceiving parish pay. Here are nine factories, for-
merly all cloth, but latterly some of them have
been occupied in the silk and crape trade, of
which three are totally unoccupied, and the rest
only partially occupied.

fVells, March 5. — The universal cry of po-
verty and distress is as vehement here as any
where. The farmers have no money -the la-
bourers no employ — and the tradesmen no custom,
at least, comparatively. A retailer told me, his
usual takings were from 20*. to 30s. a day, and
are now, frequently, not more than one shilling.
The manufactories here are all closed, and many
of the windows broken ; one has scarcely a whole
pane of glass in the building : the poor rates are
therefore much increased, and the overseers have
been obliged to borrow money at the bank, to
carry them through the year.

The last report from the Bath Savings' Bank
states the receipts to have been, since its com-
mencement, .£252,260. 17*. 4d. ; and the balance
in hand at present is .£208,3/6. 15«.2d., the num-
ber of depositors have been 3,922, besides 70 cha-
ritable and friendly societies.

and cannot he borne 1" — "We are living in a
population of 60,000 souls, and of that population
20,000 of them are unal'le to maintain themselves
without parochial relief! !!" — " If we look to the
1m her and larger establishments of this city, we
see them breaking and falling to ruin I ! !" Allu-
sions and comparisons were made to Ameiica by
another speaker, where the chief magistrate re-
ceived .£5,000 per annnm, and where there were
no taxes but those paid on articles imported im-
mediately on their entry! The French revolution
was also alluded to by another, with their sans
culottes : " what with bankruptcies, assignments,
and compositions on every side, our own popu-
lation were so reduced, that we shall soon see
them sans culottes here !" — " Taxation is the
sole, direct, and immediate cause of all their
suffering." — " In the palaces of fund-holders, loan-
mongers, and placemen, all i* luxury and ease.
The poor are degraded to a .-tate tif universal
and reckless pauperism — small shopkeepers and
tradesmen are broken and ruined— manufacturers,
farmers, and merchants can scarcely stem the
swelling torrent that threatens to sweep them
away!!!" " What has caused the unitingof whig,
tory, liberal and brunswicker, loyalist and ra-
dical reformer, and unchangeable quietist, and
alarmist? What has wrought this miracle? Why,
the awful sense of our common danger, the
pressure of our overwhelming, universal, and
intolerable distress!!!" The" resolutions were
introduced by Mr. Robberds, in an admirable
speech. Indeed, times are wonderfully altered, for
we percehe better speeches made out tUan in
the legislature — no parliamentary phrases like
" running liis rigs upon me 1" nor " bothering
me always!" are to be found in any of the late
provincial orators' displays, either at the manu-
facturing towns of Birmingham, Leeds, or Nor-
wich —^carcely anything resembling " pot-house
speeches," • or even " pot house manners !"
No coughing, nor scraping of shoos on the floor,
as a delivery from unanswerable argument! !-

486 Provincial Occurrences : Devonshire, Worcester shire, 8$c.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE.— The inhabitant* of
Pursley, assembled in the Town-ball, have pe
titioned parliament, •« to take into their most se-
rious and immediate consideration the unpa-
ralleled distress they are labouring under, attri-
butable, in connection with the enormous weight
of taxation, to the almost total stagnation of
trade throughout this and the whole of the ma-
imfacturing districts."

DEVONSHIRE.— By the late statement of the
Devon and Exeter Savings' Bank it appears that
<£I,2C2996. 15*. 7d. have been received since its
original institution, and that the total in pay-
ments made amounts to .^588,254. 1'5*. 7d., so
that the sum of ,£<>75,776. 19*. 3d. remains in
hand. The number of accounts opened 31,285,
and the number of deposits received 114,513.

At the last Report published of the state of the
Devonport Union Savings' Banks, the sum paid
in by 5.188 depositors since its commencement,
amounted to .£288,154. 14*.. out of which pay-
ments have been made of the sum of ^4^,467. 16s.8d.
—remaining balance .£243,314. 9*. Sd.

WORCESTERSHIRE.— At a meeting of the
freeholders of this. county, held March 2, at the
Guildhall, Worcester, it was unanimously re-
solved to petition the legislature on the present
universally depressed state of the country, and
praying a full and strict inquiry into its causes-
Lord Beauchamp and the county members were
requested to present the petition to the House
of Lords and Commons.*

At Worcester assizes, 23 prisoners received
•entence of death ; the persons tried for being
concerned in the murder of the Rev. Mr. Parker,
and then for his murderer Hemmings, were all
discharged, although one confessed his guilt!!!
The record, styled " the Clerk of Assize's Ca-
lendar," thus recites this case of English Juris-

* The petitioners stated, that they had heard
with astonishment that his Majesty's Ministers,
at the opening of the Par iament, declared the
present distress to 1 e partial ; and that the retail
tradesmen in country towns were in a state of
prosperity : and that they conceived that nothing
luit the grossest and most culpable ignorance of
the real state of tlie country could have induced
these declarations ; inasmuch as the distress is
general and unprecedented ; that all interests are
sunWing in a most alarn. ing degree, and thht the
re.tail trade, in particular, never was in so de-
pressed and ruinous a situation as it is at the
pre.-ent time ; and that the only persons upon
whom the general distress had not yet fallen, are
those who are living upon the proceeds of faxes
and fixed tnonied obligations in the shape of di-
vidends, pensions, salaiies, and sinecures.

That They are of opinion that a great part of the
present distress is to be nttributi d to the alteration
in the currency, a measure adopted without any
inquiry as to the effect it w«ul I have on the in-
dustrious classes of the community, or as to the
just ce or injustice of the measure.

That it would have- been impossible such ruin-
ous and unjust measures could have passed the
Hojuseof Commons, had it consisted ol what, the
constitution supposes it to consist, the real repre-
sentatives of the p"op1i>.

That it is a notorious fart, that a large number
of the Members of that House (Commons) arc.thc
mere nominees of Peers, and a majority obtain
their seats by purchase, and are not elected by
the free voice ot the people; and that therefore it
is expedient that there be an immediate and tho-
rough reform in the Commons House of .Par-
liament.

prudence !— " Standing indicted a» accessariet
to a murder, but the principal felon not having
been tried, and being now dead, and the pri~
toners therefore declining to plead, they are
to be discharged III"

HANTS.— The inhabitants of Southampton
and neighbourhood have, by lesolutfons passed at
the Guildhall, March 8, determined to petition
Parliament, " to revise those Penal Laws by
which the punishment of Death is inflicted." At
their recent assizes,32 prisoners received sentence
of death ; and all have since been reprieved ex-
cept one!

A petition from the Landholders of this county
has been presented to Parliament, complaining of
their present depressed state, which they attribute
in a great measure to being undersold in their
own markets by the importers of agricultural
produce.

A county meeting was held at Winchester,
March 10, convened by the High Sheriff, and
attended by about 4,000 persons, consisting of the
respectable Yeomanry, when resolutions were
unanimously passed, and a petition voted to Par-
liament.*

BUCKS— A meeting of agriculturists and
others has been held at Aylesbury County Hall,
to take into consideration the present distressed
state of the country, when it wa« unanimously
resolved to petition Parliament for relief from an
overwhelming taxation and for a thorough reform
in the House of Commons representation. Lord
Nugent attributed much of the present difficulties
to the people's fondness for War.f
- At these assizes, 7 prisoners received sentence
of death. Baron Vaughan addressed the Grand
Jury on their very full attendance to discharge

* The petition was founded on a series of reso-
lutions, to the effect that th" Speech from the
Throne had created much dissatisfaction, and was
calculated to cause great, dismay amongst the
people of this kingdom — that if some speedy and
effectual remedy were not applied, the country
will soon be overwhe me.-! with anarch}' and con-
fusion ny the changes which bav been made in
thecunency — that the interests of the kingdom
have suffered ai d are now suffering from the
absurd Free Trade experiments — that this king,
dom has suffered, and is now suffering from the
want ot a Fair Representation in the Commons
House of Parliament, whi^h has been r< cently
illustrated in a late trial in this county for bribery
and corruption in Stockbrid«e, where it had been
proved upon oath, 60 guineas had been rejru'arly
given for a vote! — that the only mode by which
the present severe distress can be rend 61 ed sup-
portable, is by an immediate reduction of those
taxes which press on the productive classes of the
community — that, in order to make such reduc*
tion, the public expenditure shou'd be reduced,
all unnecessary pensions and } laces abolished,
and the national debt pared down to the altered
value of money, &e. &e. [Field 'Marshal Co-
bourg, his .£'50,<,00 per annum, and his other
emoluments, were alluded to in the course of the
speeches.]

f "Tell your children, and your children's chil-
dren," said his Lordship, " to look back at the
year 1830! and they w.ll see the effects of War!
In the deserted country-house ; in the farm-
house, the occupier of which cannot cu'tiva'e
his land, cannot support his poor; in the cottage,
where the poor cannot keep out the elements —
and the labouring population stiff ring to an un-
usuai extent ; all 1 roiight on by that beldam War,
whose hideous visage has been upheld by a
Grinding Taxation!!!"

1830.] Sussex, Warwickshire, Westmoreland, Lancashire, fyc. 487

the important duty confided to them, and on the
state of the calendar. This decrease of crime
he hoped he mitfht fairly attribute to the vigilance
and activity ol' the magistracy of the county, and
to the improvement of the poor themselves, whose
patient endurance in a season of severe privation
was highly creditable to them ! ! I"

SUSSEX.— The last Report of the Brighton
Savings' Bank committee states, that more than
j£186,000 have been placed in the Bank during
the period elapsed since its establishment ; of
which sum nearly .£"14,000 were deposited in the
course of the current year. That of the 2,045
accounts now remaining open, the balances upon
1221 are under .£20 ; and that under the regula-
tions adopted, they venture to anticipate still
greater encouragement, and an increasing influ-
ence upon the morals of the lower orders of the
community.

WARWICKSHIRE.— A meeting of the inha-
bitants of Coventry has taken place to take into
consideration the distressed state ol the country.
Several speakers addressed the meeting on the
subject, and some resolutions were agreed to, the
substance of which was, that allegiance could
only be reasonably expected while the govern-
ment protected the people; that great distress
existed at Coventry and throughout the kingdom,
which had been produced by the unconstitutional
system of borough traffic; and that the complaints
of the people would never be attended to while
the House ol Commons was constituted as at pre-
sent. A resolution was passed for forming a pro-
visional committee often persons to prepare rules
for a union for the promotion of a radical reform
in the Commons House of Parliament.

The inhabitants of Long Itchington, Offchurch,
Upton and Stockton, have petitioned Parliament
on the present distress, re«.pectiully attributing it
to be caused by heavy taxation pivgMiig upon re-
duced means. — Leamington Spa Courier.

A " Political Union " lias been formed at Co-
ventry, and by the report of the committee lately
read to the society, it is established for the pur-
pose of a real and effectual representation of the
people in the Commons! the repeal of bad laws —
the abolition of all sinecures and unmerited pen-
sions, and to collect and organize the peaceful
expression of public opinion, so as to bring it to
act upon the legislative functions in a ju>t, legal,
and effectual way. The members have agreed to
petition the Speaker of the Commons, requesting
him " to in>ist on Mr. Healhcote attending to his
parliamentary duties, or vacate his seatl"— Co-
ventry Observer.

WESTMORELAND.— At the recent assizes,
Mr. Justice J. Park thus addressed the Gentlemen
of the Grand Jury : — " It is very satisfactory to
me to witness that there is not a single prisoner
in the gaol of this county now in custody. This
circumstance is highly creditable to Westmore-
land, and I congratulate you upon it. It is a
proud distinction, which perhaps no other county
in the kingdom enjoys. There are no criminal
charges to lay before you, and if nothing else
should be preferred, I shall feel great pleasure
in discharging you." The Grand Jury retired,
and returned into court again in about half an
hour, informing his Lordship that no business bad
been brought before them. They were imme-

diately discharged by his Lordship, and thanked
for their services.

LANCASHIRE.— A numerous and highly res-
pectable meeting has been held at Manchester
Town-Hall of the merchants, manufacturers, and
other inhabitants of that town, on the present dis-
tressed situation of the country, when it was una-
nimously resolved, " That the great manufac-
turing district, of which this town is the centre
and the mart, nofwithstanding the unwearied at-
tention to business, and the incessant labour of
its inhabitants, is suffering under a pressure of
distress, which is wholly unexampled in its extent
and severity."

A most appalling report was made of the state
of Maccle>ficld, Chorley, Blackburn, and other
places, connected with Manchester, the recital
of which makes the heart sicken. In Macchs-
field alone there are 993 empty houses, and 34
unoccupied factories! Other resolutions were
passed expressive of " the enormous amount and
unequal pressure of taxes,"*—" of an immense
standing army in a time of perfect peace,"—-
" of the payment of salaries and pensions wholly
undeserved/' — " of compelling foreign nations to
become our rivals, instead of being our cus-
tomers," &c. &c. A petition (founded on the re-
solutions) to both Houses of Parliament was theri
voted, and has been delivered to the Legislature.

The opening of the Rock Perch Light-hou«e at
Liverpool, took place March 1. This building
has been completed at the entire cost of the cor-
poration, for the accommodation of the commerce
of the port, and is a splendid specimen of me-
chanical art.

A meeting has been held at Liverpool, fores-
tablishing a permanent Asylum for the Houseless
Poor, and subscriptions entered into for that
purpose.

LlNCOLNSHIFlE.-At these as?izes, 15 pri-
soners received sentence of death. The pressure

* Mr. Slmttleworth said, in seconding the reso-
lution, "There is not one department of business
that I am aware of, in which capital can he em-
ployed with any reasonable prospect »f fair re.
numeration ; the prominent cause of which is, the
overwhelming weight of taxation. If the taxes
remain at their present dreadful amount, and are
still to be drawn as heretofore— not from real pro-
perty, whether land or capital, — but from • I.eer,
tea, soap, candles, sugar, and other necessaries
of life, it may be confidently stated, that they
will in the end overpower all the energies which
the country can put forth to meet them. A very
slight .'ilance at their immense amount will clearly
account for rhe difficulties of our present situation.
From January 1/97, to January 1817, the gross
produce of the revenue exceeded I,i90 millions,
and in the same period the public debt was in-
creased 450 millions, so that the total expenditure
amounted in twenty years to about 1,/40 millions
—or an average ot 8; millions a year. Durinir a
part of this period, the expenditure considerably
exceeded thi- average. In the five years from
1811 to 1815 inclusive, so utterly reckless of con-
sequences were those who then administt red the
national resources, that the expenditure amounted
to jefil3,4i3,00(t, or an average of nearly 123
mMlions a year. From 1817 indusive, tlu> expen-
diture has been about £00 millions, which, added
to the former sum, makes the expenditure for a
period of little more than thirty years 2.600 mil-
lions— a sum, the mighty vastness of which no
human mind has power distinctly to compre-
hend!!!"

488

Provincial Occurrences : Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, 8$c. [[APRIL,

of the times still shows to a grievous extent in
many parts of this county. Between 20 and 30
families are emigrating to America from Co-
ningshy, Dogdike, and the fens in that neigh-
bourhood, principally middle farmers and me-
chanics. The parishes are holding vestry meet-
ings, to devise plans for assisting the industrious
poor with large families to follow their rather
better-off neighhours in their migration I !!— Lin-
colnshire Mercury, March 19.

WILTSHIRE.— Warniinster is suffering as
severely as any the distress which is now uni-
versally afflicting the country. Out of several
cloth factories, only one is employed, and that
only partially. The machinery is rusting. The
depression in agriculture is dreadful ; and there
is not a tradesman in the town free from com-
plaint.

Thirty-two prisoners were sentenced to death at
the Salisbury and county assizes ; 20 were trans,
ported, and 40 imprisoned for various periods.
Mr. Justice Bosanqnet, in lamenting to the Grand
Jury the state of the calendar, said, " I am in-
clined to think that this increase of crime is to be
attributed to the pressure of that distress which
now unfortunately prevails in the country, rather
than to any alarming increase of depravity
amongst the lower orders!"

DORSETSHIRE.— At these assizes, 12 pri-
toners were condemned to death, 12 transported,
and several imprisoned.

14 prisoners were condemned at Dorset assizes,
7 transported, and 12 to hard labour and im-
prisonment.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE.— Feb. 25, a public din-
ner was given at Cambridge to the gentlemen
against whom the corporation of that town
brought actions, to try their right to the tolls,
known by the name of " StreetTolls" and to ce-
lebrate the triumphant result that has opened the
market of Cambridge, and overturned the op-
pression and unlawful demands of that corporate
body. After dinner, allusion was frequently made
in the respective speeches to Colonel French and
the Duke of Rutland, as connected with the pre-
sent state of the representation of that town to
Parliament, and to the place worth .£2,000 per
annum which the colonel receives, and of which
Mr. Wells said he would do the business for
.£200 : an object worth attending to in the dis-
tressed state of the country,

OXFORDSHIRE.— At these assizes, 8 pri-
soners received sentence of death, 6 of transpor-
tation, and a few of imprisonment.

NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.-At the Lent as-
sizes, 12 prisoners received sentence of death,
and 9 were transported.

A meeting of the freeholders of this county
was held, March 12, at the Shire-Hall, North-
ampton, for the purpose of taking into consider-
ation the great distress, privations, and diffi-
culties of the agricultural, commercial, manu-
facturing, and other interests of this county and
the kingdom in general, when a petition was
unanimously voted to Parliament praying relief,
by adopting the strictest economy in all branches
of public expenditure.

RENT— A meeting of the freeholders has been
held at Pcnnenden Heath, when it wan unani-

mously resolved to address the King for an in-
stantaneous Reduction in the Civil, Military and
Church establishments, and a Reform in Par-
liament. High debates took place, and Field-
Marshal Cobourg's immense income and emo-
luments were alluded to — petitions were also
voted to the Lords and Commons.

RUTLANDSHIRE.— A meeting of the agri-
culturists of the county of Rutlnnd was held at
Okeham, at which a petition to Parliament was
agreed to, which attributed the difficulties of the
country to excessive importation of foreign pro-
duce at inadequate prohibitory duties, and the
contraction of the currency without a suitable
diminution of the public burdens, and praying
for retrenchment, alteration in the present tithing
system, reduction of taxes,' and for a reform in
the House of Commons.

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE.— A private meeting
was convened in Thurland-hall, Nottingham, for
the purpose of discussing the propriety of forming
a "Nottingham Political Union," similar to that
lately instituted in Birmingham, when it was
unanimously resolved that a •• General Political
Union '' should be formed between the middle
and lower classes of the people of that town. A
committee was then appointed to prepare the ne-
cessary regulations.

At Nottingham county assizes, 7 prisoners re-
ceived sentence of death, 4 of whom were under
20 years of age.

SURREY.— A meeting has been held at Epsom
of the freeholders of this county, when several re-
solutions on the distress of the country were
agreed to, as well as a petition embodying the
same, including a prayer for the radical reform
of the Commons! -The county members at-
tended.

CORNWALL.— A public meeting has been held
at Bodmin, on the prevailing distress, when re-
solutions were entered into and a petition resolved
on to the Legislature, praying an inquiry into it,
and also into the present defective state of the re«
presentation of the Commons!

A meeting has been held at Liskeard Town-Hall,
when a petition to Parliament, embracing a reform
in the representation of the people, as well at
the very great distress now prevailing, was car-
ried unanimously.*

* Mr. Grubb, who proposed the successful pe-
tition (there being two proposed), said, " It was
his firm belief, that ' milk and water ' petitions
would avail nothing. It was the duty of erery
honest man to speak out ; nor could any doubt
that it was so, when the distress of the country
was considered. Ministers would not grant ade-
quate relief until compelled to do so by an honest
House of Commons, constitutionally elected by
the voice of the people ! ! ! Here was the bane of
the Sta'e ; the real source of the evils all now
deplored. If the people had been represented in
reality, government never could have contracted
an enormous National Debt, and the overwhelm-
ing amount of taxation required to pay the in-
terest of that debt would not have been re-
quired!!!"—" This." says the tl'est Briton and
Cornwall Advertiser, " is a new event in the
domestic politics of Cornwall ; and is, we trust,
the precursor of more important occurrences.
Cornwall sends 44 members to Parliament, and
yet now begins to see the necessity of a r*-
form!!!"

THE

j MONTHLY MAGAZINE •:

OP
POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES.

VOL. IX.] MAY, 1830. [No. 53.

THE SESSION OF PARLIAMENT.

THE national opinion of Parliament has for many years been settled.
We must speak of its original purposes with the homage due to a great
instrument of the Constitution ; of its former efforts, with the admiration
due to the highest powers of the human mind exerted for the highest pur-
poses of empire and liberty ; and of its present state as the place of se-
curity against arrest, the place of oratory to the Whittle Harveys and the
Humes, and the place of emolument and — proh nefas! — of power to the
Peels, the Herrieses, and the Goulburns. We must bear with those things.
The nation may yet see a change, and we shall rejoice when the time
comes. But whether the Nation deserves to see that change ; or whether
the "progeniem daturi vitiosiorem" be not the natural destiny of the British
empire henceforth, are questions on which we choose to give no opinion.
One point, however, is clear — that the direction of the public mind has
been invested in authorities of another class than the formal harangues
of St. Stephen's j that the arena of all the great questions is now in
the public journals and periodical writings ; and that men glance over
the parliamentary articles without much more reverence for the mini-
sterial speeches than for the ministerial character.

There never has been a session in which more important concerns
seemed to urge themselves upon the Legislature. Distress, undeniable
and extensive, among the most intelligent and active part of the English
population ; the manufacturers sinking into rapid pauperism ; agriculture
dejected; our foreign concerns in a state of singular confusion. Yet, what
has been done to meet those difficulties ? What display of legislative
wisdom has been made ? What great measure of manliness and know-
ledge has been put in act by the Ministry ? Nothing. Things have been
left to themselves. The manufacturers have been told that they are
without remedy, and are not starving, as they had the presumption to
suppose ; the agriculturists, that they are without remedy ; the foreign
concerns of England have been left to struggle as they may : Turkey is
dismembered : Russia is raised to a height of power which, as sure as
there is a sky above us, will, before the next generation, come down like
an avalanche on the pride of England. Portugal, almost a British province
by the wise policy of our former Governments, is at this hour almost an
enemy's country by the feebleness and palsy of our present one. The

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53. ' 3 R

490 The Session of Parliament. [MAY,

West Indies are kept in a state of fretful anxiety, which in the first dis-
turbance with America threatens the total abscission of those invaluable
possessions. And what has been done ? Nothing. The Commander
in Chief, we should say the first Lord of the Treasury, has galloped a
good deal between Windsor and Whitehall, and secured his own salary
and that of his military staff in the House : he has shot pheasants and
filled up places ; and beyond those eminent national services we cannot
for our souls discover what he has done ; unless it be that he has made
a protest against the attack on Algiers with more than a certain number
of troops, which protest the French Cabinet seem to have treated with
the same scorn as his protest against their expedition to Greece ; and that
he has proposed Prince Leopold for the Greek throne ; the dullest of
men for the most difficult of situations ; the most unpopular of men for
a situation where popular manners are essential ; and the most penurious
of men for a situation where the most generous liberality would not be
more than enough to conciliate a people at once impoverished, insubor-
dinate, and suspicious of all European interposition.

Let us then hear no more of the wisdom of the field-marshal states-
man. He has one knowledge — that every third man he meets is
only waiting to be corrupted; and for the lust of power this is enough.
But we in vain solicit any one proof of his powers beyond that of turning
a loud-tongued adversary into a silent slave ; in swelling the ministerial
train from the ranks of pseudo-patriotism ; and in turning nobles with
many sons, and lawyers with few clients, into the worshippers of the
man who declared, that " he would be mad to think of being minister !"

A sketch of the principal topics of the session will amuse our readers.

Mr. Whittle Harvey — for in the present house this person is a pro-
minent member, and has actually a right to be a prominent member —
brought forward the fruits of his inquiries into public jobs, by a motion
on what he called the gross mismanagement of the Crown-lands, and
those under the charge of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests.
The chief part of the Crown-lands had originally been either the estates
of the great English families who had in their turn succeeded to the
throne, or the estates of the monasteries, and forfeitures of the great
nobles in the wars. On the accession of Anne it was determined to give
up their possession to the people, a civil list being granted in return.
A statute was made for their management, by which no lease of the lands
was to be given for a longer term than thirty-one years, nor of the
houses for longer than fifty ; the rent being always one third of the
value, and the other two thirds being paid by a fine.

This arrangement, of course, let in a large number of interests, almost
the whole of which were jobs ; and the underlings of Government carved
the Crown-lands at their pleasure. Enormous trusts were let for a
merely nominal rent, and the fine went into the pockets of office, where
it was not thought more lucrative to carve an estate out of the lands.
But the job now forms an enormous amount, if we take the actual
value of the whole of the Crown-lands ; independently of the Woods and
Forests, and that portion which might be considered to belong ex-
clusively to the royal person. " There were 130 manors worth 1,000/.
each ; there were freehold estates producing an annual rental of500,000/.
which, at twenty-five years' purchase, would produce 12,500,000/. ; there
were ground-rents in various parts of London, producing upwards of
50,000/. a-year, which, at forty years' purchase, would bring 2,000,000/.;

1830.] The Session of Parliament. 491

the rents from houses were estimated at 20,000/. annually, which, at
eighteen years' purchase, would produce 360,000/. ; the farms were worth
160,000/. ; the waste lands in forests were estimated at 86,000 acres,
which, at 5/. an acre, would produce 430,000/. ; the allotments under
488 enclosure acts, passed within the last forty years, were estimated at
225,000/. ; the church livings were considered to be worth 100,000/.,
which, at twenty years' purchase, would produce 2,000,000/. ; making
a total of 17,805,000/."

The motion was, of course., negatived.

In the Committee of Supply Sir James Graham moved the abolition
of the office of lieutenant-general of Ordnance, and charged the whole
Ordnance department with being kept up to swell the influence of Go-
vernment.

" There was, first, the master-general, a peer of Parliament, and a per-
son of considerable importance ; then there was the lieutenant-general,
member for the county of Gloucester ; then the surveyor-general was
the member for Sandwich, and the clerk of the Ordnance for Newport,
and another important officer for Cambridge, and the clerk of the De-
liveries for Scarborough; finally, there was the treasurer of the Ord-
nance, a most important personage, of whom he knew not in what terms
suitably to speak, so varied and so valuable were his services. He knew
not whether to regard him as a civil or a military functionary. In the
House he was looked upon as the muster-master general, and, he might
add, the Ajaxflagellifer of the Commons' House. He could mean none
but the honourable member for Bishop's Castle." ( A laugh.)

So much for the public opinion of that worthiest of whippers, Billy
Holmes, whose office is to hunt the coffee-houses, the smoking-rooms,
and every other room of every other kind, for the lazy, the sleeping, the
smoking, or, however may be employed, the great legislators of this
fortunate country : and for this lofty employment this poor fellow has
only 1500/. a-year, besides certain more private good things for life.

But this is no matter of jest, after all. The people must wring from
their own necessities every shilling that remunerates — such is the word— —
the services of the whole Billy Holmes' tribe. Sir James Graham spoke
with natural scorn and indignation on the subject. " Let him then hear
no more of East Retford, wjien Sandwich and Queenborough were over-
awed by the Admiralty, Newport by the Treasury, and other boroughs
by the Ordnance. Let them hear no more, then, of the great borough-
holders ; let them not be told of the Duke of Newcastle and of other
noblemen in the same circumstances, when such doings as those of the
Ordnance and the Treasury and the Admiralty were before their eyes.
Could it be that his Majesty's present Government were incapable of
understanding the signs of the times ? If they possessed but the most
limited capacity for reading those signs, they would perceive that the
time was fast approaching when the people would no longer endure the
prodigious establishments with which it was loaded, and their inevitable
consequence — a weight of debt and of taxation of which the history of
mankind afforded no parallel. They might rest assured that the weight
of that taxation would speedily make the people cry aloud in a voice
that would be heard — cry aloud for a still further reduction of all public
establishments, with a view to the removal of public burdens. Now,
after having voted, in time of peace, a military force of 82,000 men, it
would be little matter of surprise that the people should begin to demand

3R2

492 The Session of Parliament. [MAY,

of the Parliament,, in no very measured terms, that it should stop the
bleeding artery through which the wealth and the resources of the nation
were flowing. Let them but repeat their vote of Friday last, and they
would answer the just expectations of the people ; let them but repeat
that vote, and, though the Minister might dissolve them, yet they would
stand."

The motion was, of course, negatived.

But then came on a business in which the House found full employ-
ment for its deliberation. The topic was pleasant and popular, and the
House exhibited the fullest attendance of the session. This was the
Ellenborough Divorce Bill, which had been sent down from the Lords.
The brilliant part of the first night's performance was. Miss Margaret
Steele's examination before the Collective Wisdom.

Miss Margaret Steele, Lady Ellenborough' s governess, stated that she
had remonstrated with Lady Ellenborough on levities in her conduct.

" Did you ever speak with Lord Ellenborough respecting his wife ?"
— " Yes ; I told him she had some associates which I thought bad."

" Do you recollect who these objectionable associates were ?" — (Loud
cries of " No, No.")

" Were those associates gentlemen or ladies ?" — " Both."

" Were these associates introduced into the house by Lord Ellen-
borough?" — " They were of course introduced by Lord Ellenborough."

<f Were they rejected in society by persons of rank ?" — " On the con-
trary."

< ' Were they usually admitted in society at other respectable houses ?"
— " At houses called respectable." (Laughter.}

" Am I to understand that those ladies and gentlemen, to whom you
objected, were afterwards visited by Lady Ellenborough at their
houses ?" — f( I know one individual was, to whom I have particularly
alluded."

' f You considered that Lady Ellenborough, being a young person, had
better avoid these persons ?" — " I considered them bad associates for
Lady Ellenborough, or any one else."

" They were received in the best society in England ?" — " In fashion-
able society." (Laughter.)

" Were they such as were received in the society in which Lord and
Lady Ellenborough moved ?" — " They were, but I warned Lord Ellen-
borough against them."

" Will you try to recollect what warning you gave Lord Ellen-
borough?" — " I warned him particularly against one lady ; but I can-
not mention names/'

" Were these objectionable associates unknown to Lady Ellenborough
before her marriage ?" — " Certainly."

" What were your objections to the male associates ?" — " I merely
knew them by reputation to be profligate men."

' ' Did the witness warn Lord Ellenborough on more than one occasion
against them ?" — " I did not."

" Can you recollect what answer he made to your warnings ?" — " He
laughed !"

Examined by Sir H. HARDINGE. — " Were those persons who visited
at Lord Ellenborough's, and whom you thought objectionable persons, of
rank in England ?" — " They were."

" Were they persons who are usually seen at places of public amuse-
ments ?" — " They were."

1830.] The Session of Parliament. 493

The third reading of the bill produced the strongest possible animad-
versions on the conduct of Lord Ellenborough. Dr. Phillimore, the
civilian, stated the law of the case. By the law of England,, marriage
was indissoluble, except in the single instance of the crime of adultery.
The custom was to legislate on the particular case. The first of which
was that of Lord Roos, in 1669, afterwards Duke of Rutland. The dis-
cussion on it lasted for several years. King Charles attended at the de-
bates in the House. The bill for the dissolution of the marriage passed by
only a small majority ; and Burnet attributed its passing to a sceptical
and libertine spirit at court, and a desire in the King to get a divorce.
From that time to 1800, a period of one hundred and thirty years, there
had been only one hundred and thirty-two divorces by act of Parlia-
ment ; whereof eight were in the first forty-five years ; fifty in the next
sixty, and seventh-four in the last twenty-five. Then the divorces ran
on in rapid proportion ; for from 1820 to 1830 there had been twenty-
six cases of divorce.

Dr. Phillimore after adverting to the repeated cautions that had
been given to Lord Ellenborough of the temper and habits of his wife,
and the nature of her associates, and other circumstances, which must
have put any man of common sense on his guard, came to the separa-
tion of the parties for more than six months ; — ( ( a circumstance which
in any court of justice," said he, " would be considered one that ought
to have excited great alarm, and increased vigilance and attention on the
part of the husband. But it appeared to have excited neither the one
nor the other." Then, " it appeared that this unfortunate lady was in
the habit of going daily to Prince Schwartzenberg ; that she went in
her own carriage, and with her own servant ; that her grossness of con-
duct was visible to the whole street ; that her coachman saw this prince
in constant attendance upon her at all times, and at all kinds of places.
And yet Lord Ellenborough knew nothing about all this !" From those
circumstances Dr. Phillimore felt himself compelled to come to the
conclusion, that this noble lord had no right to the aid of the Legis-
lature. " The House were called upon to decide upon this case in
their judicial capacity, and justice should be their primary object — -
justice not only to the parties themselves, but to the public ; and in doing
so, they should give all the consideration which was due to the sanctity
of domestic life, to the public morals, and to all the circumstances which
crowd upon the mind in reference to the inviolable nature of the mar-
riage tie. Under all the circumstances of the case, — after such evidence
as had been given by Miss Steele — evidence regarding which he doubted
whether it would have been sufficient to obtain a verdict in a court of com-
mon law, — after the absence of other evidence which might and ought to
have been given — after the consideration of the facility with which that
evidence might have been produced by the noble applicant, and of the dis-
cretion which the House had in its power, and was bound to exercise in
all applications of this kind — he said it with pain, that under all the cir-
cumstances of this case, he could not give his vote in favour of the relief
which was sought to be obtained by this bill." So much for the case of
this guardian of India ! the noble person who has the appointment of
the Bishops to India, and who, in his part, is to sustain the moral ma-
jesty of the British Empire !

After this important discussion, the interest of affairs faded away
prodigiously. Budgets, corn regulations, coin, foreign policy, were talked
of, and talked over, until the Easter holidays, which dismissed the senate

494 The Session of Parliament. [MAY,

to enjoy its leisure " in green fields and pastures new." The bill for the
emancipation of the Jews produced a brief but,, from its subject, interest-
ing debate. The history of their sufferings in England since the con-
quest is one of the darkest pages in our annals. For about one hundred
and fifty years after the conquest, they were treated more like wild
beasts than men, by both kings and people. In those periods of kingly
and popular poverty, the Jews, as being the chief possessors of wealth,
were allowed to exist only for the purpose of being plundered. The
most horrid conceptions of their crimes were propagated, to afford some
kind of justification for this public cruelty, and the Jew became the ab-
horrence as well as the spoil of England.

In the reign of Henry the Third, laws were passed to deny the Jews
the right of holding or transmitting land, of possessing any other cha-
racter than that of serfs, or slaves of the Crown, and of solemnizing their
worship in a tone so loud as to be heard by " the Christian people." —
The statute de Judaismo followed in the reign of Edward the First, allow-
ing some privileges, but forbidding them to take interest for money,
which was then called usance, or usury. But even this tyranny was
mercy to what rapidly succeeded. Edward's wars probably compelled
him to find money where he could : the Jews were a ready victim, and
at one fell swoop he confiscated their whole property, and drove their
whole number, fifteen thousand, from England.

Some attempts were made for their return in the protectorate, but
they failed, probably from Cromwell's reluctance to rouse the rigid pre-
judices of the puritans. However, the practice of the excluding laws was
so modified by him, and the increasing common sense of the country,
that the Jews, in the reigns of Charles the Second and James the Second,
became a numerous community, and received letters of denizenship.
But it is scarcely wonderful that, with the Jew's experience of the se-
verity of the English laws and English prejudices, he should still look more
to his brethren in foreign countries, than to the unpaternal government
of a land in which he still suffered every stigma of popular scorn. He
was essentially an alien, and the Governments of William and Anne, the
former of which laid on an alien-duty, and the latter an ordinance that
the Jewish parent should provide for every child turned Christian, were
partially justified by the circumstances of their time of general European
anxiety and war. As this period passed away, with it passed away the
alien-duty, which was repealed under George the First. The feeling of
Government was soon so far from alarm, that, in 1753, Mr. Pelham,the
minister, brought in and carried the bill for the naturalization of the
Jews. But the popular prejudices had not slept, and the bill was next
year repealed. The Ministry thus took part in an act of impolicy and
injustice, on the old placeman principle of giving up any thing rather
than their salaries.

Since that period, however, no legislative measure has increased the
burdens of the Jew. The oath of allegiance passed in Elizabeth's time
contained nothing adverse to the Jews' feelings, except the form of its
being taken on the Evangelists. The oath of abjuration contained no-
thing obnoxious to them, but the words " on the faith of a Christian,"
which not being their faith, could form no bond nor profession of their
obligations. The sacramental test was till lately got rid of by all dis-
senters through the yearly bill of indemnity. But the difficulty is now
increased, for the test has been replaced by a new declaration, also " on
the faith of a Christian."

1830.] The Session of Parliament. 495

The present restrictions against Jews are many and serious. A Jew
cannot hold any office civil or military. He cannot be a barrister, solicitor,,
pleader, conveyancer, attorney, or clerk. He is totally excluded from
all employment or emolument in the most active and powerful of all
civil professions. He cannot be a member of Parliament, nor even a
voter, if any one should choose to demand his oath. He is shut out
from all corporations. In fact, he cannot be any thing which requires
the taking of the oath of allegiance ; a prohibition which obviously
amounts very nearly to a total exclusion of the Jew from all kinds of
public trust or employment.

The arguments against this emancipation were not many, nor are we
convinced by them. It was said, " that the Jews had never possessed any
political rights in any Christian country." To this we say, more shame
for those Christian countries which combined the doctrines of Christianity
with a practice directly repugnant to its tenets ; Christianity in no in-
stance meddling with the civil claims of men, but distinctly ordering
that if we should do to all men even as we would they should do unto
us ;" a command which directly prohibits our refusing any man any
rights, or even any good, except on the probable ground of its public or
private injury: a point which in the present instance remains to be proved.
It was alleged with respect to the Roman Catholics, that their emancipa-
tion was a different thing from that now claimed, for that the Roman
Catholic merely demanded a restoration of privileges of which he had
been deprived by the state. But why had those rights been forfeited ?
By the crime of that Roman Catholic ; by the evidence, that while they
were continued, the state was insecure ; and that the principle of popery
was downfall to protestantism. In how much better a position does the
man stand who has never been tried, than the man who, whenever he
was tried, was found a culprit and an enemy.

u But the Jews were aliens, and felt more for their foreign connexions
than for England." What wonder that they should, when England
branded them as aliens, and refused the many interest in her welfare ! —
" But this would give all British subjects in the colonies or Canada a right
to sit in Parliament." The obvious answer is, that those colonists have
legislatures of their own, where they may sit : but if a Canadian or West
Indian should desire to sit for an English town or county in Parliament,
why should he, in reason, be forbidden to do so ? — " The introduction of
a Jew would, in seven years, produce parliamentary reform." We are by
no means certain that this would be an evil ; on the contrary, the carrying
of the " atrocious bill" has fixed the minds of many most wise and honour-
able men on the necessity of parliamentary reform. As to the bribery es-
sential to the bringing a Jew in for a county or borough, we should like to
know what member is prepared to throw the first stone. What becomes
of the twenty and forty thousands that fly from the member's pocket at
an election ? But the argument principally relied on was, the faith of
the Jew, which by being opposed to Christian belief, rendered him unfit
for the care of a Christian church. To this argument, which, when urged
by so excellent and sincere a man as Sir Robert Inglis, we are fully
satisfied was offered in honesty and sincerity, we answer, that all we
have to consider in the case is, whether the Jew is, like the Papist, bound
to overthrow the Church of England, or to introduce idolatry in place
of our religion, or to introduce any other religion. In all those points
the Papist is obnoxious ; yet him we have admitted. The Jew is clear,
and why have we the moral right to repel him ?

496 The Session of Parliament. QMAY,

As to making a man a legislator for the church and state, who does
not believe in Christianity, is it not practically done every day ? How
many members of the House of Commons are Unitarians? and undoubt-
edly it is a contradiction in terms to call a man a Christian who denies
the divinity, the doctrines, the merits, and the power of the Lord Christ.
Yet those men, not being bound, as the Papist is, to overthrow the church,
legislate for it without obvious injury. How many Deists, how many
Socinians, how many men who never trouble their heads with asking
themselves what they are, legislate for the church ? To expect a Jew
to feel any kind of zeal for the Church of England would be idle. But
we defy him to feel less zeal or possess less knowledge on the subject
than many a man who takes a part in the national councils.

To think that because the Jews have lain under a divine malediction
for ages, men will please God by treating them with severity or injustice j
is to mingle ourselves with the divine wrath in a manner totally unau-
thorised and culpable. Our duty is, in all instances, to show mercy and
love, to give every man service and justice. But the scriptures not
merely give this great command, but plainly declare, that kindness to
the Jew is an eminently acceptable service to God ; that severity to the
Jew is an eminently displeasing offence ; that he still loves them, for the
sake of their ancestors ; and that he will exact a terrible vengeance from
their oppressors ; and that this vengeance has followed, we believe may
be shown in the history of every nation which has made itself con-
spicuous in cruelty to the Jews, even in modern times. Our conclusion
is, that so far from " doing God service," in excluding the Jew from
any privilege which might ease his condition, we are presumptuously
and hazardously exposing ourselves to the divine displeasure by op-
pressing his people, rejected as they are for a time ; that we have no
right to add human infliction to that measure of suffering which it has
pleased the Divine Wisdom to lay upon them; and that our duty in this
case, as in all others, is to leave the working of Providence to its own
ways, following the great command, te to do justice, and love mercy,
and to walk humbly with our God."

The bill will probably be thrown out, because it connects itself with
no political interest. It promises no additional strength to the minister,
nor any addition to the importance of his clerks in office. But if our
disgust for him and his could be heightened, it is by hearing the pro-
testations of those eminent champions of the Constitution and Christianity,
the Goulburns, and Herrieses, &c. haranguing against it as hostile to their
dearly beloved church and religion ; Mr. Goulburn, honest man, objecting
to it on the further ground that this change of oaths, and so forth, would
bring scandal on the Parliament, as a (< vacillating body, capable of altering
its conceptions suddenly upon great points, and unsaying this year what
it said a dozen months before." Of such materials are the consciences and
countenances of public men made in our time! Peel had the policy to
keep aloof. The pretext of his father's illness answered his purpose in
avoiding the necessity of a harangue against his solitary elector, the Jew
Masseh, Manasseh Lopez. He thus also escaped having directly applied
to him the brand which Sir Robert Inglis declared must be on the fore-
head of every Jew representative.

But those men and their generation will pass away. Other minds
will yet have the regulation of England, if she is to hold her rank among
nations ; and we may see manliness and virtue once more the distinc-
tions of a British statesman.

1830.] C 497 ]

A CHAPTER ON CIGARS.

How many are the moments in a man's life (let us philosophise for an
instant) when the mind, that metaphysical curiosity, that ethereal es-
sence, ever present and never visible, refuses to fix itself; when it floats
hither and thither like the thistledown, seeking some object whereon it
may find rest ; when it wanders about from parish to parish without
obtaining relief. There are times when neither an arm-chair with a fen-
der for a footstool — nor a gossip with a pair of glancing eyes — nor a stroll
by moonlight — nor a song — nor a bottle though ever so old — nor a book
though ever so new — can administer the particular balm which our fan-
cies or our faculties require. No ; there are certain periods of time, cer-
tain points of existence, when nothing in nature can enliven our droop-
ing senses, restore a tone and tranquillity to the mind, and perfectly sa-
tisfy all the wandering and undefined desires of the moment, but a pinch —
a full, fresh, fervent pinch of snuff— pungent and unadulterated. There
are occasions when the spirit of man turns in weariness from the won-
ders that surround it — the glories of art, the enchantments of nature — and
centres all its wants and wishes, soothes all its anxiety and disappoint-
ment, in a genuine Havannah. It is the only thing that precisely suits
his case.

"Blessings on the man," says Sancho, "that first invented sleep."
But what wreaths shall we twine, what rewards shall we invoke, for the
head of him that first invented smoke ! Mysterious essence, emblem of
our existence, type of our desires and our dreams, our graceful vanities
and shadowy ambition ! A cigar - the very word has a fragrance in it.
The pen, as it writes, seems to acquire a rich brown hue, and pours
forth, instead of cold solemn syllables, oriental breath and delicious per-
fumes. Its odour transcends that of a rose, or a roast pig Nothing
in life is like the flavour of a real cigar, to those who know how to enjoy
it. All that smoke are not smokers. There are persons who prefer a
bad cigar to a good one, and who puff out as much cloud and vapour in
a year as Mount Etna, without tasting a particle of it. Some French
writer has said, that it is not every one that knows how to take a
walk. It may as truly be asserted that it is not every one that knows
what smoke is ! But to those who are in the secret, your initiated few,
to whom nature has given a finer sense of enjoyment, a divine per-
ception of the beautiful — to these, the curling cloudy column that rises
from the lips is ethereal air, the element of a new life.. It springs up
as from an altar, and floats on the air like incense. Through the narrow
tube of a cigar gushes a full flood, a Nile of enthusiasm and delight,
refreshing the senses and refining the imagination. Really, when honours
and eulogies are showered upon objects whose claims upon our gratitude
are so very apocryphal, something should be said or sung of the merits
of a weed, that is hourly productive of a wise pleasure and a healthful
recreation. If Steele or Pope were living, instead of Sir Walter and
Wordsworth, the memory of this fragrant and familiar little ministrant
to our comforts would be enshrined in golden verse, and periods full of
grateful praise.

But as all are not epicures, we will look at our subject in a less ele-
vated light, and regard it merely as the medium of an elegant courtesy,
a harmless indulgence, a simple but a social luxury. To Dr. Lardner,
or to any other learned labourer in science, who may assure us that

M.M. New Series.— VOL IX, No. 53. 3 S

498 A Chapter on Cigars. [MAY,

smoke is stupifying and injurious, and that snuff produces sickness and
intoxication, we should make a very pantomimic, but at the same time,
a very philosophic reply. We should venture to hand him a cigar from
Gliddon's, and beg that he would do us the favour to take a pinch out
of our private box. This is the argument we should resort to, and we
think it would induce him to publish an erratum to his next edition. If
he declined, we would ask him, while he objected to tobacco as a soother
or a stimulant, what he thought of it as a convenience ! What awkward
pauses would sometimes occur in conversation, and what slumbers would
steal occasionally over our studies, if Sir Francis Drake's antipodes were
to rise, and carry the glorious weed out of England. We would rather
(Rothschild forgive us !), that the Bank should stop payment. Society
could not go on. Old Time would stand still, and, taking a pinch of sand,
turn his hour-glass into a snuff-box.

A snuff-box is a letter of introduction ; it has been the fountain of
many friendships. When you cannot ask a stranger his opinion of the
new opera or the new ministry, you can offer him your box, with a grace-
ful as well as a profitable politeness. Even when the weather and other
popular topics are exhausted, a pinch is always eloquent, always conver-
sational, always convenient. And as for a cigar, it is the very symbol
of congeniality. You sit in a circle, and the smoke rises up in a visible
union : It is like the meeting of souls. If you have nothing to say, it
discourses with a sage and silent wisdom ; if otherwise, it gives an ele-
gant turn to your sentences, and comes in at a pause like a note of admi-
ration ! There is much virtue in a whiff.

If we were in possession of another mulberry- tree, we would have it
all turned into snuff-boxes, as the truest compliment that could be paid
to the spirit of Shakspeare. And assuredly we would rather have the
broken bowl of thy pipe, Tobias Shandy, or even a grain or two of the
ashes that it held, than the arrow that pierced Achilles, or a lock of
Caesar's hair.

We are well aware that there are learned men still living who contend
that there is no enjoyment in life ; but then it is quite clear that they
have never been to the cigar divan in King-street. Once let them taste
the magic of a richly flavoured leaf, over a cup of coffee and a magazine
just published, and the next treatise they may write will tell a tale mar-
vellously different. They will then find out that a cigar and coffee are
the true Sublime and Beautiful. B.

1830.] [ 499 ]

BRITISH INDIA, AND THE RENEWAL OF THE COMPANY S CHARTER.

THE destinies of our empire in the East are at this moment depending
upon the fiat of the legislature; and we are most anxious to impress
upon our readers the great importance of the questions upon which
the parliament are about to decide, whilst the scales are still trem-
bling in equilibrium, and whilst the public mind is in that state of
excitement, which, when it is natural and healthy, fits it best both to
receive and digest information. We shall endeavour not only to awaken
still more thoroughly the national interest, and to furnish genuine and
wholesome materials for it to work upon ; but shall also exert ourselves
to meet and combat some of those fallacies and misstatements on the
subjects now under discussion, which would seem to be most prevalent
and mischievous.

The periodical curiosity and attention which the affairs of British
India excite in this country, — as contrasted, in their warmth and brevity
of duration, with the long cycles of apathy and indifference which pre-
cede and follow them, — remind us, very forcibly of the accounts which
we read in old wonder-loving authors of the temporary resuscitations of
comatose patients. After lying in perfect lethargy for days, or even
weeks, scarcely even exhaling enough breath to bedim a looking-glass, they
suddenly began to yawn and stretch themselves, and anon sat bolt up-
right in their beds, calling lustily, according to their previous habits,
for bread and cheese and beer, or wine and a sandwich ; whilst the
astonished attendants could scarcely suppress their wonder at the acute-
ness of their recovered perceptions, and the eagerness with which they
proceeded to enter upon the domestic concerns of the family. But the
marvel was always short-lived, for before the beer could be drawn, or
the bread sliced, irresistible drowsiness once more weighed down the
eyelids and senses, and the sufferers were consigned, unrefreshed, to a
second trance of a fortnight.

We are guilty of no exaggeration in thus comparing the occasional
starts of animation, which particular circumstances have, from time to
time, excited, with regard to our Indian possessions, with the brief con-
sciousness of a person awaking from an unnatural state of torpor, and
almost instantly relapsing into it. Indeed, the analogy would be com-
plete, if the trances from which we have drawn our illustration, had not
frequently been mere trickery and imposture, whilst the moral lethargy
in question is undeniably genuine. With very partial exceptions, not
only those classes of the community who are, generally speaking, the
best informed, but even our Senators and Statesmen are ignorant upon
subjects connected with India, — its history, geography, and statistics,
and the manners and character of the people, — to a degree which would
be absolutely ludicrous, if it were not humiliating to our national pride
to reflect how little we are superior in these respects to our Spanish co-
temporaries, who only awoke from their protracted stupor of indifference
with regard to their magnificent trans- Atlantic colonies, to find that they
had lost them. St. Stephen's might produce its hundreds quite upon a
par with any Hidalgo of Castile or Andalusian bull-fighter whatever ;
and if we be more fortunate than our neighbours in retaining our hold
upon a distant empire, we may thank the energies and talent of those

3S2

500 British India, and the Renewal of [[MAY,

who are toiling to maintain it with so little encouragement or notice, and
who, indeed, may at all times esteem themselves fortunate, if they are
suffered to serve their country in security from sneer and sarcasm,—
the misrepresentations of reviewers *, and the flippant impertinence of
fashionable novels.

We have not time nor space to speculate very deeply upon the causes
of this ignorance, and, of what is worse, the disinclination to seek for
and acquire information. We presume, however, that the existence of
these feelings will not be disputed. They pervade almost every class of
society, although there be scarcely a family under the very highest and
above the lowest classes, which has not sent a scion to India in some
capacity, or on some errand ; and they have kept their ground in a
manner highly becoming a British prejudice, whilst astounded and
envious Europe has been watching the rapid and uninterrupted ex-
tension of our Oriental dominions, until, with the exception of a few;
tributary or dependant states, our empire stretches from the banks of
the Btirrampooter to the mouth of the Indus, and from Cape Comorin
to the eternal snows of the Himalayas. It is wonderful that the natives
of a small island, at the other end of the globe, should have achieved
such gigantic conquests, and should be able to stretch their arm to main-
tain them over so many thousand leagues of intervening ocean; but it
is far more unaccountable, that a spectacle of so much grandeur should
be regarded by those, who, nationally speaking, have worked these
marvels, with mere cold and listless acquiescence. It was not thus, we
apprehend, that the Romans contemplated the flight of their eagles,
and the acknowledgment of their supremacy by distant nations ; it is
not thus that empire has been acquired and upheld by any people but
ourselves, whose sons have happily public virtue enough to stimulate
them to exertion, although their most successful efforts have been passed
over almost unnoticed, and although applause and honorary distinctions
have been dealt out to them with the most niggard hand, whilst ser-
vices of less intrinsic merit, if performed nearer home, are certain step-
ping-stones to title and consideration.

There is nothing more certain than that credulity is the constant at-
tendant upon ignorance ; and that when particular conjunctions stimulate
the public appetite for information, the great body of inquirers ma-

* It may not be amiss to instance a case in which there is a very happy amalgamation of
ignorance and slander. The Quarterly Review for June, 1827, contains an article upon
Russian Missions to Bokhara and Khiva, and the writer, after speculating upon the pro-
bability of an invasion of India by that power, cannot allow so fair an opportunity of vi-
lification to pass unimproved. He deprecates the folly of the military arrangements. "Our
great armies and our splendid establishments are mostly confined to the sea-coasts, where they
are the least necessary ; the lower extremities of th'e great Indian body are well clothed,
and fringed with costly garniture, while the head and trunk are left naked and exposed.
On the south-eastern frontier, where no danger can now be apprehended, -we keep up a large
army to sicken and die in the swamps and jungles of the Ganges, the Honghty) and the
Burrumpooter ; while on the north-western frontier, where every thing is to be apprehended,
and where the mountain air breathes health and vigour into the human frame, we have no
army at all." Vol. xxxvi. p. 136.

It is scarcely credible, that whilst the reviewer was writing, the "large army" main-
tained on the south-eastern frontier " to sicken and die," consisted of five regiments of
Native Infantry, or .about 5000 bayonets, — the line to be protected extending more than
ten degrees of latitude ; whilst in the quarter defended by *' no army at all," there were
forces amounting, in the aggregate, to 60,000 or 65,000 men.

1830.] the Company's Charter. 501

nifest much more avidity for the highly-seasoned condiments of ex-
aggeration and misstateinent, than for the flavourless simplicity of truth.
And we need no political economists to inform us that in these cases the
supply is always fully equal to the demand. On the present occasion,
the pending discussions upon the renewal of the Company's charter,
and the interest excited by other coincidences, have proved very hot-
beds for raising polemical pamphlets and articles ; and since, as Dr.
Johnson observes, "he that vilifies established authority will always
find abettors/' there has been a great preponderance, with respect to
activity and vehemence at least, on the side of those to whom the
Company appears to stand in the same relation as Carthage to the
Romans, and who would seem resolved to destroy the monster, which
they have dressed up for the nonce as a moral Guy Faux, by any means
and at any hazard.

Some of the writers to whom we allude are influenced by interest,
some by vindictive feelings, excited by alleged oppression at the hands
of the rulers of the East ; and one author, whose career as a pamphleteer
in the good cause commenced in 1828, and the termination of whose
labours can only as yet be seen, in dim prospective, deep in the womb
of futurity, is the victim of theories as headstrong and untractable as
the most wilful " allegory on the banks of the Nile," and does not appear
to possess any control whatever over the " furor scribendi" with which
he is afflicted. But the exertions of these gentlemen are by no means
confined to the agency of the pen and press, nor is one hand content to
grasp only a single weapon of offence. Mr. Buckingham is the editor
of a periodical publication which is esteemed by all whose opinions it
espouses as the very mace which is to destroy the many-headed Hydra
of Leadenhall-street ; but he also travels the country to preach a
crusade against the existing government of British India ; and at the
moment when British manufactures are selling in the bazars of Calcutta
at prime cost, or somewhat under, and American vessels are taking them
as a return freight, descants in glowing language upon the consumptive
capacities of the Eastern World, and holds up to execration the greedi-
ness of the monopolists who exclude their fellow-countrymen from such
markets. Another gentleman is not only a most energetic pamphleteer,
to say nothing of occasional appearances in the pages of the Oriental
Herald, and the columns of the Times, but, being like Cerberus (Mrs.
Malaprop's " gentleman with three heads"), he also figures as the dry-
nurse of the delegates from Liverpool., and flapper in ordinary to sundry
members of a committee now sitting in the neighbourhood of Westmin-
ster Hall. Nothing but the alcohol of determined animosity could
support weak humanity through such labours; and there can be no
doubt that " a good hater," provided he possess competent talent and
judgment, is a valuable partisan. For he must have made but poor use
of his powers of observation, who has arrived at years of discretion,
without being aware that a very large proportion of the " most thinking
public" are much more easily influenced through the medium of their
feelings, passions, and prejudices, than by any appeal to their reason ;
that many, even of those who do not expect to get any thing in the
scramble, are always ready to club their voices to swell the clamour in
favour of pulling down that which has long been set up ; and that hun-
dreds will read and pin their faith to declamation and invective, who
cannot spare time to collect and weigh evidence, to pore over documents,

502 British India, and the Renewal of [MAY,

and give their attention to argumentative statements and matters of
detail.

Accordingly, the writers to whom we refer, — to omit further mention
of those " who lecture as they go," like some of the heroes of the Anti-
Jacobin, and whose eirea TtTepoEVTO. we cannot undertake to catch and fix
sufficiently for handling in our pages, — have not failed to press the most
vague generalities, and every possible form of vituperation into their
service. The Company would seem, from their allegations, to be a very
incarnation of the principle of evil, the undisputed monarchs of misrule.
Their government, it is said, affords no protection to person or property ;
the police is utterly ineffective ; " the administration of justice is in such
a state that an appeal to it is nearly hopeless* ;" their servants, even the
judges, are hostile to te all the private enterprises of British subjects f ;"
all the sources from which they derive their revenue are polluted J ; and
in addition to all this, lo ! it is written, that they are oppressors and ex-
tortioners, the grinders of the faces of the poor, the plunderers of the
purses of the rich ; very Machiavels in every thing but talent ; with
hearts of stone, and hands of steel to extract all and spare none. To all
these charges, reiterated in a vast variety of forms, and in tropes and
figures of vilification, which we despair even of imitating at the most
humble distance, the public are called upon to give their unqualified
assent, and to follow up the verdict thus dictated to them by a sentence
of deprivation. The dominions which they have so long misgoverned,
as well as the commerce which they have equally mismanaged, are to be
taken from them, and other merchants are to trade, and other sovereigns
to rule in their stead. But with regard to any consistent and intelligible
plan even for pulling down a fabric so old, and so well consolidated by
its own magnitude and its collateral buttresses, except by a bare vote of
the legislature for the abatement of the Company, none of the political
philosophers, who are so nervous in assertion, and fluent in hard names,
nave offered even an outline. Doubtless, however, they have some un-
deniable scheme in reserve, though it be hidden, for the present, from
the eyes of the profane; and, under these circumstances, it would be
most unreasonable indeed, to expect that our illuminati should allow us
to catch even the most hasty glimpse of the stately and symmetrical
edifice which they propose to erect in the place of that which they are
so eager to destroy, " from turret to foundation-stone."

Nevertheless, those who are in any degree practical, all, in short, who
are not the merest spinners of theories and weavers of systems, have a
prejudice in favour of looking, at least, so far before them, as to see solid
footing for their first three or four steps in an untried ford. The water
may be very shallow, Mr. Rickards, as you say ; the bottom may be
very hard, Mr. Crawfurd, as you are pleased to affirm ; and the editor
of the Oriental Herald may echo your asseverations, like the French
charlatan exclaiming, " What the gentlemen say is very true ;" but we,
who are plain men, beg to be permitted to examine the ground a little
for ourselves. Moreover, we shall make bold to inquire whether the
old bridge, which has stood so long, is built upon such erroneous
principles of architecture, and is altogether so rotten and unsafe, as you

* " View of the Present State and Future Prospects of the Free Trade and Colonization
of India," p. 32.

•f Ibid. p. 23. 31. £ Mr. Rickard's Pamphlets, passim.

1830.] the Company s Charter. 503

assert it to be ; and request permission to suspend our judgment until a
fair survey has been instituted, upon an actual and minute examination
of facts and circumstances.

Upon an investigation of this nature we propose to enter. We intend
to inquire in the first place, and principally, how the Company have
governed their magnificent empire ; what wisdom they have shown in
the conduct of affairs so great and momentous as those which have been
committed to their management; how far they have consulted, in
intention, the happiness and best interests of the people under their
sway ; and in what degree their efforts have been actually successful,
when regarded in connexion with the difficulties of situation, and the
resistance of circumstances. And we desire to make these the principal
subjects of our inquiries, because, whatever may be thought by those
whose talk is of cotton twist and piece goods, and who consider the
question now agitated as one entirely of freight and market, demand
and profit, we are most decidedly of opinion that the welfare of our
fellow-subjects is the primary object of consideration. Desirable as it
assuredly is, to create a new market for the manufactures of Manchester
and Paisley, and to increase the exports of Liverpool and Glasgow, we
shall be guilty of the grossest injustice if we purchase those benefits at
the expense of the people of India. The dominion that we enjoy in
that country was bestowed upon us for purposes very different from
that of affording a field for experiment, or for the consumption of the
produce of our spinning jennies ; and although the direct interests of
England ought, doubtless, to be consulted, we shall abuse the trust
committed to us, and eventually deceive ourselves, if we suffer any
selfish and narrow views of immediate advantage to interfere with a
more noble and liberal policy. With reference solely to the world in
which we live, there are motives of action, there are objects of attain-
ment, higher and holier than any that are to be found in merchant's
ledgers, or on the cockets of the custom-house ; and the fruit, however
fair and tempting to the eye, which we greedily catch at, in disregard
or contempt of more sacred obligations, will most indubitably turn to
ashes and wormwood upon our palates. From what has already tran-
spired in the House of Lords, however, we are inclined to indulge a
hope that a benevolent concern for the well-being of the many million
natives of our gigantic dependency will be allowed some weight in the
balance, in spite of the clamour of those who arrogate fr> themselves the
title of anti-monopolists, and who value an outlet for their manufac-
tures above all earthly considerations. We trust that the country will
not disgrace itself, nor inflict any injury upon the native population of
India, to pander to their greediness.

We desire not to be misunderstood in this matter. We have the
strongest anxiety for the extension of our commerce and manufactures —
we should be rejoiced to see the sails of our shipping spread to every
wind of heaven, and channels opened for the admission of the products
of our industry to the very innermost parts of continental Asia, — but, if
we can avert it, even these advantages shall not be grasped at to the
sacrifice of justice and mercy; because we know that supreme wisdom
has so ordered the sequences of cause and effect, that such a dereliction
of principle, at the instigation of short-sighted selfishness, must inevitably
be followed by evil consequences. As far as it may be found practicable
to reconcile the two ends at which we aim, and to promote the interests

504 British India, and the Renewal of £MAY,

of our merchants and manufacturers without wrong to the other parties,
incalculably more numerous, and to whom the upshot of our delibera-
tions is of far more vital moment, let every thing in reason be conceded.
But, at the point where they cease to be compatible, we would make
our stand resolutely, and ground our opposition to any farther conces-
sion upon the broadest and most permanent basis. Distressed as we
confessedly are, and most earnestly as we desire to give a fresh stimulus
to exertion, by enlarging the inlets through which our commerce has
hitherto forced its way into the markets of the East, as well as by the
discovery of new openings, it would be national folly in the extreme to
seek for the cure or palliation of existing evils by any measures involving
the loss of our national character for equity and humanity. Provision
being made to protect this from impeachment or suspicion, we hold up
both our hands for the removal of every restriction upon industry and
enterprise : but, with regard to the security of the natives of India from
encroachment or oppression, we shall be satisfied with nothing short of
the most unquestionable safeguards.

We must pause here to offer a few observations upon the subject of
the free commercial intercourse between this country and India, which
has subsisted since 1814, because the opinions held by one party, pre-
viously to the last renewal of the charter, have been most industriously
misrepresented; and because their opponents, wrho never fail to avail
themselves of every opportunity of protruding their merits upon public
notice, have exerted themselves as manfully to trumpet forth the praises
of their own sagacity as to twist and torture into absurdity the language
of those who differed from them. This process, when it can be com-
pleted without detection, affords the greatest possible assistance to ratio-
cination, for nothing can be easier than to cover an adversary with con-
fusion, and hold him up to never-ending ridicule, if you can but persuade
the public to believe that his arguments are founded on an assumption
that two and two make five, or any moral postulate of equal folly.

f ' We were told," says the great advocate of free trade and coloniza-
tion, " in a tone of oracular authority, and on the alleged experience
of two centuries, that the trade between Great Britain and India was
wholly incapable of extension; that we could furnish nothing new
which the Hindoos wanted, nor the Hindoos produce any thing new
which we required." This is absurd enough, but as we never doubted
Mr. Crawfurd s talent for caricature, let us see what Sir Thomas Munro,
the principal oracle consulted, did really say upon the subject.

" It has been sometimes said that the natives have a prejudice against
the manufactures of Europe: the Hindoos have no prejudices against
the use of any thing that they can convert to an useful purpose ; whe-
ther European or native manufacture, it is pure as it comes from the
hand of the workman to all Hindoos; but they have one prejudice,
which I believe is a very common one in this country, against the pay-
ing a higher price for a worse commodity ; and until we can undersell
them in such articles as they now require for their own use, we have no
hope of extending the use of our own manufactures in India; it is en-
tirely a question of price : whenever we can undersell the Hindoos in any
article which they require, it will find its way into the interior of the
country without much help from the British merchants; it will Jind its
way into the interior in spite of all regulations to prevent it *."

* t>e^ the Evidence before Committees, Oth and 12th April, 1815.

1830.] the Company's Charter. 505

If this be not sufficient, let Mr. Oawfurd's statement be contrasted
with the language of the Heport of the Committee of Correspondence
to the Court of Directors, as quoted by himself at page 15 of his
pamphlet.

{< We were told, in a tone of oracular {< There seems to be a general and de-
authority, and on the alleged expe- plorable delusion respecting the prac-
rience of two centuries, that the trade ticability of a vast extension of the sale
between Great Britain and India was of the manufactures of this country in
wholly incapable of extension" &c. &c. India and China, and of the produc-
— Pamphlet, page 2. tions of those countries here/' &c. &c.

—Report.

The Report of the Committee asserts that -<c a vast extension" of the
sale of British manufactures in India is impracticable, which Mr.
Crawfurd, by some strange obliquity of vision, reads as if it had been
maintained that the trade between the two countries " was wholly inca-
pable of extension." Such a statement of an opponent's opinions may,
for aught we know, be considered fair controversy by pamphleteers, but
to us it bears an appearance of very questionable morality.

Mr. Rickards has pursued a course exactly parallel. The Report
above quoted had stated that " the earnings of the common labouring
classes, and consequently their expenses, may be estimated on an average
not to exceed 41. 10s. per annum." They are indolent by nature, frugal
by habit, under manifold religious restrictions. What demand of the
manufactures from Europe is to be expected from these? From whom ?
from " the common labouring classes," if we understand construction.
But Mr. Rickards paraphrases the question at page 74 of his work, as
if it had been asked, " what farther demand for the manufactures of
Europe is to be expected from such a people ?" implying, as the context
fully proves, the whole population, high and low, rich and poor, of the
Peninsula.

Again he asserts that the Court of Directors maintained " that no in-
crease of demand for European commodities could be expected to arise
among a people of such simple habits * ;" and refers, like Mr. Crawfurd,
to the evidence of Sir Thomas Munro, to whom he condescends to give
some very qualified praise. Truly the manes of that great statesman
must rejoice in the testimony borne to his merits by Mr. Rickards.

We have already shown what Sir Thomas Muiiro's sentiments really
were ; but Mr. Rickards is kind enough to contradict himself in the
course of a very few pages, by quoting the evidence of that officer to
the following purport. We cannot supply the Indian with commodities,
because, while he can get them ( ' not only better, but cheaper, at home,
it is impossible that we can enter into competition in the market." Does
Mr. Rickards suppose that the Hindoos would buy dearer and inferior
articles because they might be of European manufacture ? They have
bought goods nominally cheaper, until they discovered that their want
of durability rendered such bargains any thing but gainful ; and accord-
ingly no less than 3,063,9681bs. of cotton twist were imported into India
in 1827- Our machinery gives us great advantages in the preparation of
this material of manufacture ; but we cannot stop here to inquire how
many thousands of Hindoos have been thrown out of bread by this im-
portation.

* Page 79.
M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53. 3 T

506 British India, and the Renewal of [MAY,

We will have no room for misunderstanding. We know that the trade
to British India has increased considerably since 1814 ; but we know,
too, that it has fallen very far short, both in extent and profit-— but in
the last respect more particularly — of what the Court of Directors truly
designate as the " Sanguine Theory" entertained by Mr. Rickards and
others. That agents have thriven and fattened upon it we do not doubt,
for their per centage is carried to credit, whatever be the upshot of the
speculation ; but owners and shippers can tell, we suspect, a very differ-
ent tale. Let reference be made to the prices current of Calcutta and
Bombay, and the rates of freight to and from those places. We do not
hesitate to avouch our conviction, that if, by some compulsory enactment,
all persons, with the exception of those engaged in commerce, were com-
pelled to proceed over-land to India, three-fourths of the shipping now
engaged in the Indian trade would be thrown out of employ ; for it is
the passage-money alone that keeps them afloat. As it is, only the
agents thrive, and ship-owners, as the whole city of London can testify,
are driven to shifts which in former days would not have been thought
the most reputable. We may mention, as an example, an instance which
has lately come to our knowledge, where a surgeon's berth on board a
free trader was applied for, and promised, provided the party should be
able to persuade his friends to engage a certain quantity of freight. Ships
are sailing, moreover, day after day, half laden, because their owners are
afraid to hazard their capital, with a contingency of loss very little short
of certainty ; and every bazar and warehouse in Calcutta are crammed
with European articles, until the rent eats up not only the profit, but the
whole value of the goods. Meanwhile, the agents clap the shippers on the
back, and cajole them if possible into becoming ship-owners ; and the
trade goes merrily on, because those who are intensely engaged in spe-
culation are too much occupied in their own schemes to see or regard
the many who drop from the same path into ruin and beggary, like the
passengers on the bridge in the Vision of Mirzah.

If, therefore, Sir Thomas Monro and others, who in 18 13 maintained,
in opposition to the sanguine theorists, that the trade to India was not
susceptible of any " vast extension," and supposed, " most erroneously"
that native Indians could supply themselves with the little they did
want, at a cheaper rate from their own manufactures, than by importing
British or European fabrics *, " did entertain opinions which time and
experience have proved to be too narrow, their error was one only of
degree ; — and those persons who flew into the opposite extreme, who
were at least as positive, and whose sentiments were far more extrava-
gant, have not the smallest right to raise a shout of triumph over their
opponents. If, indeed, they had had the fairness to abstain from giving
injurious paraphrases of the opinions entertained by those opponents, and
had quoted them verbatim, every shadow of a pretext for such exulta-
tion would have vanished. Mr. Rickards and his party have cried
" Eureka" with great emphasis and perseverance ; and because the friends
of the Company were partially in error, have assumed that they who dif-
fered from them " toto ccelo" were altogether right. The utmost, how-
ever, that impartiality can declare, now that the page of the last sixteen
years is spread before us, is that the truth lies somewhere between the

* Mr. Rickards, Part I. The italics are his own.

1830.] the Company s Charter. 507

two extremes ; but that the advocates of free trade have overshot the
mark, to a far greater extent than their adversaries have fallen short of it.
We have been led into a digression from the topic more immediately
before us, of greater length than we had in the first instance contem-
plated, and our limits forbid our resuming the thread at present ; but
our time will not have been wasted, if we have succeeded in bringing
out in relief the peculiar mode of reasoning adopted by certain assailants
of the company. We shall resume the general subject " demense in
mensem," and trust that in the course of a few numbers we shall be able
to do much towards clipping the pinions of not a few fallacies which are
now " towering in pride of place/' and in affording our readers such data
as may form the ground- work for a durable superstructure of opinion.

TEN DAYS QUARANTINE : AN ANECDOTE.

THE beauties or wonders of natural scenery are not remembered by
the traveller with more fondness and minuteness than are the incidents
which have attended him in his commerce with his foreign fellow-crea-
tures. The strange situations into which he or they have been cast,
their own eccentricities of character, and the wild results from these two
causes, sometimes leave a tablet filled with occurrences more vivid and
glowing and picturesque than the brightest scenes of Tuscany or Tempe.
Something of this sort comes to my mind at present, and as it happened,
so will I relate it.

At a port in the Mediterranean I was performing quarantine after a
voyage from Alexandria, at which city a visit of two days only had en-
tailed an after-imprisonment in a lazaretto of a month and a half. Our
vessel lay in the quarantine harbour, and having but poor accommoda-
tion on board, we disembarked and obtained apartments in a large build-
ing devoted to the use of those wayfarers whose cognisance, like ours,
was that of the yellow flag. One or two of the ship's officers, an Italian
passenger and myself, constituted the whole of this small party, and of
these none remained with me at night but the last mentioned gentleman.
The lazaretto was an immense structure, in the shape of a square, sur-
rounding an open court, and overlooking the sea on every side but one.
It was built on a thin peninsula, which being barricaded and guarded on
the land side, was in fact almost isolated, and therefore admirably
adapted for the purposes of the building. On our front, the waters of
the harbour came up to the very doorway, and in a long row, with little
space between them, lay a string of vessels from various unhealthy ports,
undergoing the same penance with our own ; which, as being the last
comer, was for the time moored immediately beneath our windows, and
close astern of another Turkish vessel which had left Alexandria about
a week before ourselves. Though very extensive, our hospital was not
lofty. It consisted of only two stories ; the ground floor being occupied
by various sets of unpurified voyagers, chiefly of a more plebeian order,
and the upper story, silent and deserted, save in the few rooms whose
echoes rang awfully with occasional efforts of conversation. A gallery
ran round the central court, and every room opened into it, so that no
part of the building was without free and healthy ventilation, or pre-
cluded from a view of what was going on below.

My companion, the Italian, was a man of furious temper, which had

3T2

508 Ten Days' Quarantine : an Anecdote. [MAY,

exhibited itself in many unpleasant forms during our common voyage.
However, from the first, I apprehended that there was some latent and
justifying cause for his ill-fellowship, and the roughest acts or words
into which he ever was seduced, had, at other times, a full compensation
in manners both engaging and sincere, and a warmth of feeling that
could not but be returned. On the passage, he had been restless and
excited, and almost constantly irritable. Now, his mind had become
more composed, but there remained still the former frequent abstracted-
ness and anxiety, and a stealthy forgetful manner, as if some absorbing
thought overwhelmed those ordinary ones which mere acquaintances are
apt to interchange. He never could be persuaded to enliven himself by
looking out from the windows upon the harbour and shipping, and town
in the distance, and further still the occasional heights and plantations of
the country. Nor, on the other hand, did he show any stronger curio-
sity with regard to the assemblage of people below us. There were peo-
ple of all the Mediterranean sea-ports, varying in dress, countenance, dia-
lect, and manners ; but he was not tempted to make a spectacle of them.
The conversation with which these our fellow-sufferers whiled away
their time, was often amusing ; their occupations, grave or gay, at any rate
differed from our own, and as I was entertained, so I expected that he
would be, but my calculations were erroneous. He consumed nearly the
whole day in a moody and passive indifference, and only with the sun-
set did he regain his activity. At that time he usually commenced his
exercise. He sauntered along the gallery, and wandered into the furthest
rooms, and there I would sometimes hear the echoes of his voice, as if
in soliloquy, almost awful amid the solemn silence of the place and hour.

But though his habits were thus apparently unsocial, he had yet one
disposition which made us neighbours for some portion of the four and
twenty hours. He could not sleep alone. I did not seek the cause of
this whim, but indulged it willingly by allowing him to place his bed in
the room which I had from the first selected for my own. One night —
it was in summer, and the weather far less tolerable than the maximum
of our English heat — I was startled in my sleep by a stumbling footstep
near my bedside. I called out to discover the nature of the intrusion,
and my neighbour gave answer. It was in a slow and confused voice,
and did not by any means satisfy me.

" Hang these mosquitos ! What Christian can endure their endless
singing in the ear, and the sharp twitch they give you ? and as I live, I
think they are not the only curses with which my bed is afflicted ! I am
sorry to have disturbed you."

With this apology, and having buffeted the air in all directions for full
five minutes, he returned to his bed, and I again fell asleep. Again I
found myself aroused by some fresh interruption.

" Who's there ?" I cried, but not a breath replied to me.

" What was that noise?" I repeated; but the former silence was still
unbroken.

" By heaven, I will see, then !" I exclaimed, and bursting from my
bed, was about to alarm one of the sentinels, but my purpose was pre-
vented.

" Hush !" said the Italian, " I suppose you must know at last, or you
will not be pacified any longer. Be quiet, and listen to me. Can you
keep a secret?"

Confused by the suddenness of this address, from one, too, who must

1830.] Ten Days' Quarantine : an Anecdote. 509

have feigned slumber but a moment before, I was nevertheless comforted
by an accent of honesty in the man's voice very different from the tone
of his previous excuses. I encouraged him to say his say, and in sub-
stance it amounted to this : that " there was some one in the building,
an old and most dear friend, whom he had engaged to see in the dead of
night, as at no other hour could their meeting have escaped the vigil-
ance of the guards. This friend, he said, was in another quarter of the
lazaretto, surrounded by people who would, if they could, prevent their
coming together, so that the utmost caution was requisite to render his
movements as inaudible as possible. Having told me thus much, and
entreated me to make no noise, he proceeded on his way. I rose quietly
from my bed, and observed him, as well as the darkness would allow, in
the progress of his plans. Having stolen through our doorway, he crept
along the gallery till he reached the post at which the hospital guard
should have been watching. After a little pause, I saw his figure ema-
nating from the shade, and skulking onwards as before, till he reached
and doubled the angle of the gallery. When he had advanced to a point
nearly opposite to me on the other side of the court, he suddenly paused,
and after a careful survey in all directions, at last laid himself down quite
prostrate, with his head towards the verge of the foot-planks overhanging
the area of the court. Having done this, I heard, though so faintly that
I almost doubted my own senses, a thin, fine sound, like the smallest con-
ceivable intonation of a man in whistling. This signal, for so I concluded
it to be, was speedily attended to. A door went immediately beneath
him, that is, on the ground floor, slowly turned on its noiseless hinges,
and a figure in female drapery emerged from the apartment. Her steps
must have been slow indeed, for I was almost wearied with waiting,
whilst she was accomplishing the tiny distance between her starting
point and that which brought her nearest to the gentleman in the strange
posture above her head. I next saw his arm outstretched, and something
suspended from it, which she contrived to reach, but whether this was
all the purpose for which they met, or their further proceedings were
interrupted, I know not ; however, immediately afterwards, and with
somewhat more speed than before, each retreated from the scene of
action, and in a few minutes my companion returned. He was afraid of
disturbing the guards by talking to me, so I heard nothing more of this
matter until the following morning.

He then explained more fully the nature of his immediate situation,
which undoubtedly was sufficiently singular. He had been attached, he
said, when at Alexandria, to the daughter of a fellow-countryman trading
at that port. For some reason or other, his suit, though encouraged by
the girl, was positively forbidden by her father ; so much so, that upon
taking one of his customary voyages from Alexandria, the old seaman
resolved to take her with him, lest in his absence the mischief which he
dreaded might be consummated. But the attachment had by this time
become too strong to be so easily broken. It was durable ; it was mu-
tual ; and when Carmela bade a farewell to the home of her best hopes,
she knew that he would follow in the first vessel that had the same des-
tination. Thus, the one arrived in harbour exactly ten days before the
other ; and all his difficulty was to effect some intercourse with her, some
tokens of recognition, some renewal of past scenes, without incurring the
risk of observation. For this reason, he had abstained from presenting
himself in the balcony, to view the external prospect which to me had

510 Ten Days' Quarantine : an Anecdote. [[MAY,

been so interesting, or at the balustrade, to witness the domestic pro-
ceedings of our fellow-prisoners. Carmela's father might have been at
either time in his vessel, which lay immediately below the window, or
amongst the troop of idlers in the court-yard; and in that case my com-
panion must have been discovered.

Having confided to me so much of his history, I was of necessity
compelled to become the receptacle of all this idle garrulity for the next
ten hours. Amongst other things, he informed me that he was about to
venture on a very bold experiment. He meant to sink down into the
court-yard, and meet his lady-love face to face ! My prudent insinuations
were but lost labour to me, for he was bent on this fool-hardy project,
the more especially as he had observed, during his expedition of the night
before, that our nearest guardian or sentinel stripped himself of his coat
during his nap, and deposited the robe of office on a chair by his side.
In this stolen livery, my friend purposed to pass current; and sure
enough, on that evening, when the universal silence acknowledged the
sovereignty of Morpheus, off glides he towards the sentinel's post, and,
having purloined the cast-off garment, invests himself with the same, and
therein proceeds, as on the previous night, to the opposite part of the
gallery. Presently I could distinguish him arranging something to a
transverse beam, and having suspended himself by it, I saw him gra-
dually let down, without the least noise or obstacle, until he reached the
ground. The same challenge as on the former occasion was accepted
with the same or readier acquiescence. The maiden came forth, and
they were locked in each other's arms ! So desperate a feat neither love,
hate, ambition, nor any other of the most violent of human impulses ever
before accomplished in a lazaretto.

But this was not destined to be all- successful. Despite his garb as of
an orthodox servant of the police ; despite his former caution and his
maidenly fears, some hazard was sure to be encountered ; and that hazard
occurred in the shape of an extravagant reverberation along the empty
court- walls, consequent upon a natural movement of two pairs of lips
in the sweet interchange of kisses. " Carmela !" cried a gruff voice from
within the nearest apartment. " Saints preserve us ! where is the girl,
to venture in the air so late at night ? a mad thing as she always was."

" My coat, there ! — Who 's got my coat ?" echoed another and shriller
voice from above. " Filippo ! Giuseppe ! Capitano Muscat ! Who the
devil has borrowed my second best coatee?"

" I see her ! by heavens, she 11 catch cold," grumbled the merchant,
slowly disengaging himself from his bedclothes, as he caught a glimpse
of the female figure through the half-opened doorway, and dreaded a
thousand fevers as the natural result of such imprudence.

" 'Gad zooks ! I see something like the yellow collar and stamped
button!" shouted the ecstatic guardiano, peering along in the moonlight,
and right joyous with half a hope of reclaiming his official glory. They
advanced part passu towards the common object of their scrutiny, and
the father confronted his child, as the guard detected his prisoner. Here
ends a dilemma.

The old gentleman perceiving one of the male creatures in the police-
coat, and the other destitute of any garment at all, naturally enough
concluded that the latter was the stranger, and the former his friend.
Advancing, therefore, full of suspicion and paternal rage, he was about
to lay violent hands on all there : on his child, to secure her return to

1830.] Ten Days' Quarantine: an Anecdote. 511

him; on the coatless man, to inflict summary punishment for the sup-
posed wrong ; and on the mock sentinel, to force his official interference.

" Stop ! old fellow !" cried the servant of police, suddenly advancing
between him and the others ; " stop where you are, or you know the
consequences."

" Consequences ! What d 'ye mean, scoundrel ? Are you about to ruin
me and my child, and think to find me a passive looker-on ? Signor
Guardiano, I call on you to put this scapegrace in his own cell. I '11
complain if you don't."

" Off! you old fool !" repeated the real guard, standing between the
parties like a barrier, and presenting a huge stick towards the captain,
to make his injunction still more effectual.

" If you touch them, or me "

" What — what— tell me what then?" spluttered the other, almost voice-
less with rage.

" Oh ! you know what," replied he quite carelessly, and at the same
time dictating to my friend the Italian to betake himself immediately to
his own quarters, a measure not at all relished by the forlorn captain, who
could not yet see through the mistake that had arisen from the assump-
tion of the borrowed plumes. In fact, he thought himself cajoled, and
could evidently be restrained no longer. On he rushed, and was within
a few feet of his daughter, when the guardiano again interposed, with
the emphatic words,

' ' Remember your bill of health."

cc The devil !" exclaimed the other : " is she in a new quarantine, then ?"

" Of ten days only," was the calm reply.

A dead silence followed this announcement; and the truth of the whole
began to dawn upon the bewildered man. By coming in contact with
my friend, whose expurgation had commenced ten days after her own,
the girl had incurred the penalty of this addition to her imprisonment ;
and her father, if he had touched any one of his then companions, would
have shared the same fate. As the responsible master of a commercial
vessel, he knew not how to act. To lose so long a time before he could
be released from quarantine, would entail a serious loss ; to leave his
ship in the charge of another, or desert his daughter, was impossible.
In the mean time they were separated, and his resolution was not made
up until the next morning. Judge of my friend's distress, when he learnt
that the stern old fellow had determined to set sail immediately, and lose
the advantage of his " clean bill of health," by taking his daughter
with him !

Such, however, was the case ; and here, as it seemed, would terminate
the romance of my present story. But my Italian friend was a mad dog,
and his passion drove him to acts of sheer childishness. On the night
of their embarkation, he managed to escape from the lazaretto from the
sea-side, plunged into the water, and swam a considerable distance to-
wards their vessel. Whether he had arranged any secret scheme for
effecting an entrance upon his reaching it, or whether he hoped to move
the father's compassion by such determined proofs of affection, I know not ;
but before he could put either to the proof, a shot from one of the land-
guards grazed his shoulder and disabled him. He sank, and rose again ;
made a little progress with one hand, then sank as before ; and so on,
till a boat, that had put off from the lazaretto, brought him back to his
old prison in a delirious fever. He knew not that the ship which con-

512 Ten Days' Quarantine: an Anecdote- [[MAY,

tained his love sailed at daybreak ; he could not tell for what motives
he had infringed the severe harbour-laws, and encountered this heavy
penalty; but he lay for days in a wild and wakeful trance, raving about
his Carmela.

To conclude this anecdote, it so chanced that the vessel had to combat
with a stout and lasting maestrale, or north-west wind, so common in
those seas, as the name would indicate ; and after buffeting about for
two or three days, it was driven back again to port, its crew dislodged,
and the captain and his family, on account of the equality of quarantine,
quartered in our part of the lazaretto. Something in the pitiable con-
dition of my patient, for I was his only nurse — more, perhaps, in the
determined love of his daughter — at last softened the captain's antipathy
to the man. He would occasionally visit him and show some sympathy
with his sufferings. Then he withdrew his refusal of permission to
Carmela to accompany him on these occasions. I cannot account for
the history of these changes ; but all I remember is, that the sick man
rapidly improved from that very moment ; and when he left me, it was
to take a voyage with the captain and his child, for the perfect restora-
tion of his health.

LADY BYRON, CAMPBELL, AND MOORE.

OUR readers will expect something from us on this battle of the books.
But we shall not harass them with going deep into the engagement.

All the world knows by this time that Moore compiled from Lord
Byron's letters an amusing view of his life and opinions, which he had
the good sense to leave as he found them. The book was received, as it
ought, as no more than the showing of a very eccentric and vicious
noble lord, relative to his own conduct. Moore's labour was evidently
occupied most in cutting down furious libels against all mankind, and
particularly the noble lord's particular friends; it happening to be. the
good fortune of every man who had at any time served or assisted, or
even exhibited any remarkable attention to his lordship, to be marked
down for his especial ridicule and abuse; of which, we believe, the cor-
respondence which Moore is now washing, plaiting, and smoothing for
mankind, affords some brilliant examples.

But the quarto had done its best or worst, and passed away ; the com-
piler was paid, and was busy with its brother quarto ; the blue-stockings
were pining over some other novelty ; the learned coteries, from Ken-
sington to Moorfields, were profound in some new pottery from Pompeii,
or some new traveller from the world's end; in short, Byron, the book,
the libels, and the "injured lady," were completely forgotten ; when
some evil spirit, in the shape of a passion for publication, came before
Lady Byron's soul, and urged her to the "necessity of vindicating her
father's and mother's humanity to her late husband !"

The only point worth thinking of in this matter was the necessity.
And that there was no necessity for Lady Byron's defending her parents,
(as honest and unimportant a country gentleman and lady as ever ve-
getated,) is clear as the sun at noon-day. In some former observations we
allowed that the vindication was well composed, and that Lady Byron
was also entitled to write it, if she pleased. But we are quite satisfied

1830.] Lady Byron, Campbell, and Moore. 513

that the world, in general, no more required to be told that her lady-
ship's father and mother were well meaning people to Lord Byron, than
that they were man and wife.

However, the tempter prevailed over the lady ; and she wrote, and not
merely wrote, but printed her writing, sent it through her circle of cor-
respondents, friends, lovers, and haters, and finally saw it (we can con-
ceive, with no great surprise) fairly flourishing as a regular piece of
publication. The Literary Gazette had it first, and by its extensive cir-
culation settled the affair of publicity without loss of time. The letter
was at the Land's End in twenty-four hours, and has long before this
been read in Calcutta, if it have not been already on the break fast- table
of his Majesty of Pekin.

People wondered why the lady should take so much trouble to prove
points that nobody doubted ; and the result of this superfluous trouble
was that they began to doubt. But there was something more than met
the ear. Lord Byron had been so long known to indulge himself, with-
out any kind of ceremony, in any pursuit that amused his tastes, good
or bad, that people had begun to think no more of vices, which, as he
never took the slightest trouble to conceal them ; deprived scandal of all
the piquancy belonging to a secret. It was at length said, that his lordship
was not worse than nine-tenths of our spoiled children of rank, nor half
so bad as some who had been cabinet ministers. But this vindicatory
letter seemed to strike some blows on his reputation severer than even
common scandal had ever menaced; and there were hints of crimes
which, according to the common conception of such matters, would
have fitted his lordship less for the House of Peers than for the
gallows. We by no means desire to worm out secrets of this nature ; but
the general impression of the public certainly is, that the mysterious
crime, which her ladyship could not communicate to her own mother,
but which she finally dropped in the judicial ear of Doctor Lushington,
was any thing but an every day offence.

However, bad as the business looked, the public were weary of
the perpetual harping on " My daughter!" — the follies of Byron — the
wrongs of his lady — and the rustic virtues of Sir Ralph and Lady
Milbanke. The thing was fairly yawned away, when Campbell took it
up, and flung the ball before the public again. We give a few extracts
from his letter :

" You speak," says Campbell, " Mr. Moore, against Lord Byron's
censurers in a tone of indignation which is perfectly lawful towards
calumnious traducers, but which will not terri/y me, or any other man of
courage, who is no calumniator, from uttering his mind freely with
regard to this part of your hero's conduct. I think your whole theory
about the unmarriageableness of genius a twaddling little hint for a
compliment to yourself, and a theory refuted by the wedded lives of
Scott and Flaxman. I question ^your philosophy in assuming that all
that is noble in Byron's poetry was inconsistent with the possibility of
his being devoted to a pure and good woman — and I repudiate your
morality for canting too complacently about ' the lava of his imagination,'
and the unsettled fever of his passions being any excuses for his planting
the tic douloureux of domestic suffering in a meek woman's bosom.
These are hard words, Mr. Moore., but you have brought them on your-
self by your voluntary ig norn nee of" facts known to me — for you might
and ought to have known both sides of the question ; and if the subject

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53. 3 U

514 Lady Byron, Campbell, and Moore. [[MAY,

was too delicate for you to consult Lady Byron's confidential friends,
you ought to have had nothing to do with the subject/'

He then wrote to Lady Byron to ascertain the correctness of Moore's
statements, and she thus answers him :

" DEAR MR. CAMPBELL, — In taking up my pen to point out for
your private information those passages in Mr. Moore's representation
of my part of the story which were open to contradiction, I find them of
still greater extent than I had supposed — and to deny an assertion HERE
AND THERE would virtually admit the truth of the rest. If, on the
contrary, I were to enter into a full exposure of the falsehood of the
views taken by Mr. Moore, I must detail various matters, which, con-
sistently with my principles and feelings, I cannot, under existing cir-
cumstances, disclose. I may, perhaps, convince you better of the diffi-
culty of the case by an example : — ' it is not true that pecuniary embar-
rassments were the cause of the disturbed state of Lord Byron's mind,
or formed the chief reason for the arrangements made by him at that
time.' But it is reasonable for me to expect that you, or any one else,
should believe this, unless I show you what were the causes in question,
and this I cannot do. — I am, &c. &c. E. NOEL BYRON."

This letter is a mere matter of words ; for it tells nothing but her lady-
ship's opinion, that there are falsehoods in Moore's book : and when she
comes to the proof, it depends on matters ' ' which, under existing circum-
stances, and connected with her principles and feelings, she cannot disclose"
Campbell now proceeds to animadvert upon the biographer's garbling the
evidence before his eyes. " What I regret most in Mr. Moore's Life of
Lord Byron is, that he had in his own hands the only pure means of
serving Lord Byron's character, which was his lordship's own touching
confession, and that he has thrown away the said means by garnishing
that fair confession with unfair attempts at blaming others. In Letter
235, Lord Byron takes all the blame on himself. But why, Mr. Moore,
have you frozen the effect of this melting candour by dishing up the
inconsistencies of Lord Byron on the same subject, and by showing
your own ungallant indifference to the thus acquitted Lady Byron ? In
the name of both of them, I reprove you. Byron confesses, but you try
to explain away his confession j and by your hints at spies, unsuitable-
ness, &c., you dirty and puddle the holy water of acknowledgment, that
alone will wash away the poor penitent man's transgressions. You resort
to Byron's letter to Mr. Rogers, for the means of inculpating Lady
Byron and her friends, as blamers of Lord Byron. But they never said
more than that Lord Byron's temper was intolerable to Lady Byron.
That was true, and they never circulated any calumnies against him." But
a passage follows, which, adopting her ladyship's own style, heaps that
enigmatical odium on his memory, which no direct charge could much
exceed. " It is more for Lord Byron's sake than for his widow's, that I
resort not to a more special examination of Mr. Moore's misconceptions.
The subject would lead me insensibly into hateful disclosures against
poor Lord Byron, who is more unfortunate in his rash defenders than
his reluctant accusers. Happily, his own candour turns our hostility
from himself against his defenders. It was only in wayward and bitter
remarks that he misrepresented Lady Byron. He would have defended
himself irresistibly, if Mr. Moore had left only his acknowledging pass-
ages. But Mr. Moore has produced a Life of him which reflects blame
oivLady Byron — so dexterously, that more is meant than meets the ear."

1830.] Lady Byron, Campbell, and Moore. 515

The friends of Lord Byron's memory have undoubtedly a right to
demand something explicit on this point. What are those hateful dis-
closures which horrify every body who knows them, and which are too
horrifying to be let loose among the public ? If Lord Byron had com-
mitted crimes of a nature for which he deserved to be cast out from
society, even though he had made his exit by the scaffold, they could not
justify stronger expressions.

" You said, Mr. Moore, that Lady Byron was unsuitable to her lord
— the word is cunningly insidious, and may mean as much or as little as
may suit your convenience. But if she was unsuitable, I remark, that it
tells all the worse against Lord Byron. I have not read it in your book,
for I hate to wade through it; but they tell me, that you have not only
warily depreciated Lady Byron, but that you have described a lady
that would have suited him. If this be true, it is the unkindest cut of
all. But I trust there is no such passage in your book. Surely you
must be conscious of your woman with her ' virtue loose about her who
would have suited Lord Byron/ to be as imaginary a being as the
woman without a head. A woman to suit Lord Byron !!! Poo! poo!
I could paint to you the woman that could have matched him, if I had not
bargained to say as little as possible against him.

" If Lady Byron was not suitable to Lord Byron, so much the worse
for his lordship. This was not kicking the dead lion, but wounding the
living lamb, who was already bleeding and shorn even to the quick. I
know that, collectively speaking, the world is in Lady Byron's favour;
but it is coldly favourable, and you have not warmed its breath. Time^
however, cures every thing ; and even your book, Mr. Moore, may be
the means of Lady Byron's character being better appreciated."

We know nothing in the severest displeasure that would not be justi-
fied against those who first charged Lord Byron's memory with the
crimes, which his wife's letter seems to reassert. Campbell's letter is
merely chivalric ; he thinks Lady Byron injured, and thinks that it is
his duty to fight her battle. But he is a stranger, and has no interest
of blood or companionship. With Lady Byron the whole affair is
different.

Let Byron be what he might, he was her husband, and the father of
her child ; and it was her duty, if not to screen his memory, at least to
keep aloof from defacing it. It is impossible that any woman of her
years, mixing in general life, or even casually reading the newspapers,
should not be acquainted with the meaning annexed to the phrase of
" Horrible crimes ; crimes not to be named, hateful disclosures," &c.
Her ladyship has written more notes than one upon the topic, and her
observation, on hearing of Lord Byron's civilities to one of Lord Hol-
land's sons, "that Byron was a peculiarly dangerous companion for a young
man," was strongly expressive. The late lord may have left no friends.
But if we had seen a relative or friend scarcely laid in the grave when
such charges were flung upon his memory, we would have the assailants
before the world, and compel them either to speak out, or to acknow-
ledge themselves calumniators. And, if we did not this in sorrow and
love for our dead friend, we should do it in justice to mankind. What
man can hope to transmit an unsullied name to his children; if it be in
the power of the first idle pen to fasten a stigma upon his grave, that, if
living, would have sent him to it by the scorn of society, if not, by the
vengeance of the law ?

3U2

Lady Byron, Campbell, and Moore.

Campbell is an able poet, and a man of good intentions ; but he has
taken up a hazardous cause. Lady Byron is a woman of education and
birth ; but having first made the grand mistake of resisting the will
of her family for the indulgence of her own, in marrying for fame a
man whom she could not respect for virtue ; she next made the grand
mistake of setting her parents' reputation above that of her husband, in
contradiction to the wise and sacred precept, that the "wife should leave
father and mother and cleave to the husband."

That Lord Byron hated that father and mother is palpable ; and that he
used to fly into paroxysms of scorn and rage when they were spoken of,
is perfectly true. Whether this was caused by peevishness or folly on
their side is another question. But he had a right, as a husband, to be in-
dignant at his wife's leaving his house without his permission ; and he
had a right to taunt any woman with hypocrisy, as well as want of duty,
who writes to him a letter full of fondling, at the moment when she was
determined on abandoning him for ever. Had her ladyship ever read
the book in which it is declared that the " husband is the head of the
wife ?" or remembered that ritual in which it is declared that she
weds " for better for worse, till death do them part ?" For a wife's de-
sertion there can be no ground, short of starving or blows. It is a bur-
lesque to say that nothing graver than " Dear duck," at the head of her
final letter, would have prevented Lord Byron from dashing his head
against the wall.

But, if married people will be liable to sudden quarrels and partings,
where is the proof of any attempt to return on this woman's part ? — of
any effort to soothe the temper whose irritability she knew before she mar-
ried ? — of any decent sorrow over his grave ? Did even her carriage, or the
carriage of her family, attend his funeral ? Has she since given the most
trivial instance of female fondness for the memory of a man with whom
she was so closely united ? What honours has she paid to the tomb of a
great being by whose fame alone she is at this hour distinguished from
the mob of title ? Nothing. — But we have her at the end of half a dozen
years disturbing the honours of him whom her duty and feeling might
have kept in his country, to be its living ornament, instead of being cast
away in a barbarous and remote tomb. And for whom is this disturbance
made ? To vindicate the civility, and so forth, of two such people as
Sir Ralph Milbanke and his wife, about whom the world cares no more
than about the giants in Guildhall.

PRESENT POLICY OF EUROPE TOWARDS THE BARBARY STATES.

THAT Great Britain should be a party to the present policy of Europe
towards the Barbary States, must create the greatest surprise in those
who reflect on her name and resources ; a policy which began in error,
has continued in injustice, and which presents one of the strangest
anomalies that can be conceived. We continually quarrel and cavil
with the Moors for the observance of particular etiquette, and a regard
of minor and insignificant privileges, whilst we consent to tolerate that
general system of dishonesty to the world, out of which these disputes
grow. How much longer the Barbary powers shall be allowed to exact
a. toll for crossing the high seas must be left to the feelings of those
nations interested in its payment to determine ; meanwhile it may not be

1830.] Present Policy of Europe towards the Barbary States. 617

uninteresting to examine a little more narrowly into our relations with
a people amongst whom Europe maintains consuls, and vice-consuls,
from Mogadore to Tripoly, whose chief agency has hitherto been that of
transmitting a few lions and tigers in return for our money and horn ige.
It must be a matter of curiosity to know something of the borrowers who
repay our loans with such bad interest, and regarding whom there is a
greater dearth of information, than of the people of the most remote parts
of the Asiatic continent. Whilst their threats and menaces are looked
upon with dread, and are at this moment the subject of deliberation in
more councils than those of France ; it is surely worth while to inquire
what adequate end Europe attains by her enormous expenditure, in en-
deavouring to maintain their friendship.

Situate as the dominions of the Emperor of Morocco are at the en-
trance of a narrow sea, without any naval force to support his pretensions,
nature itself conspiring against the possibility of his forming a navy, by
choking up every river and harbour in the kingdom, this monarch solely
depends on the dissensions and want of unanimity amongst the European
powers for the continuance of that truly advantageous system, which
ensures him a certain revenue without any risk or trouble. He entirely
trusts to their jealousies of his favour, (which he has certainly hitherto
managed to keep alive), to supply his absolute deficiency of real power,
or the means of enforcing the contributions he now so easily receives.
All his utmost efforts could effect against an enemy would be to cut off
unarmed or becalmed ships, and pursue that tedious sort of warfare
which might exasperate, but could not greatly injure. The other Bar-
bary states, although more or less dependent on the same policy as the
sultan of Morocco, possess at least some shadow of maritime strength,
and have fortified cities on the shores of the Mediterranean, beneath
which they could at least find shelter in case of retreat.

In the spring of 1828, the sultan of Morocco, Muley Abderachman,
visited Tangiers to receive the homage, tribute, and presents of the
different European nations, whose delegates had assembled there to court
his friendship, or renew their alliances. Public expectation had been
kept alive by repeated and broken promises (perhaps with a view of in-
creasing the importance of the royal presence) for upwards of three
years, and had caused the detention and assemblage of many, whose
patience was nearly exhausted. The emperor, however, at last set for-
ward from Morocco, accompanied by 5000 of his troops, infantry and
cavalry. Whatever gratification this intelligence afforded those who
awaited his visit, it was not equally welcome to the bashaws and in-
habitants of the provinces through which he passed ; for on the former
fell the impost of being obliged to make large presents to their master,
and on the latter, that of furnishing provisions for the troops, which, like
a flight of locusts, generally leave marks of devastation wherever they

The royal entry to Tangiers was announced by fireworks, and the
discharge of cannon from the fortifications. The emperor took up his
residence at the Alcassaba, or castle of the bashaw, the apartments of
which, at least those destined for his use, had been previously furnished
by general contributions of the European consuls, who, amongst other
things, had presented his majesty with a handsome state bed, as well as
many articles of ornamental furniture. The troops were not quartered
in the town, but formed a regular encampment on a slight eminence

518 Present Policy of Europe towards the Barbary States. [MAY,

eastward of Tangiers. In the midst of this camp was guarded, in large
and handsome tents, his majesty's harem, said to consist of ten white
wives, and ten black concubines. Another handsome tent was set
apart for a marabout or saint, who always attends royalty, and who
is consulted as to the auspicious days for transacting business, tra-
velling, &c.

The third day after the sultan's arrival was fixed on for the reception
of the foreign consuls, who were summoned to the court-yard of the
Alcassaba ; the troops, a great number of whom were blacks, lined all
the avenues and approaches thereto, as well as the court-yard itself, in
the area of which the turbaned chiefs and scribes of the household
were assembled. Not a single musical instrument added to the effect of
this scene (a judicious idea in presence of Europeans, to whose ears the
Moors were conscious their music was most inharmonious). The troops
previous to the entrance of his majesty were seated cross-legged on the
ground, with their long guns held between their knees. At his approach,
which was preceded by the bashaw of Tangiers, they rose up and stood
to their arms. The sultan entered the court-yard on horseback, the
manner in which he invariably gives public audiences. Over his head
was borne a large splendid silk parasol of Italian manufacture. The
bay barb on which he was mounted was fanned by slaves, with white
muslin handkerchiefs, and in his train were several parade horses beau-
tifully caparisoned.

The person of Muley Abderachman is both dignified and majestic; on
his brow is deeply marked the consciousness of his superior station and au-
thority, and that gravity for which the Moors are so distinguished ; but in
him it seemed to dwell with more ease and affability than in those who
surrounded him — the result of his more polished manner and education.
The sultan has a fine intonation of voice, and his whole deportment
rather bespeaks that of a man accustomed to associate with the great
world, than of a monarch residing at such a distance from polite life :
he is of robust stature, about five feet nine inches in height, and is ap-
parently about forty-two or forty-three years of age, of very dark com-
plexion, nearly approaching black ; but his fine features, glossy black
beard and moustaches, at once show that he is not of negro blood. He
bore no distinctive mark of sovereignty in his dress, except the beautiful
texture of the el-haicke, or long scarf, which nearly enveloped him, dis-
covering only a small part of the green tunic and gold scabbard of the
yatagan worn beneath. His turban was of plain white muslin, denoting
an elegant and unostentatious simplicity.

The principal officers of the sultan being stationed around him, the
bashaw of Tangiers, on whom it seems the order of the ceremonies had
devolved, introduced the French consul and vice-consul to his majesty,
who approached, and through their interpreter begged the emperor's
acceptance of the annual tribute money, and presents of their nation :
a list of the presents was handed to his majesty who passed it to one of
his ministers; these consisted of articles of the most valuable and elabo-
rate workmanship of France, as well as large quantities of cloth, sugar,
coffee, &c. valued at £30UO sterling, which were borne up the steep
ascent of the Alcassaba by Jew porters, who, barefooted, stood trembling
with their burdens in the royal presence. The consul received a
gracious reply ; and next in succession was presented the Danish consul,
whose gifts were of proportionate value to the rank of his nation : he

1830.]] Present Policy of Europe towards the Barbary States. 519

paid over the sum of 50,000 Spanish dollars, the amount of two years'
tribute due to his imperial majesty ; thirdly, and which seemed to excite
no little surprise in the spectators, was presented Mr. Douglas, the
English consul-general, vice-consul, &c. accompanied by several officers
of the garrison of Gibraltar, who had arrived for the purpose of witness-
ing this ceremony. The cause of the British consulate not being pre-
sented first as on former occasions was said to be owing to an intrigue of
the bashaw of the town, who, on account of some differences with the
English consul-general, which had for a long time been the subject of
a most disagreeable correspondence with the emperor, took this oppor-
tunity of wounding Mr. Douglas's pride. Some presents, such as a
handsome sword, several pieces of cloth, &c. were laid at the emperor's
feet, who in return replied, " that he was happy to maintain the friend-
ship and esteem of his good friend and brother the sovereign of England,
with whom the Moors could boast an alliance since the time of his pre-
decessor Muley Ishmael ; that he always should consider the English his
best friends, and hold them entitled to protection and privileges in his
country which no other nation could enjoy." In conclusion, the sultan
inquired " if the consul had any request to make, which he then pro-
fessed himself willing to attend to." The remainder consuls were then
successively introduced, but it must not here be omitted to be remarked
that the offering of the American consul was merely a bag of rice ! un-
accompanied by any tribute money whatever. The Americans, not-
withstanding their refusal to degrade themselves by the payment of
tribute, enjoy the same protection and privileges as other nations. The
Neapolitan consul, whose government had expended a large sum of
money in the purchase of presents, was ordered " not to show his face.,"
as neither his gifts could be accepted nor his office recognized, till his
royal master agreed to pay an annual tribute of 20,000 dollars, for which
sum Neapolitan vessels would be allowed to navigate the high seas, un-
molested by Morroqueen corsairs. This formidable navy, which con-
sisted of the two brigs before mentioned, was then at anchor in the
Bay of Tangiers, decorated with the flags of the nations with which the
emperor was at peace. The ceremony of audience concluded, the dif-
ferent packages were opened, and the contents carefully examined, with
the lists handed in. In cases of any deficiency, or baseness of quality in
the articles, the unhappy consul soon hears of the deception, and may
esteem himself fortunate if it is not made a subject of quarrel with his
government. The emperor generally distributes part of these gifts
amongst his officers, or those whom he is under the necessity of re-
warding ; but all specie or plate, as well as watches, of which he is very
fond, .are generally reserved for himself. That part which falls to the
lot of his faithful servants soon finds its way to the hands of some
broker, who, for a very small sum in ready money, becomes the purchaser
of articles of great original cost. In this manner a handsome glass
dessert service, which had been distributed amongst several competitors,
was purchased for a trifle by a person who collected the separate allot-
ments. A musical watch, the works of which had become deranged by
continued playing, was also sold for a few dollars, a very short time
after it had been presented to the sultan.

The sums of money thus expended in this single port of Barbary
amounts to about 50,000', sterling per annum, and should the emperor
succeed in compelling the Russians, Austrians, Neapolitans, and the

520 Present Policy of Europe towards the Barbary States. [MAY,

Hanse Towns to comply with his demands, his revenue will be thereby
considerably increased. This system, which is followed up with little
modification in all the piratical states of the Mediterranean, cannot fail to
inflate the pride of savage princes ; nor is the appearance of the repre-
sentative of Great Britain in these pageants, laying down her share of the
purchase money of the smiles and sunshine of their countenance, likely
to diminish their ideas of potency and greatness. The almost literal
fact, that here

" As in the east, exhausted slaves
Lay down their far-brought gifts and die,"

must for ever destroy the notion, that the basis of all intercourse between
states ought to be reciprocal advantage. Muley Abderachman is by far
too sagacious to arouse Europe from its lethargy ; as long as we are
willing to pay, he will extend his hand to receive. This prince was
called to the throne by the late emperor, his uncle Muley Soleyman, on
account of his abilities, to the exclusion of his own sons, who are yet
living, and whom the present emperor has so far conciliated as to keep
in his train, one as his aide-de-camp, and another he has made governor
of an interior province. The manner in which he has long soothed
many of the governments of Europe into a compliance with his policy,
and frightened others without a shadow of offensive force, is no insigni-
ficant proof of his talent. He has besides counteracted all the plots of
opposition to his government (which during his reign have been
numerous), either in seizing by stratagem or open force all the refractory
scherifs and bashaws who, under pretence of his not being rightful
heir to the throne, have often rebelled. A specimen of his cunning he
lately afforded by the mode in which he dislodged an inimical bashaw
from his government. This man had often refused to appear when cited
at court : not wishing to proceed to open hostilities, the emperor, by
means of agents, stirred up an insurrectionary mountain warfare in the
bashaw's neighbourhood, under pretext of quelling which he took the
field himself, and ordered all his chiefs to join him. The unsuspicious
governor abandoning the safety of his bashalick entered the emperor's
tent, when he was immediately laden with chains and conducted to
prison, from which he was not released till he had disgorged what the
emperor considered a fair share of the profits of his government, the
division of which had been the cause of their quarrel.

1830.] [ 521 ]

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE BRITISH WEST INDIES.

IN giving some account of the state of society in Sierra Leone, and
in those other parts of Africa mentioned in official documents, or which
have recently been visited by European travellers, we, in former numbers,
endeavoured to submit, for the information of our readers, such extracts
from new publications and government papers as we hoped would in-
duce them to investigate and judge for themselves, rather than adopt,
upon slight examination, the decided opinions which we have formed upon
the important matters brought under their notice.*

In following up this investigation, we are quite aware of the great dif-
ficulty by which the main point of the subject is surrounded ; and we
agree with our industrious countryman, Captain Hall, that " a person
quite unaccustomed to the actual presence of slavery is naturally very shy
of admitting any thing, even to himself, which shall look like approving
of the principle ; and it requires considerable time, and a knowledge of
many details, before he can be sure that he is doing the subject justice.
Ignorance is so apt to usurp the place of knowledge ', that, by a strange
perversity, fresh information often appears unnecessary, and is not un-
frequently resisted as intrusive." But these obstacles, instead of deterring
us from a proper examination of this very important matter, should rather
stimulate our exertions to ascertain and elucidate the real humanity of
the case. Having already endeavoured to explain the state of society
and slaves in Africa, we now propose to avail ourselves of the information
afforded in Captain Basil Hall's valuable and laborious work on the
United States, to show the extent and condition of slavery in that free
country.

Let it not be supposed that we are advocates for perpetual slavery in
our own colonies, or elsewhere. We, on the contrary, are heartily de-
sirous of concurring in every measure likely to raise the mental and
physical powers of the negro, so as to fit him for the becoming enjoy-
ment of freedom in every part of the globe. We wish, in particular, to
see our own colonial labourers continue the advance, which they are
progressively making, in civilization and in habits of industry, until
they arrive at that point when they shall be capable of appreciating
and fulfilling the arduous duties of industrious freemen, without which
it must be evident that emancipation would be no benefit to them. It
is well known to every person acquainted with our West India colonies
that, besides considerable property, they have already attained a higher
degree of civilization, and the enjoyment of greater privileges and com-
forts, than their brethren in the foreign colonies, or even in the United
States ; and we earnestly recommend to every true friend of humanity
to consider the subject attentively, in all its bearings, before sanctioning,
even in appearance, the rash schemes of the anti-colonists (manifested
by their ignorant petitions to parliament, and other absurd representa-
tions), who, were they permitted to have their own way, would, by
premature and compulsory manumission, wantonly complete the ruin of
thousands of their countrymen, but, as in the cases of St. Domingo and
Mexico, plunge the negroes into that state of barbarism, from which,
under the present mild and humane colonial system, they are so gradually
emerging.

* Vide " Our West India Colonies," " Sierra Leone," and " Ancient and Modern Systems
of Slavery," Monthly Magazines for February, March, and April last.
M.M. New Series.— VoL.IX. No. 53. 3 X

522 United States of America, and British West Indies. [MAY,

Before we attempt to give some idea of the condition of slaves in the
United States of America, we may be permitted to notice briefly some
further papers published by order of parliament (printed 17th Feb. last
No. 57), " relative to Sierra Leone," which fully confirm our former
statements. We do not feel disposed to dispute the anxious desire now
evinced by his majesty's ministers, as manifested throughout these papers,
to give the administration of the affairs of that deadly colony their
serious attention, and to place the whole of the establishments on the
African Coast on a better and more economical footing. With this
view, Cape Coast Castle, Accra, and their dependencies have been given
over to a committee of merchants, to be held as factories ; but it is pro-
posed to increase the number of settlers on the Gambia !

The total and instant abandonment of Sierra Leone as a colony is
undoubtedly a measure attended with difficulty. But we contend that,
so long as no European constitution is equal to the performance of the
arduous duties of governor for any number of years, every effort to en-
force steady and uniform measures of improvement must, in a great
measure, continue to be abortive ; that even compulsory labour, were
it to be more generally enforced, would not render the climate one whit
more salubrious, however it might, to a trifling extent, improve the im-
mediate vicinity of Freetown ; that little improvement can take place
amongst the liberated Africans, so long as they are spread over a great
extent of country, liable to the incursions and contaminating influence
of the neighbouring tribes ; and that the advancement of civilization in
the interior never can be effectually promoted by these settlements.

Earl Bathurst complains of the vicious habits in which the Africans
appear to have been permitted to indulge, of wandering about the colony;
and, particularly, of assembling in large numbers in the vicinity of Free-
town;* but Sir Neil Campbell, on the other 'hand, complains, 7 March,
1827, that their village-location system is equally objectionable; "one
great evil tending to retard the civilization of a proportion of the liberated
Africans in every village is their being permited to form detached vil-
lages, where they speak no language but their own, and always continue
naked as they were in Africa, with all their former usages; never altering
from the state in which they landed from the slave ships."* — Can the
inutility of the whole of this system for promoting civilization and
habits of industry be acknowledged in more direct terms ?

Sir Neil discovered that the plan of buying and issuing rations was
bad j and the missionaries, to whom it had become a source of profit, are
ordered to confine themselves, in future, to moral and religious duties.

When the Africans are liberated from the slave vessels, they are em-
ployed as labourers, or sent to the villages, and an allowance is made,
during the first six months, for the support of the males. The females
receive rations for three months only, by which time they must, it is
expected, get married, or lose their rations; a short and powerful argu-
ment, certainly, in favour of matrimony ! ! — But we should much doubt
whether this hasty pairing system is likely to superinduce domestic com-
fort, and a becoming regard for moral obligations.

" The greater portion of the land of the colony," say s Governor Ricketts,
' ' will not, after a few years, yield a satisfactory crop ;" the liberated
African cultivator must, therefore, shift his ground in rotation, or clear

* Sierra Leone Papers, printed 17, No. 3, 1830, No. LVII. p. 18.

1830.] United Stales of America, and British West Indies. 523

another portion of forest land. This circumstance must always operate
to discourage agricultural pursuits in Sierra Leone.

The total number of slaves liberated in 1828 appears to be 2,558;
the total number in charge on the 31st December of that year,, 15,004.
The number of persons who have left the villages in 1 828,, and whose
absence cannot be accounted for, is no less than 680, besides 1,341 stated
as supposed to be settled in Freetown, or employed up Ike river! Here
are 2, 021 people, or one-eighth of the whole, liberated at a great expense
to government, many of whom have undoubtedly deserted, or been kid-
napped, and again carried into slavery by the neighbouring tribes ! !*

These parliamentary papers contain ample medical reports on the in-
salubrity of the climate. We shall, however, take leave of the African
Coast and Sierra Leone, by again urging the policy and necessity of
getting quit of the latter, except as a factory, at as early a period as,
under all the circumstances of the case, humanity will permit. The
removal of even a part of the people and stores, and the cost of esta-
blishing them on new ground, cannot be effected without expense ; but
when the cost of re-erecting nearly all the present public buildings, and
keeping effective, by constant supplies of men and money, a larger esta-
blishment there than might be fully adequate to the same purpose else-
where, is taken into consideration, we have no doubt that the incidental
expense, whatever may plausibly be said to the contrary by interested
individuals, would, in the end, prove to be a considerable saving.

A very slight examination of Captain Hall's Travels in the United
States will, we think, prove that he has paid very particular attention
to the subject of slavery there ; and we are not aware, after a very careful
examination of his remarks, that he has been swayed by any other con-
siderations than an earnest desire to elicit the truth. He says, " by
gradually acquiring a more extensive knowledge of the facts of the case,
under many different forms, I was enabled, I trust, to escape from the
influence of enthusiasm or of paradox on the one hand, and of strong
and often angry passions and interests on the other. To steer a fair
course, in the midst of such a strange kind of moral and political navi-
gation, is a hard task for any traveller." This, however, appears to be
a task which the captain has performed with great impartiality and con-
siderable ability.

The first two volumes relate to his visit to Canada and sojourn amongst
the sober, dram-drinking, scheming, wood-chopping, electioneering,
" what-do-ye-think-of-us" citizens of the northern states of the Union.
Leaving Philadelphia in December, 1827, he proceeded in a steamer to
Newcastle, forty miles below the first mentioned city, and from thence
by land to Frenchtown, on the left bank of the Elk river, a small stream
running into the Chesapeake, where, in the steam-boat, " the tables were
removed by three or four light-fingered negro domestic slaves, I was
given to understand ; for we had now come within the limits of that
large portion of the Union, where the labouring population do not even
possess the name of freedom." f

As the immense number of slaves in the states of the Union is not
generally known in this country, especially to many persons who derive
their only knowledge of the subject from the reports of anti-slavery

* Vide Caillie's Travels, vol. i. p. 256.

-J- Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828, by Captain Basil Hall, R.N.
vol. ii. p. 381.

3X2

524 United Slates of America, and British West Indies. [MAY,

meetings, and who encourage the continuance of the foreign slave-trade,
by signing senseless petitions for the ruin of our own colonies, we give
for their information the following statement of the number of slaves in
each state or territory, in the year 1828 ; and we shall afterwards en-
deavour to show, on Captain Hall's authority, their present condition, as
compared with the slaves in our own colonies.

In New Jersey the number of slaves, in 1828, was 3,778

Delaware 2,500

Maryland 100,000

Virginia 450,000

Kentucky 166,000

North Carolina 235,000

South Carolina . 288,000

Georgia ....... .189,600

Tennessee ...... . 110,000

Alabama 93,308

Mississippi ..... . 52,502

Louisiana 110,502

Indiana . 304

Illinois 1,460

Missouri . 20,800

Arkansas Territory 2,587

Florida Territory .... . 5,000

District of Columbia 6,806

Making altogether a slave population of . . 1,838,155

or more than double the whole slave population of the British West
Indies ! In two of these states, namely, South Carolina and Louisiana, the
slaves considerably outnumber the whites ; and many of our good old ladies
at home, who piously attend anti-colonial meetings, and have sugar basins
with ff produce of free labour" inscribed upon them, would be shocked
at the idea of being supposed to be encouragers of slavery in its worst
form, although the clayed sugar which they substitute for the sparkling
produce of our own colonies is entirely raised by foreign slaves; and
the cottons and muslins, the rice, and various other articles which they
consume so profusely, are also wholly the produce of slave labour !

From Baltimore Captain Hall proceeded to Washington, the seat of
Congress, where he had an opportunity of hearing the slave question
discussed to as little purpose as it sometimes is at home. He had also
an opportunity of attending the sale of a negro lad by the deputy mar-
shal ; " both his parents and all his brothers and sisters, he told me, had
been long ago sold into slavery, and sent to the southern states — Florida
or Alabama — he knew not where." We need scarcely add, that the
separation of families in most of our own colonies is, by enactment of the
legislature, strictly forbidden.

Although this youth was fortunate enough to be purchased by a person
to whom he was known, yet the concluding sentence of the auctioneer
held out little prospect of ultimate emancipation. "The lad is yours,
sir, — a slave for life !" And this assertion was not merely a figure of
speech ;- — manumission, in some states, being contrary to law, except
for great public services !

Other circumstances came under the notice of our traveller, affording

1830.] United Stales of America, and British West Indies. 525

evidence that, even under the eye of the senate, similar sales are quite
customary; although the state of Columbia is not without its Anti-Slavery
Society, from whose reports, regarding the state of its slaves, some of the
calumnies against our own colonies appear to us to have been copied
almost verbatim, although not at all applicable to the state of our colo-
nial labourers.

At Richmond, in Virginia, Captain Hall, in walking round the capital,
was struck by the unusual sight of a sentinel ; and, in answer to his
inquiries, he was told, that it was " customary, in these states, to have
a small guard always under arms ; there are only fifty men here. It
is in consequence of the nature of our coloured population ; but it is
done more as a preventive check than any thing else; it keeps all
thoughts of insurrection out of the heads of the slaves, and so gives con-
fidence to those persons amongst us who may be timorous." Yet sixteen
years had elapsed since any attempt at rebellion had taken place ; and
the white population in this state are to the slaves as three to two. " On
inquiring further into these matters, I learned that there was in all these
towns a vigorous and active police, whose rule is, not to take for granted
that any thing is secure which vigilance can watch. No negro, for
example, is allowed to be out of doors of ter sunset, without a written pass
from his master explaining the nature of his errand. If, during his
absence from home, he be found wandering from the proper line of his
message, he is speedily taken up, and corrected accordingly."* In our
own calumniated colonies, where the preponderance of the slave popula-
tion is so overwhelming, the confidence between servant and master,
when not interrupted by the extraneous interference of sectarians, or anti-
slavery influence, is so great, that no such apprehensions are entertained ;
and slaves are seen visiting their neighbours at all hours of the night.
Captain Hall had many opportunities of investigating the slavery ques-
tion during his stay in Virginia, and always found the planters in that
and other states <c extremely fair and communicative." " The essential
impediment, however, which I found in the way of getting at the truth,
on this and many other subjects, consisted less in any reserve on the part
of the natives, than in the difficulty I found in removing the shell or
husk of prejudice which surrounded my own mind, and gave me a
constant desire to distort my observation, in order that I might see
things in the particular light under which I had preconceived they ought
to be viewed." And on the slavery question he very candidly observes,
that this difficulty is perhaps greater than on most others; " for there
our feelings enter into contest so often with our judgment, that sober
reason, political necessity, established usage, and so forth, have sometimes
no fair play "

As he verged towards the region of the tropics, " tobacco, cotton, and
rice fields, every where presented themselves." The mildness of the
climate, too, the colour of the population, and the tone of their voices,
were all characteristic of countries quite dissimilar to the northern
states."

He visited a well-managed plantation on the banks of the James's
river some miles out of town. What interested him most was a party of
a dozen negroes, squatted on the floor of a tobacco house ; and he gives
the following not unpleasant account of the manner of preparing that
weed for shipment. The slaves were placed, men, women, and children,

* Hall's Travels, vol. iii. p. 76.

526 United States of America, and British West Indies. QMAY,

in a circle, drawing the leaves from the stalk ; " in the centre stood two
men, who, on receiving the leaves from the pickers, distributed them in
heaps according to their quality. There seem to be three qualities of
tobacco ; the lower leaves, or those which touch the ground, are liable
to get dirty and torn, but on the higher parts of the same stalk two
different sorts of leaves are found, one yellow, and one brown. These
being carefully separated, and made up into little bunches, somewhat
thicker than a man's thumb, are tied round with a thong, formed out
of the leaf itself. The branches are then slung, in pairs, across bars
of wood, stretched from side to side of the roof, not unlike herrings
in a drying-house. In the course of time, the house becomes so
completely filled with those bars, carrying bunches of tobacco, that
there is barely left space enough for a man to creep under them to trim
the fires, kept constantly burning on the mud floors to dry the leaves.

" The next process is to pack it into the large hogsheads which every
one has seen before the door of a tobacconist's shop. This operation is
performed by means of long levers worked by hand, which force it into
a compact mass. The slaves looked wonderfully cheerful and healthy,
and although scantily clad, were not unseasonably so, for the air was
quite mild, notwithstanding it was now the depth of winter. Of a
hundred and ten slaves on this plantation, I was told not one could read
or write."*

At Fortress Monroe he had an opportunity of seeing the operation of
the punishment substituted in place of flogging. " I found a large party of
men, about two hundred in number, each one of whom carried a heavy
chain, which hung in a festoon between his legs, one end being riveted
to the ancle, while the other trailed a four pound shot along the ground.
Most of these persons, it appeared, were deserters from the army, though
some had been guilty of disobedience, and other acts of insubordination
to military discipline. They were all dressed in party-coloured jackets,
on the back part of which was painted ' United States convict ;' and I
do not remember to have beheld anywhere a more humiliating, or more
unmilitary spectacle." The old method of flogging was abolished in the
American army, by Congress, in 1812 ; since which, according to Captain
Hall, the discipline of the troops has been gradually declining. We might
remark upon the decline of discipline in Hayti, and other quarters, where
more severe punishments have also been substituted for flogging ; but we
shall content ourselves with referring to vol. iii. chap. 5. for our traveller's
reasons at length in favour of continuing the former system, as being the
most humane, as well as effectual.

Proceeding from Norfolk through North Carolina, in February, 1828,
he thus describes one part of the road : for about twelve miles it " passed
through a dense forest of pines and junipers, rising out of a continued
swamp, along which the carriage-way seemed to float on poles, or trunks
of small trees, laid across, which, being covered with nothing but a thin
stratum of earth and leaves, was fearfully jolty. The evening, moreover,
was so dark, that the forest on each side of us stood up to the height of
sixty feet like a perpendicular cliff of coal, with a narrow belt of sky
above, serving no other purpose than to point out the way by a feeble,
ghost-like reflection from the ditches on either side, which looked as if
they were filled with ink. It was a sort of guess-work driving, for we
came every now and then to pools a quarter of a mile in length, through

» Hall's Travels, vol. iii. p. 97-

liZl£;3 l^lcai-l t-I U il , CtAlVl. J. V^tifc ^ 1 I ' C^ , IL/t-lC M^&V| *** V^CIJ. VSJIXICI; (Ml

1 comparatively idle. The whites, generally speaking,
litable to work, and the slaves work as little as they

1830.] United States of America, and British West Indies. 527

which the horses splashed and floundered along as well as they might,
drawing the carriage after them, in spite of holes into which the fore-
wheels were dipped almost to the axletrees, making every part of the
vehicle creak again. These sounds were echoed back with a melancholy
tone from the desolate blank on both hands, mingled with the croaking
of millions of frogs, whose clear sharp note, however, gave some relaxa-
tion to the ear from the gloomy silence of this most dreary of forests."
He was ferried across the Chowan river by slaves, who stuck several
torches, made of the pitch pine-tree, into the sides of the scow, or flat.
" This blaze of light immediately about us made the solitude and silence
of the forest in our rear even more impressive than it had appeared when
we ourselves were almost lost in the gloom."

Subsequently he passed through many cotton plantations, and some
tobacco fields ; but the chief cultivation was that of Indian corn. " In the
more northern parts, we had been very much struck with the air of bustle,
and all sorts of industry, men riding about, chopping down forests, building
up houses, ploughing, planting, and reaping ; but here, in Carolina, all
mankind appeared
consider it discreditable
can."

He found a great many Scotch Highlanders settled in the country
round Fayetteville, retaining almost exclusively their native language.
Conversing with a gentleman at the little town of Camden, on the subject
of slavery, he complained much of the slaves. " Suppose," said he, " I
have a slave who is a drunkard and a thief, and really almost the whole
race are dissipated and dishonest ; how can I get rid of him ? I cannot
sell him, for nobody will be his purchaser ; the laws won't allow me to
turn him about his business. I am obliged, therefore, to feed, clothe,
and take care of this rogue, while, all the time, I get no service out of
him, and know him to be a scamp of the first order I"

One of the miseries which must be endured by the slaves in the United
States, from which our slaves in the West India islands are exempt, is,
their liability to be moved hundreds or perhaps thousands of miles, at
the will of their masters, for the purpose of clearing grounds in the
southernmost states, for sugar plantations ; a speculation which, from a
spirit of rivalry, and otherwise, has, since the intercourse with our West
India colonies was broken oif, been much encouraged by the government
of the United States. This circumstance not only gives rise to an im-
mense inland traffic in slaves, creating much misery to the negroes, but
also retards, for evident reasons, that progressive civilization which is so
rapidly going forward in our own colonies. During the drive from
Camden to Columbia, the seat of government of South Carolina, Captain
Hall " overtook several bodies of migrants," if there be such a word —
farmers-errant, proceeding with all their worldly goods, from Virginia
and Maryland, to Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.

" The first party consisted of a planter and his wife, accompanied by
his brother-in-law, and family, a whole troop of their children, and some
forty or fifty slaves of all ages and sizes."

" We had drawn up just abreast of a group of slaves, consisting of

two or three women, with six or eight little children playing about them,

none of whom were much encumbered with clothing." Captain Hall's

little girl, delighted with the novelty, distributed her sponge-cake among

^the shining little blackies, to the unspeakable satisfaction of the mothers,

528 United States of America, and British West Indies. [MAY,

" who sat upon the bank smiling with as much freedom of soul as if they
had been resting on the side of some far-famed African stream." Indeed,
if we can believe recent travellers, it would be difficult to find any stream
in Africa where they could venture to rest,, for any length of time, with
the same degree of safety.

" The second party of emigrants were on the march. It was smaller
than the others, and did not consist of above thirty persons in all, of
whom five and twenty at least were slaves. The women and children
were stowed away in waggons, but the curtain being let down, we could
see nothing of them except an occasional glance of an eye, or a row of
teeth as white as snow. In the rear of all came a light covered vehicle
with the master and mistress of the party. Along the roadside, scat-
tered at intervals, we observed the male slaves trudging in front. At
the top of all, against the sky line, two men walked together apparently
hand in hand, pacing along very socially. When we came nearer, we
discovered that this couple were bolted together by a strong short chain
or bar, riveted to broad iron clasps, secured in like manner round the
wrists. On inquiry, it was found that one of these men had been mar-
ried, but his wife belonged to a neighbouring planter, not to his master.
When the general move was made, the proprietor of the female not
choosing to part with her, she was necessarily left behind. The wretched
husband was therefore shackled to a young unmarried man, who, having
no such tie to draw him back, might be more safely trusted on the jour-
ney !" If such an occurrence as this had taken place in our own colonies,
it would have been food for the Anti-Slavery Reporter for six months at
least, and matter of accusation against the colonists for ever !

One of the emigrant leaders being questioned as to his motives for
moving so frequently, his wife declared, half in jest, half in earnest, that
" it was all for the mere love of moving. ' We have been doing so all our
lives, just moving from place to place, never resting ; as soon as ever we
get comfortably settled, then it is time to be off to something new/" Of
course, under such a system, it is in vain to expect any amelioration in
the condition of the slaves, or that any great progress towards civilization,
or religious and moral improvement, can be made.

The road from Columbia to Charleston is through a swampy, dismal
country. " At one of the forlorn dwellings in the swamps, we were
received by the chief female slave, who made an excuse for the non-
appearance of her mistress, who was then ill in bed." When the lady
made her appearance, she answered an inquiry after her health by
thanking God that they had all " had their fevers !"

Captain Hall was much struck with the tropical aspect of Charleston.
The wharf presented piles of cocoa nuts, bananas, bags of coffee, boxes
of sugar, and other southern produce, while large bales of cotton, barrels
of flour, and packages of bale goods, gave ample token that materials for
barter were not wanting. His attention, however, was most taken up
with the slave market.

" A long table was placed in the middle of the street, upon which the
negroes were exposed, not one by one, but in families at a time. From
this conspicuous station they were shown off by two auctioneers, one at
each end of the table, who called out the biddings, and egged on the
purchasers by chanting the praises of their bargains.

"I learned from a gentleman afterwards that the negroes, independently
of the important consideration of being purchased by good masters, have

1830.] United States of America, and British West Indies. 529

a singular species of pride on these occasions in fetching a high price,,
holding it amongst themselves as disgraceful to be sold for a small sum
of money. This fact, besides showing how difficult it is to subdue
utterly the love of distinction, may perhaps be useful in teaching us
never to take for granted that any one boasting the human form, how-
ever degraded in the scale, is without some traces of generous feeling."

The opinions of various well-informed Americans on the abstract
question of slavery are stated. Some of them hold it to be a very great
evil, and others maintain a contrary doctrine. " They (the slaves com-
pared with freemen) work much less," say the latter ; " they are as well
fed ; they have no care for the future, very little for the present ; they are
in a state of happy ignorance, and know nothing of those things which
make freemen miserable ; and as they are generally well used, they be-
come attached to their masters, and work on in their service cheerfully."

fe Force, power, or whatever name you give it," said another, " by
which one nation gains the ascendancy over another, seems to be, in the
practice of life, the grand rule which regulates the intercourse of man
with man. * * * * This may not appear just, but so it is ; such is
the order of our moral and political nature. It has been so from all time,
and will continue so as long as there remain any distinctions between
human beings. The slave question is merely one of the varieties of this
principle.

" The blacks were brought to America when these matters were not
treated philosophically; they have since extended themselves far and
wide, and have now become, to all intents and purposes, an integral part
of our society.

" The masters and the slaves, from long habit and universal usage,
have fallen into certain modes of thinking and of acting relatively to one
another ; and as this understanding is mutual and complete, the whole
machinery goes on with the greatest uniformity, and much more cheer-
fulness than you will at first believe possible. At least an equal period
of time, but perhaps ten or a hundred times as long a period, may be
required to unwind the thread again, and to free the country from this
moral and political entanglement.

" In the meantime it is in vain to deny that, circumstanced as they
now are, the negroes belong almost to a different race ; so different, that
no philanthropist or abolitionist, however enthusiastic, pretends to say
that an amalgamation can take place between them and the whites.
There is no reasoning upon this point : it seems a law of our nature, and
is felt probably as strongly in other countries as here. What English
gentleman, for example, would give his daughter in marriage to a negro ?
But the prejudice, or whatever it be, is just as strong in the southern
states of America, with respect to a political community of rights and
privileges ; and if changes in this respect are ever to be brought about,
they can only be accomplished by the slowest conceivable degrees.

" The blacks who form our labouring population are so deplorably
ignorant, and so vicious, that in almost every instance where freedom has
been given to them, they have shown how unfit they are to make a right use
of it. The practice of manumission is, in consequence, everywhere dis-
couraged, and in many places RENDERED BY LAW IMPOSSIBLE ! except in
cases of high public service." (P. 159.)

Every person acquainted with the present state of the labouring popu-
lation in the British West Indies, and the daily acts of kindness and

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53. 3 Y

530 United Stales of America, and British West Indies. [MAY,

friendly emancipation which take place in these calumniated colonies,
will at once perceive the immense superiority of feeling which is in ope-
ration there over that of our American neighbours, notwithstanding the
boasted freedom of their institutions.

The workhouse is not only a sort of bridewell, where offenders work
at the treadmill, but is also used for punishing slaves. The offending
slave is sent to the workhouse with a note and a piece of money, on deli-
vering which he receives so many' stripes, and is sent back again. The
retention of the power of punishment in the hand of the master is
defended on the plea of necessity. " I was often assured by sensible
men," says Captain Hall, " that any considerable modification of it, in
principle or in practice, would speedily bring about anarchy, insurrec-
tion, bloodshed, and all the horrors of a civil war,"*

"In the court-yard of the jail, there were scattered about no fewer
than three hundred slaves, mostly brought from the country for sale, and
kept there at twenty cents or about tenpence a-day, penned up like cattle
till the next market-day. The scene was not unlike what I suppose the
encampment of a wild African horde to be. Men, women, and children,
of all ages, were crowded together in groups, or seated in circles, round
fires, -cooking their messes of Indian corn or rice. Clothes of all colours
were hung up to dry on the walls of the prison, coarse and ragged ; while
the naked children were playing about quite merrily, unconscious alike
of their present degradation, and their future life of bondage. On the
balcony along with us stood three or four slave dealers, overlooking the
herd of human victims below, and speculating upon the qualities of each.
The day was bright and beautiful ; and there was in this curious scene
no appearance of wretchedness, except what was imparted to it by re-
flection from our own m.inds."

Leaving Charleston, Captain Hall passed through a country rather
interesting on account of its vegetable productions and forest scenery.
He halted some time at a large and well-ordered plantation, where he was
hospitably entertained, in the absence of the family, by the head negro,
who had had orders to receive him. He had here an opportunity, for
the first time, of seeing something of rice cultivation. " The plantation,
at the time of our visit, consisted of two hundred and seventy acres of
rice, fifty of cotton, eighty of Indian corn, and twelve of potatoes, besides
some minor plots of vegetables, the whole being cultivated by eighty
working hands. A shovel plough is used at certain seasons for weeding ;
but all the essential and laborious work of preparing the soil, as well as
that of sowing and reaping the crops, is done exclusively by hand."

At another estate farther south, about thirty miles from the sea, he
had an opportunity of acquiring further information on this subject. —
The ebb and flow* of the tide in the rivers intersecting the level parts of
South Carolina is of the greatest consequence to the rice growers, as it
enables them to irrigate their fields at the proper season, and in the pro-
per quantity ; an advantage which leads to the production of those mag-
nificent crops with which all the world is familiar. " During our stay,
we had an opportunity of being initiated into the mystery of the culti-
vation of rice, the staple of Carolina. This grain is sown in rows, in the
bottom of trenches made by slave labour entirely. These ridges lie about
seventeen inches apart, from centre to centre. The rice is put in with
the hand, generally by women, and is never scattered, but cast so as to

* Hall's Travels, vol. iii. p. 108.

1830.] United Stales of America, and British Went Indies. 531

fall in a line. This is done about the 17th of March. By means of flood-
gates, the water is then permitted to flow over the fields, and to remain
on the ground five days at the depth of several inches. The object of
this drenching is to sprout the seeds, as it is technically called. The
water is next drawn off, and the ground allowed to dry until the rice
has risen to what is termed four leaves high, or between three and four
inches. This requires about a month. The fields are then again over-
flowed, and they remain submerged for upwards of a fortnight to destroy
the grass and weeds. These processes bring matters to the J 7th of May,
after which the ground is allowed to remain dry till the 15th of July,
during which interval it is repeatedly hoed, to remove such weeds as
have not been effectually drowned, and also to loosen the soil. The
water is then, for the last time, introduced, in order that the rice may be
brought to maturity, and it actually ripens while standing in the water.
The harvest commences about the end of August, and extends into Octo-
ber. It is all cut by the male slaves, who use a sickle, while the women
make it up into bundles. As it seems that no ingenuity has yet been
able to overcome the difficulty of thrashing the grains out by machinery
without breaking them, the whole of this part of the process is done with
hand-flails in a court-yard.

" The grains of this plant grow on separate pedicles^ or little fruit-stalks,
springing from the main stalk. The whole head forms what a botanist
would call a spiked panicle ; that is, something between a spike like
wheat, and a panicle like oats. After being thrashed, the next process
is to detach the outer husk by passing the rice between a pair of mill-
stones removed to a considerable distance from each other. The inner
pellicle, or film, which envelops the grain, is removed by trituration in
mortars under heavy pestles."

It is then thoroughly winnowed, and being packed in casks, is ready
for sale.*

" The cultivation of rice was described to me as by far the most un-
healthy work in which the slaves were employed; and, in spite of every
care, that they sank under it in great numbers. The causes of this dread-
ful mortality are the constant moisture and heat of the atmosphere, to-
gether with the alternate floodings and dryings of the fields on which
the negroes are at work, often ancle-deep in the mud, with their bare
heads exposed to the fierce rays of the sun. At such seasons every white
man leaves the spot as a matter of course, and proceeds inland to the
high grounds,f or some other healthy station."

Ingenious tradesmen were among the slaves attached to this, as is
universally the case in extensive West India estates, although in the
latter colonies the unhealthy cultivation of rice is, happily, not amongst
the list of grievances.

The domestic habits of the slaves on this and other estates in Carolina,
according to Capt. Hall's information, are not interfered with, except in
matters of police. " We don't care what they do when their tasks are over.
Their morals and manners are in their own keeping. The men may
have, for instance, as many wives as they please, so long as they do not
quarrel about such matters."

Preachers are not allowed to interfere with the duties of the slaves
towards their master. "Can any of them read and write ?" asked Capt.

* Hall's Travels, vol. iii. pp. 163. 186. t Hall's Travels, vol. iii. p. 188.

3Y2

532 United States of America, and British West Indies. [MAY,

Hall : the reply was, " Certainly none. That is entirely contrary to usage
here, and contrary to law in some places. Such things would only make
them discontented with their lot, and in fact would be quite repugnant
to the whole system of slave discipline in this country."* The superior
liberality of our West Indian slave system cannot be denied even by the
most virulent anti-colonist !

Although domestic slaves in America, as every where else, are better
fed and clothed, yet field labour is generally preferred; and Capt. Hall
vindicates the conduct of overseers, as a class, from that mass of abuse
which it has been too much the custom to heap upon them. An over-
seer in America who acquires a character for undue severity is, as in
the British Colonies, much scouted, and sooner or later discovers that his
services are not valued or sought after. The cultivation of the fertile
land on the coast, or any part of the low districts of the southern states,
by white labour, is universally declared to be quite visionary. Slaves
must either be employed, or these fertile districts abandoned !

In the northern parts of Virginia, where the soil is poor, the slaves do
not reproduce by their labour as much as they consume in the shape of
food. " Many fine-looking districts were pointed out to me in Virginia,
formerly rich in tobacco and Indian corn, which had been completely
exhausted by the production of crops for the maintenance of slaves."
" The climate as well as the soil of the extreme southern states, Georgia,
Alabama, and Louisiana, together with the territory of Florida, are quite
unlike those which are found in the northern districts of the slave-hold-
ing portion of the union, such as Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky. In
the southern section, as the labour of the negro is highly productive, the
settlers in that new and fertile country are willing to give great prices
for slaves. A sure and profitable market is thus furnished for the sale
of the blacks reared in that express view on the more northern planta-
tions above described.

" The new states bordering on the gulf of Mexico, as well as those
which are watered by the Mississippi, are at present the chief markets
to which the slaves bred in the north are sent. But great numbers are
also absorbed by South Carolina and Georgia, where the cultivation of
rice thins the population so fast, as to render a constant fresh supply of
negroes indispensable, in order to meet the increasing demand for that
great staple production of the country. The enormous increased con-
sumption of cotton, also, has brought down multitudes of negroes to turn
up the fertile soils of those burning regions, the sea-island districts, well
known to commerce. The progress of sugar-cultivation, in like manner,
in the alluvial lands forming the vast Delta of the Mississippi, is a further
attraction to the slave dealers, and must, like the others, long continue
in operation as a productive field for slave labour. These combined
causes have set a-going, and will probably keep in motion for a long period
of time to come, one of the most extensive slave trades in the world, in the
very heart of the United States "-\

So great is this traffic, that, during certain seasons of the year, " all the
roads, steam-boats, and packets, are crowded with troops of negroes on
their way to the great slave markets of the south.

" It is quite clear that the pecuniary interest of the slave holders in

* Hall's Travels, vol. iii. p. 191.
t Hall's Travels, vol. iii. pp. 194, 195, 196.

1830.] United States of America, and British West Indies. 533

the northern districts above alluded to is to rear as many negroes as
possible, since they are quite sure of a favourable market for them, so
long as the crowds of fresh inhabitants in the new states of the south,
who are daily bringing more capital, industry, high hopes and great
determination, to bear upon the virgin soil of those regions, are increas-
ing in their demands for more labourers" * This great internal slave
trade is carried on by sea as well as by land. " I saw a brig from Bal-
timore, lying alongside of the Levee at New Orleans, with upwards of
two hundred negroes on board. Her decks presented a scene which
forcibly reminded me of Rio Janeiro. In the one case, however, the
slaves were brought from the savage regions of Africa ; in the other,
from the very heart of a free country. To the poor negro the distinction
is probably no great matter !" We imagine that the distinction would,
on a more close examination, be found much in favour of the native Afri-
can. To those ' ' bad subjects of barbarous states, enslaved for their
crimes" mentioned by Mr. Kenneth Macauley, and to the " criminals"
who, according to Lander and other African travellers, are generally sent
to the coast for sale to the slave traders, the change would be a commuta-
tion of punishment only ; but to the American-born negro the transfer
to a distant and unhealthy part of the country may be viewed under a
very different aspect.

At Savannah, Capt. Hall had an opportunity of acquiring much informa-
tion on the condition of the slaves in Georgia. Pulmonary complaints
there prove very fatal to the negroes, especially to such as cultivate the
rice grounds. On the cotton plantations, the negroes are generally
healthy, all the work being of a dry kind ; but on rice estates the hos-
pitals are often quite crowded in autumn. " This sickness is brought
on chiefly by circumstances inevitably connected with the cultivation of
rice j the negroes being almost constantly working in the water, or ancle-
deep in mud, ditching, drawing, or weeding, or turning over wet ground."
Bad usage is too often added to their other misfortunes ; and what is
very remarkable here, the absence of generous principles is most fre-
quently found amongst those who, on their first arrival, have had least
patience with slavery under any modification ! ( ' People who are incon-
siderate enough," says Captain Hall, " to abuse a whole system, without
taking the pains to distinguish between what is inevitable and what is
remediable, are not likely to be more reflecting when these distinctions
become apparent." Various facts seem to confirm the truth of this ob-
servation ; especially the conduct of our own operative philanthropists at
Sierra Leone, and also at Berbice, when the government estates in the
latter colony were unfortunately under their charge !

The laws of the different states of America relating to slavery have
been published by the anti-slavery party at Philadelphia, and are more
inconsistent with the principles so much cried up in that republic than
can well be conceived : but really, observes Capt. Hall, " nothing is to
be made out from the written laws j since, under any system of legislative
arrangement in America, as far as I could learn, the negroes must, in
every case, be left almost entirely to the control of their masters, or with
no appeal that deserves the name."f

The impossibility of enforcing measures of amelioration, except with
consent of the masters, is very forcibly stated. " Congress has not, by the

* Hall's Travels, vol. iii. pp. 197, 198.
t Hall's Travels, vol. iii. p. 208.

534 United States of America, and British [Veal Indies. [[MAY,

terms of the constitution, the slightest shadow of right to meddle with
the internal concerns of the states, and least of all those which relate to
slavery. Any assumption of such pretensions on the part of Congress
would be so instantaneously resisted by the southern states, that the idea
would not exist one hour. The inevitable consequence mould be a division
of the union. It would be quite as simple and effectual a process for the
southern members in Congress to pass a law enslaving the manufacturers
or husbandmen of New England, as it would be for those of the north
to break the chains of the negroes in the rice or cotton districts of the
south,, or, which is held to be almost the same thing, to intermeddle with
their slavery concerns in any shape whatever." *

From Savannah, Capt. Hall went down to Darien, a town on the sea-
coast, and then across the states of Georgia and Alabama, in the direc-
tion of New Orleans, visiting the " sea- islands" abreast of Georgia, famous
for their cotton. Our limits will not admit of our giving a full descrip-
tion of the culture of this article, and its preparation for market. " In
September, or perhaps earlier, the cotton begins to open in ' good blow,'
at which stage it is fit for gathering. One hand picks from ninety to
one hundred pounds of what is called seed cotton, from the seeds being
still in it : a woman generally performs about twice as much of this kind
of work as a man can do. After being gathered, it is assorted in the barn
by the women and old invalids into different qualities. It is then dried
in the open air, and separated, by an ingenious apparatus, from the seeds.
After being cleared, by picking out with the hand any seeds that may
have escaped through the machine, it is packed with screws into bales
for shipping. In this part of the Union, on well regulated cotton plan-
tations, where the owners are humane, the condition of the negroes, in
so far as regards their personal comforts, is similar to that of their
brethren in the British colonies.

" It is very disagreeable," says Capt. Hall, " to speak of the punish-
ments inflicted on these negroes, but a slave holder must be more or less
of a despot in spite of himself; for the laws neither do, nor can they,
effectually interfere in the details of discipline. The master must enforce
obedience to his orders, and maintain general subordination, however
kind-hearted he may be, by the only means which the nature of the
whole system leaves in his power." " It is a great mistake, however, to
suppose that slaves labour sulkily, and under the perpetual exercise of
the lash. On the contrary, from constant habit, they do, in point of fact,
go about their work with cheerfulness ; and as their tasks are limited to
what can be readily performed, it is in the power of every slave who
chooses, to escape punishment for 'any length of time." ' ' It ought to
be recollected, in due fairness to the slave holders, that many ships of
war, many regiments, and I fear I may add many domestic establish-
ments, to say nothing of schools, are often, as I have witnessed in all
quarters of the globe, the scenes of as revolting tyranny as any rice or
cotton plantation can well be." " In fairness to the planters we ought
also to recollect that the slave holders, or by far the greater number of
them, are not possessed of that character by any voluntary act of their
own. Most of these gentlemen have succeeded to their property by
inheritance, or have been obliged by duty to themselves and their fami-
lies to engage in that particular profession, if I may so call it."f

* Hall's Travels, vol. iii. pp. 209, 210.
•j- Hall's Travels, vol. iii. pp. 220, 22?.

1830.] United Slates of America, and British West Indies. 535

If these observations are applicable to the American slave owner, they
are still more so to the British planter. But no fair and liberal consider-
ations of this kind are permitted to come into the calculations of their
inveterate enemies, the pseudo " Saints" of England !

Before we reproach the planter f pr being a holder of slaves, we should
consider the share we ourselves take in supporting the system. He can-
not make the smallest use of his crop, unless, upon an invitation to
divide the advantages with him, we agree to become partners in his spe-
culation, by paying him for his sugar, rice, cotton, tobacco, and other
articles, which we scruple not to make use of, and without which we
should be very ill off.

On the 20th March, 1 828, Capt. Hall proceeded across the southern
section of the United States, traversing Georgia, Alabama, &c., through
forests, swamps, uplands, and new clearings, to New Orleans, from
whence he ascended the Mississippi, and again returned to the north-
ern states.

"In talking of emancipation," says Capt. Hall, (p. 159) c< people are
apt to forget various little difficulties which stand in the way. In the
first place, the slaves are, to all intents and purposes, the property of the
whites. They have been legally acquired, they are held legally, and the
produce of their labour forms the rightful fortune of their masters.

" To enter the warehouses of the planters, and rob them of their rice
or cotton, would not be one whit more unjust than taking away the
slaves whose labour brings it out of the ground. Suppose, however,
that difficulty removed, and that a compensation could be provided for
the slave holder, what is to become of the liberated negroes ? What is
to be done with two millions of ignorant persons, brought up, as their
fathers and ancestors were, in bodily and mental bondage, who have
acquired habits of thinking and feeling suitable to that state, but totally
unfit for any other ? It is said to be less difficult to make a slave of a
freeman, than to raise a slave to a just knowledge of freedom ; and
certainly experience in America gives no reason to hope that this maxim
is there reversed.

" The mere act of breaking the chains will not do. The rivets that
so long have held down the understanding cannot be driven out, till
some contrivance be found which shall at the same time eradicate all
memory of the past, and all associations with the present state of the
world, from the minds not of the blacks alone, but also of the whites."

" In concluding this important subject I feel bound to say, that, as far
as I could investigate the matter, the slave system of America seems to
be in as good a condition, that is to say, in as fair a train for ameliora-
tion, as the nature of so dreadful a state of things admits of. With re-
spect to external interference, the planters will probably not be the worse
of an occasional hint, even though it be rude and unpalatable. On the
other hand, the abolitionists must make up their minds to suffer great
and almost constant disappointments. Between the two, impartial and
cool-headed men, who, without any particular views, sincerely wish well
to their fellow-creatures, black as well as white, planters as well as slaves,
will confine their hopes and their exertions to what they know is practica-
ble, consistently with justice to all parties, and the laws of common sense." *

If, as Captain Hall observes, the slave system of America is in as fair

* Hall's Travels, vol. iii; pp. 240, 247.

536 United States of America, and British West Indies. QMAY,

a train for amelioration as the nature of so dreadful a state of things ad-
mits of, it must be allowed,, that in point of general intelligence, religious
knowledge, moral feeling, and personal property, the slaves of the United
States are, at least, a century behind those of the British Colonies We
hear nothing from Captain Hall of their being in possession of property
in any shape ; whereas, heads of families, in our own colonies, if at all
industrious and prudent, generally possess, not only considerable sums
in money, but also furniture, utensils, live stock, &c., which property
they bequeath to their families, with as much certainty that the latter
will enjoy it as if they were equally as independent as their masters. One
anecdote, illustrative of good feeling in a wealthy negro, is thus related
by Mr. Barclay.

" About a month before I left Jamaica, in May last, an old negro, be-
longing to Chiswick estate, named Joseph Marriott, called upon me one
Sunday morning ; and, after the usual salutation and good wishes, said,
' Come to trouble massa, if massa so good.' ' What is it about, Joseph,'
said I, ' what can I do for you ?'

" ' I wish to free my wife, Sophy, belonging to Barking Lodge estate,
if massa will stand my friend.'

" I replied that I would with pleasure do what I could for him. ' But
has not Sophy/ I added, ' some children not yours ? Will Mr. Forsyth
(the manager) agree to part with her from the estate without the children?'
' ' ' I free them all, if massa will stand my friend, — no 'fraid for me.'
" Thinking he meant by ' standing his friend,' and ' not to be afraid,'
that he wanted assistance in money, I said I would assist him to a mo-
derate extent, but that the mother and so many children would be a
heavy purchase, and I asked what he himself thought would be the value
put upon them : ' two or three hundred,' said he, with all the sangfroid
imaginable. Somewhat surprised at his manner, I observed that it
might be thereabout, and if he made so little of that sum, I supposed
there would be no great difficulty in the matter. Upon which the old
man put his hand in his pocket, and threw down upon the table two
hundred pounds in gold, telling me he had more money placed out, which
he would have ready by the time I could get the matter settled for him." *
The affair, by a friendly process, was arranged accordingly. " Here,"
says Mr. Barclay, " is a wealthy slave purchasing the manumission of a
woman with a large family, not even of his own caste, for they are mu-
lattoes, who has yet no wish to change his own condition." We could
adduce many other instances of the wealth of the slave population, amongst
whom the missionaries contrive to obtain some good pickings.t We
will state only another instance to show the nature of the property, inde-
pendent of coin, possessed by slaves in the smaller islands. A prize offered
by the agricultural society of Grenada, to the head of a family of slaves
" who shall produce certificates of being possessed of the greatest quantity
of domestic stock, and of having the most beneficially worked and productive
gardens" was gained by Charles of Munro's Bacolet estate, who possessed
eleven pigs (four of them large), a sow, twenty-eight fowls, besides rabbits
and pigeons. Four gardens, in which were six hundred and eighty-five
plantain trees, thirty-five in full bearing, five hundred and eighty-eight

* Effects of the late Colonial Policy, &c., by Alexander Barclay, Esq. Smith, Elder,
and Co. 1830.

f Effects of the late Colonial Policy, &c. pp. 27 to 35.

1830.] United States oj America, and British West Indies. 537

yams, one thousand eight hundred and forty-seven tannias or eddoes,
forty-three coffee bushes, some of them in full bearing. Six gardens in
another quarter, in manioc, plantains, yams, sweet potatoes, and tannias ;
manioc, forty bushels ready for present use, forty bushels more expected
from the young plants, eighty- six plantain trees, twenty-five tannias or
eddoes six months planted, six bushels of sweet potatoes, and three thou-
sand two hundred and fourteen yams of different kinds. In short, the
great profusion of animal and vegetable food raised by steady and in-
dustrious slaves, and the general comfort of that class of people in the
British West Indies, is noticed with considerable surprise by every new
visitor.

Let it not be supposed that the work of religious instruction and
emancipation is standing still in the meanwhile : on the contrary, every
year produces fresh proofs of the progress of both, and what is very
creditable to the planters, two-thirds at least of the manumissions are
either by will, or " without any consideration," being exacted, by the
master, from the slave.

Our limits will not, however, permit us to pursue this subject further
at present ; and we must conclude by referring such of our readers as are
desirous of becoming acquainted with the laws in favour of slaves, to a
small abstract, or enumeration of them, lately published by Ridgway,*
which so completely gives the lie to the assertions of the anti-colonial
party, that we should not be surprised to see " the voice of the country"
raised as loudly against them, as it has ever been in their favour.

* An Abstract of the British West In&ian Statutes, for the Protection and Government
of Slaves. London, 1830.

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53. 3 Z

[ 538 ] [MAY,

THE PRESSED MAN : A TALE OF THE COAST.

THE recollections of childhood are the last that fade from the memory;
the joys and predilections of early youth cling round the heart and the
imagination with a force far beyond those of our riper years. Thirty
hard-working summers saw me confined to a small inland village, where
was no water, save a brook that had hardly force sufficient to turn the
mill-wheel, and whose inhabitants had nothing from which they could
form an idea of a boat, much less of a ship, save the crazy punt in which
the miller occasionally angled, or bobbed for eels, in the sluggish stream.
Nay, so little interested were they which way the wind blew, that the
weathercock on the church spire was allowed to remain, rusty and
crooked, pointing perennially to the south-west, from whence came the
gale that had warped it out of its due perpendicularity.

These thirty years beheld me successively the apprentice, shopman, and
master of what, in a remote country place, is called expressively The Shop:
the store whence pattens and treacle, French lace and plums, mops and
mahogany chairs, candles and patent medicines, may indifferently be
purchased. At length came the moderate competence which permitted
some relaxation to the weary labourer ; and, oh ! with what sensations of
joy and chastened pride did I ascend my own modest gig to spend my
first holiday in revisiting the place of my birth ; gazing, at length, once
more on the mighty ocean, and hailing my cherished old acquaintances,
the white sails dancing on its bosom.

Every one who has run down the line of coast from Brighton to
Portsmouth must have remarked the cleanly, respectable-looking, and
pretty village of E. Here was I born ; its schoolmistress, the dread and
torment, its carpenters' yard (dignified with the name of dock-yard),
the delight and solace of my boyish days. On its bay my mimic ship
hoisted its paper sails to the wind j in its fishing boats my gayest holidays
were spent. It was about four o'clock of a beautiful summer afternoon
that I drove up to the door of its best inn — that door from which I had
often been chased with threats by the angry waiters when, one of a
dozen or more dirty, ragged, and mischievous imps, I was hallooing and
hurraing the coach that brought news of our sailors' triumphs under a
Duncan or a Nelson. I was disappointed. Every object had lost the
magnificence with which my childish wonder once clothed it : the pretty
village I remembered had first expanded into a moderate- sized town,
and was now dwindling again into an assemblage of houses " to lei"
and half-ruined warehouses ; the cottage in which I was born had been
razed to make room for a manufactory, which, nourished by the demands
of war, had been ruined by the return of the pressing times of peace.

In my inquiries after the companions of my boyish days, I was not
more fortunate. Most of them were too obscure and humble to dwell
in the recollection of " him of the inn," but two had signalized them-
selves in the annals of E. One, its hero, had perished on the same deck,
and in the same moment, with the immortal Nelson ; to the other had
been prescribed, by certain right honourable physicians of the soul, a
fourteen years' sojourn in the mild climate of Sidney, as the only means
of curing an unfortunate crookedness of finger, and itching of the palms
of the hands, with which he was grievously afflicted. In despair I gave
up all further questions, and solaced myself for an hour or two with my
chop and modicum of port.

1830.] The Pressed Man: a Tale of the Coast. 539

It was already twilight when, leaving the inn, I took the well-remem-
bered path to the churchyard, to gaze, for the first time, on a head-stone
I had caused to be engraved with the humble names of my parents, and ,
of an only and much loved sister, who had shared the dawn of my pro-
sperity, and presided at the first table I could call my own. Business,
tyrant business, had forbidden my travelling 150 miles to pay the last
sad honours to their remains ; and I now shed my first tears over the
place of their rest. But this is not my tale. The moon had risen, and
I was still pacing the avenue of limes which led to the church porch,
when my ear was startled by the single bell, of which its steeple boasted
tolling minute bells. Torches soon after gleamed in the distance, and
two coffins, one arrayed in all the pomp and heraldry of aristocratic woe,
the other, humble as its cold inhabitant, were borne into the same isle,
and deposited side by side in the same vault. The unusual hour, the
glare of torches, added solemnity to a scene always awful ; and here a
half frantic female, carried fainting from the vault, into which no per-
suasions could prevent her descending, heightened a picture which
wanted not her soul-harrowing shriek to deepen its melancholy traits.

The figure and whole appearance of one among the mourners had
powerfully attracted my attention, and at length, when all were dis-
persing, I ventured to say, speaking rather to myself than him, " Is
that, or is it not, Kit Missen ?" " Who hails ?" was the instant reply.
" Who hails ? Why, Will Thornton !" " Will Thornton ! no, that be
d — d (that I should say so, and but just seen my master under ground),
Will Thornton '& dead, or turned tailor years ago."

" I am sorry to hear that. Who was it then that watched all night
with you, Kit, for the laughing Jenny, and helped to pilot her into the

cove, when Ned Needham had jammed his ?"

" By G — d, this must be Will Thornton, or the devil in his likeness.
Why, how fares it, old messmate ? Many a long cruise, and a hard one
too, since we last parted company. Well, and how stands it on the
purser's books — but no matter, well or ill, come along with me and we
will freshen the nip, and have a yarn of old times, as long — ay, as long
as the main-top bowline and signal halyards spliced."

A few words of explanation sufficed to rejoice the heart of the honest
tar, who, ten years my senior, had erst been my instructor alike in the
rigging of a cutter, and the occasional mysteries of a moonlight watch
among those who (God forgive them!) thought brandy and tobacco none
the worse flavoured for not having paid the king's duty. He freshened
his nip with me at the inn, and from his explanation of the scene we
had just quitted arises my story.

" Why, look ye, master Will, it is not that I am going to say any thing
agen pressing. I knows it 's a damned hard line for a poor fellow to be
hauled out of his own craft and clapped aboard a king's ship, with the
articles of war on one side of him, and the boatswain's daughter on
t' other, whether he will or no. But then, this here 's the case. If so
be the king's majesty, God bless him, wants hands; and the parly vous,
God d — n them, want licking, why he as won't sarve voluntare-ily
must be made to sarve. But there 's reason in all things, as our old
boatswain used to grumble between his gums, when the skipper swore
the yards wer'n't squared sharp enough. And I am sure if the history
of those two poor fellows as we just saw laid alongside of each other in
their last berth was known, it would make some of our leeftenants more

3Z2

540 The Pressed Man : a Tale of the Coast. [MAY,

careful of driving a poor fellow mad, because he happened to have a
pretty sweetheart, and an anchor tattooed on his arm."

But I must divest the tale of the profusion of nautical phrases with
which honest Kit embellished it, and tell it in my own language.

The squire of our little village had an only son, who, though born to
the inheritance of a magnificent fortune, chose to serve his country in her
proudest, and then most cherished service, the Navy. He was just such
an officer as Jack best loves: sharp, smart, and straight-armed on duty,
but knowing well a sailor's wants, wishes, and frailties ; anxiously pro-
viding for the one, indulging, as far as duty permitted, or winking at the
others in a good seaman ; while woe to the confirmed lubber that turned
out fit for nothing better than lop -lolly-boy or cook's shifter. Prize-
money was sure if he headed the cutting out boats ; victory no longer
doubtful if he led on the boarders. He knew what a sailor could do,
and ought to do, and never spurred him beyond his power, or pardoned
wilful neglect. So much for the officer. . The man was light-hearted,
generous, and amiable ; a firm friend, an honourable enemy. But he
had one fault, the indulgence of which sent him, after years of protracted
suffering, a maimed and miserable tenant to the long home of all that is
mortal : his attachment to the fair sex was unbounded ; and where that
passion was concerned, conscience, and almost even honour, were con-
demned to silence.

Ned Needham was the flower and glory of the E. fishermen. No one
steered the boat in a gale so steadily, or threw a net with such precision as
Ned. That he occasionally speculated in " moonshine" has been already
confessed, and what fisherman in war-time has not ? Ned had saved some
money, armed a boat or two of his own, and was about to man the pret-
tiest pinnace in the village, when the young squire, just one and twenty,
and recently made^r-rt of a crack six and thirty, came home to celebrate
at once his arrival at years of discretion, and raise as many daring dogs
among the fishermen of E. as were inclined to the sport of catching
French or Dutch Indiamen between the Straits of Sunda and the Cape.
Bonfires were lighted, ale barrels broached, and, in a few days, hardly a
ood hand remained in the village. But Ned, to the surprise of all who
id not know the cruise he was upon, Ned, the daring, the brave, held
back. The squire wanted him particularly for coxswain of the gig, for
no man dipped a lug like Ned; but no — promises of additional pay,
certain promotion on good behaviour, or the best interest for his imme-
diate discharge at the end of the cruise, were lavished in vain. At length
the squire found out at once the cause of Ned's backwardness, and why
All his warmest advances to Fanny Cottrell, the prettiest girl in the parish,
or five surrounding ones, had been met with a disdain to which he was
wholly unused. But, to do him justice, even where he was most cul-
pable, he did not learn how close their engagement, or how near its
consummation.

Revenge took possession of the lieutenant : he knew the single blot in
poor Ned's character ; and though determined now not to have him in
his own crew, he gave the hint to another officer, and just as the happy
fisherman was leaving the church door with his bride, a press-gang,
whose numbers defied the resistance even of desperation, conveyed him
on board the receiving ship, from whence he was soon drafted into a
seventy-four.

vacancy for coxswain of the gig, which poor Needham's ill-.

g
di

1830.] The Pressed Man : a Tale of the Coast. 541

starred love created, was filled up by my old companion Kit, and the

dashing stood down channel for her three years' spell on the India

station. Kit was soon attached, as a kind of personal retainer, to the
lieutenant, and refused even a boatswain's warrant that he might remain
disposeable to follow his master whenever he changed ship.

The details of a prolonged cruise between the Cape and the China
seas, the bay of Bengal, and the Persian gulf, claim no place in this tale.
Years passed away, the lieutenant got his commander's commission on
the station, and was dispatched home, in charge of a prize corvette he
had himself cut out, to get confirmed at the Admiralty.

To man the corvette for fighting her way over the broad seas required
a draft from various men of war and Indiamen that were lying in Bom-
bay harbour. Among the first to ascend her side, and pass muster before
her new commander, was Ned Needham. A scowl of peculiar though
suppressed meaning just crossed his brow as he measured eyes with his
future captain ; but no other token of recognition passed on either side.
The character Ned brought with him secured him at once the post of
captain of the fore-top. But his conduct soon showed a strange com-
bination of every quality most valuable in a sailor, with an occasional
dogged kind of indifference to duty ; or rather, a wilful display of negli-
gence, and even insubordination, when more immediately under the
captain's own eye. The captain knew him well ; remembered but too
painfully how deeply he had injured him, and winked hard at his sallies.
But at length a daring expression of almost mutinous defiance obliged
his commander to order him instantly to the custody of the master at
arms.

" I waited but for this," exclaimed Ned, and darting suddenly forward,
aimed a murderous blow at his captain with a jack-knife, which, it was
afterwards discovered, he had been for days carefully pointing and
sharpening.

" This for Ned and Fanny."

The captain, though only slightly wounded, reeled with the force of
the blow ; and at once a hundred arms secured the mad assassin.

" Do him no injury ; his sentence must pass in England," said the
captain; " but let him be securely guarded."

The corvette rounded the Cape, after hammering for a week against
a nor-wester ; rolled down to St. Helena, and was already making
TenerifFe's lofty peak, when, for the first time during her long voyage,
a sail decidedly inimical claimed her attention. A game of long bowls
by moonlight ensued ; night parted the combatants ; but the morning
showed, on board the Englishman, a lost prisoner, and his sentinel,
bayoneted and senseless, stretched over the useless fetters. When the
marine had somewhat recovered his senses, under the doctor's hand, he
said that during the hottest of the firing, Needham had suddenly jumped
up, freed, as if by magic, from his irons ; seized his musket, and pinioning
him to the deck with his own bayonet, had rushed up the nearest hatch-
way, and no doubt plunged overboard unobserved, while all hands had
their guns and a Frenchman to look after. " Best as it is," thought the
captain ; " I am well rid of him. I should have little liked to be obliged
to hang a poor devil whose happiness I had unfortunately blasted for
ever." How Needham had contrived to escape during the bustle of
an engagement, a small watch-spring file, lying near his irons, pretty
clearly explained ; but whether even his skill in swimming would

542 The Pressed Man: a Tale of the Coast. [MAY,

enable him to reach the enemy's ship at a good mile of distance, and
through rather a rough sea, was a galley problem. However, the wonder
hardly lasted its nine days, when it was swept from every one's remem-
brance by the white cliffs of England. The Land's End, the Eddystone,
the Needles, successively greeted the seaman's longing eyes ; and at
length Portsmouth received the corvette in its spacious harbour. Jack
got liberty, the new commander his confirmation of rank, and a speedy
commission in the prize he had brought home ; in which he was dis-
patched to a new scene, where he was to combat kinsmen-foes who
spoke the language of Britain, and turned the arms of bought and paid
for traitors against the land which had nursed them. Years again passed
away. Washington and New Orleans saw the young commander as
enterprising and active at the head of his brigade of seamen on shore
as he was seamanlike and daring on the quarter-deck of his sloop at sea.
Immediately after the last-named unfortunate expedition, posted for his
own personal conduct, and charged with dispatches, he once more turned
his prow toward Old England.

Scarcely had his gallant vessel cleared the Bahamas, when one of
those sea-snakes, the prides of America, a long black raking schooner
rather above her own force, showed the stripes and stars not three miles
on her weather beam. te That's the very article," said the young cap-
tain, " I should like to carry with me to England ; but we are no match
for her in the legs : master, up helm, and let her count our cabin win-
dows : she will follow us hard if we show signs of running, and then,
if she scapes our eighteens, we'll forgive her." — " Oh ! there she comes,
tacks and sheets started already : watch her well, and contrive if you
can to let her shoot past us : never mind our raking fire ; once close under
our lee, she's ours if guns or boarding pikes can buy her."

The vicissitudes of a sea-fight have been too recently and too well
described to be repeated here. Suffice it that after a protracted conflict
of some hours' duration, both vessels were reduced to crippled wrecks on
the water ; but the Englishman having some head sail remaining, that,
though riddled with shot, would still draw, contrived, in spite of a wound-
ed rudder, to wear round and join the shattered stump of her bowsprit
between the American's main shrouds and runners. Boarding was the
word, and Jonathan soon sent to quarters. Our hero was in the act of
hauling down the stripes to make way for the red cross, when " Never
to him ! ! !" roared a voice that was heard even above the din of battle,
and in an instant a pistol wound and cutlass slash stretched him on the
deck, Ned Needham flourishing his blood-stained weapon over his pros-
trate foe. But not a moment had he in which to exult ; twenty pikes at
once pinned him to deck ; the victory remained with the red-cross flag,
and the English captain and American renegade were borne below, both
as it was supposed mortally wounded, and better, far better that both had
expired before they could be laid in their berths. A shattered jaw and
incurable body wound condemned the captain to years of lingering
misery ; nor was the renegade's lot less melancholy ; an amputated arm
and leg, and a fractured skull, deprived him of the means of self support,
and at times even of reason.

The first use our hero made of returning sense was to write on a slate
(for his wound had rendered him speechless for life,) " Say nothing !"
Kit read, and his tears obliterated the command ; but he understood and
obeyed his master's wishes. He who could have told of Needham's

1830.] The Pressed Man : a Tale of the Coast. 543

mutiny, desertion, and treason, was silent ; and when the ships arrived
at St. John's, to which their crippled state obliged them to repair, a car-,
tel carried the maimed fisherman to his supposed country.

Peace had been long restored : the captain, still attended by the faith-
ful Kit, lingered out a miserable and too prolonged existence. He had
sought out the widowed Fanny, and made her situation as comfortable
as money could render a breaking heart. His first and only great crime
atoned for, to the best of his power, he awaited, with the calmness of
resignation, his release from suffering.

It was on a stormy autumnal night that chance led Kit Missen
through the very lime-row where he and I met at the commencement of
this tale. A strange figure wrapped in a seaman's cloak, and evidently
anxious to avoid observation, passed limpingly by him, but a sudden and
bright moon-gleam betrayed to his old companion the figure and linea-
ments of Needham. At once following and arresting his attempted
flight, he exclaimed,

" Needham ! Nay, it is you ! What madness has brought you where
one word would hang you ?"

" Madness ? Ay, it is madness, but it is vengeance too ! Twice my
aim has baulked me : a third time — "

" Nay, then, you are dangerous, as well as mad— help, here !"

And he said truly — the last dread affliction of humbled humanity was
even then asserting its power over the unhappy man, and it required all
the force of Kit, and two or three countrymen who joined him, to con-
vey the now raving maniac to the house of the village surgeon, in which
Kit's influence immediately secured him medical aid and secrecy.

After weeks and months of mental aberration, a moment of returning
sanity permitted his attendants to explain to Needham the real state of
affairs, and his cure from that time proceeded so favourably, that he was
soon permitted to see and embrace his dearly loved and long severed
bride. Their meeting — but no ! some other pen must describe such
scenes. Mine shrinks appalled from a task that only he, the mighty
magician of the north, he who has chronicled, to the life, the deep
resignation of Flora M'lvor ; the remorse for nameless transgression of
Lord Glenallan ; or the maniac desperation of the Bride of Lammermuir,
might venture to cope with.

" I forgive him," at length said Needham, " but I cannot accept his
bounty. In another country I still possess enough for my wants, and
where my injuries drove me, there shall the short and painful remainder
of my days be spent."

But Providence ordained otherwise. Heart-break had long been si-
lently conducting Fanny to the last bourne ; and though, for a few short
weeks, the restoration of her husband, such as war had left him, seemed
to inspire her with new health and vigour, continual returns of illness
stopped each projected plan of emigration, till in less than a twelvemonth
from their reunion, one day, almost one hour, summoned her husband
and the captain, the injurer and the injured, to the tomb.

The funeral rites which I had witnessed were in strict obedience to
the captain's own wishes, and he had by his will made ample provision,
not only for Kit, but for a yet unborn pledge, which poor Fanny was
likely to present to her husband, of their faithful though ill-starred love.

Who was the female that formed one of the funeral groupe I need not
say. Next morning I rambled up to the old hall, and the undertaker's

544 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. [MAY,

hieroglyphics displayed on the magnificent hatchment announced that
the last of his race had perished. Returning,, I passed Needham's cottage,
where closed windows told me that Fanny's sorrows had also found a
refuge in the grave.

Her child survived. Of him a future tale may tell. G. D.

THE UNITED SERVICE SMOKE-SHOP : A WINTER SKETCH.
BY A SMOKER.

Scene, the Divan. — St. Martin's in the Fields.— President's Chair. —

Long Table. — Chairs, fyc. — Enter Bob Vino and Beau Ben in argument.

Vino. But give me leave to say, friend Ben, that you are quite mis-
taken : a pipe is, I contend, a more dignified medium for inhaling the
perfume of tobacco than your boasted cigarro, and only inferior to the
sublime hooka.

Beau Ben. Psha, Bob ! you are always on stilts : dignified ! sublime !
what have these pompous words to do with our humble smoke-shop ?
where a few good fellows meet, in the free-and-easy way, to blow a
cloud ; each, according to his fancy, enjoys his nip of ale, or glass of grog
and Welsh rabbit, free from all restraint, and without being exposed to
that prying inquisition into each other's circumstances which seems to be
half the business of certain modern associations : enjoy your splendidly-
mounted meerchaum, if you will ; but for the luxury of smoking, give
me the cigar fresh and fragrant from the cedar box.

Vino. But you'll give me leave to say

Beau Ben. Avast ! /'// give you leave (without further asking) to say
whatever you please for the next six months ; but a'n't we early ? no
faith, nearly nine. Where can old MacTowlter be ; he maintains that
character in the smoke-shop which all agree he did in the field of battle
— the first in and the last out of it.

Enter Lieut. Col. MacTowlter (choked).

Beau Ben. Welcome, noble colonel ; well secured, I see : we were
afraid you had got a tumble this slippery weather.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Not quite, Beau ; but, I'll tell you what, I walked
very aisy for fear I would.

Beau Ben. Colonel, here's an old campaigning friend of yours, Mr.
Vino, of the commissary department.

Vino. (Correcting him.) Commissary/, if you please.

Beau Ben. Well then, commissan'atf, if you will have it so.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Mr. Vino, we have seen some hard, ay, and some
pleasant days too, together. Do you remember our scramble on the
march from Figuera? we were both hearty cocks in these times; but
twenty years or so makes all the difference.

Vino. I often think of my old acquaintances of the rough and ready,
and wish them well.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Why, for the matter of that, Mr. Vino, they are,
I hope, well off; but seeing there are not above five or six of the old
hands left to give an account of ourselves, we must only trust that our
old comrades in arms, having made their last mortal march with honour,
have arrived at better and permanent quarters.

1830-3 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. 545

Vino. What became of Major Gypps ? I missed his name out of the
Army List at the close of the war.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Shortly after, he succeeded to Gypps' Park, on the
death of his uncle ; and if you should feel disposed to take a cruise in
your yacht up the Bristol Channel, I'll ensure you a hearty welcome,
and the best bottle of claret in Glamorganshire.

Vino. And that fine fellow, David Larkin, I saw his name in the
list, " severely wounded."

Lt. Col. Totilter. Yes ; he lost his right leg the day he gained the
majority.

Vino. Is he alive, colonel ?

Lt. Col. Towlter. Ay, as well as his odd leg will let him. He is now
an alderman of our ould corporation, and the same good-humoured fellow
he ever was. (Major Claymore's voice heard without.) Here comes as
brave a soldier as ever stormed a breach, ay, and as good a man as ever
lived to honour the profession.

Enter Major Claymore.

' Major Claymore. Your most obedient, gentlemen : MacTowlter, how's
aw wi' ye ? Captain, your hand. Ah ! Mester Vino, you here ! this is an
unexpected pleasure ; we haan't seen you amongst us since we got into
our winter quarters here : wha must we thank for picking you up this
cold night ?

Vino. My friend Captain Binnacle, to whom I was first indebted for
the honour of an introduction into this agreeable society ; and give me

leave to say

Beau Ben. Yes, Bob, we all knew what you were going to say; but
here comes a member to make up, a quorum.

Enter Captain Cleverly.

Capl. Cleverly. Major, you have had the start of me. Ah! Colonel,
I fear I shall never win my glass of grog by being here before you.
Binnacle, here you are, as spruce as ever, although the thermometer is
ten below the freezing point.

Major Claymore. Captain Cleverty, here is our friend, Mr. Commissary
Vino ; allow me to make you acquainted with him. Had it not been for
this gentleman's care of us, the poor Highlanders would have fared but
badly on our race to Coruna — eh, sirs ! that was a sore time, and it might
have been worse, had it not been for our naval friend here. Captain
Beenacle, the old Highlanders will never forget your kindness on the
melancholy morning of the seventeenth of January.

Beau Ben. Name it not, major ; I was but the humble representative
of our noble-hearted skipper, who, laid on his beam-ends at that time
himself, could the more keenly feel and sympathize with the sufferings
of those brave men whom the fortune of war threw upon our protection.
Never may we see the day when the keys of our lockers shall be inhos-
pitably turned on a brother in distress, whether he wears a blue or a red
jacket.

Major Claymore. I don't know how you get on this frosty weather,
gentlemen, but I had quite enoo to do to hold my footing ; and I begin
to feel the old soldier's complaint in the stiffness of my back. You don't
seem to mind it, Captain Beenacle, with your light boots and dandy frock.

Beau Ben. I am well secured, major : look at these " preventive spring

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53 4 A

546 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. [MAY,

straps," placed (as I should say, nautically) " one point abaft the beam"
of the foot ; they form a complete protection against slips ; they are my
own invention : as for the twitches in your back, major, you must try
one of my anti-sciatica-polar-safety belts, which bid defiance to rheum-
atism. I am going to take out a patent for them at the suggestion of
Lord Lumbago, who never stirs out without one : it does not in the least
affect the shape, as you perceive (turning his back). Sir Jacobus Jallap
(of lazaretto-phobia memory) has written a squib against my belts, in
consequence of seeing his patient, Lord Lumbago, skaiting last week on
the Serpentine, after his positive injunctions to him not to leave his room
during the frost.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Chair, major ; past nine o'clock. Chair. (Major
takes the chair).

Enter Captain Geehogan. R. W. I. .

Lt. Col. Towlter. Ah, Geeho ! just in time to take your place on the
right of the chair.

Capt. Geehogan. Our friend Mac is at the door.

Enter MacCarthy hastily.

Omnes. Welcome, Mac.

MacCarthy. Mr. President, I beg to be allowed to introduce a friend
of mine, Mr. Burgoyne, from Southampton, who is desirous of being
admitted a member of our shop.

Major Claymore. My good Mac, it would be very repugnant to my
wishes, and I'm sure, to all here, to decline the pleasure of receiving any
friend of yours ; but yell recollect, that no person is eligible to take his
seat amongst us, unless he be a member of one or the other of the services,
ceevil or meelitary : this may appear an ungracious distinction ; but as
the object of our little society is an economical enjoyment of the few
social pleasures which our straitened circumstances allow us to pursue,
we cannot open the door to every person whom curiosity, or a less par-
donable motive, might lead to become a spy on the nakedness of the land.
We have all done our duty to king and country in the hard days of trial,
and must not forget our duty to ourselves, in preserving, as far as we can,
all that is now left us, the pride of our profession. (MacCarthy retires
for a minute and re-enters.)

MacCarthy. Mr. Chair, I am happy to be able to obviate the objec-
tion to my friend's admission by stating, that he served as cornet in the
Hampshire Fencibles during the late war, and only retired into country
life when his regiment was reduced.

Major Claymore. Gentlemen, ye have all heard what our worthy
friend Mac has stated ; after which, it remains with you to decide the
question ; as far as my voice goes, I say admit Mr. Bourgyne.

Omnes. Admit, admit him !

Major Claymore. MacCarthy, introduce your friend.

[MacCarthy retires and returns with his friend, whom he presents
to the president and company^}

Major Claymore. Take your chair, Mester Bourgyne, we are glad to
see you amongst us.

[Burgoyne is followed by a terrier dog unperceived by the company,
and which takes its place between his master's feet under the table.~\

1830] The United Service Smoke-shop: a Winter Sketch. 547

Enter landlord and waiter.

Major Claymore. Gentlemen will now please to order what they may
require for the ensuing hour.

Lt. Col. Towlter. A bottom of whiskey, hot water, and materials.

MacCarthy. Ditto, ditto. — Burgoyne, what shall I order for you?

Burgoyne. A pint of port.

Omnes. Chair, chair !

Major Claymore. Mester Bourgyne ! I beg to mention, that it is
against regulation to have wine served in this shop, except on our monthly
dining days.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Have you seen any thing of my friend Sir Hugo
lately ? are his accounts passed ?

Vino. My excellent friend Sir Hugo is now in town toiling away at
them ; but he expects that all his accounts will be audited and reported
on this session.

Major Claymore. Then it is to be hoped he will receive the deegnity
which the duke recommended him for at the close of the war.

Vino. I don't know that, major ; at the close of the war, the duke's
heart seemed warm with the recollection of recent services ; and the sun
of his favour appeared to shine on the humble labours of those who
assisted to place him at the top of the ladder of greatness ; of late years,
however, this feeling has marvellously cooled ; and I fear my friend Sir
Hugo, amongst others, has felt the chill of his frozen countenance. But
even should the long promised dignity of baronet be granted after all,
it would prove but an empty honour, unless accompanied by a more
substantial reward (for thirty-five years' honourable and meritorious ser-
vice), than his paltry half-pay of nine and twenty shillings a day.

LL Col. Towlter. NINE and TWENTY SHILLINGS! why, his/ull pay
was FIVE POUNDS a day, was it not ?

Vino. True, colonel ; his full pay was FIVE POUNDS a day ; but the
HALF of that pay melted down in the treasury crucible is, by some re-
finement (inexplicable to all but the favoured and mind-illumined few
of that building), found to be exactly TWENTY-NINE SHILLINGS and

THREE-PENCE ! !

Lt. Col. Towlter. Good encouragement that to integrity ! and no bad
hint to " make hay while the sun shines" eh ! Mr. Vino ?

Vino. Hem, hem ! (becomes suddenly husky.)

Capt. Geehogan. May I ask Mr. Vino what became of the store-
keeper's department, to whose service a brigade of our corps was atr
tached for upwards of a year ; lugging about their cases and band-boxes
all over the country, from Lisbon to the Pyrenees, and then back again
to the cloisters of Belem ?

Major Claymore. I have often wished to ask you, Mester Vino, how
that money was accounted for which, you recollect, was hurled over cliffs,
and thrown into ditches on our retreat in Gallicia; I'm told it amounted
to upwards of seventy thousand pounds I ! !

Vino. My dear major, I can answer you in a few words, a " wet
blanket" was thrown over that matter, — and why ? the chief of our de-
partment at that time was himself, one of the wooden gods of Scotland
Yard — in other words, he was an army comptroller. All his accounts
were audited con amore — (" Hawks dont pick hawks' eyes out." )

Major Claymore. But government sent out an audit establishment, with

4 A 2

548 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. [MAY,-

all its expensive apparatus, to Portugal ; and Parliament was told that
all the Peninsular accounts would be audited on the spot.

Vino. Such was the story, major ; and, like other Lisbon stories of the
same period, was swallowed : a residence in that delightful climate was
found convenient for more parties than one. Mr. Dogberry (the chief)
established himself in the cooling bowers of Cintra, whence he issued his
mandates. Accountants were summoned from the east and from the
west ; from the Mauritius and the Cape ; from Canada ; from England,
France, and the Netherlands, to attend his high court for examination,
explanation, and implication !

Li. Col Towlter. Well ; and what came out of it, after all?

Vino. Why, it all ended in failure, to be sure; and. the whole of the
Peninsular accounts (jumbled together in as much confusion as a clubb'd
battalion) were bundled off to the audit board, at Somerset House ; on
whose shelves some of them may probably repose in dusty silence for
the next twenty years.

Major Claymore. But I thought that the duke, and his gallant little
second, Sir Henry, had fairly laid their shoulders to the wheel, in the
business of dispatch and retrenchment, and that there was no such thing
now-a-days as fi accounts in arrear."

Vino. Yes ; as far as the dismissal of some scores of poor clerks (the
slaves of former years) went, this zeal for retrenchment has indeed been
conspicuous ; but all the fat offices remained untouched.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Much of a piece with that pitiful parsimony, which
reduced the means of transport for the accommodation of the officers of
the line, during the years 1812, 1813, arid 1814, to one mule per com-
pany, while the generals had from forty to fifty each. By the by, Mr.
Vino, you gentlemen of the commissariat took pretty good care of your-
selves in the distribution of quadrupeds ; no, there was no arguing your
plea of the necessity of security for the public documents : on one occa-
sion, I remember seeing a box of these documents overthrown on our line
of march, when out rolled a Stilton cheese in its leaden jacket, escorted
by a pickled tongue ; which (had it the faculty of speech) might have
told a tale of many other niceties of a documentary character contained in
the box.

Omnes. Ha, ha, ha !

Vino. {More than usually pompous.) Give me leave to say, colonel,
that the circumstance you mention did not occur with my division.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Indeed, it did not ; and sorry we were for it, my
friend ; for in that case, our little mess might have reckoned on a slice
of your well-secured Stilton, and a cut of your cherry-coloured lingua.

Capt. Cleverly. For that matter, colonel, there were other depart-
ments of the army which shared equally well with the commissariat.
We poor mousers, the infantry of the line, had always the hardest work
and the least comfort. On the retreat from Burgos, when our wounded
and sick were lying by hundreds on the roadside in a dying state ;
when all our personal comforts were cheerfully abandoned, in order to
afford some accommodation for our perishing comrades ; when our com-
pany mules might be seen tottering up to the knees in mud, laden with
two, sometimes three disabled soldiers on the back of each ; we were
compelled to " open column to the right and left," to afford a passage
to the personal cart (as it was called), and a string of sumpter mules
of some of the great ones.

1830-3 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. 549

Major Claymore. These, my dear Cleverly, are contingencies insepa-
rable from a state of war ; recollect also, that general officers have what
is termed their family (and I like the expression much), consisting of
their staff, to provide for daily ; and if these officers do their duty, they
have quite enough to employ the faculties of body and mind, without
having to provide their individual subsistence as an additional task on
their exertions.

Lt. Col. Towlter. I remember on the passage of the Pisuerga the rush
on one of the bridges was tremendous ; the mules of our artillery tum-
bril took fright, by which it was forced up on the low parapet, then half
demolished, in such a situation as to impede the rapid retreat of the di-
vision. " Throw it over ! throw it over !" shouted our general. An
order which was about to be obeyed, when the commanding officer of
artillery rode up, and urged the preservation of the tumbril, inasmuch
as it contained valuable " carcass ammunition." By the great exertions
of our people at the head of the column, and a further delay often mi-
nutes, the carriage was rescued from its dangerous position, and the
mules set off in a brisk trot. On our short halt that evening we dis-
covered that it was laden with hampers of WINE and PORTBR, with
HAMS, CHEESE, and other most essential " carcass ammunition," of which
we salvagers were liberally invited to partake. All's fair in campaigning !

Major Claymore. The ordnance people certainly had a great latitude ;
but the arrangements for carrying on that arm of the service have ever
been conducted on a scale of liberal, I might add prodigal expense : but
its splendid services throughout the war was cheaply purchased at any
price. I am told Lord Beresford (following up the plans of the duke)
has applied the axe of retrenchment and reduction with a heavy hand.

Lt. Col. Towlter. True ! But we keep a parcel of fat tom-cats that
catch neither rat nor mouse ; sometimes, indeed, they play a little with
the former, and latterly they lap out of the same dish together.

Major Claymore. Do you know, Mester Vino, what may be the in-
come of the master-general of the ordnance ? I have heard various esti-
mates of it.

Vino. I believe it may be taken in round numbers at eight thousand a
year, one thing with another (I know it is generally stated at much
less) ; and its patronage, always great, has been augmented by the ar-
rangement which merged the office of barrack-master-general in that of
the ordnance.

Major Claymore. Yes, yes ; there's no want of patronage. Ech ! the
marshal 's a lucky man.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Faith ! you may say that.

Major Claymore. Master-general !

Lt. Col. Towlter. A pensioner of two thousand a year !

Major Claymore. Colonelcy of 16th foot !

Lt. Col. Towlter. Government of Jersey !

Major Claymore Viscount Beresford !

Lt. Col. Towlter. I wonder does his grace ever reflect on the chance of
again taking the field with British troops ? I wish he had never turned
statesman. " Confound his politics." I hate to think of them.

Capt. Cleverly. With due deference to the legislature, I must express
my doubts that a barrack-master is, in strictness, a civil servant of the
crown j he is amenable to martial law; and if subject to all the pains
and penalties of the military code, he ought in fairness to be allowed to

550 The United Service Smoke-shop: a Winter Sketch. [MAY,

claim its protection. But the question, although often mooted, has never
been fairly met by any government : whether the half-pay of officers of
the navy and army is to be considered as a remunerating pension for pasl,
or a retaining-fee for future services ? Even Mr. Canning, when pushed
on the subject some years since, shuffled out of the debate, in a manner
equally discreditable to his abilities and to his principles.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Had he any ?

Beau Ben. Pardon me, Cleverty ; the question was decided in one
case, that the half-pay of officers of the ARMY and NAVY was bondtfide a
remuneration for past services. The occasion I allude to was that of
Lord William Beauclerc, afterwards Duke of St. Albans, who was a lieu-
tenant in our service on half-pay; and his claim to which he fully
established (when declining to be again employed) on the principle I
state, and against the powerful opposition of the Great Lord.

Major Claymore. I was sorry to read in the new regulations respect-
ing claims on the Compassionate List, a string of difficulties presented
which almost amount to exclusion ; it is, I take it, a cruel experiment
on the loyalty and attachment of the poor officer to throw so many im-
pediments in the way of the orphans' relief after the parent has resigned
his breath on the field of battle ; or perished more ingloriously in the
obscurity of private life, worn out with honourable toils, a prey to dis-
tress, disappointment, and neglect !

Lt. Col. Towlter. I have read the " MEMORANDUM" from the War
Office, which you allude to, with disgust. I begin to hate the word
" Memorandum" latterly, for it always ushers in some contemptible clip-
ping and paring down of the veteran's comforts.

Capt. Cleverty. Ay ! and economy begins at the wrong end. If one-
twentieth part of the enormous salaries, pensions, and allowances, granted
to military men holding high official situations, CIVIL as well as MILI-
TARY, were appropriated (if every third year only) to the COMPAS-
SIONATE FUND, hundreds of destitute orphans, either in helpless infancy,
or interesting, yet suffering youth, might annually be rescued from per-
dition.

Major Claymore. I agree with you that the example ought to begin
with the great military functionaries and public departments ; and be fol-
lowed by the colonels of regiments and governors of forts and garrisons;
not nominally and to a miserable amount (as at present), but virtually
and largely too. When military men draw so much from the public
purse, they should freely give, as they freely receive ; but I am aware
this would be deemed an unpalatable doctrine in certain high quarters.

Lt. Col. Torvlter. Yes; but why shut out poor devils on half-pay (I
beg your pardon, brother HALVES !) from even a smell of the civil
kitchens ? There is an individual, whose name I see in the Red Book
as enjoying the following good things : —
Retired Colonel of Artillery !
Aide-de-carnp to the King !
Lieut. Governor of Hull !

Commissioner of Hackney Coaches, Pedlar and Hawkers'
Licences, &c. &c. &c.

Mr. President, I have not had a drop in my tumbler this last quarter of
an hour. The clock has struck ten, and we seem all ready for the rein-
forcement.

]830.] The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. 551

Major Claymore. Mester Bourgyne, we have the pleasure of calling
ye Boots to-night. Ye'el do me the favour to ring the bell.

\_Burgoyne rings.~\

Enter landlord, who takes orders for reinforcement of grogs, ale, Sfc.
Enter two members, Captain Kilkenny and Lieutenant Mainbrace, R. N.

Omnes. Ah, welcome, Kilkenny ! All hail, CAPTAIN ! Kilkenny and
Mainbrace, all hail !

Capt. Kilkenny. All snow, you might say. But here, gentlemen, I
am. CAPTAIN at least ! a captain of twenty-four hours standing, and a
soldier of twenty -four years service ! However, welcome promotion
on any terms.

Major Claymore. Captain Kilkenny, I sincerely wish you joy of your
step; and my next wish is for a speedy call into actual service, the credit
of which no man would more honourably sustain.

Capt. Kilkenny. Thank you, from my heart, major, for your kind
wishes ; it is but a poor service, however, when after a quarter of a
century's hard fagging in all climates, a fellow must be deemed by his
friends a fit subject for congratulation on attaining the wonderful pro-
vision of seven shillings a day, and a place on the half-pay shelf, perhaps
for life !

Mainbrace. Avast there, Joey, my boy ; recollect the honour of the
thing — CAPTAIN is a good name for any man who wears a cockade ; but
a real captain is a host, as I may say : what say you to it, Navarino Ben ?

Beau Ben. Why, Jack, that I wish I was a real CAPTAIN, as you say;
you see how touchy certain persons are about titles, and tie us down to
that of Commander, as if it was high treason to call us CAPTAIN ; and
this too from chaps that have but just got the lift themselves.

Mainbrace. The very sort, of course, for your old hands would be
above it ; but though there may be here and there such blocks, dang it,
they are not a fair specimen of the blue coat : we are, to be sure, grum-
blers, from middy to " red at the main ;" but we can't be accused of
depressing each other.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Humph ! (sending out a long whiff of smoke.) Settle
that amongst yourselves, gentlemen.

Beau Ben. Mainbrace ! you are a most generous fellow to talk so just
now, when, to my knowledge, you are smarting under an act of neglect,
so unkind and unexpected, that it would have rendered any other man
but yourself peevish.

Mainbrace. Pooh ! pooh ! Ben, that squall's blown over. I was, to be
sure, promised a shove into a " twenty-eight;" and left my reverend
dad's comfortable Christmas fire-side, and (hanging up my gun in
ordinary) tramped up to London to receive my appointment : but you
ought to know that LORDS are not always MASTERS. Some other, and
perhaps better fellow, has chopped in for the number of my mess ; — and
success to him, I say ! I can go back to the old Parsonage House — can
shoot, hunt, drink my wine, dance, and carry-on " till all's blue again,"
without shaking hands with our liberal agent, Sir Francis Omnibus,
above once a year. Not so, my Beau Ben, with many a brave fellow
who cools his heels from meridian till midnight, walking about this un-
charitable town, without any one to ask him if he has such a thing as a
mouth ! spinning his yarn of existence on the poor Jive shillings a day ;
hardly able to show colours — damned queer in the canvas, and some-

552 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. [MAY,

times leaky in his lower works. O ! I have often wished the Duchess
of St. Falconberg had taken a fancy to the cut of my jib when I used to
Philander her about the Steine in old Tommy's time. If I had the com-
mand of the " Millionnaire," there should not be one sorrowful-faced sub
to be seen, whatever was the colour of his cloth.

Beau Ben. Nobly said, Jack, my boy ! What messmate ever passes
within hail of the parson's gate without being brought-to, and em-
bargoed for a bed and bottle as long as he likes to enjoy them ? What
sailor or soldier ever left the porch of your dad's hospitable home with-
out receiving his reverence's bounty, and leaving behind him the
veteran's blessing ?

Mainbraee. Thank you, Ben, for doing justice to the old 'on — who
(although /say it) is a regular trump ! ay, Ben, and as hearty as when
he boarded us at Plymouth to place little Ned under his godfather, Lord
Exmouth, when we were agoing to have a rap at the Algerines j it was
the poor boy's first and only voyage : but the old man bore the loss of
his last born like a hero.

Major Claymore. Or a Christian, Mr. Mainbraee. [Solemnly. ,]]

Mainbraee. As both, major ! (with peculiar animation.) Little Ned
behaved like a lad of spirit, and the blunt old admiral wrote such a
kind letter to father, that the tear of a parent's pride chased away the
tear of a parent's sorrow ! — But, Ben, your old friend Tom is come
home, sick of mulligatawny, hard marching, and the fears ofhalf-batta —
he is going to dowse the red coat and take to the black, that the living
mayn't go out of the family; and so he ought, poor fellow ! for all the
Devil has been worked out of him during the last five years' fagging,
and he's as poor as a church mouse.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Good reasons for turning parson. O ! he '11 do.

Major Claymore. No talk now of the peerage for Sir Archibald's
Burmese services. I always doubted the report ; but if such a thing is
to be, I hope the Premier will not put it off from year to year until the
intended peer slips through the fingers of royalty, like that gallant spirit
of the north, Sir David Baird !

Capt. Cleverly. But for whom the Great Captain would now be
General Wellesley.

Lt. Col Towlter If that?

'Enter landlord and waiter with the bowl, fyc.

Major Claymore. Now, gentlemen, that we are better primed to do
honour to the toast, I'll give you the health of the YOUNG CAPTAIN, but
our OLD brother soldier, Captain Kilkenny.

Omnes. Captain Kilkenny ! health and long life to him !

Major Claymore. Now, Kilkenny, may we beg to hear your tuneful
warble? Twenty years' service don't much improve the voice or
person, but yours is an organ never out of tune,

Lt. Col. Towlter. Joe, give us the song that brings your country, your
name, and yourself always before us — give us " the Boys."

Omnes. " The Boys ! The Boys ! "

Capt. Kilkenny. (Sings.)

" The Boys of Kilkenny are sweet roving blades."

[Concluding with loud cheers from the party 7\
Omnes. Bravo ! bravo ! delightful.

3830.] The United Service timokc-shop • a Winter Sketch.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Bravo, Kil ! may you never have worse music at
your own wake, and may I never live to join in it !

Capt. Kilkenny. Major ! as iny friend Mac and Mr. Vino seem to
be tuning their pipes, suppose you allow me to call on them for a duet?

Major Claymore. None more capable. Gentlemen, choose your own
time and air.

\The PAYMASTER and the COMMISSARY sing the

Duet. — " Could a man be secure, &c. &c."
with great feeling and effect. ;]

Lt. Col. Towlter. Mac, your notes are always sweet, and as for
Vino's, there's CORN, WINE, and OIL in them ! Well, I say,

" Very good song and very well sung :
Jolly companions every one"

Let's be merry while we may — whether in our smoke-shop or in bivouac ;
let our hearts be as light as

Capt. Kilkenny. Our pockets.

' Lt. Col. Towlter. Exactly — the devil could not bate you at a simile,
Joe — but talking of pockets, who do you think I met to-day ?

Capt Kilkenny. Many hundred, I dare say.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Oh ! there's more of it ! Well, I met that prime
chanter. Jack Ramskin, in high feather ; he had touched the commuta-
tion— bartered his fifteen years' service for seven hundred pounds, and is
about to take wing for the continent,, in hopes of picking up gome stray
ould bird with a lot of money.

• Capt. Cleverly. A bad spec, colonel ; better stay at home, and beat
the covers of Cheltenham, Leamington, and Bath ; Jack, at thirty-six,
looks fresher than most men at five -and- twenty in these days — and,
besides, he is six feet high, and has a beard like a scrubbing-brush :
great qualifications in the eyes of ladies arrived at the age of gratitude.

Capt. Kilkenny. Yes, but then Jack's seven hundred pounds would
scantily bear him through the season in this country ; while it would
last him nearly as many years abroad with management

Lt. Col. Towlter. Not if there was a " rouge-et-noir" table in the
way : but why did he accept that commutation which appears to have
been framed to afford a convenient loop-hole for the retreat of men who
never saw a day's service ?

Major Claymore.. My good MacTowlter, with all its disadvantages
to the old soldier and apparent partiality to those who neither earned by
service nor purchased the commissions which they are now permitted to
•sell, the measure is a good one, and formed, I feel convinced, as much
for the convenience of the officer as the advantage of the state ; it had
the sanction of Him who justly gained the envied title of THE SOLDIER'S
FRIEND, and whose memory we must ever hold in grateful recollection.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Major, you always floor me ; but it is an honour
to be knocked down by such a noble antagonist — perhaps I am mistaken
in my opinions on many things — but I have not been a lucky man, and
my naturally light spirits are sometimes overcast by a cloud. I wonder,
however, at Ramskin's retiring from the service for so paltry a considera-
tion as a few hundred pounds He did not want for interest surely with
one diplomatic uncle, and another a pro-Catholic bishop ?

Capt. Cleverly. Neither of whom dares ssk a favour out of their own

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53. 4 B

554 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. [MAY,

line, that is an understood point amongst our rulers ; besides,, nothing
can now be given away unless on the dictum of the Great Man — every
place, from the secretary of state to his office-sweeper, comes under his gift.
Jack wanted money — he had all the " elegant desires" of the gentleman
with a sad lack of the means of indulging them. He commenced his
career in the households, in the palmy days of Waterloo — spent half his
fortune in them ! took the difference, and exchanged into the dragoons,
where he dashed away the other moiety : again he took the difference,
changed his service, and became a FoOT-man ! With his mother an
honourable, one uncle a minister, and another a right reverend, Jack still
looked forward with hope ; but there was a right restive in the way
who would neither lead nor drive, and who knew too much of Jack's
military movements to lend an ear to his advancement.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Hookey! ( holding up his crooked Jtnger.)

Capt. Cleverly. Just so ! I fear poor Jack's sun is set, unless he
improves his circumstances in the Hymeneal service. He talked at one
time of going out to his uncle in South America ; but he would pine his
life away before he reached the Pacific.

Capt. Claymore. Is he the gentleman who wrote a spirited pamphlet
on duelling with a plan for a court of honour ?

Capt. Cleverly. The same, major ; but it never found its way beyond
the tables of the clubs where it was distributed gratis, and the counters of
snuffmen and chandlers. All the shy-cocks attempted to laugh it down,
and the brave ones saw its impracticability in such a state of society as
the present. One gallant nobleman, however, gave it his support, and
in his own person (unnecessarily, I must say) gave an example of his
amenability to a law at once romantic and (with reference to that par-
ticular case) erroneous.

Major Claymore. By the by, the marquis is in the field of letters again.
What do they say of his book on the wars of Germany and France ?

Capt. Cleverly. His publisher says much, but as yet I have seen no
review of the work.

Lt. Col. Towlter. I hope his lordship will not be called on to make so
many corrections, as those forced from him by the errors and mis-state-
ments in his last work.

Capt. Cleverly. Nay, colonel, don't say forced ; for you ought to
know that no one is ever more ready to acknowledge and correct an
error than the nobleman we allude to.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Granted, friend Cleverty, granted — but the mischief
of errors in a work published under such imposing authority is, that
they reach the remotest quarters of the globe in a first edition, while the
corrections, " like a lame and hobbling beldame," limp after the swift-
winged scandal without a chance of overtaking her.

Capt. Cleverty. Major, have you seen the Annals of the Peninsular
Campaign, by the author of Cyril Thornton ?

Major Claymore. Who has not, by this time? I am deep in the
second reading, and the more I read, the more I am delighted. Mester
Ceeril showed his powers in his novel, but he has thrown away the dis-
taff and taken up the weapons of the Herculus.

Capt. Cleverly. He does not pretend to so much.

Major Claymore. All the better for his fame ! his unassuming preten-
sions render his work the more admirable. I look upon it invaluable,
as a book of reference ; his details are clear and comprehensive j his

1830.] The United Service Smoke shop : a Winter Sketch. 555

record of events is given with a simplicity which rivets pur belief in their
general correctness ; all. his characters are drawn with the fidelity of the
unbiassed historian ; equally removed from the charge of fulsome and
indiscriminate adulation, or unjust and captious censure, taking truth
for his guide, he pursues the even tenor of his way ; tempering the
ardour of the soldier with the mild spirit of the Christian Philosopher, and
invokes the tear of regret for the departed brave, while our hearts swell
with all the pride of conquest, as we peruse these glowing annals of one
of the most brilliant epochs in Britain's History.

Capt. Cleverly. He does not much flatter some of the French marshals
as it has recently been the fashion to do.

Lt. Col. Towlter. No — nor another marshal, who is neither French nor
English. ALBUERA, to wit!

Beau Ben. " Still harping on my daughter." — Hem !
Capt. Cleverly. Yes, the Viscount is hit pretty hard in the Annals —
but Cyril Thornton did not spare him in his own Adventures when he
details the blunders of that bloody field ; the Peerage, however, lays the
" flattering unction to his soul," by boldly recording that this same battle
will "immortalize his name in our Military Annals!"

Lt. Col. Towlter. Fudge ! — the Peerage ! — why the same Peerage tells
us that Lord Fife was u severely wounded at the storming ofMalagorda"
when every body knows that the insignificant heap of ruins so called,
which were held as long as the stones kept together, was abandoned —
never stormed ! nor was Fife (who, by the way, is a good and gallant
fellow) ever employed with the Spanish troops after the breaking up of
old Cuesta's army, when the Duke of Albuquerque and his cavalry rode
their celebrated Steeple Chace on the Isla deLeon. Lord Fife stuck by
the Spaniards as long as they would fight, and he offered to march at his
own expense a brigade of them to join Lord Wellington ; it was not his
fault that he was not in the field.

Capt. Cleverly. He was hit, however, Colonel, at Matagorda, when he
volunteered to bring succours to Archy Maclaine, (formerly of. ours)
who so gallantly defended that miserable post to the last extremity. Do
you ever visit his lordship ?

Lt. Col. Towlter. Not above once a year ; you know 7 am no lord-
hunter : seeing the door of his hotel crowded and blocked up by syco-
phantic danglers, and swarthy sons of Italy from the Opera House,
I merely drop my card, and pass on.

Capt. Cleverly. You never knew a man of his generous nature on
whom such flies did not fasten and fatten. I often call, and always find
my name a ready passport to his breakfast room, where, dressed in plaid
coat and trews, he gives audience to all visitors— peers or players, old

friends, or old w omen — authors with new works, or auctioneers with

old china ! A true disciple of Democritus, he laughs through life and
" counts nought so great a sin as seriousness."

Major Claymore. His brother, the general, is a prince of a fellow.
Lt. Col. Towlter. I wish he had the fortune of one.
Capt. Cleverly. In that respect, Colonel, he is not badly off; he had
a good wind-fall lately : and then his regiment ! the manner in which it
was bestowed was honourable to both the sovereign and the subject. A
few years ago General Duff visited his Majesty at Windsor : during a
stroll through the rooms, the King, lay ing his hand on the shoulder of the
General, in his own kind and peculiar way, asked " How does it happen,

4B2

556 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. QMAY,

Aleck, that Fife never asks a favour of me?" Because, Sir, your Ma-
jesty has not left him a favour to ask for, replied Duff. " O ! yes, there
was one he ought to have asked for" (rejoined the Sovereign) ; " but when
you write to him, tell him the KING has presented his brother with the
Colonelcy of the Gordon Highlanders, as a proof of his esteem for an
old friend and gallant soldier !" — This was positively the first intimation
General Duff received of his Majesty's gracious intention.

Major Claymore. I can well believe it, Sirs : it was like the man, and
worthy the KING !

Lt. Col. Towlter. Long may he live ! (muttering to himself as he
drains the glass), — how damned small the tumblers are grown since the
pace.

Capt. Clever/i/. What a sweep amongst the generals lately ! Death
has been busy with his scythe mowing down on an average one a month !
Seven regiments vacant in little more than half a year ! fine patronage
for Lord Hill.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Lord Hill ! Bathershin !

Capt. Cleverly. Why, though Lord Hill is not the fountain of honour,
he is the channel through which the grateful stream must flow, and it
surely gives his heart (as kind a one as ever beat within a soldier's
breast !) sincere pleasure to be himself the harbinger of his Sovereign's
favour to many a brave comrade of former days !

Lt. Col. Towlter. I never could understand the principle on which
selections of officers for regiments (as they fall vacant) are made ; has
not interest a good deal to say in the distribution of these matters ?

Major Claymore. No doubt — high political interest will always have
its influence ; but you saw the 79th regiment bestowed on Ferguson,
who always was a thick- and- thin opposition man in parliament.

Capt. Kilkenny. I wonder Fred. Ponsonby has not obtained a regi-
ment— no man stands higher in the profession.

Major Claymore. He is yet but a young major-general, and besides
— having been always a cavalry man, he no doubt looks up to a regi-
ment of dragoons, and these things are not every day gifts.

Capt. Kilkenny. Sir Henry Fane got a regiment of dragoon guards
fifteeen years since, when as young a major general.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Ay, but he was a Fane. Three Fanes in parlia-
ment and the uncle privy- seal.

Capt. Kilkenny, Well, Four Ponsonbys in parliament, and the father-
in-law president of the council! Seeing these things, I am led to believe
that these favours are more impartially distributed than any others within
the royal gift : for example — Sir John Elley got a regiment of dragoons
the other day ; he had nothing to recommend him but the character of
a good soldier during forty years' service.

Lt. Col. Towlter. Yes, there 's good sense in such promotions.

Capt. Geehogan. Sir John Elley and myself were brother soldiers in
the same troop eight-and-thirty years ago : he was a fine, tall, lathy,
active fellow, and no man in the service was ever a greater favourite
with the ladies. — Zounds! there was not a landlady from Windsor to
Westminster that would not have emptied the till into his laced hat, had
he asked it.

Major Claymore. Do you ever go down to Croydon now, Captain, to
take a look at the waggoners ?

Capt. Geehogan. I paid a visit last summer to my old friend Basil

1830.J The United Service Smoke-shop: a Winter Sketch, 557

Jackson, captain of one of the two troops of which the corps is now com-
posed. You must know that Basil and your humble servant entered
the army together upwards of forty years since ; by a strange co-inci-
dence in our fortunes we ascended step by step together in the service,
and at three-score-and-five years feel the same interest for each other's
welfare as in our more youthful days,

Lt. Col. Towlter. Lord George Beresford got a cavalry regiment the
other day, but I never could meet with any one who could tell me for
what service.

Capt. Kilkenny. His family's and gratitude for support, in ex-
pectancy.

Lt. Col. Towlter. And there's LordEdward Somerset succeeded old Garth
in the Royal Dragoons, and also obtained the Lieutenant Generalship of
the Ordnance — but he is a soldier ! Well ! although I hate to sound any
man's knell, I think we shall have two or three cavalry vacancies before
we cut our next Michaelmas goose.

Capt. Kilkenny. What's to become of the 5th Dragoon Guards in the*
event of Prince Leopold being elevated to the crown of Greece ? a de-
stiny which is, 1 believe, no longer problematical.

Major Claymore. Why, given to some cavalry man, I suppose ; there
are a number of the old ones yet unprovided for. I have always been of
opinion that the colonelcy of that regiment should, in the person of the
husband of the late princess, (whose name it bears,) have been but
honorary ; it was unworthy of FIELD MARSHAL the PRINCE O;F CO-
BURG to soil his hands with the emoluments ; which, if analysed very
minutely, are not exactly what an officer and a gentleman ought to
derive a profit from ; but which, until some correction of the evil takes
place, must be received by colonels, as part and parcel of their advan-
tages.

Capt. Cleverly. Is it quite so certain, Kilkenny, that the Prince will
be so comfortably settled on the throne of Greece ? There are rumours
of a hitch in the arrangement 011 the part of some of the leading powers,
—what do you think, Major ?

Major Claymore. Believe me, I never allowed the subject to occupy
my thoughts a minute.

Lt. Col. Towlter. But I have — I wish for differences : hang me if I
care in what quarter they arise, — I am sick of idleness ; and as keen for
a kick up as a lawyer for a lunacy cause. I was in hopes a couple of
years ago that fortune had taken pity on us, and that something would
turn out of that " untoward event" with the Turks ; but it all ended in
smoke !

Beau Ben. Not all, colonel ; there was a something more.

Lt. Col. Towlter. O yes, my fine fellows ! as far as brave fighting
went, you never behaved better ; but I meant as to consequences.

Mainbrace. As for consequences, Ben can speak of them ; he got the
step, for which he might have waited another fourteen years.

Beau Ben. Yes, Mainbrace, it did give me the step, over the heads of
many an old and esteemed messmate ; but it was our chance — yours may
come next ; our professions are a lottery.

Lt. Col. Towlter. With a thousand blanks to one prize !

Capt. Cleverty. Your admiral has been severely attacked in a foreign
journal for refusing quarter to the unfortunate Turks, who, it is stated,

558 The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. [MAV,

clung by dozens to your ships' rudders and cables, and some had even
gained the chains of your small craft when they were " shoved off ! "

Beau Ben. It was felt to be the hardest service that devolved on us ;
but we are to obey orders, not to discuss them ; ours were, not to allow
a Turk on board on any account.

Lt. Col. Towlter. A cool order that. You have a song, (a great fa-
vourite in your service,) which I think runs thus :

" But mark our last broadside ! see, she sinks ! down she goes :
Quickly man all the boats, boys — they no longer are foes;
For to snatch a brave fellow from a watery grave
Is worthy of BUITONS — who CONQUER TO SAVE!"

However, Binnacle, te it iy an ill wind that blows nobody good," — you
have bravely won your step, and your well-earned badge of honour ; I
hope to see you soon a-float again, on the road to the highest honours of
your daring profession.

Mainbrace. We all thought, Ben, that you would have been popped
into the little Phil., after the noble dispatch-bearer was promoted to
Post.

Beau Ben. That could not be, Jack, while her own gallant First could
advance his superior claims ; I did, however, consider, from what was
said to me on the quarter-deck after the action, that besides my step, I
might flatter my hopes with the command of a craft of some kind ; but
the thing did not tell at home as we all expected it would ; and for the
few openings it occasioned, there were always Parliament-men ready to
pop in a word for a favourite — and you know the rest.

Mainbrace. Ha ! ha ! I never hear Parliamentary interest mentioned
without thinking of an adventure in Cadiz Bay in 1810. I was then a
younker ; our brig was ordered off, at quarter of an hour's warning,
for Lisbon, to take dispatches from old Purvis to Lord Wellington, re-
porting the arrival of General Stewart with the British troops, and the
safety of Cadiz. Well, we had half the watch aloft, making sail, when
we were hailed by a person in a Spanish boat, the crew of which were
pulling away like devils to overhaul us: — to our question of " what do you
want?" the answer was a "passage to Lisbon." " Ask him who he is,"
said our skipper. " My name is JACOB," answered the supplicant,
"Jacob!" repeated the captain, " a damned Jewish name— no, it wont
do— tell him so — loose top-gallant sails!" " Sir," says the first lieuten-
ant, " he is waving his hat and holding up a paper." " What the devil
does he want ?" said the captain, peevishly : ' ' you know, we can't take him
in — that's flat !" The stranger roared up, with the lungs of a Boatswain,
" I want to get to England immediately, to attend my duty in PARLIA-
MENT." " Did he say His duty in Parliament?" anxiously inquired the
captain. " Yes, sir," replied the leef. " Damme, that alters the case, —
stand fast top-gallant sails," roared the captain, " back main-top-sail !
man ropes at the side there ! — Steward ! bring up my best hat, and put a
bottle of Madeira on the table, — His DUTY IN PARLIAMENT ! — gently,
gently, there — fend off! — Now, sir, give me your hand — welcome on board
the Persiana," said our now obsequious skipper, as he doused his sky-
scraper and tripped it before the legislator bowing like a dancing-master.
The member strutted along as if he felt all the dignity of his Parlia-
mentary character. " We may Jill now, sir," said the lieutenant, as he
threw a sly look at the senator.

1830.] The United Service Smoke-shop : a Winter Sketch. 559

Beau Ben. Good Mainbrace, you got an early lesson that nothing was
like Parliamentary interest.

Li. Col. Towlter. Except petticoat.

Major Claymore. Gentlemen, I think I scent the Welsh rabbits ;
clear off all glasses, for the clock warns us that we have .but a short half
hour before we shut our shop.

[_Captain Kilkenny, who had retired some time before, now enters
preceding the landlord, who bears in his arms an immense bowl of
punch, attended by the waiter with a tray of Welsh rabbits and
sandwiches ; the whole being placed on the table, the landlord and
waiter withdraw.~\

Capt. Kilkenny. Mr. President, and Gentlemen, this is my [humble
oblation in honour of my new rank. I throw myself on your kind in-
dulgence, to excuse the liberty I have taken in introducing, without
leave, though not without licence, my warm and spirited friend now be-
fore you, in which we will drown the memory of past hardships, and
drink " better days to all."

Chorus.

If any pain or care remain
We'll drown it in the bowl.

Omnes. Hurrah ! here's to our next merry meeting.

THE DEVONSHIRE BALL.

ON the Duke of Devonshire's visit to his estates in the south of Ire-
land, he won the hearts of the population by his hospitality; and among
the rest of his performances, gave a general invitation to all the belles
and beaux of the neighbourhood of Youghall, a considerable town, of
which he holds the chief part. But the ball was like the famous one at
which the war of Troy was constructed ; the Duke himself being the apple
of discord, and all the beauties of the town, for twenty miles round, being
the Venuses, Minervas, and Junos, for the time being. An indigenous
bard, the hereditary poet-laureate of the Devonshire estate, fenned the
conflagration by making a song of the affair, and by the help of " Apollo
and the Nine," (as he believes,) has contrived to keep up a tolerable
combustion ever since. We give it as a document which will be in-
valuable to the compiler of the ducal biography, in this age, when a man
can neither live nor die without being manufactured into a quarto.

THE BEAUTIES OF YOUGHALL.

By Murtogh Cornelius O'Callaghan, Poet.

Assist your true lover, ye Nine,

Who for ever are singing and dancing ;
I wonder if ever ye pine

At the pleasures of life to be glancing.

Sing Cupid and Hymen, heigh ho !

I wonder if ever the frost

Makes you think you've almost served your time?
Or a husband or two, at the most,

Is considered among you a crime ?
Sing Cupid, &c.

£60 The Devonshire Ball. [MAY,

If you'd take my advice, you'd all marry,

Leave off sleeping your days all alone,
Send Apollo at once to Old Harry,

And come down, and be bone of our bone.
Sing Cupid, £c.

Now, inspire me to sing of the Ball,

Where the Youghalites swarm'd all together,

All beauties, the short and the tall,
In the hottest of all the hot weather.
Sing Cupid, &c.

There were lads from the woods and the waters,

Bold Captains and Majors likewise,
And old ladies in lots with their daughters,

All famous for brogue and black eyes.

Sing Cupid, &c.
Long life to the Duke and his pockets,

And long life to his liveries and coach,
The thoughts, like a brace of sky-rockets,

Lit the blue eyes of pretty Miss Roche.
Sing Cupid, £c.

So he grayed of her white hand the honour,

Tho it put the whole room in a fret,
But chiefly Miss Phelim O'Connor,

And the rest of her backbiting set.
Sing Cupid, &c,

What girl but would like to be Duchess?

So off they sail'd down the quadrille,
While her eyes gave him so many touches, —

I '11 be sworn he remembers them still.
Sing Cupid, &c.

But up came the fairest of fair ones,

Miss Dunn, that kills hearts with a look,
Her cheeks were two roses, and rare ones ;

It was thought she would finish the Duke.
Sing Cupid, &c.

Down they danced; it was sweet Summer weather ;

And the charmer seem'd sure of the plate ;
But tho' hearts may be melted together,
A dukedom's not won in a heat.
Sing Cupid, &c.

For just as a speech and a sigh

Were beginning his passion to tell,
A pair of sweet lips caught his eye,

They were yours, merry Lucy O'Dell.
Sing Cupid, £c.

Off they went ; and you'd swear that his Grace

Had made up his mind for a wife,
So fondly he gazed on a face

That might make a king happy for life.
Sing Cupid, &c.

But in spite of Miss Lucy's sweet smiles,

To Miss Phelim's unbounded surprise,
His Grace waltz'd away with Miss Giles,

So wit beat red lips and black eyes.
Sing Cupid, £c.

1830.] The Devonshire Ball 561

But dukes are but dukes at the best,

And since he bade Ireland adieu,
Let him hunt through the world east and west,

And he'll find no such charmers as you.
Sing Cupid, &c.

THE KING'S OWN : BY THE AUTHOR OF

UNTIL the last few years " tales of the sea" have, strange to say, been
furnished by landsmen. Smollett, one of the most conspicuous in the em-
ployment of naval incidents in fiction, was a physician : it is true, he had
been a naval surgeon ; but still he was a civilian, and therefore must have
been unacquainted with the subtler points of nautical minutiae. Dibdin, ,
the soi-disant bard of the ocean, was scarcely ever out of the smoke of
London; Moore, the author of a whimsical and humorous romance called
the " Post- Captain," was a doctor, we do not recollect whether of physic
or of law ; and Cooper, the American writer of " Tales of the Sea," is, or
was a purser. Now, pursers are very respectable men, and Cooper is a
fine'writer; but as to intimate and scientific knowledge of seamanship,
we hold Cooper to be often at fault; and we ascribe this, not to his
want of faculty, but to the amphibious nature of his office: he is neither
fish nor flesh. In this appreciation of his calling, we shall be joined by
every one who has had, we were going to say, the good luck of passing a
month onboard a man-of-war ; during which time the visitor must have
observed that pursers were, perhaps unfairly, often made the joke and
by-word of the service. In the censure implied in what we have just
said, we would unequivocally except the masterly tale of the " Pilot,"
in the construction of which we cannot help suspecting that Cooper must
have had at his elbow some one of those naval adepts whose knowledge
of his profession has contributed to give a tone to the maritime character
of America. One of Mr. Cooper's tales is dedicated to a friend and
former messmate — a Master. We repeat, that we do not by this mean to
undervalue the works of Cooper, who possesses merit enough for the
foundation of his claims independently of his naval romances, which in
nautical details are, according to the old- lady style of expression, " no
better than they should be."

The apathy with regard to writing about their own affairs, or turning
them to account in the more attractive shape of fiction, which has hi-
therto been manifested by naval men, may be ascribed to several causes.
In the first place, the scenes and events which to landsmen appear to
furnish the most striking materials for the purposes of romance fail,
from constant familiarity, to make the least impression on the sailor :
then his attention is too constantly occupied by practical matters of the
most anxious nature to attend to any thing which has only for its object
the administering to amusement or curiosity. Besides these consider-
ations, there is another of far greater weight, namely, the heavy, and we
may add painful responsibility incurred by any gentleman in the naval
service who may be tempted to give free scope to his pen — and, without
this freedom, nothing good, either in invention or delineation of character
or of circumstance, can subsist. In this respect there is, we imagine, a
difference between the military and the naval services. For example, for-
merly a junior officer in the army might, upon any real or supposed affront
from his superior, demand what is absurdly called "satisfaction;" whereas,

M.M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53. 4 C

562 The King's Own. [MAY,

afloat, such a proceeding would inevitably cause the dismissal from the
naval service of the party so acting, however his feelings might have been
outraged as an officer and a gentleman. Under such circumstances, an
officer who may have written about " Life at Sea," and who therefore
may perchance have stumbled on a disagreeable truth or two, is inevi-
tably exposed to the annoyances, unless, indeed, he be charged with de-
spatches, of any superior under whose command he may, even accident-
ally and fugitively, happen to fall ; and who, with perverse ingenuity,
may fancy himself to have been satirised or neglected to be praised, the
sin of omission being generally worse than that of commission ; and as,
according to the march of intellect, the rising men are guilty of the of-
fence of being the cleverest, it is ten to one that the sting will strike
where the power of unfair retaliation is the strongest.

Whether the author of the work before us feels himself quite inde-
pendent of the service, we know not; but it is clear that he is a seaman,
and not either purser, doctor, or marine officer j and it is equally clear
that he lays about him, careless where his blows may fall, and utterly
reckless of consequences. He is a man of genius too, a novelist of no
common order — skilled in the construction of a plot, in the dramatic de-
lineation of character, and especially in the description of those animating
and absorbing incidents which so often arise in 'his hazardous profession.
He is the seaman's Le Sage ; and whether he describe the character of
the common sailor, the uneasy condition of the " middy," the toiling
hopes of the lieutenant, or the anxious authority of the captain, it is im-
possible not to be struck at once with the entertaining character of the
sketch, and, with one or two exceptions, the truth of the representation.

The chief plot of " The King's Own" consists mainly of the adventures
of a young man in his majesty's navy, whose birth was attended by cir-
cumstances of a very remarkable and tragical nature. His father was
hanged for mutiny, and his mother died broken-hearted in consequence
of that event. William., the hero of the story, is consigned by his con-
demned father to the care of an old seaman, who, with true esprit de
corps, thinks he can do no better for the boy than mark his skin with
the broad arrow, and thus make him the " Kings Own." But Willy,
notwithstanding his rough education, is of gentle blood, which manifests
itself in occasional refinement of manner and chivalrous bravery. These
qualities attract the attention of the captain of the ship in which the lad is
situated ; and he is accordingly " borne on the books," and placed on the
quarter-deck, in the capacity of a midshipman. Willy is, in fact, the
grandson of an admiral of large property, who disinherited his son and
heir, the father of our hero, and the latter had, therefore, been rash
enough to revenge the conduct of his parent by entering himself as a
common man on board of a ship of war. Willy's fate in the service is
marked by striking vicissitudes ; and, after the death of his grandfather,
when his own claims to the property were discovered, he is supposed to
have been lost in a vessel which foundered at sea. The splendid fortune
of Admiral Decourcy devolves, in consequence of this belief, to a Mr.
Rainscourt, a distant relative of the family. This last character is capi-
tally conceived and executed by the novelist. He is an unprincipled
roue, plunged in debt and debauchery ; a scoundrel, who repudiates his
wife, and then, because she is no longer at his command, pesters her
with vehement solicitations of love, which are the more importunate
because the lady firmly rejects his suit. Miserable error in individuals

1830.] The King's Own. 563

miscalled " men of pleasure !" who think, that if any gratification is in
their power, it ceases, on that very account, to be desirable. We will
not forestal the pleasure of the reader by acquainting him with the sin-
gular catastrophe which terminates the strange, eventful life of the hero;
though we cannot forbear to state that his career includes all those various
incidents which turn the life of a seaman into a romance. We are pre-
sented with scenes in wild and distant countries ; we are present in the
roar of battle, and participate in the throbbing anxiety of the chase ; we
are made to feel the desolate horror of shipwreck, and in other moods
the author excites our mirth by whimsical pictures of life afloat. Of this
last, especially as we are confident that it shadows forth a living ori-
ginal, we lay before our readers the following inimitable and graphic
dialogue between a peculating captain and the inferiors under his com-
mand. *;;

" It may then be inquired, why he requested to be employed during the war ?
Because he liked full pay and prize-money when it could be obtained without risk,
and because his wife and family were living on shore in a very snug little cottage
at Ryde, in the Isle of Wight, which cottage required nothing but furniture and a
few- other trifles to render it complete. Marriage had not only subtracted from
the courage of this worthy officer, but, moreover, a little from his honesty. Captain
Capperbar (for such was his name) should have been brought up as a missionary,
for he could convert any thing, and expend more profusely than any bible society.
The name by which he had christened his domicile was probably given as a sort
of salvo to his conscience. He called it the ( ship ; and when he signed his name
to the expense-books of the different warrant-officers, without specifying the exact
use to which the materials were applied, the larger proportions were invariably
expended, by the general term, for ' ship's use/ He came into harbour as often
as he could, always had a demand for stores to complete, and a defect or two for
the dock-yard to make good; and the admiral, who was aware of Mrs. Capperbar
being a near resident, made every reasonable allowance for his partiality to Spit-
head. But we had better introduce the captain, sitting at his table in the fore-
cabin, on the day of his arrival in port, the carpenter having obeyed his summons.

" ' Well, Mr. Cheeks, what are the carpenters about f

" ' Weston and Smallbridge are going on with the chairs ; the whole of them
will be finished to-morrow/

« ' Well?'

" ' Smith is about the chest of drawers to match the one in my Lady Capperbar's
bed-room/

" ' Very good. And what is Hilton about?'

" ' He has finished the spare-leaf of the dining-table, sir; he is now about a
little job for the second lieutenant/

" ' A job for the second lieutenant, sir ? How often have I told you, Mr. Cheeks,
that the carpenters are not to be employed, except on ship's duty, without my
special permission/

" ' His standing bed-place is broke, sir ; he is only getting out a chock or
two/

" ' Mr. Cheeks, you have disobeyed my most positive orders. By the by, sir,
I understand you were not sober last night.'

" ' Please your honour,' replied the carpenter, ' I wasn't drunk ; I was only a
little fresh/

" ' Take you care, Mr. Cheeks. Well, now, what are the rest of your crew
about ?

" ' Why, Thompson and Waters are cutting out the pales for the garden, out
of the jib-boom ; I've saved the heel to return/

" ' Very well; but there won't be enough, will there?*

" ' No, sir ; it will take a handmast to finish the whole/

" e Then we must expend one when we go out again. We can carry away a
topmast, and make a new one out of the handmast, at sea. In the meantime, if

4C2

564 The King's Otvi). [MAY,

the sawyers have nothing to do, they may as well cut the palings at once. And
now, let me see — oh ! the painters must go on shore to finish the attics/

{< ' Yes, sir; but my Lady Capperhar wishes the jealowsees to be painted ver-
million : she says it will IOOK more rural/

" ' Mrs. Capperbar ought to know enough about ship's stores by this time, to be
aware that we are only allowed three colours. She may choose or mix them as
she pleases ; but as for going to the expense of buying paint, I can't afford it.
What are the rest of the men about '?

tf ' Repairing the second cutter, and making a new mast for the pinnace/

'•' ' By the by — that puts me in mind of it — have you expended any boat's
masts?'

" ' Only the one carried away, sir/

" ' Then you must expend two more. Mrs. C has just sent me off a list of

a few things that she wishes made while we are at anchor, and I see two poles
for clothes-lines. Saw off the sheave-holes, and put two pegs through at right
angles: you know how I mean.'

" ( Yes, sir. What am I to do, sir, about the cucumber frame ? My Lady Cap-
perbar says that she must have it, and 1 havn't glass enough : they grumbled at
the yard last time/

" ' Mrs. C must wait a little. What are the armourers about ?'

" ' They have been so busy with your work, sir, that the arms are in a very
bad condition. The first lieutenant said yesterday that they were a disgrace to
the ship/

"'Who dared say that?'

" < The first lieutenant, sir/

" ' Well, then, let them rub up the arms, and let me know when they are
done, and we'll get the forge up/

" ' The armourer has made six rakes and six hoes, and the two little hoes for
the children ; but he says that he can't make a spade.'

" ' Then I '11 take his warrant away, by heavens ! since he does not know his
duty. That will do, Mr. Cheeks. I shall overlook your being in liquor this time ;
but take care — send the boatswain to me/

" ' Yes, sir,'— and the carpenter quitted the cabin.

"'Well, Mr. Hurley/ said the captain, as the boatswain stroked down his
hair, as a mark of respect when he entered the cabin, ' are the cots all finished ?'

" ' All finished, your honour, and slung, except the one for the bobby. Had I
not better get a piece of duck for that f

" ' No, no ; number seven will do as well. Mrs. C wants some fearnought

to put down in the entrance-hall/

" ' Yes, your honour/

" ' And some cod-lines laid up for clothes-lines/
. " ' Yes, your honour/

" ' Stop, let me look at my list— ( Knife-tray, meat-screen, leads for window-
sashes/— Ah! have you any hand-leads not on charge?'

" ' Yes, your honour, four or five/

" ' Give them to my steward.— ' Small chair for Ellen ; canvas for veranda/
— Oh ! here's something else ; have you any painted canvas f

" ' Only a waist-hammock-cloth, sir, ready fitted/

" ' We must expend that ; ' no old on charge.' Send it on shore to the cottage,
and I shall want some pitch/

" ' We 've lots of that, your honour/

" ' That will do, Mr. Hurley. Desire the sentry to tell my steward to come
here.'

" ' Yes, your honour/ (Exit boatswain, and enter steward.)

" This personage belonged to the party of marines who had been drafted into the
ship; for Captain Capperbar's economical propensities would not allow him to hire
a servant brought up to the situation, who would have demanded wages inde-
pendent of the ship's pay. Having been well drilled at barracks, he never answered
any question put to him by an officer without recovering himself from his usual
' stand-at-ease' position, throwing shoulders back, his nose up in the air, his arms

1830.] The King's Own. 5G5

•down his sides, and the palms of his hands flattened on his thighs. His replies
were given with all the brevity that the question would admit, or rapid articula-
tion on his own part would enable him to confer.

" * Thomas, are the sugar and cocoa ready to go on shore f

" ' Yes, sir.'

" ' Don't forget to send that letter to Mr. Gibson for the ten dozen port and
sherry/

" « No, sir/

" ' When it comes on board, you'll bring it on shore, a dozen at a time, in the
hair trunk/

« ' Yes, sir/

" * Mind you don't let any of the hay peep outside/

" ' No, sir/

" ' Has the cooper finished the washing-tubs ?'

" < Yes, sir/

«< And the small kids ?'

" ' No, sir/

" ' Have you inquired among the ship's company for a gardener ?'

" ' Yes, sir; there's a marine kept the garden of the major in the barracks/

" * Don't forget to bring him on shore.'

'/ < No, sir/

" ( Recollect, too, that Mrs. Capperbar wants some vinegar— the boatswain's is
the best — and a gallon or two of rum; and you must corn some beef. The harness
cask may remain on shore, and the cooper must make me another/

" < Yes, sir/

(( ' Master Henry's trousers— are they finished yet?'

" ( No, sir; Spriggs is at them now. Bailly and James are making Miss Ellen'-s
petticoats/

(t ' And the shoes for master John— are they finished?'

" < Yes, sir/

" ' And master Henry's?1

" ' No, sir. Wilson says that he has lost master Henry's measure/

" ' Careless scoundrel ! he shah* have four- water grog for a week : and, steward,
take three bags of bread on shore, and forty pounds of flour/

" ' Yes, sir/

" ' That's all.— Oh no !— don't forget to send some pease on shore for the pig/

" ' No, sir,' — and the steward departed to execute his variety of commissions."

As a contrast to Captain Capperbar, we should be glad to present to
our readers a specimen of the high-minded but strict disciplinarian

Captain M . This character, however, is elaborately drawn, and we

have no room for an adequate exposition of it, but must content ourselves
with laying before the professional reader the following spirited scene on
the deck of a man-of-war.

t( After supper the watch was called, and the directions given by the captain to
the first lieutenant were punctually obeyed. The drum then beat to quarters
earlier than usual ; the guns were doubly secured ; the dead lights shipped abaft;
the number of inches of water in the weU made known by the carpenter; the
sobriety of the men ascertained by the officers stationed at their respective guns ;
and every thing that was ordered to be executed, or to be held in readiness, in the
several departments, reported to the captain.

" * Now, Mr. Bully, we'll make her all snug for the night. Furl the fore and
mizen-topsail, and close reef the main— that, with the foresail, fore-staysail, and
trysail, will be enough for her/

" ' Had we not better reef the foresail, sir f said Pearce. ' I suspect we shall
have to do it before twelve o'clock, if we do not now/

" ' Very right, Mr. Pearce ; we will do so. Is the main-trysail bent '?

" ' All bent, sir, and the sheet aft/

" ' Then beat a retreat, and turn the hands up; shorten sail/

566 The King's Own. [MAY,

" This duty was performed, and the hammocks piped down as the last glim-
mering of daylight disappeared.

" The gale increased rapidly during the first watch. Large drops of rain mingled
with the spray, distant thunder rolled to windward, and occasional gleams of
lightning pierced through the intense darkness of the night The officers and
men of the watches below, with sealed eyes and thoughtless hearts, were in their
hammocks, trusting to those on deck for security. But the night was terrific, and
the captain, first lieutenant, and master, from the responsibility of their situations,
continued on deck, as did many of the officers termed idlers, such as the surgeon
and purser, who, although their presence was not required, felt no inclination to
sleep.

" By four o'clock in the morning the gale was at its height. The lightning
darted through the sky in every direction, and the thunder-claps for the time over-
powered the noise of the wind as it roared through the shrouds. The sea, striking
on the fore-channels, was thrown aft with violence over the quarter-deck and
waist of the ship as she laboured through the agitated sea.

" t If this lasts much longer, we must take the foresail off of her, and give her
the main-staysail/ said Bully to the master.

" ' We must, indeed/ replied the captain, who was standing by them. * But
the day is breaking. Let us wait a little. Ease her, quarter-master/

" ' Ease her it is, sir.'

" At daylight, the gale having rather increased than shown any symptoms of
abating, the captain was giving directions for the foresail to be taken off, when the
seaman who was stationed to look out on the lee-gangway, cried out, ' A sail on
the lee-beam !'

" ' A sail on the lee-beam, sir !' retorted the officer of the watch to the captain,
as he held on by a rope with one hand, and touched his hat with the other.

" ' Here, youngster, tell the sentry at the cabin door to give you my deck glass,'

said Captain M to Merrick, who was one of the midshipmen of the morning

watch.

" ' She 's a large ship, sir— main and mizen masts both gone,' reported Bully,
who had mounted up three or four ratlines of the main rigging.

" The midshipman brought up the glass ; and the captain, first passing his arm
round the fore-brace, to secure himself from falling to leeward with the lurching
of the ship, as soon as he could bring the strange vessel into the field of the glass
(no easy task under such circumstances, except to the practised eye of a sailor),
exclaimed, ' A line-of battle ship, by heavens !— and if I am any judge of a hull, or
the painting of a ship, she is no Englishman.'

" Other glasses were now produced, and the opinion of the captain was corro-
borated by that of the officers on deck.

" ' Keep fast the foresail, Mr. Bully : we 11 edge down to her. Quarter-
master, see the signal-haulyards all clear.'

" The captain went down to his cabin, while the frigate was kept away as he
directed, the master standing at the conn. He soon came up again: * Hoist No. 3
at the fore, and No. 8 at the main. We '11 see if she can answer the private
signal.'

" It was done ; and the frigate, rolling heavily in the trough of the sea, and im-
pelled by the furious elements, rapidly closed with the stranger.

" In less than an hour they were within half a mile of her; but the private
signal remained unanswered.

" ' -Now, then, bring her to the wind, Mr. Pearce/ said Captain M , who

had his glass upon the vessel.

" The frigate was luffed handsomely to the wind— not, however, without shipping
a heavy sea. The gale, which, during the time that she was kept away before the
wind, had the appearance, which it always has, of having decreased in force, now
that she presented her broadside to it, roared again in all its fury.

" Call the gunner— clear away the long gun forward— try with the rammer
whether the shot has started from the cartridge, and then fire across the bows of
that vessel.'

" The men cast loose the gun ; and the gunner, taking out the bed and coin,_to

1830.] The King's Own. 567

obtain the greatest elevation to counteract the heel of the frigate, watched the
lurch, and pitched the shot close to the forefoot of the disabled vessel, who imme-
diately showed French colours over her weather-quarter.

" ' French colours, sir !' cried two or three at a breath.

" ' Beat to quarters, Mr. Bully/ said Captain M .

" ' Shall we cast loose the main-deck guns?'

" ' No, no— that will be useless; we shall not be able to fire them, and we may
have them through the sides. We '11 try her with the carronades.'

" It was easy to perceive, without the assistance of a glass, that the men on board
the French line-of-battle ship were attempting, in no very scientific manner, to
get a jury-mast up abaft, that by putting after-sail on her they might keep their
vessel to the wind. The foresail they dare not take off, as, without any sail to
keep her steady, the remaining mast would in all probability have rolled over the
side ; but without after-sail the ship would not keep to the wind, and the conse-
quence was, that she was two points off the wind, forging fast through the water,
notwithstanding that the helm was hard a-lee.

" ' Where are we now, Mr, Pearce?' interrogated the captain: ' about eight or
nine leagues from the land?'

" ' Say seven leagues, sir, if you please,' replied the master, ' until I can give
you an exact answer,' — and he descended the companion-ladder to work up his
reckoning.

" t She's leaving us, Mr. Bully— keep more away, and run abreast of her. Now,
my lads, watch the weather roll,— round and grape— don't throw a shot away— aim
at the quarter-deck ports. If we can prevent her from getting up her jury-masts,
she is done for.'

" < As for the matter of that,' said the quarter-master, who was captain of one of
the quarter-deck guns, ( we might save our shot. They haven't nouse enough to
get them up, if left all to themselves.— However, here 's a slap at her.'

" The frigate had now closed within three cables' lengths of the line-of-battle
ship ; and considering the extreme difficulty of hitting any mark under such disad-
vantages, a well-directed fire was thrown in by her disciplined seamen.

" The enemy attempted to return the fire from the weather main-deck guns ;
but it was a service of such difficulty and danger, that he more than once aban-
doned it. Two or three guns disappearing from the ports, proved that they had
either rolled to leeward, or had been precipitated down the hatchways. This was
indeed the case ; and the French sailors were so much alarmed, from the serious
disasters that had already ensued, that they either quitted their quarters, or, afraid
to stand behind the guns when they were fired, no aim was taken, and the shots
were thrown away. Had the two ships been equally manned, the disadvantage,
under all the misfortunes of the Frenchman, would have been on the side of die
frigate ; but the gale itself was more than sufficient employment for the undis-
ciplined crew of the line-of-battle ship. The fire from the frigate was kept up
with vigour, although the vessel lurched so heavily as often to throw the men who
were stationed at the guns into the lee-scuppers, rolling one over the other in the
water with which the decks were floated; but this was only a subject of merri-
ment, and they resumed their task with the careless spirit of British seamen. The
fire, difficult as it was to take ariy precise aim, had the effect intended— that of
preventing the French vessel from rigging any thing like a jury-mast. Occasion-
ally the line-of-battle ship kept more away, to avoid the grape by increasing her
distance ; but the frigate's course was regulated by that of her opponent, and she
continued her galling pursuit."

From this specimen our readers will conclude that the author before
us, in describing preparations for " bad weather" and battle, uses the
language of an officer and seaman. No lubberly conduct is evinced by
the captain of the Aspasia, nor in the dialogue on deck is the nautical
ear offended by the introduction of fresh-water phrases, by which the
American novelist so frequently destroys the vraisemblance of his sketches.
We never light on such lubberly expressions as "full-rigged ship"-—

568 .-The King-s Own.

(e bearing up against the breeze" — " filling the forward sails" — " setting
the ensign," £c. &c.* Nor does " Captain M — — ," like the far-famed
" Red Rover," direct his first lieutenant to " haul down the staysails, and
steady the ship by the yards !" A boy a month in " blue water" could
inform Mr. Cooper that it is not by naked spars a ship is to be " stea-
died." The two succeeding chapters powerfully, and we may add,
painfully detail the destruction by shipwreck of the French battle-ship

and the British frigate. The motive of Captain M for resorting to

an expedient so desperate will doubtless become a subject of professional
discussion.

One more extract and we have done. It is descriptive of an oriental
lattue, and it strikes us to be one of the most gorgeous .and picturesque
pieces of writing we ever remember to have read.

" At an early hour, Courtenay and his companions started with. their attendants
for the scene of action. Several elephants, as well as horses, had been provided,
that the officers might mount them when they arrived, and fire from their backs
with more deliberate aim. In less than two hours they reached the spot, which
they had surveyed the day before. The game, which had been driven from
jungle to jungle for many miles round, was now collected together in one
large mass of underwood and low trees, three sides of which were surrounded by
the natives, who had been employed in the service, and who had been joined by
many hundreds from the town and neighbouring villages. As soon as the party
arrived, those who were on horseback dismounted, took their stations upon the
howdahs of the elephants, and collected at the corner of that side of the jungle at
which the animals were to be driven out. The scene was one of the most ani-
mating and novel description. Forty or fifty of the superior classes of natives,
mounted upon fiery Arabians, with their long, glittering, boar-spears in their
hands, and above one hundred on foot, armed with musquets, surrounded the
elephants upon which the officers were stationed. The people, who were waiting
round the jungle— silent themselves, and busy in checking the noise and impatience
of the dogs, held in leashes, whose deep baying was occasionally answered by a low
growl from the outskirts of the wood— now received the order to advance. Shouts
and yells, mixed with the barking of dogs, were raised in deafening clamour on
every side. The jungle, which covered a space of fifteen or twenty acres, and
which had hitherto appeared but slightly tenanted, answered, as if endued with
life, by waving its boughs and rustling its bushes in every direction, although
there was nothing to be seen.

" As they advanced, beating with their long poles, and preserving a straight and
compact line, through which nothing could escape, so did the jungle before them
increase its motion ; and soon the yells of thousands of men were answered by the
roars and cries of thousands of brute animals. It was not, however, until the
game had been driven so near to the end of the jungle at which the hunters were
stationed, and until they were huddled together so close that it could no longer
contain them, that they unwillingly abandoned it. The most timorous, the rabbit
and the hare, arid all the smaller tribes, first broke cover, and were allowed to
pass unnoticed; but they were soon followed by the whole mass, who, as if by
agreement among themselves, had determined at once to decide their fate.

" Crowded in incongruous heaps, without any distinction of species or of habits,
now poured out the various denizens of the woods — deer in every variety, locking
their horns in their wild confusion ; the fierce wild-boars, bristling in their rage ;
the bounding leopards ; the swift antelope, of every species ; the savage panthers ;
jackals and foxes, and all the screaming and shrieking infinities of the monkey
tribe. Occasionally, amongst the dense mass could be perceived the huge boa-
constrictor, rolling in convolutions — now looking back with fiery eyes upon his

* The professional reader well knows that "head sails" ought to have been substituted
for "forward sails" and that " setting the ensign" is an expression not more incompre-
hensible than " a full-rigged ship."

1830.] The King's Own.

pursuers, now precipitating his flight; while the air was thronged with its winged
tenants, wildly screaming, and occasionally dropping down dead with fear. To
crown the whole, high in the expanse a multitude of vultures appeared, almost
stationary on the wing, waiting for their share of the anticipated slaughter. And
as the beasts threw down and rolled over each other in their mad career— the preyer
and the preyed upon, the powerful and the weak, the rapacious and the harmless,
the destroyer and his victims— you might have fancied, from the universal terror
which prevailed, that it was a day of judgment to which the inhabitants had been
summoned."

We may just allude, however, to the chapter on " Humbug," which
we anxiously recommend to the consideration of all the parties con-
cerned ; and what with the imposers and the imposed-on, we think that
nearly the whole of the town will be included. We should like to know
whether certain parts of this chapter are to be understood as developing
the political creed of the writer. If so, and if from the quarter-deck of
a man-of-war he should some day suddenly appear in the no less bois-
terous arena of St. Stephen's Chapel, he will, we doubt not, be considered
something more than an Admiralty automaton.

We cannot conclude our remarks without exhorting the clever author
to abate some of his tendency to exaggeration ; his dramatic talent is
too genuine to need such forced aids. We might readily specify more
than one instance of caricature. We could also have wished that the
writer had more indulged in what may be termed incidental dialogue.
Through this medium the verisimilitude of the scene would have been
better preserved, and the stiffness of narrative would have been less
tedious. But we have received so much pleasure from the perusal of
" The Kings Own/' that we feel it would be ungracious to dwell upon
what appears to us to be its defects.

A CAUTION TO ALL POETS, AND TO ONE IN PARTICULAR. *

" Garth did not write his own Dispensary."

POPE.

IN an era when mortals but mystery see,
And no one can guess who his neighbour can be ;
When manuscript verses to poets are shown
Who approve — and obligingly call them their own ;
When ladies write lyrics, and borrow the name
Of a popular friend, to ensure them from shame ;
I venture to lift up the visor at last,
And peep through the clouds that encircle the past.

I speak not the language of madness or mirth — •
I *m the greatest anonymous author on earth !
And having been silent and secret so long,
I intend to surprise the disciples of song.
Some thirty years since— he'll remember the time—
I sent off to Campbell a packet of rhyme.
The stanzas of Helicon bore the true twang,
And with magical music each syllable rang;

• A key to these lines is to be found in a recent and very remarkable statement.
It appears that a distinguished poet, on reading some stanzas by a lady who was doubtful of
the propriety of printing them in her own name, politely offered her the use of his. They
were printed accordingly, and we suppose were admired; for the lady has stepped forward
with her story, and claimed them.

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 53. 4 D

570 Caution to Poets.

He relish'd their flavour, o'erwhelm'd me with praise,

He finally offer'd to father my lays,

And begg'd to become the affectionate sire

Of all the young odes to be born of my lyre.

He said that, as I was a stranger to fame,

If I 'd lend him my stanzas he 'd lend me his name.

But now that he sits in their glory enthroned,
I may safely reclaim all the songs that he own'd:
And, unless with my fame he intends to elope,
I request he'll restore me my "Pleasures of Hope."
" Hohenlinden," " Lochiel," I lent him— and these
I '11 thank him to send by return of the breeze.
My " Gertrude"— the spirit yet hangs on her tone—
I implored him to rear her like one of his own.
'Twill surely afflict him, for parting is hard ;
He must feel like the fossil remains of a bard !
To forsake the " Last Man," by adoption his son,
And write a new ode to the last man but one !

The world for a season much agony felt

To know where the author of " Waverley" dwelt ;

Some said that the three- volumed mysteries flew

From the moon's farthest corner — some said that they grew.

Scott own'd them at last — but that proves not the sinner ;

Ten thousand stout " noes" to one " yes" after dinner !

Then Coleridge— mankind has been led to believe

That he wrote the ballad about " Genevieve."

There's Wordsworth again; I shall want the " White Doe"

That I left in his library some years ago.

And Southey— before he drinks deep of his sack,

I trust he will send me " Don Roderick" back.

While Moore, as I 've left him his laurel so long,

Will surely resign all pretensions to song.

Those f< Melodies" once re-enshrined on my shelf,

The " Loves of the Angels" I '11 leave to himself.

You imagine that Milman can soar on a wing — •
That Hemans and Landon can sparkle and sing-
That Crabbe a satiric excursion can take,
And Rogers write smooth — the thing 's all a mistake !
Alas ! at Parnassus those names are unheard ;
They boast many beauties — but wrote not a word.
The pilfer'd Promethean flame, that has burn'd
So brightly within them, must soon bereturn'd.
How many there are, now accounted divine,
Who, like poor Cinderella, will cease to be fine !
How many, now passing for wonders and wizards,
Whose coaches are pumpkins, whose lacqueys are lizards !

1830.] [ 571 ]

NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL.

THE loyal feelings of the empire have been kept in great anxiety by
the state of the King's health. Without pretending to any Persian adora-
tion for the throne, we know from many circumstances, and some of
them of no remote occurrence, that the continuance of the King's life is
one of the best pledges for the public security. We look to the future
with no confidence in the benefits that the country would derive from
change ; and in this full belief we echo the national sentiment, and say,
" Long live the King !"

The first notice of his Majesty's illness was in the following :—

" Official. — We are concerned to announce that the King is not suf-
ficiently well to come to town, and has commanded that the celebration
of His Majesty's birth- day, his levee, and his drawing-room, should be
postponed for a fortnight."

« BULLETIN. — Windsor Castle, April 15, 1830. — We regret to state
that the King has had a bilious attack, accompanied by an embarrass-
ment in breathing. His Majesty, although free from fever, is languid
and weak. " HENRY HALFORD.

" MATTHEW JOHN TIERNEY."

The public alarm was in some degree diminished by reports of his
having had some sleep, and the non-appearance of bulletins on the
Saturday and Sunday following. It was, however, speedily re-excited
by the report that water was forming in the chest, and that sleep was
procured only by laudanum. On Tuesday the following appeared in
the Court Circular : —

" His Majesty's health has not, we regret to state, improved to that
degree as was anticipated from the favourable state in which the King
appeared on Saturday. Sir Henry Halford and Sir Matthew Tierney
remained in attendance on his Majesty during Sunday night. The two
medical gentlemen held a consultation yesterday morning at the Palace,
previous to their leaving for London, and agreed upon the following bul-
letin for the information of the public : —

" Windsor Castle, April 19, 1830. — His Majesty continues to suffer
occasionally from attacks of embarrassment in his breathing.

" HENRY HALFORD.
" MATTHEW JOHN TIERNEY.

" His Majesty may be considered to be rather better than when the
first bulletin of the state of his health was issued; certainly not worse. Nei-
ther of the physicians were in attendance on the King during yesterday."

On the following day there was an improvement, and the following
was communicated on the authority above quoted : —

" We have great satisfaction in being enabled to state that his Ma-
jesty passed a pretty good night on Tuesday, and experienced less dif-
ficulty from his complaint yesterday."

Thursday brought still more cheering intelligence ; it ran thus : —

" His Majesty passed another good night on Wednesday, and yester-
day morning the following bulletin, which confirms the previous favour-
able statements of his Majesty's health, was issued. It will be seen that
only one physician now attends the King : —

" Windsor Castle, April 22.— The King is better.

f- HENRY HALFORD.

" His, Majesty signed a number of official warrants and documents on

4D2

572 Notes of the Month [MAY,

Wednesday, some of them relating to the Treasury. — The Duke of Wel-
lington visited the King, at his Palace at Windsor, yesterday ; and after
having an audience, returned to town."

Friday only confirmed the grateful tidings ; and the report to-day is
not less favourable. On Saturday the 24th, the improvement continued,
ministers received dispatches giving favourable accounts, and the fol-
lowing bulletin was sent to the Lord Mayor : —

" Windsor Castle, April 24.— The King has passed two good nights,
and continues better. (Signed) " HENRY HALFORD."

From that period, until the time of our going to press, the recovery
seemed to be gradually progressive. The question of his Majesty's dis-
order, however, appears not yet settled among the authorities. The
bulletin announcing the first decided illness is certainly no evidence of
the clearness of expression for which the classic Sir Henry Halford is so
fond of claiming distinction. The disease was defined to be " attacks of
embarrassment in his breathing ;" which we conceive to be a puzzling
kind of description. While the puzzle continued, people of course set
themselves about solving it in their own way ; and there were but few
maladies in the list of human sufferings which were not heaped on the
head of our monarch. The gout in his stomach, or a conversion of the
whole system into bile, were the prevalent discoveries. Water in the
chest was supposed to be unquestionable ; yet the doctors in attendance
are now understood to deny it outright, and to limit the whole calamity
to an c( asthmatic difficulty of breathing." It is remarkable that court
reasons never are the true reasons; that court facts are never to be re-
lied upon, and that court physicians seem to have been from time im-
memorial incapable of giving a decided opinion upon the nature of a
royal disease.

This is a vigorous month of publication, and those who consult our
reviews at the end of the Magazine will see that we have been active in
watching its progress. But there are some volumes that we may an-
nounce here. Among the first of those is a republication of " The Last
Days of Bishop Heber, by Thomas Robinson, A.M. ;" being a collection
of memoranda, issued from the Madras press, soon after the bishop's
death, by his chaplain. Heber's best memorial is his own book ; beyond
all rivalry, the most various and animated account of India. His chap-
lain's journal adds some fillings-up of dates and dinners, excursions, and
routine duties of the episcopal office. But we dislike the perpetual
affectation of the style. That Heber was an active, ardent, and perfectly
well-meaning man, and that his prolonged life might have been of great
service to the cause of religion and civilization in India, no one can
doubt. But his chaplain talks of him in a strain so totally unwarranted
by Heber's, or almost any uninspired man's abilities, acquirements, or
services, that common taste turns away in disgust.

To a chaplain, a bishop is, doubtless, at all times, a very important
personage, and we can make considerable allowance for this professional
habit of prostration. But Heber, if he had half the good sense for
which the public give him credit, would have told this chaplain, that it
was foolish to make an ( e apostle" of him ; to call him " his father ;"
talk of shedding tears at his coming in or going out; that, in short, he
was by no means inspired ; that he was neither St. Peter nor St. Paul ;
and that, to the best of his belief, such language savoured too much of

J830.] ofc Affairs in General. 573

fanatical cant to be worthy of an English clergyman. A Latin inscrip-
tion for Heber's tombstone is given. It is immeasurably long. The
use of an inscription being, not to give the history of a life, but the
peculiarities of a character ; and its merit consisting in giving those in
the most condensed expression possible.

A curious work on the whims and oddities of Ireland has just made
its appearance. It is a collection of brief tales ; and is entitled " Traits
and Stories of the Irish Peasantry." In these two duodecimo volumes,
which are evidently written by an intelligent and practised writer, the
picture is of a generation who have hitherto been defrauded of their
fame by the Irish annalists Tipperary and Kerry, the south and west
of Ireland, have hitherto " lived in description and grown green in song."
Mrs. Hall's very pretty books have thrown a budding popularity round
Wexford, more to the east ; but the present historian takes up his weapon
for the honour of Ulster, or the north ; a part of the country which we
thought, in general, more productive of the material of shirts and trow-
sers than of ghosts flying by night, or conspiracies parading in noon.
The wars of papists and orangemen have, it is true, a little varied the
scene, but still the northern Irishman is a weaver ; and romance <f waves
her wild wings," and flies from this half tailor generation. To " draw
three souls out of one weaver" is beyond the mightiest labours that
Shakspeare attributes to man, mermaids, or music ; and the text palpably
intimates the difficulty of finding so much as one within that sedentary
and sallow flinger of the eternal shuttle.

However, genius can work wonders ; and the author actually exhibits
those flax-manipulating automatons as being capable of making love
and making battle; of running away with red-haired Rosamonds, and
breaking each other's heads with native shillelahs. We recommend the
work to those who desire to see a neglected portion of the human race
raised into sudden celebrity, not less than to the curious in physiology,
who have hitherto conceived a weaver to be an inseparable portion of
his own loom.

Another work of a graver class. " Historical Sketches of the Native
Irish," by C. Anderson, deserves an attentive perusal. The object of
the volume is the preaching and general diffusion of scriptural knowledge
in the native language ; which still continues to be the only language of
multitudes of Irish, and to be the favourite one, even where the English
language is understood. A historical statement of the feeble efforts
made, from the earliest period, to meet this difficulty, is given, and the
volume certainly states a case well worthy of the deepest public attention.

We are not fond of invoking Parliament to our aid, for reasons
which might not be deemed sufficiently respectful to that illustrious
body to mention ; but we seriously wish that either Parliament or Sir
Richard Birnie, who so ludicrously lays down the law in Bow-street,
would take measures for bringing from the land of the Jews the far-
famed missionary, Mr. Wolf, as rapidly as possible. To judge of him
by his book, his preaching, and his conduct, a more thorough ass never
wore ears. What he did on his former peregrinations he has recorded,
and the record is a compound of self-sufficiency and weakness. This
was, indeed, sending the blind to lead the blind. ;;T-, t

We fully respect the motives of the individuals, some of them very

574 Notes of the Month [MAY,

good men, and, probably, all very sincere men, who sent this fellow as
a missionary. But, with the most perfect good- will to the cause, we
cannot discover in him a single evidence of the temper, the talents, the
grave knowledge, or the decorous spirit, that are essential to make any
impression on the minds of men at all in earnest in their opinions. His
early experiments seem all to have been abortive.

His present expedition produced its first fruits to him in a quarrel
with the Turkish governor, which ended in a bastinado ; and the last
intelligence from this foolish fellow is that he has forced himself into
some scrape, from which he is to be rescued only by the intervention
of a British sloop of war. And all this occurs in a country where a
crowd of British travellers are passing backwards and forwards every
day, with scarcely more obstruction than in the tour from Piccadilly
to Pimlico, where the pachas are in the habit of civilly receiving the
English every day in the year, and where nothing but the most de-
termined absurdity could contrive to make a quarrel. If the following
paragraph, which we see uncontradicted, be true, we cannot conceive
on what principle any missionary society can suffer itself to be repre-
sented by this person. Wolf, the converted Jew, who took his wife
with him to Jerusalem, to assist in overthrowing the scruples of the
Hebrews there and every where else, has been figuring as a prophet,
even more authoritatively than the wildest of the modern enthusiasts.
On the 2 1st of December he issued, from Cyprus, the following, among
other 'important announcements : —

" The Lord Jesus Christ will again appear on earth in the year 1847,
to gather together the Jewish nation from all quarters of the world, to
bring them back to their land. Wellington the proud will be terribly
punished, for having admitted into power the beast — I mean the Church
of Rome. The Jews . shall rise in divers places, and proclaim salvation
by a crucified Saviour. Blessed are those who hear now the name of
Joseph Wolf — Sultan Mahmoud, thou art a great man, but the war of
Russia has prepared thy death I another shall usurp thy place."

If Wolf ever wrote this nonsense, we know no corner of the earth
but one fit to contain such a diplomatist. Sultans are not of such easy
tempers as to suffer public proclamations of their dethronement. And as
for the theology of the case, it is downright foolery. That the time will
come for the conversion of the Jews, is irrevocably declared in the
Scriptures in their own possession. But with the declaration there is
coupled the most explicit denial that the date is to be ascertained by
man, or by powers, perhaps as much superior to man as he is above
the worm at his feet. It is this presumption that makes the wise and
learned so often shrink from the attempt even to examine the most
interesting and important predictions of the inspired volume. We wish
that Wolf may escape future floggings or imprisonments ; but we wish,
if he must talk nonsense, that he would be content to talk it at Mr.
Drummond's holy conversaziones !

The marrying families declare this last winter was the worst in their
line ever known. Except the Duke of Buccleugh, nothing worth catch-
ing was caught, and, in his case, the capture was by an accidental throw
in the dulness of that dullest of all dull things, a visit in the country.
The blame was laid upon the weather. We had so much frost and snow,
that all the ladies' noses much outblushed their cheeks, and so far as
lips and elbows went, every woman was a blue. The customary speeches

1830.] oh Affairs in General. 575

froze between the teeth of the marrying men, the pressures of the
hands were all of the most selfish description and occupied in thawing
each other, and the only flame in the whole generation of beaus and
belles was the flame of Newcastle coal. But this desperate time has
luckily come to an end, and, like Iceland music after a thaw, the sup-
pressed melody of the passions is now ringing round the fashionable
world — all is marrying and giving in marriage.

First of the first, the Duke of Brunswick, who seems to be the
maddest of sovereigns, which is something beyond the " maddest of
March hares," is flirting with all the opulent of France, and has sadly
puzzled Prince Leopold the poor, and Mademoiselle Orleans the rich.
The lady would take either, and either would take the lady. But the
point of perplexity is, that Prince Leopold has not yet got his cap of
sovereignty, and the Duke of Brunswick may be not far from losing his.
Greece may have heard the cabbage-gooseberry speculations of the one, and
utterly fling out the green-grocer ; as the empire of Brunswick may re-
fuse to lay itself at the mercy of a vulgar despot, with no more brains
than his own walking-stick. But in England the genius of manoeuvring
thrives, and the spinsters are -getting rid of their singleness as fast as they
can. These are but a few of the votaries or victims of Hymen : — A mar-
riage is in contemplation between the eldest of the Ladies Bertie, daughter
to Lord Abingdon and the Hon. and Rev. Charles Bathurst ; Lady Alicia
Howard, youngest daughter of the late Earl of Wicklow, is shortly to be
married to William Bissett, Esq., nephew of the Bishop of Raphoe ;
a union between Lord Ashley and Lady Emily Cowper ; one between
the Hon. William Ashley and Miss Baillie ; and last, not least, a marriage
between Prince Schwartzenberg and Lady Ellenborough are announced.
The Schwartzenberg affair however is said to threaten a delay, which
must be peculiarly hurtful to the delicacy of Miss Digby's feelings.
The little Emperor of Austria, who is a great marrier himself, is said to
have taken a sudden idea into his head, that the lady's example would
be by no means necessary to his domestic comforts, and, in short, that
the gentle court of Vienna has quite exhibitions enough of those charm-
ing liaisons, without importing any in the shape of English contraband
goods. Such is the rumour of the day, which we understand has thrown
Miss Digby into great dejection at the cruelty of emperors in thwarting
the virtuous passions of the sex. But it is also whispered, that the
Emperor of Austria does not care a lock of his moustaches about the
affair, and that the report has been compiled for the purpose of satisfying
Miss Digby that she is not to be a princess : the gallant prince finding
Paris pleasant, champagne dear, and Miss Digby almost as intolerable
a burthen as if she were a wife.

The most valuable affair of the season was a furious quarrel between
Madame Vestris and Anderson, an experimentalist in opera. The
stage chroniclers say, that Anderson was a worshipper of the beauties of
Josephine, sister of Madame, the fact of which offended Madame ; the
rumour offended Josephine; and the compound of fact and rumour
prodigiously offended Anderson.

In this condition of the tempers on all sides, the fire was brought to a
focus, as philosophers say, by Anderson declining to play Macheath
until he had learned the part, — no bad reason, — and by Vestris taking
it, she having triumphed in it before. Madame, however, was hissed by
some malcontent in the shilling gallery. This kind of criticism was new
to the clever little actress, and she and her friend, or friends, made that

576 Notes of the Month [MAY,

blockhead who performs law at Bow Street, — that Sir Richard Birnie —
(such is knighthood) — a party in the cause, from whom she proceeded
to lay her wrongs before our sovereign lord the king, in the form of a
bill presented to the grand jury against Anderson, for " hiring people
to deprive her of her bread by hissing," &c. &c.

As all grand juries must do something for the honour of their office,
they brought in the bill at once, and the parties were in a fair course of
hearing themselves very handsomely abused on both sides, by men
learned in the law, and handsomely paid for the same. But the children
of the muses are of a more glowing temperature ; and they could not
wait for the tardiness of forensic Billingsgate. So, on the very first
public opportunity, the performance of Guy Mannering, they declared
their mutual confidences. The detail is too brilliant for our frigidity,
and we give it from an eye-witness.

Let our readers imagine Guy Mannering, act 2d, scene 1st; the duet
of " Now hope, now fear" is over, and the Henry appears. He bore
the " strife of gods and men" with most laudable nonchalance, while Ma-
dame realised Byron's description of a boarding-school miss, and seemed

" So much alarmed that she was quite alarming."

The tumult which ensued was a hot-bed for extemporaneous eloquence
both on the stage and in front. Anderson stated that Madame's asser-
tions were altogether fa Ise. This we thought a strong expression towards
a lady; for had he used it respecting a gentleman, the consequences
would have been unpleasant. Wallack begged a hearing for Vestris,
and seemed to feel for the novelty of her situation. He remarked that
extemporaneous speaking was not exactly in her line, and seemed good-
naturedly to intimate that, as it was in his, he was ready to be eloquent.
The lady, not duly appreciating this handsome offer, preferred (as ladies
do occasionally) using her own tongue. She appealed to her affidavit,
and assured the audience that she was prepared to substantiate her
charge. She added, " With respect to Mr. Anderson, if I had not every
proof of his conduct, I would not have taken the steps which I have felt
it to be my duty to adopt. I am well convinced that he hired persons
to drive me from the stage. (Cries of ' No, no,' and ' true, true.') If,
ladies and gentlemen, he can clear himself from the stigma of having
thus behaved, no person will be more rejoiced at it than myself. (Ap-
plause.) Ladies and gentlemen, I hope that, for your amusement, you
will suffer us to finish the opera." (Bravo.) "Make it up ! kiss and be
friends," said one in the pit. " Josephine would kick at the kissing,"
was answered from the upper boxes. " He 's to blame," from one quar-
ter ; " She 's to blame," from another ; " They 're a pretty pair for a
curricle" says a third. It would seem that Anderson does not cherish
Falstajf's sentiment, " The better part of valour is discretion ;" for they
do say in the theatre, that when remonstrance was used on the ground
of incurring public censure, he said, " I '11 fight any man in the house
who says I should m^ke an apology." He showed fight when his groom
said that he knew his master could fight any one of them ; and if a second
appeared he would be glad to encounter him.

All this is excellent. And we peculiarly admire the sublimity of
Anderson, who thus laid down the chivalric maxim, that any who dared
to think him any thing short of Braham or King Solomon, merited a
brace of bullets in his brains, or a thrust in the thorax. His groom, too,
becomes an historic character ; and the whole is a very fine burlesque.
" Kiss and be friends," indeed ! We say, " War to the knife."

1830.] [ 577 ]

MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN.

The Picture of India, Geographical, His-
torical, and Descriptive, 2vols. 12mo. 1830.
— Of the multitudinous subjects of public
concernment, extending over every quarter of
the world, the greater part depend almost
wholly upon accident for the revival of any
interest about them ; while some few, from
special causes, contain in themselves a se-
curity against oblivion, by periodically re-
calling attention, with the certainty of a fixed
festival. The question of India is of this
kind. Every twenty years the Company's
Charter must be reviewed and renewed, and
the renewal— never doubtful, nor will it be
for a few more twenties of years — stirs up a
commotion, not only among those who de-
sire to shake or share the monopoly, but
among the thousands who have no earthly
concern or regard for the matter but to talk
and speculate. But every body, at the periods
of "approaching discussion, is expected to
know all about India ; and to talk even at a
dinner table, or at a conversazione with any
effect, some acquaintance with facts — some
specific information on the subject, is really
almost indispensable. Hence arises the ne-
cessity for new books with the newest intel-
ligence, written down to the last hour; and
the Picture of India presents itself at the
critical moment to meet the sure demand.
Though got up avowedly to meet this sure
but temporary demand, it must be allowed
to be well got up — by some one familiar with
the subject in every branch of it — with phi-
losophy enough to detect the bearings of par-
ticular facts upon general conclusions, and
with wisdom enough of the practical kind to
turn them into the channels which lead to
the decision of a question of great political
importance. The Picture of India will sur-
vive the immediate occasion which prompted
its production, and take its place as a book
of valuable information among works of per-
manent interest. The work is very neatly
printed, and handsomely illustrated by wood-
cuts of views, peculiar ceremonies, animals,
&c. &c,

Travels in Peru, and a Residence at Po-
tosi, by Edm. Temple, Knight of the royal
and distinguished Order of Charles III., '2
vols., Svo.—~ Among the Companies which
sprung up, mushroom-like, in 1825, none
was more magnificent in promise or splen-
did in outfit than the Potosi Association.
Generals and barons, foreigners of course,
were among its commissioners ; and Mr. Tern-
pie, himself a captain of cavalry in the Pen-
insular war, and a Spanish knight, figured
as secretary with 500/. a year and corre-
sponding appointments. Not a moment was
lost : the whole party, with servants and dogs,
a fashionable carriage which proved of no
use, and packets of gingerbread and pepper-

M.M. New Series — VOL. IX. No. 53.

mint drops, which unluckily got wetted and
melted before they had occasion for these
especial comforts in crossing the Pampas, cm-
barked in a post-office ten-gun brig, landed
at Buenos Ayres, scudded along the said
Pampas, flew through Cordova, Tucuman,
Salta, Tupitza, and rested not till Potosi
itself received them, panting and melting,
within its gold and silver embraces. At the
port of Arica, a vessel laden with stores to
the tune of 20,OOOJ. was to arrive almost as
soon as themselves ; and accordingly the ge-
neral rode forward to welcome it, and take
charge of its treasures ; and in the meantime
the baron set out to examine and buy up
mines, and Mr. Secretary opened his books
and spread out his papers. Scarcely had
operations actually commenced at Potosi,
when intelligence arrived that the Company
had split, and the cargo at Arica had been
seized on the part of the seceding directors.
No money was forthcoming : the secretary
suspended the works, discharged the labour-
ers; and broke up the establishment. Hisoccu-
pation was gone : he despatched an indignant
letter of resignation, and scampered back to
England with as much celerity, but with
less hilarity, than he went. Not that he lost
his good spirits : he is of a buoyant temper-
ament, with an elasticity of feeling proof
against any ordinary pressure. Though nei-
ther abounding in incident, nor very instruc-
tive in facts, the manner of the book is lively
and dashing, and not unattractive: the narra-
tion is strictly a personal one ; and the author
makes the most of his little adventures by
sea and by land, with an eye to the ludicrous.
Captain Temple talks, of course, of mines ;
but of them we have already had enough ;
and his line of march is, moreover, familiar
' household words,' or as the quotation itself.
He finds the towns every where suffering
under neglect, the Spaniards every where in-
dolent, and the Indians, amiable and culti-
vable, every where oppressed. The capabi-
lities of the country are every where incalcu-
lable ; and his predictions are as sanguine as
his belief is fixed, that South America has
gained by independence. When he passed
through Tucuman, a Colonel Somebody,
with a few marauders in the garb of soldiers,
had just expelled the governor, and taken his
place ; and was himself, a few months after-
wards, it appeared, pushed from his stool
with as little ceremony by another predatory
Colonel.

Captain Temple describes graphically and
amusingly: for instance the balsa, in crossing
the Santiago river.

The boats were constructed in a much shorter
time than I require to describe them, although their
description may be given in a few words, thus: —
Take a dried bullock's hide, pinch up each of the
four corners, put a stitch with a thorn to keep those
4E

578

Monthly Review of Literature,

[MAY,

corners together, and your boat is made. For use,
place it upon the water bottom downwards; then,
to prevent its natural tendency to turn bottom up-
wards, put one foot immediately in the centre, and
let the other follow with the most delicate caution :
thus, standing breathless in the middle, you are
now to shrink downwards, contracting your body
precisely in the manner in which, probably in your
childhood, you have pressed a friar into a snuff-
box. This position, however inconvenient, serves
to conceal a considerable share of timidity from
your companions, though not from the spectators,
who line the banks of the river, indulging in loud
wild laughter. When crouched down in the bottom,
sundry articles are handed in, and ingeniously de-
posited round you, until the balsa sinks to about an
inch or perhaps an inch and a half from the water's
edge; it is then considered sufficiently laden. A
naked peone now plunges into the stream. " Mercy
on us !" is the natural exclamation ; for the first
impression from the shock is, that yourself and all
your property are going to the bottom ; but you are
instantly relieved from this very probable conjec-
ture by the peone's taking hold of one of the cor-
ners of the balsa (which projects like that of a cocked
hat), and asking you— " Estd V. blent" "Are
you comfortable?" To this question you reply by
a nod of the head, for the use of the tongue is lost ;
but even if words were at command, you may not
wish to commit yourself by expressions diametri-
cally opposed to feelings and symptoms ; or you
may wish it to be imagined, as is sometimes prac-
tised in perilous situations, that your profound si-
lence indicates indifference of danger, or may pass
for coolness and presence of mind. Silence also
conveys an idea of gravity, and of resignation to
your fate, which, indeed, is no more than becom-
ing, when you feel persuaded that nothing short of
a miracle can prolong your existence beyond a quar-
ter of an hour. The nod being given, a peone on
the shore imparts a gentle impulse to your tottering
bark, while the peone in the water, keeping hold of
the corner with one hand, strikes out with the other,
and swims away with you to the opposite bank.
The moment you touch it, so great is your joyful
surprise at arriving perfectly safe that all the perils
of your voyage are forgotten, and you soon find out
(as is often the case in life) that your imagination
had represented dangers and difficulties, where,
with a little caution, there existed neither the one
nor the other.

The shape of the poncho is conveyed in
much fewer words: — An oblong square gar-
ment, having a hole in the centre, through
which the head passes. It is worn constantly
by men, and may be called the cloak of the
country. Ladies use it only on horseback.

Capt. Temple has some information about
the height of the Andes from Mr. Pentland,
a gentleman attached to the Peruvian Em-
bassy.

Chimborazo has long passed for the highest of
the Cordilleras, and, until the discovery of the Hi-
malaya, was supposed to be the highest mountain
in the world M. Humboldt,as he himself observes,
' ' had the pleasure of seeing a greater extent of
mountains than any other geognost ;" but he did not
pursue his travels to this part of the Andes, where
subsequent travellers have ascertained the height of
the Ylimani to be 21,800 feet above the level of the
sea, exceeding that of Chimborazo by 350 feet— no
very great difference, it may perhaps be said, in
subjects of such vast dimensions; but still quite

sufficient to take from the latter the palm of super-
lative magnitude and grandeur in the great chain of
the Andes.

Mr. Pentland, who measured the Ylimani in 1826,
gave me his calculations with the remark, that
'.' they required revision ;" consequently they were
not intended to go forth as accurate. At a subse-
quent period, I was informed by our chief commis-
sioner, who took a warm interest in these subjects,
that the height of Ylimani had been given to him
as 21,800 feet, which agrees with that given to me
by Mr. Pentland, and this appears to be corrobo-
rated by the observations of Dr. Redhead.

This account, however, does not at all
agree with Humboldt's recent Memoire sur
les Travaux Geographiques et Geognos-
tiques de M. Pentland. Instead of 2 1,800
ieet, Ylimani is there stated to be 24,350,
and Sorate 25,400. Is this addition of more
than 3,000 feet the result of M. Hum-
boldt's "revision" of Mr. Pen tland's calcula-
tions ? We are afraid mighty little reliance
is to be placed upon either calculations or
«« revision."

The Game of Life, ty. Leitch Ritchie,
2vols. I2mo. 1830. — A volume of magazine
sketches by this gentleman, some time ago,
we considered as the production of no com-
mon person ; and the tale before us confirms
our estimate and anticipations. The writer's
object is here plainly to delineate certain
scenes of London misery which do not fall
within the purview of everybody, and he has
done so with spirit, and possibly with truth :
the rest is mere machinery. An elderly
gentleman, retired from business on a slender
pittance, and subsequently enriched by the
death of a brother, finds himself a lonely
being, without a relation or a friend, and
almost without an acquaintance, save the
curate who plays backgammon with him.
Wearying of the solitude and monotony of
his condition, and panting for some object
on which to pour his unoccupied affections,
he takes a sudden resolution to abandon, for
a time, the curate and his game of counters,
to go and play a " game of life." He recol-
lects a lady whom he had once admired, but
who had jilted him in favour of a poor lieu-
tenant; he resolves to go and see her, and
sets off for her residence at Llangollen by the
mail. He finds her a widow, with a son, a
fine, frank youth, on the point of starting for
London to seek his fortune, with ten pounds
in his pocket. With her also he finds a
young and beautiful girl of a vigorous and
intelligent character, an orphan, the child
of nobody knew whom, and keeping a little
school in the town. In his longings for
objects on whom to lavish his overflowing
tenderness, these two young and interesting
persons seem the very beings he wants ; and
he accordingly resolves to patronize them,
but to set about the matter prudently. He
will put them to their probation ; he lays his
little plan ; he foresees all the incidents of
the drama, and fondly hopes to wind it up at
his pleasure. In vain the curate reminds

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

5J9

him men and women are not to be played
with like counters, and advises him to come
back to backgammon, as a more manage-
able game. No : his mind is made up. The
youth goes to town, and the old man follows,
meaning to watch over him, and shield him
from difficulties. Unluckily he is too late.
The first evening of his arrival, the young
man had called upon an acquaintance of his
native town, whom he found in a garret with
a wife and two children, in the deepest misery,
and earning a wretched subsistence by copy-
ing lawyers' papers. To escape from his own
feelings, the miserable man takes the youth
to a neighbouring tap-house, where he en-
counters some rough associates, among others
a reporter who had pretty well exhausted his
resources. Returning to his inn, he loses his
way ; and while in a state of perplexity where
to pass the night, he drops upon the reporter,
who takes him to a house where crowds of
men and women are assembled, of the lowest
ca.ste. He escapes as soon as possible, and
the next day presents his letters of recom-
mendation, and discovers the hopelessness of
his chance of employment. Repeating his
visit to his law-friend, he again accompanies
him to the scene of the former night, where
he is seduced into drunkenness and a quarrel,
and during the struggle catches the eye of the
old gentleman he had a few days before seen
at his mother's. Old Mr. Vesper had un-
luckily learnt all that had passed since his
arrival, without any of the palliatives ; and
he returned to Wales, disappointed, to com-
municate the sad result to his other protegee.
She renounces the youth forthwith in a letter
of severity, which almost distracts the poor
lad. In the meanwhile his little money va-
nishes, when he again encounters his pot-
house acquaintance the reporter; and, re-
lating to him his forlorn condition, is advised
to turn penny-a-liner. At the moment, fire-
engines are flying past : they pursue them to
the scene of action, and his first essay is a
flaming description of the horrible and woful
consequences. His ambition rises with suc-
cess. He attempts a magazine article, and
receives a cheque ; he repeats the dose, and
receives a check of another kind, which leaves
him utterly without resources, and without a
penny. He is shut out of his lodgings, wan-
ders through the streets, finds himself at one
of the bridges, and in despair attempts to
throw himself from the battlements. A bible
in his pocket catches the coping, and saves
him, and brings him to more sober thoughts.
He opens it, and, to his amazement, finds a
501. note, placed in it by Mr. Vesper when
leaving his mother's. Just at this time, that
benevolent old gentleman was again in Lon-
don, in pursuit of the youth : he traced him
everywhere ; and everywhere, unhappily, cir-
cumstances told against him. The young
man hears of his inquiries, and, not knowing
their object, resolves to seek him, and has
the vexation to catch a glance of him in a,

coach just started for Wales. His 50/. how-
ever, enables him to assume a more decent
appearance; and by the aid of a sort of general
agent, is presented to a member of parlia-
ment, who wants assistance for a speech and
a pamphlet. This member of parliament
happens to be the proprietor of the estates
in the neighbourhood of which live his mo-
ther and the charming schoolmistress : he
had seen the latter, was passionately in love,
had even offered marriage, and finally re-
solved to carry her off by force. His new
secretary, without knowing his purpose, ac-
companies him, and discovery of course fol-
lows. The old man was present, and by a cu-
rious train of circumstances the young lady
turns out to be his own niece. His purpose is
completely answered ; he takes her and her
lover to his home, and with them two or three
others who had forwarded his views ; and
among them the law-writer, who proved an
honourable man, and the reporter, who was
not without redeeming qualities*

Travels in the Morea, by Wm. Martin
Leake, F.R.S., $c. 3 wofo., 8wo., 1830 — If
Colonel Leake's purpose really was what he
obviously hints, what indeed he assigns as
the main cause for the long delay of his pub-
lication, that is, to make his book agreeable
to the general reader, he has shot wide of his
mark. It will not in any respect suit the
general reader : it has none of the qualities
that attract him ; it deals neither with politics
nor personalities ; it scarcely glances at events,
and but incidentally notices the living beings
among whom the author travels, their habits,
or their condition. It is a dry survey of the
country, with reference to objects about
which the general reader cares not a rush.
It is, however, the result of the most pertina-
cious research, the fruit of considerable learn-
ing and untiring zeal ; and though it will
get no introductions to boudoirs and drawing-
rooms, it will retain a permanent position in
the libraries of silent students. The author's
sole object was to identify the ancient to-
pography of the Peloponnesus, and he tra-
versed the peninsula at almost every point
of the compass, book in hand, with Pausanias
and Strabo for his guides, or rather the for-
mer only, for Strabo, so far as regards the
Morea, was but a cabinet speculator, and a
sort of commentator on the Homeric cata-
logue. The colonel's researches began so
far back as the year 1806, when the Morea
was quite a new field. Wheeler and Chand-
ler had seen nothing but the coast, and some
small portions close to it. The interior was
utterly unknown. Olympia, Megalopolis,
Sparta, Messene, Tegea ; none of them had
been visited. Col. Leake has left nothing,
at least unlooked for ; but so sweeping have
been the devastations of time, that many
localities once of celebrity can with difficulty —
that is, not with certainty — be identified. He
has, however, done much ; and the map of

4E2

580

Monthly Review of Literature,

[MAY,

the peninsula, which before depended al-
most wholly upon inferences gathered from
descriptions of ancient historians and geogra-
phers, is now constructed with something
like trigonometrical precision. One thou-
sand five hundred measurements were made
with the sextant and theodolite, and these
corrected or confirmed by some good ob-
servations of latitude.

Eleia proves, perhaps, the most barren of
interest : the relics are fewer, and every spot
more difficult to trace. Rivers and hills are
permanent, or nothing would have been ac-
complished. After Elis monopolised the
management of the Olympian festival, it at-
tracted the wealth and population of Eleia
and Trephylla, and other places fell into de-
cay. The soil of Eleia, too, is sandy, and the
scarcity of stone led to the plundering of
buildings and temples. It is moreover lia-
ble, beyond other parts of the Morea, to allu-
vial changes. The sanctity of the territory,
besides, superseded the necessity of castles
and fortresses. These are all conspiring
causes. Messeriia and Laconia are both of
them in a somewhat similar state, though
from different sources. The Spartans, after
their conquest of Messenia, themselves le-
velled the fortresses and enslaved the natives ;
and Laconia was kept in a state of vassalage
scarcely less rigid. Except at Andania — and
there are found rather vestiges than ruins of
the massive works which once defended the
site— no traces are discoverable of ancient
fortresses, such as Arcadia and Argeia still
present.

The eastern parts of thepenihsulahave better
retained the old names ; but it is not always
safe to trust to this source of identification,
at least in the western parts. For instance,
the modern Koroni, on the eastern coast of
Messenia, is not the ancient Corone: the
descriptions of both Pausanias and Strabo
prove incontestably that Petatidhi, some ten
miles higher up the gulf, is the site of the
ancient town. From the few natives at all
cultivated and acquainted with the old writ-
ers of Greece, nothing seems to be attain-
able. At Dhimitzana is a school, the most
renowned in the Morea, and apparently older
than the Turkish invasion, the didasculus of
which Col. Leake describes as a '* sensible,
pleasant man, with a tolerable knowledge of
the ancient authors, and a good memory."
According to him, Dhimitzana is the ancient
Psoplils, the mountain of Stemnitza Lam-
peia, and the river Erymanthus. " In vain,"
says Col. Leake, " I turn to Pausanias, and
endeavour to show him that those places
must have been some thirty miles distant.
He produces Meletius, though he acknow-
ledges him to be full of errors, in support of
the tradition which he received from his pre-
decessor in the school, and which the people
of Dhimitzana have been so long accustomed
to, that they will probably adhere to it as long
as Greece remains in its present state of dark.

ness." At Solos, in Arcadia, he observes, "I
can find no person, not even the didasculus,
who is scholar enough to be sensible that he
is living on the banks of the Styx ; but what is
very curious, though ignorant in this respect,
they preserve the old notion that the water of
the river is unwholesome, and relate nearly the
same story concerning it as Pausanias, saying
that no vessel will hold the water, &c."

While roaming among the hills of Arca-
dia, he took shelter in a shepherd's tent.
"The man," says he, "has his wife and chil-
dren, and his sons' wives and all their chil-
dren, to the number of twelve or fifteen, in
the tent. Milk and misithra is their only
food. 'We have milk in plenty,' they tell me,
' but no bread.' Such is the life," he adds,
a of a modern Arcadian shepherd, who has al-
most reverted to the balanephagous state of
his primitive ancestors. The children, how-
ever, all look healthy, and are handsome, hav-
ing large black eyes and regular features,
with very dark complexions."

Occasionally passages like the following
relieve the general dulness of the book : it is
making an agreeable use of his learning.

These woody heights (still in Arcadia) , backed by
the higher summits, are admirably adapted to shel-
ter the wild animals which made Pholoe and its vi-
cinity so favourite a resort of Diana and her nymphs,
and Scillus so delightful a residence for a sportsman
like Xenophon. Of the wild animals which afforded
chase to Xenophon and his friends at Scillus, deer
are now rare in the lower parts of the mountain ;
but they are found in the higher regions, as well
of Pholoe, as of the other great summits of the
peninsula : the roebuck and the wild hog are fre-
quently seen as low as Scillus and the banks of the
Alpheius. The bear would seem, from the silence
of Xenophon regarding it, not to have been com-
mon in the Peloponnesus in his days ; though in
more ancient times we maybe assured that it ex-
isted, from its skin having furnished clothing to the
Arcadiatis, and from the story of Areas and Callisto.
It is very possible, that as the wild animals dimi-
nish with the increase of the human species, the
bear may have been driven out of the peninsula iu
the most populous and civilized ages of Greece, nor
have regained its footing in the Peloponnesian
mountains until the Roman wars and their conse-
quences had reduced the country to a state of deser-
tion from which it has never recovered. In the time
of Pausanias,} the bear was common in the woods
of Arcadia : it is now seldom seen in any part of
the Morea, though the occasional appearance of
a^xovbia in the mountains both of Arcadia and
Laconia is generally attested by the inhabitants.

The women of Mistra (in Lacedaemon, not
far from the banks of the Eurotas) and the sur-
rounding plain, the gallant colonel observes,
were taller and more robust than other Greeks,
had more colour, and looked healthier ; and
learnedly reminds us this agrees also with
Homer's Xom^ai/juova, xyT^XiyvvKiKK,

About an hour west of Monemvasia, not
far from Mistra, there are still vineyards
which produce a strong wine ; but that
which gave rise to the name of Malmsey has

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

been long extinct. Malvasia is a corruption
of this Monemvasia.

At Tripolitza, he communicates a little
bit of information for the naturalists : they
are not of ten indebted to him: "An idea pre-
vails here, which I have heard repeated in
several parts of the Morea, that the swallows
come in the spring from Africa on the lacks
of the cranes. A person of good credit has
assured me, that he has seen a crane light
upon a ship at sea with swallows on its back.
The storks arrive in the Morea at the same
time as the cranes, but are not swallow-car-
riers ; whether," he adds, to show that he can
be funny if he chooses, " whether from want
of charity, or want of strength, I cannot
learn."

Mount Sinai, a Poem, in four Books, ty
William Phillips, of the Middle Temple,
1830. — It is of no manner of use for writers
to be continually deprecating in the way they
do. The world wish to be informed or
amused, and find no compensation, no in-
demnity, in apologies and palliatives. Read-
ers care not about the arduousness of the task
— it is the writer's own choice ; nor about his
possible inability — it is his concern : and as
little are they influenced by being told, as
Mr. Phillips tells them, that it is a first
effort; that (by implication) the next will
be better ; that the deed was done in sorrow
and suffering. Even the wonder-working
pencil of Mr. Martin can do nothing for him,
nor ought it. The poem must stand upon its
own merits. He was bound neither to write
nor to publish. If the writing relieved dejec-
tion, it is well ; it answered a good purpose —
the publishing will do nothing but annoy his
readers, and finally himself. Accustomed as
we are to force our attention, we could not
manage Mr. Phillips's poem: about two-
thirds of the first canto wore us to a stick.
The author professes to adhere to Milton's
" metrical economy, as preferable to that of
numbers of more modern extraction." If
Mr. P. was to be read by Milton's cotempo-
raries, there would be some reason in thus
adhering ; they might read it ; but for what
purpose the obsolete tournure of his style is to
be revived, or who is to be charmed, by it, is
past our comprehension. It is the idlest pe-
dantry imaginable to employ antiquated words,
and not the language of the times — to use stale
and stiff inversions of phrase because they
were fashionable two centuries ago. We
hate mere verbal criticism, and never have
recourse to it ; but we must ask what beauty
the author discovers in create for creation,
alternate for successive, equal for adequate,
sometime for formerly ? — why he employs
such words as dissilient or aperient, when he
is talking, not of opening medicine, but of
opening a door ? or inchoate, natheless, called
of for called by, &c. ?

We must quote a line or two where the
writer evidently thinks he is particularly bril-
liant.

— Sacred Sleep,
Insensate handmaid of the dewy night,
Claim'd all in Israel, and the camp was still.
Some of the effects of a flight of locusts :

Pleasant herbs,

'Neath fell infliction of the frequent fang,
Distain the sward with aromatic, while
At browse the dusky populace malign
In breathing acres batten.

What enigma is this ? — is reflecting meant ?
Fair forms of angels from his wrath emerged,
Glassing the mellow smile of Him.
But a longer scrap will furnish a fairer esti-
mate. Moses is setting out for Mount Sinai.
The camp thus threads he till the gate extreme
Itself is gain'd. Evolving, it divides
On mural hinge aperient, but erewhile
Albeit impregnable. From thence infer
How high his office! Presently, while Night
Attain'd her zenith, upon Sinai's skirts,
Beyond the frontier of the wild, he stood.
Shone full before him (he might else have err'd)
Such light as lingers in the filming eye
Of late-expiring, red, solstitial eve
On fertile Ind, or o'er the Caspian, rich
In watery mine. With faltering step and faint
On quest portentous clomb the prophet then
Steep Sinai difficult— with faltering step
And faint, on quest portentous he. Though toil
Or pain there needs not to a thewe, or nerve
Ascending thus that mount precipitous.
For seraph strength upon his aged limbs
Was knit and girded — such a strength divine
As mortals boast not: nor yet marvel was
That soul wax'd weak, without though seraph-
braced, —
Alone, unsandall'd, he must meet the Lord.

Then was Moses fatigued or not ? — or did he
only make believe ? If he was, it must, it
seems, have been voluntarily incurred.

On his arrival at the summit, he was thus
addressed :

Arise and hearkeri, O beloved of God !

Beloved as well henceforth as heretofore.

Which puts a stop to our progress, and will
to most others.

The Pilgrim of the Hebrides, 1830.— A
tour in rhyme, distributed not into chapters,
but cantos ; the first ranging from Glasgow
to Staffa, the next from Staffa to Fort Wil-
liam, and a third from Fort William to
Edinburgh. A second visit comprehends a
tour to Inverary, to Skye and Inverness, and
back again to Edinburgh. The poet de-
scribes ^and remarks by turns, historically
and morally, always with facility, and some-
times forcibly. He carries the fetters of
rhyme lightly ; they seem no burden, no en-
cumbrance : he moves as easily with them
as without ; they are of silk not metal. The
versification is vigorous and sonorous; but
the stuff and staple, however elegantly ex-
pressed, are of a very ordinary quality, very
dull prose ; and the whole wears by the
monotony of the cadence and the very preci-
sion of the metre, and especially by the com-
monness of the sentiment.

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Monthly Review of Literature,

[MAY,

Here is at least spirit in expression ; and
had we not had so much of a similar kind of
late years, it would be striking.

Man is a riddle, to himself unknown,
Of hope and fear, of loathing and desire —
Pursuits abandoned, projects overthrown —
A cloud, a spark, a smoke, a flash of fire :
In vanity and guilt the seeds are sown
Of woes that life infest, till life expire ;
And though the present mock our hope, a gleam
Of future and remote still lengthens out the dream.

Light-bounding onward, youth aspires to climb
-The' ascent of life, and numbers every hour,
And chides it for delay, till manhood's prime
Give licence to besiege the gates of power,
Of wealth or glory ; while the gulf of time
Yawns underneath unheeded, to devour
The crowd, the pomp, the revelry, the car
Of triumph ; arts and arms, and policy and war.

But when the strength is tasked, when heart and

brain

In error are perplexed, and worn with woes,
Then youth and enterprise cry out amain,
And envy age his honours and repose ;
While age is heard responsive to complain
And murmur that his day is at the close ;
And take reluctant leave of broil and rout,
The struggle and the chance, the victory ;id the
shout.

Travels through Central Africa to Tim-

&MC/OO, by Rtne CaUlii, 2 vols. 8vo. 1830

Caillie was born in 1800, brought up at a
charity-school, and put to some humble trade,
but at sixteen, impelled by an irresistible
desire to see the world and especially Africa,
he embarked in a small vessel bound for the
Senegal, with sixty francs for his viaticum.
At the period of his arrival, Major Peddie's
expedition was preparing — he died — Camp,
bell died ; and the next year Major Gray's
commenced on the Gambia. Young Caillie,
longing for an opportunity to go into the
interior, set out on foot, in company with a
couple of negroes, in the hope of getting em-
ployment from Major Gray ; but he was com-
pelled to stop at Cape Verde. The journey
knocked up both him and his hopes, and he
was glad to accept a passage to Guadaloupe,
and a recommendation to a merchant of that
colony. A few months, however, brought
him back to St. Louis, just at the time when
Adrieu Partarrien was there performing some
commission for Major Gray, and on the point
of rejoining the expedition. Caillie obtained
from his countryman permission to accom-
pany him ; but illness obliged him, before
the expedition terminated, to return to St.
Louis. From thence he sailed to France,
but in 1824 he was again on the Senegal.
Baron Roger commanded the colony, and
from him he succeeded in obtaining some
assistance, and his consent to go up the river
as far as the Brancas to learn among them
Arabic and Moorish ceremonies. After a
residence of about eight months, he found
himself, from the want of resources and some
misunderstanding with the natives, obliged to

come back to St. Louis, where he met with
but a sorry reception from the new governor.
In the hope of Baron Roger's return to the
colony he continued at St. Louis and the
neighbouring villages, and earned a miserable
subsistence by catching and stuffing birds.
Baron Roger returned, but refused peremp-
torily to further his views. Caillie now re-
solved to go to Sierra Leone to solicit English
assistance, but naturally neither General
Turner, nor his successor, Sir Neil Campbell,
would listen, though General Turner kindly
gave him the superintendence of an Indigo fac-
tory, with a salary of 3,600 francs. Still rest-
less, and eager as ever to reach Timbuctoo, he
had no sooner saved 2,000 franks, than he de-
termined to attempt the journey on his own
resources, and finally accomplished it. From
Sierra Leone — not from the colony on the Sene-
gal, as Ihe English preface has it— he sailed to
the Rio Nunez, and proceeded by Kakondy,
Timbo, and Kankan — not Kankan and Tim-
bo — some 200 miles beyond Soulimana, to a
town or village called Tima, where he was
detained some months by illness, and was
tolerably well treated. From that point he
proceeded northward through more than a
hundred villages, till he reached the Dhio-
liba, or Joliba, or Niger on the right bank
opposite to Jenne. From Jenne he embarked
on the river, and had ample opportunities of
observing its course, its islands, and the im-
mense lake of Debo through which it flows,
in a voyage of a month's continuance, till he
arrived at his ultimate point, Timbuctoo.
Timbuctoo, to his great disappointment, he
found considerably smaller than Jenne, and
instead of a town as large as Lisbon, accord-
ing to Adams, one of about ten or twelve thou-
sand inhabitants, in houses not very thickly
congregated, and so covering a larger space
than towns of the same population in Europe.
It is built on the edge of the great desert —
itself on the sands — the country around is
utterly unsusceptible of cultivation — not a
tree to be seen, and scarcely a shrub ; and
the river at least seven or eight miles distant.
The natives depend on the trade in salt,
and exchange it for European products from
Tripoli and Morocco, and for native ones
from Jenne. Caillie's stay did not exceed a
fortnight, and he was plainly not able to get
to a thorough understanding, how such a
number of persons, situated as he represents
them, could live. Apparently the place is an
entrepot — Moors bring salt on camels from
the mines of Tondeyni, and Moors bring
tobacco and some European goods from the
shores of the Mediterranean. But at Tim-
buctoo the merchants seem all to be Moors,
whilst the bulk of the people are negroes.
Caillie only gives us a glimpse — we must
still wait for full information. At Timbuc-
too, Caillie seems to have gathered all the in-
telligence ever likely to be gathered of poor
Laing's death; we must refer to the book
for the details. Caillie joined the caravan to
Morocco, and after a series of severe suffer-

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

sas

ings and constant indignities reached his own
country. The volumes add considerably to
our knowledge of Central Africa — though
the absence of geographical precision is a sad
drawback. Of the 4,500 miles he traversed,
3,000 were almost untrodden ground.

Family Library, vol. 12. Southey'ls Life
of 'Nelson, 1830.— Mr. Southey's well-known
and spirited piece of biography — perhaps the
very best of his prose performances — is, we
believe, trusting to our recollections of it,
1 here simply reprinted. Though very largely
read, the cheapness of the present form will
cause it to be still more generally perused ;
and this is the advantage of cheap publishing,
for which we are indebted mainly to Mr.
Murray, whose example some have already
followed, and more will speedily do so. Of
course the bookseller calculates on gaining
at least as much as by the old and more ex-
pensive form ; but Murray has the merit,
notwithstanding — a political, if not a per-
sonal one — of breaking in upon an odious
monopoly. There still survive numbers who
would gladly confine all printing to costly
quartos. Nelson's dislike of the French rose
to thorough hatred and passion ; and Mr.
Southey could not, without so far detracting
from the full and fair view of his hero,
withhold altogether his coarse and revolting
phraseology when giving vent to the feeling ;
but while recording it, he might surely have
conveyed some disapprobation, if it had been
but a word. At all events there could be
no necessity for repeating Trowbridge's dis-
gusting Billingsgate. In his last moments
Nelson commanded the fleet to anchor ; and
Mr. Southey, in the former editions, in re-
cording the order, adds, " unhappily it -was not
attended £0," implying thus some censure of
his successor. Lord Collingwood's " Letters"
show the impossibility of executing this order,
and Mr. Southey, with a handsome and de-
served compliment to that publication, with-
draws the offensive expression.

Cabinet Cyclopaedia, vol. 5; Mechanics

This is the first of the scientific treatises ; and
we find it, on the slight glance we have been
able to give it, admirable in development
and clear in principle, and especially felicitous
in illustration from familiar subjects. An
attempt is made to exclude mathematical
symbols and technical phrases; and of course
awkward circumlocutions, if nothing worse,
occur, which might show its futility and un-
advisedncss. The truth is, such symbols and
phrases, used moderately, contribute mate-
rially to direct communication, and fix defi-
nite conceptions more deeply and firmly than
the vague and unspecific terms of colloquial
language. Nothing but a very slender ac-
quaintance with algebraic expression is re-
quisite ; and those who will not qualify by
acquiring this previous knowledge are pre-
cisely the persons who will make no use of

books of this kind; they are people who turn
away from abstractions, whose minds are
wholly alien from science. It is superfluous
to provide for wants which they have not.
Take a specimen of what Dr. Lardner evi-
dently considers as a sort of chef-d'oeuvre, for
the dexterity with which he at once uses and
abuses technicality. He is talking of the de-
scent of heavy bodies.

" The use of a few mathematical characters
will render these results more distinct, even
to students not conversant with mathematical
science. Let S express the height from
which the body falls, V the final velocity,
and T the time of the fall, and let the square
of any of these quantities, or rather of their
numerical expressions, be signified by placing
the figure 2 over them — thus T'2 or V2. The
sign X between two numbers signifies that
they are to be multiplied together. These
being premised, the results of the reasoning
in which we have just been engaged may be
expressed as follows :

V increases proportionally with T (')

S VxT (*)

S T* (3)

The theorems (3) and (4) follow from (') and
(2) ; for, since by (J) T is proportional to V,
it may be put for V in (*), and by this sub-
stitution VxT becomes T X T or T2. In
the same manner, and for the same reason,
V may be put for T, by which VxT becomes
VxVorV,"&c.

Now, surely, an acquaintance with these
common symbols might have, very safely,
been supposed, or if not, more, much more
preliminary statement was requisite. Con-
fident we are, no person who has not alge-
braically considered the subject of " propor-
tion" and " variation" will understand the
ground of the "substitution."

The volume is the production of Captain
Kater and Dr. Lardner. The editor mo-
destly gives his coadjutor precedence; but
the whole is Dr. Lardner's, except the chapter
on balances and pendulums. Captain Kater
is known to have made the pendulum his
particular study, but we doubt if he has been
equally successful with his colleague in his
popular communications.

Manners of the Day, Svols. 12mo. 1830.
— The manners of the very, very great, of
course, is all that is meant. The novel is
strictly a. fashionable one — one, that is, which
professes to describe the conduct, tastes, and
sentiments of some five hundred persons,
more or less, about whom and whose u ways"
the world of novel readers are all agog, and
almost horn-mad. Where the appetite is so
furious, however perverted, there will be
found persons to minister to its perversions ;
and though none of the five hundred will
themselves communicate with the profanum
vulgus, numbers of necessity come occasion-

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Monthly Review of Literature,

[MAY,

ally in contact with them, a8 aspirants, con-
fidants, or agents; and some of these, for the
gratification of vanity, or with the hope of
gain, will tell all they know, and all, perhaps,
they can fabricate. It is not, however, now-
a-days, solely to butlers and abigails the mob
are indebted for their knowledge of the great ;
undoubtedly men and women more capable
of observing and recording get among them,
and give us, if not complete, at least more
competent, conceptions than formerly. The
writer of the " Manners of the Day" is
understood to be one who has had greater
facilities in approaching the " gods" than
most of those who have hitherto exhibited
the objects of the world's idolatry.

A grave man of forty, a peer, a member
of the cabinet, with some twenty thousand
pounds a-year, and given up by match-
makers, accidentally meets with a beautiful
girl of seventeen, j ust released from the school-
room, and marries her off-hand, or at least as
speedily as such a matter can be arranged.
The shrinking girl looks on him rather as a
father than a lover, and expresses some na-
tural scruples ; but these are speedily borne
down by her mother, a lady who had been
very successful in marrying off two or three
daughters, and had still another, besides two
or three sons to provide for. The noble
lord's official engagements compel him to
place his lovely bride under the auspices and
protection of his sister, a prime leader of the
fashionable world, a lady-patroness of Al-
macks, &c. This lady is sadly chagrined
at her brother's marriage, but is too well
worn in the ways of life to show her chagrin.
" What is done cannot be undone," is not al-
ways true ; there are ways of breaking hymen-
eal fetters without the violence of death. Lady
Danvers introduces her brother's bride into
fashionable life— to her own particular set ;
every lady must have her male attendant ; and
she treacherously places a profligate colonel
of the guards in attendance on the young and
now brilliant Lady Willersdale. Exposed,
unarmed, to his insidious attentions, she is
seduced to the very brink of destruction,
when luckily her official lord is seriously
wounded in a political duel ; an event which
breaks up her career of dissipation. Duti-
fully, and by degrees fondly, she adheres to
Lord Willersdale's bid-side, and Lady Dan-
vers's diabolical scheme is fairly baffled. Re-
tirement gives time for reflection, and Helen,
aware of the peril she had thus narrowly
escaped, urges her convalescent husband to
visit his Irish estates. In the solitude of the
banks of the Shannon, and among the friends
of her lord, she meets with a young lady of
her own age, a ward of the minister of the
parish, a very charming girl, a very miracle
of accomplishment, intelligence, and decision,
whose birth is wrapt in mystery, but which
of course develops in the course of the story.
Suddenly, after a residence of some months,
Lord Willersdale is summoned by his gra-

cious sovereign to take the reins of a new
ministry ; the party returning to London, and
a second season of gaiety and tumult com-
mences. Though fortified by her new-found
affection for her lord, the lessons of her past
imprudence, and the absence of the wily Lady
Danvers, Lady Willersdale is again exposed
to danger. The colonel of the former season,
now Lord Forreston, and possessed of vast
wealth, again makes his treacherous ap-
proaches, but more covertly than before.
Lady Willersdale's young Irish friend
is with her. To that lady's charms his
devoirs are ostensibly paid, and these Lady
Willersdale favours, for she is eager to marry
her beautiful protegee to a man of rank and
fortune. His attentions to herself, however
cloked, excite some apprehensions in the
mind of her brother, a frank and gallant
soldier : he expostulates with Lord Forreston,
and he the better to cover his secret purposes,
finally offers his hand to Florence, hjr Irish
friend. A letter addressed to her guardian,
for his consent, brings him to town, when a
strange discovery takes place. Florence proves
to be Lord Forreston's own daughter, by a
lady whom he had seduced, to whom the said
guardian had been himself attached, and who
on her deathbed had bequeathed to him her
child, never to be seen by her profligate father.
By the law of Scotland, Florence is legiti-
mate. Lord Forreston repents of his purpose,
Slays the repentant father, and unites his
aughter to the man of her choice. Lady
Willersdale discovers Lord Forreston's base
views, is shocked at her own conduct, con-
fesses her follies, and is anew taken into her
lord's confidence. His dismissal from office
completes the cure ; he is at leisure to shield
his wife, and she escapes all farther danger.
The writer is a person of considerable tact ;
she catches the pith of a sentiment and the
points of a scene, and presents both to the
reader effectively . But these representations
of fashionable life, we doubt not, mislead.
That there are profligates in the caste she
describes, perhaps in an unusual proportion,
public facts make notorious ; but these novels
make intrigue the business of life among them,
and lead the vulgar to suppose the great are
all worthless alike.

The History of Chivalry and the Crusades,
by the Rev. H. Stebbing, M. A. 2 vols.
K530. — L. and LI. of Constable's Miscel-
lany.— Mr. Stebbing's History of Chivalry
and the Crusades is a very sensible and spi-
rited performance, distinguished from its pre-
decessors by a disposition to promote a more
sober estimate of the virtues of knight-
hood and its effects upon the civilization of
society. It is not his purpose to depreciate
the splendour of its institutions, or its influ-
ence in prompting the spirit or directing the
valour of its votaries to daring undertakings ;
but it is his intention to measure its virtues,
religious and moral, by a severer standard

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign*

than has been usually employed. The ex-
travagant representations of its modern hi-
storians have a tendency, Mr. S. thinks, " to
make men regard the advantages at present
possessed by society as of less value than
they really deserve, or to be indifferent to
the struggle which is going on to provide
mankind with more certain guides in pursuit
of knowledge and happiness than were en-
joyed when war was the only road to distinc-
tion, and carnage the first of virtues." The
author traces the origin of chivalry to the
forests of Germany, and finds its leading
principles in activity long before Charle-
magne; but to him he assigns the honour
of consecrating it by religion, or rather of
coupling it with ecclesiastical sanctions. At
the commencement of the cru«ad_>s, the in-
stitution was in its full development and
glory. Dedicated to the service of the church,
the knight was the champion of her rights,
and rewarded with her favours temporal and
spiritual. Honour was his first principle of
conduct ; inflexible adherence to his word,
which he observed rigidly without regard to
circumstances, though productive often of the
noblest sacrifices, was also often the source
of mischief and absurdity. Truth, too, was
a distinguishing quality of the true knight ;
but the beauty of the virtue itself was lost
sight of under the specious colouring of
ambitious fancy.

It may be observed, and the remark will apply to
more cases than the present, that the worship of
truth is comparatively easy, when the sacrifices we
offer are all of our own invention, and made only
at such times as may ensure their reward, either in
the increase of our reputation, or in stfme other
advantage. The history of chivalry contains ample
proofs that such was, with very few exceptions, the
devotion which the knight paid to this angelic vir-
tue. He never broke a vow ; but both the making
and observance of it contributed largely to raise his
reputation. If it was an extraordinary one, and
required particular labour and hazard to fulfil it, he
had measured the difficulty beforehand; he had cal-
culated how much admiration and praise he should
receive when he had gone through the voluntary
trial ; and he bore with him, in the peril of the
encounter.the pleasant feeling which always attaches
to the consciousness of being watched and admired
while combating any danger. Nor must it be for-
gotten, that a large number of the vows which the
knights made, and obtained the greatest praise for
observing, had their origin, not merely in personal
vanity, but in the expectation of their aiding them
in the most difficult of their love-adventures. To
vow that he would perform some notable exploit in
honour of his lady, was the noblest piece of gallantry
which a knight could exhibit. It elevated him in
the eyes of his brother-chevaliers, contributed to
establish the reputation of the dame for the power
of her charms, and thereby ensured him her smiles,
when every other expedient of the despairing lover
had proved fruitless. When such a reward as this
awaited him at the conclusion of his enterprise, it is
possible, that he might have undertaken it without
any other consideration ; and when we compare the
number of instances which are on record of this
kind with those in which truth seems to have been

M.M. New Series.— Vol.. IX. No. 53.

honoured and pursued for her own sake, we are
compelled, however unwillingly, to regard the re-
fined veracity of knights as possessed, in general, of
no other quality but its refinement. That they had
a very clear apprehension of the beauty of truth,
either moral or religious, whatever we know of their
habits or pursuits tend greatly to disprove : that, if
they did understand it, they were guilty of the
coldest and most base hypocrisy ever practised, we
have evidence in nearly every work which, either
purposely or not, affords any description of chival-
rous times.

The effect of the institutions of chivalry
upon the condition of women, Mr. S. is
inclined to think greatly exaggerated. The
passage is too long for extraction; it will
repay the reader. The history of the cru-
sades is a rapid but distinct narrative, and
furnishes an adequate view of those — why
does Mr. S. call them ?— Holy Wars.

Travels in Kamtchatka and Siberia, with
a Narrative of a Residence in China. 2 vols.

12mo. By Peter D obeli. 1830 Mr. Peter

Dobell designates himself " Counsellor of
the court of his imperial majesty the em-
peror of Russia," without affording another
word of explanation. We like modesty and
reserve very well ; but there is some dif-
ference between silence and babbling, and
some little communication of who he is — what
were his occupations — what the object of his
several journeys in these strange lands, would
really have been very acceptable, and have
given something like personal interest to his
intelligent but very dull volumes. Appa-
rently he is English ; whether merchant or
naval commander is doubtful ; and whether
officially engaged in his residences in China
and Kamtchatka, or pursuing his own busi-
ness, is equally uncertain. What is the
ground of this shyness ? Not any conscious-
ness of imposture, we feel confident ; pro-
bably some dread of his imperial master.
His first visit to China was in 1798, but sub-
sequently he resided in the country, of course
at Macao or Canton, seven or eight years,
and once travelled as far as Pekin ; but of
Pekin he is silent as the grave, and confines
his communications relative to China to the
factories at the only ports foreigners are al-
lowed to visit. The greater part of the
volumes is occupied with his tour through
Kamtchatka, and his subsequent journey to
Petersburgh, along the coast of the sea of
Ochotsk, and through Siberia. He landed
from a vessel, of which he appears to have
had the command, at St. Peter and St. Paul,
and finding the governor to be at the other
extremity of the peninsula, he proceeded
thither forthwith, by canoes and sledges,
some seven hundred and fifty versts, and
back again, all in the summer season. In
the depth of the following winter, he started
again for Russia, in a kibitka, or covered
sledge, drawn by dogs, and arrived at Pe-
tersburgh in safety, after encountering innu-
merable hardships, from the severity of the

4F

586

Monthly Review of literature,

[MAY,

climate, and the poverty of the country,
narrowly escaping the maws and paws of
bears, and starvation from cold, and occa-
sionally from hunger. This painful and
laborious journey took up the better part of
a twelvemonth. Subsequently ho visited
Siberia twice, and resided four years at
Avatcha in Kamtchatka; so that, though
his book takes the form of a journal of one
particular tour, in the years 1812 — 13, the
author expresses the general results of the
whole of his experience. His last view of
Siberia was so recently as 1827—8. The
communications are of a very welcome kind,
for Kamtchatka is little known, and few are
likely to visit it from motives of curiosity.
The tone of them is quiet and simple,
and irresistibly conciliates the reader's con-
fidence in the general faithfulness of his ac-
counts.

In the neighbourhood of St. Peter and St.
Paul, he met with mounds and dikes to a
great extent ; and also in many other parts
of the country. These were plainly artificial
works, and indicate at some period a very
considerable population. The author refers
them, not to native Kamtchatkans, for they
never could have had inducement enough,
but to colonists subsequent to the conquest
of the country by the Russians. They are
still in good order, and were evidently in-
tended to preserve the low lands for hay and
pasture against inundations. The seat of
government has been removed from Nijn
to St. Peter and St. Paul ; and the Russian
soldiers are all withdrawn from the peninsula
into Siberia. The native population has long
been gradually reducing, and does not now
amount to more than seven or eight hundred,
sadly corrupted from the simplicity, honesty,
and mildness which Mr. Dob.ll remarked in
them on his first acquaintance — an effect
attributed to the felons which have been of
late sent among them from Siberia, at whose
recommendation the author does not know ;
but he thinks it an unwise measure, and one
that has done mischief in various ways.
Mr. D. represents Kamtchatka as not by
any means unsusceptible of cultivation. That
corn and vegetables were producible, he had
the evidence of his own senses ; but the na-
tives are content with tha produce of the
chase, and will be so as long as game abounds.
The rivers, too, and the coasts, swarm with
fish, and all live upon fish, men and do^s.
Spirits, tobacco, and tea, are their luxuries,
and these they readily obtain in exchange for
furs. Mr. D. shall speak for himself.

Providence h«-v> been bountiful to this peninsula,
which only wants population and industry to render
it rich and flourishing. Even the bleak moss-co-
vered moors, where there is not a bush to regale the
eye, afford nourishment to innumerable herds of
reindeer. Nature indeed has done much for Kamt-
chatka, but man nothing; or if he has interfered, it
would appear that he has only done so to pervert or
destroy the liberal donations of Heaven. Wherever
one travels, the marks of misrry, desolation, and

depopulation present themselves. Shortly after the
battalion of soldiers was sent thither from Siberia,
the small-pox, an epidemic fever, the venereal, to-
gether with the introduction of ardent spirits, almost
swept from the face of the soil the Kamtrhatdale
race. The miserable remnant does not actually
amount to more than seven or eight hundred souls.

I have always regretted that the soldiers were sent
back to Siberia, as a great many of them, being
married, took with them their wives r.nrt children.
It would have been much better to disband them in
Kamtchatka, in order to cultivate the soil, and in-
crease the population of a spot so much in want of
inhabitants. Certainly the fisheries, and particu-
larly the whale fishery, which might be established
at Kamtchatka, if properly managed, are of them-
selves a source of great wealth. Besides, that coun-
try is in the near neighbourhood of the richest and
the most populous parts of the globe. In ten or
twelve days, a passage may be made to any part of
the Japanese islands ; in thirty or forty days, to the
Sandwich Islands, to Macao, to the Philippines, or
any of the Indo-Chinese Islands ; in sixty days, to
the north-west coast of America, California, or the
Islands of the great Pacific ocean. There is no place
more advantageously situated for commeice, and no
place that enjoys so little.

The Kamtschatdales themselves seem to feel the
want of more inhabitants, and the value they would
be of to their country. 1 asked the Toyune of Ouka
if he should be pleased at seeing a vessel arrive at
his little port with a cargo of tea, sugar, nankin, and
other luxuries. " Those things," said he, " to us,
who have so little, would be very acceptable ; but I
should be more pleased if they would send me a
cargo of men ; for, out of twelve or fifteen souls,
which compose my ostrog, I have only five or six
men who are able to hunt and fish." This shrewd
answer showed his penetration and good sense.

Memoirs of Simon Bolivar, President
Liberator of the Republic of Colombia, $r.,
by Gen. H. L. V. Ducoudray Hohiein, '2

vols., 12wo., 1830 What credit is to be

given to General H. L. V. Ducoudray Hoi-
stein, we have no means of ascertaining. He
represents himself, through life, as a passion-
ate admirer of liberty, all the world over :
as having actually served in France through
the revolution, and after 1800 as attached to
the staff of Napoleon. The " sacred cause'*
of South America drew him, he says, to Car-
tagena ; but of what took him from France,
before the Emperor's deposition, he says not
a word. At Cartagena the local government
offered him service, and conferred on him the
highest military rank in its power to grant*
He was at one time commander in chief of
the forts of Boca Chica, and after a series of
disappointments, jealousies, and dissatisfac-
tion, in 1810 he quitted the service, in disgust
ac Bolivar's tyranny and distrust of his pa-
triotism. Since then he has resided in the
United States, keeping a sharp eye upon Boli-
var's actions, and we may add, if not a ma-
lignant, certainly not a favourable one. Gen.
Ducoudray would have us regard himself
as a stern and sturdy republican, devoted to
the liberties of mankind, both practically and
in the abstract ; as a man drawn aside by
no personal bias, but judging every man in

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

587

authority by the one rigid criterion of the
general good. Bolivar will not, at any time*
stand the severity of this test. He finds him,
from first to last, any thing but a patriot ; a
man, in short, who has nothing at heart but
his power. He detects him to be weak iiv
intellect, feeble in character, poor in expe-
dient, impotent in council, a coward in the
field, the slave of his passions, and at once
luxurious and cruel. Facts, we confess, arc
ngainst Bolivar. He has obviously always
been more ready to retain his single' power
than to share it with the representatives of
the nation. Occasions have always been
readily found for dictatorships, and dismis-
sals of congress ; and, on the other hand, pro-
per times for reassembling the one have
rarely occurred, and of resigning, bona fide,
the other, never. For years in this country,
it was scarcely safe, with a cartain party, to
hint at Bolivar's want of sincerity ; now, we
believe, suspicions are all but certainties, and
at home they are by this time entirely so.

"Nevertheless, with Ducoudray,he is too nnl-
formly wrong, he has no redeeming qualities;
and if we adopt his statements and senti-
ments, the wonderment would be, how Boli-
var has contrived to retain not merely his poT
litical supremacy, but his personal authority
and influence. His opulence, on which so
much stress has been laid, will scarcely ac-
count for it; and, for considerable periods he
has been without troops, and more than once
in exile ; but always, the moment he re-ap-
peared, invested with a sort of absolute au-
thority. Ducoudray, however, will give him
no "quarter. " A\\ that can be said, with
truth and impartiality"— these are his own
words — " of General Bolivar's patriotism
is, that it began with his being at the head
of the army and the government ; or to speak
more plauily, Gen. Bolivar began from 1813
to be a zealous and ardent patriot, because
from the sixth of January, that year, until
the present day (July, 1828), he has not
ceased to have either the three powers, legis-
lative, executive, and judiciary, united in
himself, or to have, together with the execu-
tive power, the direction of all civil and mili-
tary operations." — " He has thrown off his
flimsy mask, and declared that bayonets are
the best, and only rulers of nations." Since
this was written, Bolivar, it appears, has re-
signed again — fudge !

Narrative of a Tour through some parts
of the Turkish Empire, by John Fuller., Esq.
i830.> — We have seldom looked through a
more agreeable or intelligent volume of tra-
vels. The tour is an extensive one, and in
many hands would have made three or four
handsome quartos. But the author tells his
story in a quiet and gentlemanly manner, and
shows no disposition to make mountains of
mole-hills. He knows the scenes he visited,
for the most part, have been described by
number-, avid he confines himself to simple

statements of sights and occurrences, without
dilating or speculating. Starting from Naples,
he coasted the eastern shore from Bari down
to Otranto, by no means a common line of
march, and found the Romaic spoken pretty
generally by the lower classes, not, however,
Greeks by direct descent from the old oc-
cupants of Grecia Magna, but Albanian emi-
grants. Mr. Fuller proceeds from Corfu to
Patras, to Corinth, Athens, Smyrna, Con-
stantinople, to Alexandria, Cairo, and up the
Nile to the second cataracts; in Syria, to
Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the Lake of Tibe-
rias, Damascus, Balbec and Palmyra ; and
finally through Cyprus, Rhodes, Delos, and
Athens, to Zante. The whole tour was ac-
complished in about a twelvemonth, without
hurry, with infinite satisfaction, with the
indulgence of a liberal curiosity, few extraor-
dinary adventures, and no real perils.

Pierce, whose name is so well known for
his long residence in Abyssinia, accompanied
Mr. Fuller up the Nile. We quote his ac-
count of the man.

He was a man of superior intellectual powers, of
great observation, and able to communicate his
thoughts in an original and vigorous style. Some of
the letters which he wrote from Abyssinia to the
East India Company's resident at Mocha, were pub-
lished iu the Asiatic Journal, at Calcutta; and he
kept up al-so a regular correspondence with Mr. Salt,
and had a large collection of manuscripts full of
valuable information on his adopted country. These,
at the persuasion of his friends, he intended to pub-
lish ou his return to England, accompanied by a
memoir of his eventful life ; and when I left Cairo
he was busily engaged in preparing them for that
purpose. What became of them after his death I
have never heard; but it is not likely that they will
now ever see the light, and his name and history
will remain in unmerited obscuiity. He was alto-
gether an extraordinary character. Great warmth
of temper, and an unbounded spirit of enterprise,
were the sources of all his errors. His good qualities
were courage, activity, intelligence, and zeal in the
service of his employers. These I had full opportu-
nity of observing during more than eight months
that he was my constant, and frequently my only
companion; and I am happy to pay this tribute to
the memory of a humble but much valued friend.

Mr. Fuller's account of Ipsambul is very
striking ; we have space only for the externals
of the temple.

To those who are at all acquainted with Egyptian
antiquities, or who have attended to the brilliant
discoveries made of late years in that country and
in Nubia; the temples of Ipsambul, the last and
most magnificent objects of a voyage up the Nile,
must be familiar in description, though no descrip-
tion can convey an adequate idea of their grandeur.
Above Ibrim the shores of the river were tame and
level, till at length we arrived in sight of a high range
of sandy cliffs, which appeared to be placed directly
across our course, and to intercept our further pro-
gress. On reaching them, however, the river took
a sudden bend, and a most striking scene opened
upon us. Immediately above us, on the right, was
an excavated temple, with .six gigantic figures of
Isis supporting the roof; and in front, the great
temple presented itself with its four colossal statues,

4 F 2

588

Monthly Review of Literature,

[MAY,

occupying entirely the face of a lofty perpendicular
cliff. These figures are in a sitting attitude, sixty
feet high, and almost detached from the rock, being
connected with it only by a narrow rib. They are
undoubtedly superior to any other work of Egyptian
sculpture; and allowing for the peculiarity of feature
which distinguishes all the productions of lhat school,
they may be pronounced to be among the most beau-
tiful specimens of ancient art. The countenances
have a sweetness and serenity of expression quite
unrivalled. The sand drifting down over the top of
the rocks had formed a sloping bank, and covered
the figures more or less in proportion to their dis-
tance from the river. Of the furthest the head alone
was visible, while the nearest was buried only up to
the knees. In the centre of the fayade is a statue of
the hawk-headed Osiris, placed in a niche ; and
immediately under it is the door, which is twenty
feet high, but so choked up as scarcely to leave room
for entrance. Only one person could go in at a time,
and he was obliged to lie down and permit himself
to be carried on by the rolling motion of the sand.

Library of Entertaining Knowledge, Part
IX. New 'Zealanders, /. 1 830. — This is a
very interesting account of the inhabitants of
New Zealand, collected partly from Captain
Cook's voyages, and the communications of
others who have touched at the island, espe-
cially Mr. Marsden's, who, in his capacity
of missionary, has several times visited them.
Hitherto nothing has been told except of the
northernmost part of the northern isle. Within
these two or three years, one John Rutherford
has returned from the northern island, where
he had lived among the natives for some years.
On his voyage home, he dictated his adven-
tures to a friend, and from this source the
compiler has been enabled to. add materially
to our previous knowledge of this singular
people. Rutherford was born in 1796, at
Manchester, and employed till ten years old
in a cotton factory, when he went to sea. He
was for some time off the Brazils, and after-
wards at the storming of St. Sebastian. He
then went on board a king's ship to Madras,
and from thence to China, and was a twelve-
month at Macao. He was afterwards in a
convict ship, and made two trading voyages
among the islands of the South Sea, when he
was at last left sick at Owhyhee. From
thence he was taken on board a small Ame-
rican brig of six guns and fourteen men, and
went to New Zealand, where the whole crew
were overpowered by the natives, and most of
them killed and eaten. Rutherford himself
was luckily preserved, and, subsequently, tat-
tooed, made a chief, and married a couple of
wives. His narrative is not yet completed.
A portrait of him is given, for the sake of
exhibiting the elaborate tattooing of his per-
son. His accounts are full of interesting
details, and we wish they had been printed
uninterruptedly, and not mixed up with the
author's gleanings from other quarters. The
New Zealanders are quite worthy of a distinct
consideration. They form a sort of anomaly
in the history of savage life Though evi-
dently the same people with those of the South

Sea islands, from some as yet unknown cir-
cumstances, they are in a higher state of cul-
tivation. Their ferocity and treachery, never
probably unprovoked, have been shown in
several very horrible instances. Several of
the chiefs have been in England, but in ge-
neral they have been abominably dealt with.
The captains of small trading vessels seem to
think keeping terms with savages a matter of
no importance. When they get them on
board they keep them, or land them just
when and where it suits them, without any
regard to compacts. The destruction of the
Boyd's crew in 1807, was entirely an act of
revenge prompted by harsh conduct of this
kind towards a native chief.

Poetical Aspirations, ly W. Anderson,
Esq., 1830. — A collection of youthful effu-
sions, written for the most part while the au-
thor was a minor, on occasional topics, and
addressed, many of them, to the lovely ob-
jects of his young admiration, who seem to
have succeeded each other pretty rapidly; we
have Jane, and Jessie, and Zera, and Anne,
if not more. A few of the aspirations are
of a more elevated caste, one " after Fame,"
begins thus —

In the seclusion of my solitude,
Thy echo reach'd me, and awoke a brood
Of slumbering visions into life and light;
A spell seem'd thrown around me, and my mind
Was full of unfix'd images ; the bright
And ready impulses of thought, confined
And struggling to be free ; a light had dawn'd
Across my path, as if by Heaven's command.

But a "few simple lines" addressed to
his mother are touching and delicate.
My mother ! when I think of thee".
Joy o'er my heart comes gushfully ;
And thoughts of tenderness and love
Spring up all other thoughts above —
Oh ! I want language to express
All that my bosom would confess ;
If thoughts like mine in words could dwell,
To say what never words can tell.
Mother ! the bark is on the sea
That leads to home — that leads to thee —
And I behold its sails expand,
As scorning all that clings to land ;
And I behold it floating there,
Like a light cloud on lambent air —
With grief I see its sails expand,
I cannot join its gallant band,
For other cares must keep me here,
Absent from all I hold most dear ;
Oh ! mother, well I love the sea,
Because it bears to home and thee.
See yonder moon that climbs the height,
Where all is beautiful and bright ;
See yonder stars that shrine around
Where all of truth and love is found ;
They'd light my passage home to thee,
Oh ! mother, well I love the sea.

The Tradesman's Law Library, ly George
Thompson, Attorney-at-Laie, and Author of
" Practical Suggestion^ to Young Attorneys,1''
1830. — A great book is a great evil; it has

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

589

been said a thousand times, and we ourselves
often feel the force of it deeply : but the sweep-
nets of the law are greater still; and de malis
minima is a sound rule in the choice of evils,
from the days of Cicero, and before, to our
own. If, moreover, this great book of 1024
pages, with close type and narrow margins,
will tend to keep the tradesman out of the
law's clutches, and secure to him his rights,
he will, perhaps, screw up his courage to
grapple with it ; but really we cannot but
think the bulk and even " solid contents" of
it might have been less without any material
loss. In an appeal before the Lords, a few days
ago, the leading counsel (one out of three)
spoke seven hours and a half; when the chan-
cellor's patience being exhausted — and well it
might — he interrupted him with this remark :
4' You have been speaking seven hours and a
half, and are not yet coming to a conclusion.
Truly, I think there is no case, however
complicated, but, with a little pains, counsel
might bring within the compass of three or
four hours; or if not, how is the business of
the House to be got through ?" In the same
spirit we are tempted to ask, if the legal
knowledge necessary for a tradesman cannot
be conveyed in a smaller compass than 1024
such pages, how is he to possess himself of
them and manage his business at the same
time?

We do not of course pronounce upon the
soundness of the law ; but the author is a
professional man, an intelligent person, and
his reputation is at stake. We can say, also,
that we have dipt in several parts, and cer-
tainly found the information we looked for.
The multitude of cases on every point, very
briefly yet' clearly stated, furnishes both
amusement and information, and at the same
time large materials for meditation. They
are calculated, we fear, to confound any but a
legal head, or a very hard one. The grounds
of decision delivered by successive judges are
often technical ones, varying in principle and
contradictory in fact; appealing to reason,
and setting common sense at defiance.

A Manual of the Economy of the Human
Body in Health and Disease, $c. 1830. —
Books of " Domestic Medicine" for the most
part confine themselves to the description of
disease, to the details of symptoms, and the
treatment and cure of them. Something be-
yond these matters seems desirable for com-
mon information; some knowledge of the
structure and functions of the different parts
of the frame; some acquaintance with the
general economy of the system, without which
the directions for diet and regimen must often
be obscure, and calculated rather to perplex
than enlighten, to puzzle and mystify rather
than guide to any useful application. The
prevailing ignorance on these points is noto-
rious : " Even persons otherwise of enlarged
minds," says the writer, and perhaps correctly
enough, "are every day to be met with, who

scarcely know on which side of the body the
stomach or liver is situated, and who are in
utter ignorance of the simplest laws of animal
economy." This sort of information, accord-
ingly, it is the compiler's especial purpose to
communicate, and he does communicate it in
a very simple and satisfactory manner ; and
nothing more seems necessary but to per-
suade people to read, which is, after all, the
most difficult point. Books, and good books,
abound ; but activity — activity that demands
abstraction — is scarce. If people were as eager
to gain knowledge, as to get money and fine
clothes, how wise we should all be ! and, by
the way, how superfluous books would be-
come !— a rather alarming anticipation. In
this excellent little book, every age is con-
sulted for. The management of children is a
main point; and the best methods of render-
ing old age comfortable are suggested on the
authorities of the ablest physicians. The
author forgets nothing — not even to conciliate
the doctors. " A host of prejudices, which
the medical man finds it often more difficult
to combat than the disease itself, will be thus
banished;" — that is, if the patient read his
book, and gets better informed ; — " the sick
will be more disposed to listen and adopt
rational advice, and be better able to distin-
guish sound judgmentj enlarged experience,
and patient observation, from shallow pre-
tension, base chicanery, and impudent em-
piricism."

Conversations upon Comparative Chrono-
logy and General History, 1830. — These
are really very well managed little dialogues.
The writer's distinguishing object is to fix
the young student's eye upon periods and
contemporaneous events; introducing occa-
sionally remarkable details of the incidents
recorded, the better to keep the attention
alive, and assist the memory. The intro-
ductory conversation concerns the different
modes of computing time adopted by differ-
ent chronologists ; much of which might
have been omitted, safely and greatly to the
relief of the young people for whose informa-
tion it is intended. The Cosmogonies which
follow, both of the bible, and of idolatrous
nations, ancient and modern ; as well as the
mythologies of Persians, Indians, Scandina-
vians, &c., are well stated and extremely
useful. The Chronology and general his-
tory are carried down to the birth of Christ,
and will be followed, if the present volume
sells, which it doubtless will, by a similar
one to the present times. We had marked
sundry little absurdities ; such as the Bible
History of the Creation, being illustrated by
Milton's noble poem of Paradise Lost. Al-
luding to Homer's and Hesiod's language
respecting Iris, Mrs. S. observes —

Some .have derived the bows of Apollo, Diana,
and even Cupid, from the same origin.
LOTA. Of Cupid, mamma ?
MRS. S. Yes ; for strange to say, this heathen

590

drity appears to have been originally a sncrcrt em-
blem. His bow was a symbol of divine love; ar.d
he was represented as a child, in memory of the re-
novation of the world.

ISABELLA. How wonderfully these coincidences
prove the tiuth of the Holy Scriptures !

Chrisbna, the Hindoo Apollo, has aline
complexion, and one of the young dialo-
£uei>-ts thinks this a very odd colour for a
beautiful complexion. Oh ! says Mrs. S.
the Egyptians too described their most
powerful gods as having blue faces, particu-
larly when they were angry.

ISABELLA. This is, perhaps, the origin of the
vulgar observation, that people look blue when
they are displeased.

- Mi;s. S. It is possible ; for many vulgar sayings
may be traced, &c.

• But these are trifles. The book is a very
good one.

A Compendious German Grammar, ly
A. Bcrnnns, Editor of Hie German Antho-
logy, Io30 This multum in paryo of Mr.

Bernays is a very judicious and 'welcome
publication. Every body naW' 'learns Ger-
man, and all the current grammars of the
language have too much learning in them, or
none at all ; they are either too diffuse or too
dry, lost in their own fat, or shrivelled to
skeletons. Something of the intermediate
caste was evidently wanting, and the medium
has been happily hit. - The size of the neat
little volume will seem to class it with one
of the old extremes ; but the compiler's aim
has been rather at condensing than excising ;
he has compressed his language more than
his matter. The pages are indeed bu t sixty ;
but a common type and form would readily
have tripled the number; and no little dexter-
ity has been shown in packirg the page. To
glance at the improvements, the fifteen or
eighteen declensions to which we have been
accustomed are reduced to four, and these
closely dependent on each other ; a dictionary
of prefixes and affixes, quite a novelty, and
well-imagined ; striking rules for the arrange-
ment of words, a syntax at once concise and
copious, &c. The whole will be made more
complete by a series of exercises which the
author announces is preparing for publica-
tion. " These will be essentially practical,
as they are intended, not to make the stu-
dents poets or orators, but to enable them to
converse and write with fluency on the com-
mon occurrences of life."

Natural Tlicology, by Rev. Alex. Crombic,
LL.D. $c. 2 vols. 8vo.— This will be found
to be a very masterly discussion of the subjects
usually arranged under the title of natural

n&y Review of Literature.

[MAY,

theology, the existence, attributes, and pro-
vidence oi' Deity, the soul's immateriality, and
a future state. These important topics Dr.
Crombie prefaces with an inquiry into the
causes of atheism, which resolve into personal
indifference on the subject, and an indolent
acquiescence in the sentiments of anti-reve-
lation writers. The prime merit of the book,
its distinguishing characteristic, is the tho-
rough shaking it gives to the metaphysical
argumentation of Dr. Clarke and others. He
shows the same weapons may be readily turned
upon those who use them. This is remark-
able in the inquiry relative to the existence
of Deity. Dr. C. however, is not always
equally happy in his substitutions. Dr.
Clarke disproves the eternity of matter by an
argument of this kind : what is eternal is self-
existent, and what is self-existent exists ne-
cessarily, and so necessarily that the contrary
supposition must be a contradiction. Now,
matter so existing must either have gravitation^
or not. If not, there could be no motion ; if
it have, then there must be vacuum, and if
there be vacuum, matter can no longer be
a necessary being, and then, of course, it is
not eternal. This argumentation Dr. Crom-
bie finds no difficulty in demolishing, though
he perfectly agrees with Dr. Clarke in his
conclusion, that matter is not eternal, but
created. His own arguments are of a very
different caste ; whether much more decisive
is another matter; at all events they are
more, though not all of them, within the
reach of common understandings. He rests
his belief of the creation of matter on these
arguments, because he perceives no contra-
diction in supposing that a power is possible,
capable of calling matter into existence ; be-
cause, if such power is possible, it must
belong to an eternal and self- existent being,
to whose nature it is essential to unite in
himself every possible perfection ; because,
if one cause suffices to account for a pheno-
menon, it is idle and unphilosophical to resort
to more ; because it implies, he conceives, a
contradiction to suppose, that there can be
two beings eternal, and, in respect to exist-
ence, mutually independent, and yet the one
subject to the government and control of the
other; because, finally, the dogma of the
atheist, that action implies passion, is not a
metaphysical truth, the necessary correlative
of action being agent and not passion. Our
glances at books forbid our entering into
matters of discussion, or we should have been
glad to show, what we believe, Dr. Crombie's
injustice towards Dr. Paley. We are satis-
fied he has mistaken him, as much as Dr.
Sumncr did in his Records of Creation, and
much in the same way.

183G.J [ 591 ]

WORKS IN THE PRESS, AND NEW PUBLICATIONS.

WORKS IN PREPARATION.

In addition to Mr. Murray's Family
Library, Dr. Lardner's Cyclopaedia, and Mr.
Knight's Library of Entertainment, we
find another work of the same popular form
and character announced under the title of
The Library of General Knowledge. This
work is to be under the superintendence of
the Rev. G. R. Gleig, A. M., who is to have
the assistance of such writers who are most
competent to treat on the various subjects
that are included in this comprehensive title.
It will appear immediately, in Monthly
Parts.

The extraordinary success of Mr. Murray's
Family Library— a success as merited as
matchless — has induced followers into the
field, and we believe there will be now no class
of readers unprovided with an exclusive and
pe&uliar *'• Library." No. I. of The Juvenile
Family Library is to appear in June. The
subjects which this work will embrace -are to
be treated in a style adapted to that portion
of the rising generation for which the other
publications are not altogether calculated.

Tales of a Tar, in 3 vols., will be published
next week.

The Templars, a Novel, in 1 vol., will
appear immediately.

Four Discourses ; on the extent of the Sa-
crifice of Christ ; on the Nature of that Faith
which secures the blessing of Redemption ;
on Christian Assurance ; and on the Dealing
of the Holy Spirit with the Danger of griev-
ing that Divine Agent. By William Hull.
Sylva Britannica, complete in one volume
royal 8vo., enriched with several additional
subjects, comprising in the whole sixty plates
of the most celebrated specimens of the vari-
ous descriptions of Forest Trees in England
and Scotland. By Mr. Strutt.

An Inquiry into the comparative Advan-
tages which the Nation would derive from a
Confiscation of the Property belonging to the
Church, in preference to the Seizure of the
Property belonging to the Licensed Victual-
ler. By a Publican.

Sir Ethelbert, or the Dissolution of Monas-
teries. By the Author of Santo Sebastiano.
A New Edition of Dr. Ure's Dictionary of
Chemistry, nearly all rewritten.

A Second Volume of the British Natura-
list ; or Sketches of the more interesting pro-
ductions of Britain and the surrounding Sea,
in the scenes which they inhabit.

On Nervous and Mental Disorder, with
especial reference to recent Investigations on
the subject or' Insanity. By Dr. Uwins.

A Translation of Tasso, in one volume,
royal 18mo. with the Wood Engravings of
the former Edition. By L. H. Wiflfen.

God's Mercy to his Church pourtrayed in
some Important Particulars. Illustrated in
Twenty Sermons. By the Rev. F. G. Cross-

man, Minister of Carlisle Episcopal Chapel,
Lambeth.

A Life of the Great Gustavus of Sweden.
By Capt. Sherer.

The Aphorisms of Hippocrates, with a
free Version and Notes.

The Arrow and the Rose, and other Poems.
By William Kennedy.

Paul Clifford, a Novel. By the Author
of Pelham.

The Barony, a Romance. By Miss A.
M. Porter. 3 vols. 8vo.

A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of the
Eye. By William Mackenzie, Lecturer on
the Eye in the University of Glasgow, and
Senior Surgeon to the Glasgow Eye Infirmary.
1 vol. 8vo.

Select Works of the British Poets, from
Chaucer to Withers. By Robert Southey,
LL. D. Poet Laureate. 1 vol. 8vo. uniform
with " Aikin's Poets."

The Anthology ; an Annual Reward-Book
for Midsummer and Christmas, 1830 ; con-
sisting of Selections adapted to the Amuse-
' merit and Instruction of Youth : — I. Voyages
and Travels (including Natural History). —
II. Tales, Apologues, and Fables — III.
Moral and Eloquent Extracts — IV. Poetry.
By the Rev. I. D. Parry, M. A.

A History of the Church, from the Crea-
tion to the Commencement of the 19th Cen-
tury ; in the form of Question and Answer.
By the late Alexander Smith Paterson, of
Aberdeen. Edited by the Rev. James Brew-
ster, Minister of Craig. 2 vols. 8vo.
• Horatii Opera Omnia, cum Indicibus lo-
cupfetissivnis, recensuit et illustravit Frid.
Guil. Doering. 1 vol. 8vo. From the last
German Edition, with the Editor's latest
amendments and additions.

Schola Salernitana. A Poem on the Pre-
servation of Health : written in rhyming
Latin verse. By Giovanni di Milano, in the
name of the School of Salerno, and addressed
to Robert cf Normandy, son of William the
Conqueror, with an Introduction and Notes,
by Sir Alexander Croke, D. C. L. and
F. A. S.

A Disquisition on the Geography of Hero-
dotus, with a Map ; and Researches on the
History of the Scythians, Getse, and Sarma-
tians. 1 vol. 8vo. By B. G. Niebuhr.
Translated from the German.

A Manual of the History of Philosophy,
translated from the German of Tennemann.
1 vol. 8vo.

Reflections on the Politics, Intercourse,
and Commerce, of the Principal Nations of
Antiquity; translated from the German of
A. H. L. Heeren, Knight of the Guelphic
Order, Professor of History in the University
of Gottingen.

Professor Heeren's Manual of the History
of the European States-System and their
Colonies.

592

List of New Works.

[MAY,

Attempt^ in Verse. By John Jones, an
old Servant. With some Account of the
Writer, and an Introductory Essay on the
Lives and Works of Uneducated Poets. By
Robert Southey. Crown 8vo.

History of Demonology and Witchcraft.
By Sir Walter Scott, Bart.

The Life of John Ray, M. A., F. R. S.,
the Naturalist; and a History of Natural
Science up to his era. By George W. John-
son.

An Essay upon National Character ; being
an Enquiry into some of the Principal Causes
which contribute to form or modify the Cha-
racters of Nations in the State of Civilization.
By the late Richard Chevenix, F. R. S.
2 vols. 8vo.

Conversations with Lord Byron onReligion,
held in Cephalonia, a short time previous to
his Death. By the late James Kennedy,
M.D.

A Treatise in Six Books, in Disproof of
the Superfecundity of Human Beings ; and
developing the Law of Population : to which
is added, a Dissertation on the Balance of the
Food and Numbers of Animated Nature.' By
Michael Thomas Sadler, M. P. 3 vols. 8vo.

The Life of Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath
and Wells. By the Rev. W. L. Bowles.
2 vols.

The Papers of the Earl of Marchmont.
Comprising a Variety of Original and Un-
known Documents, Diaries, &c., illustrative
of the Reigns of Queen Anne, George L,
&c. 2 vols. 8vo.

Ireland and its Economy ; being the result
of Observations made on a Tour through the
Country in the Autumn of 1829. By J.E.
Bicheno, Esq., F.R.S., Sec. of Linn. So-
ciety.

The Life of Julius Czesar. By the Author
of the Life of Alexander the Great. Small 8vo.

The Life of Cowper. 1 vol.

Popular English Specimens of the Greek
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The Life of Sir Isaac Newton. By David
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The Life and Reign of George III. 3
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The Kirby Letters ; or, a Family Tour
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Life and Times of Dante. 1 vol.

The Life of General Wolfe. By Robert
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Lives of Eminent British Physicians.
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Levi and Sarah ; or, the Jewish Lovers.
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The Progress of Society. By the late
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The Book of Psalms, newly translated
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Jesus College, Cambridge, and G. Skinner,
M. A., Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.
8vo.

A Grammar of the German Language.
By C. F. Becker, M. D. 8vo.

Principles of Geology. By C. Lyell,
F.R.S. 2 vols. 8vo..

Rise and Progress of theEnglish Common-
wealth, from the first Settlement of the Anglo-
Saxons in Britain. 2 vols. 4to. By Francis
Palgrave, Esq., of the Inner Temple.

A Fifth and Sixth Volume of Lord Byron's
Works : containing English Bards, Heaven
and Earth, Deformed Transformed, The
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Works recently purchased by Mr. Murray,
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plete Edition. 2 vols.

Landscape Illustrations to Byron's Works
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The Life of Cervantes. By J. G. Lock-
hart, LL. B. Small 8vo.

My Native Village ; and other Pieces.
By N. T. Carrington, Author of " Dart-
moor." 8s. 6d.

The Lives of British Worthies. By
Robert Southey, Esq. 6 volumes. Small
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY.

The Picture of India ; exhibiting the
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beautifully printed small octavo volumes, with
many appropriate Illustrations from original
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The Life of Richard Bentley, D.D., Mas-
ter of Trinity College, and Regius Professor
of Divinity in the University of Cambridge.
By Rev. James Monk, D. D. 4to. 31. 3s.

Memoirs of Mrs. Ann Judson, late Mis-
sionary to Burmah, including a History of
the American Baptist Mission in the Bur-
man Empire. By J. D. Knowles. 18mo.
3s. 6d.

Memoirs of John Frederic Oberlin, Pastor
of Waldbach, in the Ban de la Roche. 8vo.
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A Memoir of the Rev. Alex. Waugh,
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&c. By the Rev. James Hay and Rev. H.
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The Last Days of Bishop Heber. By
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Murray's Family Library, vol. 12; con-
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The National Portrait Gallery of Illus-
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Jerdan, Esq., F.S.A., &c. &c. ; (containing
36 Portraits,) vol. 1. Imperial Octavo, half-

1830.]

List of New Works.

bound in Morocco, 21. 2s. Proofs, on India
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History of the Ancient Town and Borough
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The History of the Troubles and Memor-
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1645. By John Spalding, Commissary
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Historical Sketches of the Native Irish
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Literary Recollections, and Biographical
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Memoirs of Bishop James of Calcutta.
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EDUCATION.

The Children's Introductory Book to the
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The Elements of Arithmetic. By Augus-
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M.M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 53.

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The King's Own, a Novel. By the Au-
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11. 11s. T5d.

4 G

594

List of New Works.

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1830.]

C 595 ]
LIST OF EXPIRING PATENTS.

List of Patents which, having been planted in the
month of May, 1816, expire in the present month
of May, 1830.

1. John Collier, London, for a machine for
shearing' woollen cloths.

4. John Rongley, Leeds, for further improve-
ments in his hydro-pneumatic machine*

— Richard Batiks, Hadley, Salop, for improve-
ments in wheeled carriages.

. — William Threadgold, London, for apparatus
for insuring in chimneys a passage for smoke.

— Robert Copland, Liverpool, for means for
effecting a saving of fuel.

11. Benjamin Rotch, Bath, for a flexible elastic
horse-shoe.

14. Jean Samuel Pauly, London, for improve-
tnents injire-arms.

— Thomas Buxton, Dublin,/or a locTc.

14. Richard Francis Hawkins, Woolwich, for a
plan for tunnels under rivers.

— Daniel Wilson, Dublin, for improved appa-
ratus for distilling.

— William Simmons, Wigan,/or improvements
applicable to keyed instruments.

25. Francis Richardson, London, for improve-
ments in fire-arms and bayonets.

— Philip Taylor, Bromley, for new application
of heat in brewing, distilling, and sugar-refining.

— Christopher Dihl,London,/o»-im/»-owd mastic
cement.

27- George Dodgson, Shadwell,/<w improved fire-
engine and forcing-pump.

— Isaac Hadley Reddell, London, for improved
lighting apparatus.

— Robert Kemp,Cork,/o>- improvements in locks
and keys.

30. John Heathcote, Loughborough, for improve-
ments in the stocking-frame*

BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS,

ADMIRAL SIR EDMUND NAGLE, K.C.B.

. This gentleman, a native of Ireland, was
born about the year 1757 or 1758. Early
in life he entered the Royal Navy, in which
he had the good fortune to attain the rank of
full Admiral. Throughout his career, in-
deed, he may be regarded as one of the fa-
vourites of fortune. While Post Captain,
and in the command of a frigate, he distin-
guished himself greatly in an engagement
with a ship of much superior force. For
that service he received the honour of knight-
hood. Sir Edmund married a lady possess-
ed of a very ample income. Many years
since, he attracted the notice of his present
Majesty, who, in 1815, when, as Prince
Regent, he created a second class of Knights
of the Bath, named Sir Edmund a Knight
Commander as the eighth of that rank. At-
tending His Majesty in all his naval excur- ,
sions, he was jocularly designated the King's
Naval Aide-de-Camp,. His Majesty appoint-
ed him one of the Grooms of the Bedcham-
ber. In fact, he stood so high in estimation
with his royal master, who loved his nautical
humour, that, of late years, he has been al-
most domesticated with him.

Sir Edmund Nagle, however, died at his
own house, at East Moulsey, on the 14th of
March. He has been succeeded as Groom
of the Bedchamber by Henry Hope, Esq.

MR. KLOSE.

Mr. F. J. Klose, the son of a well-known
musical professor, and himself a teacher,
Composer, and able instrumental performer,
was a native of London. He studied com-
position and the piano-forte under the cele-
brated Francesco Tomich and others. In the
course of his life he was a member of most
of the orchestras in London, particularly of
the King's Theatre and the concert of an-
cient music. As a piano-forte teacher, he was
eminently skilful, and as a composer he was
much esteemed for facile works of a descrip-
tion calculated to promote the end of instruc-
tion. He also excelled in ballads of a pa-

thetic and sentimental cast. Amongst these
may be particularly mentioned Lord Byron's
"Adieu! adieu ! my native land;" Lady
Caroline Lamb's " Can'st thou bid my heart
forget," and others from her ladyship's novel
ofGlenarvon; "The Rose had been washed,"
by Cowper, &c. Indeed the catalogue of his
works is very extensive. He was the author,
too, of several ballets and detached pieces,
performed with success at the King's Theatre.
Mr. Klose died in Beaumont Street, Mary-
le-bone, on the 8th of March.

THE DUKE DE LEVIS.

This nobleman, descended from one of the
most ancient families in France, was a son
of the Marshal deLevis. At the commence-
ment of the French Revolution he was sent
as a Deputy to the States General by the
nobility of Dijon ; but, neither in the States,
nor in the Constituent Assembly, did he act
a conspicuous part. Though friendly to a
moderate reform, he was disgusted with the
republican aspact which the Revolution as-
sumed ; and, after the 10th of August, he
emigrated, and served in the army of the
Princes, and also at Quiberon, where he was
wounded. He resided in England till the
establishment of the Consular Government,
when he returned to France. However,
during the usurpation of Buonaparte he did
not accept any office, but, in calm retirement,
devoted himself entirely to literary pursuits.
In 1808 he published Maxims and Reflec-
tions on different Subjects;— in 1812, The
Travels of Kanghi, or new Chinese Letters,
2 vols. ; — a Continuation of the Four Facar-
dins, and of Feneide ; — in 1813, Recollections
and Portraits ; —in 1815, a Notice on Senac de
Meilhan ; — England at the beginning of the
Nineteenth Century; — and, in 1816, Moral
Considerations on the Finances.

The Duke de Levis was comprised, in the
first promotion of Peers by Louis XVIII.
In 1816, he was admitted a member of the
French Academy. He died at Paris, this
year, early in March.

. 4 G 2 i **; .>

590

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons,

[MAY,

RICHARD CHEVENIX, ESQ., F.R.S.

This gentleman, a member of most of the
scientific and literary institutions of Europe,
was a native of Ireland. Possessing great
versatility of talent, and great variety of in-
formation, he had distinguished himself in
different paths of polite literature. It was
in chemistry, however, that he attained the
greatest celebrity ; his name justly ranking
as one of the highest among those who have
cultivated tha analytical branches of that
science.

Mr. Chevenix was the author of many
papers in the Philosophical Transactions,
Nicholson's Journal, and the Philosophical
Magazine. To him the public were also in-
debted for numerous contributions, of great
interest, and on various topics, to other emi-
nent periodicals of the day. His first dis-
tinct publication was Remarks on Chemical
Nomenclature, according to the System of
the French Neologists, 12mo., 1802. His
Observations on Mineralogical Systems ori-
ginally appeared in the 65th volume of the
Chemical Annals, while he was at Paris.
These observations, which constitute a formi-
dable attack on the system of Werner, and
a truly philosophical defence of the rival
system of Hauy, were translated into French
under his own superintendance.

Mr. Chevenix wrote, in the spirit of the
dramatic authors of the Elizabethan age,
the Mantuan Rivals, a Comedy, and Henry
the Seventh, an Historical Tragedy. Much
ef his time and fortune was devoted to lite-
rary and scientific pursuits ; and, in an exten-
sive circle of private friends, he was eminently
esteemed and beloved. Mr. Chevenix died
at Paris, on the 5th of April, after an indis-
position of only a few days.

JOHN RENNEL, ESQ., F.R.S., &C.

Tradition ascribes to this celebrated geo-
grapher a Norman extraction. One of the
Knights who accompanied William the Con-
queror in his descent upon England is be-
lieved to have been his paternal ancestor. He
was born at Chadleigh, in Devonshire, where
his father had long been settled on a small
estate, yielding sufficient for the enjoyments
of private life, in the year 1742. His edu-
cation was derived from a free grammar
school in the neighbourhood. Family cir-
cumstances rendering necessary his early set-
tlement in life, he, at the age of fifteen, en-
tered the naval service of his country. At
the siege of Pondicherry, he gave proof of
enterprise and talent. Some sloops of war
belonging to the enemy having moored be-
yond the reach of our guns, in shallow wa-
ter, he requested of his captain the use of a
boat. This, as the night was far advanced,
was at first refused, but ultimately granted.
Accompanied by only one sailor, Mr. Ren-
nel accordingly departed, with what object
in view no one was acquainted. After a
brief interval he returned, with the assur-

ance of having ascertained that, as the tide
was unusually high, there was sufficient
depth of water by which to reach the sloops
of the enemy. This information was prompt-
ly acted upon, and the result was completely
successful.

At the age of twenty-four, Mr. Rennel,
on the suggestion of a friend who possessed
considerable interest in the India House, left
the navy, entered into the army, and was
immediately sent upon active service to In-
dia as an officer of engineers. There he di-
stinguished himself greatly, was favourably
noticed by the Government, and speedily
promoted to a Majority — the highest rank
he ever attained. It was about this period
that he produced his first work, a Chart of
the Bank and Current of Cape Lagullas.
This publication, of great local interest and
utility, gave to him the reputation of one of
the first geographers of the day. He was
soon afterwards appointed to the laborious
but lucrative office of Surveyor General of
Bengal. His next publications were his
Bengal Atlas, and an Account of the Ganges
and Burrampooter Rivers. The latter, which
greatly advanced the reputation of its author,
was inserted in the Philosophical Trans-
actions.

While in India, Major Rennel married"
one of the daughters of Dr. Thackeray,
many years head-master of Harrow School.
Soon after his marriage, he returned to Eng-
land, where he was received with great dis-
tinction, and his acquaintance courted by
the mcst eminent men of the day. He was
elected, by acclamation, as it were, a mem-
ber of the Royal Society. From this period,
he maintained an extensive correspondence
with many of the most learned men of Eu-
rope. Amongst his most intimate friends
were I)r. Horsley, Bishop of St. Asaph —
Dr. Vincent, Dean of Westminster — and
Sir William Jones. It was the publication
of his Memoir of a Map of Hindostan, im-
mediately after his return to England, which
introduced him to the friendship of the two
former. At a subsequent period, he materially
assisted Dr. Vincent in his Commentary on
Arrian's Voyage of Nearchus. With cha-
racteristic ardour, he also aided Sir William
Jones in his Oriental Collections, and many
of the best articles in the Asiatic Researches
and Registers were from his pen. A brief
passage from one of these is important in it-
selfj and at the same time indicates the cha-
racter of the author's belief as a Christian :
— " With regard to the conformity between
some of the Christian and Indian doctrines,
I have no hesitation to assert that all exa-
mination into Indian history and antiquities
most strongly confirms the Mosaic and scrip-
tural account." This principle of belief
probably operated with his political feelings
in causing him to decline the acceptance of
an invitation to become a member of the
French National Institute.

In 1708, Major Rennel assisted Mr. Park

1830.]

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons.

597

in the arrangement of his African Travels ;
and, tracing the route of that gentleman
through each clay's journey, and comparing
his observations with those of other travel-
lers and geographers, he illustrated the work
by a most accurate and able map.

The Major's next great performance — his
greatest indeed — was his Geographical Sys-
tem of Herodotus, a production the learn-
ing of which was equalled only by its utility.
Another work of extraordinary research, cu-
riosity, arid interest, was his *' Observations
on the Topography of the Plain of Troy."

We have heard ascribed to Major Rennel
the detection of the impudent fraud of Dam-
berger's Travels into the Interior of Africa.
We happen to know, however, that the cre-
dit of that detection was due to Mr. John
Giffbrd, the editor of the Antijacobin Review,
author of the Life of Pitt, &c. The expo-
sure was made in an able and elaborate arti-
cle in the Review here mentioned. It is not
impossible, however, that Major Rennel and
Mr. Gifford might have simultaneously, and
without intercourse with each other, have
discovered the fraud.

Major Rennel had several children by his
lady. Universally respected and beloved,
he, on the 29th of March last, terminated a
long and useful life, after many weeks of
severe suffering occasioned by the accidental
fracture of his thigh. — This gentleman's
literary and geographical productions are so
valuable and important, that we conceive a
list of them will prove generally acceptable.

A Chart of the Bank and Current of Cape
LaguUas, 1778 ;— =a Bengal Atlas, 1781 ;
a Memoir of the Map of Hindostan, or the
Mogul's Empire, 1782 ; — a Map of Hin-
dostan, with a new Memoir, 1788; — Me-
moir on the Geography of Africa, with an
adjoined Map, 1790 ; — on the Rate of Tra-
velling as performed by Camels, and its Ap-
plication, by a Scale, to the purposes of Geo-
metry, 1791; — the Marches of the British
Armies in the Peninsula of India during the
Campaigns of 1790 and 1791 ;— a Second
and Third Memoir on the Geography of
Africa, 1798;— the Geographical System of
Herodotus explained, 1800 ; — a Corrected
Sheet Map of the Peninsula of India, of the
Mysore Country, and the Cessions of 1798,
1799, and 1800 ; — a Fourth Memoir on
African Geography, and a Map of Mr.
Horneman's Travels, for the African Asso-
ciation ; — and Observations on the Topo-
graphy of the Plain of Troy.

COUNT GOUVION ST. CYR.

Gouvion St. Cyr was born at Toul, in
Lorraine, about the year 1760. He entered
the army as a volunteer, and soon became an
officer ; but in what particular service he
was engaged, in the early part of his life,
does not appear to be upon record. In 1793,
he served in the army of the Alps as Briga-
dier General. In that, and in the following
year, he attracted much notice by his bra-

very and talents ; in 1797, he became Ge-
neral of Division, and held a command in
the army of Moreau; and, in 1798, he took
the command in Italy after Massena had
been compelled to retire in consequence of
an insurrection of the troops. In Italy Ge-
neral St. Cyr effected many important re-
forms. From what cause does not appear ;
but, by some means, he dissatisfied the Di-
rectory ; and, in 1799, he was dismissed
with other generals. His retirement was
but brief ; as, in 1801, he was placed in the
council of state ; in March, l£03, he was
invested with the command of the French
army in Italy ; in 1804 he was made Colo-
nel General of the Cuirassiers, and Grand
Officer of the Legion of Honour; in 1805,
under Massena, he made prisoners of 6,000
Austrians, led by Jellachich and Rohan ; in
1806, he was ordered to take possession of
the kingdom of Naples ; and he afterwards
joined the grand army in Prussia, and was
made Governor of Warsaw. Serving in
Spain, he obtained considerable success in
Catalonia. In the Russian campaign, after
Marshal Oudinot was wounded, he led the
army of the centre ; for which service, and
for advantages gained over the enemy on va-
rious occasions, he was promoted to the rank
of Marshal. At the battle of Dresden he
bore a distinguished part ; and shortly after-
wards, he defeated Count Tolstoy at Plauen.
On the retreat of Buonaparte he was left in
Dresden, with a force of 16,000 men ; and,
after a time, was compelled to surrender.

Such is a rapid sketch of the military ca-
reer of this officer, who is generally allowed
to have been one of the best tactitians in the
French army. On his return to France,
Louis XVIII. created him a peer, and made
him a Commander of the Order of Louis.
Evidently the King had a good opinion of
him, and the justness of that opinion was
verified by his subsequent conduct. Marshal
St. Cyr remained faithful to the cause of the
Bourbons, and narrowly escaped with his
life in an attempt to restrain his troops from
joining Buonaparte. Nor was Louis un-
grateful. When he returned from Ghent,
he made him temporary Minister of War,
and loaded him with honours. In 1817, he
was made Minister of the Naval Depart-
ment; and, shortly afterwards, he was re-
moved to the head of the War Department.
Marshal St. Cyr died at Kieres, in the month
of March.

GENERAL SIR HUGH DALRYMl'LE.

Sir Hugh Whiteford Dalrymple, Knight
and Baronet, of High Mark, in the county
of Wigtoun, was the son of John Dal-
rymple, Esq., by Mary, daughter of Alexan-
der Ross, of Bailkaik, Bart., of North Ber-
wick. He was born on the 3rd of Decem-
ber, 1750; he entered the military service
of his country as an Ensign in 1763; and,
after passing through the respective grada-
tions of rank, he obtained a Colonelcy, in

598

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons*

[MAY.

1790. He served in the Grenadier Batta-
lion of the Guards during the campaign of
1793 ; and, under the command of the late
Duke of York, he was present at the battle
of Famars, the siege of Valenciennes, and
in every other action in which the battalion
was engaged. At the close of the year he
returned to England, and was not again, for
some time, on active service. However, be-
tween the years 1794 and 1806, he attained
the rank of Lieut. -General, and held various
home commands, amongst which was the
Lieut. -Generalship of Guernsey. In 1806,
he was removed to the staff at Gibraltar ;
and, in August, 1808, he was sent to put
himself at the head of the British army in
Portugal. Unfortunately for him, he as-
sumed the command in time to share in the
responsibility of the disgraceful convention
of Cintra ; a convention which, by allowing
the French to retire from Portugal in En-
glish ships, and giving the beaten enemy other
advantages, blighted the laurels of the army,
and robbed the country of its glory. He
consequently incurred, with others, though
perhaps not with equal justice, a heavy por-
tion of the popular odium.
- Having been previously appointed Colonel
of the 57th Regiment, and Governor of
Blackness Castle, this officer obtained the
rank of General, on the 1st of January, 1812.
. General Dalrymple was created a Baronet
on the 21st of December, 1814. He mar-
ried, on the 16th of May, 1783, Frances,
the youngest daughter and co-heiress of
General Leighton ; and by that lady, who
died in 1823, he had a family of one son
and three daughters.

Sir Hugh Dalrymple was a member of the
Consolidated Board of General Officers. He
died in Upper Wimpole Street, on the 9th
of April.

THE MARQUIS LALLY TOLLENDAL.

The Marquis Lally Tollendal, a distin-
guished character himself, was the son of
Thomas Arthur, Count Lally, a brave but
imprudent and unfortunate Irish officer in
the service of France, of whose fate it may
here not be improper briefly to remind the
reader. Of a family that had followed the
fortunes of James IT. he had entered the
French army, signalized himself in the battle
of Fontenoy, and been made a brigadier-
general on the field of battle. He was an
inveterate partisan of the Pretender. In
1756, selected for his capacity and bravery
to restore the French interest in India, he was
made Governor of Pondicherry ; and, when
that fortress was taken by the English in
1761, he and the garrison were made pri-
soners of war. From the violence of his
temper and conduct, he had offended every-
body connected with him in the government.
The loss of Pondicherry drew down a torrent
of invective upon him from all quarters ; he
was even accused of having sold the place to
the English; and, when he was allowed to

return to France from this country, he was,
after a long imprisonment, brought to trial for
treachery, abuse of authority, and unjust
exactions. His enemies triumphed ; he was
found guilty, and condemned to be decapi-
tated ; a sentence which was executed with
circumstances of great cruelty on the Cth of
May, J766, in the 68th year of his age.

Young Lally, his son, was born at Paris,
in the year 1751. He was educated at the
college at Harcourt, where he was distin-
guished for the number of prizes which he
gained during a studious term of five years.
According to his own statement, he did not
know who his father was till the day before
his execution, nor who his mother was till
four years after her decease. The expenses
of his education were defrayed by his cousinr
the Countess Dillon, and by Louis XV. who,
aware of the deep injury which he had sus-
tained, regretted that he could not do him
ample justice.

At the age of fifteen, the youth dedicated
a Latin poem to Mr. Mauduit, his professor,
on the subject of the unfortunate Galas, in
which the fate of his own father was evidently
alluded to, and deplored in a spirit of ener-
getic and touching eloquence. No sooner
had he reached a more mature age, than he
strenuously exerted himself to obtain justice
to the memory of his father, and satisfaction
from the tribunals of his country. In his
efforts he received every aid from the most
eminent men of his time, especially from
Voltaire. Ultimately, his labours were
crowned with success. Four decrees of the
council annulled the judgments of the par-
liaments respecting his father ; and, in 1783,
'he recovered possession of his paternal estates.

M. de Lally's fame had now spread abroad.
An eventful period was opening before him.
His reputation for eloquence and general
talent was so thoroughly established, that, in
1789, he was elected deputy from the nobi-
lity of Paris to the States -General. He soon
became one of the most popular members of
the Constituent Assembly ; gave his support
to the famous declaration of the Rights of
Man, proposed by La Fayette ; and afterwards
suggested, by way of amendment to that de-
claration, that all citizens should be equally
admissible to public employments, without
any distinction but that which might arise
from virtue and talents. This suggestion
was adopted by acclamation. M. de Lally,
however, did not carry his notions of liberty
so far as many of his coadjutors, but argued
strenuously for a constitution of distinct
powers, agreeably to the model of the British
Government. Not finding himself suffi-
ciently supported in his views, and lamenting
the calamitous scenes of the 5th and 6th of
October, he resigned his seat in the Consti-
tuent Assembly, and took refuge in Switzer-
land, with his friend, M. Mounier, the father
of the present Baron Mounier.

M. dc Lally returned to France in 1792,
and exerted himself with extraordinary

1830.J Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons. f>9&

energy in defence of Louis XVI. He was in of the press ; nor can this liberty itself exist

consequence arrested, and sent to the Abbaye. without the admirable institution of juries."
Thence he had the good fortune to effect his At the restoration, M. de Lally once more

escape to England, where he received a pen- made his appearance on the public theatre,

sion from the government. When Bona- He accompanied Louis XVIII. to Ghent, as

parte assumed the consular power, he went one of the members of his Majesty's Privy

back to France ; but, taking scarcely any part Council; and he is supposed to have been

in public affairs, he lived much in retirement, the author of the manifesto addressed by

devoting his time to literature, and the charms Louis to the French nation,
of domestic life, till the restoration of the In the new arrangement of the Chamber of

Bourbons, in 1814. Yet, upon one occasion, Deputies, M. de Lally was created a mar-

we find him maintaining the generous prin- quis. He was the author of an Essay on the

ciples of his youth with constitutional and Life of the Earl of Straffbid ; the Earl of

characteristic energy. In a debate, in Feb- StrafFord, a tragedy ; a defence of Louis

ruary, 1 807, speaking of the seizure of pub- XVI.; and various other productions, di-

lications, he exclaimed, " There can be no stinguished by their elegance and purity of

representative government that has not for its taste. The Marquis died at the latter end

basis public as well as individual liberty. of March, or the beginning of April, in the

There can be no liberty without the liberty present year.

MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT.

As was reported in our last, March dust ransomed the crops, more especially the wheats—-
of all, the most important. The present month was ushered in with cutting frosts, and in
many parts with an unusual depth of snow for the season. The effects were instantaneous
and visible on all vegetation, in its foliage and tender shoots, just beginning to feel the
genial influence of Spring. Fortunately this unseasonable rigour was temporary, being very
shortly succeeded by a genial Spring warmth, with the old April showers and south-
westerly winds, the true panacea for all the crops in their existing state. And should May
prove equally genial, forgetting to make the cow quake, great hope may be entertained
even of the late-sown and thin crops.

Accounts, however, of the crops from various parts, are, as has been usual of late, ex-
tremely anomalous. Some, from the best lands, are rather sanguine in the expectation of
an average crop of bread-corn ; whilst, more generally, no such hope is entertained, from the
foul and impoverished state of the lands, and the lateness of so great a part of the season on
heavy wet soils : even bean-seed-planting is not yet finished ; but, generally, the greater part
of the Spring crops is completed, and the culture of marigold and carrots in full operation.
Most fortunately, and unexpectedly, the turnips have held out to the last, with even a sur-
plus in some parts : the same of the hay and fodder, affording the keepers of live stock the
rare opportunity of sparing their grazing lands until they have produced a good bite for the
cattle. The young beans and peas are complained of as thin planted from the dampness
and infertility of much of the seed. The natural grasses, pushed on by the fertilizing
moisture of the season, fully sustain the character of our last report — in fact, promise an-
other great grass year. Spring tares, and seeds generally, appear of equal promise. Late-
sown winter tares, an experienced bad practice, have failed as usual. The nearly total
failure of the last year's clover-crcp proves particularly distressing during the present dearth
of money among the farmers. Not only is the price of the seed very high, but the quality,
whether of the imported or home-grown, cannot be depended upon : thence many have
wisely substituted hop clover, trefoil, and other seeds for the present season. In the mid-
land counties the culture of winter beans and peas has, of late, had its return to periodical
practice successfully; and perhaps the turn of winter barley may come next. General early
sowing, too, has once more its advocates. The considerable quantity of barley grown last
year has produced little benefit to the grower, from the lowness of the price, difficulty of sale,
and badness of the quality, whence it is unfit for horse-food — the case also of the beans.
Nevertheless, it is reported on all hands, that the stock of every kind of home-grown corn
is nearly exhausted — of wheat beyond all other kinds. The latter Spring crops are in train
for a speedy finish, to be followed by preparing the lands for the reception of the turnip-
seed. The late failure of marigold occasions it to have a marked attention this year, as a
most useful article that stands in the gap in Spring between failing turnips and growing
grass.

Grazing and stall-feeding, from the depression of price last year, have proved most un-
fortunate concerns; too many fat stocks having been sold for no more, or even less, than the
original cost of the stores : this has been particularly the case, both with respect to cattle,
corn, and all other farming substance, at the numerous sales under execution for rent. How-
ever, cattle and sheep have done well and improved in condition during the present Spring ;
and we have the satisfaction to report not only a return of demand, but some additions te

600 Agricultural Report. [MAY,

prices, at all the great marts and fairs. The rot in sheep is yet most unfortunately pre-
valent in Kent and in most of the western counties ; elsewhere it has been fortunately
escaped. In the west they have bestowed upon this too well-known disease another term-*
" the bane or coathe," as though a disease of different type ; and in the true style of our
countryfolk, high or low, who are never happy or satisfied but when they are deceived, are
hunting after specifics for the cure of the said coathe — that is to say, a cure for disorganiza-
tion of the system of perfected rottenness, the patients perhaps five hundred strong ! A very
sensible late writer has taken the pains to assure them that prevention is the only remedy;
humouring them in the mean time, as he would their babes, with a few harmless and
plausible prescriptions. This foolery is in full force in our day, malgrt the experience of
centuries — of which the reams of well-paid nonsense published on such subjects is an
evident proof. Our pigs seem not yet to have recovered from their astonishment at the
Irish invasion: they have been sold fat on the coasts at three-pence per pound, and
the price has not hitherto experienced much amendment. After all the losses on the in-
fected lands, the present is still deemed a successful lambing-season, and lambs are said to
be in great plenty. Complaints are made of the market prices of beef and mutton ; but
surely there is something more rationally to be alleged on the stores having been purchased
at too high a price. Milch cows have been unusually low in price, but they are a species
of stock which cannot remain long so. Previous to the late few days' frost, the apple and
pear trees, by their blooming appearance, portentously threatened another burdensome fruit
year, to the utter dismay of the cidermakers of the west, whose superabundant stock of
last year's cider is not now of the worth of the containing casks: thus it is in old England,
where plenty is sure to ruin us. Good cart-colts— indeed good horses of all kinds—are worth
whatever can be asked for them. Wool has at length, in real fact, made a small start, and
certainly is now convertible into money at some price. In the hop-market there is little
or no activity or advance of price. Hop speculations, formerly of such high account,
seem to have lost caste, and to have gone out of fashion.

The accounts from Scotland of the crops are favourable, and from some of the English
border counties ; but the reverse as to their grazing and feeding, in which they have been
equally unsuccessful with us of the south.

We have received several late letters from Ireland, which note nothing peculiar respecting
the season or culture, but much in a most lamentable and desponding tone on the barbarous
and nationally destructive system of multiplied sub-tenancy, the great curse and bane of
Ireland, which, by impoverishing and rendering destitute an immense population ofadscripti
glebce, has long since constituted them the savages of modern Europe. What must a man
from a state of civilization think, when, present at an Irish merry-meeting or fair, he beholds
a strapping fellow, with a face flushed and eyes darting fire, brandishing his weapon, and, in
the true spirit of Irish fun, vociferating " This night a man must die ?" This our friends
have seen and heard ; and even other things, if possible, more extraordinary. It is fit the
truth should out : this ignominy, disgrace, and misery has wretched Ireland been endowed
with by her absentees. The utmost which has been alleged of the former jealousy, re-
straint, and oppression of the English government, could never have had such fatal effects
had the aristocracy of Ireland performed their duty — the most solid title, indeed, by which
they ought to hold their estates.

The more our ministers' late donative of a repeal of the beer-duty is canvassed in the
country, the more it is disliked as insufficient, and probable to be attended with a very
trifling good effect- The cry is unanimous throughout for a repeal of the malt-tax;
indeed we have scarcely known any public cry more so. To the assertion that it cannot be
afforded, the reply is, let it be made up from a retrenchment of the superfluities and cor-
ruptions of government. Emigration is going forward on a very general and extensive
scale; and Mr. Horton's plan will not be found, in the ultimate, either so irrational or un-
successful as has been predicated. In Lincolnshire, and a few other counties, the labourers
are fully employed ; but, perhaps, in three parts of the whole country the unemployed
surplus is yet most alarming, and the poor's-rate constantly on the increase. Should
tobacco come into culture — an event scarcely to be hoped, considering our long predilection
for neglecting all other culture for that of corn — some accession to employment might thence
be found. The country letters are still filled with the hard-heartedness and harshness of
the landlords in still holding up their rents by periodical trifling douceurs and indulgences
in over wheat cropping, whilst their miserable dependants have wasted or are wasting all
their substance and property, and executions, sales, and makings over, are the order of the
day, throughout so great a part of the land. Under such evidences of the fact, if a joke,
it is surely a cruel one to doubt the existence of distress ; for

He that hangs, or beats out's brains.
The devil 's in him if he feigns.

Smithfield — Beef, 3s. 4d.— Mutton, 3s. 2d. to 4s. 2d — Veal, 5s. lOd — Pork, 3s. 8d.
to 5s. ; best dairy-fed, 5s. 4d.— Lamb, 69. to Is. 2d.— Rough Fat, 2s. 2d.

1830.] Agricultural Report. 601

Corn Exchange. — Wheat, 46s. to 78s. ; superfine white foreign, 02s. — Barley, 24s. to
38s — Oats, 23s. to 34s — The London fine 4-lb. loaf, 10£d — Hay, 45s. to 105s. per
load — Clover, ditto, 60s. to 110s. — Straw, 45s. to 54s.

Coals in the Pool, 26s. 6d. to 35s. 6d. per chaldron.
Middlesex, April 24.

•..

MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT.

SUGAR. — There was little alteration in the market last week : the good and fine qualities
continue to be taken off eagerly at very full prices. The soft browns continue neglected.
The stock of West India sugars is 11,53.9 hogsheads and tierces, being 4,100 hogsheads
and tierces less than last year. The stock of Mauritius is 72,280, being 26,180 more than
in 1829. The weekly deliveries are 2,483 hogsheads and tierces, being 200 more than last
year. There is scarcely a beard of good Muscovadoes on show this morning: the quantity
of low browns are inconsiderable : shippers bought freely of the refined for export. Last
week the prices were higher, being a small supply at market : fine goods were in request.
There is no alteration in currency. Molasses rather higher. The public sale of 10,196
bags of Mauritius sugars last week went off heavily : one-third was taken in after the sale.
The request was revived : all parcels withdrawn sold at full market prices. — Foreign
Sugars. — There were no purchases last week : good white Brazil sold at 33s. 6d. ; good
strong white Havannah sold at 41s. to 42s. 6d. ; soft, 35s. to 39s. ; yellow, 22s. 6d.

COFFEE. — This day 1,325 bags 16 casks damaged St. Domingo, and 62 bags East
India sound: St. Domingo at 33s. The market is more firm : coloury descriptions in-
quired for at an advance of 2s.

RUM, BRANDY, HOLLANDS. — The Is. per gallon on rum is in the same uncertainty,
and prevents the usual transactions of the market Brandy is held with much firmness.
In Geneva there are few transactions lately: the order of the Treasury respecting the re-
dip (ordering the payment of the duty of the actual guage) is only for rum.

HEMP, FLAX, TALLOW — The tallow-market is dull, without any reduction of prices.
Hemp is very heavy: in flax there is no alteration. A large failure is announced at
Petersburgh.

Course of Foreign Exchange — Amsterdam, 12. 8 — Rotterdam, 12. 8. — Antwerp,
12. 8 — Hamburgh, 14. 2 Paris, 25. 75 — Bordeaux, 26. 5. — Frankfort, 156.— Peters-
burgh, 10.— Vienna, 10. 18.— Madrid, 10. l9.-Cadiz, 36.— Bilboa, 36. 0^.— Barcelona,
35. Of. -Seville, 35. Of.— Gibraltar, 47- 0|.— Leghorn, 4?. 0^.— Genoa, 26.— Venice,
47. 0£. — Malta, 48. 0§.— Naples, 39. 0^.— Palermo, 118.— Lisbon, 44. — Oporto, 43. Of.
—Rio Janeiro, 21. 0£ — Bahia, 25.— Dublin, 1. 0^.— Cork, 1. 0|.

Bullion per Oz. — Portugal Gold in Coin, £6. Os. Od Foreign Gold in Bars,

£3. 17s. 9d — New Doubloons, £3. Os. Od.— New Dollars, £0. 4s. 8£d Silver in Bars

(standard), £0. 4s. lid.

Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of
WOLFE, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill. — Birmingham CANAL (i sh.), 2907. —

Coventry, 8007 — Ellesmere and Chester, 01 Grand Junction, 2887. — Kennet and Avon,

27^.— Leeds and Liverpool, 460^7.— Oxford, 6357 Regent's, 22-}7.— Trent and Mersey

($ sh.), 7807.— Warwick and Birmingham, 2707.— London DOCKS. (Stock), 73f?.— West

India (Stock), 191$J East London WATER-WORKS, 1187. — Grand Junction, 52^7. —

West Middlesex, 757 — Alliance British and Foreign INSURANCE, 10|7 — Globe, 1677.

— Guardian, 26|/. — Hope Life, 6£7 Imperial Fire, 1197.— GAS-LIGHT Westminster

chartered Company, 07.— City, 1907._British, 07.— Leeds, 1957.

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES,

Announcedfrom February 23d to March 22d, 1830, in the London Gazette.

BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED. W. Fuller, Pimlico, builder

D. Fowler, Euston-square, builaer

J.Nicholls, Cleeve-Prior, builder L.. Jacobs, Chelsea, broker

J. Rayne and C. Rayne, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, J- de Groot, Wood-street, merchant

seed-crushers w- Ware, Exeter, timber-merchant
J. Bull. Taunton, woollen-draper . .

M.M. New Scrics.—Vol. IX. No. 53. 4 H

602

Bankrupts*

[MAY,

iggist. (Glutton and Co.

BANKRUPTCIES.
[This Month 103.]

Solicitors1 Names are in parentheses.

Atlee, J. Liverpool, merchant. v Williams and Co.

Lineoln's-inn-fields
Adlington, J. Chesterfield, mercer. (Smithson and

Co. New-inn ; Hutchinsons, Chesterfield
Berguer, L.T.and E. Blaquiere, Pickett-st. printers,

(Yallop, Basinghall-street
Bilton, H. Woolwich, druggist.

Temple

Brownell, J. Reading and Oxford-street, straw-hat
'•manufacturer. (Dignam, Little Distaff-lane
Baster, C. Abingdon, money-scrivener. (Graham,

Serjeant's-inn ; Graham, Abingdon
Blake, R. St. Mawes, twine-manufacturer. (Cardale

and Co. Gray's-inn; Bull, Falmouth
Bryer, J. Bath, grocer. (Henderson, Surrey-street;

Golden, Bristol
Blakcley, T. Bath, haberdasher. (Simpson, Furni-

yal's-inn; Brokenbrow, Bath
Bristow, J. sen. Poole, spirit-dealer. (Holms and

Co- New-inn ; Parr, Poole
Calvert, J. Wressle, cornfactor. (Capes, Gray's-inn ;

Walmsley and Co. South Cave
Cassell, J. Plymouth, builder. (Smith, Basinghall-
street; Husband, Devonport
Clarke, T. Dover, master-mariner. (Rixon and Son,

Jewry-street

Cole, W. and R. K. Vorley, Suffolk- lane, hop-mer-
chant. (Stevenson Paternoster row
Claik, J. Blyth, miller. (Dunn, Gray's-inn; Wilson,

• Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Corren, J. Strand, glover. (Cross, Surrey-street
Davis, F. W. New Windsor, silk-mercer. (Dicas,

Basinghall-street
Davies, O. Maentwrog, innkeeper. (Williams,

Pwllheli ; Thomas, Barnard's-inn
Dangerfield, W. Cheltenham, victualler. (Merediths

and Co. Lincoln's- inn
Dicken, T. and E. Bromby, Drayton-in-Hales,

bankers. (Herring and Co. Lincoln's-inn-fields ;

Stanley, Newport

Evans, J. Manchester, timber-merchant. (Adling-
ton and Co. Bedford-row ; Morris, Manchester
Fancourt, J. Marshall-street, victualler. (Robinson

and Co. Half-moon-street
Field, T.Blackfriars-road, flour-factor. (Spence and

- Co. Shoe-lane

Fox, J. Margate, merchant. (Cook and Co. New-
inn ; Cobb, Margate

Fourdrinier, C. J. Lostock Gralam, chemist.
(Kurd and Co. Temple; Seddon, Manchester

FHnn, J. Hoxton, commission-agent. (Beart, Wal-
brook-buildings

Goulden, J. Hackney-road, carpenter. (Norton,
New-street, Bishopsgate

George, M. Margate, draper. (Clowes and Co.
Temple

Garraway, R. Poplar, shipowner. (Dods, Northum-
berland-street

Groves, T. Chelsea, white-lead-manufacturer.
(Pearce and Co. St. Swithin's-lane

Golrting, J. Walworth, bookseller. (Totld, Gray's-
inn

Goodrum, T. Redenhall, bombazine-manufacturer.
(Austin, Gray's-inn; Staff, Norwich

Godson, S. jun. Coventry, grocer. (Stephens, Bed-
ford-row

Godson, R. Southwark, grocer. (Clarke, Basing-
hall-street

Herbert, W. Ratcliff, wine-merchant. (Hodgson,
B road-street-bu ildings

Holden, P. Prescott, innkeeper. (Blockstock and
Co. Temple; Booth, Liverpool

Hawke, R. Penzance, baker. (Follett, Temple;
Rogers, Helston

Holland, J. Upper Thornhaugh-street, cheesemon-
ger. (Wright, Richmond-buildings, Soho

Heatley, J. Manchester, corn-dealer. (Makinson
and Co. Temple ; Atkinson and Co. Manchester

Hutson, H. Spilsby, tailor. (Van Sandan and Co.
Old Jewry ; Jacomb and Co. Huddersfield

Harvey, W. Bearfield, cattle-salesman. (King and
Co. Gray's-inn; Bush, Broadford

Harrison, J. Blyton, brick-maker. (Dawson and Co.
New Boswell-court ; Codd and Co. Gainsborough

Hodgens, W. Newgate-street, glass-dealer. (Thorn-
bury, Chancery-lane

Harraden, J. R. Cambridge, upholsterer. (Barber
and Co. Furnival's-inn

Howard, J. Warrington, sail-canvas-maker. (Tay-
lor and .Co. Temple ; Fitchet and Co. Warrington

Huskisson, W. Haggerston, chemist. (Lloyd,
Thavies-inn

Hussey, T. High Holborn, hat-manufacturer.
(Jones and Co. Mincing-lane

Hatton, T. sen. A sh by-de-la- Zouch, plumber. (He-
ming and Co. Lincoln's-inn-fields

James, I. Merthyr Tidvil, victualler. (Evans and
Co. Gray's-inn; Haberfleld, Bristol

Jenkins, H. Tonbridge Wells, grocer. (Glutton and
Co. Borough

Johnson, J. N. Liverpool, colour-manufacturer.
(Ellis and Co. Chancery-lane; Holden, Liverpool

Jones, G. Tenterden-street, livery-stable-keeper.
(Baxter, Size-lane

Jones, W. C. Shrewsbury, mercer. (Philpot and
Stone, Southampton-street; Burley and Co.
Shrewsbury

Johnson, T. Leeds, victualler. (Strangways and Co.
Barnard's-inn ; Blackburn, Leeds

Joseph, N. Minories, tailor and draper. (Isaacs, St.
Mary Axe

Kennedy, T. Keswick, woollen-manufacturer.
(Lead bitter, Bucklersbury ; Ansell, Leswick

Kirk, B. Leeds, victualler. (Battye and Co.
Chancery-lane; Naylor, Leeds

Lade, J. S. Maidstone, cornfactor. (Harmer, Hatton
Garden

Lilley, J. Tibberton, corn-dealer. (White, Lincoln's-
inn ; Holdswoi th and Co. Worcester

Lloyd, D. Brecon, tanner. (Evans and Co. Gray's-
inn ; Haberfield, Bristol

Martin, W. Bath-street, cordwainer. (Todd, Gray's-
inn

Maccornack, Pontefract, tea-dealer. (Cloughs and
Co. Pontefract

Miller, T. Tottenham-court-road, stable-keeper.
(Cardale and Co. GrayVinn.

M'Donald, C. Liverpool, surgeon. (Lake, Catea ton-
street.

Nash, E. Clerkenwell, jeweller. (Tanner, New
Basinghall-street

Nicholson, E. Great Titchfield-street, milliner.
(Warren, Symond's-inn

Pecqueur, L.and L. jun. and W. Paddington-street,
mattress-makers. (Rowles, King's-arms-yard

Phillips, T. Strand, linen-draper. (Coombe, Token-
house-yard

Parkinson, T. jun. Liverpool, brewer. (Dean, Pals-
grave-place ; Crewe and Son, Liverpool

Prince, Wr. Sunningwell, lime-burner. (Ford, Great-
Queen-street ; Fran kum, Abingdon

Potter, G. and W. Bishop, Blackman-street, vic-
tualler. ( Osbaldeston and Co. London-street

Partridge, S. Birmingham, grocer.^ Chester, Staple's-
inn ; Arnold and Co. Birmingham

Ryan, T. T. Hoxton, merchant, late of New York.
(Nettleship and Co. Grocers'-hall

Robson, W. and G. Gray, Gateshead, ship-builders.
(Bell and Co. Bow Churchyard ; Stokes, New-
castle-upon-Tyne

Robinson, T. Wigton, saddler. (Mounsey and Co.
Staple-inn, Ewart, Carlisle

Richmond, W. Gutter-lane, factor. (Smith, Basing-
hall-street

Ramon, H.de, (formerly of Paris) London, mer-
chant. (Lowes, Southampton-buildings

Randal, T. Halifax, ironfounder. (Battye and Co.
Chancery-lane ; Higham, Brig-house

Ridgway, R. Manchester, brewer. (Adlington and
Co. Bedford-row; Timperley, Manchester

Ridley, W. Gateshead, dealer in marine stores. (Bell
and Co. Bow Churchyard ; Dawson, Newcastle-
upon-Tyne

Rose, R. Coventry, grocer. (Hindmarsh and Son,

Jewin-street; and at Manchester
Rogers, J. Kuightsbridge, victualler. (Clayton, John-
street

Sherrin, J. Street, innholder. (Dyne, Lincoln's-inn-
fields ; Welsh, Wells
Skyrme, A. J. Hereford, tanner. (Robinson, Pan-

cras-lane; Gough, Hereford

Simpson, H.Warmfield-cum-heath, boarding-house-
keeper. ( Scott, Lincoln's-inn-fields; Taylor, Wake-
field

Salmon, J. Banbury, miller. (Alpin, Banbury
Sharp, W. Ramsey, paper-manufacturer. (Jones,

John-street

Sampey, S., M. Feild, and E. Feild, New Bond-
street, milliners. 'Young, George-yard

1830.]

Bankrupts.

Stodart, G. Somer's-town-terrace, master-mariner.

(Clift and Co. Red-lion-square.
Thorn, G. and T. Livinston, Cheapside, biscuit-
bakers. (Reilly, Clement's-inn
Thompson, 0. Earl-street, bookbinder. (Wettig,

Duke-street, Portland-place

Tye, J. Chalford, draper. (Evans and Co. Gray's-inn
Timbrel], W. Goswell-street, corndealer. (Bailey,

Ely-place
Thornes, T. Stroud, fishmonger, fruiterer, and

sheriff's-officer. (King, Serjeant's-iun ; Paris,

Stroud.
Willett, C. Brandon, linen-draper. (Turner, Basing-

lane
Whittaker, M. Esholt, York, worsted-stuff-manu-

facturer. (Few and Co. Henrietta-street; Butter-

worth, Bingley
Winch, J. Kmgsland-road, victualler. (Selby, Ser-

jeant's-inn
WHkins, T. Warmington, tailor. (Chester, Staple's-

inn; Tibbets, Warwick
Whitby, J. Weasenham, St. Peter, grocer. (Austin,

Gray's-inn ; Barnard, Norwich
Wood, F. C. Leeds, shoemaker. (Dawson and Co,

New Boswell-court; Stother, Leeds
Wiley, F. Sheffield, mercer. (Taylor, John-street;

Badger, Sheffield
Vick, N. Pimlico, coal-merchant. (Farden, Great

James-street

Underwood, W. Coventry, grorer. (Byrne, Ex-
chequer-office ; Carter and Co. Coventry

ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS.

Rev. T. Brereton, to the Vicarage of Steeple
Morden, Cambridge — Rev. II. B. Domvile, to the
Rectory of Peneombe, Hereford — Rev. E. H. B.
Estcourt, to the Vicarage of Great Wolford, War-
wick.—Rev. J. C. Hall, to the Rectory of Off ham,
Kent.— Rev. C. Goring, to the Rectory of Twine-
ham, Sussex — Rev. W. H. Greene, to the Rectory
of Steppingley, Bedford. — Rev. H. Rose, to the
Rectory of Brington, Northampton. — Hon. Rev. A.
A. Tumour, to the Vicarage of Little Melton, Nor-
folk— Rev. R. C. Griffith, to be Chaplain to Mar-
quis of Bath. — Rev. H. Jenkins, to the Rectory of
Stanway, Essex. — Rev. P. Felix, to the Vicarage of
Easton Neston with Hulncote, Northampton.---
Rev. Dr. Barrow, to be Archdeacon of Nottingham.

—Rev. C. P. Law, to the Rectory of Northrepps,
Norfolk. — Rev. J. E. Commins, to the Vicarage of
North Shoebury, Essex — Rev. E. Walford, to the
Rectory of Dallinghoe, Suffolk — Right Rev. Dr.
W. Carey, to be Bishop of St. Asaph.—Right Rev.
Dr. C. Bethel!, to be Bishop of Exeter.--Rev. W.
Firth, to the Rectory of Letcombe Bassett, Berks.
- Rev. J. F. Jones, to the Rectory of Guernesney,
Monmouth.--Rey. C. Reynolds, to the Rectory of
Brandon Parva, Norfolk.— Rev. C. Mason, to the
Vicarage of Bramfield, Suffolk.— Rev. C. W. Eyre,
to the Rectory of Babworth, Notts.— Rev. J. D.
Ness, to the Vicarage of Morthoe, Devon. — Rev. J.
Rowlandson to the Perpetual Curacy of Mansergh,
Westmorland.

CHRONOLOGY, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, ETC.

CHRONOLOGY.

March 27. It transpired in the Court of Chancery
that there are in the kingdom upwards of 50.000
charities, of the annual value of about two millions,
not above one quarter of which is properly applied.
The public commissioners for investigating charities
have reported upon 20,000, and their expenses al-
ready exceed 200, 000?.

29. Motion negatived in the House of Commons
for abolishing the office of Lieut.-General of Ord-
nance*, although one of its late holders was absent
18 months, while holding it !

30. Motion negatived in the House of Commons
(98 against 46) for inquiry into the state of the land
revenues of the crown f .

* This office and the treasurership of the Navy
had been previously declared useless by the Finance
Committee.

t Mr. D. W. Harvey said his object was, that the
state and management of the Crown Lands should
become the subject of serious investigation, and
made conducive to the exigencies of the state. He
then entered into an elaborate and most comprehen-
sive view of the subject before a thin House ; and
in his progress he shewed that in the reign of that
great and good defender of the faith, Henry VHI.
this property amounted to 273 000?. He advanced
nothing upon this subject for which he hart not the
authority of history, and he held in his hand a
paper which proved his statement. The total
value of the Crown Lands, as he hart been able to
estimate them, now amounted to 17,865,200?., ex-
clusive of coal, tin, and copper mines, &c. &c. ! ! !
Mr. Hume supported the motion. In alluding
to its importance, he observed, that the other
night, when the question was only about 900?. the
House was crowded ; but now, when it amounted
to nearly 18 millions, no one thought it worth his
while to attend ! By the by, during the debate on

April 5. Motion carried in House of Commons
(115 against 07) for leave to bring in a bill to remove
the disabilities of such persons as were of the Jewish
persuasion !

The quarter's revenue made up to this day pre-
sents a decrease of 245,812?., and on the year
864,3497.

Common hall held at Guildhall pursuant to a re-
quisition signed by many of the livery, addressed to
the Lord Mayor, for the purpose of " taking into
consideration the present overwhelming distress
which pervades all ranks and classes of our fellow-
countrymen, excepting those who are annuitants,
those who receive fixed incomes, and those who live
upon the taxes ; and to devise the most effectual
means of checking the alarming progress of the
wide-spreading and devastating evil." When a pe-
tition to Parliament was unanimously voted, and
several resolutions entered into.*

the 900?. sinecures, Colonel Sibthorpe stated, by way
of contrast, " that he had submitted a memorial of
the strongest nature to Government with respect to
an» individual of unimpeached character, (Serjeant
Duncan Macdonald,) who was 84 years of age, had
served thirty years in the army, was now in a state
of blindness, and who applied for an addition of
only sixpence a day to his allowance; and what an-
swer did he receive? That no additional grant could
be afforded. And why ? Because this person had
been worn out in the public service ! ! ! Here were
two hon. gentlemen of noble descent, the sons of
lords, and members of a ministerial party, and they
got 900?. a-year for having done nothing.' .' .'"

* The principal speakers were Aldermen Wood,
Waithman, Thompson, and Mr. Hunt, who ad-
verted to the expensive nature of the wars of the
last reign of America and France, both undertaken
against liberty ; the first supported by the Bo'-rbons
against us, and the second supported by us for the
Bourbons, which wars, he said, had entailed upon

4H2

604

Chronology, Marriages, and Deaths.

[MAY,

Lord Ellenborough's Divorce Bill finally passed
the legislature, receiving by commission the king's
signature.*

April 12. A meeting took place at the London
Tavern for considering measures proposed by Mr.
Owen for the relief of the distress of the working
classes, and permanent improvement of society,
when several resolutions were passed for that pur-
pose, and for presenting a petition to Parliament, re-
commending its Reform as the most effectual re-
medy for the people's distress.

April 14. One culprit executed at the Old Bailey
for burglary.

April is. Bulletin issued by His Majesty's phy-
sicians stating he had had a bilious attack, accom-
panied by embarrassment in breathing. In con-
sequence the levee and drawing-room were put off.

April 15. Sessions commenced at the Old Bailey,
the cases for trial amounting to 390, of which 158
were females.

20. Document printed by order of the House of
Commons exhibiting the declared or real value of
all our exports from Great Britain and Ireland from
1815 to 1830, both inclusive, comprehending both
produce and manufactures.

Years.

Real Value

Years.

Real Value.

1815

43,447,373

1823

36,176,897

1816

49,653,245

1824

34,5*9^410

181T

40,328,940

1825

37,600,021

1818

40,349,235

1826

38,077,330

1819

45,180,150

1827

30,847,528

1820

34,252,251

1828

36,394,817

1821

35,569,077

1829

36,150,079

1822

35,823,127

1830

35,212,873

Total,

324,603,398

Total,

285,049,255

Decrease, 39,554,143

324,603,398

us our present distress, an irredeemable debt of about
one thousand millions, after having caused oceans
and rivers of blood to be spilt !

The following (which should have been in-
seited in our last) evinces part of the distress
which afflicts the metropolis. March 6. A general
meeting of the silkvveavers took place at Bethnal
Green, when it was resolved to petition Parlia-
ment on their present distressed state. The pe-
tition states, " that the operative silk-weavers,
or those employed in the silk manufacture of Eng-
land, amount altogether to upwards of 500.000
souls, who are now reduced to the greatest misery
and privation, either from the crowded state of the
workhouses, or from being obliged to subsist on the
trifling pittance allowed by their parishes, which is
not enough to purchase the common necessaries of
life!!" The petitioners attribute greatly their
mis' rable state to " the produce of foreigners, with
which they cannot compete while the country is
burdened by such an enormous weight of taxation !"
They therefore pray for the repeal of the duties on
malt, hops, beer, coals, candles, leather, and soap,
as the means cf rendering them some relief.

* The language used during the proceedings of
this filthy business, the accusations of indecency,
misinterpretation, and misrepresentation, by which
it was accomplished, obliges us to express our
regret, that the speaker should have so lamentably
neglected the duties of his office, and permitted such
language to go forth to the country, as uttered in
the House of Commons without explanation or
.ipology. — Observer. The following are Ihe spe-
cimens of this English legislative oratory. " He
lias no sense to understand evidence." — " I fling this
back as a monstrous lie on its contemptible au-
thors."— " His perversions of evidence arose from
the extraordinary formation of his mind." — " His
observation was very impertinent." — This is surely
plebeian, but it reminds us of the patrician phrase
« falne an hell!' uttered in the House of Lords by
the head of the Elitnborough family, (Heaven save
the mark !) then lord chief justice of the King's
Bench, although the present lord is merely a clerk
there, with a princely income arising thcrufrom ! .

23. Sessions terminated at the Old Bailey, when
27 culprits received sentence of death ; 125 were
transported, and 54 imprisoned.

MARRIAGES.

G. Wigram, esq., son of Sir R. Wigram, bart.,to
Fanny Bligh, niece to Marquis Londonderry and
Earl Darnley. — Horace Twiss, e&q., M.P., under
Secretary of State, nephew to Mrs. Siddons, to Mrs.
Greenwood. — Hon. Major Taylor, nephew to Lord
Chatham, to Lady Sarah O'Bryen, daughter to
Marquis Thomond.— At St. George's, Hanover
Square, Rev. E. H. B. Estcourt, son of T. B. Est-
court, esq., M-P., to Anne Elizabeth, daughter of
Sir J. Johnstone, bart — J. Arkwright, esq., to
Sarah, eldest daughter of Sir Hungerford Hoskyns,
bart — At Lord Tankerville's, Lady Emma Bennet,
to Viscount Fitzharris — At St. George's, Hanover
Square, Lord Henry Thynne, second son of Mar-
quis of Bath, to Harriet, daughter of A. Baring,
esq., M.P.

DEATHS.

At Litchfield, 74, Mary, relict of Rev. G. Parker,
rector of Addingley (Worcester), whose murder,
and the murder of his murderer, were under inves-
tigation at the last Worcester assizes. — Archdeacon
Eyne, 73 ; rector of Babworth, and Beelsby, canon
residentiary of York, prebend of Southwell, and
archdeacon of Nottingham ! ! !— Major Rennell, 88.
—Near Regent's Park, Miss A. M. S. Graves, niece
to Lord Saye and Sele.— At South Lytchet, Sir
Claude Scott, bart., 88.— At Vauxhall, T. Evance,
esq., 81, late Recorder of Kingston. — Miss E. G.
Lettsom, grand-child of Baron Garrow. — At North
Muir of Forfar, Peter Smith, 103. He was one of
those who were pressed in the year 1745, to assist in
conveying Prince Charles Edward's baggage, and was
a walking chronicle of the occurrences of those
times.— At Dublin. Anne, Countess of Ormende,
relict of John, late Earl of Ormende — At Brighton,
Lady Mary Anne Sotheby, wife of Admiral Sothe-

by In North Audley Street, Earl of Pomfret, 63.

At Whitehall, Louisa Mary, daughter of Lord Car-
rington.— In Wimpole Street, General Sir Hew Dal-
rymple, bart., 80.— At Fareham, Lieut.-Col. P. T.
Stanhope, eldest son of the late Admiral Stanhope.
At Bradninch, Rear-Admiral Pearse, 71.— At West
Frimstone, Mr. Mark Fostyn, aged 101. He was
coachman to Bishop Trevor, at the time he was
translated to the see of Durham, in 1752, and per-
fectly remembered the ancient ceremony which took
place upon Croft bridge, in presenting the faulchion
to the Bishop on his first entering the diocese. — At
Gredington, Peregrina, youngest daughter of Lord
Ken yon.

MARRIAGES ABROAD.
At Florence, Marquis Bocella, to Jane Dorothy,
daughter of the late Rev. H. Hamond.

DEATHS ABROAD.

Lately, at Chateauraix, Madame Bertrand, who,
with her husband, accompanied Napoleon Buona-
parte to St. Helena—At Cincinatti, Father Hill, of
the Catholic Church, brother of Lord Hill, and ne-
phew of the celebrated Rowland Hill. — At Carls-
ruhe, the Grand Duke of Baden. — At Boulogne,
Lady Homfrae.— At Baltimore, (U.S.) Sir Richard
Lyttleton Reynell, bart.— At Madeira, Stuart, son
of the late F. J. Jackson, esq., His Majesty's Minis-
ter Plenipotentiary at the Courts of Madrid, Vien-
na, and Berlin. — At Malta, Baron Schlippenback,
icaptaiu of the Russian frigate Alexandra-

1830.] [ 605 ]

MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES.

DURHAM.— An extraordinary carriage, which
travels at the rate of 12 miles an hour without horses
or steam, has been exhibited at Durham.

No less than 90 vessels were laid on for coal car-
goes at Stockton between the 1st and 20th of
• March.

A ewe, the property of Mr. Joseph Barker, of
Bearpark Lodge, near Durham, on the 28th of
March yeaned the unusual number of 4 strong
lambs.

The condition of the agricultural interest of the
county of Durham is at present most appalling. En-
tire districts of farmers and graziers are in a state of
ruin; bankruptcies, sales, ordistraints.are of almost
daily occurrence, spreading consternation and dis-
tress around. «

YORKSHIRE— Several families, amounting to
between 50 and 60 persons, from the Yorkshire
Wolds, passed through this city, this morning, on
their route to embark for America— York Courant,
April 20.

The rage for emigration, especially in the district
within 20 or 30 miles of this town, seems to be on
the increase. We understand that not less than 15
ships have been laid on, in this port, to take out
passengers, principally to Quebec, and that the pro-
prietors of every one calculate on a full cargo. We
heard it asserted, the other day, by a gentleman on
whose knowledge of these matters we can rely, that
already 4,400 applications for a passage across the
Atlantic had been made in Hull. Some of the ap-
plicants, we believe, have gone to Liverpool.— Hull

The Leeds petition for Retrenchment and Parlia-
mentary Reform has been signed by 13. 850 signal
tures.

A numerous Meeting was held, April 12, at Al-
mondbury Bank, for the purpose of taking into con-
sideration the propriety of forming a Political
Union, to correspond with that lately formed in
Birmingham, having for its object the Ideally ob-
taining a real Reform in the Commons' House of
Parliament. A declaration passed unanimously
(it described their sufferings, and is very distressing
even to peruse) and several resolutions were entered
into, and a plan for Reform, elicited by Mr. Wood*
was unanimously agreed to.

The assizes terminated April 10, after three
weeks unremitting attention and hard labour on
the part of the judges, juries, and counsel, 46
prisoners were recorded for death; 23 transported,
and several imprisoned. One trial in the Nisi Prius
Court took up 77 hours time, and gave great dis-
satisfaction, as it was an importation from Lancas-
ter, in the midst of the assizes, for the accommoda-
tion of his high mightiness the attorney-general.—
Leeds Intelligencer.

There were no less than 1 64 prisoners tried in the
criminal court at the Yorkshire assizes.

* " If they wanted Reform," said Mr. Wood, " in
his oninion they must not state any particular plan.
If they thought nothing less than Annual Parlia-
ments "and Universal Suffrage would do, they must
be content to go by themselves, as the majority of
the community would not go so far as that. He
contended that this county was not fully and fairly
represented, although it did semi 4 members to par-
liament, as 2 of them were what he might term
blanks, and the remaining 2 opposite blanks, and
they all knew that when 2 were taken from 2 there
remained nothing ! ! ! He would, therefore, advise
thorn to pass a resolution that they would support
a Union for an effectual Reform in Parliament, with-
out giving it any particular name."

The phenomenon of the aurora borealis was ob-
served at York on the loth April.

NORFOLK.— A meeting has been held at Yar-
mouth in the New-hall, for the purpose of petition-
ing Parliament for a further Reduction of Taxation,
and a Retrenchment in the Public Expenditure,
when a petition was unanimously agreed to*.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE.— At Ely assizes 6 prison-
ers received sentence of death ; one of them was a
boy only TEN years of age! ! ! He was found guilty
of breaking into a dwelling-house f.

The learned judge (Mr. Justice Storks), in his
charge to the grand jury, said he was happy to see
the amelioration of the criminal code proceeding
rapidly. We boasted of our ancestors, but when
the present race were mouldering in the dust poste-
rity would bless us for our labours and improve-
ments!!! It was exceedingly to be regretted that
crime was on the increase — there were many causes
for this state of things — education, unquestionably,
was a great blessing, but it was useless if not con-
nected with morality. The poor-box was formerly
approached with shame and reluctance; this feeling
was now completely altered, he feared never to be
restored ! ! ! All should endeavour to restore the
poor man to his former station in society ! ! !

At the Cambridge assizes, Mr. Hatfield, the pub-
lisher of the Huntingdon Gazette, was tried on a
criminal information for an alleged libel on Mr. G.
F. Maule, solicitor and town-clerk of Huntingdon.
Mr. Pryme made an able defence for Mr. Hatfield ;
and the jury, after retiring for a quarter -of an hour,
brought in a verdict of not guilty ; which was fol-
lowed by loud and long-continued cheering ! ! !

* The petition states " That as Merchants, Ship-
owners, Ship-builders, Fish-curers, and Tradesmen,
your Petitioners are labouring under heavy and un-
exampled difficulties, from which their best exer-
tions and greatest industry seem incapable of reliev-
ing them. The property of your petitioners is de-
teriorating with fearful rapidity, and bankruptcies,
insolvencies, and more private arrangements with
their debtors are sweeping away those very capitals
on which, as traders, they depend; whilst those of
your petitioners who are Seamen. Artisans, and Me-
chanics, in consequence of the great want of em-
ployment, are compelled to submit to privations and
expedients as distressing as they are humiliating.
Taxation in all its pervading influence, its harassing
enactments, its absorbing effects, and the means, it
affords of overwhelming patronage, accompanied by
the monopolies and restrictions which it encourages
and supports, your petitioners believe to be the
great cause of their distresses. Taxation is the price
which society pays for government, and that go-
vernment must be the best which preserves the so-
cial order, protects the common weal, and provides
for the equitable payment of the public creditor at
the least possible price. Your Petitioners therefore
humbly, but most decidedly and firmly pray, and
fully and confidently expect that your Honourable
House will forthwith reduce to its lowest practica-
ble expence every department of Government from
the highest to the lowest, "abolish all Monopolies
and Exclusive Privileges, and, as the intended
result, effect such a Reduction of Taxation as
shall be commensurate to the great need, the just
expectations, and the undoubted right of your peti-
tioners.

t The boy was in tears during the trial, and it
was understood that he has been several times in
want of food and the common necessaries of life,
from the inattention of his family. The learned
judge stronely condemned the brutal and inhuman
treatment the boy had experienced from his father,
and said he should be happy to forward any com-
munication so as to place him out of the reach of
such an unnatural monster. At present the only
course was to record sentence of death, the boy
having committed a capital crime.

606 Provincial Occurrences : Northumberland, Herefordshire, $

NORTHUMBERLAND.— The Newcastle and
Carlisle rail-road will shortly be commenced. Mr.
Giles, the engineer engaged to conduct the under-
taking, is at present in the north.

HEREFORDSHIRE.— Sentence of death was re-
corded against 10 prisoners at these assizes; 3 were
transported, and 22 awarded to imprisonment.

HAMPSHIRE.— A petition to Parliament has
been voted at a meeting held at Southampton rela-
tive to negro emancipation. It was also proposed
to indemnify the West India landholders against the
loss arising from the emancipation of their slaves. —
Hampshire Telegraph, April 12.

The new cattle-market commenced at Botley
under the most favourable auspices. It is to be held
every fortnight on the alternate Monday with the
cattle-market at Fareham.

The number of children belonging to the Ports-
mouth Sunday schools, nearly 5000, attended their
annual sermon on Good Friday. In the Portsmouth
parish account for last year there is a curious item
of 51. 5s. paid to the Rector for tythes on the Poor
House Garden !— Hampshire Telegraph.

HUNTINGDONSHIRE. — A county meeting
has been held at the Court House in Huntingdon,
to consider the propriety of petitioning Parliament
for the total repeal of the malt tax, which was
unanimously agreed to, after a variety of speeches
made upon the occasion.*

CHESHIRE.— A public meeting of the bankers,
merchants, tradesmen, and other inhabitants of
Chester, was held at the Exchange, April 8, pur-
suant to a requisition to the mayor, numerously
and respectably signed, to consider the propriety of
petitioning both Houses of Parliament against that
partof the Attorney General's Bill, by which it is in-
tended to destroy not only the. jurisdiction of the
Court of Session of the County Palatine of Chester,
but also to deprive the County of the City of Chester
of its local courts, when several resolutions were
entered into, and a petition unanimously voted to
parliament. f — Chester Chronicle .

15 prisoners were recorded for death at the assizes
and sessions for this county and city, besides several
transported and imprisoned; the melancholy pic-
ture of the state of crime exhibited in the calendar-
excited feelings of the deepest regret both in the
judge and recorder, and is particularly alluded to in
the local press.

* One of the speakers, Mr. Day of St. Ives, said
" that by rigid economy, and the abolition of sine-
cures, a considerable reduction might take place.
They now asked for what they were prepared to
prove could be done by lopping off pensions ; there
was the Duke of Manchester receiving 4.000/. a
year for doing little more than seclude himself in
Kimholton Castle. Let any person take up the Red
Book, and read what is there detailed, and then put
his hand on his heart and say, if he can, that it is
impossible for ministers to" repeal taxes!" — Cam-
bridge Chronicle.

•f Mr. Granville, having given the matter his best
consideration, said, he could not but regard that
part of the bill , which proposed the abolition of the
local courts of the County Palatine and of the City
of Chester, not as a i eformation, but as a change of
the most objectionable and injurious tendency to
the inhabitants of those places; inasmuch as they
would be thereby deprived of the means of obtain-
ing cheap and speedy justice at their own doors — an
advantage which ought rather to be extended to
every part of this kingdom than taken away from
any portion of it! ! !

SHROPSHIRE.— At the Lent assizes for this
county 7 prisoners received sentence of death; 8
were transported, and a few imprisoned.

SOMERSETSHIRE.— At these assizes 26 pri-
soners received sentence of death, 8 were ordered to
be transported, and about 30 imprisoned.

DEVONSHIRE — By the last statement of the
Devon and Exeter Savings' Bank, it appears that
1.262.996/. 15*. id. have been received since its ori-
ginal institution ; and that the total in-payments
made, amounts to 5S8.254/. 15*. 7d., so that the sum
of 675,776/. 19*. 3d- remains in hand. The number
of accounts opened, 31,285, and the number of de-
posits received 114,513.

At the last Report published of the state of the
Devonport Union Savings' Bank, the sum paid in by
5, 188 depositors, since its commencement, amounted
to 288,134?. 14*., out of which payments have been
made of the sum of 46,4677. 1'6*. sd. ; remaining ba-
lance 243, 314?. 9*. 8d.

WORCESTERSHIRE.— The petition in the
course of signature at Worcester relative to the
revisal of the criminal laws, states that on an
average of 7 years ending with 1826, 75 executions
took place annually in England and Wales, and the
capital convictions to 1003 ! *

WARWICKSHIRE.— The assizes for this county
were heavy and laborious, and the number of pri-
soners was about 230 ! sixty-nine of whom received
sentence of death .'!! Between 40 and 50 were con-
signed to various periods of transportation. An
analysis of the calendar exhibits in a melancholy
point of view the prevalence of juvenile delin-
quency ; of the total number of prisoners, one was
of the tender age of twelve !.'.' 27 from 12 to 1 5 ! 81
from 16 to 20 ! 60 from 21 to 25 ! 24 from 26 to 30 ;
and about 40 from 31 to 52 and upwards f.

* " Sanguinary law's are a bad system of the dis-
tempsr of any state," says Blackstone; and for
the wisdom of our ancestors, in making lots of acts
of Parliament, some idea may be formed by com-
paring theimportant changes that have taken place
in the statute law of the realm, from the numner of
statutes that have been cither wholly or partly re-
pealed within the last seven years (from 4th to 10th
Goo. IV. inclusive). It appears that during the
above period, 1,126 Acts of Parliament have been
wholly, a-»d 443 partly, repealed, making a total of
1.569 : of these, 1,344 relate to the empire at large,
and 225 solely to Ireland ! ! ! Mr. Peel's reform re-
lative to forgery will reduce 360 acts to 10, and that
in the customs only ! ! !

t Sixty-nine prisoners cast for death in one county,
and that too the midland county of this once boasted
humane and civilized England ! Well may foreign-
ers taunt us for our sanguinary code, for we doubt
whether there are as many criminals at present lying
under sentence of death in the whole of continental
Europe, as there are in three of our counties, to say
nothing on the horror of having a few of them un-
der the tender age of twelve ! ! ! Most of the cul-
prits tried at Warwick are from Birmingham, many
of whom have been lingering in prison, waiting
their six months day of trial. Whatever might have
been the arrangements of our tvise ancestors during
the barbarous period of the feudal system, surely
the great population, overwhelming taxation, and
civilization of these latter times, entitle that town to
a more convenient, cheap, and speed?/ dispensation of
justice, and its consequent extirpation of crime,
"which may be also mightily assisted," as Dr.
Johnson remarks, " by looking out upon the Intel-
lectual World, and extending the power of Learning
over regions yet undisciplined ; or by surveying
more exactly our ancient dominions, and driving
ignorance from the retreats where she skulks unde-
tected and undisturbed."

1830.] Gloucestershire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Cornwall, fyc. 607

A memorial from the Coventry Blue Club, signed
by upwards of 1000 individuals, has been transmitted
to R. E. Heathcote, Esq., M.P., one of the mem-
bers for that city, expressing in the most unqualified
terms their disapprobation of his public conduct,
and calling upon him "forthwith to resign the re-
presentation of the city, in order to afford them an
opportunity to elect a member that is willing and
has time to attend to their interests ! ! ! !" In reply
to this communication, Mr. Heathcote, under date
of April 4, says—" I have no intention of relinquish-
ing my seat for Coventry previously to a dissolution
of Parliament, nor any desire to occupy it one day
afterwards \ \ \ '."—Aria's Birmingham Gazette.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE.— At the annual meeting
of the directors of the Bristol Savings' Bank, it ap-
pears by their last report that they had received from
its establishment the sum of 280,3467. 16s. lid., de-
posited by 6270 members,10 charities, and 90 friendly
societies.

A meeting has been held at Rodborough of the
woollen manufacturers, when it was resolved to
petition parliament against the system of paying
workmen by way of truck.

At the county assizes 56 prisoners were recorded
for death, 20 were transported, and 60 were ordered
to be imprisoned.

LANCASHIRE.— At a public meeting of the in-
habitants of the towns of Great and Little Bolton,
held for the purpose of taking into consideration the
present distressed state of the country, and presided
by J. Livesey, esq. boroughreeve, several resolu-
tions were entered into, and a Political Union
formed of the middle and labouring classes to ac-
complish a Reform in the Commons House of Par-
liament as the only means of eradicating the various
evils with which the country is assailed. The re-
solutions stated the crippled state of the industrious
part of the people by enormous taxes brought on by
a false and fatal ambition ; the enormous revenues
of the Church, particularly the Tythes, the paro-
chial Aristocracies, &c. &c

At Lancaster assizes, Sir J. A. Park said to the
grand jury : " These are frightful times ! Long as
I have been connected with this circuit as a barris-
ter and a judge, I have never seen a calendar stained
with crimes of such enormity." His lordship's ob-
servation is equally applicable to the Yorkshire
calendar for the late assizes. Public distress is suf-
ficient to account for robberies and certain irregu-
larities, but not for the heavy offences which we
have had to record — Macclesjield Courier.

A public meeting had been held at Manchester for
the purpose of taking into consideration the best
means to be adopted for obtaining from Parliament
a general act for the regulation of the hours of labour
of young persons employed in cotton, woollen, and
other factories where children are employed and ma-
chinery used, when several resolutions were passed,
and a petitionfounded thereon unanimously voted to
both Houses of Parliament.

We stated, a few weeks ago, that the number of
persons who were emigrating to the western world
was as great during the present as it had been during
the same period of the past year. We find, on in-
quiry, that the number is daily increasing, and that
there is every probability that it will this year ex-
ceed considerably the number of emigrations during
the last. The emigrants are principally persons
who have been engaged in agricultural pursuits, and
the bulk of them comes from the inland counties-
They are all decently attired, and neither they nor

their families exhibit marked traces of having un-
dergone the severity of distress. Many of them
seem to have been small farmers. Several parties
of emigrants have come to Liverpool in waggons
and covered carts their own property. The stream
of emigration is still towards the United States. —
Liverpool Albion.

LINCOLNSHIRE.— From every part of Lin-
colnshire, families are preparing to emigrate. More
than loo individuals, chiefly middle-aged farmers
and industrious mechanics with small capitals, will
leave Boston during the next week, in two small
vessels termed lighters, which have been hired by
them to convey themselves and goods, by canals, to
Liverpool, where they purpose embarking for the
United States— Lincoln Mercury, April 2.

CORNWALL. — At these assizes 5 prisoners re-
ceived sentence of death, and a few were imprisoned.

A meeting has been held at Truro of merchants
and others interested in the mines of this county,
when it was resolved to present a Memorial to His
Majesty's Government, claiming its protection from
the inroads the smelting of Foreign Copper Ores
is making against their property.*

WALES.— At the Radnor, Monmouth, Cardi-
gan, Denbigh, and Flintshire Sessions, the civil
business was very light, sentence of death being re-
corded only against 2 culprits.

A public meeting, called by the Vicar and about
40 of the principal inhabitants of the populous and
important parish of Holy well, combining, as it does ,
in a remarkable degree, the agricultural, the manu-
facturing, the mining, and trading interests, was
held at that town, to petition the legislature on the
present general distress which presses with peculiar
severity on that district, when 9 resolutions were
carried by acclamation, stating the very deplorable
condition of the population there, caused by an
overwhelming taxation, raised to pay the expenses
of long and destructive wars, &c. &c. Petitions to
both Houses of Parliament were passed, founded on
the resolutions; and the language uttered at this
meeting " was," as the Chester Chronicle informs
us, "that of speaking out on the present state of
the country, and the causes of it! ! !"

* The resolutions state, that the mines of Corn-
wall are calculated to employ between 80 and JJO.OOO
souls, being about one- third of its population. That
the Customs Acts of 1827 and 28, which first
permitted Foreign Copper Ores to be smelted in
England, threaten rapidly to destroy those advan-
tages, which not only attach provincially to Corn-
wall and Devonshire, Wales and Ireland, but spread
themselves generally and extensively throughout the
kingdom, which insure to the British Navy, in peace
or war, a never failing and cheap supply of metal,
now become essential to its perfection and durabi-
lity, and thus form so valuables part of our inter-
nal resources and security. That by the importation
of even a small portion of such copper ores as are
known to be raising in South America, and as have
been of late actually sold in the British Market,
many of the mines would be suddenly and irretriev-
ably crushed — thousands of industrious families
would be thrown upon their parishes, and a degree
of distress occasioned, commercially and agricul-
turally, which it would be then as impossible to
prevent as it is now appalling to contemplate. That
by the admission of Foreign Smelter only a few years
ago, the Cornish Mines depending upon that ar-
ticle were suddenly and at once extinguished, much
of their ores lying now unsaleable at the price of
raising them, without any benefit having accrued,
so far as can be ascertained, to British Interests—
this fact proving that the present alarm, with re-
spect to Foreign Copper, is founded not only upon
the best information, but upon actual experience.

Provincial Occurrences: Monmouthshire, Ireland, fyc. [MAY,

A meeting has been held at Priesteign of the
freeholders of Radnor, when a petition to Parlia-
ment was resolved on, for adhering " to the old
judicial constitution," with such improvements as
may he found absolutely necessary.

It is with the greatest regret that we have to com-
municate the particulars of one of the most fatal
shipwrecks that has occurred on the coast of this
country for several years. On Friday night, April
16, the Newry, captain Crosbie, from the port Of
Newry, bound for Quebec, with about 400 passen-
gers on board, ran on the rocks at Portinclineon,
near Bardsey, in Caernarvon bay, and was dashed
to pieces in a few hours, about 70 perishing in the
wreck ! A considerable part of them were principally
Irish emigrants, and the captain, with the crew, and
about half the passengers, succeeded in reaching the
shore, and are at Caernarvon, where they have been
treated with the greatest kindness by the inhabitants.

MONMOUTHSHIRE.— Sentence of death was
recorded against 5 prisoners at these assizes ; 5 were
transported, and 8 imprisoned for various periods.*

IRELAND.— Our quays are crowded with emi.
grants from this and th« adjoining counties.—
Several ships have obtained their full compliment
of passengers, and only wait a favourable wind to
leave our shores. At present, Newfoundland seems
to be more in favour with the emigrants, as a place
of settlement, than the Canadas, the majority em-
barking for St. John's, where they expect more im-
mediate employment on landing than they would
find in Canada, and whence they may afterwards, if
disposed, pass over to New Brunswick with great
facility. We observe a great number of females
amongst the emigrants.

While on the subject of emigration, we cannot
shut our eyes to the fact of the great decline of mer-
cantile exports from WaterfoFd to Newfoundland,
which previous to the baneful system of Free Trade
were considerable, and a source of extensive em-
ployment and profit to our tradesmen and mer-
chants. Formerly the greater part of the pork,
butter, flour, &c. consumed in that island, was the
produce of this country, but of late, these articles
are obtained from Russia,Hamburgh, America, and
elsewhere, on terms so low, that our merchants can-
not compete with them ; and the consequence has
been that in this city alone, several mercantile
houses have given up the trade altogether, whilst
those that remain engaged in it, do comparatively
nothing.

The tide of emigration to America from this part
of the country is setting in very strong just now,

and many families are embarking at this port

Limerick Chronicle,

A " Society of the Friends of Ireland of all religi-
*us Denominations," has been recently established
in Dublin, of which Daniel O'Connell is chairman.
The Committee have made their Report in 25 arti-

* At these Assizes, a girl, about ten i/ears of age,
was tried fot stealing coals of the value of one far-
thing!!! The culprit was of such diminutive
stature, that the governor ofths gaol had to hold
her up in his arms, that the Court and Jury might
have a view of her while she pleaded to the indict-
ment ! ! ! Her counsel took an objection to the
prosecution, on the gronnd that she was of that
tender age from which a want of guilty knowledge
was to be inferred; but the Judge was of opinion
that the presence or absence of guilty knowledge
was a question for the consideration of the Jury.
The Jury accordingly exercised their judgment on .
the case, and returned a verdict o? " Not
Guilty !! ."'

cles, stating in the first and last, " to terminate party
feuds — to extinguish religious animosities— to bury
in perpetual oblivion all past injuries, insults, and
offences — to extend harmony and conciliation
throughout the land, and to combine Irishmen of
every class and creed in mutual benevolence and
fraternal affection." Mr. Lawless read his petition
for the repeal of the Union, which was referred to
the committee to report thereon, and Mr. O'Connell
moved that persons paying a pound should be mem-
bers of the society, and that clergymen of all rcli-
gious persuasions should bememberswithoutpaying
any subscription.

SCOTLAND.— The Report of the Select Com-'
mittee on the Improvement of the Northern Roads
has been recently published; it recommends the ap-
pointment of a commission to carry this important
object into effect. It appears, that Mr. Telford has
given it as his opinion, drawn chiefly from surveys
already made, that a saving of 30 miles may be
made in the road between London and Edinburgh,
viz. 10 between London and Newark, (j between
Newark and Morpeth, and 14 between Morpeth and
Edinburgh ; so that the whole distance would be re-
duced from 399 to 369 miles.

The ships Trusty and Neptune sailed on Thurs-
day for Canada; the latter vessel with 150 emigrants,
wholly mechanics and agriculturists. Numerous
groups of friends and relatives accompanied the
ships to the end of the pier, and a long deeply felt
farewell was exchanged when the last rope was let
go that linked them to Caledonia ! — North Briton,
April 14.

The quays of Greenock and Port-Glasgow pre-
sented an unusual bustle during the last week,
by the arrival and embarkation of emigrants from
all parts of the country, to various vessels about to
sail for America. The Corsair was to sail this day.
Yesterday the Cherub sailed for Montreal , with a
few wealthy agricultural and commercial emigrants,
who, we hear, have taken a considerable sum of
money with them to their adopted country. The
Earl of Dalhousie, also bound for Montreal, was
to sail this day, and she also takes a few passengers.
The Cassandra, from Port Glasgow for New York,
is to sail on Tuesday, with, we learn, about 150 pas-
sengers.— Glasgow Chronicle.

About 32 families, almost all of the Roman Ca-
tholic persuasion, were to sail on Thursday .weather
permitting, from Greenock for Prince Edward's
Island, under the superintendance of Mr. M'Don-
nell, assistant clergyman in the Catholic chapel of
Glasgow. The greater part of them belong to Glas-
gow and vicinity; but a few of them are natives of
Ireland and the Western Isles. Many of them have
left very comfortable situationsin this country, allur-
ed by the bright prospects held out to them by their
spiritual guide. They are by no means the poorest
part of our Catholic population, as all of them were
able to pay their own passage, and the most needy
had a surplus, while many of them have taken con-
siderable sums of money. One farmer from Ireland
actually sold his patrimony, for which he obtained
TOO/., and joined the expedition. — Caledonian Mer-
cury.

The fever for emigration is at present raging at
its height in the county of Sutherland, and the
wilds of Upper Canada are this year the chosen
scene for voluntary exile. Vessels have been
freighted to sail about the end of May, and no less
than three hundred adults (besides children) have
already registered their names as passengers. — In-
verness Courier.

THE

MONTHLY MAGAZINE

OP
POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND THE BELLES LETTRES.

VOL. IX.] JUNE, 1830. [No. 54.

PETITION TO THE KING OF THE BEGGARS !

HEAR your lovers, first of princes ;

Men whose conscience never winces ;
Hear your kinsmen, last of kings.

Each with fifty stars and strings :

We 're no Hackballs nor McGregors ;

We 're your Teutchsland high blood beggars.

Hear your royal Cobourg brothers,

Hear your house's hundred mothers ;
Hear your twice a hundred cousins,

Hear their mistresses by dozens ;

Hear us while you have an ear,

Hear the royal " near and dear."

Now that you have touch'd John Bull ;

Blockhead, when his purse is full,
Thinking 'twill be never empty,

Not a sixpence left to tempt ye ;

Just six hundred thousand pounds

Made your own on "public grounds."

Sixty tftbusand touch'd for Claremont,

Rearing gooseberries and spear-mint;
Fifty thousand more for spoons,

Fifty more for pantaloons,

Fifty more for cab and carriage,

Handsome pay, we own, for marriage !

True, the nation boutiquiere

Gave thee the eternal sneer ;
True, its scribblers, Heaven confound them !

Spatter' d endless ink around them ;

True, the Press (the devil's invention !)

Talked of slicing down your pension.
M.M. New Series.— Vol. IX. No. 54. 4 I

610 Loyal Address of the King of the Beggars.

True, their orators, 'od rot them !

Brawling in their House of Gotham ;

Each place-hunting for himself,

Longed to put you on the shelf:
Theirs the sting, but yours the honey,
Still you pocketed the money.

Asses, could they think our line
Born on shopkeepers to shine ?

Cobourg blood, and Cobourg grace
Lavished on the Cheapside race ;
Tribe of tinkers, tailors, tanners,
Gratis polished by our manners !

Phrenix of the Cobourg blood,

Ages older than the flood !
Statesman, warrior, saint and sage,

Filling Europe's broadest page ;

Expectation's cabbage rose,

List to what your house propose.

If your Highness steers for Greece,
Bringing back the golden fleece.

Shall the rascal Capitani

Think their Solomon a zany ?

Shall they see you waste your guineas,

Like the mob of English ninnies ?

Brother, hear thy beggar band !

From our native plains of sand,
From our vinegar and meal,

Hard to buy, but sweet to steal ;

Ship our nakedness to Greece,

We 're the lambs who want the Fleece.

Here we 're ready, man and wife,

To be pension'd for our life ;
Riding through the English million,

Every man his own postilion ;

Giving loyalty the swing,

Beggars, round the beggars' king f

But, if Lord Field-Marshal Nitre

Finds that you can bite the biter,

And on English ground you stay ;
Pop us on the Civil List ;
There a million won't be miss'd —
So your House shall ever pray, —

&c. &c. £c.

1830.] [ 611 ]

LORD MOUNTCASHEL AND THE CHURCH.

THE Earl of Mountcashel is an enthusiast; probably an honest man —
certainly a rash one,, and as certainly plunging into discussions beyond
his depth. The truth is, that having felt disgust at the conduct of in-
dividuals in the diocese in which he lives, he has expanded his disgust
over the whole Irish church — has determined to believe that a fac-simile
of the Bishop of Cork presides over every diocese in Ireland, and that
an honourable Tom St. Lawrence revels in pluralities in every corner of
the land. Disgust will do much with a man of strong feelings ; and we
should not have been surprised to hear Lord Mountcashel pouring out a
stream of indignation on the state of things directly within his view.
But he should have deliberately examined the general aspect of the
church, have balanced the characters of the active, the learned, and the
sincere against his prepossessions, have ascertained how much of the
existing evil was to be attributed to the past legislative corruption ;
and, as a conclusion, decided that the Irish church was an important
'agent of good to the people. If the Irish church were to be overthrown,
the Irish state would follow it. If the influence which the Protestant
clergy exercise upon the civilization of the country were to be with-
drawn, three- fourths of Ireland would degenerate into barbarism; arid
if the connexion which their presence upholds between the Irish feeling
and English government were to be dissolved, the islands would be di-
vided in heart from that hour; Ireland would cease to be a part of the
British empire. A rebellion would break the bond ; followed by a re-
volution which would set up a local tyranny ; followed by a war, in
which Ireland would be the field of battle.

For what horrors the land must be prepared that can contemplate
such a struggle. What utter devastation of the present means and fu-
ture powers of Ireland must be made in the course of a struggle between
the mad rebellion of the people and the angry vengeance of England ;
how tremendously the evil must be aggravated by the interference of
popish Europe, an interference which would undoubtedly be urged with
all the subtlety of Jesuitism, and all the fury of bigotry ! The island
must be covered with ruin ; population must perish ; production must
be extinguished over the face of the land ; and unless England should
be overborne and crushed by the united strength of European popery,
Ireland must be held to her allegiance only by the lash and the chain.

We can feel no surprise that the church establishment should be made
the theme of that multitude of silly and ignorant disputers, who habitually
molest society. A blockhead who will argue though he cannot reason,
and will talk though he cannot learn, is among the worst nuisances of
civilized life. This haranguer is often some unlucky and obscure strug-
gler in the lower walks of some profession ; he sees himself surpassed
on all sides, and he salves his wounded vanity by abuse of all existing
things. He feels himself scorned in the general intercourses of intelli-
gent society, and he tries to revenge the scorn by reptile hatred of all
that dignifies public and private life. In default of all other know-
ledge, he takes up the miserable common-places of politics. He is the
radical. In the most repulsive ignorance of divine things, he takes up
the miserable common-places against religion ; hunting after the mean-
est sources of gain, he is outrageous at the established revenues of every

412

612 Lord Moitnlcashcl and the Church. £ JUNE,

institution alike in church and state ; and as nothing but an utter sub-
version of the country can give him a chance of lucre, he clamours for
that subversion as the only chance of safety or subsistence to the nation.

With men of this class, it is but waste of words to argue. Their vul-
garity, virulence, and folly, are beyond all reasoning ; they must be left
to the natural career of rebellion and atheism, fortunate only if their
cowardice prevents them from putting their theories into act, and con-
tents them with poisoning the minds of fools without bringing themselves
to the scaffold by the attempt to realize their profligate principles. But
to those who desire to judge of things upon their merits, we say that
the grounds for advocating an establishment of religion are as strong as
those for advocating a civil government.

Christianity is a system of the highest truths essential to the highest
purposes of man individually and generally. It retains the most dis-
turbing feelings of our nature in the path of duty. It rewards and ani-
mates the noblest labours and trials of personal and public virtue. It
diffuses cheerfulness through the deepest scenes of an anxious life. It
elevates the human mind in the lowest ranks of the social system. It en-
nobles human nature by giving it the noblest of all motives, the love and
honour of a being who comprehends within himself all grandeur, power,
virtue and wisdom. It raises the humblest to the level of the loftiest,
by that holy equality which makes no distinction beyond the grave, but
the distinction of virtue. It girds us up for the most sublime sacrifices
in the cause of man, by displaying to us the secure happiness of a life
exhausted in the service of God and man; the nothingness of those
human honours which may be earned by successful crime; and the solid
and imperishable glory of that praise which comes from the Eternal
Source of glory.

But all knowledge requires a teacher, and all knowledge that is to be
permanent must be sustained by a succession of teachers. If religion is
to be impressed upon the people, it must be by men appointed and edu-
cated for the purpose of impressing it. There must be a clergy. But
if the religion of a nation is to be a fixed system of principles, not a
vague compilation of fugitive theories, there must be some standard,
there must be some acknowledged and authentic form of doctrine, there
must be something beyond the rambling fancy of every half-madman,
who undertakes to lead the popular mind. We must not see in the
pulpit to-day a man who contradicts every syllable said by the man of
yesterday, and is as sure to have his doctrine cast out before the man of
to-morrow. There must thus be a summary of belief: a liturgy, places of
worship, men entitled to preserve the decorum of that worship, to sus-
tain its offices, to propagate its truths, and those men must be kept up
in a continued succession, or the whole falls to the ground. But to keep
up this succession, there must be some settled inducement for families to
devote their sons to the church, some remuneration for the expense of
education, some security that the remuneration will not fail if the service
be done. Thus we must have a clergy, colleges for their instruction,
livings for their support, and a permanent right to be paid by their share
of the general possessions of society.

If we will have our children initiated into Christianity by the rite com-
manded by its Divine Teacher ; or if we will make the union of the sexes
the sacred bond that it must be made, to avoid the most fatal evils to the
human race ; we must have baptisms and marriages, and men to perform

1830.] Lord Mountcashel and the Church. 613

them both. If we would pay the natural respect to the dead, whom we
honoured and loved in life ; or if we look upon the body, that is yet to
rise and be glorified, as worthy of more consideration than the body of a
wild beast, we must have men to perform the decent ceremonial of the
grave. For all those offices, and for many more than those, we must
have a clergy.

But the outcry of the radical and the atheist is, that the clergy have
usurped too large a portion of the property of the state ; that their pay-
ment is injurious to public prosperity ; that the establishment is nothing
more than a ponderous contrivance to pamper indolence ; and that the
state, as having given the property, has a right to modify, to diminish, or
take it away altogether. Every one of those assertions is a prejudice, an
error, or an absurdity.

The revenues of the establishment are not paid by the people. The title
of the establishment to its lands and revenues is older than that of any
other institution in the empire. Its revenues were not taken from any
man's estate, for they have subsisted for ages previous to the existence of
that estate ; and they have existed by the most natural and intelligible of
all rights, the right of private ownership to dispose of its property. This
right is more sacred than the right of the nation to dispose of property,
because that process implies violence, or revolution ; and what one revolu-
tion may do, another may be entitled to undo. It is more sacred than
the right of kings to confer property, because that right may often be the
mere work of tyranny. Thus the right of the church to its possessions is
the most ancient, simple, and solid of all — the right of the individual who
has acquired property, to dispose of it according to his own good will.

The first edifice assigned for Christianity in England was in Canter-
bury, the gift of Ethelbert, the king of Kent, in the sixth century. As the
British people were then heathens, the priests who had come with Austin
travelled through Ethelbert' s kingdom, preaching Christianity. The first
assemblages of their converts were in private houses. When those assem-
blages became too numerous for meetings in the cottages of those semi-
barbarians ; regular, though rude, places of worship, called prayer-houses,
or oratories, were appointed for the service. Still, the service was only
occasional ; the preacher was an itinerant missionary ; and the population
was, in a great measure, deprived of religious instruction.

But Christianity, by the labours of those zealous and saintly men, made
rapid progress. The Saxon chieftains were successively led to listen to
Divine truth, and were naturally urged to provide for the religious in-
struction of their vassals. The oratories were few and mean ; the mother
church, or cathedral, was distant ; and they erected churches on their
own lands, and fixed a permanent minister of religion beside the church,
for the perpetual maintenance of its worship ; endowing him generally
with a portion of land, and besides, in all instances, with that portion of the
products of the estate, which we now call tithes. This was the state of
church property before the Conquest.

The Gorman invasion extended the system of granting land to the
great officers and feudatories of the crown ; and they, in their turn,
repaid the services of their chief retainers by minor grants. A vast
number of those possessors, each desiring to have for his vassals and te-
nantry the same advantages of church service, and the residence of a
clergyman upon his estate, which existed in the case of the higher lords
of the soil, erected churches, and placed clergy upon their property.

614 Lord Mountcashcl and the Church. Q!UNE,

Thus arose the general distribution of livings and churches. The bound-
aries of the estate being in general the boundary of the parish, and the
services of the priest being appropriated to the particular estate, and of
course paid out of the proceeds of the property settled for his main-
tenance by the owner. It is impossible that any right can be more
natural or justifiable than that of a maintenance derived in this manner.
It was not forced from the owner : it was not taken from either the pro-
perty of the public nor of any unwilling individual. The lord of the estate
felt the necessity for having religious service on his estate ; to have that
advantage he set apart a regular salary for its provision ; and to continue
that advantage to his posterity, he made that provision permanent to all
time.

That this was the origin of tithes and glebes is unquestionable. In a
number of instances, the documents under the seal of the feudal lord are
extant; in some instances establishing the payment of the priest by his own
authority ; in other, joining the seals of his immediate heirs, when they
happened to have any peculiar power over the disposal of the lands. Sel-
tlen's History of Tithes abounds with evidences of this style of distri-
bution.

The seizure of the church property by Henry VIII. was the act of a
notorious tyrant, and cannot justify any interference with property of any
kind. But even that tyrannical seizure had a pretext which can be offered
no longer. In the perpetual civil wars of England, the parish clergy
had been, in a great measure, driven to take refuge in the monasteries,
which were then places not only of great opulence, protected by the pre-
valent superstition of the time, and under the powerful sanction of the
papacy, but were in general places of considerable strength. The splen-
dour, the luxury, the learned leisure, the popular veneration, the easy
and social life, and the actual personal safety of those magnificent com-
munities, forming an irresistible contrast with the seclusion, the narrow
means, the rude association, and the personal insecurity of life and
property, gradually made the convent the permanent refuge of the secu-
lar priesthood. In return, they contributed their income to the support
of the convent. The tithes and glebe, in process of a few generations,
thus became the property of the convent; the service of the parish
churches being almost wholly supplied by priests sent from the con-
ventual body, as its agents, and thence named vicars; for whose support
a certain smaller portion of the tithes was allotted, thence called vicarial;
the original tithes or Great Tithes, with the glebe, or actual lands at-
tached to the priests' house, being the property of the convent. This
abuse rapidly grew excessive, in the disturbances and superstitions of
the long interval between the Conquest and the Reformation. The cru-
sades, and the prodigal and profligate lives of the great barons, who ex-
pected, by a death-bed legacy to the convent, to atone for a life of vio-
lence ; augmented the convent lands, until they were computed to amount
to a third of the island. An abuse of this magnitude undoubtedly called
for a remedy ; and Henry's passion for plunder of every kind broke up
the convent estates. But the measure had the taint of tyranny. The
rightful and ancient property essential to the religious education of the
people, the revenues for popular instruction, the funds for the poor, and
the lands of hospitals, were all involved in the fate of the ill-gotten gains of
the convent. The country was but little enriched by the change; for the
church-lands were given to the profligate retainers of the court ; and that

]830.] Lord Mountcashel and the Church. 615

soil, which, under the convents, had been in general carefully cultivated,
and rendered productive by all the knowledge of the only Englishmen
who travelled or had any valuable intercourse with foreign countries ;
was, in a multitude of instances, left to the decay natural in the hands of
rude retainers, or giddy proprietors, to whom the court was the centre of
preferment and pleasure.

Thus arose the " impropriate" livings, or parish benefices, given into
the hands of laymen, which are now actual estates.

A comparatively small portion of the old livings were restored to the
church. But the right to those livings was not derived from the king,
nor from the legislature. It was the mere recurrence to the original title
given by the owners ; a title older than that of any other species of pro-
perty, acknowledged in every form by the ancient laws, given for a most
important purpose, and incapable of being alienated by any thing but
an act of the most palpable injustice. So stand the rights of the Church
of England.

All the arguments commonly used against the church property are fal-
lacies.— It has been said that the people are taxed to pay for the support
of the clergy. This is a fallacy. The people are no more taxed for the
support of the priest, than they are for the support of the Duke of
Devonshire. Both priest and duke being supported by property, not
taken from the people, but allotted by individuals to whom it belonged,
and who might have disposed of it in any way whatever. This answers
the outcry of all the sectaries, who complain that they are taxed for a
church in which they do not believe : — they might as justly complain that
they are taxed for a duke in whom they do not believe. — But, it is said,
that the tithes are a burthen upon the landholder. This is a fallacy.
If the landholder be a tenant, they can be no burthen on him ; for it is
notorious, that he takes the land the cheaper the more tithe it pays ;
and thus, that, at least, he does not pay for the clergy. If the landholder
be the proprietor of the estate, neither does he pay for the clergy. It
being obvious that whether he inherited or purchased the property, it
came to him with an allowance for the tithes ; the inheritance being
transmitted from an ancestor almost a thousand years back, if any living
family can claim such ancestor — or the estate being sold to him with the
obvious reservation of the tithe ; for if the land had been tithe free, the
price would have been higher, and the only difference to the purchaser
being that instead of paying tl\e whole value of the land in one sum,
he divides it between two persons, the proprietor and the clergyman,
both of whom have a legal right, but the right of the latter being im-
measurably superior in antiquity.

But, it is said, that if the tithe falls upon neither the farmer nor the
landlord, it falls upon the public in the shape of a tax of a tenth on pro-
visions. This is a fallacy. If the parson burned his tithe, or suffered
it to rot on the ground, there would be a public loss of a tenth. But
the parson sells it, or lives on it in his family. The produce exists and
is converted to the public use ; only with this difference, that instead of
the whole produce of the farm coming to market in the farmer's cart,
a part of it comes in the parson's. The amount in the market being, of
course, the same, and the price of provisions being neither raised nor
lowered by having two bundles instead of one.

But, it is said, that tithes prevent agricultural improvement by ad-
vancing a claim on every new object of tillage. This is the only argu-

616 Lord Mountcashcl and the Church.

ment that has a show offeree, and yet this too is a fallacy. If the farmer
lays out fifty pounds additional in any new culture, the clergyman who is
undoubtedly entitled to his share in the product of the land, may claim his
tenth. But, in the first place, the farmer has made his calculations of
profit with this knowledge; and in the next, if he involve himself in any
difficulty on the point, the evil lies at his own door, for nothing is more
easy, and, indeed, nothing is more common than that amicable agreement
between the clergyman and the farmer, by which a regular rent is paid,
let the improvements for the time be what they may. That after a limited
period the clergyman's means should rise with the general opulence of
the country is a matter of public policy, for it is essential to the use-
fulness of a clergy, that they should keep up their level with the coun-
try; and, that, while the people round them are growing rich, they
should not be growing poor. In all countries, a pauper loses public respect,
let the' colour of his coat be what it may; and a beggared clergy would
be scorned as teachers, or perhaps, in the natural course of things, might
be driven to uphold their influence by fanaticism, and the arts which sus-
tained the mendicant orders of popery ; or lie tempted to the obvious
alternative of hostility to a state which sank them below the less edu-
cated ranks, and, like the struggling French vicars, look for a change of
situation in general overthrow. But so far as agricultural interests are
concerned, the bill introduced in this session by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, allows of a composition for twenty years, a period which
gives the most anxious improver more than time enough to pursue his
plans without let or hindrance to the full extent of speculation.

One of the most frequent sources of popular outcry against the establish-
ment is theassertion, that though the church confessedly possesses a right
to a provision ; yet that it has usurped more than the original grant, that
the tithes were originally divided into four parts, of which but one was
for the priest, the other three being, severally, for the repairs of the
church, for the maintenance of the bishop, and for the support of the
poor. But this, too, is a fallacy, founded on the ignorance, actual or wil-
ful, of the orators. It arises from confounding transactions of the Ro-
man age of the church with periods later by some hundreds of years ;
and the transactions of the church in foreign countries with those of the
English establishment.

The first revenues of the church were voluntary subscriptions.
The apostles sanctioned and directed the laying up of a weekly sum in the
hands of deacons, or other officers of the congregations, for the necessary
expenses of the church, for the claims of charity, and for the support of
the preachers ; who had in general abandoned all claims to their heathen
property, and in some instances had given up productive professions. St.
Paul constantly insists on the right of the preachers to be subsisted by
the congregations ; though he refuses to avail himself of it, from a wish
to avoid burthening the infant and persecuted churches. Our Lord in
sending forth the twelve Apostles (10 Matthew) expressly declares their
right to be subsisted by the persons to whom they brought the Gospel, for-
bidding them to make any preparation for their own expenses ; " neither
purse nor scrip, for the labourer is worthy of his hire." This mode of
provision seems to have prevailed during the whole time of the great
persecutions, or nearly 250 years ; the church having received its first
endowments only a short period previously to the accession of Con-
stantine.

1830.] Lord Monntcashel and the Church. 617

Those subscriptions were perfectly matters of good-will, and propor-
tioned to the means of the individual. They were of course of various
values, but, as according to the Levitical Law, a tenth was set apart for
the priesthood, the early Christians adopted the proportion, and the
tenth of their gains, the tithe, was given. This fund originally placed
in the hands of the Apostles or leaders of the congregations, was subse-
quently deposited with their successors the bishops, and thus they became
the regulators of the distribution. A part was allotted to the priests who
served the various congregations or travelled through the country, a
part for the maintenance of the church buildings, and the residue for the
support of the humbler portion of the disciples, in case of infirmity,
accident, or age : but the parts were generally unequal, and the whole
was regulated by the necessity of the case, and the zeal and wisdom of
the head of the diocese or congregations.

This arrangement seems to have ceased at a very early period in Eng-
land, and to have naturally given way to the regular endowment of the
clergy. The contributions which continued for some time to be made
in the churches, being thenceforward appropriated solely to the poor. But
in England the legal and regular provision for the poor, introduced by
the 43d of Elizabeth, at length superseded this collection; and it ceased,
as contributions for the clergy had ceased, and for the same reason.

The last argument that we shall notice, and it is an argument that
naturally exhausts the controversy, is the actual wealth of the church.
We are told that, allowing the clergy to have a full right to a maintenance,
they can have no right to wallow in the present enormity of church opu-
lence. The whole statement is an assumption, and the argument upon it
must therefore be a fallacy. The total amount of the public endowments
of the establishment is 1,628,095/. Those form the obnoxious part in the
opinion of our haranguers. The livings in private patronage, which are
equivalent to personal estates, and which the English landholders, who
harangue in the loudest tone against the church, grasp with all the eager-
ness of private property — livings with which they endow their sons and
their connexions, or which they sell, amount to nearly twice the value, viz.
2,084,043/. The whole revenue is 3,872,133/., which divided among
11,342 benefices, (the number in England and Wales,) leaves only 300/.
a year as the average of an English living.

But trivial as this sum is for the support of a man who must keep up
a decent rank in society, who in most instances has a family, and whose
education has on an average cost about 800/., a large deduction must still
be made for his actual church expenses. He must keep his parsonage
house in repair ; in general he must pay down a considerable sum for
previous buildings ; and there are few instances in which the advantage
of having a house is not counterbalanced by the necessary expenses. It
is computed, that, taking the whole as a mere matter of pecuniary calcu-
lation, a clergyman, before he can expect a living, lays down, in principal
and interest, about 1100/., which about middle life would purchase an
annuity of 90/. a year, thus leaving him but 210/. as a recompense for
his clerical labour, his literature, the devotion of his life to solitude in
nine instances out of ten, and all to gain an income about the average
gains of a country tailor, or grocer in a tolerable run of trade.

The advowsons are the true scandal of the church : but those are not the
property of the establishment ; but of the country gentlemen, of the whigs
and patriots, the great reforming aristocrats, and general patriotic and fox-
hunting portion of the legislature. We see those livings advertised in

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 54. 4 K

618 Lord Mountcashel and the Church. £JuNE,

the newspapers with as little ceremony as the advertisement of an ox
or an ass, and of course purchased with as little, the chief recommen-
dation being — " that the living lies in a sporting country and in the
neighbourhood of several packs of first-rate hounds."

But with those abominations the establishment cannot be charged.
They are the result of the robbery of the church, not of her will ; and
the only remedy is to be looked for in the legislature. The vulgar writers
who declare the church revenues to be 8,000, 0001. make no distinction
between the revenues of the ecclesiastic and the usurped revenues of
the layman ; they throw the impropriate tithes into the same mass with
the church tithes, and where nearly twice the value is grasped by the
lay descendants of the minions of Henry , they fling, the whole charge
on the head of the clergy.

Lord Mountcashel's motion was received with scorn, and with scorn it
deserved to have been received. The clergy are ill paid ; their emolu-
ments are below those of any other class of educated men in the empire ;
and the attempt either to degrade them in the public eye, or to fleece
them of their legitimate rights, would be one of the grossest offences
against law, and as the offenders might soon discover one of the most
formidable hazards in policy ; but, of such intentions, we acquit Lord
Mountcashel : he is honest, but ignorant of his subject : he has been
stimulated by partial disgust into general charge, and in his determina-
tion to punish the local evil, he has overlooked or vilified the good of a
great system, without which the British empire would speedily be a
republic, its religion a chaos of clamouring sects, and its dominion a
rope of sand.

ANECDOTES OF BRAZIL.

No. I.

t( Sunt quibus in satira viclear nimis acer, et ultra
Legem tendere opus."

LIKE the simoom of the desert, whose ruthless blast spreads terror and
desolation over a whole region of fertility, modern civilization has swept
from the surface of society all that was romantic and picturesque, with
some slight shades of difference. One uniform system of manners and
customs prevails over all the European continent ; man is in every part
of it the creature of the same habits, and swayed by the same opinions.
In Brazil, on the contrary, from causes moral as well as physical, human
nature has remained stationary, and retains to this day many of the in-
teresting features which shed so romantic a halo around the society
of Europe centuries ago. .

Under the tropical climate of the Rio de Janeiro, no pale gradations
from saffron hue to roseat morn harbinger the approach of day ; the Del-
phian god bursts suddenly from the bosom of darkness, and light awakes
the world. At the earliest peal of the holy matin bell, the fair Bra-
zilian, her graceful form shrouded in the ample folds of the jealous man-
tilla, and accompanied by her sable attendants, is seen gliding to the
shrine of her patron saint to offer up her morning orisons. The coloured
population issue forth in crowds to pursue their daily avocations, their
wild and discordant cries breaking with singular effect on the ear through
the stillness of the morn ; the quays are filled with the rich and varied
productions of both hemispheres. At eight o'clock the more important

1830.] Anecdotes of Brazil. 619

business of the day commences; the public functionaries move with stately
step, in their antiquated cocked hats and formal cut coats, to the scene of
their duties. The avenues leading to the custom-house are crowded
with men of every clime. Observe near its door that group of English
merchants, how their air of purse-proud arrogance sinks into one of ob-
sequious reverence as they salute the administrador, who is passing them
in all the pride and dignity of office. Mark well the gray eye of another,
how it dances with delight on his well-packed bales, his commission on
which he is mentally calculating. How finely his ruddy complexion and
tight European attire contrast with the sallow cheek and sombre habili-
ments of the solemn friar, who invokes his charity in the name of St.
Francis ! That flight of rockets proclaims that high mass has commenced
at the imperial chapel, while the party of German lancers, proceeding to
mount guard at the palace, leads back the memory to the parades of Ber-
lin and Vienna. The sun has now attained its meridian height ; the
business of life ceases; the streets are deserted, save by a solitary foreigner
whom curiosity or ennui has led forth to brave its torrid heat. The more
indolent Brazilian courts the balmy pleasures of the siesta, till the length-
ened shadows proclaim the close of day. All again is bustle and anima-
tion. The beautiful drives in the environs of the city are crowded with
horsemen and vehicles of every description, from the clumsy iroquitana
or sege of the native, driven by a monkey-looking black postillion, in
huge cocked hat and cumbrous boots, to the neat stanhope of the English
resident, or the more stylish equipage of some member of the corps diplo-
matique. At this hour the great square of the palace presents in pleas-
ing variety all the lights and shadows of Brazilian life. In the fore-
ground of its various groupings stands out with pictorial effect, in his
singularly wild and picturesque costume, the tall Mineheiro (or inhabit-
ant of the mines) ; the magnificent outline of his gigantic figure is partly-
concealed by his dark-blue poncho, which descends in ample folds to his
heavily spurred heel ; his sable eyebrow shades an eye of fire ; and his
savage gloom of countenance, heightened by the raven curls and large
slouched hat, reminds the spectator of some dark creation of Salvator's
pencil. His mustachoed lip curls with derision as he turns his back on the
foreign trader, to whom he has just disposed of a parcel of uncut topazes
for a sum four times their value. Near to him are a party of Botocudo
Indians, staring at all around them with an air of savage wonder, their
distended ears resting on their shoulders, and mutilated lips presenting a
unique spectacle of disfigured humanity. Inhaling the evening breeze
in her richly gilded balcony is a dark-eyed daughter of Brazil; her
female attendants are directing her attention to the religious procession
issuing from the neighbouring church : but she heeds them not ; her
lustrous eye is fixed with ardent gaze on the martial figures of a party
of foreign officers of the guard lounging beneath her own door. Among
them you may distinguish the yellow-haired German, the fiery Italian,
the lively Frenchman, and haughty Briton, disjointed fragments of the
mighty hosts that formerly met in fierce conflict on the banks of the Bi-
dassoa, bivouacked amid the burning palaces of Moscow, or escaped the
horrid butchery of Leipsic, or the " king-making field" of Waterloo.
The fiery orb of day now descends with headlong speed into the lustrous
bosom of the western wave,

" Not as in northern climes, obscurely bright,
But in one unclouded blaze of living light."
4K2

620 Anecdotes of Brazil.

The vesper-bell sends forth its solemn peal, the hum of htiman voices
is hushed, the devout Brazilian piously repeats his Ave Maria, a magic
stillness pervades all nature, which on a sudden ceases ; the " Boa nocte"
passes from lip to lip, and the various topics of conversation are resumed-
There is something solemn and singularly beautiful in this custom ; the
mind, chastened by religion, withdraws from the consideration of worldly
affairs, and indulges in the effusions of friendship and affection.

Such are some of the leading external features of Brazilian life. The
streets of the capital are deserted by an early hour, for its enervated
inhabitant dreads the nocturnal dews as much as the modern Roman the
malaria of the Pontine marshes. You may wander through their silent
expanse, lighted up by the silver moon and her starry court, and nothing
breaks on the soft stillness of the hour, save the wiry sound of a guitar.,
or the solemn hymn of the dead, which tells that some frail son of earth
is leaving this world of care and woe.

Many of the prevailing manners and domestic habits of this people are
of Moorish origin. With the exception of the highest class of society,
the Brazilians take their meals squatted a-la-Turc on mats spread on the
ground. A very singular custom is observed at these repasts towards a
stranger. The host, or the person whom chance may place beside him,
extracts from his plate some portion of the dainty it may contain, and,
in return, will convey some choice morsel from his own on to that of the
stranger guest. As the use of knives and forks is on these occasions
most religiously dispensed, there is certainly something in this custom
revolting to our European refinement ; but here it is the pledge of hos-
pitality, like salt with the wandering Arab.

Some traces of the language of flowers, so common all over the East,
are still to be found in Brazil. A stranger, on entering a house, is inva-
riably presented with a flower by some female member of the family.
This custom has survived the lapse of time, and the gradual revolution
of manners ; but the language, the delicate allusion, the sentiment of
high-flown gallantry and tender affection, allegorically expressed by
these beautiful productions of nature, is as little understood by the Bra-
zilian as the mathematical analysis of the tables, by which he calculates
an eclipse, by the modern Brahmin. By nature a Gascon, a Brazilian's
description both of persons and things must be received with cautious
limitation, for they are always in the richest vein of oriental bombast.
I have repeatedly heard the emperor compared to a god, and his people
to a nation of heroes. Their usual style of addressing a person is ' ' most
illustrious." A splendid entertainment is merely termed " hum copo
d'ago" a glass of water ; while the courage of some favourite military
officer is represented as something superhuman, varying in a ratio from
that of ten to a hundred thousand devils. (< Tern o animo de ceno-mil
diabos" is the hyperbole used on such occasions. One unacquainted
with their national character would imagine he were residing among a
nation of fire-eaters ; but in few countries is the personal dignity of man
sunk to a lower ebb than in Brazil. During a nine years' residence, I
never heard of a single duel, nocturnal assassination being the fashionable
mode of vindicating outraged honour. The rigid state of seclusion in
which the females are kept deprives society of that fascinating polish of
exterior cast over its surface in other countries by the influence of the
softer sex. The mind of the Brazilian female is left in all the wild lux-
uriance of uncultivated nature; her existence is monotony itself, gliding on

1 830.] Anecdotes of Brazil* 621

in its dull course in the society of her slaves, to whom in point of intellect
she is little superior; but her manners are soft and gentle, and her sen-
sibilities, when roused, have all the fiery energy of her native clime.
Interesting, rather than beautiful, her sedentary life tinges her cheek with
a sickly hue ; while early marriage gives to her figure an exuberant em-
bonpoint, which, however, in the oriental taste of the country, is con-
sidered the beau ideal of beauty in both sexes. In this precocious
climate ladies are grandmothers at seven and twenty. Female education,
I have already remarked, is an absolute nullity ; that of the other sex is
not of a more elevated character. With the exception of those who have
pursued their studies abroad, it is extremely rare to meet with any one
who possesses even elementary knowledge on any branch of science or
polite literature. Few among them ever take the trouble of reading
their own beautiful Lusiad. Indolent, addicted to gambling, and a slave
to the grossest sensuality, which but too often degenerates into the most
criminal excesses, all the finer feelings of our nature are early blunted
in the mind of the Brazilian, who bears the loss of his nearest and dearest
friends with an indifference amounting to apathy. As if to veil the
(native deformity of vice, his manners are courtly in the extreme : he
repeatedly reminds you that every thing he possesses is at your disposal,
and on leaving his house after a morning visit, you are bowed out to the
very door, often at the imminent risk of breaking your neck down the stairs
in wheeling round to correspond to the courtly inclinations of your polite
host. There is, after all, much that is good and generous in his nature,
systematically debased by political misrule and religious superstition. It
is to be hoped that the wide field of honourable ambition, thrown open to
him by the revolution, will elevate his character in the scale of civilized
man.

From this picture of the moral degradation of our species, the mind
turns with pleasure to the contemplation of the singular and somewhat
more favourable specimen of humanity presented by the population of
the two mountain provinces, Minas and Sato Paulo. Left by their isolated
station to the undisturbed workings of their own hearts, their characters
are such as might be expected. Stubborn both in truth and error, con-
fined from the cradle to the grave to the consideration of few objects, they
never reach that tractable state of feeling which extensive knowledge of
the world can alone produce. Their bigotry, when called into action, makes
them ardent in their thoughts and deeds. Their jealousy and revenge
are proverbial even in Brazil. The following anecdote, which I had
from an officer, an eye-witness of the event, is highly illustrative of the
former passion. A young officer, on a tour of inspection, arrived on the
eve of St. John at a small villa in Minas. On the following morning,
he accompanied the coptao mor of the district to the celebration of high
mass. During the ceremony he was forcibly struck with the beauty of a
young female kneeling near the altar. Young, ardent, and impetuous,
he expressed his admiration with all the indiscreet warmth of licentious
passion. The innocent object of his aspirations was the wife of the cap-
itao mor, who, however, vouchsafed no answer to his anxious inquiries ;
but his brow grew dark, and even as he bowed down before the ele-
vated host, he meditated a deed at which the blood runs cold. On leaving
the church he framed an excuse for leaving the officer during the re-
mainder of the day ; but in the evening he rushed into his apartment,
and, holding up a knife reeking with blood, exclaimed with a hysterical

622 Anecdotes of Brazil. [JUNE,

laugh, " Your intended victim is now beyond the reach of dishonour !"
Among a people entertaining such extravagant notions of honour, it
would be but natural to expect to find the purity of the female character
fixed at an elevated point. This, however, is unfortunately not the case ;
few places, perhaps, present a more lamentable picture of vice and licen-
tiousness than Villa- Rica, the capital of the province of Minas. To such
a pitch is it carried, that a proposal to form a " liaison" the most
"equivoque" with a young female would not be received by her family
as an insult, but acceded to, or declined, according as they might deem it
advantageous. But, on the other hand, a clandestine correspondence,
although carried on with the most honourable intentions, would, if pre-
maturely discovered, bring down the vengeance of the family on the
offender. The Mineheiro never forgives an affront ; he will track his
victim with the ruthless spirit of a tiger, till he has an opportunity of
wreaking his revenge. The knife in the hands of these people is a
most formidable weapon. With his left arm enveloped in the thick
folds of his poncho, the Mineheiro, under cover of this shield, advances
fearlessly against an experienced swordsman : if foiled in his onset,
he will spring back ten or fifteen paces with the agility of a mountain-
cat, and throw his knife at his advancing foe with unerring and
fatal precision. From these two provinces the emperor draws his
best cavalry. Most of the higher offices of state are also filled by Mine-
heiros and Pauliotos, whose activity and energy of character fit them
better for the duties of office than the more indolent inhabitants of the
maritime provinces. On a levee day the court of the emperor presents
a most brilliant spectacle. He has created a corps of noblesse, which
in numbers, at least, will vie with that of the oldest European courts.
Military talent, the never-failing stepping-stone to nobility, is not, how-
ever, one of the attributes of the newly privileged orders of Brazil. The
late revolution was sterile in talent, not having produced a single suc-
cessful soldier. At a levee held by the emperor towards the close of
the late war with the Buenos Ayrean republic, when a series of disasters,
crowned by the signal defeat of Ituzaingo, tarnished the lustre of the
imperial arms, Don Pedro turned to a distinguished foreign officer near
him, and pointing to the brilliant circle by which he was surrounded,
exclaimed in a tone of great bitterness, — ' ' In all this glittering crowd
I cannot fiitd an officer fit to command a brigade." The character of
this prince is the very antithesis of that of his people. Simple in his tastes,
active in mind, of a manly and energetic temper, his unremitting exer-
tions and loftiest aspirations are for the welfare of his newly founded
empire. The political regeneration of his people is, however, an hercu-
lean task ; for the vices engendered by the old colonial system are of an
inveterate character. On few occasions can the morality of the Brazilian
functionary withstand the temptation of a bribe : the unaffected grace
with which he extends his greedy palm to clasp the glittering prize is
only surpassed by the singular felicity of the aphorism by which he re-
conciles it to his conscience ; " Viva el rey c do aca a capa." To such a
pitch was peculation carried under the old system, that full one-half of
the revenue of the country never found its way into the government
coffers. The dezimo alone produces a large revenue, but the mode of
levying it falls very heavy on the poorer classes, who have not the means
of propitiating the dezirneiro, for in many instances it is literally taken
numerically, rather than intrinsically. Many of the vices of the national

1830.] Anecdotes of Brazil. 623

character have their source in the maladministration of justice. A law-
suit in Brazil, both in duration and intricacy of proceedings, realizes
the fable of Penelope's web. After years spent in useless litigation,
during which time a dozen decisions may have been pronounced in your
favour, and as often reversed, you are at last finally nonsuited, not
from any conviction in the mind of the judge of the badness of your
cause, but from the more sporting character of the opposing litigant, who
fairly outbids you in the last result. The laws, however, for the pro-
tection of the slave population are an honour to humanity. The Brazilian
is a humane master ; and the horrors of slavery are in Brazil greatly
mitigated by the mild spirit of Christianity. Negroes are eligible to
holy orders ; and with a laudable attention to their prejudices, a black
virgin and one or two sable saints have been placed in the calendar,
whom they venerate as their patrons. The condition of the negro, when
transplanted from his native Africa to the colonies, is an epitome of the
more extended chapter of human life — as various in its colouring — as
diversified in lot.

Throughout all the provinces are innumerable tribes of gipsies, who
in fact carry on the commerce of the interior. The period of their first
migration to Brazil I could never ascertain ; but in their physiognomy
and predatory habits they closely resemble the gipsy tribes of Europe.

Crimes are rare in Brazil, at least such as spring from the pressure
of want. In these fruitful regions the earnings of two days' labour will
subsist the labourer the other five. Few countries, indeed, are more
blessed by the bountiful hand of nature than Brazil. A prodigious
extent of territory, diversified by every variety of soil and climate, her
resources, mineral, as well as agricultural, are immense ; while the cha-
racter of her prince and the theoretical spirit of her government are
favourable to their full and rapid development. At a period of universal
depression and stagnation like the present, it is gratifying to be able to
direct our attention to a country which presents so wide and extended
a field for the operation of British capital and enterprise as Brazil. That
there are still some dark clouds hovering round her political horizon
I am not free to deny. But it has been justly remarked by a celebrated
writer of the present age, — " When a man forms schemes in politics,
trade, economy, or any business in life, he ought not to draw his argu-
ments too fine, or connect too long a chain of consequences together,
for something is sure to happen to disconcert his reasoning." If, in the
present instance, awed by the remote contingents of future evil, we
neglect availing ourselves of the present good, we should realize the
fable of the countryman, who waited till the river flowed away to pass
over to the opposite bank :

" Rusticus expectat dum defluit amnis."

[ 624 ] [JUNE;

NAVAL ADMINISTRATION OP GREAT BRITAIN*.

" List, ye LANDSMEN, all to me !"

IT is not, we believe, generally known, that this pamphlet, of which
so much has been said, and concerning which so much more has been
thought, is the production of the late Admiral Sir Charles Penrose. In
the commencement of his remarks, the Admiral tells us, " that during the
time he had been employed in arranging his reflections on the conduct
of our naval administration, it often occurred to him to consider whether
the subject is in itself of sufficient importance, and, the errors which occur
in its management of sufficient magnitude to justify," fyc. fyc. The pamphlet
itself is the best corrector of this doubt; the affectation of which doubt is
the only thing throughout the pages which can be met, by either party
in the State, in any other spirit than one of fixed and. serious atten-
tion. The Admiral's counterfeited misgivings as to the importance of the
subject must have arisen from a powerful sense of the contrary; a species
of hypocrisy which is common to mankind, but which an old sailor should
have been above, especially as he was not speaking of himself, but of a
Service wherein may be said to lie the principal part of our political
strength. We are not professing any puritanical horror of hypocrisy,
for we think there are times when this failing has in it ' ' a soul of good-
ness." It is very well, for example, in the maudlin speeches which cus-
tom demands after dinner, when even Mr. Canning might have found it
proper and becoming to crave indulgence for the imperfections of his
oratory, when Mr. Rothschild might call himself a poor man, and the
Duke of Wellington profess himself the humblest individual in the room;
and whatever has been said in praise of plain speaking, we cannot but
think that there is something amiable in that kind of hypocrisy which
avoids the utterance of truths which would uselessly wound the feelings
of a friend. It is hardly too bold a word to say, that every man is more
or less a hypocrite. A great part of the literary strength of Dryden was
contained in his prefaces, which might be said to have originated the
best parts of the modern code of criticism. The world read and loudly
applauded them; and therefore, in one of his last and most perfect treat-
ises of this kind (the preface to his version of Juvenal), the poet pre-
tends humility, and says, " This is the last time I will commit the crime
of prefaces, or trouble the world with my notions of any thing that relates
to verse." Now some little might be said in extenuation of this weak-
ness in Dryden, because the subject is himself; but that an old and able
Naval officer should come forward with an apologetical aspect, and a
modest doubt as to the value and importance of his own profession, is
merely foolish. Admiral Penrose knew well enough, and so does every
one else, that our maritime supremacy is an object of the most vital con-
sequence to our very political existence ; and that it is not the less so
because it happens to be grossly neglected by the Legislature, which
seems to think it hardly worth a debate. It is true that a farce is per-
formed annually at St. Stephen's, under the title of " Navy Estimates."
But who are the dramatis per •sonce ? A nautical Matthews, perpetually
punning on " round sterns and square tucks •" a pert Irish secretary,
ever ready to ridicule the false reckoning and ^figurative rhetoric of a

* Remarks on the Conduct of the Naval Administration of Great Britain since 1815.
15y a Flag Officer. 8vo.

1830.] Naval Administration of Great Britain. 625

Scotch economist,, whose eloquence knows no bounds when demonstrating
the value of a ha'porth of twine and a penn'orth of tar ; a Land lord or
two., always at sea upon professional points, and a sea-]ord lording it
over the lords of the land. But Admiral Penrose's pamphlet is
a formidable criticism on this dramatic performance; and it will go nigh,
we think, to damn it, notwithstanding the long run it has enjoyed.
" If," says the Admiral, "any of those members of the House of Com-
mons who watch vigilantly over the public expenditure do me the
honour to read these pages, let me advise them to scrutinize our Navy
Estimates more rigidly than they have hitherto been accustomed to do,
to call for more detailed accounts, and to ascertain satisfactorily in what
manner the sums voted have been actually expended ; whether in the
repair and construction of those classes of ships which I have recom-
mended, or in improvident and injudicious expenses on those of inferior
and objectionable descriptions. Above all, let me advise them not to be
silenced or mystified by any official replies which they do not perfectly
understand ; and to be assured that there is nothing mysterious or unin-
telligible in naval affairs where a disposition exists to explain them
openly and candidly." This is well put ; and we wish that the Admiral
had, in pursuance of his own recommendation, been a little more candid
in the style of his own pamphlet, and had not suffered himself to be se-
duced into little flatteries, which involve him in ludicrous dilemmas, and
which are utterly inconsistent with the bold tone of reprehension every
now and then assumed by him. In page 2 of his pamphlet, Sir Charles
says, " I am perfectly aware, that at no period of peace was the British
Navy, in many points, in so satisfactory a state, or in better preparation
for any sudden emergency." This is not true, as we shall presently
show : but how is the reader to reconcile it to the following words, oc-
curring in the very succeeding page ? '" I write with all the advantages
which my having been an eye-witness of former errors and mismanage-
ments can confer. I remember the commencement of the two last wars
in 1778 and 1793 ; and the circumstances which I shall presently state
will, I think, convince my readers that, at both the above-named periods,
many opportunities of achieving brilliant successes were lost, and in-
calculable injury was inflicted by our enemies on our commercial marine,
in consequence of the vicious system which at that time prevailed to the
greatest, extent, and which is even now far from being totally eradicated"
Far, indeed ! We are now in a worse condition, as regards our navy,
than at any former period of peace. In the first place, English seamen,
in those days, never thought of emigrating to America ; they were to
be had in shoals upon the most sudden extremity. Not so now. It is
true that twenty thousand blue-jackets might be raised in the short space
of a fortnight ; but it is not every man who wears a blue jacket that can be
considered a thorough seaman. There is no nursery in the present day
for British seamen ; and instead of our merchant-ships being navigated
by the men of our own shores, the prevailing rage for economy induces
our ship-owners to provide their vessels with seamen of any and almost
of every nation on the globe — Danes, Swedes, Portuguese, Negroes,
Lascars, and we may add even Chinese, those coy Asiatics from the ce-
lestial empire !

In reference to the Admiral's compliment touching the present state of
effectiveness of our ships on the peace-establishment (we particularly al-
lude to those of the line called " guard-ships"), we may observe that those
M. M. New Scries.— VOL,. IX. No. 54. 4 L

Naval Administration of Great Britain. £JuNE,

vessels were formerly not so entirely dismantled as they are at present;
nor were their crews drafted to perform duties on shore which translate
them, to use Bottom's phrase, from loyal and thorough seamen, to lub-
berly landsmen studying the art of smuggling. We allude to the pre-
cious service entitled the Coast-blockade. It cannot, indeed, be denied
that it is absolutely necessary to protect the legal trade and consequently
the revenue of the country ; but, we would ask, are no other men com-
petent to this except the best of our ships' companies ? Might not a
portion of the marines be incorporated with seamen in the execution of
this duty ? The preventive service, now partly superseded by the coast-
blockade, was conducted on what appears to us to be a preferable system
to the present. The whole establishment was entirely under the control
of the Commissioners of the Customs, who formed the necessary force from
miscellaneous sources, such as watermen, fishermen, &c. &c.; but since
the Admiralty, out of a desire to monopolize all the patronage connected,
however remotely, with the sea, have taken under its own parental care
and appointment the situations connected with this amphibious service,
our " best hands," likely to be wanted on occasions of great necessity, are
either suffered to emigrate into the service of foreign states, or are frit-
tered away in the lounging promenading life of beach sentinels.

But this and more serious defects in the present administration of the
naval affairs of the country may be easily accounted for and summed up
in one word — " Patronage !" It is the effect of undue patronage that
the Board of Admiralty should be constituted, not of naval officers, as
might naturally be concluded, but of a majority of landsmen compara-
tively ignorant of the nature of the momentous affairs confided to their
direction. We have had, before now, a General in the army sitting as
First Lord, and a Cornet of Dragoons filling the place which ought to
have been held by an experienced Admiral ! The two naval officers at
present attached to the Board (and more efficient men could not have
been selected) are obliged, for want of professional colleagues, to devote
the whole of their time to levees and other occasions which peremptorily
demand their personal attendance in London. This being the case, let
us ask how the numerous duties out of London, equally essential with
the above, are to be discharged, particularly as in none of our sea-ports
is there any establishment whose functions partake of the authority of
head-quarters ? To speak plainer, there is no branch-administration ;
no local body of professional men invested with power to examine
into the condition of our ships, and to originate, if necessary, any
measure which might tend to remedy an abuse, or to introduce an
essential improvement. For, be it observed, that the power of the
port-admirals, and commissioners of dock-yards, do not partake of
this nature. As it would obviously be quite useless to send the
^professional lords on such service, the inquiring reader will na-
turally ask what are the duties discharged by these gentlemen ? The
only answer to be given to this is, that they sign letters, present to
the House of Commons once a year the Navy Estimates (a duty
which, by the by, ought to be performed by the secretary), and
last, though by no means least, it is expected of them that they take
the trouble to provide their juvenile friends with situations afloat
— a thing highly necessary, inasmuch as it would seem utterly incon-
sistent with the practice of well-regulated states to let the slightest
opportunity of this kind fall into the hands of old officers, who, being

1830.] Naval Administration of Great Britain. 627

quite .toil- worn and weather-beaten by long service., are incompetent to
the exercise of such discretionary power. Still, however meritorious the
services of these " shore-going" Lords of the Admiralty might be, in
appointing and promoting their own connexions for the good of the
service, let us for a moment cast a glance at the other duties which the
innocent public might think they ought to discharge. For instance,
suppose Sir George C**** and Lord C********** were despatched to
Portsmouth or Plymouth to investigate any local circumstances con-
nected with the service, such as the patent triangular stay-sails of Sir
Henry Heathcote, to what conclusion could either of these gentlemen
arrive at as to the merits or demerits of the proposed invention ? The
former, from his well-known predilection for old usages (as the patrons
of the Ancient Music might satisfactorily testify), would, in all proba-
bility, reject Sir Henry's plan because it was not a hundred years old ;
just as the works of Haydn are not allowed to be performed in the
orchestra, or to be admitted into the reverend and dusty library of the
institution ! And this exclusion is not because Haydn's symphonies are
not far better than those of his predecessors, but because they do not bear
the stamp of age ! On the other hand, the juvenile lord might be in-
clined to regard the new stay-sails with contempt, because, in demon-
strating their utility. Sir Henry might demonstrate also a wristband not
authorised by the oracles of fashion.

But the whole of our naval administration is not confined to the Ad-
miralty. The Navy Board have under their jurisdiction all matters
relating to ship-building, and every thing (excepting the ordnance)
belonging to the fitting-out of a vessel of war. But in this body, as
Admiral Penrose very justly remarks, there is a pernicious adherence to
old customs merely because they are old. With this body the cry is,
and ever has been, " No innovation !" as if improvement was not inno-
vation. ff Where the judgment is weak, the prejudice is strong." There
is nothing which marks the infirmity of age so unequivocally as fear of
alteration, and irrational resistance to improvement because it is change.
" I was very much struck," says the Admiral, " by one remarkable
instance of obstinate adherence to our old system on the part of the Navy
Board. The Foudroyant, of eighty guns, had been taken from the
French in 1758, and was universally considered, during the whole of the
American war, the finest two-decker in the British service ; but no per-
suasion could induce the surveyors of the navy to imitate so desirable a
ship; and it was not until 1793, thirty -Jive years after she had been in
our possession, that the first eighty-gun ship on two decks was launched
from a British dock-yard !" This is a fact, though it seems incredible ;
but it is well known to professional men that the Admiralty have been
too long controlled by the " Comptroller of the Navy." To illustrate
this assertion : — The Admiralty permit naval architects to construct a cer-
tain number of experimental vessels, and accordingly Captain Hayes,
Captain Symonds, and Professor Inman, build ships of a certain class ;
but, instead of being allowed the full exercise of their scientific acquire-
ments, are so " cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in" by the Navy
Board, as to render their efforts any thing but experimental. Let us refer,
on this head, to the pertinent observations of our author.

" The first great mistake committed, appeared tome to be in limiting the con-
structors unnecessarily as to the dimensions, and more especially as to the breadth
of their ships, by insisting that they were not to exceed a certain prescribed ton*

4L2

628 Naval Administration of Great Britain. [[JUNE,

nage. Now it should have been well known at the Admiralty that tonnage, as
taken by the old rule of admeasurement, neither expresses accurately either the
displacement or capacity of a ship ; and although I perfectly agree with them in
thinking that the constructors should have been obliged to build their ships nearly
of the same size, yet my opinion was, that the great object being to obtain as per-
fect a specimen of each class as possible, the restriction should have been on the
length only, and that they should on this occasion have had a carte blanche as to
their model in all other respects : and this was the more necessary in the pre-
sent case, because the besetting sin of our naval constructors having been hitherto
an invincible unwillingness to give sufficient breadth, and the consequence a
failure in point of stability in most of our ships, it became of more importance
to prevent the surveyors of the navy, by insisting on a restriction of this nature,
from bringing down all the other ships to the level of their own.

" What was the result? Captain Hayes, contrary to his own judgment, but
not choosing to sacrifice length, built both his ships considerably narrower than
he otherwise would have done : and the consequence was they failed in stability.

" Professor Inman, fully aware of the advantage of breadth, gave up a part of
the usual length of ships of that class to obtain it. Captain Symonds followed
his example, and, as might and ought to have been foreseen, both the Sapphire
and Colombine, although possessing many excellent qualities, and very superior
to most ships of their respective classes, were still much inferior to what might
have been expected, if their ingenious constructors had been left to the uncon-
trolled exercise of their own judgment."

This is truly lamentable ; and the wonder is how, under such circum-
stances, our Navy should have maintained its pre-eminence. But let the
government look to it in the event of a future war. Pursuing the subject,
Sir Charles says, t( What, however, was the result of that which actually
took place? In the first trials, the ships built by Professor Inman,
Captains Hayes and Symonds, although, for the reasons I have already
stated, far inferior to what they might have been, were superior to those
built by the Surveyors of the navy : one of the latter, the Tyne of twenty-
eight guns, was actually sent back to Portsmouth as totally unfit to compete
with the remainder; and although, after various expensive alterations,
they were all considerably improved, especially the two corvettes (which
I understand were pretty close imitations of the Champion and Orestes,
and very unlike the Pylades), yet it was quite clear that our official
naval architecture ought no longer to be implicitly relied on." And yet
the head surveyor has been designated by high authority <f the Heaven-
born architect !" In justice, however, to the present Board, we may
state (if there be any consolation in the thought), that their predecessors
were as backward to be instructed as themselves. In a letter dated 1792,
from Admiral Patten to Sir Charles Middleton (afterwards Lord Bar-
ham), the following passage occurred: " In this country, the study of
the theories of floating bodies, and resistance of fluids, has been totally
neglected. In France the very contrary has been the case ; men of real
genius and observation have employed their talents in improving this
science, and have brought it to a considerable degree of perfection.
What was known in France, near a century ago, to every person who
pleased to make it any part of his study, is not at this moment known in
England to many of those who, as professional men, fill the first depart-
ment in their line under government." And yet we call ourselves a
maritime nation and a thinking people !

After alluding to abundant instances of mortifying failures, as well in
contests with French as with American vessels of the same class, but of
superior force in men and metal, all which failures were " attributable

1830.] Naval Administration of Great Britain. 629

to the unwise and impolitic conduct of our naval administration during
the preceding peace,, and to the inferior description of ships which we
had persisted in building/' the Admiral goes on to say,,

ft The war with the United States had but too clearly developed the system of
naval policy on which our new rival for maritime superiority was successfully
acting. Their three principal classes of ships, although nominally of the same
force as our own, were really nearly one-third superior in size, calibre of guns,
and number of men ; and various unsuccessful actions had but too clearly proved
that neither professional skill nor the most brilliant personal courage and exer-
tions could compensate for this great disproportion of force.

" I had therefore felt perfectly confident that, when we began to turn our
thoughts seriously towards rebuilding our navy, a measure which at the termina-
tion of the war had become one of inevitable necessity, — the greater part of our
ships, and especially the smaller classes, being in a very decaying state, — the con-
siderations to which I have referred would have their due weight ; and that in
determining the dimensions and force of our new ships, we should, instead of
adhering servilely to old models and classes, be very careful to build such only
as might be fully capable of opposing at least an equal force to that which we
were to encounter: and this was the more necessary, because it very soon became
universally known that the success of the American navy had produced a deep
impression throughout Europe, and that France especially, as well as several mi-
nor maritime powers, were following the example of that system which had been
attended with such beneficial results.

" I saw with much pleasure that, with respect to our ships of the line, we were
very judiciously abandoning our old-fashioned and heavy-sailing second-rates,
and determining to build in future no three-deckers smaller than the Caledonia ;
and that our new two-deckers were to be powerful eighty-four-gun ships, carry-
ing twenty-four-pounders on the main deck, and therefore, in my opinion, not
materially inferior even to the Americans. But here, alas ! my satisfaction ended ;
and what was my disappointment when I saw between forty and fifty new
frigates laid down in our different dock-yards, all, except eight, built on old French
models, carrying eighteen-pounders only on the main deck ; all, in short, of the
force of the unfortunate Java and Guerriere, possessing all the dejects of these
ships, their want of room and stowage / and that we were consequently replacing"
our frigates on the same footing of comparative inferiority which I had hoped
it would have been our first study to avoid ! I should have thought that instead
of incurring such an immense expense* in building frigates of an inferior descrip-
tion, it would have been better economy and wiser policy to have contented our-
selves with a smaller number, but of a superior class, following rather the model
of the Pomone and the twenty-four-pound frigates built after that beautiful ship,
one of which, the Endymion,f proved in her action with the President, the
largest of the American frigates, that those of this class are very little, if at all,
inferior to any single-decked ship.

ff It will hardly, therefore, appear credible, that while we have been building
at such an expense so large a number of small frigates, we have not since the
peace laid down a single one on the model of the Pomone or Endymion ; a class
which excel the former as much in good qualities of sailing and stowage, as in
the more important point of superior force. '

The capture of the Java calls forth reflections which we can with dif-
ficulty suppress. We only regret that we dare not safely quote the last
words of her dying commander, the heroic Captain Lambert.

* Probably nearly two millions, taking the old calculation of 1000£. per gun.
f The President was captured by a squadron, but engaged by the Endymion only. The
loss in killed and wounded stood thus : —

K. w. Total.

President 35 70 105

Endymion 11 14 25

630 Naval Administration of Great Britain.

In alluding to those impotent vessels, brigs of ten guns, our experi-
enced author says,

" With respect to the ten-gun brigs, of .which we appear to be so fond, and on
which, during the last ten years, such large sums must have been laid out, I can
only say that in my judgment they are entirely unfit for every purpose of war,
as they sail indifferently, and are in point of force inferior to most privateers. I
would therefore almost pledge my existence not one of them is seen on the sea
in six months after the commencement of hostilities. How those who have
lavished the public money on this most useless class of vessels will then be able
to justify themselves, I do not presume to conjecture.

"I see, by referring to the list of the navy, that we have now above forty of
these brigs afloat or building, all except one or two laid down since the peace,
besides twenty-eight more employed as packets; for which service experience
has now fully proved them to be less calculated, and from their construction
more unsafe than any other description of vessel which could possibly have been
selected."

We perfectly acquiesce in these remarks. A gallant marquis, not
more distinguished for his equestrian than his aquatic accomplishments,
has been heard to assert that, " if he ever accepted the office of First Lord
of the Admiralty, his primary measure would be to break up these worse
than useless vessels, and sell their remains for fire- wood." As regards
the multiplication of small vessels, the Americans are wiser than we, as
our author exemplifies.

" With respect to the American navy, says Admiral Pen rose, the comparative
size of their ships of the line, frigates, and corvettes, is now so universally known,
that I shall content myself with two short extracts from a work just published
by a very intelligent naval officer on this subject, (Travels in North America, by
Captain Basil Hall, R.N.) in 1827, 1828.

" ' At the navy-yard .(at Gosport) there was a line-of-battle ship, the New
York, (called a seventy-four) of ninety guns, and the St. Lawrence, (called forty-
four) of sixty guns : the frigate is round-sterned, and they are both built ex-
clusively of live oak, in a compact and apparently skilful manner.

" ' It occurred to me, when looking at these large ships, that there was no good
policy in building such an expensive class of vessels ; for other nations would of
course profit by past experience, and avoid unequal matches in future.
• " ' That is very true,' said an American naval officer, who was present when I
made this observation ; ' but we calculate in this way : in the event of a war with
you or France, for instance, it may happen that our enemy will have many times
our number of ships such as these, but he will have a still greater proportion of
smaller ships. If one of our frigates should chance to meet with one of yours of
the same class, she must of course take her chance, and we trust she will play
her part as becomes her; but as the greater number of your ships are smaller
ones of the old sort, the chances are more in favour of our meeting them ; and
if we do, the balance will tell on our side: thus, in either way, we hope to pre-
serve the advantage we have already gained.' "—Vol. iii. p. 83.

The conversation between Captain Hall and the American officer speaks
volumes. But the disparity of size in hostile vessels under the same
denomination did not originate with the Americans. In the commence-
ment of the revolutionary war, the French built larger and heavier
frigates than we did even at its close. La Forte mounted twenty-four
pounders on the main deck ; La Pomone and La Prudente were of equal
dimensions ; and L'Egyptienne was built on the scantling of a line-of-
battle ship. These examples, however, were lost at home.

But if the reader is struck with astonishment at these multiplied in-
stances of inefficiency in the direction of our naval affairs, his wonder will

1830.] Naval Administration of Great Britain. 631

be increased when he learns that the practice of our gunnery afloat is
equally neglected.

"Another most important point/' says the Admiral, "to which too little at-
tention has heen paid since the peace of 1815, is our artillery practice. There
can be no doubt that our reverses during the American war are to be attributed,
not only to the great superiority of the ships we engaged, but to the imperfect
manner in which our officers and men had been trained to the use of their guns.
It will, perhaps, hardly be credited hereafter, that there was at that time no re-
gular system of exercise established by authority in the British navy, but that
each ship had its own particular plan and method, varying of course according
to the experience and degree of information possessed by the captain, as well as
to the degree of importance which he attached to the subject. I need not detail
the fatal negligence which too often prevailed, and which became only known in
its full extent by its unfortunate results. At the conclusion of the peace, how-
ever, the officers of the navy were unanimous and urgent for the immediate
adoption of a better system, and various suggestions were offered to the Admi-
ralty as to the best method of proceeding. Assuming, as appeared most probable,
that our ships would be almost entirely in port, some recommended an exercising
ground at each naval arsenal, in which the crews of the guard-ships, &c., might
be regularly trained ; others preferred a ship fitted for this purpose ; but all con-
curred in the necessity of establishing some uniform practice. In 1817 Sir H.
Douglas, an officer who combines an hereditary interest in the welfare of that
service which owes so much to his father with all that science and experience
in war can afford, laid before the Board of Admiralty a most valuable work, con-
taining a series of suggestions on this subject, which, if they had been properly
attended to and acted upon, must have placed our system of artillery exercise on
a very different footing from that on which it at present stands. It does not
however appear that between 1817, when he first offered his manuscript work to
the Board of Admiralty, and 1819, when he requested their permission to publish
it, any attention was paid to the valuable suggestions with which it abounds, be-
yond issuing by authority a sort of uniform manual exercise for the great guns ;
and, until 1827, when His Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence became Lord
High Admiral of England, I was not able to observe that any effectual steps
were taken to introduce or enforce such a regular system of artillery practice,
especially amongst our ships on the home stations, as might enable us to keep
pace with the improvements rapidly introducing amongst our maritime rivals.

" During his royal highness's short administration, much was undoubtedly
accomplished by his own frequent personal inspections of the ships in commis-
sion, arid the attention he paid to every thing which respected their artillery ;
but he was unfortunately too short a time in office to establish any material or
permanent improvements in this part of our system ; and I cannot therefore do
better than give my readers in this place, and as nearly as possible in Sir H.
Douglas's own words, a sketch of the plan which he, twelve years ago, suggested
to the Admiralty — which at the moment appears to have been received with en-
tire approbation — but which since that time has not (as far as I can learn) been
thought worthy of further consideration.

" When the navies of Europe, opposed to us in the late war, had been swept
from the face of the ocean by the gallant achievements of the British marine, a
period of triumphant, undisputed dominion ensued, during which our seamen
were not in general sufficiently practised in the exercise of those weapons by
which that dominion had been gained ; but, in the pride and ease of conquest,
were suffered, in many instances, to lose much of that proficiency in warlike
practice which had been acquired in a long series of arduous service. No one
seemed to doubt that the decided superiority which we had displayed in every
action with a marine generally esteemed expert in gunnery was owing to a de-
gree of permanent perfection in our own system, which, animated by the well-
known gallantry of our officers and seamen, would always ensure us victory over
the vessels of any other state, even in conflicts with superior force. Relying with
too great confidence on this persuasion, we were led to despise expected foes

632 Naval Administration of Great Britain. £JuNE,

whom we only rated on a level with those we had uniformly beaten, and to en-
gage rashly in very unequal contests with the ships of a power whose practice we
have since found is not of that character which should render us satisfied with
the condition, or indifferent about the improvement, of our own."

In pursuance of this subject, we may ourselves state that the want of
proper exercise at the guns is not to be charged against the commanding
officers of ships, but is attributable to the scanty allowance of ammuni-
tion by the Board of Ordnance; so that, if a captain feel it imperatively
necessary to exercise his men at a mark, he must account for the con-
sumption of powder by a false entry in the expense-books. For example,
he will direct the gunner to state officially that fifty or a hundred shots
have been expended in bringing vessels to, and so many barrels of powder
consumed in salutes and signals, when perhaps for these purposes not
a grain of powder had been actually consumed. Thus a zealous officer is
reduced to the following annoying dilemma; namely, that he must either
neglect a part of discipline, the want of which might be fatal to the ship
confided by his country to his care, or else he must tell a lie, and run the
risk of losing his commission, by false expenditure of his majesty's stores.
If one half the powder wasted in absurd salutes, and in more foolish com-
memorations, such as the observance of the anniversary of Gunpowder
Plot, (which has no other effect than to produce laughter in little boys,
and to cause annoyance to the sick and ailing of his majesty's subjects)
were devoted to practice in naval artillery, the service in general would
be essentially benefited, and actions at sea more speedily decided.

We might say more on this subject, had we either time or space ; how-
ever, what has been developed, we trust, will call general attention to the
Admiral's pamphlet. Sir Charles Penrose has indeed done a great service
to his country ; for we hold it to be utterly impossible that his remarks
should fail to work some reform, if not a complete one, in the system of
Naval administration. His complaints and suggestions are the result of
a long life ; and the ability with which he has condensed his whole ex-
perience into a few pithy pages cannot be too highly estimated. He not
only points out the disease, but prescribes the remedy, as the following
passage will show :

t( If I am asked what practical suggestions I have to offer, and by what mean
I would propose to remedy the defects I complain of, (without incurring an ex-
pense which the national finances cannot at this moment conveniently bear),
I reply that I can only recommend our discontinuing, without loss of time, all
further expenditure on any of those classes of ships which I consider so useless
and objectionable; to suspend in a great degree the construction of ships of the
line, (except perhaps one of the new class now in progress of ninety guns on two
decks, for the purpose of ascertaining their qualities by actual experiment before
any larger number are laid down,) and to turn our thoughts chiefly towards
those classes of ships to which I have principally alluded in the course of these
observations. I should recommend our satisfying ourselves, by full and careful
trial, whether the first and second classes of frigates, such as the Barham and
Southampton, are in all respects equal to the expectations entertained of them,
especially whether the razeed seventy-fours answer so well as to justify the ex-
pense incurred in altering them. From these experiments certain rules may be
laid down for their stowage, trim, armament, &c. &c. and prevent that general
uncertainty on these points, which must inevitably prevail, if they were hastily
fitted out by officers unacquainted with their peculiarities, who could only try
experiments which might or might not succeed, and would, in the latter case,

occasion much disappointment and delay." But we shall return to this very

interesting subject in our next.

1830.] [ 633 ]

NEWFOUNDLAND ADVENTURES.

DURING the time I was engaged in the Newfoundland fishery, I hap-
pened to accompany the admiral of the station in one of his usual coasting
voyages of surveillance, which, in his capacity of governor of the island,
he performs at stated periods.

It was about the end of July that we cast anchor at the isle of Tou-
linguet, on the northern coast, where we heard that a considerable
sensation had been created by the unprovoked murder of a planter, *
and plunder of his stock of cod, as it lay drying on the scaffolds, by the
Esquimaux, during one of their flying visits from the mainland.

These Esquimaux are a very singular people. They are truly savages.
Every attempt on the part of the settlers to conciliate and civilize them
has hitherto proved abortive. Distrust seems to be a constitutional cha-
racteristic of the race, to an extent unknown amongst other North Ame-
rican Indians. They also possess a full share of the love of war and the
love of theft, unmitigated by any feelings of pity for the pains they inflict,
and undisturbed by any metaphysical considerations of the difference
between meum and tuum.

" For why ? because the good old rule

Suffices them,— the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should kill who can !"

In common with other Esquimaux tribes, hunting and fishing are
their only means of subsistence. Indeed, the soil and climate offer few
temptations to engage in agriculture ; especially to a people who never
remain a week in one place if they can help it, and to whom the restric-
tion of a settled residence would be felt an intolerable evil. In short,
they present as complete a specimen of savage life as could be found in
any quarter of the globe.

The constant feeling of insecurity of life and property, which the
settlers on the coast endured from these people's vindictive and pre-
datory habits, tended much to retard attempts to improve the interior.
At last, the local government determined to take measures to lessen the
evil. The most effectual seemed to be, the civilization of a few natives
to an extent that would render them capable of communicating between
their countrymen and the European settlers, to interpret the desire of the
latter to open regular trading houses for their accommodation, and render
them every assistance they might require, in the hope of ultimately esta-
blishing a friendly intercourse.

The murder of the planter seemed a very inauspicious prelude to this
project, but the admiral did not despair. He summoned a meeting of
the neighbouring inhabitants, and went on shore himself to see what
could be done. As I had always a great curiosity to learn any thing
relating to these Arabs of the snows, I begged leave to accompany
him.

The meeting took place at the house of Mr. English, episcopal mini-
ster of the islands of Fogo and Toulinguet. He was an intelligent, well-
educated young man, evidently much respected by the admiral and the
assembled company. He was very anxious that a party should be

* A resident on shore, employed in curing and packing fish, &c.

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 54. 4 M

634 -Newfoundland Adventures. [JUNE,

formed (of which he offered to be one), to proceed in search of the
natives, to bear them presents, and by the language of signs (well
understood over the continent of North America) to explain our good
wishes and intentions to permanently contribute to their comforts, if they
would consider ours. " And, perhaps," said he, " we may induce one or
two to return with us, through whom we may, by kind treatment,
eventually establish a satisfactory intercourse with the wild tribes, and
convert them from dangerous enemies into useful friends."

" 'Tis only throwing away time to think of it," said an old weather-
beaten fisher, who held a fine boy by the hand; " the ugly devils are
incapable of civilization. When I was whaler on the Hudson's Bay
station, I saw hundreds of these Esquimaux for years together, and
know them well. They were brutish and wild enough, God knows;
but of all the animals on two legs that I ever saw or heard of, these
islanders are the lowest and worst. By their fruits ye may know
them."

" Granted !" said the benevolent minister ; " but surely, Simon, they
only stand in more need of our assistance and instruction. If we had
commenced our works of kindness a year ago, probably, your son would
not have been thus savagely murdered. Bad as they are, we should feel
for them. They have at least souls to be saved."

" Souls to be saved !" re-echoed Simon in scornful surprise ; " d — n
their souls ! I read my Bible constantly, but I never saw a word in it
about these Esquimaux, or could learn that the raw-flesh-eating * vaga-
bonds had souls in their stinking carcasses, though they wear their beards,
and call themselves f men. A black wolf has ten times more sagacity than
any of them, and when he dies, his skin is worth a dollar. My dog
Cabot has as much flesh on his bones, and as much brains in his skull,
and is much more likely to have a soul to be saved. I'll tell you what
he did one day, and then judge for yourselves. As we were at anchor
fishing in the Ditch | "

" Avast, Simon !" said the admiral, " we '11 listen to that story another
time ; we 've other fish to catch now !"

" Ay ! Ay !" replied the rough old fisher in a grumbling under-
tone, ' ' haul away ! Unlucky hookfulls you '11 have of them ! and glad
enough you 11 be to throw your stinging stinking fish overboard again !
Fish, indeed ! They 're neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring !"

A number of the company seemed to coincide with Simon, that the
savages were a bad speculation to meddle with, and that the safer mode
of treatment was to keep them at a distance, like wild beasts : but the
admiral was not so easily disconcerted. " Simon," said he, " I always
heard a good account of you, as an obliging fellow, and as a man of
courage too. Now I want to trap a few of these rough unsavoury
fellows, that you despise so heartily ; but if you stand aback, you '11 make
cowards of all the crew. Your fishing season is fairly over now, — your
scaffolds are full, — the cod is drying briskly ; and if you and your com-
rades will join Mr. English in a hunt after the natives, you sha'n't lose
your labour. 1 11 give ICO/, for every one that you bring to Fort

* Esquimaux is derived from Esquimantsic, in the Albinaquis language, importing,
" Eaters of raw flesh." Many tribes are still quite ignorant of the art of cookery,
t Keraliti, i. e. men.
+ The deepest soundings, near the centre of the Great Bank.

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures.

Townshend a year hence, able to speak either English or French,, and
interpret between us and their countrymen."

" Bless your heart !" said Simon, " that 's a noble bounty, and would
bring mermaids from Norway. We '11 hook the lubbers for you, though
they hide like otters, and snap like sharks. But the parson here must
undertake for the lingo, and a tough spell he 11 have of it. They are as
sulky as bears in their winter lodge. Ah ! cut a shark's meat ever so
nice, you '11 never teach him to chew like a Christian."

" Grandada," said the boy in an earnest whisper, " let me go with you
to hunt the savages ! Paul will lend me his carbine, and we '11 bring
Cabot."

" No ! no ! child," replied the old man, " 'twas enough for them to kill
your father. I must not lose you, as I did my poor Ben, by the arrows
of these wild brutes. Stay at home, my dear Sebastian, for a little
while. You '11 get fighting enough, I promise you, as you go through
the world."

It was finally arranged, that Simon should man a small sail-boat with
a few steady men of his own choice, and run along the coast the very
next day, with Mr. English, in search of the native Esquimaux; bearing
as presents some trinkets and utensils which they value highly, a fort-
night's provisions for themselves, and, to guard against the worst, arms
and ammunition. I had never yet seen these natives, and as I had
always loved adventures where sociality and danger went hand in hand,
I requested, and readily received, permission to accompany the party.
Mr. English gave me a bed in his house, and the sun at its rising next
morning found us seated beside old Simon in his smack, with the helm
in his hand, Cabot between his legs, and his long duck-gun behind him,
steering right before the wind into the Bay of Exploits. His crew con-
sisted of six jovial fishers, prepared for any adventure ; their guns and
pistols safe in a chest, and their tobacco-pipes sociably displayed in their
mouths, puffing away care, and enjoying hundreds of pounds sterling in
all the moral certainty of lively anticipation. You and I once heard a
matter-of-fact person deny the power of the human mind to forestall
future pleasure and pain to any real extent ; but this lubber had never
dreamt of jumping ashore into the arms of expecting friends, whilst
becalmed amidst the fogs of Newfoundland, and lulled to sleep by the
loud billows that break above its Banks ; or never fancied himself in a
sinking ship in the midst of the Atlantic, while the cries of agonized com-
panions assail his ears with horrible fidelity. For my part, I find my
share of solid material happiness so very trifling, that I am determined
through life to enjoy as much of it as possible in prospect, and look at the
bright side of things wherever my course is bound.

There was little of brightness or beauty to be seen in the shores along
which we were passing. Farmer's Island lay on our right, the mainland
on our left; both bordered with cold, rugged, gloomy rocks; here quite
barren, there crowned with juniper, heath, or wild spruce, which formed
the only objects that relieved the waste of waters. A few detached, tall,
naked crags stood forth among the waves in picturesque array ; but the
general aspect of still life here is sombre and repulsive ; so I turned in
self-defence to enjoy animated nature beside me.

" What a noble animal this Cabot is !" said I to his master ; ( ' you were
interrupted yesterday in an interesting anecdote of his sagacity."

"Ay !" said the old man proudly, "'tis he that needn't be ashamed

4M2

63() Newfoundland Adventures.

to hear his doings spoken of. He knows every word I say, and would
speak if he could. I reared him from his cradle, and fed and christened
him myself. I love him like a child, and he respects me like a father.
Well, as I was saying, my poor boy Ben and I were fishing on the
Bank one day, as usual, and Cabot was on board. I like to bring him
with me, for he has a pretty notion of the weather, and always takes his
watch with me, and keeps me warm in my berth when we turn in to-
gether— (that 's if he 's not too wet, for then he has the decency to lie
alone). When on deck, he keeps a good look out for squalls, and barks
right in the wind's eye till they strike us : but if he spies a sleeping whale,
he 's as mute as a mouse. He can see an iceberg through a fog, or feel
the freezing blast from it, as well as any Christian. He 's like a Christian
in every thing — eating his fish boiled or broiled, as we can give it to
him — not bolting it raw like the unclean savages (who .only know the
use of fire to show them light), except when he takes a fancy to eat a
cod's tongue from my hand, or to munch a flounder, that he amuses
himself finding with his feet in the shallow water on shore, and chasing
till he catches them.

" Well, as I was saying, we were pulling up the fish by hundreds.
The sea was alive with cod. 'Twas only the end of May, and we had
our ten thousand for the bounty already caught. Every man of us was
alive and jumping ; Cabot wishing he had hands to help us, and avoid-
ing the hooks like an old seaman. All of a sudden, a hook on the line
that I was paying out caught the riband of my seals, and whipt the
watch out of my fob ! — a beautiful little double-cased, gold, flat, French
thing, that went as regular as the gulf-stream. The riband tore half
through in the jerk, and away flew the montre d'or clean off the hook !
< O my watch ! my watch !' said I. Cabot saw the salmon-leap it made
over the gunwale, heard my outcry, and instantly plunged in head
foremost after the shining bait. ' Ah ! poor Cabot,' thought I, ' gold
sinks faster than you can dive, and the bottom is out of your depth here.
I pray Heaven he does not hook himself/ Well, it wasn't long till he
popped his head up like an otter with a fine cod splashing about in his
mouth. ' Well done, Cabot,' said I, ' you thought I bid you go fish
for me, as often you did before.' Ben helped him and the cod into
the boat, and up the side of the vessel. ( You deserve the tongue
for yourself, my fine fellow/ said I, as I cut it out for him, and
threw the fish to the gutter. Cabot wouldn't have it, but jumped after
his prize. Ben and I went on at our work as before, when presently
we heard him barking furiously, and saw the gutter threatening him
with his knife. ' What's all this about, Cabot?' said I, — ' silence, sir!'
but he made more noise than ever. — ' How dare you insult the dog ?'
said Ben. — ' Upon my oath I didn't touch him,' replied the gutter
trembling. — ' You lie,' said Ben, seizing the fellow by the arm ; ' he
never barks at any one for nothing, and to mend the matter you turn
your knife on him !' Cabot, the instant that Ben caught the fellow's
knife-arm (he never meddles with edge tools), sprung on the rogue's
breast, tore open his waistcoat, and down dropped my watch and seals
on deck. Cabot seized them, handed them safe to me, and jumped for
joy. We all kissed him, and Ben kicked the dirty gut-plucker ; and
Cabot barked him out of the vessel. I examined his fish afterwards,
and found that he had caught it by the tail, most likely as it was trying
the hard bellyful it had swallowed too hastily, and was shaking it out,

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 637

head-downwards as usual; for (saving your presence) they puke as
natural as an alderman. I got the watch cleaned at St. John's; — here
it is, and it goes better than ever ; but when fishing, I always wear my
seals inside. Ay ! you see Cabot knows what we are talking of," con-
tinued he, as the sagacious animal caught the riband playfully in his
mouth, and looked proudly at his master ; ' ' and he has heard as much
French spoken while he was with me at Cape St. John, that he under-
stands a good deal of that language too."

"I'll try him now," said I, "and turning to Mr. English observed,
" Le del promet V or age contre le vent ! Y a-t-il de I'apparence des raffles
aujourd'hui ?"

Cabot jumped up earnestly, laid his paws on the gunwale, snuffed
the breeze, and looked along the sky over Farmer's Island in very sea-
man-like style ; then after peeping in all our careless faces, seemed to
settle himself down into an opinion (as he yawned and nestled again
between Simon's legs, with some contempt in his countenance) that
there was no danger of squalls. " I'll try him again," said I, and con-
tinued to Simon, " Y a-t-il sur ce cote des bons endroits pour prendre
terre ?" The dog's eyes instinctively turned coastwards, but he seemed
to await his master's reply.

" Ok non ! Mais au-deld, de la polnte prochaine la terre est plus unie,
el nous pouvons debarquer de terns en terns chercher pour ces gros pitauds
les Esquimaux !"

Simon (who had much of the vivacity of gesture which seems an in-
dispensable part of the language he was speaking) could not help point-
ing significantly at the headland he was about to weather, and infusing
an extra degree of scorn into his brief notice of the poor natives. Cabot
evidently observed both, and stood upon the alert, as if he had received
an " order of the day" to hold himself in readiness for actual service.
His curiosity was effectually roused, and he ran about the vessel with
his eyes fixed on the rock that concealed the promised land of his master's
hereditary foes.

" The word Esquimaux," said Mr. English, "has a great effect on him.
I think he shares in his master's antipathies. It started him angrily on
his feet just now, as the cry of Neunook !* rouses an Esquimaux dog."

The old man seemed rather affronted by the illustration. " What re-
semblance is there," said he, " between that noble fellow and any of
their howling, thievish, half-starved, quarrelsome curs ? — a cross between
wolves and foxes ! — just kept alive by offal, and by shell-fish of their own
finding; and, when in harness, requiring a skelp, and a curse every
minute, to prevent them running riot, and choking themselves with each
other's wool ! Cabot never needs a blow, and wouldn't bear it. He can
run as fast as I can with two hundred weight of wood or fish in his own
little sleigh when the snow is hard, and, once to oblige me (indeed I
lent him a hand myself), drew twice that weight. He wouldn't live on
the raw garbage that they do, for he always eats with me. — My lads, get
breakfast ! — He never hurted a dog in his life, unless it first attacked him.
By the by, now you remind me, he was set upon by four savage curs
in an Esquimaux sledge one day, that turned out of their track on the
Hudson Bay ice to fall foul of him. The driver had been shouting

* A bear.

638 Newfoundland Adventures. [\TuNE,

Neunook ! as if there were a bear in sight,, to spirit them on their journey,
when all at once they turned on Cabot, pretending to mistake him for
a bear. < A joke 's a joke !' said I, c but this is too bad !' so I levelled my
gun to quash the fight ; but the little woolly devils were over and under
him so often, that I couldn't fire without hurting him. He just gave all
their legs a chop a piece (that's his way of fighting), and left them lame
and howling. During the fight, their driver poised his fish-spear, and
would have shivered Cabot, if I hadn't fired my charge of duck-shot
across him, and blew the harpoon-head off: it was only tied on with a
single thong in the middle of it, as usual (to let it turn into a cross-barb
in the fish or flesh it penetrated, as the case might be) ; so he got it again
after the fray, in two of his dogs' mouths, that were fighting for its fresh
seal-skin thong. But, would you believe it? the savage was so intent
on slaughter that he didn't mind my shot, but darted the headless handle
at Cabot, who, in return, seized the ugly devil by the leg like the rest —
(small blame to him) — and pulled three boots off. I had great work to
untangle them. Well, when the battle was ended, and I was giving the
greasy driver a drop of brandy, he saw that poor Cabot had got fast to
his fishing-line by a hook stuck through the web between his toes : the
fellow seized the paw roughly to recover his property, and was going
to tear it out, as if it had only been in a cod's jaw. Cabot winced, and
was about to bite him again, so I knocked the fellow down for peace-
sake, to teach him gentleness, as words would be thrown away on him.
I cut the line and drew out the hook backward, to Cabot's admiration, who
was in despair at the awkward grapple he had made, and expected to part
with some of his precious toes, at least, before he got clear. Well, sir !
when we went home, and fully six months after, one day as I came to
shore to unload a cargo of fish at Ben's scaffold, Cabot came swimming
and barking alongside to congratulate me, and play with Sebastian as
usual. He was anxious to attract my attention, but I didn't speak to
him for a long time, as I was busy on board, keeping a tally of the fish.
At last he howled mournfully : 'twas the first time I had ever heard him
howl — (the Esquimaux brutes can do nothing else). And as little
Sebastian kept interrupting me, I looked steadily to see what was the
matter. Then I perceived he had another dog at the water's edge along
with him, very lame ; — and as he kept running about the poor brute —
then towards me — then back again to him, I thought there must be
some meaning in it (for Cabot has no nonsense about him) ; so I stepped
ashore and looked at the lame dog's foot. And there, fast anchored in
the flesh, stuck an ugly cod-hook. I took it out, as I had done before
for Cabot, and jerked it into the water, as I thought, sinking it with a
hearty curse to the bottom of the sea : but it fell short ! When, what
do you think Cabot did? — The considerate brute ran after it — picked it
up — let it drop fairly in the water — then returned to his companion, and
away they both scampered, barking with delight. The dog 's worth his
weight in dollars ! He has a great heart, tender bowels, and no spleen,
bile, gall, or venom, in his nature. I'll bet my year's fishing he has a
soul to be saved ! Now, lads, to breakfast !"

A substantial breakfast was spread around the mast. Our stores con-
sisted of green and dry cod, herrings, salmon, and eels, salt beef, gan-
riets and their eggs from the Bird Islands, biscuits, and brandy. The
last was a present from the stores of the admiral, who knew the general
poverty of diet of the fishers, and wished to infuse some spirit into their

1830.J Newfoundland Adventure*. 639

proceedings through the medium of their stomachs. Cab6t sat beside
his master, took politely whatever was given him, and behaved himself,
as Simon would say, " very like a Christian."

By the time breakfast was ended, we had doubled the little cape, and
then ran alongside a low beach for some time till we found a favourable
spot to land at. We jumped ashore, and ascended the most elevated
rock contiguous ; but the telescope could show us nothing of the human
race : so we continued our course along the shore, as near as we safely
could venture, till we reached the southern extremity of the bay where
it receives the River of Exploits j occasionally turning into little creeks
and coves of still water, where we could land without risk, and get a view
inland. But as yet no natives appeared.

A sail-boat is a fine place for listening to stories. You have no row-
ing to tire you ; sailors have always something strange to tell, and you
may believe as much as you please. Wrapped up in your cloak, the
breeze in your ear only makes you arrange it more comfortably to catch
the long " yarn" as it comes spinning out amidst spray and sail-flap,
creaking of the astonished mast, and rattling of rival ropes.

( ' This is a strange mainsail of yours," said I j ' ' how came the pic-
ture of this great fish on it ? — What claw-like fins ! — and what a set of
teeth ! — Which of your sea-devils is it?"

" That's a grampus," replied the old man, "the whale's greatest
enemy. One of these fellows (with sometimes the help of a thresher,
or a sword-fish, or a sea-unicorn,) will drive a poor whale ashore in shal-
low water, kill him, and eat him after. They 're all great poachers and
injure the whale-fishing very much. Yet they 're sociable animals in
their own way, not very unlike the white wolves, in their mode of life,
that I have seen in a long string like a crescent on the plains of Labrador,
chasing an elk in the midst of them over a precipice, and then quietly
descending to pick his bones together. I'll tell you how the fish came
to be painted there.

" When I was mate of a Nantucket whaler, and we were running
south heavy laden from Hudson's Bay, an ugly wind from sou'-sou'-west
ahead blew us back as we were entering the straits of Belle-isle, and
sent us coasting round Newfoundland through the fogs. We doubled
Cape Bauld by close shaving, then stood well out from the shore till the
storm abated, and just passed Toulinguet, when the wind died away, and
the fog came down on us like a casting net. There we were for three
days, that we never saw the sun, yawing about, till the tide carried us
one night right on a sharp ledge of sunken rocks. Then (when the
mischief was done) a gale set in at sunrise from the north, the fog was
cleared up like a mainsail in a squall, and we found our stout ship break-
ing her back on the ledge as the tide fell, within a bow shot of Round
Head, the northern point of the isle of Fogo. What was to be done ?
The gale was increasing ; the breakers boiled furiously about us, and
the surf on the shore would swamp a life-boat. It had been a spring-
tide, d'ye see ; the vessel now lay high on the ledge : every wave Tan up'
the rock like a wild bull, tossing up the stern, and letting it fall again.
The thumps she gave as the keel struck the bottom were felt like the
shocks of an earthquake in the Mississipi ! We all expected by full ebb
that the good ship Grampus would be in shivers, with all of us afloat, to
be dashed on the Round Head among our barrels of blubber !

" A crowd of people on the island had assembled at the mouth of a

640 Newfoundland Adventures. |~JuNE,

little cove, just a mere gap in the rocks, where in fair weather a boat
might put in, or a dog swim ashore. A thought struck me. I called
Cabot, showed him the cove, and bid him swim with a line to the peo-
ple there. He would have taken it in his mouth ; but I persuaded him
to wait till I made it fast to him like the traces of his own sleigh, and
then off he jumped with it, rowing through the surge in gallant style.
We all gave three cheers for Cabot as we beheld him pushing on un-
dauntedly, with all our lives depending on the rope that he bore so well,
and which every minute grew heavier. I paid it out myself, lest he
should be held back, or lest more might go than was needful, and mayhap
catch on the coral bottom. Now he approached the surf on shore. Again
we cheered him on. The islanders had caught a sight of him amidst
the tumbling spray, and re-echoed our shouts as he neared them. The
captain stood beside me watching every stroke of the dog through his
glass, and giving us hope and comfort. I could only mind the rope. I
recollect I knocked my son Ben upside down for treading on it— (that
poor fellow who was murdered t'other day !) ' Now,' said the captain,
' he enters the breakers ! No, he stops ! No wonder ; that surf would
make splinters of a porpoise. Ah! he sinks, — he's lost !— and we're
lost !' He dropt the glass, and fell on his knees on my coil. ' Get off
the line, you cowardly lubber,' said I, capsizing him. ' I '11 bet a guinea
now he 's diving under it. What should ail him ?' The captain jumped
up like a new man, and soon we saw the waving of hats, as Cabot swam
cleverly in !

" We now sent a strong rope ashore, and along with it a cable, which
they made fast round a high rock. On this we swung a chair (well
braced together with cord, like a cage), that slid along by an iron ring.
One by one the crew went safe ashore in this easy chair with the help of
the islanders, who pulled it cheerily to land every time by the second rope ;
and those who remained on board hauled it back again. Every one
made much of Cabot when he landed, but he minded none but our friend
Paul there beside you, who had waded into the water to meet him and
take off the line, and give him a biscuit after his swim. He barked with
delight as each of the crew were hauled through the surf to the rock,
and spun about like a trundling mop when he saw me in the cage setting
off from the ship with little Sebastian in my arms ; for we were the
last except the captain. The Grampus soon was bumped to pieces, and
the casks of blubber came rolling in. As the wind abated, we saved
most of them, and some of the ship's sails and timbers, by guiding them
into the little cove. Ben and I were given the charge of them till they
could be disposed of. We found kind people in these islands, and liked
our quarters so well that here we have staid ever since, and given up the
harpoon for the cod hooks. The captain gave me a foresail that I saved :
Ben cut it up into what you see, and painted that Grampus on it, that
we might never forget our whaling days."

We now entered the River of Exploits, and landed to climb a rocky
hill at a little distance, from the top of which we might hope to get a
pretty extensive view. And here, after a sharp look out, to our great
delight we caught a sight of the Equimaux. About a dozen single canoes
were lying a mile off, up a bend of the river, hauled into a rushy creek :
a rude tent of skins thrown across a few poles stood near them in a
clump of juniper, and their owners were huddled together at a little
distance on the overhanging heathy bank ; very much resembling a

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 641

group of young white bears on the watch for fish. We had scarcely dis-
'covered them, when their keen eyes perceived us also, and up they
started in haste, pulled down their tent in a minute, rolled up their little
furniture in the skins in the most expeditious and workmanlike style,
and ran with their property to the canoes.

" We alarm them," said I. " They may escape us if we don't hasten
up in the boat."

" No ! no !" replied Simon, " they mistake us for a land party, and
take to the water for safety. So far, so well. Let them tie the bear-
skins fast on their canoes, and cram their own blubberly selves into the
deck-holes, and then we have them on our own element. The wind is
with us, and we'll soon run them down."

'Twas just as Simon foretold. The Esquimaux hastily paddled from
shore, each tied up in his water-proof seat ; but having gained the cen-
tre of the river, they seemed to await our further movements to regulate
theirs. We now hastened down to the boat, which as yet lay hid by
the hill from their sight, and made all sail to come up with them. As soon
as they espied us on the water, they were seized with consternation.
They speedily paddled back to land again, and untied their packages as
quickly as they had tied them on before, stowed them away into the
holes they had sat in, and marched off inland with their boats and bag-
gage on their heads ; — a curious sight to me. During this operation, we
were fast approaching them, and getting ready our presents. Mr. Eng-
lish and Paul (who both knew something of their manners) undertook
to bear them ; and, to excite less apprehension, left their guns behind.

" Nevertheless," said Simon, " take each of you a pair of pistols in
your pockets. These savages are treacherous at best. And if you find
them in a bad humour don't close with them, but keep out of the reach
of their arrows and spears. And all the rest of you, put by your pipes,
and look to your priming. The messengers may need our help yet."

We laid the boat close in to the bank, and made her fast to an old
spruce fir that grew near. Our ambassadors now hastened to overtake
the loaded natives, who, as soon as they perceived themselves followed,
divided into two parties, and pursued separate paths. Mr. English took
the course of the party to the right, and Paul endeavoured to come up
with that to the left. As the ground was tolerably clear and level, we'
had a fair view of all their proceedings from the river side.

When the savages saw they were pursued in this manner, first one
party, then the other, laid down their canoes, and held a consultation
amongst themselves. " I 'm sorry now that Paul went," said Simon to
me; "he's drest exactly as my poor Ben was the day he was killed.
They were comrades, and cut their jackets from the same piece, and
their caps out of the same seal-skin. He was present at that skirmish,
and helped us to rescue our fish. I wounded one of the natives, and he
wounded another. If these fellows were of that party, he runs a great
risk. Ha ! they are threatening him. Paul, stop ! call him, somebody
that can shout. The wind baffles my voice. That fellow in front is
springing his fingers!* — and now they string their bows, and fit their
arrows; and the booby's picking his steps, and doesn't see it. Paul,
I say ! Lads, get your guns!"

* To spring the fingers at any one, as if sprinkling water, in the language of signs, in-
dicates the discharge of missiles, and die threat, " I will kill you if "

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 54. 4 N

642 Newfoundland Adventures..

At our repeated shouts, the messenger turned round, and at that
moment, the party to which he had been advancing, discharged their
arrows at him. He was struck — ran a little way towards us, staggered,
and fell. The Esquimaux rushed towards him with loud shouts; and
Mr. English, well knowing the fate that awaited the poor fellow, if they
reached him, ran courageously to his aid, and discharged his pistols at
the assailants. They returned his fire by several arrows shot in suc-
cession, and so well aimed, that if he had not watched narrowly, and
jumped actively aside, each shaft would have transfixed him. I was
struck with admiration at the intrepid presence of mind and quickness
displayed in this dangerous moment by a quiet young man, whose
exercises had hitherto been of so different a cast. The old Peruvian
gymnasts, who stood as marks on their pedestals,* could not have
evaded the hostile missiles more dexterously. The secret of his safety,
I believe, lay in the calm, observant mood which was constitutional in
him, and now enabled him to look danger steadily in the face — to cor-
rectly estimate its tendency — and, thus collected and forewarned, to
move the requisite step in ease and safety.

The party to the right now made ready to assist their companions.
Our crew also ran towards the scene of action. " Stop, lads ! and fire
quickly and steadily," cried Simon ; ' f 'tis the only chance to save them !"
Each of our men shot in turn, but so hurriedly, from the agitation they
felt at the sight of their fallen comrade in the clutches of savages, that
they all missed their marks. Simon and I had not yet fired. Some of
the fishers stood in my way, so I discharged my piece (which was loaded
with swan drops), at the second party, who were now advancing with
shouts of defiance, and with good effect, for they instantly retreated, took
up their canoes, and we soon lost sight of them. The others had now
surrounded their hapless victim ; and one of them (the fellow who first
threatened Paul) was in the act of plucking out the arrow he had
shot him with, when Simon, resting his long duck-gun on a branch of
the withered spruce that our boat was tied to, fired and shot him dead.
On his fall, and our approach, his companions speedily retraced their
steps, with the exception of one who remained bent in anguish over his
body ; but, such is the force of habit, ere they fled they could not resist
the temptation of snatching their own particular arrows out of the body
of the dying man. They also found time to plunder him of the ill-fated
presents.

As our crew hastened up to their bleeding comrade, the remaining
savage fled also. Two of the fishers, who had re-loaded, again presented
their pieces with steady, vengeful aim, but Simon arrested their fire by
exclaiming, "Hold, lads! 'tis a woman! I see the peak of her head-dress,
with its beads and feathers. I '11 stop her without gunpowder. Here,
Cabot ! seize her, boy ; catch her by the long cloak, and hold her fast !"

The dog waited for no more, but stretched away after the waddling
bundle of skins which his master's sharp eye had recognized as the dress
of a female Esquimaux. He soon came up with her, and effectually
arrested her flight by laying firm hold of the ample bear-skin robe.
Hoping still to escape, she untied it at the collar, left it in his grasp, and
fled again. Again the dog pursued, caught her by the tail of her jacket,
and held her securely without further violence. The savage, thus tram-

* Vide Marmontel's Ir.cas.

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 643

melled, uttered screams of rage and despair. She turned furiously on
the dog with her drawn knife, and plunged it furiously into his throat
and breast several times. The noble animal retained his hold to the
last; but as the life-blood flowed from the wound, she shook herself
free, and again ran towards her tribe, now far distant. The old man,
during the struggles, had gained fast on her, and, boiling over with
wrath, at last overtook and knocked her down with the butt of his gun.
Again her screams of rage were heard, and rose on the air at intervals.
I ran up to save her life, as I feared Simon was inclined to take ample
vengeance on his prisoner ; but I perceived he was only binding her feet
together, and her hands behind her back. He then hastily returned to
his faithful dumb friend, who lay bleeding and shuddering on the spot
where he had fallen beneath her knife.

I aided Simon's endeavours to bind up the deep wounds which the
enraged savage had made in his breast and neck ; but it was plain, from
the quantity of blood that had gushed from them ere we arrived, and
now lay streaming around him, that the noble animal was past our help.
The old man's voice faltered, and I saw a tear on his rough cheek, as he
said, " 'Tis all over ; Cabot will never swim again ; and there's not such
a dog alive. God forgive me ! 'twas I that sent him to be killed !" Cabot
still knew his voice ; and with eyes that were fast assuming the glossy
lustre of death, acknowledged the grateful sympathy of his master. He
raised his head for an instant, and attempted to lick the hand that patted
it ; but the vital stream gushed from his mouth, and the effort was un-
availing. It was his last — expressive of the master feeling of his noble
nature, and Simon fully appreciated it. " My faithful dog !" he ex-
claimed, " where shall I find such a friend ? I would share half the
remaining years of my life with you if I could. But it pleases God to
take you to himself, and leave me to struggle on alone with storms and
savages." So saying, and sighing heavily, he rose from the clotted gore
in which he had been unconsciously kneeling, and returned with me to
the spot where the crew were assembled round the wounded fisher and
the dead Esquimaux.

As we approached, they beckoned Simon to hasten, and we both ran
forward. Paul lay on his face on the ground, weltering in blood. One
arrow was yet sticking firmly in his neck, the last remaining of four
which had pierced him as he turned to ask the meaning of our shouts.

The fishers and Mr. English were endeavouring to stanch the wide-
spread wounds by bandages when we arrived; but all their hand-
kerchiefs and neckcloths were soon soaked through, and his life was fast
flowing away. He motioned Simon to stoop down to him, as he could
not raise or turn his head, and he groaned with horror as his comrades
proposed to remove the arrow. ' ' Simon," said he, faintly and at intervals,
<f I am dying. This arrow is too deep. Don't touch it ! Let me die !
These are the fellows that killed Ben. Wear this cap for my sake. Let
Sebastian have my carbine : the boy was fond of me. Tell Mary I pardon
all her cruelty. Give her the little moss-rose tree again ; perhaps she
will think of Paul as she wears its flowers. Give my watch and every
thing else to my mother, and say my last thoughts were of her." — " I
will, my dear fellow," replied Simon ; " God help her and me too !"
A pause ensued. His breathing was yet audible, and all were silent in
deep commiseration. Again his feeble voice was heard, as if a sudden
thought occurred. " Tell her, lest she should lose time in searching,

4N2

644 Newfoundland Adventures. [JuNE,

that I hid the key of my chest over the door, and that I put her strong
shoes up the chimney to dry." He would have said more, but the
barbed weapon now irritated his throat beyond endurance, and he
coughed violently : the blood gushed afresh everywhere, and when the
fit ceased from exhaustion, he breathed no more : life terminated in that
universal convulsion.

All stood sadly gazing on the piteous sight, till Simon, with an anxiety
we could not comprehend the cause of, withdrew from his friend's neck
the fourth and last shaft which the savage had been endeavouring to
regain when he received his death-shot. " He is quite dead !" said the
old fisher, " he winces not ! 'twould have roused life if a feeling remained.
Ay !" continued he, as he closely examined the carving of the bone
arrow-head, and compared it with those in its owner's quiver, and with
one which he drew from his own pocket, " ay ! 'tis as I thought. The
same hand that shot Paul drew the bow before to murder my poor Ben :
these arrow-heads were cut from the same bone, and notched by the
same hand, and now it lies cold and stiff there beside Paul's. I 'm satisfied.
And see how the wild butcher still grasps his knife in death ! 'Tis
plunged into the earth as he made his last spiteful stab at Paul with it.
Lads, bear your comrade's body to the boat : we '11 take it home to his
poor mother. And bring me the anchor and boat-axe : I 've a grave to
dig here."

The crew lifted Paul's cold and stiffening body on their guns, and
slowly moved from the scene of blood ; while Simon, accompanied by
Mr. English and me, returned to the spot where Cabot expired. At a
little distance his prisoner lay bound on the earth, exhausted by her fit
of rage, and now awaiting her fate in sullen silence. As he gazed
mournfully on the body, he exclaimed, " What shall I say to the child ?"
" 'Tis his grandson, Sebastian, that he speaks of," whispered Mr. Eng-
lish ; " Cabot and he were inseparable. 'Twould have delighted you to
have seen the noble dog swimming in the sea with his little friend on
his back. He '11 take his loss very much to heart."

' ' Ay !" said Simon to himself, as if in an act of devotion ; " through
my fault! — through my fault! — through my most grievous fault ! / sent
him on the fatal errand. / bid him hold her fast, and he did so with
the sacrifice of his life. If I had left him to stop and turn her at his own
discretion, she never could have mangled him thus."

I could not help smiling at the high opinion the old man entertained
of his dog's capacity, as I walked with Mr. English towards the female
prisoner. " I am surprised," said he, " that Simon does not take Cabot
home also, and bury him in consecrated ground. But let us bring this
poor woman to the boat."

Her features now exhibited extreme fear. The Esquimaux are never
shown the least mercy by their neighbours, the Canadian Indians,
wherever they meet, even when no recent quarrel had occurred ; and,
therefore, they shun the warlike red-men with instinctive antipathy : but
from enemies of any nation they dread destruction as a matter of course ;
and now the captive evidently expected nothing less than death as the
return for that which she had inflicted. We untied her feet, but leaving
her hands still bound, led her to the boat. I got to the windward of her
as soon as possible, for the rank effluvia of train oil emitted from her
dress and her breath, struck on my nerves so forcibly, that it gave me a
headach, cind other unmentionable symptoms. She was clad in skins.

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 645

The large cloak which the dog had first seized her by was of bear-skin,
worn with the hair inwards, wrapped about the breast, and descending
to the middle of the leg. It had also a large falling hood attached, and
seemed rather a cumbrous pelisse for July wear. Perhaps there was
something of the pride of display connected with the burden ; perhaps
mere prudence ; for if it were left at home, (or, more correctly speaking,
buried near any of their thousand extempore encampments), their dogs
might scratch it up and eat it. Besides, as the owner camped out in
all weathers, it served for bed, umbrella, tent, tarpaulin, and also, as we
afterwards learned, for a nursery. This did not strike us at the time,
as the wearer was destitute of the Esquimaux nurse's cradle-boots,
hooped inside with whalebone ; a great convenience, which she had
probably left behind to hold the child. She now wore a kind of sandals
tied on in the Italian mode, but with a greater liberality of skin, serving
both for shoes and stockings.

Her inner dress was a jacket and drawers of seal-skin, with the fur
outwards j the former tastefully fashioned with two broad tails which
hung one behind and one before, in the shape of the shields that sur-
round the old broadside of Magna Charta. Instead of ancient blazonry,
she had decorated them with insertion work coinciding with the curve
of the outline. Similar braiding was worked along the outer seam of
the arm, and a keepsake of scarlet cloth, one inch square, was stitched
on the left shoulder. A curiously cut and embroidered pocket of fox-
skin hung by a thong round her neck. Her cap was all of a piece in
pattern and substance with the jacket : it was, in fact, a continuation of
it, terminating in a point on the top of the head, fancifully stuck over
with feathers, and strung with beads of glass and bone. The man's
dress was somewhat diiferent. He wore a capuchin coat (a kind of
close smock-frock with a hood) of seal-skin, which doubly defended
him against the cold, by a lining of feathers within. This garment
descended to the middle of the thigh. Beneath, trousers, and five pair
of boots (all of seal-skin), defended his lower extremities. Inside all,
he wore a kind of shirt, made, as Mr. English told me, of bladders
of sea-calf, stitched together with threads formed of the fine nerves of
some animal, which the natives expertly ply in their needles of bone.
Both the savages were of a middling stature, robust, and of a brownish
colour : their ages nearly the same, about thirty. Their complexions
had a greasy sallowness that savoured much of the oil of seal and por-
poise which they use so liberally. Their heads were large, their faces
broad, — their lips thick, — teeth strong and white, — cheek-bones high,
and noses flat ; their hair was long, black, and lank ; their shoulders
large, and feet uncommonly small. The woman was much the comelier
of the two. Her eyes were black, small, and sparkling, and most un-
settled, as if continually meditating means of escape. She submitted to
her fate with a very bad grace, and became so unquiet in the boat that
it was necessary to tie her feet again.

Simon had contrived to dig a deep grave in which he laid the remains
of his faithful follower, and had commenced filling in the earth and
stones as Mr. English and I returned to the spot. Suddenly he threw
away his tools, and dragged up the body of Cabot again. Grief had
effectually checked his loquacity, and we were obliged to 'ask the mean-
ing of this movement before he afforded us any explanation. " I cannot
part with him entirely," said the old man. " I'll bring home his skin

646 Newfoundland Adventures. [\JuNE,

to Sebastian for a keepsake. 'Twill make a couvrelit for the poor lonely
child." He took a sharp knife from his pocket, and commenced the
operation of skinning by an incision along the breast, but speedily ex-
claimed, et I can't do it ; I feel as if / was slaughtering him ! Let some
of you take the knife, who don't feel as I do."

Two of his comrades, who were standing by, undertook the work,
and Simon looked on for a while with mournful interest. At length, he
came close to Mr. English, and asked in a low but earnest tone, " Sir,
don't you think 'twould be decent and fitting to say a word of prayer
over poor Cabot, before we leave him for ever ?"

Mr. English was somewhat startled; but after a little time* replied,
" There is no form of prayer prescribed for brute animals, Simon."

" Well ! what signifies that?" said the fisher in a matter-of-fact tone.
" I have heard you pray on occasion without book, for fellows that
were not worth a cod's head, that eat like cormorants and drank like
fishes, and died like boobies, knocked down by death for want of sense
to get out of his way !" I, however, prevailed on him to postpone his
petition till he arrived at home. He did not quite forgive Mr. English,
for on a hint from him of the propriety of affording burial to the body
of the savage that lay beside us, he replied roughly, " Let it lie there !
His fellows will return, I '11 engage, for the sake of his boots, and they
may eat him if they will, for what I care." So saying, he threw Cabot's
skin over his shoulder, and having seen his body fairly interred, and a
large stone rolled over his grave, he gathered up the bow and arrows of
the slain Esquimaux, and returned to the boat.

These were the only remaining trophies ; for the routed party had
contrived to carry off the two empty canoes. They were very small
compared to similar weapons of the red tribes of North America. The
islanders have little choice of woods for their purpose. The bow was com-
posed of a species of fir (probably larch or spruce), in three pieces ; not
on the principle of compensation well known to the old English archers,
who glued together entire lengths of yew and lance-wood, to balance
elasticity by toughness ; but simply to make up the requisite length of
the weapon, as if their knowledge of carpentry did not enable them to
cut out a single piece of the proper size. The parts were attached by
thongs made out of the sinews of the deer, which had been cut up
fresh, and bound on tightly over the entire bow : these in drying had
shrunk exceedingly, and imparted to the wretched sticks a degree of
strength and spring that made the weapon tolerably effective.

Our crew had evidently lost much of their zeal for the civilization
project, by the melancholy death of their comrade. After a short con-
sultation, it was determined to steer homewards, to inter the body of
Paul, and secure their prisoner. Accordingly, we hoisted sail, and de-
scended the river, placing the prisoner and her cloak as much to leeward
as possible. As we retraced our course along the bay, I was struck
with the great alteration of tempers and manners in my companions ; so
different from what they had been as we entered these wild scenes.
Then all was hope and gaiety : not even the habitual economy of the
pipe (prompting the propriety of smoking continuously once it was
lighted) could restrain their lively narratives and repartees. Simon had
been particularly vivacious. Now he, as well as they, sat smoking in
sober sadness, occasionally turning their eyes towards the corpse that
lay at their feet, and turning away their noses in unconcealed disgust,

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 647

whenever a whiffling wind came back from the poor prisoner. Were it
not for the promised bounty, and the presence of Mr. English and my-
self, I am inclined to think that she would at least have been tossed over-
board like many an odd- fish-looking creature that boded bad luck to af-
frighted fishermen, as they laboured in their vocation with all the super-
stition and ignorance incident to its solitude and danger ; caring little
what loss science might sustain, so they ward off ill-luck themselves.
My friend English and I had the conversation all to ourselves, and I
recollect that even we spoke in whispers ; so infectious is melancholy :
the shores looked more bleak and barren, the breeze and surf chilled us
as we sat listlessly beneath their influence, and the breakers seemed to
strike more sharply against the rocks, as our open ears unconsciously
admitted their ill-omened burthen. At last our thoughts received a
sudden turn by Simon starting up and exclaiming in anger, " Where 's
Cabot's skin ? I brought it into the boat. Who has dared to throw it out?"

" It's all safe," said one of the fishers. "I stowed it away snug in
the bear-skin cloak there."

" Damn your eyes !" cried Simon fiercely. " How dare you roll up
his skin in that carrion hide, which is enough to rot the plank it lies on ?
Shake it out, you lubber, and hang it to air, if you wouldn't rouse him
out of his grave to chop your head off !"

" No offence !" said the fisher, " I meant all in kindness. I didn't
think the skin was so touchy."

Nothing further occurred to checker our voyage home. The female
was by common consent given in care to Mr. English, who gladly un-
dertook to teach her whatever was possible, and provide for her main-
tenance. He had her disgusting apparel immediately removed, and re-
placed with the usual dress of respectable females of the island. I beheld
her thus attired next day, when she was presented to the admiral, and
recollect thinking her very much humanized, and almost comely : such
alteration does dress make ; but her dark eyes were very wild and un-
settled.

The admiral attended the funeral of Paul, along with our little crew,
and a number of islanders, who knew and regretted him. At the head
of the procession, Simon led his little grandson in one hand, and Paul's
weeping mother in the other. As the ceremony concluded, I overheard
Sebastian say to the old man, " I hope the ugly savage woman that mur-
dered Cabot is to be killed and buried too. I 'm sure she deserves it."

" Ay, boy !" replied Simon, " but the admiral gives no bounty for
dead vermin."

" I fear," said I, as I shook hands with Mr. English at parting, (i the
civilization of the natives will go on but slowly. You can't expect any
aid from these people. If I don't visit you next season, pray write me
word how you succeed with this poor woman." He promised he would,
and the admiral's barge soon after brought me back to the ship.

In the winter I left Newfoundland for St. Heliers, with three cargoes
of cod for the French market. There I had the satisfaction to receive a
letter from my friend English, dated nearly a year after my departure.

" Toulinguet, 4th August, 1818.

******

" Your prediction is correct. The civilization of the natives goes on

648 Newfoundland Adventures. £JuNE,

very slowly. Our people speak of their researches in the interior as ( an
unlucky kind of fishing/ and won't repeat them. My female pupil would
wear out the patience of the seven sages. She will attend to nothing :
in fact, she is still a savage. I need not assure you that she is treated
kindly (indeed more like one of my family than a stranger), but nothing
seems to efface the memory of the scene she witnessed on the bank of
the River of Exploits. I sometimes endeavour to interest her on that
subject, but though I am confident she understands our language to a
considerable extent, I cannot yet prevail on her to speak a word of it.
She is shrewd and observing at times, but wants either the will or the
power of fixing her mind on any subject requiring continued attention.
It seems that the Esquimaux shot by Simon was a chief, and her hus-
band; that she has left a child with her tribe; and that they recognized
Paul as a former enemy by his dress. Ursa (the name given to her in
jest by a young midshipman of the admiral's party, and since univer-
sally adopted by the fishers, who don't trouble their brains about deriva-
tions,) has a most powerful propensity to steal ; but her thefts are con-
fined to materials of dress or minor articles of apparel, which, when dis-
covered in her possession, are always found transformed into baby-
clothes. She understood something of sewing when taken prisoner, and
it continues to be her only occupation when she thinks she is unobserved.
Her bear-skin cloak with the cradle-hood is still stretched on a frame in
one of my rooms, which it has completely taken possession of, for none
of us can tolerate the effluvia it still retains and dispenses, though the
room is well ventilated, and a year has elapsed since the airing process
was begun. She evinces a strange apathy to music. The finest airs
have been delightfully played and sung in her presence, but she appears
as if she heard them not ; though the howling of a dog will attract her
attention at any time, for she is quick enough in her perceptions of things
that have habitually interested her. When left to herself she is at times
lively in her motions ; if interrupted, very irritable ; indeed she seems
incapable of either long concealing or long entertaining the feeling of
anger; and all her fits of passion generally terminate in a prolonged la-
mentation for herself or her absent child.

" Our threats availed nothing to check the petty thefts that Ursa's
maternal feelings continually prompted, so we brought her one day to
see a thief flogged in the market-place, and to explain the cause of his
punishment. She screamed violently, and in the course of the next week
made an attempt to escape, evidently anxious to avoid a similar infliction,
which she seems conscious of meriting ; but watchful Simon caught her,
and brought her back. He frequently inquires after her proficiency,
and is astonished to hear that she does not know her alphabet yet. He
recommends me to start her with a rope's end, once or twice a day, and
is affronted because I will neither employ it myself nor allow him to use
it. He says I am like the dog in the manger. He has never forgotten
our difference of opinion respecting Cabot's soul, and shortly after your
departure joined the congregation of a rival of mine, a methodist preacher
who was formerly a Jersey agent on the island, and is now also a fisher
and a schoolmaster. I find it impossible to induce my poor parishioners
to pay cheerfully my stipulated fee of one shilling per head per annum ;
and as I don't admire quarrelling, I shall very likely make an exchange
of parishes shortly; but not before I do all that is possible . for Simon

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures 649

and his comrades by fair means, to render their prize worthy of the
admiral's premium, fa yet she is altogether ungovernable and useless.

" My rival manages his congregation admirably. He prays and
preaches gratuitously, but makes a respectable charge per head for teach-
ing the little sinners their A, B, C. His flag is flying while I write, to
summon the elect to his class meeting ; and I see Simon and Sebastian
moving on with the rest to luxuriate in his outpourings. He and Simon
have struck an average of opinions on the subject of our schism. He
admitted, that ' if it pleased Heaven, Cabot might have had a soul :' but
Simon insists on this version — ' Cabot may have a soul, if it pleases Hea-
ven ;' and the preacher thinks it prudent to acquiesce in the amendment.

" I am informed that two more Esquimaux women have lately been
caught by another exploring party in the interior, and are now under the
admiral's care at St. John's." * * *

* * * * * *

Home business still prevented my return to Newfoundland, but our
Jersey fishers at last brought me the following letter from Mr, English,
dated two years after his first communication.

" Toulinguet, 12th August, 1820.

* * * * •* •*

" The admiral visited us during his rounds last month, and appeared
much disappointed at the continued intractability of my pupil Ursa.
Excepting her increased knowledge of the English language, she is very
little altered for the better. He observed that she possesses the same air
of distrust, anxiety, and occasional abstraction, which marked the wan-
dering character of her mind when first captured, and which is also
common to her two countrywomen. They are to be sent back to the
interior (well furnished with proofs of British liberality) on his return
to St. John's.

" He endeavoured to interest Ursa respecting the condition of her own
people, for whom he had brought presents of some value, and which she
was to be intrusted with ; but whatever kindly feelings his generosity
excited, were still shrouded beneath the same restless uneasiness, indi-
cative of some powerful train of feelings whose source lay in the past, and
which engrossed her whole being. Fear and sorrow were evidently up-
permost, and are almost the only emotions she has of late exhibited.
Once, and but once, I beheld her moved to sympathy. 'Twas by the
sight of an infant in the arms of an Irish lady who came on a visit at the
house. She gazed on the child with an absorbing earnestness, that moved
the anxiety of the mother for its safety : but there was nothing to fear.
Ursa with tears in her eyes explained to her in broken English, that she
had left an infant of a similar age with her tribe when she was captured,
for whom she had never ceased to grieve.

" On the first of this month, I embarked with Simon and his five com-
rades to convey this poor creature to the district where we had found
her three years ago, and where we hoped to fall in with some of her
countrymen, on whom the sight of her wealth, and the account she could
give of her good treatment, might produce their natural effect on a race
so needy, and at the same time so distrustful, as the Esquimaux. Her
cloak was now delivered to her along with the admiral's gifts ; and even
her baby-clothes were restored, that no unfavourable impression might
remain on her memory. The greater part of the voyage she was obsti-

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 54. 4 O

650 Newfoundland Adventures. £JuNE,

nately silent, and seemed under the influence of recollections that agi-
tated her violently. I endeavoured to cheer her, but she shook her head
and answered not. I asked if she were ill ? if she were sorry to return
to her tribe ? if I could yet do any thing for her comfort ? She at last
replied, in a tone of fearful energy, ' Nothing ! nothing !' indicative of
such determined self-reliance or self-abandonment, that I gave up the
attempt in utter hopelessness.

" At last we entered the River of Exploits, and put ashore at the same
little rushy harbour near where the fight had occurred. I thought it
imprudent to excite her feelings by taking her thither again ; but a ge-
neral feeling of curiosity, in which she strongly participated, and our
anxiety to discover any late tracks of the wandering natives, with whom
we might now hope to open an intercourse under more favourable cir-
cumstances, led us on to the very ground where we left her husband un-
buried three years ago. Nothing now remained of the .slain Esquimaux,
but the spot was well marked by nature in the luxuriant herbage that
sprung from earth which had imbibed the life-blood of two human be-
ings. A small rock lay beside it, and further on a second, on Cabot's
grave. The moment Ursa reached that little patch of verdure in the
midst of barrenness, she became convulsed with feelings whose intensity
was too great for endurance. She struggled for utterance, and, bursting
into a loud and piteous scream, fell to the earth amongst us. We hastily
raised her, and supported her on the large stone, while one of the men
ran back for some water, which he brought in his hat ; but she could
not sit, she could not speak, she could not breathe ! — that piercing cry
was the last sound she uttered. We felt her pulse, but not a single beat
was found : the cold water dashed in her face did not send one throb
back to her heart ; it was cold and motionless too, and we saw with
dismay that we held a corpse in our arms ! Simon stood aghast !

' D tion !' he exclaimed ; ( the bounty 's lost with her ! All '& gone !

Ben, Paul, Cabot, — and all through these infernal savages !' He cocked
his gun, stepped up hastily on the rock, and looked long and steadily
around him, as if for some object on which to wreak his vengeance, or
by which to retrieve his loss : but nothing appeared in the distance ; and
declining to give us any further aid, he went and sat in silence on the
stone of Cabot's grave.

" We bore the body back to the boat, and soon after Simon slowly
joined us. We returned hither immediately, and next day deposited
poor Ursa's remains in the churchyard, in a grave which happened to be
dug close to the spot where we laid those of Ben and Paul three years
ago. Simon exclaimed strenuously against the profanation of burying
a heathen like her in consecrated ground, and beside them, the victims
of her husband's ferocity. I tried the argument of Christian charity
with him : — in vain. He said that Ursa was ' neither a Christian or a
neighbour/ and was positive she had no claim to charity from us. A
hint, however, of the probability of the admiral's displeasure, and the
total withdrawal of the bounty in consequence, silenced him at last.

" Immediately on my return, I wrote to St. John's, and received in
answer from the admiral a singular account of the termination of the
expedition to restore to their tribes the two native women who had been
educated under his own eye. On reaching the place in their route across
the island where they had both been taken prisoners about two years ago,
one of them fell dead! (what a strange coincidence !) and the other ob-

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 651

stinately refused to proceed, and finally returned with the escort. She
will explain nothing further than that she is afraid her tribe would
kill her !

" The admiral's opinion now is, that the hereditary antipathy of the
Esquimaux to the European settlers is such, that they forbid any inter-
course with them under pain of death. If this be the case, our labour
is fruitless." ******* **

It was in autumn, two years after the date of this letter, that I had an
opportunity of again visiting Newfoundland. A Jersey trader brought
me to St. John's, and a coaster carried me thence to Toulinguet, where
I had some business to transact. I found that my friend English had
left this parish, and had been appointed to one in New Brunswick.
Here I saw old Simon as active and loquacious as ever, and Sebastian,
now grown a fine stout lad and a daring fowler. The first thing his
grandfather showed me was Cabot's skin still lying on Sebastian's bed.
It had been most carefully preserved, and retained the beautiful black
hair, whose glossy curl I had so much admired years ago. Two more
Esquimaux bows and quivers decorated the walls of their hut, which, on
my inquiry, the young fellow told me, in rather a chuff way, he had got
last winter from a native party off Strait Coast.

" Did they give them to you?" said I.

" No," replied the boy carelessly as he left the room, " I got them in
exchange for powder and shot."

Five years had made a surprising difference in his stature, look, and
voice. He spoke little, but most energetically. His eyes were dark, and
deep-set beneath heavy over-hanging brows ; and these were surmounted
by a beetling forehead. His head was remarkably broad between the
ears, which stood boldly forward, full in view, as if to catch the slightest
sound that was uttered in his presence. His whole aspect was stern
and ardent, and left an impression on me that I did not easily forget.
Its expression was of that cast which indicated conscious power and
readiness to compare, determine, and speedily execute whatever was re-
solved on. There was also a contempt of trifling, and a capability of
remembering injuries, too strongly marked to be overlooked or mistaken.
His grandfather assured me that it took up the greatest part of his time
to watch over him, to keep him out of danger, and restrain his im-
petuosity. I had remarked three deep scars on the boy's forehead, and
one on his cheek : these Simon told me he had received from the gan-
nets of Magdalen Islands last year in lightening the rocks of a boat-
load of eggs. " 'Twas well I was there/' said he, " for the blood blinded
him, and he missed his footing and fell into the sea about twenty feet
below. The spiteful screaming things still darted at him in the water,
as if they 'd pick his bones j and I had to shoot some of them before
they 'd let me haul him out. He 's going again in the Grampus in a
day or two, and I must go with him too, or they won't leave an eye
in his head."

" 'Tis fortunate," said I, " that our courses lie together. I have par-
ticular business at Prince Edward's Island, and will be glad to accom-
pany you, and see your method of fowling on the rocks."

Simon cheerfully engaged to take me by his usual northern route,
and we appointed the next morning but one (wind and weather per-
mitting) for the voyage. Accordingly, having despatched my business
in the interim, I once more took my seat at break of day beneath the

40'2

652 Newfoundland Adventures. \

Grampus that still fluttered grimly in the old mainsail, with store of
powder and shot, and an excellent detonating double-barrelled fowling-
piece that I had brought from Jersey. Simon took it up as he came on
board, in the way that a trumpeter of the heavy dragoons might vouch-
safe to handle a child's penny whistle — condescendingly laid it along-
side his old duck gun — and shook his head most hopelessly as he dis-
covered by actual admeasurement that both my barrels taken together
would only equal the length of his ! I was rather piqued at the old
fellow's inference, and entered into a statement of some late experiments
in England on the various ranges of barrels, and their disproportionate
ranges. Simon shook his head still more incredulously at the new-
fangled notions of the old-world sportsmen ; and at last clearly con-
vinced me that he was too old to admit a new idea, and that in his case
I must be contented with the exhibition of the very opposite state of
the human intellect — that which gratifies itself with pouring out all the
notions it had acquired previous to the age of forty.

He and Sebastian formed my only companions. The old man ex-
plained the cause in a whisper, as the boy shook out the jib, and made
ready for sea. " When I was a young fellow, I always found that my
playfellows led me into danger that I wouldn't have faced without com-
pany ; so I persuade Sebastian that 'tis more courageous and profitable
to go alone : for he and I are all one. Ah !" continued he with a sigh,
" Cabot's qualities are only granted to him in part as yet. He has got
all his courage without his caution. He'd fight a shark in the water
with a diver's toothpick* if I'd let him, out of downright carelessness
of life. So I go to keep watch on him, now that Cabot's gone."

We had a fine easterly breeze that morning, before which we scudded
along at a delightful rate. We soon doubled Cape St. John, where the
French coast commences. Headland after headland was passed in quick
succession ; and thinly scattered fishing-huts peeped out here and there,
from creeks and coves, like out-posts of civilization thrown on land to
secure the wealth of ocean. The tall scaffolds — some forty feet high —
stood in picturesque array beside the cottages in many places, rising
like watch-towers high above the perpendicular rocks on which they
were erected, when the scanty strand below did not allow the careful
planters room to dry their fish in safety there. The day passed away
before my eyes were tired of the wild scenery presented to them along
this coast, which was quite new to me, and appeared strangely savage
after having feasted my sight for the last five years on the luxuriant
shores, and splendid castles, towns, and villas of the English Channel.
The sun set, and still the steady gale swelled the sails, and displayed the
picturesque Grampus in the moonlight as the orb rose trembling over
the waves. The weather was so fine, and the wind so favourable, that
we agreed to stand out well from shore, and take rest alternately as
well as we could. The old man was prevailed on to " turn in" to his
boat-cloak and take the first nap, while Sebastian and I kept watch : he
soon snored soundly.

" Is there any hope alive," said I to the lad, " of still civilizing these
wild natives?"

* A short stick, sharp at both ends — the weapon by which the pearl-fishers in California
baffle their powerful enemy in his own element. As the shark opens his mouth to bite,
the diver thrusts the stick in perpendicularly, holding it by the middle : the jaws close on
the points, and the man withdraws his hand in safety and triumph.

1830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 653

" No ! no !" replied he ; " not on our side of the island, at least. We
have suffered dearly by them; and if ever I forget or forgive!"—-

" Mr. English had great patience with that poor woman."

" Mr. English was a great fool to think to change a crab into a flying*
fish ! He took three years to find out what any one might have known
in three days, and what even I (child as I was) became certain of in three
weeks — that she was a mere savage, and that no good could be expected
of her by fair means. My grandfather might have known it too, if his
hope of a share of the 100/. hadn't blinded his judgment. If I had had
the care of her, I would have starved her into obedience ; or, if she had
continued obstinate to the month's end, shot her to save time."

"Would you have murdered the poor creature?" said I in astonish-
ment.

" Yes !" said he calmly, " if my grandfather had let me, as readily
as I would a shark or a polecat. I don't know what any of these pesti-
lent vermin are good for, except to destroy fish and game, and devour
them raw."

et And pray what good do you do in the world ? What right would you
plead to your life, if her tribe displayed a similar readiness to take it?"

" Let them take it when they can !" replied he with a fierce short
laugh of derision. " I value not my life, and I value not theirs. Whilst
I am above the waves, I live to comfort that old man, and to revenge my
father !"

" Revenge is not a Christian frame of mind, young man."

u I get enough of preaching on the island," said he, cutting me short ;
and as I did not foresee any beneficial result from proceeding in this strain,
I did not renew it. " What a task a preacher must have," thought I,
" to make his sermon work for good on one of the hundreds who appear
to listen to it, ignorant as he must be of the under-current of their
. thoughts ! This young scapegrace thinks vengeance a virtue ; and may
I be hanged instead of him, if 1 know how to * put in' an argument
that will touch him."

Early the next day we doubled Cape Bauld, and stood into the Straits
of Belle-isle. Here we fell in with a magnificent iceberg, glittering in
the morning sunshine, and glowing with all the hues of the rainbow.
The ice was brightly crystalline, and the side next to us freshly broken.
It was the fragment of a huge floating mountain from Davis Strait,
which had been wrecked and shattered in the dangerous embrace of
some gigantic nymph of the North Pole, as they sported on the azure
fields of ocean, and yielded with irresistible impetus to the seductive in-
fluence of each other's accumulated attractions. Darwin has sung "The
Loves of the Plants," Moore " The Loves of the Angels/' Canning*
" The Loves of the Triangles :" Sir Walter sings,

" Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
And men below and saints above ;"

but it yet remains for some mightier poet to do justice to the chaste yet
melting Loves of the Icebergs.

It floated by. a pile of picturesque beauty, strongly resembling a Gothic
cathedral. The pointed caverns, worn by the dashing waves below,
yawned like portals and archways around the base ; shivered splinters
stood like buttresses to guard the front and sides, and their points

654 Newfoundland Adventures. [JuNE,

bristled up into pinnacles : more dense and elevated masses rose into
towers, lanterns, and steeples; whilst the precipitous and glassy walls
shone with brilliant reflexions that completed the architectural simili-
tude. All at once this splendid floating mountain stood firm as a rock
(grounded in water whose depth must have been double its immense
height) ; and as the resounding billows now beat louder against its fretted
base, I almost fancied I could hear the swelling murmur of thousands,
whose voices joined in some measured psalmody, while at times the
groaning organ drowned " the busy hum of men" in its stormy burthen.

I watched this ocean palace with unceasing interest as we rounded
Cape Norman, while the increasing distance heightened the illusion.
The sunless side now came gradually in view, and I was admiring the
shadows which strongly marked each deep recess between the towering
buttresses, when my f( fancy's sketch" was hastily dispelled by the eager
and almost imploring tone of Sebastian, who was at the helm: — " O ! dear
grandfather ! there they are ! now remember your promise !"

Right ahead appeared seven Esquimaux in canoes of the exact de-
scription we had encountered on the River of Exploits five years before.
They had just put out of Boat Harbour, at the northern extremity of the
old Indian path, and seemed taking advantage of a fair wind to paddle
across the strait to either Green or Red Bay on the Labrador shore.
" Stay, child," said Simon; " don't be rash ! You need not cross them.
You can stand into shore out of their way. You ought to be well satis-
fied. Remember the two who fell last winter !"

" No, no!" replied the boy earnestly; " they were only slain in my
own defence. Paul and Cabot are but half avenged. And my father !
my father ! — he still haunts my dreams unappeased."

" Nay, be cautious !" said the old fisher as he undid the sealskin
cover of his gunlock. f( Our passenger here may be brought into danger.
Yet 'tis no harm to be prepared."

" If you fear their arrows," said Sebastian to me, {f lie down in the
bottom of the boat, and we '11 spread the cloaks over you."

*' Are you going to attack them unprovoked ?" said I to Simon.

" No," replied he, " not without provocation. We received sufficient
at their hands five years ago to prevent us forgetting it so soon. This
boy lost his father by them, my only son ; and you saw our double loss
afterwards, on the river side, as we went to offer the murderers the right
hand of fellowship. Yet, dear boy, not for their sakes, but your own,
avoid this needless danger. Mark how wildly they toss their paddles,
and shout to each other, and gather into a squadron !"

" It appears to me," said I, " that they recognize the boat and its
mainsail. Perhaps these are some of the party that you encountered
twice before ?"

" If they be," exclaimed Simon, losing sight of all his prudential
advice, " let them look to it. Bear down on them, my boy !"

" Will you help us ?" asked Sebastian joyfully.

" Certainly, if need be, if they attack us," I replied, putting a couple
of detonating caps on my fowling-piece. We were now close upon their
little fleet, which lay to as if to receive us, with their prows sharp in the
wind, yet all formed in line (as if preparing to attack a sleeping whale),
so as to enable them to get a full view and fair aim at us as we held on
our course, and at the same time to paddle free of each other.

J830.] Newfoundland Adventures. 655

Simon sat in the stern of the boat, with his gun cocked in his hand,
frowning sternly as he gazed on their hostile array. The fixed expression
of his features, as he came within their view, was scornful and severe ;
reminding me of the unalterable bearing of some figure-head of a
triton, the carved beau-ideal of ocean heroism, engrafted so long since
on my memory that I forget how or where. 'Twas the undisguised por-
trait of defiance — deriving not a little of its formidable aspect from the
black sealskin cap he wore. That instant I remembered 'twas Paul's
cap ! his keepsake as he lay bleeding to death ! That very instant
an Esquimaux seemed to recognize it also. He shouted, in a voice
hurried by fear and rage, some jargon, in which his fellows joined as he
pointed at the unlucky cap. All at once each loosened his harpoon from
the deck, and grasped it with the dexterity of a man accustomed to strike
his game at a moment's notice. We were on the alert. Sebastian in-
stantly changed his course, steered right on the end of their line of battle
(which broke up as if struck by a black squall), and at that moment,
while they shook their weapons to hurl at us, we fired at those nearest
with steady aim. Sebastian mortally wounded his man. The dart
dropped from his hand, his head sank on his shoulder, his body
drooped to one side, and the canoe in which he was tied turned with
it, and thus quickly drowned him despite his struggles. Both my
barrels took effect; but being loaded with shot, the charges spread, shat-
tered two canoes, and disabled their owners. The skins with which these
boats were covered were pierced through and through in front; the water
poured in; the prows in which their feet were stowed sank; but the after-
part of each, still buoyant with air, floated, and sustained the wounded
savages. Simon's duck -gun had done equal execution. He had levelled
at two enemies whom he took in file : one fell on his face on the deck
of his canoe, whilst his arms sank helplessly into the water on each side
of it ; the other appeared stunned and motionless, and his canoe slowly
sinking. An Esquimaux, who had not been near enough to discharge
his harpoon, was seen, as the smoke dispersed, paddling back to land
with all his might; whilst the seventh and last who had escaped our
shot was found endeavouring to extricate his harpoon, which had stuck
in the gunwale as he flung it at me from behind, and from mere habit
had left it attached by the running line to his reel on deck. Sebastian,
who spied him first, seized the boat-axe to cut him down; but the dex-
terous Esquimaux instantly paddled backward, cut the line, and escaped
after his comrade towards the shore.

All this passed so rapidly, that we had not time to exchange a word.
A glance suffices to gather in a scene which it takes pages to describe.
Simon and I had been engaged in recharging our guns, and he was now
endeavouring to get a fair shot at the last of the fugitives. The man who
had been stunned by his first fire now gradually revived, as the oozing
water filled his ruined canoe; and as it slowly sank under the bow of the
Grampus, he lifted his spear against his destroyer with all the energy of
hatred and despair. I called out to Simon, " Look ahead !" in a tone
of voice that I thought would have been sufficient to rouse him to stare
his danger in the face. But all his faculties were at that moment ab-
sorbed in pulling the trigger at his distant, flying foe. Simon dropped
his gun, and fell back with a faint cry, more of surprise than pain. Se-
bastian started forward to encounter the unexpected enemy ; but nothing
was now to be seen above the water except his grim and death-like visage,

656 Newfoundland Adventures. [JUNE,

and the upraised hand that had thrown the harpoon ; and ere the furious
boy could hurl his axe, the wave closed over both for ever.

Simon lay insensible. The spear had fallen out, and he now bled pro-
fusely. On removing the unfortunate cap, we saw that the weapon had
cut deep. We bound up the wound, but I had no hope of his recovery.
" Now/' said his grandson, putting about the helm, and standing into
shore after the fugitive canoe, " now to finish our work !"

" I will not fire at another man, unless in immediate self-defence," I
replied firmly. " If you are determined to commit murder, you must do
it alone."

" And thank God," said he, with a laugh of savage joy, " I am able
to do it alone !" So saying, he put on Simon's blood-stained cap with an
air of defiance that bespoke eternal hostility to the nation of the slayers
of his fathers.

And now our swelling sails gained fast on the wearied paddler. Se-
bastian, meantime, had loaded both his guns with ball. I kept mine in
readiness, watching the event, and really dreading my companion in his
vengeful mood far more than the poor savage who fled before us. It was
evidently Sebastian's object to get between the canoe and the shore ; and
lest the sinewy arm of the Esquimaux should attain shallow water first,
he fired the long duck-gun at its greatest range. The ball took effect ;
the poor fellow started in his seat, and the canoe fell over to the left. A
swing of the paddle in his right hand brought both him and the canoe
erect again, and with that hand alone he feebly urged his skiff to the
beach. We approached him rapidly, and I could discern blood streaming
from his left shoulder. Sebastian's second shot now struck him : the
paddle dropped from his grasp for ever; the drifting canoe was shaken into
the trough of the wave, and, no longer balanced by the alternate lively
dip of the paddle, combining steadiness with swiftness, soon upset with

its freight. No further struggle was visible ; and by the time we

came alongside, it floated bottom upwards.

" I '11 take his weapons from the deck," said the exulting conqueror,
" to hang up at home with the two bows and quivers," seizing the boat-
hook, and dragging the canoe (in which the body was tied, like all the
others) into its former upright position ; when, to my astonishment and
horror, I saw that it only held a bleeding headless trunk, and in another
minute a white shark rose to the surface, and kept playing around, ex-
pecting the remainder of its banquet.

" Are you satisfied ?" said I to the boy, as he stood silently gazing
on the sickening sight.

" Satisfied !" repeated he. " The darts and harpoon are lost. What
more remains for me to do ?"

" Nothing," I replied sternly, fc unless to join your blood-thirsty fel-
low-playmate there in the feast you have prepared."

The boy stared at me, then at the weltering corse — again encountered
my stedfast frown ; finally he sat down abashed, and resumed the helm
in silence. We reached Prince Edward's Island late that night, and next
day saw Simon's remains deposited in the grave— " ashes to ashes,
dust to dust !"

C 657 ]

REDUCTION OF TAXES — INCREASE OF CONSUMPTION AND REVENUE.

Sir Henry Parnell, in his valuable work on Financial Reform,, recom-
mends such a revision and reform of taxes and of commercial regulations,
as shall remove all existing obstructions in the way of extending indus-
try and national wealth ; so that the sources of war taxes may be increased
as much as possible, and the natural capacity of the nation be thereby
prepared for meeting in the most effectual manner whatever difficulties
may occur. He justly asserts that while the adopting of these measures
cannot but be attended with every kind of advantage in time of peace,
the postponing of them will be nothing short of exposing the British
empire to the most formidable difficulties, and to the greatest disasters.
He gives various instances proving that a reduction of duties has been
productive of an increase of revenue ; and that, on the other hand, an
increase of duty has frequently caused a considerable falling off in the
amount collected.

Sir Henry particularly refers to the fourth report of the Finance Com-
mittee to prove the extraordinary effect of repealing taxes in making the
remainder more productive ; and we consider the facts he adduces to
be of the highest importance, as exposing the futility of the common-
place plea, " that the financial circumstances of the nation do not admit
of the reduction of any more taxes/' and as giving to those persons who
now argue in favour of revision and reduction, a right to say, that a very
large portion of the revenue which would appear, on a strict calculation,
as likely to be lost, would be made good by the increased productiveness
of the taxes which would remain.* If an increase of consumption and
of revenue has been the effect of a reduction of taxation on articles of
luxury — some of them injurious in a high degree to the health and morals
of the people — or on articles of necessity, where there was no extraordi-
nary injustice in the comparative degree of taxation previously existing,
how much more desirable and consistent with sound financial policy
would it have been to have reduced the duty on an article upon which,
up to the present moment, a most unjust and injurious war duty is still
continued, — one, moreover, the extended consumption of which would
not only add very materially to the comfort of all classes of the commu-
nity in this country, but which, were the duty reduced, would give room
for considerable extension of our foreign trade ! " Sugar," says a con-
temporary periodical, " is an article combining in itself the properties of
a luxury and of a necessary of life ; and it is also one which, by entering
into the composition or preparation of many taxable commodities, mate-
rially influences the extent of their consumption, and the consequent in-
crease or diminution of the revenue derived from them. As a luxury,
its extensive use so far from being injurious to the health or morals of
the people, (like ardent spirits, and many others,) is eminently calculated
to add to the domestic comfort and enjoyment of all classes. As a neces-
sary, its nutritious and medicinal properties are well known ; and were
it placed within the reach of the lower orders, it would tend to wean
them from those vicious and riotous indulgences, which undermine their
health and strength, and corrupt their morals."

In regard to the injustice of continuing this tax at the present heavy

* Colonial Reform, p. 1)3.

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 54 4 P

658 Redaction of Taxes — [JUNE,

rate, we may observe that although a certain degree of relief has, since
the peace, been granted to almost every class of the community — the
West Indians have in vain solicited that the war duty on their staple com-
modity should at least be abated ; but whether it was, that the late minis-
try were influenced by an anticolonial party, (by whose advice some few
millions of the public money have been wasted), or it now is, that the
present ministers have not yet discovered the difference between a sword
and a soup ladle — no advantage has hitherto been taken of those sound
financial principles, which, if they had been adopted, in regard to sugar,
would not only have added to the comforts of the people, and insured a
permanent additional revenue from extended consumption of this article,
and a certain resource against future difficulties at home, but would also
have left room for an extension of foreign trade by the more free disposal
of our manufactures in exchange for other sugars, especially for those of
India, and of such foreign countries as may actually and truly abstain
from a continuance of the traffic in slaves.

The absurdity of the colonial acts of 1822 and 1825, which were to have
given freedom to the trade of the West Indies, has now been fully de-
monstrated ; for, in consequence of imports being restricted to " the most
favoured nations," and then only allowed subject to the payment of heavy
duties, (fish continuing to be entirely excluded), the colonists find them-
selves as much bound down by the old exclusive system as ever they
were ; and so long as a larger quantity of sugar is brought, from our
own colonies, to this country than can be consumed here, the undue mo-
nopoly which the West Indians are alleged to possess of the home market
is of very little benefit to them. — Because, so long as they are obliged
to take the whole of their supplies from home at a great enhancement
of price, or under heavy duties from foreigners ; and there is a large an-
nual surplus of sugar which must be exported to the continent, the rate
in these markets must always govern the price here; and, of course,
under this equalization of prices, their monopoly falls to the ground.
This surplus is annually accumulating, and markets have, in consequence,
declined until the planter cannot, upon three-fourths of his sugars, receive
any thing like a remunerating price, and under these circumstances new
and more efficient regulations have become essentially necessary. Inde-
pendent of these considerations, sugar has now become an article of such
moment in the trade of the world, and other nations are extending its
cultivation so rapidly, that it behoves a commercial nation like this to
lose none of the advantages derivable from dealings in so important a
commodity.

Before proceeding to consider to what extent its consumption might,
by moderate and equitable duties, so as to induce steady low prices,
be carried, we would premise, that it seems to have been cultivated in
the eastern world during the earliest periods. It is said to have first
been made known in the west, by the conquests of Alexander the Great.
Strabo (lib. xv.) relates that Nearchus found it in India, in the 325th
year before Christ. Varro, who lived A. c. 68, describes it as a fluid,
pressed from large reeds, sweeter than honey. Dioscorides men-
tions it as a kind of honey called Saccharon, found in India and
Arabia Felix ; and describes its medicinal properties. Galen often
prescribed it as a medicine. Marco Polo found it abundant in
Bengal in 1250. Vasco de Gama (1497) mentions it as a consider-
able article of commerce in the kingdom of Calicut. Osbeck found

1830.] Increase of Consumption and Revenue.

it in China in 1751. Thornberg in his Flora Japonica. (pub. 1784)
describes it as indigenous in Japan. Mr. Bruce found it in Upper
Egypt. There is reason to believe it was introduced into Europe
in the time of the Crusades. — Albertus Acquensis mentions that the
Christian soldiers in the Holy Land frequently derived nourishment from
sucking the canes during a scarcity of provisions.

It also nourished in Rhodes and Malta. Lafitau the Jesuit, mentions
that in 1166, William II. of Sicily made a grant to the monastery of St.
Bennet (in Malta?) of a mill for grinding cane, with all its rights and
members. From Malta it was probably transplanted to Sicily, where it still
flourishes. From thence it was probably carried to Spain, and to Madeira,
the Canaries, and Cape de Verd islands, soon after their discovery in the
15th century. There is an account of a shipment at Venice for England
in 1319, of 100,0001bs. of sugar, and 10,000lbs. of sugar candy, which was
said to have come from the Levant. The sugar cane may have been
carried to the West Indies and South America by the Spaniards and
Portuguese ; yet Peter Martyr, in the third book of his first decade, com-
posed during the second voyage of Columbus, which commenced in 1493
and ended in 1495, says that it was known in Hispaniola at that time.

Thomas Gage, an Englishman, enumerates sugar canes among other
provisions supplied to his ship by the Caribs of Guadaloupe, in 1625*
And Labat asserts that it must have been indigenous, for the Spaniards
are not supposed to have cultivated an inch of ground in the smaller
Antilles, and the natives were probably too indolent.

On the whole the probability is, that the sugar cane is indigenous to
the West Indies, but that the Spaniards and Portuguese first practised
the art, there, of manufacturing it into sugar.

The duty on this article, in England, commenced with the reign of
Charles II. and had reached the amount of 3*. 5d. per hundred weight
in the reign of Queen Anne. By small additions in the reign of Geo. II.
and up to the 19th of Geo. III. it amounted to about 6.9. Sd. In 1781
a large increase took place, and with a trifling subsequent addition
it amounted in the 27th Geo. III. to 12*. 4d. In 1791 it became 15*.:
in 1797 it was raised to 17*. 6d. ; and, as in the annexed table, it was,
in 1799, finally fixed at 20*. on the cwt. Soon after the breaking out of
the French war in 1803, three successive acts of parliament for granting
additional duties to his majesty " during the present war, and until the
ratification of a definitive treaty of peace" were passed, whereby fifty per
cent, was added to the former duty of 20*.

The consumption in 1700 amounted to about 200,000 cwt.

1710 280,000 „

1734 840,000 „

1754 1,065,400 „

1770to 1775, it averaged 1,450,000 „

1786 to 1790 1,620,000 „

From that period the progressive increase of consumption, with the
corresponding duty, average price (as nearly as can be calculated), and
the annual revenue derived from it, may be seen by the annexed table.

4P2

660 Reduction of Taxes— [JUNE,

The quantity of Sugar retained for home consumption (exclusive of Ire-
land) with the duty, average price, and nett revenue, in each year,

Year.

Duty.

Price in-
cluding Duty.

Quantity
consumed.

Nett Revenue.

«. d.

s. d.

Owts.

£

1789

x

1,547,109

862,632

1790

< 12 0

1,536,232

908,954

JL / is\J

1791

1

1,403.211

1,074,903

1792

72 3}

1,361,592

1,012,538

1793

I i r ft

71 1

1,677,097

1,316,502

1794

f ID U

59 94-

1,489,392

1,031,492

1795

68 5i

1,336,230

949,961

1796

80 U

1,544,062

1,225,213

1797

17 6

82 61-

1,273,722

1,299,744

1798

19 0

88 7'

1,476,552

1,794,990

1799

-\

87 if

2,772,438

2,321,935

1800

\ on n

81 3

1,506,921

1,835,112

1801

S. 20 U

85 41

2,773,795

2,782,232

1802

3

59 9J-

2,250,311

2,210,801

1803

24 0

67 0

1,492,565

1,551,457

1804

26 6

76 5i

2,144,369

2,458,1 24

1805

80 21-

2,076,103

2,439,795

1806

72 3J

2,801,747

3,097,590

1807

27 0

63 11

2.277,665

3,150,753

1808

63 Of

2^842,813

4,177,916

1809

OO f\ }

76 lot

2,504,507

3,273,995-]

1810

2o D /

78 41

3,489,312

3,117,330

1811

average V
r O*7 A

67 41

3,226,757

3,339,218 L

1812

> 2j v

69 5J.

2,604,019

3,939,939 f

1813

89 71.

2,209,063

3,447,560

1814

30 0

96 5i

1,997,999

3,276,513

1815

)

98 2|

1,888,965

2,957,403

1816

I 27 o

80 5"

2,228,156

3,166,851

1817

{

76 OL

2,960,794

3,967,154

1818

i 30 0

78 64

1,457,707

2,331,472

1819

27 6>

72 9

2,474,738

3,507,844

1820

average 3

62 10

2,581,256

3,477,770

1821

61 3

2,676,274

3,660,567

1822

57 H

2,618,490

3,579,412

1823

59 11|

2,842,676

4,022,782

1824

r 27 o

59 4

2,957,261

4,223,240

1825

61 5J-

2,655,959

3,756,654

1820

61 1|

3,255,075

4,518,690

1827

3,021,191

4,218,623

1828

58 10

3,285,843

4,576,287

1820

557 ni

r 51 OS

3,505,709

4,452,793

* During these years sugar was used in the distilleries.

1830.] Increase of Consumption and Revenue. 661

By an attentive examination of this table, it will be perceived that the
price has, at various periods, had a very material effect in promoting
or retarding consumption. For instance, in 1806, 1807, and 1808,
during the prevalence of comparatively low prices, the consumption be-
came greater than at any former period, being about 2,650,000 cwts:
To assist the West India planter, who at that period of the war had
enormous charges of freight, insurance, and for supplies, to pay, the use
of sugar was allowed in the distilleries, the effect of which, and of the
impulse given to consumption by the previous low prices, was to raise it to
an average of nearly 3,000,000 cwts. (in 1810 it being actually 3,489,312
cwts.), but the price during 1813, 1814, and 1815, having been raised
by speculation to nearly 100*., the consumption, notwithstanding the
continued use of sugar in the distilleries, fell off more than one-third, being
in 1815, the year after it was excluded, only 1,888,965 cwts.

Since that period the price, it will be perceived, has been gradually
lowering, while the quantity retained for consumption in the United
Kingdom has risen to the unprecedented extent of 3,750,000 cwts. ; and,
notwithstanding the great distress of the West India planter, and the
privations sustained during the last two years by the lower order of con-
sumers, the government has continued to exact, during these years, the
same rate of duty, amounting, on an average, to about five millions ster-
ling on this article alone. Of this sum, Ireland, be it observed, with her
numerous population, pays only about 400,000/. per annum — a twelfth !
a sure proof that the price, of which the duty constitutes so serious a
part, still keeps it out of the reach of the middling and lower orders
there.

When we further state, that, at the peace of 1814, the planter was
receiving an average price (exclusive of the duty) of 60*. to 65s. for
sugar which he is now obliged to sell for 23,?. or 24*., the difference of
his situation, and the extent of his difficulties, will be more intelligibly
understood. Out of this trifling sum he has to pay 8*. or 10*. for freight,
commission, and other charges on the sale, so that he is only receiving
for sugars of middling quality, such as are- retailed for 6d. or ^d. the lb.,
about three halfpence the pound, and on the lowest qualities scarcely one
penny, whilst the government continue to exact on all sorts, even that
which is of the lowest quality. 27*. per cwt. The colonist is thus
doomed to see his property and means yearly diminishing, whilst, at the
same time, he is taunted with enjoying a monopoly of the home market,
and told that this country pays him about a million and a half to keep
up the system of slavery, a sum, by the by, nearly as great as that which
he receives altogether for the whole value of his sugar ! Can the gross
injustice of this system of unmitigated taxation be more clearly mani-
fested?

But, it is not the planter alone that suffers by this state of our West
India colonies ; many annuitants, minors, and others, who depend upon
these possessions for the means of subsistence, are reduced to poverty
and great distress by this situation of affairs ; while numerous mort-
gagees, trustees, executors, and others, are placed in situations of great
difficulty and embarrassment.

The British planter, while he has the mortification to see himself
approximating to a state of ruin, contrasts his situation with that of the
planter in the United States, in Cuba, and in Brazil ! He sees them
rapidly increasing the cultivation of their sugar estates, enjoying all the

062

Reduction of Taxes —

advantages of cheap labour, open markets, and unrestricted intercourse.
That orders for their produce, with ample supplies of stores, are sent
from the best markets of Europe and America, while he is forced to
compete with them under restrictions imposed by the mother country,
which cannot be estimated, at an enhancement upon the cost of pro-
ducing sugar, at less than 6*. or 8*. upon every hundred weight.
Persons not thoroughly acquainted with the subject may suppose that
this is an exaggerated statement ; but we have good reason to believe,
that it is one that can, and will, on investigation, be fully substantiated.
Under these circumstances is it surprising that the colonist should loudly
complain of the system that has brought him into this distressing situa-
tion, and that he should demand a fair investigation of his situation, with
a view to measures of relief? We perceive that Ministers have, for the
present, evaded the desire of the West Indians to bring their situation
before Parliament, by giving a pledge to take it into serious considera-
tion during the summer. But, in the mean time, it seems absolutely
necessary to afford immediate relief by a reduction of the duty, so as to
promote consumption, in order, in the first place, to absorb the surplus
stock of British plantation sugars presently in the home market, and
pave the way for such general measures as may hereafter be deemed
necessary to meet the new circumstances in which political changes in
other countries have placed our colonies.

The West Indians urge that, by the consumption of our colonial pro-
duce by our own people, who pay for it by manufactures and home
produce, we raise a sure revenue, capable of being extended, in a case of
emergency, and not liable to be affected by the caprice, hostility, or cu-
pidity of foreigners ; and that a considerable reduction of the sugar duties
would so increase consumption, that eventually the revenue derived from
it would, instead of falling off, be very considerably augmented.

This view of the subject seems to be fully corroborated by the effect
which a considerable reduction of duty has had on the consumption of
other articles, of which we give the following examples :

QUANTITIES OF COFFEE RETAINED FOR HOME CONSUMPTION IN
GREAT BRITAIN.

Years.

Lbs.

Duty.

Nett Revenue.

1789 1

to
1808 .

918,808

\E.I.2*.8@3s. ' f

£ 86,700

' to %
1820 £

-

6,540,215

( B.P. Id. @ 7Jrf. 1
1 E.I. Wd. @ Is. j

252,727

1820 <

to
1825

7,566,011

/B.P. 1*. )
) E.I. 1*. 6d. $

395,988

1825
1826
1827
1828

10,766,112
12,724,139
14,974,378
16,522,423

f B.P. '6rf. /

|F.P.M. ^

307,204
324,667
384,994
425,389

1830.] Increase vf Consumption and Revenue. 663

The consumption for the year 1829 (ending 5th January, 1830) was,
of British plantation . ' . . ' . . rifX_.r. 18,495,4071bs.
East India and foreign . , .','*. . 980,773

19,476,180

being above twenty times more than the average consumption of the
twenty years preceding the reduction of duty.

It has been alleged that coffee, previously to 1808, was not an article
which was consumed by the middling and lower orders ; and, conse-
quently, that it forms no criterion by which to judge of the effect of a
reduction of the duty of sugar, which is said to be already in general
use. But we maintain that, during particular periods, and even at the
present hour, the great mass of the lower orders of the manufacturing
and labouring population of the British empire seldom taste sugar ; and
that a considerable reduction of duty, and steady low prices, would have
a proportional effect in increasing the general consumption, not only
among the lower, but also by the middling and higher classes ; and we
are borne out in this opinion by the great increase which the present low
prices have induced.

The effect of a reduction of duty in promoting the use of commodities
amongst even the upper ranks of consumers is strongly manifested also
in the case of wines. By an official return (No. 271) recently issued, it
appears that the average consumption of all sorts during the three years
preceding the reduction of duty in 1825, was only 4,918,972 imperial
gallons ; but the average for the five years since the duty was lowered is
7,062,931. The reduction of duty on French wines was from 13.? 9d,
to 7*' 3rf. the imperial gallon ; on Cape from 3^. ^d. to 2*. 5d., and on
other sorts about one half. The consumption since that reduction has
been nearly doubled.

But the operation of moderate duties in promoting consumption and
at the same time adding to the revenue, is still more forcibly illustrated
by the following facts.

The consumption of British spirits in England for three years pre-
ceding 1827, (when the duty was lowered nearly one-half), viz : —

Gallons. £

( 1 824 •* ., r ( and the duty at

( 2 •* ., r ( and te duty at )

iJ 1825 lthe a™*6 J 3,677,457 { 12,. 7«A per ( 2,281,526
( 1896 J I I gall., averaged }

( 1827) r rand the duty')

In { 1828 V ... Ditto ... J 7,279,483 J being reduced > 2,547,819

( 1829 ) I I to 7s. averaged J

The consumption of the year (ending 5 Jan. 1830) was 7,700,766
gallons, the duty 2,695,268/. 2*. being an increase, at 7s. per gallon duty,
of 4,023,309 gallons in the quantity consumed, and of 413,742/. to the
revenue, over the average of the three years when the duty was 12,9. 8^.!
In Scotland the average consumption was as follows : —

Gallons. £

f ]821) AP -P C . f and the revenue at

fltt&lrVf, r rand the revenue at^i
IiJ 1822 >ra averaSe J 2,017,011 J 6*. 7Ud. per gallon > 751,063
1 1823 J was \ \duty, averaged J

{1824^ r fand the revenue at")

1825 >... Ditto ... J 4,188,192 3 the reduced duty of V 601,031
1826 J I (2.9.4f^f/. averaged J

664 Reduction of Taxes — £JuNE,

Gallons. £

( 1827^1 fTlo r (.and the revenue at)

In ^1828^ avera£eJ 5,415,220 J the advanced duty V 767,156

( 1829 J I ( of 2s. 1 Od. averaged )

During the last- mentioned year the duty amounted to ......... 818,448

It appears by the above statement that although the sudden reduction
of duty from 6s. 8d. to 2s. 4f d. caused a slight diminution of revenue in
the first instance, it gave such an impulse to consumption, that in J827,
1828, and 1829, when the duty was 2*. lOd. (only about one- third of the
old duty of 6.y. 8rf.) — the average revenue was considerably augmented,
and in the last-mentioned year (1829) it exceeded at 2.9. 10d.— the re-
venue at 6s. 8d.— by 66,385/.

In Ireland a reduction of duty was still more remarkable, viz. : —

Gallons. Duty. £

(1821) the con- f *. d. ( )

In 1822 Uumption ^2,539,092 at 6 7fK *?5£i* 889*731
(_

(1824) ( c .

In 1 1825 J it was ) 6,433,854 at 2 5 J and pro- I 846 597
(1826) (. ( duced J

In { 1828V it was \ 9,136,930 at 2 10 J anf P™" \ 1,294,389

( 1829 ) { J J

And the duty received during the last- mentioned

year was ..... .......................................... £1,305,064 18 6

It thus appears that the diminution of revenue in Ireland, after the
duty was lowered from 6*. 8rf. to 2s. 5d. was only about 43,000/. ; and
that such an impulse was given to the consumption of spirits legally dis-
tilled, that the average revenue during 1827, 1828, and 1829, when the
duty was 2s. 10 d.} exceeded the revenue at 6s. Sd. — by no less a sum
than 404,658/. sterling ! !

We consider it unnecessary to adduce any further proofs in illustration
of the probable result of a reduction of the sugar duty. — We think it
must be manifest to every one who has paid common attention to the
subject, that a reduction, provided it be to a sufficient extent, would give
such an impulse to the consumption of sugar as to clear the market of
the total produce, not only of our West India colonies, the Mauritius,
and the usual quantity from India, but also, under a fair and equitable
adjustment of duties, give greater facilities to the trade in foreign sugar
than have ever yet been enjoyed, thereby enlarging the channels of trade,
and creating an additional demand for our manufactures and produce.

The total quantity of sugar imported during the year ending on the
5th January last was — of the British plantations ......... 4,1 52,815 cwts.

Mauritius ................................................ 297,958

East Indies ................................................ 206,052

4,656,825
Foreign Plantations 199,568

Total 4,856,393 cwts.

The average revenue derived from the duty on sugar during thirty-
four years, up to 1822 inclusive, and including that during the years in

1830.] Increase of Consumption and Revenue. 665

which it was admitted for distillation, does not, for Great Britain and

Ireland, amount annually to quite £3,400,000

The quantity of sugar consumed, or en-
tered for home consumption in the
year ending 5 Jan. 1830 was 3,750,328 cwts.

Which being deducted from that supplied
from British possessions (including
India) would leave a surplus for ex-
portation of 906,497

4,656,825

Now, if, instead of being obliged to export this surplus, a
sufficient reduction of duty were to take place, we
have no doubt the whole would be required for
home use, and at a duty of 15$. per cwt. it would
produce a revenue of £3,492,621

Leaving an excess for deductions and contingencies beyond
the average revenue for the thirty-four years pre-
vious to 1822, when the low prices began to pre-
vail, of £92,621

We have no doubt that this increase of consumption would be realized
before the expiry of the ensuing year ; and our opinions on that subject
seem fully warranted by the fact — that the quantity issued during the
first quarter of the present year has been greater than at any former
period, and up to the 1st of May last it exceeded the issues during the
same period of 1829 by 203,000 cwts.

Government cannot reasonably expect, nor would they be justifiable
on any principle of sound policy, to continue to exact the present amount
of revenue from sugar, looking at the great distress and certain ruin which
it and other onerous imposts and restrictions are bringing upon our West
India colonies.

In the event of a reduction to the extent pointed out, we do think
that the increased consumption of sugar would give such an impulse to
that of tea, coffee, and other commodities paying heavy duties, as would
go far to make up any deficiency of revenue, even in the first in-
stance.

The trifling consumption of sugar in Ireland, at the present day, com-
pared with the extent of its population, is a striking proof of the effects
of over-taxation. — In 1800 and 1803 the average was above 570,000 cwts.
— The quantity on which duty was paid in 1829 was 254,300 cwts., or
about 28,500,0001bs. ;— the net duty 443,448/. sterling.

The quantity thus appears to have decreased within the last thirty years
above one half, and, taking the population at 9,000,000, does not give
more than about 3J-lbs. to each person, or a seventh part of the average
quantity consumed by each of the people of England and Scotland.

It is curious to observe, that were the inhabitants of Ireland to use
sugar in the same proportion to those in Great Britain, a duty of 5,9. the
cwt. on the quantity would produce a greater revenue than the present
prohibitive duty of 27*. !

The recently proposed alteration of the duty on British spirits, a
measure which seems equally justifiable on the score of finance, and as

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No, 54. 4 Q

666 Reduction of Taxes— [JUNE,

necessary for checking that enormous and increasing consumption of
gin and corn spirits, which is gradually undermining the health and
destroying the morals of the working classes — has, as was no doubt antici-
pated, called forth the strenuous opposition of the distillers, especially
those of Scotland and Ireland, who, with their usual industry, have suc-
ceeded in raising an outcry that — " the agricultural interest is in danger,
and will by this trifling addition of duty be ruined !" — We have often
heard of the plausibility and perseverance of the Haigs, the Steins, and
the Dunlops of Scotland, We believe it was a remark of the late Mr.
Pitt that nothing puzzled him more than how to devise effectual mea-
sures for the regulation of the Scotch distilleries, and we were for some
time at a loss to know what great interest the latter had in this question,
seeing that in Scotland and Ireland the duty is at present only one third
of that which is paid by the people of England. We could not see how
two-pence the imperial gallon was to have any serious effect on their
trade. On referring lately to official documents, however, the mystery
is solved ! By these it appears that the Scotch and Irish distillers have
not only a monopoly in the supply of their own markets, but that they
furnish also the greater part of the spirit which is consumed in England ;
and, consequently, have an interest with our distillers in opposing the
proposed additional English duty of l.v. the gallon. By official docu-
ments, it appears that Ike whole, quantity of British spirits furnished for
home consumption, during the year ending on the 5th January, 1830,

was 22,718,150 galls.

Of which the English distillers

supplied only 3,860,542 )

The Scotch distillers 9,649,070 \ 22,718,150

The Irish distillers 9,208,538 )

It appears that while the quantity of corn spirit consumed in
England, last year, was 7*700,766 gallons; the English distiller only
supplied 3,860,542 gallons ! We must express our surprise that the
English agriculturists, distillers, and people, who pay a triple duty, do
not, instead of aiding these interlopers in their interested outcry, rather
join in repelling their encroachments, and in keeping them on the north
side of the Tweed.

The altered condition of the landed proprietors since the peace, has,
without doubt, rendered that class very sore on every point likely to
create further depression ; and to this feeling, artfully aggravated by the
distillers, who are generally in close connexion with a few of the leading
agriculturists, may be attributed the present clamour, rather than to any
general feeling of danger on their part. For it must be evident that the
great benefit which the agriculturist must shortly derive, from the ad-
ditional consumption of beer, will far outweigh any trifling diminution
of demand for barley in the use of the distilleries, that may arise from the
proposed addition to the present duty on British gin and whisky.

The West Indians have for many years complained of the unfair man-
ner in which rum has been excluded from general consumption by an extra
and very onerous duty. There has been no want of urgency in their repre-
sentations to government on this subject ; but as they have not, like the
British distillers, been backed by a host of clamorous agriculturists, the
justice of their claims has, hitherto, been borne down by the ponderous
weight and artful opposition of their rivals.

The manner in which this extra duty on rum operates, may be seen at
one glance by a reference to the following official statement of the re-

] 830.] Increase of Consumption and Revenue. 667

lative quantities of British spirits and rum consumed in the United King-
dom during 1829, and the difference of duty levied on each :
British Spirits. Rum.

Gallons. s. d. Gallons. s. d.

In England . . . 7,700,766 at 7 0 duty 3,302,143 at 8 6 duty
Scotland . . . 5,777280 2 10 152,461 8 6

Ireland .... 9,212,223 2 10 21,262 8 6

It thus appears, that the effect of a triple duty on rum in the latter
countries, has been to prevent its consumption almost entirely ! The
gross injustice of this regulation at a time when, owing to the restric-
tions imposed by the mother country, no other efficient market is open,
is too palpable to require any comment. The supply of these liquors
for consumption in the United Kingdom during the said year, would,
if divided into 100 equal parts, be

22,718,150 galls, by the United Kingdom, equal to 85.75 parts
3,775,866 do. Rum by the Colonies, do. 14.25

Total 26,494,016 gallons equal to 100 parts

It thus appears that the quantity of rum consumed in the United
Kingdom, including the whole supply to the navy, is not a sixth part of
the spirits furnished by the British and Irish distillers. The latter
complain that they cannot produce proof spirit on the same terms as the
West Indians ; and that the proposed regulation of duty, whereby corn
spirit would pay 8,?. in England, and 3.9. the gallon in Scotland and
Ireland, whilst rum remained at a duty of 8*. 6d.y — the additional 6d. paid
on the latter is not a sufficient protection to the British distiller.

The West Indians, on the other hand, assert that they are subject to
the expense of a cask for every 100 gallons; and to heavy freight,
leakage, and charges equal to about Is. <2d. the gallon, all which is saved
to the distillers of the United Kingdom ; and that rum with all the ex-
penses that attach to it before it can be offered for sale in the British
market, costs more than British spirits — ergo, that no protective duty
for the latter is necessary !

The British distiller further complains of the regulations imposed
upon them by the excise laws. But when we look back to the ma-
noeuvres practised for the last thirty or forty years, we can scarcely
sympathise with them. We have even heard, some years ago, of ta-
lented officers of excise, who, contrary to their pecuniary interests,
solicited to be employed at a distance from a large distillery, on the
plea that their health was not adequate to the constant vigilance and
anxiety necessary for the protection of the revenue. Were we asked
what disposition on the part of the distillers rendered the task so difficult?
we would refer to the excise records, and to some of our northern friends,
for a solution of the question !

We have been a good deal amused by the inflated vituperation, and
ignorance of their own interests, displayed by the Irish demagogues and
writers on this question. Do these gentlemen know, that against the
trifling quantity of 21,000 gallons of rum, for which, taking it at 1*. Qd.
the gallon, they pay the West Indians the enormous sum of about 1825/.
the latter take in return, Irish beef, pork, butter, and hams to the extent
of two or three hundred thousand pounds, and linens to the value of about
one hundred and thirty thousand pounds annually ? And that the whole
foreign exports of Ireland last year amounted to 763,0007., three-fifths
of which, viz. to the value of 428,000/. went direct to the British West

4Q2

663 Reduction of Taxes— [JUNE,

Indies ? yet these orators of the Irish agriculturists join in the cry
against the West Indians ! !

We would ask the agriculturists of Ireland, whether their interests
would suffer more by the introduction of a few thousand gallons of rum
in opposition to corn spirits, or by the cessation of .demand from the
West Indies, for the beef, pork, butter, and linen of Ireland ?

The conduct of the Irish agriculturists, as manifested in their petitions
and orations, is too absurd for serious discussion ; and we certainly think
their Scotch coadjutors must laugh at their ignorance ; and that govern-
ment, from these specimens, must entertain a very poor opinion of either
their sincerity, or political discernment.

We have heard that an increased consumption of raw sugar has been,
by some of the refiners, considered contrary to their interests, as tending
to lessen that choice of sugars which a dull overstocked market affords
to them. But, this appears to us to be taking a very narrow view of the
question. To lower the duties would not only increase the consumption
of raw, but also of refined sugars, and, consequently, would serve to
extend very considerably their home trade. These gentlemen cannot
but know that the continental refiners, protected by fiscal regulations,
are gradually excluding them from the continental markets ; and that
many of their best workmen are emigrating to the United States of
America. 'Tis true that, occasionally, they may profit by purchasing
sugars in an extremely depressed market, but on the whole their true
interests cannot be for one moment separated from those of the British
sugar grower ; besides, every measure calculated to render the British
market more attractive must give them an additional choice of sugars
for refining.

With regard to the admission of foreign sugar for home consumption,
without any distinctive duty between it and British plantation sugar,
we have to remark, that putting aside the sound principle hitherto uni-
formly acted upon, namely, that of giving a preference to the produce
of our own possessions — if the West Indians can show that by restrictive
regulations imposed by the legislative enactments of the mother country,
the expense of producing sugar in the British colonies is greater by 8-y.
or lO.y. the cwt., or any other sum — than in the foreign colonies, it is
necessary, in common justice, that either these restrictions be removed, or
some other countervailing advantages be given, to place the British
planter on a fair footing of equality, to meet his competitors in the home
market and elsewhere.

This proposition surely cannot for one moment be disputed ; and it only
remains for the West Indians to establish, clearly, the average extent of
additional costs to which they are subjected, to entitle them to a counter-
vailing advantage, either in the shape of a bounty on sugars exported,
or in some other form.

We trust in the meantime that His Majesty's ministers will give some
immediate relief by at least a partial reduction of the sugar duties, until
they are able to decide upon general measures for redressing the grievances
of our suffering colonists. The uncertainty in which the government is
at present unhappily placed should rather induce ministers to hasten all
measures calculated to benefit the community, than by a shuffling policy
to omit the good they can do, and leave it to be inferred that they want
wisdom to discern, and firmness to decide, points which involve the pre-
sent ruin, or future prosperity, of our, West India possessions, and the
many millions of property which they contain.

1830.] [ 669 ]

TALES OF A TAR.*

WE have not only been much amused at the humour with which this
work abounds, but we have received from it much valuable information
relative to one of the important crises in the annals of our history, the
mutiny of the fleets in 1797- That the information is authentic there
can be no doubt ; the facts have been skilfully collected by the author,
who has communicated with the veterans now easily basking away the
remainder of their lives in Greenwich Hospital, and who once were the
principal actors in a scene unparalleled, as it was momentous. If any
thing could prove how little truth is to be found in history, it would
be the serious contradictions given by this volume to all the records
which have been penned by those whose literary talents would entitle
them to be considered by posterity as correct historians of the time. That
secret springs of action should seldom be disclosed, or be misrepre-
sented, is no fault in man, as there is but One to whom "all hearts are
open ;" but that particulars should be collected in so slovenly a manner,
as is evinced in the records of the mutiny, and should be so eagerly re-
ceived, without any endeavour to ascertain their truth, is a melancholy
proof of the doubt and error in which we are fated to remain during
our pilgrimage on earth. As a record of history, this work is valuable,
and on some future day will be referred to, and will correct the histo-
rian, upon several points connected with a remarkable, we may say,
solitary instance, wherein power, in the hands of the oppressed, was used
with firmness and moderation.

Where, in the annals of the world, have we read of such noble-minded
conduct ? Show us in all the records of sacred and profane history
one instance where uneducated and oppressed men, fully aware of the
terrible power which they possessed, not only abstained from bloodshed,
but from even the slightest individual retaliation ; and, separating their
own claims from the welfare of their country, declared themselves ready
to chastise it's enemies if they had the temerity to approach its shores,
and then return and renew their demands for justice. We exalt the pa-
triotism of individuals in the histories of Greece and Rome ; why, here
were 40,000 heroes, 40,000 real patriots, such as no other country ever
did produce. We consider that the character of English sailors stands
higher in estimation from their conduct during the mutiny, than even
from all the splendid victories by which they have raised their country
to its envied pre-eminence.

There is another point in which we consider this work valuable. It
is a glossary of the naval idiom ; for, being ourselves nautical, we believe
that there is hardly an expression in use which the author has not
embodied in his book. Captain Glascock seems to have made it his pe-
culiar study, and we think that no one but Captain Glascock could have
so perfectly succeeded. True it is that he has laid his phrases on rather
thick, and that few sailors talk so wholly in trope and figure. Never-
theless, the expressions are most correctly nautical, and must constantly
have met the ears of seafaring people.

Without entering into a disputation upon naval phraseology, we must
observe that it cannot be considered as slang — which implies certain ex-
pressions used to conceal the real meaning from any other persons than

* Colburn and Bentley, 1 vol. post 8vo.

670 Talcs of a Tar. [JUNE,

those who belong to the specific class in which the words or phrases
were first invented. These words have often no meaning in themselves ;
for instance, in the slang of Paul Clifford, so frequently adopted by Mr.
Bulwer : quid, a guinea ; bob, a shilling ; sice, a sixpence ; tape, liquor ;
lagged, transported ; and many others.

Now we conceive the difference between slang and idiom to be, that
in the one the unde derivator is generally wanting, in the other, seldom,
if ever ; and such will be found to be the case in the language adopted
by seamen. Cooped up and isolated from the world during the greater
part of their lives, their images are naturally drawn from the few objects
presented to them. But it will be found on close examination, that even
the apparently barbarous and incomprehensible names applied to differ-
ent parts of the ship and furniture, have a radical meaning, although
many of them are lost from time.

We might prove this, if our space would permit ; but we will select
one of the most Jar-fetched expressions we can find in this work as a
single example. Who would ever imagine that " to cut your stick,"
implied to " walk off?" But a sailor preparing himself for a journey on
foot will naturally provide himself with a good walking stick out of the
first hedge; — hence the origin of the expression. We must add, that in
all cases of naval idiom, the multum in parvo is strictly adhered to.

We cannot, however, quit this subject without referring to the par-
tiality shown by the sailor to what is termed the prosopopoeia, or sub-
stitution of the person for the thing, the animation of insensible objects,
in which they so constantly indulge. This arises from their peculiar
life — their seclusion from the world, by which their affections cannot be
bestowed upon their kind, and which, bursting forth, are lavished upon
whatever may be in contact. Every thing is with them of the feminine
gender, at least every thing that they have the least affection for : — the
neuter is obsolete on board of a ship. We ourselves were once much
amused by a sailor, who was on his knees scrubbing away most em-
phatically at an old pair of trousers, apostrophizing them as follows : —

" You won't come clean, you tarry old sons of won't you ? Now

here 's have at you again. It 's no use being obstinate, I tell you, for
I 'm detarmmed." In this instance, it is to be observed, that he made
them masculine, and plural, we presume, because they consisted of two
legs joined together, like the Siamese youths, at the middle.

The chief part of this volume is taken up with the " Breeze at Spit-
head." The following extract of the opening of the mutiny is well and
characteristically described by Tailor, an old Greenwich pensioner.

" There was little more done that day than to broach the business."

" How ?"

" Why, by three thund'ring cheers, led by the lazy Charlotte, and followed
by every ship in the fleet as fast as they could rig their roarers. Never, no,
never since the fall o' man was known such a hullabaloo. Why, the very air
rung wi' the roar, and the ships at their anchors shook for all the world like the
shock of an earthquake. I was alongside the Charlotte at the time— for you see
I was coxon o' the cutter, as only a little afore left the frigate to fetch our car-
penter aboard, as went to look at the model of a new-fashion way o' fishing a
taup-sail yard. Well, pea from pan never popped faster nor did Bill from the
boat at the sound o' the Charlotte's cheer ; f for/ says I to myself, ' the breeze 's
began.' Afore you could well crack a biscuit I stood on her starboard gangway.
There were the leaftennants, mates, midshipmen, purser, surgeon, warrant-offi-
cers, and all, flyin' up the ladders, and imist'ring helter-skelter on deck, like men

1830.] Tales of a Tar. 671

as was fairly mazed. The second leaftennant had charge o' the ship, for the
first was ashore, and the captain, in course, was seldom aboard. One Mister
W n was second-leaftennant, and a finer fellow, they said, never took trum-
pet in hand. I '11 never forget, no, never, as long as breath's in the body o' Bill,
the look o' the man when he first tumbles up from below.— ' What's the matter?—
what's the matter ?' says he, lookin' up in the crowded riggin', with his eyes
starin' out of his head— for the riggin' was reg'larly manned, and there was more,
ay, more nor seven hundred souls in the shrouds. — ' Oh God !' says he, flingin'
himself down on his knees, and heavin' up his arms aloft — ' oh 1' says he, ' is it
corned to this ? Shoot me— shoot me !' says he— ' blow out my brains at once,
for I never can live to hear it said, that whilst // said he, with the blood biling
up in his face, < whilst 7 had charge o' the ship, a disturbance broke out aboard !
— ' We'll not hurt a hair o' your head,' sings out a couple o' hands, fast hurryin'
down from the larboard main-riggin'. — ' No, not a hair,' says Uddlestone, one of
tke Charlotte's quarter gunners, as was made one of her delicates. — ' Not a hair,
says Bob Glyn, the other as belonged to the folksel— for I knew the pair on 'em'
well. — ' Not a hair,' says Bob, stepping up to the man on his knees. cGet up,

sir — up, sir,' says Uddlestone — ' Rise, Mister W n/ — ' Rise, sir/ says Glyn,

' you 've always behaved like a man,' says Bob, as he and Uddlestone lends the
poor gemman a fist to get on his pins — ' We 've nothing to say, no, not a word

against you, Mister W n, nor officer aboard.'— f N o,' says Uddlestone, ' we

wants no more nor our grievances granted, — and it's not the leaftennants, nor
yet the captains, in the fleet as can now do what we wants.'

" Well, you know, the whole fleet a followin' the Charlotte's cheer, showed the
officers at once 'twas a reg'lar blow-up, and not confined to one or two such dis-

the fleet/ says Bob, « have made up their minds not to put breast to bar, or lift
an anchor, till our wrongs are reg'larly righted.'— 'But mind/ says one Bill Wil-
liams, a Welchman born— as fine a young fellow as ever you seed— he stood six
feet two in his stockin'-feet — e mind ye/ says he, steppin' for'ard in front o' the
officers— ' ay, and let it be clapt in the log,' says he, slappin' his thigh to give
weight to his words, for Bill, they said, was a capital scholard, and could spout
by the fathom wi' the best bencher aboard— ' mind, gemmen/ says he, ' if so be
as the enemy's fleet puts to sea, we'll first give the ships up to the officers — fol-
low and fight 'em — ay, and beat 'em in the bargain ; for d it' says he, ( it

never shall be said we shy'd Mister Crappo, or hadn't the same nat'ral likin' to
lick him as ever. And then/ says he, with a flourish of his fist, 'we'll come
back to Spithead in the triumph,' (though I don know why he should fix upon
she, for she wasn't altogether one of the staunchest) — ' and repeat,' says he, f our
complaints till we makes every lord in the land shake in his shoes.'

It would not be easy, by detached quotations, to give an adequate idea
of this very curious and interesting narrative ; but we may do something
to " stay" the anxiety which we are certain our readers must feel re-
garding the only genuine account yet given of one of the most startling
events in our annals, during the existence of which, the safety of the
state hung as on a cobweb. The following is an illustrative incident.
A lieutenant of the London is tried by the delegates for shooting a seaman
of that ship; his conduct is defended by Fleming, one of the principal
delegates, an educated seaman.

"Well, when, after some discussion, I perceived that the delegates felt them-
selves compelled, as it were, to sacrifice the lieutenant's life to the fury of the
fleet, I rose from my seat, I must say somewhat excited, for it was an exciting
subject.

" ' Good God !' said I, ' are we men, or the mere tools of men ? Do we come
here to use or abuse the reason the good Almighty has given us ? Is it/ said I,
' after proving yourselves to be the most temperate, and rational minded men

672 Tales of a Tar. [JUNE,

that ever conducted so momentous a matter, that now you betray such defici-
ency in firmness as to listen to the dictates of men incapable of judging for
themselves ?'

t( Well, I was here interrupted, hut Joice, the humane Joice, obtained me a
hearing —

" ' How are we to know/ I continued, ' whether, in these fourteen pieces of
packed paper, the voice of the fleet is contained ? Who are ive ? f We of the
Mars' — ( We of the Marl borough,' &c. Are any of the delegates present includ-
ed in that we ? How are we to know whether the we of each ship is not like
the we of the newspaper, a solitary individual !'

" Well, I was again interrupted, but again permitted to proceed.

" ' You appear,' said I, ' to understand little of the relative position between
the delegates of the fleet and the seamen of the fleet. By whom are we deputed,
and here placed, to conduct the councils of the common cause ? Are we self-
constituted, or elected by the crews of our respective ships ? Have we not been
individually and collectively chosen by the latter to guide and govern them ; — •
but now — now ?' said I, with considerable warmth, ' you prefer to let them guide
and govern you' "

" You said no more than right, John — for if you're to be listning," said Tur-
ner, "to every fellow's prate when the ship's ashore, I'm if you ever gets

her off."

" A line-of-battle ship," muttered Fleming, " had been easier got off than the
lieutenant."

t( Well, at this moment a letter, which had been addressed to the London's
ship's company by the lieutenant whose life was pending on the delegates' deci-
sion, and which the committee-men of that ship had promptly despatched to St.
Helen's, was handed in and read aloud.

" It was a manly and spirited appeal, asserting that he did no more than his
duty, in promptly complying with the orders of his superior — that no individual
could possibly deplore so much as himself the life lost ; and that if the delegates
deprived him of his, they would deprive a good mother and two amiable sisters
of their only protector"

*f You may depend on't, a better man never brea tiled," ejaculated Fleming's
shipmate.

" You may depend on't," echoed Miller, " it's always a sign of a good man,
when he 'lots to his mother. No man can do wrong that does that — for though
a fellow can't always swear to his father, he's mostly sure of his mother."

Smiling at Miller's maxim, the once able-bodied, but still able-minded sea-
man proceeded.

" This letter called forth from many, remarks which did credit to their head
and heart. Nor shall I ever forget the sound reasoning, manly and feeling com-
ments, which fell from one of the delegates of the Royal Sovereign."

" ' Aye, I can tell ye,' cried Miller, ' we'd some long-headed fellows in the
old Suvran. I doesn't say they were chaps much given to larnin', or the likes
o' that — but they were these sort o' chaps, — when there was a general sarvin'-out
o' brains, they corned in for double allowance— I axes your pardon, John, but, as
it was the first time I hears the old Suvran's name, I thought 'twas no harm to
lend you a hand.'

"Well, notwithstanding the impression the perusal of this letter made upon
the minds of many of the delegates, still the majority could not divest themselves
of the idea, or, more strictly speaking, of apprehensions which induced the idea
that it was their ' boumlen duty to comply with the wishes of the fleet.' The
lieutenant's fate was sealed— his death was decided."

" ' On board of what ship must the lieutenant suffer?' asked Joice, who was
president for the day.— ' On board of his own,' replied two or three voices at the
bottom of the table. ' By what authority,' said I, ' do you mean to carry the
sentence into execution? — for I am sure,' I continued, 'none here are desirous
to commit an illegal act.'— e Nor, I am sure,' said Joice, ' that, now their anger is
subsided, the London's ship's company will never consent to the measure.' —
' They must,' was the brief remark. ' Where is your authority ?'. I again asked.

1830.] Tales oj a Tar. 673

'The delegates' order is enough !'— ' Not so/ 1 returned— f the order should a?surne
the form and character of a DEATH WARRANT, so that every man may know
for what he has to answer.' — Well, none were acquainted with the form. I
affected to know something of the matter, and immediately commenced to commit
it to paper.

"'What. you. you, John, volunteer to write the order for the lieutenant's
death!' loudly ejaculated the astonished Turner, whose short absence from the
group had lost him a portion of the previous account.

" ( I did — and moreover I don't hesitate to say that the recollection of that vo-
luntary deed has often consoled me in a solitary hour.'

" ' Well, ev'ry one to his likin'. — But see here, John — may I be ' asseve-
rated Turner, again bringing his bamboo in an awkward collision with some of
senseless legs of the circle— ' but afore I'd a drawn out the warrant, I'd regularly
been drawn and quartered myself.'

" ( We are on the opposite tacks,' said Fleming. f I'd a motive for doing as I
did. It was a dangerous experiment, I grant — but what will we not risk in cases
of life and death ?— and I have often thought/ continued the hoary-headed ve-
teran, assuming a solemnity of tone, '(nor do I say it profanely) that the great
God above, looking down on our evil deeds, must then have endowed me with
an intuitive command of language; for in the composition of the death-warrant,
every word seemed to point premeditated murder to him who had the hardihood
to sign it! Well, when completed, I gave it to Joic?, observing that it was ne-
cessary the warrant should be signed by all the delegates assembled. Joica cast
his eye over it, handed it to next on his left, and said, in a most impressive
manner, ( Will you be bold enough to put your name to that c? ' No,' was the
decided answer, as soon as the paper was perused, and in the same manner it
passed round the table by all unsigned — for when it came to the point, that
heart which never failed in a just cause, failed then to follow the cruel dictates
of the rash head.'

" ' Hurrah !' cheered Turner, brandishing his stick in the air. ' Damme— Jack
was never intended to be a Jack Ketch— but go on, old boy, for you're a regular
blue !' "

We are sorry to relate, that in the following remarks of the seamen
there is but too much truth, even in the present day. Military men hold
places under government, are governors of colonies, and, indeed, have
the monopoly of every situation that requires the services of an officer.
Now, with all due submission to our rulers, we cannot but consider
it an act of positive injustice that these advantages are not fairly divided
between the two services. The naval officers of rank are as highly
gifted and capable men as those of the army; and they have laid as
many laurels at the feet of their country. Now that the want of employ-
ment has inclined so many of both services to resort to the pen, it will
be a fair criterion of their respective qualifications to judge them by the
works which have appeared from the press. Let the public decide
between their respective merits.

" ' But, you know, John/ said Jones, ' it's always the casr— from first to last,
the sogers have always beenfavovr'd men. Look at the beginning o'the war;
no sooner Mister Crappo expends his king, and we battles the watch wi' him. for
spilling royal blood on the block, nor long-headed B illy* gives the lobsters a lift,
and increases their pay and prog; but look how it was with we.— The same
allowance in wages and wittels as was given, ay, for years and years afore the
BUIift was built, remains unraised till we betters ourselves by the breeze ; though
grog and grub, and gear, and all the necessaries o' life to support our families
ashore, was more, ay, more nor treble in price. So, see here (and it's no more
nor the nat'ral truth) the sogers have always found favor, when far better men
have been always forgot.'

* The late Mr. Pitt. t The Royal WIMsm.

M.M. New Series.- VOL. IX No. M. " 4 R

674 Tales of a Tar. JUNE,

" 'As to better men, I say nothing/ said Fleming, 'because in their respective
situations the soldier and the sailor are equally good.'

" 'Why, John, d'ye think a fellow's a fool? does the one sarve a time to a
trade ? Take a chap from the plough, or a chap from the loom— brace up his
body, — steady his step, — teach him to march, — manage his musket, — ship and un-
ship his bagnet,— pipe-clay his breeks, and burnish his buttons ; and, in a very
few months, you'll turn out a reg'lar-built soger. But see the time as it takes
to make a thoro' bred seamen ; it's a right good man as larns his trade in seven
or eight years. So, say what you will, Sill says something more should be made
of the man that's hardest to make. But, no; it's quite t'other way; look at
your Waterloo work: every chap as was, ay, perhaps no more, ay, nor in sight
o' the fray, slings to a button on his breast a medal as big as a dollar; whilst,
such chaps as we have no other token to show for our work for the icar, but —
damme— a gashed cheek, or a lopped limb.'

"At this moment a ' walking-tap,' as it was termed, happening 'to heave in
sight,' the excited tar rose from his seat, and departed to wet his whistle."

But we must be brief " KIND INQUIRIES," and " COMMAND OF MIND,"
are excellent ; and so indeed are all the short narratives which are to be
found in this amusing volume. We must make one short extract from
" Sailor Sal," a young woman who follows her sweetheart on board of
a man-of-war, and does her duty as a foremast-man. She is brought
up to the gangway for punishment.

" ' Well, my lad. says the skipper'— for as I said before, he was a good man,
and couldn't abide the use o' the cat: but in course he'd to do his duty, as well
as another—' well, my lad,' says he, 'what 'ave you to say for yourself? You
see, now, the dangerous consequence of look-out men falling asleep on their
watch. I'm sorry to punish you,' says the skipper, * for I believe you to be a
willing lad : but this is too seris an offence to look over — so strip,' says the
skipper.—' I axes your pardon, sir,' says Jem, steppin' for'ard in front o' the
people — for you see, the skipper looked for all the world as if he was only waiting
for some of the officers or petty officers to come for'ard and speak a good word
for unfortunate Sam — 'I axes your pardon, sir,' says Jem, ' I hopes you'll allow
me to say a word in favor o' the prisoner.' — ' By all means,' says the skipper,
Sal all the time pretending to ungrind the granny,* as tied her handkerchief,
was fumbling away with her fingers to gain time. ' You may depend, sir,' says
Jem, 'the young man's not well in his mind: he was drowsy and stupid the
whole day long ; and moreover,' says Jem, ' as another of his messmates, Farley,
the main-top-man can tell, he wouldn't break bisket the whole a'ternoon, or
touch a drop of his allowance o' grog.' ' Then he should have gone to the
doctor,' said the captain. 'Well, sir,' says Jem, ' I knows it's a seris offence:
and as I suppose you must make a sample o' some one aboard, if it's all the
same to you, sir,' says Jem, stripping, and heaving his jacket at Sal's feet, I'll
take the punishment myself, for I'm sure the lad can't stand the lash !' Well,
at this, Sal, first heavin' a look at Jem — the fellow look I never seed afore or
since— and givin' a guggle in her throat, as if goin' to choak, she fell flat in a
faint at his feet, for she stands it all very well till she sees Jem strippin' to take
her place. Well, the hands were then piped-down— Sal carried to the cockpit,
and the murder out in a minute.

"'Now that's what /calls behavin' like a woman,' concluded Farley, rising
from the group round the hatchway, and retiring to relieve the look-out man at
the lee cat-head."

We shall be glad to meet Captain Glascock again. He is one of those
writers who come to the point at once, without pretence or circumlocu-
tion— a rare quality in these wordy times.

* A lubber's knot, so designated by seamen.

1830.] [ 675 ]

BRITISH INDIA, AND THE RENEWAL OF THE COMPANY'S CHARTER.

WHEN a subject, vast in its extent, embracing an infinitude of details,
and extremely difficult of comprehension, as a whole, even by those to
whom many of those details are habitually familiar, is to be rendered
intelligible to general readers, the time is very far from wasted which is
employed in opening a vista for the full and free range of the mental
vision over the field of discussion. The sand that Belzoni and his bro-
ther travellers found piled against the front of the great temple of Abou
Samboul, and which covered the very head-gear of the gigantic statues
standing as sentinels over the portal, is but a feeble type of the obstruc-
tions that oppose themselves to the inquirer, who comes, if it be possible,
without prepossession or prejudice, to seek for information with regard
to the condition of the native population of our oriental dominions, and
the nature of the government under which they live. But as it is obvious
that any attempt at elucidation would be labour thrown away, unless the
questions at issue be disencumbered of the difficulties in which misrepre-
sentation and paradox have conspired to envelope them, we shall devote
a few pages to the task of beating down the mounds which have been so
industriously thrown up between the public and the real facts of the case,
partly, we must conclude, to serve the purposes of party, but principally,
as far, at least, as Mr. Rickards is concerned, from motives of a less ques-
tionable character. It may be, however, that he will not thank us for
this charitable construction, for we confess that we cannot pay a compli-
ment to the purity of his intentions, except at the expense of his intel-
lectual powers. Where premises, in a variety of instances, are incorrectly
stated, authorities enormously strained, and deductions, which the god-
dess of sophistry herself would blush at, are solemnly announced as
demonstrated, and are laid down, accordingly, as stepping-stones to
ulterior conclusions of a damnatory nature, either the moral principles or
the mental faculties must bear the blame. We shall have abundant op-
portunities, in the course of the series of papers which we contemplate,
to prove that we have dealt Mr. Rickards no hard measure ; but our
business is more at present with general features, than the character-
istics of an individual author.

The first great fallacy is this :— an absolute standard is erected for the
measurement and appreciation of the government of British India, by
the servants of the Company, without any allowance for the peculiarities
of situation, the difficulties against which they have had to struggle, and
the resistance of circumstances over which they could not possibly pos-
sess any control whatever. This institution is bad, objects one critic, for
it militates against general principles of jurisprudence. That source of
re venue is polluted, cries a second, for it was not only derived from Ma-
hommedan tyrants and extortioners ; but it displays most, if not all, of
the diagnostics which political economists agree in describing as indi-
cative of a bad tax. You have done nothing for the country which has
been fifty years under your sway, vehemently asseverates a third ap-
praiser. Where are your canals, your roads, your bridges ? Where is
agricultural capital, and an improved system of husbandry ? Where is
much that you confessedly have not even attempted to do ? Wherefore is
it that your actual achievements should fall so lamentably short of our
estimate of possible improvement. Crime, urges another, is still rife,
and heinous in its character. In the Lower Provinces, gang-robbery

4R2

676 British India, and [JtrNB,

is unsuppressed to this day, and it obtains to the greatest extent in
those districts which are nearest to the seat of government, and where
its power of suppressing violence ought to be most easily exercised.
In the same quarter, the manufactory of salt, which is carried on by
forced labour,* and in the pestilential climate of the Sunderbuns, is
productive of the most intense misery. Alligators, tigers, and dysen-
tery, contend for the privilege of destroying those whom the Company
sacrifice to the Moloch of monopoly. The Upper Provinces, on the other
hand, manifest equally infallible symptoms of anarchy, misgovernment,
find disaffection. The mob shouted in the streets of Dehli that the rule
of the Company was at an end f. There exists a class of hereditary high-
way murderers. The people showed great anxiety pending the siege of
Bhurtpore, and expressed themselves mortified at its capture. In short,
enough may be gathered from the admissions of the government itself,
and the reports of its subordinate functionaries, to prove, beyond ques-
tion, the existence of vice, and misery, and discontent, to a degree quite
inconsistent with the notions entertained by these philanthropists of " the
eternal fitness of things," and the possible perfectability of human laws
and institutions,

We are unable to lay before our readers more than brief and partial
abridgments of the charges that have been brought against an admi-
nistration, which has been compelled to contend for the last twenty
years, — that is, since its relief from external pressure threatening its
very being, with moral obstacles, greater, perhaps, and more perplexing
than the rulers of any nation have ever been called upon to face and
overcome. That they have never quailed at the difficulties of their
situation, that they have manfully set their shoulders to the wheel, with-
out calling upon Hercules for assistance, we shall prove to the satisfac-
tion of the most sceptical, if they be open to conviction, before we bring
the subject to a close. But our object at this moment is to expose the
ungenerous sophistry of the writers, who have endeavoured to betray
the public into forming an estimate of the merits of those who have been
deputed to govern our magnificent empire in the East, not only without
taking into account all that they have actually effected towards the
establishment of good government, in the widest sense of the term, but
also without reference to the circumstances inherent in the nature of the
task, and the quality of the subject matter, which have arrayed them-
selves to prevent more rapid progress, or to qualify success. Both the
one and the other have been sedulously kept out of sight, whilst
their failures, their slow and painful, and, it may be, sometimes im-
perceptible advance, and their occasional errors and oversights, have been
dwelt upon, as if they were entirely without counterpoise, as if the ser-

* This allegation (which may be found in Mr. Rickards' work, pages 644 and 647) hap-
pens to te absolutely untrue, but the use of all weapons is permitted " ad delcndam Cartha-
ginem." The statement regarding climate is also relatively unfounded ; for the salt ma-
nufacturers are the natives of those parts of the country in which their operations are carried
on, and are surely no more to be pitied on that score than the fen-men of Ely or Lincoln-
shire, or the inhabitants of the oozy shores of Holland and Flanders. However deadly the
climate of the Sunderbuns may be, the present Governor-General is now parcelling out its
swamps and wilds to English and half-caste capitalists, who must clear the forest by native
labour. The island of Sangur, which is situated at one of the most remote and desolate ex-
tremities of the tract in question, has been already brought into cultivation by the same
agency. We hope that Mr. Rickards will no't fail to inform the public what/era? was used
to gather and keep together ihe gangs of workmen by whom those operations were conducted.

f Quarterly Review, vol. xxxvi. Article on Russian Missions to Bokhara, &c.

1830.] the Renewal of Ike Company's Charter. 677

vants of the Company had a perverse pleasure in misrule and gratuitous
oppression.

No man in possession of his reason would attribute blame to a tra-
veller toiling over the defiles of Mount Caucasus, or even ploughing his
way through the sands of Prussia, for not proceeding with the same
rapid regularity as the Bristol mail. Still less would the commander
of the fastest and best appointed frigate in the British navy be brought
to a court-martial for not sailing within two points of the wind. Why, in
the name of all that is fair and candid, should the rule of estimation cease
to be considerate as soon as it is applied to moral exertions, and moral
hindrances ? Why, but because pseudo-philosophers cannot spare time
or acuteness to calculate with any nicety the quantum of resistance that
has been overcome, and the consequent power and value of the machi-
nery, that has carried on its operations, however slowly and imperfectly,
in despite of such opposition. Or, because they have drawn, in their
own imaginations, a formal and inflexible line of demarcation between
that which is good and that which is evil in legislation and the admi-
nistration of the laws, in matters of police and taxation, and all the
thousand points at which an absolute government comes in contact with
the people, with utter ignorance or disregard of those facts and circum-
stances which often make that relatively good, which partakes, in an
absolute sense, more or less largely of the opposite principle.

A single example will suffice, perhaps, to explain our meaning. Mr.
Rickards has devoted a section, at page 263 of his second volume, to the
consideration of the crime of gang-robbery in Bengal, which he attempts,
with his usual felicity, to trace to the system of land-revenue. " It
seems/' he says, " to have been unsuccessfully prosecuted, and almost
with impunity, till the year 1808." et In 1808, this tremendous evil
was somewhat checked," but there are " numerous complaints on record,
of the continued existence" of the crime. " So late as the 20th October,
1824, the Court of Directors, in their letter to the Bengal government,
express themselves sorry to find that heinous crimes had been committed
in the Lower Provinces, in 1819, to a greater extent than in 1818. The
number of decoities, (gang-robberies), they add, attended with torture
or wounding, increased from 48 to 84 ; and the total number of decoities
from 217 to 336. There was also a great increase of robberies and
thefts of various kinds, attended with murder and wounding."

Mr. Rickards proceeds, " Down, therefore, to the period here men-
tioned, we have recorded proof of the continued existence of decoity in
the royal provinces, to a most distressing extent, notwithstanding all the
measures and expedients which had been resorted to for twenty pre-
ceding years to suppress it."

Now it is certainly an evil greatly to be deplored that gang-robbery
should exist at all, that 336 crimes of such enormity, attended, as they
too frequently are, with the most horrible aggravations of torture and
cruelty, should be perpetrated in one year. But who would not con-
clude from the language in which Mr. Rickards speaks of the continued
existence of decoity, notwithstanding the efforts of twenty years for its
suppression, that the offence still prevailed with little less than pristine
intensity; that the midnight marauder carried on his bloody trade,
under the tacit encouragement afforded by a system of police utterly
inefficient ; and that the peaceable inhabitants still suffer under a scourge
little less severe than that to which they were subjected in 1808 ? This
most assuredly is the impression that it is calculated — we trust not in-

678 British India, and [JuNE,

tended to produce. But how stand the facts ? those " stubborn chiels,"
as Burns sings, which " winna ding, and canna' be disputed ?" The
subjoined table will answer.

Number of gang-robberies committed in the Lower Provinces from 1803
to 1825 inclusive, divided into Jive periods.

Average of each year, from 1803 to 1807 inclusive 1481
Ditto of ditto, from 1808 to 1812 inclusive 927
Ditto of ditto, from 1813 to 1817 inclusive 339
Ditto of ditto, from 1818 to 1822 inclusive* 234
Ditto of ditto, from 1823 to 1825 inclusive! 186

If this be not sufficient to expose the fallacy of Mr. Rickards' state-
ments, and their thorough unfitness to be used as premises from which
any conclusions may safely be drawn, with regard to the state of crime
and police in that part of the country to which they refer, we may state,
that in the year 1808, no less than 329 gang-robberies were committed
in the single district of Nuddea,| being ninety-five more than the
average for the whole of the Lower Provinces, from 1818 to 1822 ; and
143 more than the average of the term, from 1823 to 1825. Yet Mr.
Rickards is one of the especial guides who has undertaken to conduct
the public mind to a right understanding with respect to the condition
of the native inhabitants of British India ; and he fills, we understand,
the office of crammer to one of the most talented and intelligent mem-
bers of a certain noble committee.

But we have not quite done with Mr. Rickards' notice of gang-rob-
beries. He remarks the increase which took place in 1819, as compared
with the preceding year, without the most distant allusion to the fact,
which may be substantiated by reference to page 8, of the very volume
of selections, which he quotes at page 11. That the local government
of Bengal had placed upon record their anticipation of such a temporary
increase of crime, as the necessary consequence of a regulation passed
in 1818, appointing a commission to visit the several district gaols, and
release as many of the persons confined as notorious gang-robbers, —
until they should give security for their good behaviour, as might be at
all consistent with the preservation of the public peace. We find ac-
cordingly, that no less than 336 persons who were in custody, under
the circumstances specified above, were released from the gaol of Nud-
dea alone, between the date of the regulation in question, and the close
of 1819. The result was, that gang-robbery increased m that juris-
diction as under :

1817—4. 1818—7- 1819—23. 1820-28.

This deterioration, however, called forth immediate and energetic
measures on the part of the officers of police, and the calendars of the
four following years show the following returns.

1821—11. 1822—12. 1823—11. 1824—10.

Before the end of 1822, eighty-six more notorious offenders had been
set free, leaving only fifty in detention; and in 1823, those, also, would
seem to have been allowed to go at large ; nevertheless there was na
further increase of crime.

* This period of course includes the year 1819, in which the increase took place to which
Mr. Rickards makes his ostentatious reference.

f We have no later records at hand for immediate reference.

\ Bfuddea, or Rishennugger, a district about seventy miles from Calcutta. The Lower
Provinces contain twenty-five or thirty other districts of equal extent.

1830.] the Renewal of the Company's Charter. 679

It appears, then,, that from 1803 to 1812 inclusive, 1204 gang-rob-
beries were committed,, upon the average, every year; whilst from 1818
to 1825 inclusive, the average return was 210. And yet Mr. Rickards
asserts, that the crime in question still continues " to rear its terrific
head, in spite of all the expedients and contrivances set on foot to sup-
press it :"* a charge, it may be, abstractedly true, because the calendars
are still far from blank under this head ; but who would suppose from
the language in which it is couched, that the evil denounced in such dra-
gon-like metaphor had lost five-sixths of its intensity?

It would be easy to multiply specimens to any extent, of the manner
in which vague and general terms have been employed to mislead and
baffle inquiry, with respect to the management of India by the servants
of the Company. Because vice and crime still nourish to a very la-
mentable extent, that circumstance is loudly insisted upon ; and those
who have not succeeded in strangling the monsters, are denounced as
little better than accomplices. But the great progress that has been
made towards the attainment of the objects in view ; the almost regular
yearly diminution of oifences of the more heinous description against life
and property ; and the silent alteration which a determined but humane
system of policy is most assuredly working in the habits of the people ;
and their modes, if not their principles, of action, are carefully kept out
of sight. When gentlemen, who have served in India, and whose names,
like that of Sir Henry Strachey, carry great weight with them, ex-
press their opinions with regard to any part of the machine of govern-
ment, or any branch of the system, in terms of disparagement or repro-
bation ; the philosophers of the school to which we allude quote and
echo their words, give them an interpretation far more general than they
were intended to bear, and press them into their service as crutches
for their own limping theories. But when Sir Henry Strachey, speaking
of our operations as a whole, says, <c we did establish our system, ano!
imperfect as it is in practice, no law or institution, no measure of any
sovereign, in any age or country, perhaps, ever produced so much bene-
fit ; its advantages are beyond all price f." The candid adversaries of the
Company became suddenly " nigh gravel blind," and cannot read the
testimony. They have adopted the same principle of quotation from the
reports and public despatches of functionaries in active employment, who
are under solemn obligations to tell no smooth tales, and to hide no sores
or blotches from the government which they serve. Those documents
have been searched with the most painful industry for matter of vilifica-
tion, and this is made use of exclusively under a tacit assumption, that

* Vol. ii. page 213.

-f- Judicial Selections, vol. ii. p. 60. There is much more to the same purport, e. g.
" The eastern people have had wise kings and just judges. We have heard, no doubt, of
particular acts of signal equity, and of great skill in detecting injustice among them ; but
never had they a consistent uniform judicial system — a set of tribunals to which the people
might resort, and without regard to the personal character of the judge or ruler, depend upon
obtaining justice."

" This great blessing may be said, with strict truth, to have been unknown in India till
conferred upon it by the English East India Company." — Ibid. p. 59. " With respect to
the disadvantages of the system, I do not think it necessary to add much to what I have al-
ready stated. These disadvantages have, I think, been exaggerated. Some I have heard
mentioned as such, which, perhaps, have no existence. Of these defects, part may be
ascribed to human infirmity, and to our peculiar circumstances.'" — Ibid. p. 65. " But on
the whole, the balance of good is greatly in favour of our system of government. Without
hesitation, I affirm, that the people derive benefit from it ; and the best part of it I conceive
to be our judicial system." — Ibid. p. C(j.

680 British India, and [\TuNU,

the whole truth, " as well as nothing but the truth," has been told. It
was Burke, we think, who illustrated the candour of such mangled re-
ferences, by offering to prove from Scripture itself, that " there is no
God," if he were but permitted to suppress the preamble, " the fool has
said in his heart."

We need scarcely say what sort of verisimilitude a picture so painted
possesses. It has not even the poor merit of a gross caricature ; for it
fails to make one laugh. By dwelling on the prevalence of crime, the de-
lays of the law, partial and temporary instances of over-taxation, and draw-
backs and evils of every description, to the rigid exclusion of the pre-
ponderating contents of the opposite scale; they have succeeded in laying
before the public a delineation of the condition of the people of British
India, about as faithful as would be afforded by any painter of English
morals and manners who should obstinately refuse to employ any colours
but those which he might derive from the Newgate Calendar, the reports
of crim. con. and seduction cases, and the adventures of Tom and Jerry.
We can only call to mind, at this moment, one writer who is worthy to
be placed upon a level with our philosophers in this department, — to
wit, Fillet, the French prisoner of war, who generalized so liberally upon
the habits and demeanour of the dames and damsels with whom it was
his happy lot to associate during his sojourn here, as to conclude and
publish that all English women drank gin, and gave each other black eyes.

But these are not the only arts that have been practised to mystify the
subject. The goal from which the rulers of British India started, for the
establishment of social order, arid a regular system of government, has
been either altogether concealed, or stated to be other than it really was. It
never seems to occur to the adversaries of the Company, that it might be
a difficult task to grapple with the giant vices of many millions of
heathens, of a people sunk in most degrading superstition, and bound
down for countless centuries under the double yoke of political and spi-
ritual bondage. By a process similar to that which has helped him to
his vain triumph over Sir Thomas Munro, with regard to the demand
of India for British manufactures, Mr. Rickards having laboriously
proved that the domination of caste is not quite absolute or universal,
proceeds to treat it altogether as a bugbear. It forms, he seems to think,
no real obstacle to the amelioration of the condition of Indian society, it
is a mere non-entity, which owes its imaginary existence solely to the
anxiety of the monopolists, to throw this flimsy covering over the chains
which they themselves have forged for the minds of their subjects, or to
account for the small improvement which their institutions have effected.
There are not four pure tribes, as the theory of division supposes ; there-
fore, the prejudices of caste have no influence at all towards retarding
the march of civilization : there are no genuine Cshatryas, Vaisyas, or
Sudras, remaining ; therefore, those who have spoken of " the artificial
and unnatural division of the people into distinct classes," and have called
it a "misshapen structure of society," did so with the intention of imposing
upon the public. We shall shortly see it proved, that there are no Hindoos
in existence, as our fellow subjects, at least, because their numbers have
been egregiously overrated by those who have tickled the imaginations of
the manufacturers of Manchester and Glasgow with a long numerical ar-'
ray of their possible customers. We have not so studied logic as to sup-
pose, that because a proposition may be overstated through prejudice or
interest, the reverse is to be considered as necessarily demonstrated.

Whatever the causes of depravation, however (and doubtless ninny

1830.] The Renewal of the Companies Charter. 081

have concurred), folios of proof might be adduced, that when the com-
pany assumed the reins of government in India, crime and licence of
every description had attained a height unparalleled in the annals of
mankind. There were whole nations of avowed and unblushing rob-
bers : there were associated thousands who never pretended to subsist
otherwise than by plunder ; who neither tilled the earth, nor engaged
in any trade or manufacture, but swept the country periodically, com-
mitting atrocities which it curdles the very blood even to think upon —
and of which simple torture and rape were literally the mildest forms.
Besides these, the northern provinces swarmed with cozaks, or mounted
highwaymen ; and every road was beset by kings, or phanseegars, as
they are called in different parts of the Peninsula, who practised murder
as a regular calling. To this hour, the skeletons of their victims are
frequently found, to the numbers of six, eight, or ten, whenever an old
well by the way-side is cleaned out. Affrays of the most sanguinary
character were of almost daily occurrence ; every man wore arms, and
avenged his own quarrel ; perjury and subornation were employed with
equal freedom, when circumstances rendered such weapons preferable
for the destruction of a victim ; and whilst the rapine and cruelty of in-,
vading armies were, of course, utterly uncontrollable, the only check
upon crime of a more domestic character was a system of justice so
irregular and capricious, as often to inflict in its very execution more
grievous wrong than that which it professed to redress. Physical mi-
sery followed hard upon the heels of that which demons in the shape
of men inflicted more immediately upon their fellow-creatures. When
the Mahratta or Pindarry horsemen were ravaging a province, the
wretched inhabitants fled before them, to escape from outrage more in-
tolerable than death; leaving their fields unsown, or their standing
crops to forage the horses of the invaders, and famine was the necessary
consequence.* Then hundreds, with that apathetic patience for which
the race is so remarkable, laid them down to die from starvation ; and
parents sold their children into slavery, to preserve both themselves and
their offspring from a more miserable fate. But we pause here, not,
assuredly, because we have exhausted the theme, but because we would
not dwell upon a picture of the degradation of our species so hideous
and revolting, longer than is absolutely necessary for the developement
of our argument, t

Who will undertake to say, that it was an easy task to stem a tide so
violent as that which we have feebly attempted to describe ; to impose
an effectual curb upon the licence which long indulgence had rendered
habitual ; to awe the bold, to give confidence to the timid, to find

* There is a fact, which, though far from novel, speaks volumes with regard to the ha.
bitual sufferings of the people of Southern India from this cause. They have a word
" wulsah," signifying that which, probably, no other people could render intelligible with-
out a long periphrasis— the flight of a whole village community into the jungles before an
invading army. Colonel Wilks assures us, that the *' wulsah" never goes forth when a
British army, unaccompanied by native allies, is advancing.

•f One circumstance may be mentioned as peculiarly characteristic of the state of society
at the period in question, though it be far less disgusting than many other features of the
portrait which we have been compelled to draw. In all the large towns, but in Dthli and
Benares, we believe, more particularly, there was a class of men called " Bankas,"
(" younger brothers," like Poms, and " proper men of their hands" ), who lived by bully-
ing and insolence, plundering the grain shops for their daily bread, when they could find no
Master Stephen to treat them.

M. M. Netv Series.— VOL. IX. No. 54. 4 S

682 British India, $c. [JUNE,

means for protecting every man from his neighbour, without co-opera-
tion or assistance from any ? For it was not merely that the elements
of evil were widely disseminated, that the restless and turbulent formed
a large body, nor that a large majority were positively bad subjects,
both with regard to the ruling power, and their reciprocal relations as
fellow citizens ; but that there existed no leaven of an opposite character
to correct and sweeten the mass. In this want the main difficulty con-
sisted. Soldiers might be had in superabundance, and the obligation of
the military engagement seemed to possess a strange hold upon the
minds of the classes which followed arms as a profession, than any other
feeling of responsibility ; but fitting instruments of civil government,
according to European notions, there were absolutely none. There
was not a man from the Indus to the Burrampooter, from Cape Como-
rin to Hurdwar, whose word or oath could be relied upon, if the veriest
trifle were to be gained by perjury or deceit ; there was not a person
within the same limits capable of forming even an abstract idea of in-
corruptibility. There was no fulcrum for the moral lever ; their
perceptions of religious duty did not extend beyond the observance
of rites and penances, which tended only to inflame the pride of the in-
dividual devotee, and to shut his heart against his mind ; and whilst the
feebler races throughout the Peninsula were bowed down to the very
earth in unresisting abjectness, Bishop Heber, in speaking of the
Rajpoot tribes, who have never been subjected to our dominion, has
justly characterised the fiercer races as men with all " the vices of
slaves, added to those of robbers."

These are strong colours, but we throw down the gauntlet with con-
fidence, and will freely and gladly enter the lists with any writer who
will undertake to prove that we have overcharged the picture. The
only difficulty which we should find in supporting our statement, would
be to clothe the overflowing details of vice and crime which are at our
command, in such a dress as to render them barely endurable by Eng-
lish readers. How far the torrent has been checked we do not intend
to inquire at this moment, reserving it for future investigation ; but be
the success more or less, this we say, that those who have given to the
world their estimate of its degree, without reference to the counteracting
principles which were so deeply rooted in an abominable idolatry, and
the alternate slavery and anarchy of centuries, have been guilty of a
sophism, the absurdity of which is only to be rivalled by the unfairness
of a " suppressio veri ' so enormous. If they have wilfully kept out of
view the difficulties against which the government of British India have
had to contend, their conduct has been dishonest ; if they have over-
looked their existence, their purblindness utterly disqualifies them for
the office which they have exercised with such an arrogant assumption
of superiority in political knowledge.

1830.] [ 683 ]

VEGETATIVE VERSES,

BY A FELLOW OP THE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY.
tSfc*Wfte'Mt*Wr«TO , '- Vilffifc

SABINE, father of the fetes,

Chief of Chiswick, rural seer,
Deep in daisies and in dates,

Prince of bulbs and breakfasts, hear !
Hark the note of sad distress—
Who would be an F.H.S.?

Ruin seizes every root;
Buried berries daily rot.

You and I may go and shoot—-
For the drooping shrubs will not.

We are in a pretty mess —

Who would be an F.H.S. ?

Once we sate with otium cum

Dignitate in our view ;
Now we are not worth a plum—

Turnham-green is turning blue.
Science is a game at chess—-
Who would be an F.H.S. ?

Horticulture hath its bumps :

Currants are a current joke;
Spades are now no longer trumps ;

Crocuses have made us croak;
Mustard's gone, and so is cress —
Who would be an F.H.S. ?

Stocks are selling off too cheap ;

We and heartsease soon must part;
O'er a lettuce let us weep ;

Artichokes have choked the art.
Chiswick 's quite a wilderness—
Who would be an F.H.S.?

See misfortune's chilling airs

Sweep our bark from off the beech ;
Sorrows ever come in pears ;

Peaches will our plans impeach ;
Cats'-heads kitten less and less—
Who would be an F.H.S. ?

Gravel walks with marble slabs,

Tombstones, we shall shortly show ;
Since, though in an age of cabs,

Cabbages are not the go.
Botany has ceased to bless —
Who would be an F.H.S.?

Oaks have proved a hoax at last ;

Young men see the elder die ;
Leaves, not sloe-leaves, perish fast;

We for cypress press a sigh ;
Posies pose us to excess—
Who would be an F.H.S.?
482

684 Vegetative Verses. £JuNE,

Meddlers, though on trees we've none,

Now about our funds inquire ;
Sun-flow'rs die without a son ;

Hyacinths will grow no higher.
These are facts we can't suppress —
Who would be an F.H.S. ?

Useless 'tis to see afar

How the other gardens do ;
How the winds at Windsor are,

How they mind their peas at Kew.
How we managed few can guess —
Who would be an F.H.S. ?

Oh ! the rainy, rural rout,

When, half-starved amidst the shower.

Dandy lions walked about

Seeking what they might devour,

Painted ladies, blue belles, press —

Who would be an F.H.S.?

Thyme is fled, and o'er the scene

Cots and chimneys will be found ;
Beans are things that once have been ;

Groundsel gone, we'll sell the ground.
What is Robins's address? —
Who would be an F.H.S.?

^
All is alter'd — not a bough

(Save the gardener's) marks the sppt;
O'er the cowslips slips a cow —

Winds may blow there, flowers will not.
Fashion, Honour, and Success,
Once were meant by F.H.S. !

But another tale they tell

Since we fell so deep in debt —
All our celery to sell,

All our lettuces to let.
Folly, Hubbub, Sorrow— yes,
These are meant by F.H.S. !

1830.] [ 685 ]

THEATRICAL MATTERS.

AT this season, benefits chiefly occupy the theatres ; and they are said
to have been in general productive to a degree which altogether contra-
dicts the idea of a falling off in the public fondness for the stage. Far-
ren's benefit is stated at upwards of six hundred pounds ; and Harley's at
an equal sum. The benefits of four of the popular actresses have been
highly lucrative. All this argues that, if good performances are given,
large audiences will collect to see them.

Mr. Anderson has announced his intention of trying the public opinion
by a benefit ; and Madame Vestris has declared that she will have the
most prodigious house that ever assembled to pour its liberality into the
lap of an actress. Her very bill of the performance is intended to exceed
by from six to sixty feet every other bill of the season. We only hope
that she and Mr. Anderson will not have their benefits on the same
evening.

Fawcett took leave of the stage on the 20th, with a speech which has
prodigiously perplexed the critics of " farewell eloquence ;" some pro-
nouncing it the perfection of jocularity, others equally strenuous in
insisting that it was only a bad imitation of a bad speech in a bad farce.
But, as Johnsons ays, " In the reputation of a dead poet, who can feel
the interest of pleasure or pain ?" So say we, of the glory of a retired
actor. Fawcett is gone where he can be hissed no more. Happy the
actor who can say as much : and careless may he be of the criticism
which can give him but one parting lash, and then falls short of him until
it comes to criticise his epitaph ! Fawcett was attended on the stage, in
"his extremity," by many of the actors of both theatres, and he has since
received some newspaper panegyrics on his popular qualities in his pro-
fession. But, let the truth be told. He was a good actor, for he had
judgment, and seldom played parts to which his powers were evidently
unfitted. But his manners to his professional brethren were less those of
an equal than of a manager (and the word is expressive), and nothing
but his fidelity could excuse his harshness of temper and violence of
phrase.

The season has formidably tried Kean's popularity. He played some
of his former characters, and succeeded tolerably; but his appearances
were rare, and he was frequently and for long intervals indisposed. He
attempted but one new part, Henry the Fifth ; and in it verified the
prediction of every one who had seen any of his performances during
the last two years, He totally lost his memory, struggled for a while
against this overwhelming difficulty, at length gave way, and was hissed
from the stage. This would have been cruel, if the audience had known
that mere debility was the cause. His constitution, naturally of no pecu-
liar strength, has rapidly sunk under the combined influence of excess,
imprudent reliance on himself, and imprudent efforts to regain his place
in public favour. None can exult over the fall of a man of ability; and
we hope that, among his crowd of former admirers, Kean may still find
some friends, who will point out to him the advantages of a temporary
retirement, and the higher advantages to be derived from a return to the
duty which he owes an unhappy wife and a deserted son. He may rely
upon it, that the public knowledge of a man's private misconduct, even
though that man be an actor of ability, has an evil effect, which will display
itself upon the first reverse of his successes. The love, "honour,and troops

686 Theatrical Mutters.

of friends" fly off and abandon him in his premature old age, the worst of
old ages; and the multitude, disgusted at their sudden disappointment,
mercilessly set themselves to discover every thing a fault where they had
once as hastily determined on discovering every thing a perfection. Kean's
only hope is in the virtue of retirement. He is still comparatively young ;
his capacity as an actor may be revived ; and a manly resolution to change
.ill his foolish and offensive habits for the studies and manners that be-
long to a wise sense of public opinion,, might yet make him an ornament
to his profession. But the task is one of supreme difficulty.

Miss Kemble has gone through a list of performances, which must
have required singular diligence, and in which, to have not failed is no
trivial praise. Isabella, Euphrasia, Belvidera, and Portia, each require
peculiar powers ; and it is but justice to the actress to say that, but for
her, in all probability, the theatre must have been undone. One of her
latest and most studied performances was the " Gamester." The play
is a frightful exhibition of the frightful excesses of vice and despair.
But Siddons's marvellous powers gave it dignity. No living actress
wrill ever do so again. Its displays are miserably coarse, its language is
abrupt and vulgar, and its characters are among the heaviest and roughest
sketches on the stage. Miss Kemble cannot be said to have failed in Mrs.
Beverly, for with her theatrical skill she can never undergo a decided
failure ; but the character adds nothing to her celebrity, shows no addi-
tional attraction in her performance, and should only warn her that, at
least for a time, her peculiar province is that of youthful tenderness and
the first developments of feminine feeling. Her Juliet is the best upon the
stage, and better than any that we remember; better than Miss O'Neil's,
whose person was too mature for the idea of Shak spear e's heroine ; and
her passion too open, violent, and clamorous for the fine and timid
susceptibility of that love whose picturing is the most exquisite work
of the most exquisite master of feeling that the world ever saw.

Miss Kemble's chief deficiency is in voice. It has sweetness, and a
tone in that sweetness which carries with it a resistless recommenda-
tion, for it reminds us of Siddons : but it wants force and emphasis : it
perpetually falls into a whisper in the most important expressions of the
scene ; and passages on which the audience have habitually hung with
breathless delight, are hurried over in a mingling of sound, sweet, but
unintelligible as the murmuring of midnight waters.

We annex no blame to her choice of performances. The stage
has but a narrow routine for a young tragedian ; and with the excep-
tion of Shakspeare's heroines, which are all inimitable, there is not a
heroine of British tragedy worthy of the talents of a true actress. The
true opportunity for Miss Kemble's powers must be delayed, until the re-
vival of the stage, until a new race of authors shall arise to fill the stage
with new forms of ideal interest and loveliness, and until the Belvideras
and Euphrasias are consigned to the oblivion, from which nothing but
the emergencies of the stage could ever have redeemed them.

The affairs of Drury Lane have come at last to the crisis which had
been long anticipated. The expenses had so far exceeded the income
for a considerable period, that the manager had been compelled to give
up his contract, and the committee were compelled to look out for a new
lessee. We regret this ill success on Price's part, for he appears to have
been an active and intelligent manager. We of course speak only of
••it hat has come before the public. The direct source of his loss is to be

J830.] Theatrical Matters. 687

found in the common evil of modern theatres, the deficiency of modern
authorship. A manager was once reported to have said, in the triumph
of a pantomime or some such foolery of canvass and carpentry,
"D — mn authorship, give me the scene-painter and the machinist!"
If this absurdity was ever uttered, it has been dearly revenged on all
his successors to this hour. The machinist and the scene-painter have
been the two " daughters of the horse-leech, crying, ' Give, give ;' " and
their suction of the theatrical purse has reduced it to the thinness of a
vapour. Since Price's announcement as manager of the theatre, it is
remarkable that scarcely one original performance has been produced ;
if we except Miss Mitford's Rienzi, which, though clever for a female,
was not fitted for longevity ; and Lord Glengall's Follies of Fashion ;
which, though clever for a lord, had more of folly than fashion, and
was an open plunder from The School for Scandal, with all the characters
castrated, and all the wit washed away.

Price had a whole fry of French translations, the white bait of
the theatrical feast, and very pretty little things in general to toy with,
but altogether unfit to appear before the solid demands of an English
appetite. The consequence has been the gradual withdrawing of public
interest from the stage, and finally the fall of a manager who was per-
haps as well qualified for his general duties as any other man of his
day.

Price's notorious circumstances made a change in the management
necessary. The theatre was offered to the highest bidder. A number
of tenders were received from individuals desperately determined on the
glorious risk. Actors singly, and in couples and triplets; singers, of all
theatres and of none ; Jew merchants, champagne dealers, all sent in
their proposals for a speculation which has hitherto ruined every body.
Such is the trust of man in fortune ! At last the lease has been assigned
for three years, at 9000/. a year, to Lee, the singer and composer, who is
understood to be conjoined with another Jew Absalom, and both of
whom are, in all probability, sustained by the Jewish purse of powerful
individuals, who are in the habit of trying all conduits for profit on their
principal. It is said that Braham was among the original proposers for
the lease"; and if so, it is to be regretted that he did not obtain it ; as, inde-
pendently of his theatrical distinctions, he is a man at once of intelligence
and liberality, who would have taken the best financial means of sup-
porting the theatre, and would have secured the best performances.

But we will not sentence the new lessee before he has been tried. He
may be as able as any other manager, and abler than any that this un-
lucky theatre has had. We shall be glad to see him reverse its des-
tinies ; but, one thing he must take as his maxim ; that the old system
must be changed in every point, otherwise the old consequences will
follow. He must look out for able writers : he must find, as the late
Harris did, half-a-dozen writers able to sustain the dramatic interest
of his theatre. He must place his strength, not in farce, and of things
in foreign farce, but in comedy, and that English comedy, or still more
in tragedy : for the English taste is tragedy, and a work of genius, if
we have still genius enough among us to produce a great tragedy, will
carry away popularity from every other effort of the drama.

But if he pursue the course of former managers, he must, like them, be
undone. Melo-dramas and mummery have had their day ; the world is
weary of them ; they succeed for a night, and are then useless for ever.

Theatrical Mailers. [JUNE,

But a new manager will be found ; a new lessee will embark in the
theatre ; new melo-dramas will succeed and be useless ; a new comedy
from Lord Glengall will be represented and be incontinently d-mn d ;
and in two years of similar expedients and successes the committee will
be called together again, and informed by Mr. Calcraft, that the lease is
at their service, the manager in a state of affliction, the treasury in a
state of deliquescence, and that a burning is the only next catastrophe
which can clear them or the theatre.

The oratorios as usual at Easter were performed on alternate nights
at both theatres, and had but slight success at either. The cause is like
that of the unpopularity of the plays, — a want of novelty. The singers
were all those whom we had either heard before until we were tired of
them, or whom, hearing for the first time, we never desired to hear again.
Some of our principal singers were not engaged. Braham, Sinclair,
and Sapio, were unemployed. The music was in the same circumstances.
It was old, and of course in a great degree exhausted, or it was new, and
perfectly trifling. Handel will live for ever, but he cannot be listened
to for ever with the same delight : and the mob of modern composers,
who fill the desks of the boarding-school pianos, and the advertising
columns of the newspapers ; whose genius flutters from a concerto to a
quadrille, and who are equally eminent in both, can never be listened to
with any delight at all.

Hawes, the director of the oratorios, is an active manager and a
good musician, but all his activity had not been fortunate enough
to procure any one new performance that had a right to attract the
public. Beethoven's Battle of Vittoria once sustained the oratorios
through a season ; for it had spirit, science, and novelty -, and nothing
less than the three together will secure popularity. There has
been, too, a remarkable deficiency of instrumental excellence this
season, as unluckily there is now among our present English musi-
cians ; no great violinist, nor fluteplayer, nor harpist, nor even any
brilliant public pianist, for Cramer's style was never brilliant, and
even of Cramer we hear nothing. All the distinguished performers
are foreigners, and of these there are none now among us. With
such Lenten entertainment, the public would not patronize the ora-
torios, to hear obsolete music, or yesterday's ballad drawled out by
the green pupils of a singing- school ; nor even to hear a fragment of
a wire-drawn flourish from Lindley's bow, or the groan that Dragonetti's
iron hand extorts from the trembling bowels of his tortured double bass.
Why are not the director's energies extended to France or Germany,
where there are abundant solo-players of admirable skill ? or why has he
not tried whether Paganini could not hazard himself in the hearing of
John Bull ? The truth is, that unless a director does some of those
things, he must fail: novelty and effect are essential to him; he should
bring something new and something admirable, or he throws away his
time and his expenditure. There may be risk or difficulty in these
matters, but there is no risk so fatal as the losing certainty of a manage-
ment which is satisfied with letting affairs drag on in the old way, and
linger into sluggish ruin.

The burning of the Lyceum had driven the French company to the
Haymarket, where they succeeded, because they have little plays which
to us are new, and actors whose skill is just adequate to their little
plays. The Frenchman wants force on the stage, but so does his

1830.] Theatrical Matters. 689

part: he has dexterity, neatness, and na'ivett, and his part requires no
more. No French comedy, since the days of Moliere, ventures on
strength of character — that depth and vigour of human nature which
makes the stage the true picture of human passion. The French comedy
is a five-act farce ; while the French farce is a jeu d'esprit, a lucky
thought, a fragment of adventure, with a shadow of wit. But it answers
its purpose. Natio comceda est. It makes a farce-loving nation lounge
night after night to the theatre, and relieves the ennui of a fireside with-
out a fire, and a family dying of each other and of nothing to do. For a
people whose motto is, A house without a home, the vaudeville was the
happiest discovery in the national annals, and was fairly entitled to all the
honours of Sancho Panza's panegyric on eating and drinking ; " being
the best employment under the sun for those who are idle, hungry, or were
born to do nothing else in the wide world." The neighbourhood of Tot-
tenham-street is enlightened by an English vaudeville theatre exhi-
biting some very ingenious performances ; but until the manager shall
rely more upon his own resources than on the exhausted dramas of the
other theatres, he must be content to have the fate of borrowers. His
company is chiefly formed of the actors disengaged during the recess of
the Haymarket, and comprehends some popular favourites.

The King's Theatre lingered long in that expectant state in which the
audience are left to expect every thing. Monsieur Laporte expected the
arrival of some of those Pastas and Malibrans which were to cover his
stage with glory ; and the public reluctantly expected the natural conse-
quences of paying twelve thousand pounds a year for the profits of the
King's Theatre, with such singers as Curioni for their Apollo, and Blasis
for their Euphrosyne. The new ballet of William Tell was clever, so far
as having some good dances, some very showy uniforms, and every thing
but an effective story. M. Deshayes may rely upon it that it is next to
impossible to manage a conspiracy and a war in a ballet. Love, whether
among men or fairies ; magic ; and the manoeuvring of maidens in the
various saltatory states of maiden perplexity, art, or passion ; romantic
adventures, bewildered knights, palaces turned into grottoes, and grot-
toes blazoned into palaces, by the flourish of a wand; the hunting of
stags, wild as their mountain breezes, across a mighty plain thirty feet
by sixty ; and the joyous sound of the horn of Adonis or Acteon through
the depths of a forest reckoning from ten to a dozen trees, are the native
subjects of the ballet. Let M. Deshayes look to this field of glory, and
then triumph. But let him beware of the nodosities of courts, the in-
describable wiliness of a tyrant's heart, the horribly grim and undramalit
physiognomy of William Tell, and the abhorrent colour of even the very
short petticoats of even the very pretty Mademoiselle de Varennes.

The Covent Garden Theatrical Fund had a grand display in the due
season. The Duke of Clarence in the chair, embellished with a whole
galaxy of noble contributors.

The Royal Duke sustained his troublesome distinction with great
patience, many speeches, and much applause. Mathews, as usual, sang
a capital song, which he, as usual, confined to the ears of the ducal circle ;
for, three yards beyond, not a syllable of it could be distinguished from"
the "Epsom Races" or the " Nightingale Club." The song was encored,
in the vain hope of hearing through the hall a little of what it meant ;
but the second attempt was, if possible, more cloudy than the first j and
Mathews sat down under cover of his early laurels, and surrounded with

M. M. New Series,— VOL. IX. No. 54. 4 T

690 Theatrical Matters. " [JUNE,

an atmosphere of applause on the strength of his past reputation. Faw-
cett concluded the business-part of the night by a speech, sensible and
sulky, as usual, and which, abating the grimness, ought to furnish a
model to every charitable institution.

For, after all, the orators on these occasions make speeches prodi-
giously alike ; all agreeing in steering widely of the mark ; and having
but the one merit, like that of the new opera-hats, of fitting every occa-
sion equally, and of being equally unfit to have any connexion with the
skull of a man who values the opinion of society as to the soundness of
his understanding. Fawcett's detail of the actual objects, prospects, and
state of the institution, ought to supersede the whole brood of the orations.
The collection was immense ; nearly 1300/. Drury Lane followed, and
tried, with nearly equal success, its powers of melting noble hearts into
sovereigns and shillings.

The unequivocal decline of dramatic writing in England has at length
attracted the notice of individuals who are likely to offer the only hope of
its restoration. Though genius is not to be created by human expedients,
it is perfectly true, that genius may be thwarted by human obstacles to
such a degree that it throws up the struggle, and retires in contempt
or despair.

It is impossible to believe that England is destitute of dramatic genius,
or that it is more destitute than it was during the last half century ; or
that, with its various and active vigour of mind, it cannot supply the ge-
neral demands of any species of literature.

The cause of our failure in the drama must be looked for in the cir-
cumstances of theatres themselves. In the first place, fifty years ago our
winter theatres wTere comparatively small buildings, in which the chief
attraction must be the finished style of the acting, or the dramatic in-
terest of the play. Within the last fifty years, this system was changed,
the small theatre was distended into an enormous building, and the di-
rect results of the change were, theatrical debts for the building, increased
expenses for the nightly performance, and the necessity of pageants to
attract the audience to houses where, from the size, the pleasures of the
ear must be replaced by those of the eye. This change has been charged
on the late John Kemble. But he must be relieved from the charge ; for
Drury Lane Theatre had been built by Holland before Kemble had the
remodelling of Covent Garden after the fire, and Holland's theatre was
more colossal than Kemble's.

In England debt is always the first element of ruin. The formidable
expenses of the theatre soon compelled every species of temporary con-
trivance, to escape utter bankruptcy. To fill the enormous house for the
moment, the most extravagant anticipations of the future revenue were
made, and popular actors were engaged for short periods at inordinate
salaries ; spectacle and pageantry became the managerial resource ; and
upon a few leading favourites, and a pantomine or melodrame, was lavished
the revenue which once had under wiser management been spread over
the season.

As the immediate consequence of the whole system, authorship was
neglected. The manager's demand was for spectacle, which cost little
in the authorship, and required scarcely an effort of the pen ; but which
cost a vast deal in painting and processions, and amply engrossed the
carpenters and dancers, and other mere supernumeraries of the drama.

Dramatic writing is singularly difficult, and comparatively the work

1830 ] Theatrical Mailers. 091

of a rare and peculiar kind of talent. So far, it must be stimulated by
finding that its labours are sufficiently remunerated. But of all public
writing, a play is the most liable to be undone by the commonest con-
tingency : the failure of an actor in his part, a popular prejudice against
the writer or the subject, or any one of the common impulses that may
urge the multitude to injustice or absurdity, will totally destroy the la-
bours of months in an hour. In fact, dramatic writing, from its peculi-
arity and from its extreme precariousness, ought to have the prospect of
larger emolument, in case of success, than any other exertion of general
literature. There is as little doubt, also, that if it were adequately en-
couraged by managers, its productiveness would rapidly reward their
largest remuneration to the writer.

But in the present state of the case, managers expend on a monkey
or a pretty puppet, on a dancer or a droll, those resources which would
enable them to sustain a succession of original and able plays on the
stage. The whole secret of managerial success lies in the power of ob-
taining the assistance of able dramatists. Where that is neglected, not
all the skill of all the scene-painters and spectacle-contrivers on earth can
redeem the theatre from ruin.

The course has been run before our eyes a dozen times within a dozen
years. Every theatre in London and round London has been plunged
in desperate difficulties, and the sponge has been in general the only dis-
charge of the manager.

The nature of property in plays also operates as a formidable obstacle
to exertion. It contradicts all the rules of literary property. If an au-
thor produce a book, he has his right in it for life, and it is available for
a certain period after his decease ; and this on the plain reason that the
labour of the mind deserves protection as much as the labour of the
hands. But the dramatic writer has no such protection. If his play be
performed at one London theatre, it may be seized on by every theatre
in England, and be turned into a source of profit, no part of which
reaches the man most entitled to it. To take the instance of Colman's
John Bull. For this it is true that he received what was considered at
the time a very liberal remuneration, about 1000/. ; but Harris the mana-
ger declared that his theatre cleared by that play 12,0001., and, from its
long popularity in the country theatres, the probable produce was not
less than 50,000/. ! If Colman's work had been called a Novel, this in-
terloping upon his property would have been arrested by the arm of
the law !

But the case is not less unjustifiable when the author chooses to pub-
lish his play before its performance. From this moment any theatre may
seize upon it, not merely without any remuneration to the writer, but
in despite of him ; nay, where he had never intended his play for repre-
sentation. Managers, too, may not merely seize it wholly, but mutilate it,
and make it ridiculous in any way they please. This outrage has been
so long exclaimed against, that an attempt is likely to be made in the
next session to put the dramatist on a footing with other writers, and
secure to him the right which every man ought to possess in his own
efforts, whether bodily or intellectual.

In France regulations have been long since enacted, by which the au«
thor of a successful play is entitled to a tenth of the actual receipts at the
door of every theatre throughout the kingdom, as long as it continues to,
be represented : none can be a fairer arrangement, for the provincial

4T2

692 Theatrical Matters. [JUNE,

theatres will not perform the piece longer than they find it worth their
while.

In Russia a similar arrangement has been lately enacted. It now re-
mains for the friends of the drama in England to adopt the principle,
and by it lay a basis for the revival of the literature of the stage. To
the common argument, that the little trifling translations from the French
are overpaid already, and that the law needs not take the trouble of
making fortunes for, the translators, we answer, that those translations
have been encouraged only by the dearth of original writing, and that
the revival of original writing would rapidly extinguish them, and will
be the only thing that can.

The most natural consequence of a law protecting dramatic writing,
would be to turn the efforts of men of ability to it as a regular pursuit ;
the only mode in which great skill in stage-authorship can be attained,
or the stage can be supplied with a constant succession of performances
adequate to attract a manly popularity. Though Shakspeare and She-
ridan are gone, human nature is not fallow for ever ; public attention to
the rising talent of the stage is a stimulant which has never failed j and
we might in the course of a few years see the deserted walls of our thea-
tres crowded by the first personages of the empire, to witness the young
genius of men that are in their day to remind us of the imperishable
vigour of the British mind.

To the possible objection, that, notwithstanding the French law, the
national drama has gone down in France, and the theatres are suffering
under serious embarrassments ; we are entitled to reply, that no encou-
ragement of law can alter the nature of a people, that the French are by
nature farceurs, and that they seem incapable of either the sublime or
beautiful, the higher tragedy or the higher comedy. Their farces are in
general excellent : failing in point of force, they perfectly succeed in the
light touches of character, in dexterity of intrigue, and in neatness of
phrase. Their dialogue wants point, strength, and peculiarity. But
the Frenchman in a farce scarcely requires dialogue. He makes up for
the want of wit in words by wit in pantomime : his tongue is scarcely
required when he can make free use of his limbs : from the eyebrows to
the feet he is all busy with telling his meaning : he wears persuasion in
the eternal shrug of his shoulders, and declaims alike with his hand or
his heel. So, the French theatres of farce are flourishing ; and the
Theatre de Madame, in which Scribe produces all \\isfarceur spoil from
every stage of the earth — German, Spanish, English, Polish, Russian — is
the most productive mint within the realm of half the sovereigns of the
northern hemisphere.

The public business of Parliament prevented the attempt to make any
serious impression on the legislature in behalf of this natural right of au-
thorship. But we rely upon the effect of the universal public conviction
that some effort ought to be made to protect one of the very finest tri-
umphs of the human mind. What, at this hour, constitutes the chief glory
of Greece, in the eyes of scholarship, but the Greek tragedies ? What
shines as the central jewel in the coronet of England's intellectual su-
premacy?— the living glory of Shakspeare's drama. To excite the
vigour of the English mind to follow this splendour, would be among
the noblest national services, and, for such, the authorship of the stage
has a right to call on the highest zeal and energy of the legislature.

1830.] [ (593 ]

SPECIMENS OF GREAT POETS."

*« IN my opinion, this song is one of the most capital productions of the author's pen. And in saying thus
much, I fairly put it at the head of all poems of the century. It is fuller of raillery than Rogers; more
jocose than Jekyll; more butterflyish than Baily ; more mellow than Moore; and more Scottish than
Scott. On those grounds, imprimatur —

(Signed) " THE PRO-DEPUTY LICENSER."

THE ROASTED SOVEREIGN.

COME, all ye gallant gentlemen, who live by being wjtty,
Who dandyize in Bond-street, or lounge it in the City ;
Who're sure to gain a livelihood while man can live by lying,
Come, hear the famous history of a Spanish monarch's frying.

A famous warrior once there was of potentates the paragon ;
His holy law was etiquette, his kingdom it was Arragon.
Some twenty wives this monarch had, whom in his cups he toasted,
And next to ruby lips, the Don loved Spanish chesnuts roasted.

One evening all his courtiers stood around him sleek and musky,
Says he, " I 'm tired of state affairs, and drinking makes me husky ;
I 'm sick of talking gallantry, my women lately snub me,
Nay, I 'm not sure my best-belov'd some fine day may not drub me.

" So as I'm sick of Parliament, both lower house and upper,
I think, my lords, my royal will is now to have some supper.
My father died of mushrooms, and my grandfather of mutton,
But chesnuts are no poison'd dish, so let the nuts be put on."

The nuts were brought upon the spot, the Monarch's chair was set
Before the grate, in Spanish state, 't was all by etiquette :
But while his gaze upon the blaze was gravely ruminating,
Outstole Whitewand, Goldstick, Blackrod, and all the lords in waiting.

The fire grew hot, the Monarch thought, " the rascals mean to sweat me.
I'll move my chair, and get some air ; no ! etiquette won't let me.
Lord Chamberlain, come back," he roars, ' c this devilish blaze will melt me.
The chesnuts, rebel-scoundrels too, have just begun to pelt me."

The King thus bored, still danced and roar'd, the fire still kept on blazing,
At every puff that scorch'd his buff^ his voice more loudly raising.
The flame scorched soon, coat, pantaloon, the blaze soon shaved his beard off;
But still, to move his chair himself — the thing was never heard of.

Tile chesnuts did their duty well, the King was cannonaded,
But not a lord before the blaze his noble face paraded.
The King was cooking, and if cook'd, yet etiquette ne'er hinders
A king in Spain to roast himself, whene'er he will, to cinders.

But while their monarch roasting sat, the high and mighty lords
Were all too busy tying on their bag-wigs and their swords ;
Till deck'd in every star and string of which their office boasted,
They all march'd in to see how look'd a Spanish Sovereign roasted.

First came my Lord High Chancellor, a very hook-nos'd justice,
With whom the conscience of the King by Spanish law in trust is ;
A peacock in his stride, his brains, his vanity, and train,
He march'd to give his grave advice, and then — march'd out again.

Then came my Lord the President, with chalkstones in his toes,
Then Privy Seal with all his blush concentred in his nose,
Then Lord Field Marshal Fuggleston, an orator and fighter,
Whose breath was sulphur, and his eye a two ounce ball of nitre.

They found the King of Arragon still sitting by the fire,

He neither bade his lords advance, nor bade his lords retire.

The chesnuts and the King were done ! Their speeches were in vain :

They ate the nuts, they left the skins, and then— mareh'd out again.

[ 694 ] [JUNE,

NOTES OF THE MONTH ON AFFAIRS IN GENERAL.

THE state of His Majesty's health still excites the strongest anxiety.
The bulletins have alternately raised and depressed the public hopes,
until their language seems to have lost every thing in the shape of public
confidence. Last week, the effect of an operation seemed to have given
the King considerable ease. But later reports speak of the original
symptoms returning. The mere length of the illness, now upwards of a
month, is alarming. His Majesty's strength of constitution was always
remarkable. But time, confinement, and pain, are formidable trials. We
still hope the best ; for we desire to see no change upon the throne. But
why is not Sir Astley Cooper, the most skilful surgeon in the empire,
called in ? We believe that the King is the only sufferer in England who
would not be glad of the assistance of that very able individual.

We wish that some philanthropist a little more, honest than Mr. Hume
and a little less prosing than Mr. Goulburn would make a memoir on the
number of people annually drowned in the metropolis and its environs
by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. Not that we charge little
Lord Lowther with any direct activity in this wholesale havoc, nor
believe that a man of his pleasantry would wish to stop any other man's
jest by cold affusion in a canal. But if the maxim quifacit per alium
facit per se is good law, little Lord Lowther is the culprit as much as
if he stood and plunged the unwitting into any of the hundred and one
contrivances for drowning, which he suffers to exist in full convenience
and in the face of day.

A young man employed by the commissioners for watering Hyde
Park was nearly drowned a few days ago, in the Serpentine River,
the horse having got out of his depth while he was giving it some water.
It was found impossible to save the horse, which was valued at forty
guineas.

This is the very tenderest case on the subject. And no doubt the
lamentation at the office would be that the scales of fate were not
changed, and that the horse was the substitute for the man. But there
is actually so singular a neglect of life in those matters, that we shall be
doing Lord Lowther and his well-paid board a kindness in reminding
them that the Serpentine River does not exhibit the most trivial preven-
tion to any one's running headlong into twenty-fathom water ; whether
the individual be blind, or a child, or an idiot, or drunk, or benighted.
A great thoroughfare from Oxford-street to Knightsbridge runs along
the edge of a slope, down which if a man tumbles, and a mere trip of the
feet will do it, he has no alternative but to roll until he rests at the
bottom of the river, when he will probably roll no more. To scramble
up against the side wall is out of the question. There is nothing more
for him, but to lie quiet and wait the coroner's inquest to be held after
he first fishing party on the river.

The reservoir in the Green Park is in precisely the same condition.
The banks are walls ten feet high, as smooth as the chisel can make them.
The bed provided for the patient is a slope of forty-five degrees, begin-
ning with seven feet of spring water, and ending in a central channel of '
twenty feet of slough. There a slip is as certain a quietus as if the
individual had slipped off the temporary stage in sight of St. Sepulchre's.

The chief mortality of the park ponds is, we will admit, reserved for

1830.] Notes of the Month, fyc. 695

Christmas, if we happen to have a frost luckily followed by a rapid
thaw ; for then gather the skaters, and down they go. Why those
ponds should be twenty feet or fathom deep, instead of as many inches,
is to be of course accounted for on the Malthusian principle, that the
population is surcharged, and the fewer mouths the more bread. But
we have a capital exit at all seasons of the year in the canals. London
is fairly surrounded with them ; and no citizen can visit a tea-house out
of the smoke of Moorfields, no milliner's maid take a walk with her
admirer, and no disappointed candidate for the common council can
rove along their smooth and slippery banks, without finding a single
•step — a step from the sublime to the ridiculous — enough to set him at his
ease in all matters respecting this world for the next thousand years.
We call Lord Lowther's attention to the subject, and we rely on his
humanity to his own character.

One circumstance of prodigious national import has occurred since
our last publication ; Mr. Peel is no more ! — Not that he has changed his
nature, but he has changed his name. He has had a legacy which we
suppose would be of peculiar value to him : he is now Sir Robert Peel,
a name which for almost a century designated a very respectable man.

The late Sir Robert Peel began life in the humblest circumstances ;
no dishonour to him in a country where so many other men have risen
to eminence by the labour of their heads and hands.

In 1773 the cotton manufacture started into vigour by the wonderful
inventions of Arkwright ; and Peel, then twenty-three years old, having
been employed in weaving from his infancy, commenced his speculation
by a small manufactory in partnership with Yates, a weaver, whose
daughter he in a few years after married.

Fourteen years of well-judged speculation produced wealth. Nor
should it be omitted that success was attended by a proportionate care of
those by whose labour his fortunes were increased. No less than fifteen
thousand persons were at one period in his employment. He limited the
hours of work, that the growth of the children might not be injured by
labour; he provided for those children means of improvement; and he
brought a bill into Parliament for the regulation of other establish-
ments, in order to the preservation of the health and morals of the work-
people.

In 1797j> Peel and his partner subscribed ten thousand pounds to
the voluntary contributions : he mainly contributed to forming and sup-
porting the Lancashire Fencibles and the Tamworth Armed Association,
and raised amongst his own artificers six companies, the Bury Loyal
Volunteers, of which he was Lieutenant-Colonel.

Those exertions and his great opulence recommended him to the Go-
vernment, by which in 1800 he was created a Baronet. He now made his
way into Parliament, and took some part in questions relative to trade
and manufactures ; questions on which practical men, as they are called,
are proverbially prejudiced, partial, and absurd ; the cotton-manufac-
turer, of course, looking upon all other trades as public ruin, the pillars of
the Constitution as founded on packs, and the worldas altogether composed
of cotton. The wool-grower is an equal advocate for the necessity of our
swallowing nothing but wool ; and doubtless Mr. Baring, at least till he
is a lord, will persevere in his opinion that the Stock Exchange is the
true head and heart of the British Empire. But old Sir Robert, if he

Notes of the Month ' [JUNE,

was inveterate in his zeal for cotton, was an honest man, and rational on
other points : he gave away a good deal of money in subscriptions and
things of that kind, and, having finished his 81st year, died.

There was some nonsense in the papers last year about his having
disinherited his meritorious son Mr. Robert Peel for his apostacy! But
this was beyond the calibre of the old weaver. He was doubtless dis-
pleased, particularly as he had a few years before given him a handsome
draft for a speech on the Protestant side, full promises, pledges, and deter-
minations to live and die " for the Protestant Constitution, scorn for the
blindness of any man who could not see in it the only safety of the state,"
and horror for the ' ' principles of the miserable man who having once
pledged himself to that highest of human causes could waver, much
more change !" The old man subsequently found that this was so much
money thrown away, and was indignant to the amount of his loss : but
even a weaver may be tickled by ambition ; and as the worthy speaker
was not turned out of his place, he softened to him without delay, and they
say was in traffic for a peerage, which he would have got, except that his
son Robert, calculating man as he is, did not choose to be forced up into the
peers on his demise, where Wellington would not have suffered him to open
his lips ; that greatest of great orators carrying all the debate on his own
shoulders, and having the due opinion of Mr . Peel. But the old man is gone
at last ; the young man has his purse ; and we hope to live to see the day
when we shall be supplicated to reinforce it with a penny, in the hands
of a broken-down statesman, plying, broom in hand^ at the crossing of
Whitehall!

There is now a fine opportunity for an architectural entrance to
London. The Bank of England has lent £100,000 to the Corporation
of the city, to complete the new bridge and its approaches, which is to
be repaid on or before July 5, 1 858. The bridge will now, of course,
go on swimmingly, as Alderman Waithman pleasantly pronounces ; and
the only consideration is, to make the most of its approaches. The en-
trance by Hyde Park has been totally spoiled as an architectural orna-
ment to the metropolis, by the substitution of two poor performances at
the sides for one great portico or arch across the centre of the road.
But if the purpose be to give an impression of the grandeur of London
to foreigners, London Bridge is the spot, for it is by that way that nine-
tenths of the foreigners come. There actually ought to be some attention
to this matter in this place, unless we are determined to keep up our old
luckless distinction of having the most repulsive entrances of any capital
of Europe, and in general of having every thing of the worst kind in
architecture, and paying the dearest for it.

Though Napoleon is now as quiet as his forefathers, yet all that relates
to him belongs to the most stirring period of modern history, and his
crimes and qualities will form tlje topic and the lesson of many a genera-
tion to come. De Bourrienne's Memoirs of him are undoubtedly the
most curious book that has yet appeared relative to this wonder of the
nineteenth century. How much of it is exaggeration, or direct falsehood,
rests with the writer; though we can readily conceive thatDeBourrienne,
who himself was a partaker in the crimes and profits of the Napoleon
time, must have suppressed a great deal, and embellished a great deal
more. But where his story tells against the hero of his idolatry, we

1830.] on Affairs -in General 697

may believe him ; for there he is a reluctant witness, and his fancy is
forced to succumb to his facts. The horrid murder of the Due
d'Enghien has been denied and doubted, and flung from Talleyrand to
Savary, and from Savary on half a dozen heads besides. But De
Bourrienne fixes it directly on Napoleon, by the fact, that the unfortunate
Bourbon's grave was dug before his trial, and almost at the moment of
his arrival in Paris!

" On the evening of the day before yesterday, when the prince ar-
rived, I was asked whether I had a room to lodge a prisoner in; I replied,
no — that there were only my room and the council-chamber. I was told
to prepare instantly an apartment in which a prisoner could sleep who
was to arrive that evening. I was also desired to dig a pit in the court-
yard. I replied that that could not be easily done, as the court-yard
was paved. The moat was then fixed upon, and there the pit was dug.
The prince arrived at seven o'clock in the evening ; he was perishing
with cold and hunger. He did not appear dispirited. He said he
wanted something to eat, and to go to bed afterwards. His apartment
not being yet sufficiently warmed, I took him into my own, and sent
into the village for some refreshment. The prince sat down to table,
and invited me to eat with him. He then asked me a number of ques-
tions respecting Vincennes — what was going on there, and other parti-
culars. He told me that he had been brought up in the neighbourhood
of the castle, and spoke to me with great freedom and kindness. ' What
do they want with me?' he said. ' What do they mean to do with me?'
But these questions betrayed no uneasiness or anxiety. My wife, who
is ill, was lying in the same room in an alcove closed by a railing. She
heard, without being perceived, all our conversation, and she was ex-
ceedingly agitated, for she recognized the prince, whose foster-sister she
was, and the royal family had given her a pension before the revolution.
The prince hastened to bed ; but before he could have fallen asleep, the
judges sent to request his presence in the council-chamber. I was not
present at his examination ; but when it was concluded he returned to
his chambers, and when they came to read his sentence to him he was
in a profound sleep. In a few moments after he was led out for execu-
tion. He had so little suspicion of the fate that awaited him, that on
descending the staircase leading to the moat, he asked where they were
taking him. He received no answer. I went before the prince with a
lantern. Feeling the cold air which came up the staircase, he pressed
my arm, and said, ' Are they going to put me into a dungeon ?' — The rest
is known."

This was the declaration which Harrel, one of the culprits, made to De
Bourrienne. How then can we regret the retributive justice that cast down
the murderer, and sent him to die a death of disgrace and imprison-
ment in the midst of the ocean ! that extinguished his dynasty, broke
down the royalty of his family, flung them out as wanderers through the
earth, and has imprinted an eternal brand upon the name, that but a few
years ago shook the European world to its centre !

One of the papers thus observes on the attempt to enclose Hampstead
Heath.

" Hampstead Heath saved. — As good cockneys, our hearts are re-
joiced to find that the attempt to deface that beautiful spot, Hampstead
Heath, by covering it with bricks and mortar, is again defeated. The

M. M. New Series.— VOL. IX. No. 54. 4 U

698 Notes of the Month [JuNE,

bill, which was first introduced last year, and rejected, has been again
thrown out by the House of Lords. It is not every selfish and con-
temptible scheme that can obtain the sanction of Parliament/'

Without being good cockneys, we share in the rejoicing that this miser-
able and selfish project has been sccmted. The name of Thomas Mary on
Wilson may not have reached the ears of many of his majesty's subjects;
but if, instead of a pair of Christian names, he had a dozen, we exult
in seeing his paltry contrivance for putting money in his already over-
charged pocket utterly and contemptuously defeated. We rejoice
when avarice is exposed and put to scorn ; and we trust that if this man
shall make any further attempts of the kind, they will be as carefully
watched by the people, and as promptly and disdainfully put down by
the legislature. The enclosure of the few heaths and open spaces about
London ought to be resisted by more than the individuals immediately
resident on the spot. The health of every great city depends much on
the opportunities of fresh air and exercise afforded to the people. It
depends, too, in a great degree on their cheerfulness and the innocence
of their amusements. And who shall make a comparison in any of those
points between a people cramped up in the streets and alleys of a mighty
province of brick, and a people with the opportunities of enjoying the
open country, breathing air unpolluted by city smoke, and refreshing
their eyes, and their feelings too, by the pure and almost sacred aspect of
nature ? Government has been faulty in its neglect of providing public
walks and rural recreations for the population of London. The most
petty city on the continent has more cheerful promenades, and plea-
santer excitements for out-of-doors' exercise, than the opulent city of
London. We will allow that something has been done of late years.
The Regent's Park is undoubtedly a fine improvement; though, from its
being locked up, the people can only indulge themselves with the sight
of verdure. St James's Park also has undergone a change. But some-
how or other there is a heaviness about all those places, that makes them
less like the great resort of a wealthy and healthy population than the
walks of an hospital.

There is a vast deal of nonsense talked every session about the reve-
nues of the clergy. On the motion in the House of Lords for the second
reading of the bill for enabling the Bishop of London to grant leases,
the Bishop himself took occasion to advert to Mr. Baring's statements
in the House of Commons on the amount of church revenues. His own
income had been alluded to as approaching to £100,000. He begged to
state that the fixed revenues of the see did not amount to one fourteenth,
nor did it, with all casualties and contingencies amount to one seventh
of the sum in question. Here the statement of Mr. Baring is flatly con-
tradicted. Yet we are to suppose that this patriotic passer of bank-
notes feels himself quite as honest and trustworthy a person, as if he had
not been detected in talking without any kind of knowledge on the sub-
ject. But is it a public crime that a man whose profession implies learning
(and in the present instance it is learning of no trivial degree), peculiar
attention to morals, public decoruni/igeneral benevolence, and religious
duty, should have £20,000 a year, or more? Or is it a crime that a
man should have this money who is guilty of wearing a black coat ?
Let it be remembered who make the bishops : if they are not universally
the men they ought to be, the blame must fall on the government which

3 #30.] on Affairs in General. 699

chooses them ; for there can be no doubt, that among the British clergy,
able, learned, and virtuous men are to be found for all the higher situations.
But let us suppose that a bishopric placed the disposal of 100,0()0/. a
year in the hands of an able and virtuous man, would it be a worse dis-
tribution for the public than if it were placed in the hands of some
booby squire ? In the former case, we are nearly sure that some portion
of it will be turned to the public good ; that orphans will feel it in their
education, widows and the helpless in their support; morals in their
countenance by such an authority; and learning, not simply in its direct
patronage, but in its still more ample and honourable excitement by the
mere proof that it is capable of rising to such estimation and public
power. But what is this money in the hands of a squire, or any of those
to whom property falls by inheritance? On those men there is no
necessity for spending a shilling with a view to character. The
1 00,000if. goes loose through the common and unclean conduits of fool-
ish expenditure. Yet no one blames the prodigal. We see no upturned
eyes against one noble lord who lives behind the scenes of the Opera-
house ; nor against another, who idles away his years, and scatters his
money abroad in the vices and absurdities of continental life. Who
inquires into the empty fooleries, for instance, of a noble lord who trans-
ports himself and his forty thousand a year to Rome, and lavishes upon
the worn-out mummery of the place the money that should be spent in
generous hospitality among his English neighbours, or in encouraging
the honest tenantry by whom this empty fellow is kept above the
necessity of working for his daily bread ? But the noble Lord wears
a blue coat, and does not wear a wig; and therefore no man will say
that the noble Lord is doing what it should disgrace the possessor of
property to do : an J as he has come to his possessions by the accident
of being the nephew of an old lord as useless and empty as himself, and
not by being known for any one accomplishment or attainment, science
or manly and intellectual distinction under the sun, therefore every body
must ackno'syledge that he has the most perfect moral right to honour
and distinction. Far be it from us to doubt all this, or to believe that
there should be any human way to opulence or rank in society but by
the accident of being the son or nephew of some old cumberer of the
ground ; or that absenteeism, or prodigality, or brute superstition, or
lumpish idiotism, are not all praiseworthy where they are to be found in
a blue coat without a wig, and uncoupled with a pretence to serve the
public in any way whatsoever.

The ministry of the King's Theatre is, like the ministry of the King's
Cabinet, at this moment over head and ears in perplexity. Consultations
and couriers succeed each other with an alarming rapidity, and every
post letter dropt at the stage-door produces a general despatch of sum-
monses to all the grand functionaries of the menus plaisirs for fifty miles
round London.

" It is said that Taglioni, Montessu, and Paul will be restrained from
selling their pedefaclures of pas and pirouettes in England this year ; and
it is even feared that Coulon and Varennes may be recalled. Laporte
intends in the first instance to petition the Comte de la Rochefoucault
against the issuing of so harsh an injunction; and, should he fail of
success in that quarter, he will move the Court (as the lawyers say) to
have it dissolved. This will inieed be a test of the sincerity of princes,

4U2

700 Notes of the Month [JUNE,

of the gratitude of the Bourbons ; for les dieux de la danse are the
very household gods of the Parisians ; and in spite of the Duchess of
Angouleme, they would rather give up a host of heels than one of these
their penates "

But Field Marshal First Lord of the Treasury Laporte tells a very
different story, goes round the printing world with an indefatigable
smile, and pledges his laurels that Taglioni and the other Parisian bril-
liants are already inlisted with him, and that they shall arid will con-
descend to delight and dazzle the John Bull eye before the sun has gone
another sign down the zodiac.

Our lovers of liberty exclaim furiously against the restraints laid by
the French government on those opera people But " our withers are
unwrung ;" we have no tears for the fetters which compel a figurante to
limit the display of her figure to Paris, and keep herself, her antics, and
her vices, a couple of hundred miles from the plunder of London.
When we recollect what a set opera people are, the notorious habits of
their lives, and the results upon English society, we should feel no in-
curable anguish if the whole establishment were prohibited from ever
setting foot in England.

One of our English absurdities is the sudden importance that a man
assumes in society by deserving total exclusion from it. The wretch
who lives by thieving or housebreaking is, of course, looked on as he
deserves, while he happens to be out of jail. But the moment of his
detection erects him into a public object. The sentimental make
speeches about him, and the lovers of Magna Charta discover that liberty
and property are violated in every restraint on his volition.

At a meeting of the Middlesex Magistrates, Sir George Hampson pro-
posed that refractory convicts in the House of Correction should have
their hair cut off, for not conforming to the prison discipline. The mo-
tion was lost, but another to the same effect as regards females was
carried. It is hinted that n celebrated perruquier means to contract with
the visiting magistrates for the crop, as jalse fronts are now much used
by the haut ton. The forensic wig-makers will give any price for grey
locks, as the gentlemen of the gown have abjured powder.

Some of our contemporaries instantly exclaimed against the horrors
of cutting off a felon's hair. Yet except so far as it might impair his
beauty, we see no great harm done. That it may be a more painful
operation than flogging, or more embarrassing to the bodily frame than
chains, or more toilsome than a month's hard labour, we have not heard ;
though we do not mean to dispute the statement when we shall have
heard it. But in our plain style of thinking, as prisons were made for
keeping felons in order, we cannot see the serious injury of making them
orderly, even by means of such melancholy severity as cutting off
the flowing honours of their brows. The infliction appears to have been
exercised upon the females, who might be supposed to care more about
their ringlets ; and yet we have had neither a petition to parliament nor a
rebellion in the prison ; and in this opinion we shall be likely to remain,
until shaving is declared contrary to the Rights of Man !

O'Connell is making an ass of himself. The fact is beyond all denial.
His brawling does very well in the Corn Exchange, where he has a mob

1830.] on Affairs in General 701

of his own holy patriots to echo him ; or in taverns when the human in-
tellect is invigorated by the third bottle. But in St. Stephen's he "will
not do ;" that is the verdict of the sagacious in those matters. They can
endure a good deal of brawling, but he overdoes all their sufferance : they
can listen to a certain number of gross exaggerations, or saucy taunts, or
dashing defiances, but they cannot listen to a man who gives them no-
thing else. In short O'Connell is undone, so far as St. Stephen's is con-
cerned ; a lost patriot, an extravasated man of the " gem of the sea."
His exhibition on the Doherty case a few nights ago was the winding
up of his parliamentary career. Doherty threw down the gauntlet in
the style of one who knew the temper of the house " He/' (O'Connell)
said Doherty, " has unsparingly brought charges against me in taverns,
in the street, before the rabble — before those amongst whom I go, not
as a volunteer, but as the delegate of the Lord Lieutenant, with import-
ant and sacred duties to perform, which I trust I do perform faithfully,
fearlessly, and, notwithstanding the assertion of the learned gentleman,
mercifully. (Cheers.} I trust that, whenever the learned gentleman
shall find courage to bring forward his motion, I shall be able to prove
the utter falsehood of his daily and ordinary slanders /" (Loud cheers.}

O'Connell, in reply, talked ore rotunda about the necessity of discharg-
ing what he deemed his duty. — " I will not be deterred from doing my
duty fearlessly by any man, however he may be supported. In saying
fearlessly, I allude not to that species of courage which is recognized in
a court of honour, and of which I know nothing. There is blood upon
this hand — I regret it deeply — and he knows it. He knows that I have
a vow in heaven, else he would not have ventured to address me in such
language, or to presume that insolence should go unpunished. [Loud
cries of" Oh !" " Order !" and laughter.'] He knows it ; and there is
not one man in the circle of our acquaintance but knowrs it also, and
knows, at the same time, that but for that vow he dares not address me
as he has done. [Very loud cries of" Order" from all parts of the House.^
I retract."

Fine employment this for the " collective !" Valuable occupation of the
time and talents of that gifted race whom we have sent " to bear the
weight of Monarchies," and talk Wisdom for us and our posterity ! But
a speech in the style of O'Connell's must be considered by any man of
even half his shrewdness as the last dying speech of his oratorical glo-
ries, in any house short of the Corn Exchange itself. The " blood on the
hand," the " vow in heaven," — that voluntary vow, which suffers every
thing to go forth that the man's mind can prompt and his tongue utter,
while it secures him from fear of re-action — are fine figures of speech, but
they are not well received in English society ; and the general opinion
is, that an orator who will not run the natural risk of this nourishing
style should not indulge in the luxury of delivering his opinions so
much at his ease. He does not start fair with the world. He tells his
story without any notion of being called to account for it ; and in English
society " the counsellor's" latitude of tongue, we once more say, " will
not do !" He had better go home again, and figure in the Corn Ex-
change.

It would seem that the allusion made in his late speech, by Mr.
Brougham, to his having refused office, relates not to the office of Lord

702 Nole& of the Month -

Chancellor, but to that of Chief Baron, which was offered to him by
Mr. Canning, and refused.

So say the wise : but they do not add what they ought, that Brougham
was willing enough to take employment under Canning, if he could get
the place he wanted : this was the Mastership of the Rolls, a handsome
affair of 8, 0001. a year, and a sinecure, while oldEldon sat in the Chancery;
though it is a very different thing, now that a very different lawyer sits
there. But Leach, who tantalized him with four physicians at a time,
and pretended to be for half a dozen months at Death's door, is now
a keen, quick, vivid, old official ; struts about the parks with his old
gaiety ; looks in at the Opera with his old gallantry, and ten to one will
yet see Brougham's exit from this disappointing world.

Old Books. — At the sale of the library of the late William Simonds
Higgs, esq. F.A.S., under the hammer of Messrs. Sotheby and Son, many
of the books brought extraordinary prices. We subjoin a few specimens.

£ i. £ *.

Davis's Secr3ts of Angling ; a fuw A Boke of the Hoole Lyf of Jason ;

leaves (no date) 12 0 Caxton, 1475 87 3

Walton's Angler; first edition, 1653 11 0 The Golden Legende; Wynkyn de

Walton and Cotton's Angler Jllus- Worde, 1527 2C 0

trated (no date) C3 0 Shyp of Folys ; Rycharde Pynson,

Cronicles of Englond ; Caxton, 1480 73 10 1509 21 0

Discripcion of Bretagne ; Caxton, The Grete Herball; Lanrens An-

1480 27 6 drewe,1527 20 8

Cronycle of Englond; Julian No- Liber Precum; a Missal executed

tary, 1515 43 10 for Charles VII. King of France,

Dives et Pauper; Rycharde Pynson, about 1430. 04 10

1498 '. 30 9

Now, what can be more culpable, short of direct robbery, than this?
Here are about 500/. thrown away in the purchase of a dozen books,
not one of them intrinsically worth sixpence. We thus have 12/. given —
for what? — Davis's Secrets of Angling, important production! and of
that even only a few leaves. How justly the purchaser must hug him-
self on the possession of such a treasure ! We have 7^/« given for the
" Cronicles of England," not worth half the number of farthings. But then
it has had the merit of being printed four hundred years ago, and having
escaped the teeth of mice and time. The possessor must therefore think
his money incomparably expended : he may survey it upon his shelves,
rejoice in its dust, and luxuriate over the consciousness that if there are
fools like himself in the world, ready to buy every abortion of printing,
they must lay out their money on some other fragment of a volume.

What prompts this silliness? It is not love of literature ; for the buy-
ers of those rags and patches would see living literature expire, before
they would give a shilling to keep it alive. It is not admiration of the
first struggles of a noble art, for they are in general ignorant of every
thing on the subject but what they learn from the auctioneer. ''It is the
ridiculous ambition of having what men of sense would despise, and men
of learning throw away. But it is theirs exclusively; they have what
nobody else may have ; and they thus realise, outside the walls of St.
Luke's, the melancholy burlesque within — rejoice in their clay diamonds
and their straw crowns.

But is there not a stern responsibility laid upon the^'possessors of
wealt'i ? Are they not accountable for its use to a higher tribunal than

1830.] on Affairs in General. 703

their own grasping or invidious propensities ? Would not those five
hundred pounds have been like a change from death to life to almost as
many hundred human beings ? Are there not the hungry to be fed, and the
houseless to be sheltered, and the struggling to be helped, and the wounds
of the broken heart to be healed ? But what good can be done to man
by throwing away this sum for miserable shreds and patches of mon-
grel and obsolete volumes ? We know that personal indulgence may
claim the first share of our opulence, and that a man of wealth is not re-
quired to think in the first instance of the suffering multitudes round him.
But still, needless expenditure is a crime, the waste of money on a jea-
lous and capricious propensity is a crime, the purchase of useless books
for the mere purpose of exclusive possession is a crime, ay, and as great a
one as if we flung the money of the poor and orphan into the sea.

A few nights ago a polished-looking person presented himself as a visiter
to Lady Strong (the whipper-in's wife). From his appearance the ser-
vant took him for one of those gentlemen who are in the habit of dis-
cussing arrangements of all kinds, public and private, with the whipper-
in. The name assumed, too, was fond and familiar to the lackey's ear ;
it was Grant, a " parliamentary grant" of course ; and as nothing under
that engaging title could be capable of a repulse, the gentleman was
ushered in. He called for a pen and ink, to send up what the footman
may have conjectured to be his opinion on the present state of majorities ;
and on his being left alone, vanished with a saltspoon ; thus depriving
the excellent whipper-in of his whole service of plate. We hope that so
meritorious a public servant will not be left to sink under a loss, which
may be said to have been incurred on public grounds !

Colonel Berkeley, a gentleman so perfectly well known that we are
hopeless of adding to his fame, is now struggling for a peerage. His
success will add to the ornaments of the house, already ornamented as it
is ; and we only hope that Lord Ellenborough will not be jealous of a
man so calculated to rival his distinctions.

The Lords have had some sittings as a Committee of Privileges on the
subject of the Berkeley peerage. The peculiarity of this case is, that the
claim is vested in the foundation of a tenure of land ; Colonel Berkeley
relying, in support of his claim, solely on his having the freehold in his
possession, and the castle and barony of Berkeley, the possessors of which
had, in very early times, been, in virtue of their tenure, called by summons
to attend the King in his Council and Parliament.

Titles of this kind are not uncommon in France, and are every-day-
work in Italy. There the man who cleans boots or curls wigs to-day
may to-morrow figure before mankind as the Baron of Thundertentronk,
or my Lord Duke of Dunderhead. A marriage to some old wfdow or
enamoured maiden of seventy, or the disposal of the wages of a lucky
speculation in human hair, may erect the most miserable devil on earth
into My Lord ! But here such things have not been hitherto ; and we
confess that our admiration for the personal character of the gallant and
galant colonel is not exactly of that height which makes us anxious to
see the change commence in his person,

Lord Eldon is clearly against the .claim ; and the objections which
have started up in the sagacious mind of that first of lawyers are too
striking to be easily set aside. They are a very curious *spccimen of

704 Notes of the Month, $c. [JuNE,

strength and acuteness combined. " It was plain that the claim rested
on tenure : but what was the nature or kind of the tenure ? Was it tenure
in fee ? If it was, did the claim depend on the legal estate? or did it
extend to the equitable ? — Suppose he (Lord Eldon) were tenant in fee
of the castle and barony of Berkeley, would he be Lord Berkeley ?—
Suppose the tenant having the legal estate should mortgage it, and the
mortgagee were in possession, would the mortgagee, as having the legal
estate, be Lord Berkeley ? or would the mortgager be Lord Berkeley, as
having the equitable estate ? or would both of them be Lords Berkeley ?
— Did the peerage belong to the tenant in tail, or the tenant for life, as
well as to the tenant in fee ? It must be made out that it did ; for this
was only a tenure for life. — Suppose the estate were sold, would the
peerage pass along with it ? — Suppose the tenant became insolvent, and
the estate should be sold by the Insolvent Debtors' Court, could the
peerage be sold along with it ? The estate for life, too, in this case, was
subject to a term for years. Suppose the termor in possession, would
the tenant for life be a peer notwithstanding?"

Here are six suppositions, any one of which might be branched into
ten times the number, and of which the tenth part might be fatal to the
claim. On the whole, we think that the colonel, at the head of 30}OOOL
a-year — a colonel, too, though of militia, a capital fox-hunter, a con-
ductor of theatres, a first figure at balls, and prodigiously sought in
matrimony by all the match-making mammas in Gloucestershire — may
think himself well off as he is. Why should he want the peerage ? we
are perfectly assured that the peerage does not want him !

A capital work has just been produced by Mr. Burke, which will
complete all that was wanting to the public acquaintance with our
official ranks, and personages of all kinds. His " Heraldic Dictionary
of the Peerage and Baronetage" has already become a standard volume,
and deserves it, for accuracy and knowledge. The present work is en-
titled—" The Official Kalenderfor 1830; or a detail of the public insti-
tutions, public functionaries, of army, church, and state, of the colonies,
&c., of the sovereigns, and royal families of Europe, &c." In fact, of every
thing that a man who wants to know any thing about public appoint-
ments in the British empire and its connexions might look for in a dozen
other volumes, and look for in vain. We wish that Mr. Burke had an-
nexed the salaries of our officials, and of our sinecurisls too ! but the
work, as it stands, is excellent, and must be as popular as it is un-
doubtedly useful, clever, and well-informed.

1830.] [ 705 ]

MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE, DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN.

Bouricnne's Memoirs of Napoleon, 4 vols.
Rvo — Few persons could ever have had such
facilities for observing Napoleon as Bou-
rienne. He was his schoolfellow at Brienne,
his correspondent when apart, and in the
early period of the revolution, while neither
had any thing to do, roamed the streets of
Paris with him from cafe to cafe. At Leo-
ben, the very day in which preliminaries of
peace were signed, he joined the conqueror
of Italy no longer as a comrade and equal,
but as private secretary, in which capacity
he acted without interruption through suc-
ceeding events till the consular appointment
of Napoleon for life, enjoying, if not always
his open confidence, at least the most un-
bounded opportunities for observing his con-
duct and detecting his motives of action.
From that period his personal intercourse
with him ceased ; he saw Napoleon only
once more ; but held an office of political
importance at Hamburgh for the last five or
six years of the imperial power.

But opportunity is not all that is requisite
for correct communications and just esti-
mates— fairness, freedom from prejudice, ex-
emption from private bias, and moreover
competency of intelligence and soundness of
judgment, are equally essential. With want
of what is vaguely termed common honesty,
Bourienne is perhaps scarcely chargeable; but
that he is so with what amounts in effect to
the same thing, almost every page of his vo-
luminous performance will prove. He makes
frequent pretensions to ingenuousness, which,
by the way, the translator always writes in-
genious, probably as the more appropriate
word. The man manifestly thinks himself,
in all but military matters, a cleverer fellow
than his master ; and while writing himself
the agent of his manoeuvres and mendacities,
takes credit for repressing violence and inter-
cepting injustice, all in the tone of a man of
the purest sentiments and most unsullied
honour. While professing admiration,
scarcely is a fact produced which does not
tend to depreciate his friend and patron.
These facts — we are not alluding merely to
political matters — we do not question gene-
rally ; we have no doubt Napoleon was very
much of a charlatan, as many or most great
men have proved, the more closely they have
been scanned, and we are by all fair means
for reducing every man to his proper level :
but the attempt before us does not come
gracefully from one who, though suffering
from caprice or mistake, owed every thing to
him ; nor does it come acceptably from one
who knows the showing up of the old mas-
ter is the way to please the new one. Bou-
rienne manifestly . writes under the fear or
favour of the reigning dynasty. The im-
pression left by the perusal of Bourienne's
book, if we lose sight of the author and his
views, is one of loathing for Napoleon. Our
admiration of ability and vigour is swallowed
M.M. New Series VOL. IX. No. 54.

up in disgust at the absence of honourable
feeling, and the quackery of the braggart.
We forget the talent in the trickery of the
man. This is too much. Moore has, with-
out doubt, sunk both Sheridan and Byron
considerably in the estimation of the world ;
but that is because he will tell all ; while
Bourienne will tell only the bad, or, if he re-
ports the good, does it with a twist. Sir
Walter Scott's life of Napoleon is the object
of Bourienne's especial vituperation ; it is
with him a mere romance, a lying chronicle,
prompted by national hatred and a calum-
nious spirit : when all the while the source
of this abuse is, that Scott gives Napoleon
credit where credit is due ; and upon the
whole leaves a more agreeable, and we doubt
not a juster impression, than is suitable to
his views. He contradicts him point blank
in scores of places, but generally on insigni-
ficant points, and certainly such as call not
for the vehemence and bitterness he displays
against him. Sir Walter's novels are hi-
stories, and his histories novels. "I have
been assured," he says, "that Marshal Mac-
donald having offered to introduce him to some
generals, who could have furnished him with
the most accurate information respecting
military events, the glory of which they had
shared, Sir W. replied, I thank you, but I
shall collect my information from popular
report." Alluding to the plague which broke
out with new virulence in the French army
after the siege of Jaffa, Sir Walter says — rhe-
torically of course — " Heaven sent this pesti-
lence among them to avenge the massacre
of Jaffa. This is double silliness, replies
Bourienne. In the first place, it would liavc
been letter for Heaven to have prevented the
massacre ; in the next, Kleber's division
caught the seeds of the malady atDamietta."
This reminds us of Count de Narbonne.
Some stupid prefect, in an address to Napo-
leon, said 4 God made Bonaparte, and rest-
ed.' It would have been well, remarked De
Narbonne, had he rested a little sooner. Nar-
bonne was not Vlien in the imperial service.

Bourienne deals about his censures pretty
liberally. The Duke of Rovigo, in his esti-
mate, seems entitled to no credit at all. He
will neither refute his assertions, nor correct
his errors— /or they are voluntary.

It is too evident, he observes, that endowed with
a posthumous zeal, perhaps unexampled, he has
made his memoirs nothing else than a long pane-
gyric on every thing done by Bonaparte, many of
whose actions were, without doubt, grand, im-
mense, even generous, such as make a great show
in history; but he committed others from the
odium of which he cannot be absolved, and among
these I include, without hesitation, but not without
reflection, the death of Pichegru. On this, no more
than on other points, do I feel inclined to credit the
assertions made by Bonaparte at St. Helena.

This is a fair specimen of the tone of the
whole work.
4X

706

Monthly Review qfi Literature,

[JUNE,

Bouricnnc's magnanimous retort upon
some receiving personal insult is perfectly
amusing. Upon some occasion Bonaparte
was in high, wrath, and, on Bourienne' s at-
tempting to soothe him, flung the door in
his face.

He accompanied this action, says Bourienne,
which was almost convulsive, with an appellation
not to be borne; he exclaimed, in the presence of

M. de Talleyrand, Leave me alone ; you are a

fool. At an insult so atrocious, I confess that an-
ger, which had already mastered the first consul,
suddenly seized on me. I thrust the door forward
with as much impetuosity as he had used in at-
tempting to close it; and scarcely knowing what I
said, exclaimed, You are a hundred times a greater
fool than I am !

On some other occasion, when urged by a
messenger from Bonaparte for an answer on
some disagreeable subject, Bourienne bade
the man tell Napoleon he might go to the
devil !

One little anecdote of Bonaparte, imme-
diately after being appointed consul.

Before taking possession of the Tuilleries, we
had frequently gone there to see that the repairs, or
rather the plastering, which Bonaparte had directed
to be done, was executed. On our first visit, see-
ing a number of red caps of liberty painted on the
walls, he said to Le Compte, at that time the archi-
tect of the Tuilleries, Brush all these things -out:
I do not like to see such rubbish.

Traits of Scottish Life, and Pictures of
Scenes and Character, 3 vols. I2mo. — So
familiar have we been made of late years
with the dialect of Scotland, and the pecu-
liarities of the wilder natives of the country,
that we seem now almost to the " manners
born," and as much at home with them
(perhaps more) as with those of many di-
stricts of England, and especially of Wales.
They come to us of the south recommended
by all the graces of description, and our ac-
quaintance with them is wholly through
books ; they are stript of all the coarseness
of reality, and produce none of the disgust
which attends the encounter and contact with
the rudeness of our own rough peasantry.
The writer of these volumes is a new vo-
lunteer in the old field, well qualified by
close acquaintance with the country to cope
with his predecessors ; but he must sharpen
his manner and quicken the pace of his in-
cidents, if he hopes to come up and keep
abreast with them. He is far too prosing
for narrative : he claims at the outset, it is
true, th3 privilege of digressing as he pleases,
but that is not the same thing with the
claims being allowed ; and, besides, it is not
of digressing we complain, but of stretching
and wire-drawing. He keeps sufficiently to
the point, but he does not despatch — he
trusts nothing to the reader's imagination,
who, while he would gladly give him full
credit for the power of multiplying phrases,
is compelled to leap over page after page of
moralizing. The principal tale, occupying
one whole volume, is the most intolerable in
this respect — it almost completely smothers

the little interest the story might otherwise
possess. It is entitled The Secret Marriage.
A Scotch clergyman, a gentleman in manner,
and a scholar in acquirement, is living on
terms of great intimacy with a family in
his neighbourhood who have two beautiful
daughters : in the education and conduct of
both he is deeply interested, especially the
eldest. The narrator and a young friend meet
the old minister and visit his manse, where
they are struck by the extraordinary sym-
ptoms of affection on the part of the old gentle-
man towards the young lady, and particularly
with her resemblanceto a picture in the manse.
With this charming girl the narrator's friend
becomes enamoured, and their mutual at-
tachment is warmly promoted by the mi-
nister, when he at length is taken suddenly
and dangerously ill, and a discovery takes
place. The young lady is his own daughter,
and she all at once finds herself thrown into
new relations, with the loss of those she had
cherished in ignorance. The ground of this
concealment ? — a very addled one. The mi-
nister had married the daughter of a man of
family, to whose brother as well as herself
he had been tutor — a dangerous position,
by the way, for a young man always. The
enraged father renounced his daughter for
her degenerate taste, and she, unhappily,
'died of her first child. The bereaved hus-
band was paralyzed, and his establishment
was falling to ruin, when an old friend came
to console him, whose own wife had just lost
a new-born child. Arrangements were made
for his friend's wife to take his little orphan,
and himself to reside in the neighbourhood.
There he obtained the living, and superin-
tended his child's education, without dis-
closing his parental relationship, for one mo-
tive or another, till his deathbed, &c. The
"Death of the Laird of Craigwold" is a
mixture of second-sight with a little diable-
rie. The laird, a hard master and a griping
landlord, finally meets with his deserts by
being plunged down a precipice in his car-
riage, conducted to the fatal spot by an ap-
parition visible only to the coachman, and
foreseen or dreamed of by an old woman
who had still less to do with the laird's guilt
than the coachman.

The family of Glenhowan consists of an
unlicked laird and his two unmarried sisters.
The laird suddenly marries, to the great an-
noyance of the old maids, who harass the
poor wife till she is compelled to take
flight. The young cub of an heir is hu-
morously described. Some of the smaller
pieces in the third volume are well sketched,
particularly Glenmannow, a tenant on the
Duke of Queen sbury's estate a century ago,
remarkable for his herculean proportions and
strength. Attacked by a party of six troopers,
sent by the duke for the fun of the thing, he
laid hold of one of them, and made use of him
as a club to batter down the rest with. The
Rock of the Dead is a painful tale of two
brothers, who were rivals, one of whom in a
fit of jealous rage strikes the other to the

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

707

death, &c. A considerable sprinkling of
poetry is scattered over the volumes : it re-
quires patience to work through it.

Family Library. — Dramatic Series, vol.
/., Plays of Massinger.— Wdl, \ve do not
like mutilations of this kind, nor can the
motives alleged for making them reconcile
us to them. They tend to the ruin of in-
dividual characteristics, to confusion, and of
course to erroneous estimates in literary
history. We shall by degrees, if the prin-
ciple of excision goes on — alii alias causas
interserentes — not be able to recognise old
acquaintance, nor distinguish the features of
one age from another. If Massinger be too
coarse to be read, let him be forgotten;
which Abstaining from re-publication will
effectually do for him. Be the motive — we
shall not call it the pretence — ever so pure
and desirable, the execution of the scheme
will defeat its own object ; it will awaken a
curiosity, that would otherwise have remained
dormant, to see what it is that has been cut
out, and the poison will thus circulate wider
than before. The common pride of intellect,
especially of young intellect, is piqued at not
being allowed to judge for itself; and no
wonder — for who, young or old, likes restric-
tion ? to have that withheld from them which
others possess ? or will patiently bear to be
told, There is more, but it is not fit for you
to read? If the young acquiesce, it will
often be with the resolution of indemnifying
themselves the first favourable opportunity.
The intention is to publish Massinger, Beau-
mont, Fletcher, Ford, Shirley, Webster,
Micldleton, and others, omitting all such
scenes and passages as are inconsistent with
the delicacy and refinement of modern taste
and manners. Whenever it is possible, the
play will be printed entire ; but when there
is a radical evil in the groundwork of the
play, only a single act or a few scenes will
be given ; but in such cases, it seems, care
will be taken to preserve the interest of an
entire and connected story. Our objection is,
it will not be Massinger.

Of Massinger the poet, nothing is cer-
tainly known, but that he lived, wrote, and
died ; and the editor is obliged to eke out a
few pages in visionary conjectures, on which
he himself says thinking is literally a waste
of thought. A little stage-talk fills out a
few more, as to the state of things when
theatres were first built in Elizabeth's reign.
The first was in 1569 ; it is supposed some-
where in Blackfriars. The editor establishes
the contested fact of painted and moveable
scenes in the days of Shakspeare.

Excerpta Historica, or Illustrations of
English History, Part /., March, 1830.—
Among the multitude of books now publish-
ing periodically, this is one that well deserves
encouragement, but one which from lack of
popular topics stands a good chance of being
pretty generally overlooked. It relates wholly
to times gone by ; has nothing to do with
.current facts, nor indulges in any glowing or

gloomy anticipations of the future. Its
purpose is the publication of cotemporary
documents relative to English history; not
merely political instruments, like Rymer's
Fcedera, &c. but antiquarian information in
a liberal sense ; articles of private arid even
domestic interest, illustrative, at the same
time, of morals, manners, customs, literature,
and arts. Any thing like order and arrange-
ment will not, of course, be aimed at; it is
miscellaneous in its nature. It offers a re-
gister for curious matter at present buried
in dust; and little anticipation of particulars
can be made. The expectation of the editor
is sanguine ; and certainly the British Mu-
seum contains masses of unexamined mate-
rials, or at least unexamined with the views
of the publishers. Among the literary ar-
ticles of this first portion, is a poem on the
Assault of Massoura, in the crusade headed
by Louis, written in French, but evidently by
an Englishman, or a person filled with Eng-
lish feelings. The most interesting particulars
are relative to the valour and death of Wm.
de Longespee, whose father was the natural
son of Henry II. by the fair Rosamond. A
translation is printed with the Poem, very
ably executed ; and the introductory matter
is written in good taste, without any parade.
The original is written in a cotemporary
hand, and is preserved in the Cottonian MS.
Julius A. v. in the British Museum, being
preceded in that volume by a copy of Peter
de Langtoft's Chronicle in French, and
other pieces of the 13th century. This, how-
ever, is not enough to identify it as Lang-
toft's, as the editor seems inclined to do.
The extracts from Henry VII.'s privy purse
expenses exhibit some curious items, little
to have been expected from that stern and
close-fisted monarch. The papers relative to
the building of Eton are curious — the war-
rants for impressing workmen, the grant of
relics, and especially the grant of arms, with
the hidden meaning of its heraldry, probably
new to Etonians.

Chronicles of a School-room, by Mrs.
S. C. Hall — These are interesting little
sketches, given as the recollections of a ve-
nerable lady, a retired schoolmistress, who
had for some thirty or forty years kept a kind
of select and finishing establishment for
young ladies at Little Hampton. The good
lady, of course, was none of your routine
performers in this way ; she was an original
and inventive artist ; she knew how to handle
her tools and materials; estimating qua-
lities shrewdly and correctly, and turning all
to valuable purposes ; full of expedient, and
all but converting black into white, or wholly
so, if, indeed, she could make the perverse
amiable, and the spiteful kind and candid.
Her success was wonderful, and she had
often awkward subjects to deal with. One
an Irish girl, " tall, of twelve years old,
with rough red hair, prominent features, re-
markable for want of expression, and large
development, added to a painful deficiency of

1X2

708

Monthly Review of Literature,

every thing like grace of motion ; her voice
was loud and discordant, and her brogue of
the most vulgar tone; a map of defects,"
&c. But even this lump of deformity was
speedily licked into shape, and turned out
one of the most amiable and effective mem-
bers of society ; conflicting bravely, and of
course successfully, with difficulties ; go-
vernessing, marrying, and finally benefiting
her husband's " comfortable tenantry, bodies
and souls, more than all the thousand and
one writers for and against Catholic eman-
cipation ever did (she dare not venture to say
ever cou Id) effect." A story of two Indian
girls— not half-castes, though one of them is
something of the brownest, but the daugh-
ters of an English merchant with a Dutch
name, and a French lady — betrays a lack of
acquaintance with the circumstances of In-
dian society, and is mixed up with another
of a black sheep which had crept into the
school, a young lady of nineteen, who comes
among them a perfect esprit fort, and sets
systematically about enlightening the younger
pupils. The examination of the delinquent,
when detected, before the parson of the
parish, throws an air of ridicule over the
whole, full before of unlikelihoods. Another
tale of two sisters, one perfectly blind, the
other as perfectly deaf, is still more impro-
bable. The deaf girl is not congenitally
deaf, so that she is not also dumb ; though
the narrator occasionally forgets her own
statements, and makes sad confusion in her
intercourse with the poor girl. The blind
girl is, what never blind girl was, lovely and
graceful : she had not the mirror by which
alone the one can be preserved and the other
acquired. Beethoven was deaf (we do not
know that he was stone deaf), or we should
have said no girl could play, as the other
does, without ears. In spite of these impe-
diments, the girls both marry, have families,
and bring up their children " according to
the best system of education, example."
Mrs. Hall has the enviable power of throwing
interest upon nothings.

Life of a Lawyer. — The tone of this
imaginary history is far too like that of a
solemn piece of biography to be popular.
The hero of the tale is the architect of his
own fortune, and, commencing as country-
attorney's errand-boy, advances through a
conveyancer's office to the bar, and, rising
step by step, each leading to the next, ul-
timately arrives at the woolsack. The ca-
reer is traced with great intelligence by a
person familiar with the general business of
life, as well as that of the lawyer. But
under cover of this plain narrative, the author
introduces his views of reform, legal, judi-
cial, and ecclesiastical ; and matters are
represented in actual operation, the accom-
plishment of which the most thorough-going
reformers contemplate as yet at a distance.
This assumption takes miserably from the
ease and the charm of the narrative. All pro-
bability vanishes, because things are not

exhibited as they are known to be, however
we may heartily wish they were so. Thus
the first opportunity for distinction on the
circuit is by an address to the jury in de-
fence of a charge of murder. While solicitor-
general the hero introduces a bill for the
amendment of process and pleadings in
the superior courts of common law, with a
speech as sweeping and as eloquent, but not
quite so interminable, as one of Brougham's,
and carries it; as chancellor, he brings
about a thorough reform in his own court;
while the crowning act of his official reign is
ecclesiastical reform, consisting of an equa-
lization of the episcopal revenues, and the
salarying of incumbents, the tithes being
collected by the crown, that is, all titheable
property being made taxable to the average
value of the tithes. To this the author — no
unintelligent observer — plainly thinkswe shall
come at last ; nor do we see what there is in
all this so terrible for churchmen to con-
template. Such an arrangement, if really
desirable, might be quietly conducted, and
would certainly cut away one source of dis-
sension between incumbents and parishioners.
Patronage might and of course would be
still in the same hands, and the same oppor-
tunities for bargain and sale and corruption
still remain. Patrons might still act as they
now do, and aspirants for preferment find
livings as easy of access as now.

Original Letters of Locke, Algernon Sid-
ney, and Lord Shaftesbury, author of The
Characteristics, edited by T. Forster, M.B.,
&c. — Though fussing about these letters as
the editor does, and even dissertating at the
rate of a hundred good pages or more on
Locke's religious and metaphysical opinions,
and those of some others from Plato to
Priestley and even Lady Mary Shepherd,
he very honestly, and in a manner creditable
to his own discernment and candour, " de-
clares, for his part, and as far as his opinion
goes, the circumstance of these letters being
the production of men so well known and
respected in the literary world constitutes
their principal claim to notice." This frank
declaration, which the editor applies to all the
letters, is however fairly applicable only to
those of Locke and Sidney, which are indeed
of no earthly value, and only prove, what
did not require proof, that men of great name
could twaddle as well as meaner folks. The
most notable passages in Locke are where he
says, with great levity, " If you had asked
me where the best chocolate is to be got in
London, 1 should answer, where the devil
had the friar— even where you could find it ;
but to Joanna and Rachael you must say
that I had formerly a friend there, that made
it very well and just as I directed ; but now she
is dead, I could no more tell where to find the
bestthanthe greatest stranger there." Sidney's
letters are relative to mere matters of busi-
ness, but show, at least, he was careful to
make the most of his property : butShaftes-
bury's letters are of some historical import-

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

709

ance, especially those written during the last
years of William's reign, and the first of
Anne's. Shaftesbury was a zealous revolu-
tionist, and, like other whigs, was not well
pleased with William's strong leaning to the
tories. What makes the editor say Shaftes-
bury's Letters relate to ancient affairs ? Some
few of them are addressed to a young man
for whose welfare he was interested; and
among other prudential advice is some which
indicates to the editor a state of religious
feeling that takes him out of the class of
sceptics. Of the authenticity of the letters
no doubt exists. They were, nearly all, to
a Dutch merchant of Rotterdam, at whose
death they came into the hands of the editor's
grandfather, and so through his father to
himself. The editor has also in his possession
what he believes to be the original manu-
script of Locke's Essay, of which we shall
never hear the last.

Encyclopaedia Britannica. Seventh Edi-
tion The merits of the Encyclopaedia Bri-
tannica are too generally acknowledged by
the sale of six considerable editions to render
any details necessary. But the new edition
comes recommended by such fresh advan-
tages as claim at least a slight notice. Cheap-
ness and compression distinguish it. The
whole will be comprised in twenty volumes,
at 365. each including the supplement — the
well-known, and, it must be allowed, well-be-
praised supplement — the articles of which
will be inserted, each suo loco, in the one
general alphabetical series. The publication
is going on at the rate of two volumes a
year ; but the whole, it is promised, will be
printed long before the expiration of the ten
years, dating from its commencement, and
may be had at the option of the subscribers.
The dissertations left unfinished by Messrs.
Stewart and Playfair will be completed, it
seems, Mr. Stewart's by Sir James Macin-
tosh, and Mr. Playfair's by Professor Leslie.
By the way, has not Sir James M. more
upon his hands than he is ever likely to ac-
complish ? Arts, sciences, geography, hi-
story, statistics, will, of course, be adjusted to
the state of facts at the period of publication.

The Descent into Hell, aPoem, 1 830 — The
subject of this poem is succinctly included,
the author tells us, in the Apostles' Creed, by
the words " he descended into hell." Au-
thorities for the doctrine, he adds, are pro-
fusely scattered over the Scriptures, for such
as are capable of discerning them, especially
in the Psalms and the Prophets; but the
most explicit testimony occurs in 1 Peter, iii.
18, 21. Bishop Horsley has written, he in-
forms us, so beautiful a sermon upon the
subject ! The author therefore makes the sub-
ject not only a theme for poetical declama-
tion, but insists upon it as a point of faith.
As he refers to one sermon, we may also refer
to another — one of Dr. Parr's, which will be
found buried, fathoms deep, in the recent
collection of his works in eight octavo vo-
lumes of at least 700 pages each. In the

very teeth of an " article," Dr. Parr denies
the doctrine in toto, as in effect Dr. Clarke
did long ago, though not so explicitly. Mr.
Pyle, the well-known and well-received in-
terpreter, says, Christ did not himself preach,
but through the Spirit, and then subjoins a
paraphrase by somebody else, upon which in-
terpretation and paraphrase, plainly adopting
both, Dr. Parr thus acutely discriminates :

" Here, then, you have an immediate agent, dif-
ferent from that which is supposed in the common
and erroneous interpretation of St. Peter ; for it is
the Spirit which preached, not Christ personally.
You have a different time, for it was in the age of
Npah, not during the three days when Christ lay in
the grave. You have a different place, for it was
not Hell, but the country in which Noah lived.
You have different persons, for they to whom the
Spirit preached were not the accursed inhabitants of
Hell, but the cotemporaries of Noah. You have a dif-
ferent purpose ; for there is no resemblance between
the Spirit which preached unto the unrighteous co-
temporaries of Noah to check their ungodliness, lest
they should be destroyed by the flood, and the
preaching of Christ to wicked Spirits, who were al-
ready suffering in the fire of Gehenna, and of whom
we do not learn that even one was so influenced by
the instruction of Christ as to be reformed from
wickedness and released from torment."

Of the poem, elaborately written in terza-
rima, the less we say, the less, like prudent
folks, we commit ourselves, though we have
no doubts. A single specimen, and that
taken from the very beginning of the poem,
will, we think, enable the reader to measure
the poet's calibre — certainly that of his taste
and execution — the delicacy of his musical
ear, and his conception of metrical harmony.

Lift up, O Hell ! thy diuturnal gate,

But not eternal; finite,— it began.

On the huge hinge harsh thunders hoarsely grate :

— Chaos afar shook where their echoes ran.

The swinkt Damned shriek, " a change !"— of lot
no change,

If change of suffering, for fiend or man :

Still it may soothe.

Yet passages occur of extraordinary energy,
but all in the strangest taste imaginable; wild
as a wilderness, and the poet himself as mad
as a March hare.

Death speaks :

A home in air have I. Winds hear my voice,
The four winds answer it with all their breath —
— Lo ! the tornado doth alqud rejoice
In his ubiquity, and cometh out
With sudden and exaggerated noise ;
Scattering his hurtling arrows all about
Amid the sky, the while his iron shoon
Cottage and palace trample ; with a shout
Then whirls him in his dusty car aboon,
As with the ruin he would blot out Heaven,
And quench the glorious sun, — as I shall soon.
And men are hurled into the clouds, and driven
As in a witch-dance, round, and aye around,
And perish in the flashes of the leven ;
I swoop, and strangle them in that dire swound.
For sport; — and thus I gambol merrily.

My way is on the waters. Of the drowned
The last spasm makes the globule, wherewith I
Take innocent delight, and think when this
Strong hand shall, with the same facility,
Confound in one disruption, one abyss,

710

Monthly Review of Literature,

[JUNE,

A bubble and a universe. I dance

Around the circles of the vortices,

And see the ship go down in a strong trance,

And hear the shriek, — one, yet how manifold !

There, where the steeds o' the tempest foam and

prance,

Am I ; — their wild manes o'er wild ocean roll'd,
Like fire-flakes, wreathe the billows, and their

neigh
Doth chide the clarion-clang of ocean old.

I dash amidst them, eager for the fray ;
Doth plunge my charger with me ; he doth swim,
Wild in his fierceness, through the flashing spray ;
As if a lightning-stroke had blinded him,
And darted phren/y to his brain, and he
Were maddened with the torture in each limb,
And sweat' and shrieked in sightless agony,
And made huge havoc in his maniac might,
'Till his heart burst. Then on the exhausted sea
The waves drop down, and, in the dull twilight,
Lay sluggishly about the riven hulk,
O'er which the day rose sunless as the night,
Or glared portentous on the sail-less bulk
With a red eye and fiery. Lo, I
Chafe ocean, that he waken from his sulk
Awhile, and blow a gale though weariedly
And brief ; — yet unto me the billows spring,
Wild playmates, and a low-breathed harmony
We utter round the hopeless bark, and sing
A doleful and predestinating dirge.

Resources of the United Kingdom, or,
The present Distresses considered, and their
Causes and Remedies pointed out, fyc. ly
Capt. Pettman, R. N. — Captain Pettman's
remedy for the existing evils of the country is
at the bottom a National Bank, by the agency
of which the Government shall have the power
to increase its expenditure at will, which -will
is to be limited by the number of unemployed
persons. As soon as all are employed, it is
to suspend its issues. Captain Pettman seems
to apprehend nothing whatever from the cor-
ruption of governments. Supposing, for a
moment, the creations of paper not forthwith
to depreciate — not to be in a short time, in
spite of all imaginable securities, mere French
assignats — is it nothing to arm a government
with a power to command all classes, great
and small ? So that money gets into circula-
tion and employment, to Capt. P. it matters
nothing by what means. It matters nothing
who spends it. He would as lieve it should be
laid out and distributed by legions of troops
or of pensioners. To get money spent is all in
all, the remedy for all evils, for the source of
them is the want of employment and high
wages. Employ the labourers, and at high
wages, and every other class will proportion-
ally prosper. Therefore, no matter how they
are first got into employment, at whose loss
or at whose gain, in the outset, for ultimately
all will be gainers. If we again misunder-
stand Capt. Pettman, it is his fault; he
should make himself clearer. We have en-
deavoured to catch his meaning, and we
sometimes think we have done so, but as
often that we have not — so paradoxical does
he often appear, and we have little doubt
really is. We do not ourselves believe the
currency is the sole source of national evil,
but only one of many. The whole nation is

not in distress. There are too marry poor,
and too many rich : the enormous inequali-
ties of property is the predominant, is the
one, if all must be referred to some one, great
evil that lies at the root of all. These gross in-
equalities have been brought about largely by
our financial arrangements ; by speculations
in the funds ; by the facilities of credit ; by
accumulations of capital and machinery ; by
the doctrines of economists, urging the land-
lords to throw small farms into the gulf of
large ones, and convert men from free la-
bourers into brute beasts : and the remedy,
the sole one probably, is, treading back some
of our steps as fast as we can — flinging the
burden of the state, for the present, wholly
upon the rich — destroying half the machin-
ery— breaking down new enclosures, and
passing something of an agrarian law — or
adopting Mr. Wilmot Horton's sagacious
scheme of banishing two or three millions of
labourers, stopping, at the same time, all
further importations from the modern oificina
gentium, Ireland.

Tales of the Colonies, ly John Howison,
author of Sketches of Upper Canada, 2 vols.
I2mo. — These tales are more unequal, in
point of interest, than is usual in tales pro-
ceeding from the same source of invention,
though only two of them strictly answer to
the general title. The first is the story of a
half-pay lieutenant of the navy, condemned
to vegetate on some lone spot on the Irish
coast, and dying of ennui, wearying of exist-
ence, and panting for excitement. In this
state of feeling, approaching to one of despair,
luckily a stranger, of most mysterious bear-
ing, lands on the coast, who by degrees
makes his acquaintance, and finally gives
him his confidence. He proves to be the
last of a crew of buccaneers, who had long
plundered the Mexican shores, and in a soli-
tary isle off the coast, along with other spoil
equally precious, had buried a mass of
church -plate. This valuable booty the old
man proposes to the lieutenant to go in pur-
suit of — he himself renouncing all claim, and
professing only now to be preparing for the
grave. The lieutenant of course accedes, as
much for the sake of the adventure as of the
plunder, and, receiving the necessary informa-
tion, starts forthwith. His adventures in
securing the prize constitute the staple of the
tale, which is full of improbabilities, and
presents little inducement to the reader to try
the next. The next, however, is considerably
better — the incidents are more stirring and
striking, leaving the impression of actual
reality, though of a very singular cast. The
scene is placed in the heart of Antigua,
remote from other plantations, where the
worst passions might be indulged, unchecked
by the awe of a neighbourhood. But the
third tale takes by far the strongest hold of
the feelings. A young man of good family,
who, having wasted a very considerable pro-
perty of his own, and much of his mother's,
is, in a moment of perplexity, precipitated

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

711

into an'act of forgery, to relieve the parent he
has so deeply injured. He is sentenced to
Botany Bay, whither he is conveyed, mixed
up with the lowest of the human race. The
scene opens at Sydney. He is quickly as-
signed as a labourer on a farm, in the interior,
where he finds some relief in being separated
from his odious companions. He resolves to
make the best of his condition, and conciliate
the good will of his master by diligence and
usefulness. Unluckily he has a most un-
tractable animal to deal with. The colonist
was one of the middle class of English farmers
— honest, but rough and uncultivated — just
enough, but coarse and prejudiced. He made
no distinctions ; a convict was a felon, and
he knew nothing of the early history of his
slave, and cared nothing. His family con-
sisted of a sister and a niece, both of them
comparatively civilized ; the young lady, espe-
cially, seemed, in that lonely spot, one of the
loveliest of human beings. By degrees the
youth contrives to make some of the accom-
plishments of his superior condition known to
the ladies, and is beginning to excite at least
something like sympathy, when the jealousy
and vengeance of afemale convict, whose over-
tures to closer acquaintance he had rejected,
infuses some suspicion into the farmer, and
he, in the rage of the moment, loads him with
abuse, and accompanies it with a blow. This
is not to be borne : the young man flies from
the house, and takes refuge among the bush-
men, with whom, a few weeks before, he had
had an accidental encounter. In a few days
the gang propose to levy contributions on the
farmer. The youth, for the sake of the ladies,
warns the farmer of the approaching attack ;
a kindness which he repays by betraying him
to his associates. From the indignation of
these desperadoes he narrowly escapes by
darting into the woods, and eluding pursuit.
In his forlorn condition, he joins a small
party of the natives, and again, from some
misunderstanding with them, he with diffi-
culty escapes being speared. After roaming
for some time in the woods, exposed to a va-
riety of perils, he is suddenly arrested by a
party of soldiers in search of an outlaw,
and by them conducted to Sydney, where he
finds his mother, who had procured his eman-
cipation. With her he continues for some
time at Sydney, and is by the liberal party
admitted into society. Here he encounters
again his old master's niece, whose affections
he speedily wins, and is finally prevailed upon
to visit the uncle, and endeavour to propitiate
him. The attempt is attended with fatal
consequences. He proved inflexible, and was
that very night murdered by a bushman —
a fact which threw suspicion upon his visiter.
Though not convicted of the crime, in the
course of the trial, his flight from his master
and intercourse with the bushmen became
known, and he was in consequence doomed to
the public works at Paramatta. Reduced to
a more deplorable condition than ever, he
joined a party in an attempt to seize a sloop
and escape; they were pursued, and in the

conflict the miserable youth was shot. The
tale is entitled the False Step, and the pur-
pose of the writer is to trace its irretrievable
consequences. The moral is good in prin-
ciple, but it must of course fail in exact pro-
portion to the excessive rigour with which it is
pursued.

The Inland Bride, in Six Cantos, l>y the
Rev. Hobart Counter, B. D. — A little ro-
mantic tale, with few incidents, and those
chiefly of the decisive kind, but abundance of
gentle sentiment and charming scenery. It
is a poem to be read only at leisure and at
ease, by the young, by those whose imagina-
tions are still in the clouds, and not yet
brought down to the grovelling realities of
life. Almost in any part of the volume a
favourable specimen might be taken at ran-
dom ; what we give, sweet as it is, is not
above the general run of the piece.

Here Bertha dwelt for heaven, and all was rest
Within a bosom not yet warped by guile;
The very throbbings of her gentle breast
Were peace's lullaby ; and, when the smile
Played round her lips, it seemed as if the while
The sunlight of her soul was beaming there
Its God's bright reflex. How should guilt defile
A thing so pure ?— and yet was she as fair
As she was good— oh ! that like her all women were !

There was a sweet unconsciousness about her,

An utter absence of all pride, all art:

Who heard her clear soft tones could never doubt

her,

They were the echoes of a guileless heart.
Truth hung upon her lips, whence brightly dart
Its rays divine : so seraph-like her air,
That her pure frame seemed of her soul a part-
Fit casket for a work so passing rare,
For innocence had fixed its fairest impress there.

Within the circle of her native glen
She passed, without a care, the live-long day :
No wish was hers to join the " hum of men,"
Who while' in sensual dreams their lives away.
With the young rustics at their evening play
She'd mix, partaker of their merry glee,
And oft-times join the artless roundelay,
Or thread the dance, with footstep light and free, —
Her life, without its din, one constant jubilee.

The National Portrait Gallery, XII.
Nos. — This can scarcely fail of proving a
very popular publication. It is got up with
great care and elegance. The portraits, the
main feature of the work, are all of them
excellent, and many of them very striking
specimens of the correctness with which a
likeness is transferred from canvas to copper :
the art of engraving surely can no further go.
The accompanying memoirs are of course all
of the laudatory cast ; they are done by Mr.
Jerdan, and under the restrictions imposed,
indispensable, we suppose, in cases of this
kind, very respectably " done." We do not
understand the principles which guide the
publishers in their selection, unless a Na-
tional Gallery is meant to express an Omnium,
Gatherum. The Duke of Beaufort, Lord
Grantham, and the Marquis of Ormonde
can have no particular claim to distinction,

712

Monthly Review of Literature,

[JUNE,

we presume, beyond that of mere rank. Lady
G. Agar Ellis's very handsome but some-
what inexpressive features eminently qualify
her for figuring among the beauties of La
Belle Assemblee ; and Mr. Archdeacon
Wrangham, though doubtless a very re-
spectable ecclesiastic, is not precisely the
person, looking we mean to his features and
figure in the portrait, whom we should sup-
pose, as Mr. Jerdan says he is, the very
beau ideal of a church dignitary. Mr. Per-
ceval's strange physiognomy is also probably
a piece of the editor's beau idealism. He
had the fortune to be present when that re-
spectable person was shot by Bellingham, and
so desirous is he of communicating all the
possible advantages derivable from personal
knowledge, that he favours us with a diagram
marking the relative positions of the parties
at the fatal moment, and a portrait of the
pistol, as large as life.

Paul Clifford, 3 vols. 1 2mo. — Mr.Bulmer's
new hero is a highwayman of the last cen-
tury, before enclosures broke up the profes-
sion. That, we believe, is the current theory
which accounts for the decadence of the
Turpins ; and his prime object in selecting
so unpropitious a personage is, pretty ob-
viously, to supply occasions for the in-
dulgence of his irresistible bent to political
satire. Fingering the public purse is, of
course, the business alike of the placeman
and the robber, and the materials for illus-
tration are, in our days, at least, rich and
felicitous. An ambitious and profligate
lawyer contributes also admirably to the
same delectable purpose of swelling the al-
ready flooding streams that must ultimately
sweep away all existing institutions. What
advantages can be anticipated from this in-
temperate course? Subversion will not prove
to be reformation. The whole system of so-
ciety is, and so long as men have human
passions, must be, a confliction of interests.
This flinging of indiscriminate contempt upon
public men, which tickles Mr. B., if it will
not utterly extinguish public virtue, will un-
questionably annihilate all belief in it. Cant
we abominate ; but we are not sure that a
little shrouding, call it hypocrisy, if you will,
is not better than avowals would be that en-
tirely threw off the mask. Nothing we
allow can well be more revolting than the
pretensions to party which we see every day
made in the very teeth of the most grasping
pursuits ; and to this contradiction of words
and deeds is fairly attributable much of the
general distrust towards public men, which
Mr. B. labours with the zeal of a proselyte
to spread in his novels. His graver poli-
tical essays recently published, in one of our
cotemporaries, are quite of another character,
and what will seem scarcely credible, not
even readable.

Brandon is the younger son of a good
family, well educated, and bred to the bar,
and early matured in the arts of advance-
ment. Unluckily a beautiful girl crossed

his path, and his impetuous and fervid tem-
perament plunged him into an indiscreet
marriage. Cooling upon enjoyment, he was
ready for any desperate measure to rid himself
of the incumbrance, and he finally pandered
to a noble lord, who carried her off, and pa-
tronised the wittol in return in his profession.
A short time reduces the miserable lady to
the lowest degradation, and she dies at a flash
house, the mistress of which adopts her
child, a boy about three or four years old.
A troop of housebreakers had assisted the
mother in wrenching him from his father's
hands. This is young Paul, who was thus
brought up under the wings of one of the
coarsest of her caste, arid graduates among
logues, pugilists, and vagabonds. Among
the visitors of the house is. the editor of the
Asinccum, and he is engaged at the rate of
half a crown a week to put the finishing
stroke to master Paul's literary acquirements
of spelling and pot-hooking. He grows up
the meanwhile a very handsome fellow,
and quickly extends the circle of his ac-
quaintance, and the scale of his expense.
His frequent demands upon mother Lob's
purse occasion quarrels, and the youth is soon
too mighty tobrook further restraint. Thrown
thus, in a moment of passion, upon his own
reserves, he applies to his old tutor, the
editor of the Asinaeum, and being fit ap-
parently for nothing else, turns reviewer —
an employment, which, though he turns out
a capital hand in the slashing line, will not
keep him from starving, and soon wearies
him. While panting for some more pro-
fitable, as well as more active pursuit, he
accidently meets with an old acquaintance of
the flash-house, now quite a ' swell,' and
accompanies him to the theatre. In the next
box sits Brandon ; now a rising lawyer, with
his niece, a beautiful girl, or rather a child
of thirteen or fourteen. On leaving the
house, Paul's companion ' grabs' the lawyer's
watch, and Paul is seized and committed to
Bridewell, as the companion of the undoubted
thief. This completes Paul's education for
his future profession. With other despera-
does he breaks out of prison, and forthwith
joins a gang of highwaymen, among whom
he soon became conspicuous by his activity
and daring spirit. In some plundering ex-
pedition, he came in contact with Brandon's
lovely niece, and left a very favourable im-
pression of himself upon both her and her
father. Pursuing his vocation some five or
six years with a reputation second only to
Turpin himself, and encountering a variety
of adventures, he at last, in company with
two other dashing fellows, one of whom had
also been' a reviewer, and was still a philo-
sopher, proceeds to Bath, the scene of all
others in those days for fortune hunters, to
pick up a rich widow or heiress. Here Paul
meets again with Miss Brandon, to whom
he is introduced by the master of the cere-
monies as Capt Clifford, and soon makes a
rapid progress in winning that charming
girl's affections. She is with her father, on

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign,

713

a visit to her uncle, and the uncle is scheming
to marry her to Lord Manleverer, his old
accommodating friend — a very fine and fas-
tidious peer ; but her growing attachment to
Capt, Clifford excites the jealousy of my lord,
and it soon becomes unsafe for Capt. Clifford
to remain longer in Bath. So notorious had
Paul by this time become, and so perilous of
course was his situation, that he prudently
resolves, the next success he meets with, to
abandon his profession, and enter into some
foreign service, in the hope too that he might
win a name and fortune to entitle him to claim
Miss Brandon's hand. As fate would have it,
Lord Manleverer is the person the gang next
plunder. His share of the spoil is amply
sufficient for Paul's settled purpose; and
the party betake themselves for the night to
the old cave, when the cook, who is no other
than the old editor of the Asinaeum, broils
them a steak, and the next morning betrays
them into the hands of some police officers.
Escaping from their clutches by his activity
and resolution, Paul hastens to London, and
instead of flying from the kingdom forthwith,
he must have an interview with Miss Bran-
don, just to tell her he is utterly unworthy
of her, and shall see her no more. Ac-
complishing this hazardous attempt, he must
needs be chivalrous enough to rescue his com-
panions ; and this also he accomplishes, but
in the act receives a shot in his side, which
disables him, and he is forthwith clapt up in
prison. Now comes on the pathos and the
intensity of the piece. Brandon is now a
judge, and to his lot it falls to try the prisoner.
In the course of the trial he discovers him to
be the son he had so long anxiously been in
search of; but in spite of his appalled and
almost crushing feelings, he goes through
\vith his task and pronounces sentence of
death upon him. The effort, however, con-
spiring with some previous disease, was too
much for him, and in a few hours after he
was found dead in his carriage. The rela-
tionship becomes known, and Miss Brandon
visits her cousin in the prison. His punish-
ment is commuted for transportation. Within
a few months the young lady becomes her
own mistress, with immense property. Paul
escapes; Miss B. joins him, and they fly
to America; where twenty years after Mr.
Clifford is distinguished among the first and
ablest of her citizens. The moral the author
would enforce is, Wilkes's maxim, the very
worst use to which you can put a man is to
hang him.

Of Mr. B.'s merits it is superfluous to
speak; he is at the head of his class; his
knowledge is large, his conceptions vigorous,
his imagination intense, his fancy fertile, his
language apt and exciting, and his range of
subjects especially attractive and adapted to
the age. No man catches better the tone of
the day, or is more capable of speeding the
career of literature.

The Wavcrky Novels. Vols. IX., X.,
XI., and XII. — Sir Walter Scott continues
M.M. Nrie Series VOL. IX. No. 54.

his pleasant revellings. The leading cha-
racters of his tales are most of them sketches
from life ; and however singular the features
of many of them are, faithful copies it seems
of the originals, which either fell under his own
eye, or are communicated by his numerous
friends, his own ready tact detected at a
glance the presentable peculiarities. The
Slack Dwarf is a close copy of one David
Ritchie, a poor man of the hideous form and
features the author so graphically represents
him. He was brought up a brush-maker at
Edinburgh, and after roaming to a variety of
places in quest of a livelihood, finally fled
from the shouts and mockery excited by his
strange deformities, to a sequestered spot in
Peebleshire, where, on the moorland, with
his own hands he built himself a cottage,
and lived on the contributions bestowed by
the fears or the chanties of the neighbour-
hood. His Timonism was of the most ex-
asperated and enduring cast; but though
hating his kind, and children especially, he
was, if not without compensations, not with-
out enjoyments. He loved and felt the
charms of nature. He cultivated a little
garden sedulously, and took an evident pride
in exhibiting its fruits and flowers. He de-
lighted in contemplating the softer beauties
around him — the soft sweep of the green
hill, the bubbling of a clear fountain, &c.
The same love of reposing scenes found a
corresponding indulgence in perusing Shen-
stone's Pastorals, and some of the descriptive
morsels of Milton. Sir Walter heard his
hoarse voice repeat Milton's description of
paradise, which he evidently felt, though the
feeling could not soften his raven-croaking.
Of course he was occasionally the subject of
prying visits. Once a lady who had known
him from infancy, accompanied by another
lady, went into his garden, and happen-
ing to step near some cabbages covered
with caterpillars, one of them smiled. His
savage and scowling aspect was instantly re-
sumed, and rushing among the cabbages, he
dashed them to pieces : — " I hate the worms,
for they mock me." Very unintentional
offence was given by another lady, throwing
back his jealous glance as he was ushering
her into his garden, he fancied he observed
her spit, and exclaimed with great ferocity,
"Am I a toad, woman ! that ye spit at me —
that ye spit at me ?'' and without listening
to any answer or excuse, drove her out of
his garden with imprecations and insult.

Old Mortality, also, the author saw, just as
he has described him, at Dunnattar, occupied
in repairing or adorning the tombs of the
Cameronian -martyrs. A regular biography
of this singular person is given from a com-
munication made to Sir Walter, and taken
from the mouth of a son of the old man.
His name was Robert Pattison. He had
been in husbandry-service, and afterwards
occupied a patch of ground somewhere on the
Duke of Queensbury's estate. When the
Highlanders were returning from England
on the route to Glasgow in 1745 6, they

4 V

714

Monthly Review of Literature,

[[JUNE,

plundered Pattison's house and carried him
prisoner some distance, for exclaiming, " they
might have foreseen their retreat, supporting,
as they were, the wicked and bloody House
of Stuart and the abominations of Rome."
Devoted to the doctrines and preachings of
the Cameronians, he frequently left his home
to attend their conventicles in Galloway, and
occasionally took with him small grave-
stones from the quarry on his little farm to
cover the dust of the righteous, till finally
he abandoned his family altogether, and on
the back of a little poney rode from place to
place, wholly absorbed in his occupation.

The Heart of Mid Lothian was framed
from a few incidents communicated by a
lady of the name of Goldie, the wife of the
Commissary of Dumfries. Helen Walker
had been left an orphan, with the charge of
a sister considerably younger than herself.
This sister was 'unhappily proved guilty of
child-murder, and principally by the evidence
of Hannah. Though deeply distressed, she
refused to equivocate. But the very day of
her sister's condemnation, she got a petition
drawn up, expressive of some peculiar cir-
cumstances in the case, and that same night
set out on foot for London, and getting into
the presence of the Duke of Argyle, had the
good fortune to procure her sister's pardon.
This seems to have taken place about 1738.
Helen died in 1791, and had been seen by
Mrs. Goldie. Her rescued sister was married
by the seducer, and lived happily the greater
part of a century. Out of these slender and
naked materials, Sir Walter constructed the
beautiful tale of Jeanie Deans.

Cabinet Cyclopaedia, vol. VI. ; Lawyers,
ly H. Roscoe, Esq — In the Cabinet Cyclo-
paedia, which proceeds with unusual punc-
tuality, nobody, we observe, writes. Dr.
Lardner " conducts," and others "assist,"
in conducting of course. His assistant in
the sixth volume is Mr. Henry Roseoe, a
younger son of the venerable historian of
the De Medici ; and we presume he has exe-
cuted the task assigned him according to
the terms of his commission : but what
guided Dr. Lardner or his assistant in their
selection of lawyers we cannot divine. We
can account neither for their concluding with
Romilly, nor for their commencing with Coke.
None of any mark it is true have died since
Romilly but Lords Ellenborough and Redes-
dale ; yet either of them was perhaps as
deserving of notice as some of those who
have actually had the honour. Several law-
yers of eminence occur before Coke; and
numbers again between him and Romilly of
more importance than Wilmot, for instance,
who, except in the memorable case of general
warrants, was remarkable for nothing but
his singular good fortune, and perhaps his
gentlemanly bearing on the bench. Dun-
ning again was more of a politician, and Sir
William Jones of a scholar, or a linguist,
than a lawyer ; and certainly both might
have been made to give way to such men as

Coventry, Finch, Holt, Foster, Raymond,
Yorke, Kenyon, &c. If fourteen lawyers
only were to be set forth, surely the fourteen
most distinguished should have been selected ;
and certainly Jefferies was not entitled to
figure as one of that unaccountable number,
of whom Mr. Roscoe himself observes — " his
acquirements as a lawyer were of a mean
order" — concurring also, as he does, in Mr.
Justice Foster's censure, "as theworst judge
that ever disgraced Westminster-hall." —
Lord Guilford again has left no memorial,
and would have been utterly forgotten but
for his very clever but spiteful younger
brother. The truth probably is, the fourteen
names, whose biography actually occupies
the volume, were found upon the whole to
be most accessible, and despatch was the
prime object. But it is lamentable that a
mere accident should for the most part have
decided in so important a point. What is
done, however, is well done for the popular
purpose, in good taste, and generally with
sound judgment in all things but the selection.

Mr. Hallam,in his Constitutional History,
describes Coke as a " flatterer and tool of the
court till he obtained his ends." This was
said apparently on a hasty view of Coke's
character, or rather a partial one, with no-
thing in view indeed but Coke's asperity
towards Essex and Raleigh. Mr. Roscoe
thinks it difficult to say upon what particular
action of Coke's life this censure of Mr.
Hallam's is founded, and softens his own
refutation by complimenting Mr. H. as a
man who seldom makes an assertion without
a competent authority to sustain it. This
is true, remarkably so, of particular facts :
it is in his generalities that Mr. H. ventures
beyond his authorities ; and in his desperate
pursuit of a point he is ready almost to
sacrifice anything that stands in his way. Mr.
Roscoe defends Coke chivalrously enough,
but not altogether judiciously — in the trials
of Essex and Raleigh, he forgets, Coke was
attorney-general, and certainly promoted the
views of the court, and apparently his own
interests.

Baxter tells us that Selden would not
have Hobbes in his chamber while he was
dying, calling out " No atheists." We were
glad to observe that Mr. R. recollected Mr.
D'Israeli's statement from Aubrey's papers,
that Hobbes actually stood by the bedside
of his dying friend. Baxter was at all times
too heated and hurried to weigh the credi-
bility of reports, especially where they accord-
ed with his own feelings.

Somers, as is well known, wrote a pam-
phlet in defence of grand juries, on the occa-
sion of the London jury ignoring the bill
against Shaftesbury. " In one instance," re-
marks Mr. Ro.-,coe, '' he appears to have push-
ed his doctrine to a faulty excess, when he
insists that grand juries are not to be guided
by probabilities only, since in fact all evi-
dence is reducible to a mere probability, as the
testimony of an eye-witness must depend
upon the probability of his speaking the

1830.]

Domestic and Foreign.

715

truth; a probability into which it is frequent-
ly necessary to inquire." Somers obviously
meant the same thing as Mr. Roscoe, though
he did not state the matter quite so metaphy-
sically.

Wilmot's health compelled him to resign
his seat in the Common Pleas, when about
sixty-two. u I would much rather," he writes
to his brother, "resign without any remunera-
tion at all. The plus or the minus of suffi-
ciency lies only in my own breast. I hate
and detest pensions, and hanging upon the
public like an almsman /" A pension, how-
ever, he took, at the particular request of the
king, because, it seems, x" he thought it
would be vanity and affectation to refuse."
Vanity and affectation ! Of course he best
knew the state of his own feelings. No
doubt, he meant the refusal would wear the
appearance of vanity and affectation ; but
surely a man of common nerve might have
very well borne such an imputation.

We do not remember to have seen the
following anecdote of Blackstone ; it bespeaks
more independence than usually he has cre-
dit for. It is in Halliday's Life of Lord
Mansfield. He had been recommended to
the Duke of Newcastle to fill the chair of
civil law at Oxford, and accordingly the
duke sent for him to sound his political
principles. " I presume, Mr. B., in case of
any political agitation, your exertions in be-
Tialf of government may be relied upon ?"
" Your grace may be assured that I will dis-
charge my duty in giving law-lectures to the
best of my poor ability." '* And your duty
in the other branch too ?" added his grace.
Mr. B. merely bowed in answer, and a few
days after Dr. Jenner was appointed to the
vacant chair.

Mr. Roscoe's estimate of Thurlow is worth
quoting.

His language, his mariners, and his demeanour,
constituted the principal ingredients of the charac-
ter attributed to him by his contemporaries. In his
haughty contempt of the opinions of others lay the
wisdom and value of his own ; in the dogmatical
and peremptory tone of his judgments resided a
great part of their profundity and learning ; and in
his rude and repulsive manners might be discovered
the secret of his supposed honesty. But deprived
of these adventitious colourings, his character is
seen under a very different aspect; and when no
longer awed by the terrors of his aspect, we are as-
tonished to discover how small was the spirit which
dwelt within him. To the qualities of a statesman
he had no pretensions ; and by the sullen indiffer-
ence with which he regarded the proceedings of
the cabinet, he seems to have admitted his incapa-
city. During the course of a long official life, he
does not appear to have originated any one great
measure for the benefit of his country. The strong-
est political feeling which he exhibited was an at-
tachment to the person of his sovereign ; and yet we
have seen how easily that sentiment yielded to ap-
prehensions for the safety of his own interests, &c.

Satan, a Poem, by R. Montgomery ;
1830 Thank our stars, Mr. Satan Mont-
gomery has given himself his quietus. We
shalMiear no more of him. Actum est !

The very maidens pious, and dowagers de-
vout, must find their patience oozing at
every pore ; and even the very bishops,
whom he has so devoutly courted, must
think him fitter for straw and a blanket
than the gown and band, to which it seems
he aspires. Such a piece of extravagance
— such tearing and ranting — such a split-
ting of the ears of the groundlings — such a
tumult and crashing of words — we never
witnessed before ! Blackmore's clatter
was a whisper to it ! Not a scantling of
common-sense or simplicity gleams across
any line of any page of it ; and one-half of it,
as the school-boys say, won't construe. The
poem, as the title-page has it, consists of
one long soliloquy of Satan's — recently vi-
siting the earth — perched on Mount Morea,
with all the kingdoms of the world, as he
says, " Before me, like a panorama,
spread."

It matters not where we dip for a few
lines — the roar of the language is the same,
and perfectly stunning. Satan invokes the
thunder — it comes : —

Lo I how it glooms, and what a fiery gash

Deal the red lightnings through yon darkened

sky-
All echo with the chorus of her (nature) clouds !
And well Earth answers to the voice of Heaven.
Hark to the crash of riven forest-boughs
In yonder waste, the home of hurricanes,
That catc'h the howlings of the caverned brutes,
And wing them onwards to Arabia's wild,
O'ercanopicd with flying waves of sand.
Like a dread Ocean whirling thro' the skies !
But thou, alone eternally sublime,
Thou rolling mystery of might and power !
Rocking the tempest on thy breast of waves.
Or spread in breezy rapture to the sun—
Thou daring ocean, that couldst deluge worlds.
And yet rush on — I hear thy swell of wrath
In liquid thunder laughing at the winds
Resoundingly, and from afar behold
Thine armed billows, heaving as they roar,
And the wing'd sea-foam shiver on the gales.
Swell on, ye waves, and whirlwinds, sweep along,
&c.

Satan is exceedingly smitten with Swit-
zerland : —

Sprinkled with mountains, and with cloud-topp'd

hills,

Helvetia swells majestic on my view.
In her primeval glory. Free-soul'd land !
Summer and winter for thy smile contend ;
Witching thy prospects into fairy pomp
With beautiful abruptness ; meadow'd, green.
And glowingly, thy undulating vales
Extend, while fawning vines the hills embrace,
And landscapes, laughing o'er the clouds, may hear
The tempest-howl In cavern gloom below.
And winter hath his triumph ; let the rush
And roar of cataracts, the darksome lakes.
Convulsive rolling in the midnight storm.
The glaciers, billow'd into craggy ice,
And, chief o'er all, the silent Alp-king, rear'd
Like something risen from eternity !—
Let these declare thee for a land sublime,
Home of the dauntless ! on thy patriot soul
While sternness of simplicity can breathe
A Roman vigour, and the name of Tell
4 Y2

716

Monthly Review of Literature.

Haunts, like a hallowing spirit, every vale
And mountain-hollow, Time shall honour thee.
When many an empire shall have pass'd away.
And forests wave where capitals are seen !

One scrap more — one that, if possible,
out-herods Herod ! We do not know what
it is about — but no matter : —
Go, tell the fortress of the hrave and free,
How beautiful her patriotic roar
Of Vict'ry, shouting o'#r the new-made dead,
Like Madness, when she hoots a murd'rous joy ;
So shall a war-fame flourish ever green,
And laurell'd History be trumpet-tongued.
To fire Ambition with a bloody thirst,
And keep the world a slaughter-house for man ! ! !

Reflections on the Decline of Science in
England, and on some of its Causes, by
Charles Babbage, Esq. 8t>o. Felloit/es. — It is
with feelings of no ordinary pride that we
have perused this volume. Deservedly great
as is the sensation it has produced, by bring,
ing into one point of view the various abuses
which have tarnished the scientific character
of England, find entirely destroyed that of
the Royal Society, yet our readers will find
that in this journal we have anticipated what-
ever Mr. Babbage has brought forward, from
those most questionable pendulum experi-
ments of Captain Sabine, which we were the
first to denounce, down to that practical
satire on the Royal, the Medico-Botanical So-
ciety. The novel way of reducing the Green-
wich observations, videlicet, to pasteboard —
the jobbing in the medals, in the appoint-
ments to the Board of Longitude, in the ad-
viserships to the Admiralty, must be familiar
to the readers of our magazine ; and if we
have occasionally endeavoured to extract
amusement from some proceedings at Cam-
bridge, the justly high terms in which Mr.
Babbage speaks of that university strictly
convey our own sentiments, and no one can
entertain a more exalted opinion than our-
selves of the eminent professor, one of whose
papers appeared in these pages, so whimsi-
cally versified by an ingenious correspondent.

We are not surprised at the style in which
this book is written ; it is the language of a
philosopher, indignant at the quackeries of
those who1 have assumed to disgrace the
name ; yet exposure would have sufficed for
the ends of justice ; the affairs are too gross,
disgusting and palpable. The following is
a specimen of the v/ork.

"Surely, if knowledge is valuable, it cr.n never
be good policy, in a country far wealthier then
Tuscany, to allow a genius like Mr. Dalton's to be
employed in the drudgery of elementary instruc-
tion. I utter these sentiments from no feelings of
private friendship to that estimable philosopher, to
whom it is my regret to be almost unknown, and
whose modest and retiring merit, I may, perhaps,
have the misfortune to offend by these remarks.
But Mr. Dalton was of no party; had he ever
moved in that vortex, which has brought discredit,
and almost ruin, on the Royal Society of England ;
had he taken part with those who vote to each
other medals ; and, affecting to be tired of the fa-
tigues of office, make to each other requisitions to re-
tain places they would be most reluctant to quit ; his
great and splendid discovery would long since have

been represented to Government. Expectant me-
diocrity would have urged on its claims to remune-
ration, and those who covered their selfish purposes
with the cloak of science, would have hastened to
shelter themselves in the mantle of his glory. But
the philosopher may find consolation for the tardy
approbation of that Society in the applause of
Europe. If he was insulted by their medal, he
escaped the pain of seeing his name connected with
their proceedings.''--!1. 20.

As Mr. Babbage has withheld the names
of the culprits, we shall treat them 3vith the
same forbearance. In another place we find
«• It is the custom to attach certain letters to the
names of those who belong to different societies,
and these marks of ownership are by many con-
sidered the only valuable part of their purchase on
entry. The following is a list of some of these
societies. The second column gives the ready-
money prices of the tail pieces indicated in the
third. (We omit the table.) Thus, those who are
ambitious of scientific distinction may, according
to their fancy, render their name a kind of comet,
carrying with it a tail of upwards of forty letters,
at the average cost of 10?. 9s. 9$d. per letter."—?
42.

Cometary tails, indeed.! — much more like
pig-tails. A Chinaman is disgraced when
his tail is cut off, an Englishman when he
retains it. Concerning the Medico-Botanical
Society, we find

" It would be at once a judicious and a dignified
course, if those lovers of science, who have been
so grievously deceived in this Society, were to en-
rol upon the latest pages of its history its highest
claim to public approbation, and, by signing its dis-
solution, offer the only atonement in their power to
the insulted science of their country. As with a
singular inversion of principle, the Society contrived
to render expulsion the highest honour it could
confer ; so it remains for it to exemplify, in suicide,
the sublimest virtue of which it is capable."— P. 49.

The irony of the following passage is
unique.

•• Doubtless, thepresiclent.in making thatappoint-
ment, (of Mr. Brande, a chemist, we believe, to the
secretaryship of the Royal Society,) looked most an-
xiously over the list of the Royal Society. He, doubt-
less, knew that the Academies of Sweden, of Den-
mark, of Scotland, of Russia, of Hanover, and of
France, derived honour from the discoveries of their
secretaries ; that they prided themselves in the names
of Berzelius, of Oersted, of Brewster, of Encke, of
Gauss, and of Cuvier. Doubtless the president
must have been ambitious that England should con-
tribute to this galaxy of glory, that the Royal So-
ciety should restore the lost Pleiad * to the admiring
science of Europe. But he could discover no kindred
name among the ranks of his supporters, and forgot,
for a moment, the interest of the Society in an
amiable consideration for the feelings of his sur-
rounding friends. For had the president chosen a
brighter star, the lustre of his other officers might
have been overpowered by its splendour ; but, re-
lieved from the pain of such a contrast, he may still
retain the hope, that, by their united brightness,
these suns of his little system shall yet afford suffi-
cient light to be together visible to distant nations,
as a faint nebula in the obscure horizon of English
science." — P. 97-

* " Pleiades, an assemblage of seven stars in the
neck of the constellation Taurus. There are now
only six of them visible to the naked eye.''— Button's
Dictionary— Art. Pleiades.

1830.]

Fine Arts' Exhibitions.

717

There is one subject on which we regret
that Mr. Babbage should have been almost
silent, it is the you tickle me I tickle you
system carried on between this country and
the continent, in the interchange of medals,
and the reciprocal pigtails appended by the
philosophers of France and England. For
example, if B., an official member of the
Royal Society, will obtain for C., a member
of the Institute of France, or for his nominee,
a Copley medal, let us say, or the caudal ap-
pendage of F.R.S., C. wilt obtain for B., or
for his nominee, the Lalande, we will sup-
pose, in return, or the dignity of Foreign As-
sociate of the Academy of Sciences, F. A. A. S.
let us call it. We refrain from enlarging
upon this subject; they whom it concerns
will see that we understand it.

Great dissatisfaction has been expressed by
the troop of mediocre men, who now engross
and degrade every situation misnamed a
scientific appointment, that their qualifica-
tions and proceedings should be the object of
anonymous criticism. The writer who ar-

gues upon facts, avowed and acknow-
ledged to be such, need not append his name
to his reasonings, they must stand or fall by
their own intrinsic merit; and it is not every
one who is in a situation to brave the mali-
cious vengeance of official vermin, wriggling
in and battening on the corruption they pro-
duce. Mr. Babbage can venture to stand
forward, and he has done so : the worthy oc-
cupant of the chair which Newton held, con-
ferring equal honour to that which he re-
ceives, he has added the authority of his
name to censures of which the severity is not
equal to the justice. If the coterie, or cabal,
or whatever it is to be called whose malprac-
tices have rendered necessary the work before
us, should attempt to reply to it, let us hope
that these abhorrers of anonymous criticism
will not practise what they condemn. Their
little names will compensate by numbers
their deficiency of weight ; and they can
supply by assurance what they want in
capacity.

FINE ARTS' EXHIBITIONS.

EXHIBITION OP THE ROYAL ACADEMY.

LIKE the rest of the world, we have seen
the sixty-second exhibition of the Royal
Academy ; and we will confess at once, as
the world would do if it had a little more
sincerity in it, that we are infinitely more
displeased than delighted. We are aware
that it is a custom with critics of all sorts to
take the good things of this academy for
granted. It is the fashion (and a very con-
venient one it is) to open a catalogue, to
mark all the great names, and to pour out
praises upon them in exact proportion to
their popularity. We are in the habit of
being told, a week or two 'previous to the
annual opening, that somebody has per-
formed prodigies of painting ; and that some-
body else is to illumine all the town with the
brilliancy of his pencil ; that one academi-
cian has surpassed all the .world, and that
a second has surpassed himself; in short,
that Titian has out-Titianed everybody, and
that Correggio has displayed his usual Cor-
reggioscity. The consequence of this is,
that for six weeks every year the entire con-
tents of the respective parishes of St. James
and St. Giles are poured promiscuously into
Somerset-house ; until fashion grows almost
ashamed of its folly, and surrenders itself up
to fatigue — criticism takes place of cant —
the Vandyckes turn out to be nothing but
Jacksons, and the fifty superlative pictures
dwindle down to five ; the " eleven buck-
ram men" relapse again into the Prince and
Poins. In the meantime, however, artists
and the academy pocket prodigious sums,
and the arts are said to be flourishing because
its professors are ; which is about as true as
that the Argyle-rooms flourished on fire, be-
cause Chabert did. Wherever we meet with
this spirit of puffing and pretension, we de-

spise it ; but we detest it most especially in
art, because from long standing it has ac-
quired something like a sacred and exclusive
character. Artists in general are at least a
day behind the rest of the world. While
others have been looking into the current,
they have watched only the ripples on the
surface. Instead of tracing out events, and
observing the progress of moral enlightenment
and opinion, they have marked only the
changes of manners ; and have been for the
most part too much occupied in copying an
expression to think about the emotion that
produced it, or to judge of the mysteries and
marvels that were working in the human
mind. They look about for the picturesque,
but they have no conception of the earth-
quake that has occasioned it. In short they
are a conventional set of people, who have en-
veloped themselves in modes and systems
till they hardly understand the meaning of
them ; and who have confined the expression
of their ideas to set phrases and terms of art
until they have half forgotten the common lan-
guage of society. We are speaking of them
en masse; there are among them many,
very many, accomplished and intellectual
men. But Arcadia, we are told, was at one
time celebrated for its asses as well as its
poetical associations ; and we think this Ar-
cadian mixture of obstinacy and dullness in
a region of poetry and romance, this deter-
mination not to go on where there is so much
to attract and to urge it to advancement,
presents with tolerable accuracy a picture of
nine, tenths of the exhibitors that have this
year figured in the Royal Academy.

These remarks are not out of season ; for
a new era in art may be said to have com-
menced. This is the first exhibition of the
reign of a new president, and the last that

718

Fine Arts' Exhibitions.

will be graced by the productions of Law-
rence. We are anxious therefore to tell the
truth at the outset. We are convinced, from
the pictures we have just seen (we knew it
before, but we feel it with a deeper certainty
now), that the loss of this extraordinary man
is an irreparable one. Nor can we entertain
any strong hope that this loss will be alle-
viated by the appointment to the presi-
dentship of a person, who, likeMr. Shee, aims
at the artificial instead of the natural, sneers
at some of the grandest works of antiquity,
and thinks the Elgin Marbles an imposture.
There is but too much reason to fear that
the sound views of art which characterized
Sir Thomas Lawrence, — that grand principle
which led him to encourage whatever was
pure and exalted in art, and that fine taste
that invariably directed him in the search of
it — will have little influence in the future
government of the academy. But we hate pre-
dictions, particularly when they are gloomy ;
and we earnestly hope that Mr. Shee and the
rest of the R.A.'s will disappoint us.

We will now offer a remark or two upon
some of the pictures, taking the names as
they stand in the catalogue, and commencing
with

PHILLIPS. This artist, who is at the
head of the "usual excellence" school, should
never paint below the third button-hole. His
heads are remarkable for broad handling,
and occasionally for simplicity and purity of
colour ; but he seems to scorn the nicer arts
by which Lawrence attained his peculiar de-
licacy of expression. This is more especially
evident in his female figures, which are
almost invariably coarse, vulgar, and over-
charged. They have no refinement of feel-
ing— they are mere faces without the poetry
of spirit. His Nos. 1 and 36 are both good;
but the full length No. 104, is stiff and
studied. Every thing is so nice and new,
that the gentleman seems as if he had been
sitting to Mr. Stultz as well as Mr. Phillips.

TURNER seems resolved to puzzle both
artist and amateur ; but we must admit that
he seldom fails to astonish. This he effects
by a daring, that if it far oversteps the mo-
desty of nature, succeeds in the extravagant ;
and atones by a dazzling and voluptuous glare
for the want of the purer light of simplicity
and truth. His landscapes are too much
like " Lalla Rookh" to be perpetually pleas-
ing— our love " falls asleep o'er their same-
ness of splendour." Yet they seem creations
of the very genius of colour — " Palestrina"
and " Calais sands," in the present exhibi-
tion, are examples. With regard to his pic-
ture of " Jessica," it may be called a bril-
liant blunder; for that something was meant
we are willing to believe. The artist had
no doubt some sublime intention or other,
though he has forgotten what it was. There
is a report abroad, to be sure, that it is the
production of a young lady of thirteen, and
that it was painted at a boarding-school at
Clapham. Turner having an eye for yellow -
ocre, was struck by the promise that it held

forth ; and it being a fashion of the day for
great men to lend their names to the pro-
ductions of other people, he offered to place it
in the academy as his own — and there it ac-
cordingly is, to the utter annihilation of a
beautiful picture of Boxall's hung imme-
diately over it. " Pilate washing his hands"
is as a composition almost ludicrous. It is
a mere sketch which should have been kept
in his studio ; and not have been suffered,
from vanity or avarice, to have been the
means of excluding better pictures and of
destroying the effect of every thing around it.
If Mr. Turner supposes that the public can
be interested about such eccentricities, he in-
sults them. Sir Walter Scott might as well
publish his washing-bills embellished with
engravings.

CONSTABLE almost justifies Fuseli's cele-
brated desire for an umbrella, when he was
looking at one of this artist's landscapes ;
they are always wet, always smiling through
a shower. He may be called the father of
the umbrella-school of painting. In No. 19,
a Dell-scene, there is a fine freshness of
green, and a great deal of brilliant but not
natural colour.

BRIGGS is not, we fear, advancing so fast
as might be wished. In his " Ines De Castro,"
No. 20, which is in many respects exceed-
ingly clever, there is a sad want of taste in
the colour and costume. It looks like a
picture pain ted for a green-room : his genius,
like Stanfield's, may be said to have been
nurtured in a theatre. His pictures are only
stage-representations of history, or nature at
-second-hand.

ETTY'S mind appears so steeped in his
recollections of the old Italian masters, and
so wedded to the academy models, that his
exquisite taste for colour becomes clogged by
mechanical routine. We are rejoiced how-
ever to see that he adheres to large pictures ;
and we are glad that the Edinburgh Academy
of painting, for whom his "Judith" in
the present exhibition was painted, has had
spirit enough to encourage such a style. This
is the only picture in the collection that
evinces a devoted feeling for historic art on
a large scale : it is a noble production. It
has been objected, that the head of the prin-
cipal figure is turned away; but Etty, it
must be recollected,cultivates what SirJoshua
Reynolds called the ornamental style ; and
he cares less therefore about the delicacies of
expression, than picturesque attitude and
splendid colouring. The Storm, No. 37, is
admirable ; a sublimity of effect is produced
by the simplest means, the figures are
exquisitely painted, and their expressions
convey at once an entire history of the scene.
The Dancer, 380, is a fine study for colour;
and a still finer one will be found in the fe-
male figure in " Gyges exhibiting his wife
to his friend." This subject has been se-
lected for the opportunity of painting the
principal figure; but the story is strangely
told, and all the figures, we think, are some-
what out of drawing.

1830.]

Fine Arts' Exhibitions.

719

SIR WILLIAM BEECHEY has not dis-
appointed us, for we have long since ceased
to expect. We can assure him, however,
that his reputation will not be injured by his
present pictures, for they are at least as bad
as the worst of his former productions. They
exhibit the same amount of despicable draw-
ing and still more despicable colouring. The
Duke of Somerset, who figures in a fine
frame, No. 47, is a very ill-used nobleman ;
and as for the " gentleman" whose picture
is numbered 302, he would be justified in
challenging Sir William, or at least in com-
mencing an action for libel. They have
made us laugh, however, and we will not be
ungrateful.

JACKSON shines this year in the full
blaze of his mediocrity ; and if he gives us
no great deal to censure, he gives us still less
to admire. In his portrait of the Marquis
of Chandos the point of sight is too low — it
would be impossible to see the figure as it is
placed. The back-ground is composed en-
tirely of smoke and cloud ; and the Marquis
is made to appear like a gentleman in nubi-
bus, or like Mr. Sadler just escaped from a
balloon.

ROTH WELL. This artist will, we feel
convinced, appear to infinitely greater ad-
vantage next year, when there are no pictures
of Lawrence's to overshadow him. He has
little to fear from others. The raptures that
preceded his appearance must have done him
considerable injury, by exciting expectations,
and occasioning a feeling somewhat akin
to disappointment. His 347 and 447 are
perhaps his best pictures. His "Lord
Downes" and "Col. D'Aguilar" are both
good likenesses.

J. WARD'S Fall of Phaeton, No. 53, is
a weak imitation of Rubens. It is spirited,
but not poetical. The picture should have
been called " Astley's broke loose." Phaeton
looks extremely like Mr. Ducrow flying after
his stud. This artist's picture of " Venus
rising from her Couch" is poor in all respects,
but in colour especially. The Venus is
worthy of attention on the score of origina-
lity ; the artist has successfully got rid of the
vulgar idea of grace and beauty that has
been hitherto associated with his subject.

SHEE, though still inferior to many of his
brethren in art, has taken great pains this
year. Of his several pictures " Lavinia"
is, perhaps, the worst. It is meagre in form
and composition, impure in colour, and utter-
ly destitute of natural grace and sweetness of
expression. His portrait of Mr. Wynne is
carefully finished ; but he apparently cannot
divest himself of a certain waxen appearance
in his flesh. This is most evident in his
female portraits, which generally look as if
they had been copied from Mrs. Salmon's
studies. He is too fond of touches of ver-
million in his shadows — they tend to give a
heated and unnatural effect to many of his
pictures.

WILKIE'S best picture thisyearis the Gue-
fs Return. His portrait of the king has

disappointed us. There is no defined out-
line in this picture — the limbs are rounded
off into air ; the figure seems melting away
in a Scotch mist. In " Holyrood" he has
grappled a very difficult subject with much
vigour and success. The principal figure,
however, is painted in a very quizzical spirit.
The effect of the colouring is somewhat in-
jured, by a broad brown shade extending over
the back ground ; this should have been, as
in nature, more grey in parts.

WE STALL is this year precisely where he
was many years ago— there is no alteration,
no acquirement of ease and freedom of style.
In his portrait of the princess Victoria, he
has tried to make a pleasing little girl look
as much like a princess as possible; but
the picture is, to our taste, lamentably ludi-
crous. His " Sister of Viola" is crude, hard,
and singularly innocent of all pretension to
character.

LAWRENCE. The pictures of this master
of grace are hallowed— they are the last upon
which his pencil was employed. The por-
traits of Miss Fry, Moore, and Lord Aber-
deen are, we think, the finest — that of An-
gerstein the most finished. We shall see no
more such portraits.

CALLCOTT'S Italian composition Morn-
ingis, perhaps — we are saying a great deal — •
the very best that he has painted. It has
all the quiet and sweetness of Claude — it is
full of air. The gradations of tint from
warm to cold are exquisite and imper-
ceptible.

HOWARD'S May Morning is a complete
contradiction to the description ; instead of
" dancing from the east," it is a mere piece
of still-life. His picture of " Shakspeare"
has been called sublime — it is nearer to it
than many may imagine ; according to Na-
poleon, it is but a step off. Nothing can
exceed the want of taste evinced in this com-
position; it is the work of an ambitious
imagination that " falls on the other side."

EAST LAKE'S Una delivering the Red
Cross Knight is finished with great care;
but there is a want of originality in it. The
imaginative parts are the worst.

MULREADY is becoming a mannerist,
and copies from himself. His " Dog of two
minds" displays but little humour, and is
far too hotly coloured.

DANIEL has a Scene from the Red Rover.
The sky and sea are very well painted, and
there is little else in the picture. The effect,
however, is striking.

PICKERSGILL has nothing this year equal
to his Jeremy Bentham in the last exhibi-
tion. We may say of Pickersgill that he
never offends, and that he seems satisfied
with merely pleasing. His females want
the mental charm that all great pictures
should possess. His portrait of Lockhart is
a good likeness.

NEWTON is a wonderful example of what
taste and feeling will do without much ele-
mentary knowledge of art. His " Shylock
and Jessica" has less of this knowledge

720 Agricultural Report.

than any picture in the exhibition; and it magnificent picture; the water is liquid,

is the best in it for expression, character, and clear, and full of motion. While Turner

colour. His u Boniface" is almost equal to is struggling to arrive at a point by poe-

it. Yet Newton is not an R. A. ! tical effect, Stanfield appears to arrive at

COLLINS is the same as ever — rich in it unconsciously, and almost without an

sea-side stories, and exquisite little touches effort,
of scenery and character. EDWIN LANDSEER has two or three

STOTHARU'S Frith of Clyde is interesting pictures; one containing portraits of the

— as it shows how wretchedly a clever man Duke of Atholl and others, is partly spoiled

can paint if he chooses. by the nature of its subject. The dogs and

CLINT is improving in colour; but his deer are admirably painted. This picture is

" Love, Law, and Physic" is not equal to in parts almost unrivalled for its lightness

his " Charles XII." His portrait of Lord and elegance of touch.

Suffield is a deplorable failure, and contrasts LIN TON has a tasteless and purply coin-
very curiously with position called " Zagarolo," very different in

Mrs. CARPENTER'S portrait of H. Hoare, its style to one that hangs opposite it, viz.
Esq. which is remarkable for its simplicity LEE'S Water Mill, a bold, fresh, and

and freedom. In this picture there is no finely coloured picture, full of nature, and

straining after effect — no vulgarity of taste. aiming at nothing more.

STANFIELD'S Mount St. Michael is a

MONTHLY AGRICULTURAL REPORT.

WE have before remarked on the anomaly, and a remarkable one it is, that malgrt the
great distress actually existing in the country, all rural occupations are proceeding regularly,
the land is fully tilled, though certainly not in the best and most advantageous manner, more
corn, particularly wheat, has been sown than in any former year, and more cattle bred. .Thus
our distress and want, and predicted ruin, co-exist with the most exuberant and super-
abundant national stock of all the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life — money,
that never fails to make " the mare to go." included. It would require a long and painful
disquisition, for which here is no place, to solve this politico-economical riddle. The last
year's wheat crop has proved even more defective than was apprehended before Christmas,
by our most sensitive alarmists ; and granting more abundance of other corn and pulse,
their condition was such from the continued unfavourable state of the weather during the
summer season, that whatever the farmer might have profited by large acreable quantity,
was lost by depreciation on sale. No surer proof can be adduced of the great, and not of
late years, paralleled deficiency of our wheat crop, than the paucity of British samples
which has been so long exhibited at the Corn Exchange in London, and the immense num-
ber of foreign, the price, at the same time, to be considered high, with seldom any
material declension, the demand also increasing in various parts of the country for foreign
wheat. The circumstance particularly attracted our attention some time since, that fine
foreign wheat was worth ninety-two per quarter, when the finest and best English would
scarcely obtain eighty-two; a superiority of price in foreign wheat of which we have no previous
recollection. In former days, English wheat, with very few and occasional exceptions, always
yielded the highest price in our markets. Doubtless, the last unfortunate season, both
with respect to com and cattle, must have brought heavy losses on our whole farming
interest, but it has been remarked, that one bad year alone could not ruin such a number of
the tenantry. In all probability, the seeds of this distress had been previously sown. But how
are we to reconcile this risk and loss on the tillage of the land, with the following informa-
tion ? Very lately, some small pieces of land at Devizes, Wilts, belonging to a public
charity, were let at the enormous rent of seven and nine pounds per acre.

The last two months, bating about a fortnight in April, and the intervention of several
changes to a north-eastern temperature, have been most propitious to all the growing crops.
The fortnight of unfavourable weather much retarded the final preparations for seed, of
heavy and wet lands. Thus though a favourable, this is not a very forward season, yet from the
healthy and luxuriant appearance of the corn crops, should the summer solstice commence
favourably, and the redoubtable St. Swithin prove auspicious, we may reasonably expect an
early harvest. The wheats, with the exceptions formerly made, of poor, hungry soils, and
of the late-sown and insufficiently tilled, exhibit universally a rich, healthy, and exuberant
show of deep and shining verdure. The same verdict may be given of the Spring crops,
both corn and pulse, particularly of the early sown, though those unavoidably deferred to
the last have been committed to the ground under very favourable circumstances, and are
springing up with the appearance of much health and vigour. Winter tares perhaps the
worst crop of the year ; those of the Spring will produce a heavy burden. The ground in-
sects, wire-worm and grub, have thinned much of the poor land wheats. The early barley,
generally flourishing, on some farms are thin sown ; a circumstance generally attributed to

1830.] Agricultural Report. 721

deficient .quantity of seed. We incline to refer it to other causes. The best new beans and
Spring tare seed are much in request. Broad clover seed which can be depended on, com-
mands any price that can be asked. According to our late information, the wheats in the
East Riding of Yorkshire have the least promising appearance of those in any other district.
On forward soils, the chief occupation at present is preparing the land for turnip seed ; more
generally the completion of barley sowing and potatoe planting, which among the most
backward will scarcely end with May.

A finer or more bulky appearance of the grasses natural and sown has scarcely appeared
in any season, and the present warm and showery weather will still increase the bulk. In
our country, hayset will commence with June. What is to be done with the stock of old
hay, is yet a mystery ; much of the ordinary sort however, has lately been sold for litter,
as more easily obtained than straw, which is as scarce as hay is superabundant. It is said
that grass lands in Scotland let readily at the old rents, with occasionally some advanced.
As to live-stock, the fall of lambs, notwithstanding certain drawbacks, has been eminently
successful, and they who possess the means, or the power of earning the means, need be un-
der no apprehension of a want of either lamb or mutton. What a national disgrace it is that
such numbers both able and willing to labour must inevitably be (shall we say ?) defrauded
of their fair share of this common good ! Hence the horrible dissolution of morals, venge-
ance, destruction, incendiarism, by which we have been so long and constantly appalled !
Store stock of all kinds have perhaps advanced from ten to fifteen per cent, at the great
fairs, excepting those where the numbers have too far exceeded the demand ; and as this
has occurred somewhat frequently, it manifests the great extent of stock in the country. The
graziers and feeders, sore and apprehensive from their ill success during the last year, pur-
chase with trembling caution and little hope, and too many must do so on credit. Of
horses, all we have to add is ditto long since and often repeated — the ordinary kinds, when
they can be sold, persuade an ordinary price ; the superior, all that can be demanded for
them. Our Scottish farming brethren, in mockery of the distress of the times, have yet the
spirit to part with, from thirty to forty and fifty pounds each, in exchange for good draught
horses. The hops have had a visit from the fly during the intervals of north-eastern tem-
perature, but are nevertheless strong and luxuriant in bine, and thus far of good promise.
Little variation or no advance in price. It is the general opinion that there need be no
apprehensions of the coming crop of apples equalling the superabundance of the last, from
the damage received by the trees during the unfavourable months of the past summer ;
other fruits are of the highest promise, yet much destruction must have been made of the
blossoms by the late storms of wind.

For novelties, his Grace the Primate has, with equal policy and patriotism, moved for the
" Composition of Tithes :" the times are not yet ripe for their abolition! A new species of
cattle food is under late recommendation — the symphytum asperrimum, or prickly comfrey,
for which we refer to the Farmer's Journal, May 17- — The produce is immensely bulky,
and cattle must be accustomed to it, before they will take it readily ; always the case in
our country, so fruitful in natural grasses and the superior kinds of the artificial. More-
over, where the quantity superabounds, the quality seldom or never holds way with it. Mr.
Lawrence, after the example of the late Mr. Young, took great pains to introduce the cul-
ture of Millelot, so extensively used on the Continent, but without success ; our animals
indeed, horses particularly, will eat it, but they have the good taste to prefer superior green
food. Our brother scribes of Scotland continue decidedly vermincous, top-full of the fly.
fancy, and from the Carse of Gowrie, as usual, smartly severe upon us corruptionists.
Nevertheless and however, corruption ever precedes the generation of the aphis, and no cor-
ruption of blight, no aphides. Where the devil then are they in genial seasons, when those
beautiful insects are neither seen, felt, heard, nor understood ? But as our brethren seem
so solicitous to obtain a new understanding of this winged subject, they doubtless further
meditate a war of extermination against the flies, on the success of which we congratulate
them in prospectu. From Chichester we learn that the buyers and sellers of corn have
gone to loggerheads, on that most important subject the imperial measure. Surely the
most rational and easy mode of settling the difference would be in the difference of price.
Equally sure is the legislative absurdity of not making the rule equally imperative as im-
perial. The reader is requested to correct a press error in the last Report — marygold should
be read mangold or beet.

Smithfield — Beef, 3s. 2d. to 4s. 2d — Mutton, 3s. 2d. to 4s. 4d Veal, 4s. 2d. to 5s. 4d.

Pork, 3s. 6d- to.4s. 8d. — Lamb, 5s. Gd. to 6s. 9d.— Raw Fat, 2s. Id.

Corn Exchange — Wheat, 48s. to 80s.; foreign, 53s to 90s.— Barley, 24s. to 40s

Oats, 19s. to 32s — London fine 4-lb. loaf, 10£d — Hay, 40s. to 100s. per load — Clover,
ditto, 60s. to 105s. — Straw, 46s. to 55s.

Coals in the Pool, 27s. to 35s. 6d. per chaldron.

Middlesex, May 24.

M.M. New Series.— Vol. IX. No. 54. 4 Z

722 Commercial Report. [\JuNE,

MONTHLY COMMERCIAL REPORT.

SUGAR. — The demand for sugar was general and extensive; the estimated sales of West
India Muscovadoes were 3,300 hogsheads and tierces. Purchases of Mauritius exceeded
24,000 bags, all sold at full market prices. At the close of the market this afternoon, the
estimated, of West India, were 900 hogsheads and tierces. A supply of refined continues
inadequate to the demand : orders for crushed cold, not to be executed ; there being none in
the market. Shipping goods are nearly as scarce. Scarcely any advance of price were ob-
tained. Lumps went off freely, fine double-refined bounty are much sought after. Grocery
goods in steady request, full prices obtained; molasses are lower. — Foreign Sugars. — The
yellow sold' (fine) at 27s., low down to 24s., the fine white all taken in 42s. at 42s. 6d.
low yellow. Havannah, by private contract, 24s. White Pernams, at former rates at
public sale. 754 boxes, Havannah sugar : nearly the whole were yellow descriptions ; a
considerable proportion sold, 21s. for low yellow up to 25s. 6d. for the fine old soft white
Havannah sold at 36s. 6d. and ordered to good brown, 17s. to 21s. 6d. The Bengal sugars,
at the India House, sold Is. above last sale prices. At public sales last week were brought
forward 24,000 bags of Mauritius, the whole sold at full market prices. Six hundred and
nine pacts, East India : the white sold at full market rates ; strong lots rather higher.
Siam sugar steadily at market prices.

COFFEE. — The Coffee market was dull last week ; prices a shade lower. A proportion
of Demerara and Berbice were taken. Jamaica at nearly the same decline : fine middling
70s. to 75s ; good middling 63s. to 66s. Cherilon and Sumatra 31s. ; good old St. Do-
mingo at 32s. ; the Ceylon sold at 32s. ; Mocha sold lower ; Demerara and Jamaica sold
freely at higher prices.

RUM, BRANDY, HOLLANDS. — There are no sales of rum worth reporting, they are
confined to small of fine Jamaica. In brandy and Geneva there are no purchases.

HEMP, FLAX, TALLOW. — The tallow-market is more firm, on account of an advance
at Petersburgh. In Hemp and Flax there is no alteration worth reporting. The letters
from St. Petersburgh are dated the 30th ult. Exchange lOd. 13. 32. Tallow 95 rubles.
Bought 1500 casks. London Tallow 34s. 6d. at 34s. 9d., ditto for arrival 36s.

Course of Foreign Exchange. — Amsterdam, 12. 7« — Rotterdam, 12. 7- — Antwerp,
12. 7 — Hamburgh, 14. 1 Paris, 0 — Bordeaux, 26. 0.— Frankfort, 10.— Peters-
burgh, 10.— Vienna, 10. 15.— Madrid, 36.— Cadiz, 36 0^.— Bilboa, 36. Of.— Barcelona,
35. Of. -Seville, 35. Of.— Gibraltar, 47- 0|.— Leghorn, 47. 0^.— Genoa, 25. 90.- Venice,
47. 04.— Malta, 48. 0|.— Naples, 39. Of .—Palermo, 118^.— Lisbon, 44.— Oporto, 43. Of.
— Rio Janeiro, 21. Oi — Bahia, 27^.— Dublin, 1. 0^. — Cork, 1. 0£.

Bullion per Oz — Portugal Gold in Coin, £0. Os. Od — Foreign Gold in Bars,

£3. 17s. 9d — New Doubloons, £0. 4s. 9£d.— New Dollars, £0. Os. Od Silver in Bars

(standard), £0. Os. Od.

Premiums on Shares and Canals, and Joint Stock Companies, at the Office of
WOLFE, Brothers, 23, Change Alley, Cornhill. — Birmingham CANAL (£ sh.), 2911 —

Coventry, 860? — Ellesmere and Chester, 99? Grand Junction, 295?. — Kennet and Avon,

28?., — Leeds and Liverpool, 465?. — Oxford, 640? — Regent's, 23?.— Trent and Mersey
(£ sh.), 780J. — Warwick and Birmingham, 270?.— London DOCKS (Stock), 80f?.— West

India (Stock), 193? East London WATER-WORKS, 123?. — Grand Junction, 07. —

West Middlesex, 80? — Alliance British and Foreign INSURANCE, 10?._Globe, 0?.
— Guardian, 26|?. — Hope Life, 6£?. — Imperial Fire, 120?. — GAS-LIGHT Westminster
chartered Company, 58±?. — City, 190?. — British, 0?.— Leeds, 195?.

1830.] [ 723 ]

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF BANKRUPTCIES,

Announced from April 22d to May 22d, 1830, in the London Gazette.

BANKRUPTCIES SUPERSEDED.

L. Pccqueur, Paddington-street, upholsterer

E. Knibb, Liverpool, draper

J. Hayes, C. F. Hayes, and C. M'Cullum, Albury

Mills, Surrey, paper manufacturers
M. and W. Wainwright, Leeds, warehousemen
J. Cromptw, Rushcroft, fustian manufacturer
T. Moor, Leadenhall-street, woollen-draper

W. Clark, Leadenhall-street, woollen-draper
W. Cole and R. K. Vorley, Suffolk-lane, hop-
merchants

J. Whitelock, Stranton New Mill, Durham, miller
J. Tarver, Wolverton, carpenter
M. George, Margate, draper
A. D. Swinton, Salisbury-square, medicine vender
J. Stevenson, Stafford, dealer

BANKRUPTCIES.
[This Month 151.]

Solicitors'1 Names are in parentheses.

Archer, W. Pimlico, and Percy-street, boarding-
house-keeper. (Goren and Co. Orchard-street
Appleyard, J. Telford, miller. (Norris and Co.

John-street; Barker, Horncastle
Armstrong, T. Boroughbridge, corn-merchant.

(Blakelock and Co. Serjeant's-inn ; Richardson,

Knaresborough

Austin, J. Shoreditch, grocer. (Jones, Size-lane
Ainsley, T. Doncaster, cornfactor. (Perkins and

Co. Gray's-inn ; Clarke aud Co. Barnsley
Arkinstall. J. Birmingham, tea-dealer. (Tooke and

Co. Bedford-row ; Capper, Birmingham
Bennett, J. Newtown, coal-dealer. (Bigg, South-
ampton-buildings ; Marsh, Llanidloes
Brownrigg, J. Keswick, woollen-manufacturer.

(Addison, Gray's-inn ; Lightfoot, Keswick
Brooks, J. Spa-fields, Lincoln's-inn-fields, builder

and bill-broker. (Thornbury, Chancery-lane
Bishop, W. Lambeth, victualler. (Whitehouse,

Castle-street, Holborn
Burleigh, W. Toppesfield, tailor. (Preston and Co.

St. Mildred's-court
Brooks, G. E. Old Bond-street, auctioneer. (Raphael,

Fitzroy-square
Barringer, S. N. St. John-street, tavern-keeper.

(Umney, Chancery-lane
Baines, T. R. Chancery-lane, victualler. (Williams

and Co. Lincoln's-inn-fields
Bertles, P. jun. Rochdale, inn-keeper. (Milne and

Co. Temple; Walker and Co. Manchester
Benison, S. Stockport, ironmonger. (Tyler, Tem-
ple; Hunt and Co. Stockport
Bell, C. Billiter-street, wine-merchant. (Miller,

Ely-place
Barber, R. Walsall, wine-merchant. (Austen and

Co. Gray's-inn; Jesson, Walsall
Barker, J. Tooley-street, bacon-factor. (Smithson

and Co. New-inn
Brackenbury, J. Tetford, shoemaker. (Norris and

Co. Bedford-row ; Barker, Horncastle
Brown, G. East India-chambers, scrivener. (Norton,

New-street
Ball, R. J. Camberwell New-road, schoolmaster.

(Carter and Co. Royal Exchange
Barret, W. H.H. Rugby, wine-merchant. (Starling,

Leicester-square
.Bond, S. jun. Honiton, coach-maker. (Rhodes and

Co. Chancery-lane ; Flood and Co. Honiton
Brotherston, J. Liverpool, merchant. (Blackstock

and Co. Temple ; Pritt and Co. Liverpool
Bullcy, R. sen. Maldon, tailor. (Parker, Gray's-inn
Back, R. M itchell-street, baokmaker. (Ewington,

Finsbury-square
Belton, W. Skinner-streef, victualler. (Duncan,

Lincoln's-i nn-fields
Brough, J. King's-street, victualler. (Bell and Co.

Bow Churchyard
Binns, W. Staly Bridge, cotton-spinner. (Clarke

and Co. Lincoln's-inn ; Higginbottom, Ashton-

under-Lyne
Cadby, S. Water-lane and Leicester-square, general

agent and tailor. (Capes, Gray's-inn
Cartwright, W. Oxford-street, horse-dealer. (Mills,

Hatton-garden
Clarke, W. Leadenhall-street, woollen-draper. (Clut-

ton and Co. Temple
Charles, R. and G. Liverpool, ship-chandlers.

(Chester, Staple-inn ; Ripley, Liverpool

Clarke, W. and J. Moore, Leadenhall-street, wool-
len-drapers. (Wilde and Co. College-hill

Cooper, W. Stoke-upon-Trent, inn-keeper.
(Heming and Co. Lincoln's-inn-fields, Dent and

Crooks^Il. Cornhill, tailor. (Pasmore and Co.

Sambrook-court
Chervet, J. Hackney-road, coal-merchant. (Goren

and Co. Orchard-street
Cherry, E. Aldermanbury, livery-stable-keeper.

(Watson and Co. Falcon-square
Croucher, J. Change-alley, chronometer-maker.

(Glutton and Co.Southwark
Chambers, W. and W. Richardson, Milk-street,

merchants. (Norton and Co. Gray's-inn
Campbell, A.G. Fulham, apothecary. (Drawbridge,

Arundel-street
Dempster, J. Mitcham, schoolmaster. (Walton and

Co. Warnford-court
Doyle, H. Barbican, victualler. (Parton and Co.

St. Mildred's-court
Davis, N. St. Mary-Axe, wine-merchant. (YateS

and Co. Bury-street
Davies, D. Maesycummer, grocer, {Smitnana co.

Red Lion-square ; Franklyn, Bristol
Donnison, J. Liverpool, joiner. (Lowes, Temple;

Leigh and Co. Liverpool ,-.»'«_»

Darke,W. St. Colomb, linendraper. (Coode, Guil-

ford-street ; Collins, St. Colomb
Dalton, T. Carlisle, cattle-dealer. (Mounsey and

Co. Staple-inn ; Dixon, Calthwaite
Davison, T. Birkenshaw, victualler. (Birkett and

Co. Cloak-lane ... ,

Dean, W. Manchester, stationer. (Adlmgton and

Co. Bedford-row; Law and Co. Manchester
Fawsctt, J. York, builder. (Capes, Grays-inn;

Brook and Co. \ ork
Ford, W. Liverpool, builder. (Adlmgton and Co.

Bedford-row ; Whillers, Liverpool
Fairbridge, A. South A udley-street, cabinet-maker.

(HillandCo.Welbeck-street
Farrant, J. Strand, tailor. (Hutchmson and Co.

Crown-court
Grainger, J. S.Birmingham, iron-merchant. (Holme

and Co. New-inn ; Parker, Birmingham
Goater, W. Chiddesden, corn-dealer. (Whiteley,

Tokenhouse-yard . , .

Ginger, J. Bayswater, builder. (Carlon, High-st.

Gregtra! J?T. Liverpool, victualler. (Blackstock

and Co. Temple; Booth, Liverpool
Giles, J. Leeds, stuff-merchant. (Battye and Co.

Chancery-lane; Lee, Leeds
Gagan, G. R. Commercial-road, builder. (Willey

and Co. Lothbury
Gittins, E. Excall Park, Salop, farmer. (Clarke

and Co. Lincoln's-hm-flelds. Williams, Shrews-

HoneT R. Winchester, boarding-school-keeper.
(Crosby, Bucklersbury

Hayley, W. Melcombe Regis, carpenter. (Bridges
and Co. Red Lion-square; Arden, Weymouth

Hawthorn, T. Hanley, victualler. (Walford, Graf-
ton-street ; Harding, Burslem

Hyde, E. Manchester, victualler. (Hurd and Co.
Temple; Wood, Manchester

Hartwright, J. Cheltenham, woollen-draper. (King,
Lincoln's-inn-fields; Pack wood, Cheltenham

Harrison, J. Bury, Lancashire, hardwareman. (Ap-
pleby and Co. Gray's-inn ; Woodcock, Bury

Humberstone, J. Pentonville, cheesemonger. (Lewis,
Bernard-street

Hudson, J. and T. Busher, Spitalfields, silk-manu-
facturers. (Hudson, King-street, Cheapside

Hardy, J. Sproughton , cattle-salesman. ( Price and
Co. St. John-square

724

Bankrupts*

Haslewood, G. D. Oldbury, apothecary. (Stanley,
Gray's- inn; Cooper, Shrewsbury

Hawkins, J. Camberwell Newroad, builder. (Drew,
Bermondsey-street

Hollings, J. Leeds, victualler. \Strangeways and
Co. Barnard's-inn ; Robinson, Leeds

Jones, J. Liverpool, merchant. (Chester, Staple-
inn; Finlow, Liverpool

James, S. Everett-street, grocer. (Carlon, High-st.
Marylebone

Johnston, R. New-street-square, brass-founder.
(Potts and Son, Serjeant's-inn

James, S. Carlisle, mercer. (Addison, Gray's-inn ;
Wannop, Carlisle

Isaacs, W. H. Charles-street, Soho, bookseller.
(Birkett and Co. Cloak-lane

Lineam, S. Bristol, mason. (Bridges and Co. Red
Lion-square ; Hare and Co. Bristol

Lawes, 1 . Basinghall-street, coach-proprietor. (G.
Smith, Basinghall-street

Lawater, L. I. Camomile-street, merchant. (Heath-
cote, Coleman street

Langdon, J. New Bridge-street, Blackfriars, up-
holder. (Hensman, Walbrook

Lees, J, jun. Nottingham, joiner. (Knowles, New-
inn ; H urst, Nottingham

Lowes, W. Bishop's Sturtford, cattle-salesman.
(Ford, Pall Mall

Lewis, W. Bath, silk-mercer. (Fisher, Castle-st.

Meredith, J. Prescot, inn-keeper. (Chester, Staple-
inn ; Rowson, Prescot

Mason, T. Hereford, shoe-maker. (W. a'Beckett,
Golden-square ; Mathews, Gloucester

Moore, J. Leadenhall-street, woollen-draper. (Clut-
ton and Co. Temple

Marshall, W. Huddersfield, shear-manufacturer.

. (Battye and Co. Chancery-lane; Allison, Hud-
dersfield

Mayne, J.and F. A. Wilson, Picket-street, printers.
(Yallop, Basinghall-street

Martindale, R. Philpot-lane, broker. (Swain and
Co. Frederick-place

Miller, J. Wood-street, warehouseman. (Jones,
Cornhill

Margetts, T. Kilsby, cattle-dealer. (Austen and
Co. Gray's-inn ; Burton, Daventry

Millar, J. Manchester, agent. (Hurd and Co.
Temple; Hitchcock, Manchester

Myers, J. Leeds, malster. (Strangeways and Co.
Barnard's-inn ; Robinson, Leeds

M'Kenzie, W. Boshiers'-court, Oxford-street, tea-
dealer. (Amory and Co. Throgmorton-street.

Newark, W. jun. Coventry, gunmaker. (Hall, St.
James's-street ; Marriott, Coventry

Nightingale, R. Octave-hill, Stafford, victualler.
, (Swain and Co. Frederick's-place ; Foster, Wol-
verhampton

Nangle, W. Liverpool, seal-engraver. (Williamson,
Liverpool

Oakes, W. Carnarvon, grocer. (Adlington and Co.
Bedford-row ; Frodsham, Liverpool

Orford, J. City-road, builder. (Rosher, Furnival's-
inn

Power, C. Old City-chambers, underwriter. (Kelly,
New-inn

Phillips, S. Abergavenny, dealer. (Battye and Co.
Chancery-lane ; Wirborough and Co. Bristol

Pitts, R. T. Aylsham, grocer. (Austin, Gray's-inn ;
Barnard, Norwich

Parker, J. Lane-end, Stafford, farrier. (Barber,
Fetter-lane; Young, Lane-end

Porter, J. Manchester, publican. (Makinson and
Co. Temple; Markinson, Manchester

Peak, J. B. Keele, miller. (Smith, Lincoln's-inn ;
Dent, Hanley

Parry ,W. and Co. Berry, Oxford-street, upholsterers.
(Tribe, Clifford's-inn

Phillips, A. City-road, watch-manufacturer. (Yates
and Co. St. Mary Axe

Perkins, Rev. S. W. Stockton, clerk, broker. (Bur-
foot, Temple ; Heydon and Co. Warwick ,

Potter, W, and J. Lamb, Southwark, horse-dealers.
(Hull, Charles-street

Parrott, H. Kennington, coal-merchant. (Tilson
and Son, Coleman-street

Penning, J. Holies-street, cabinet-maker. (Side-
botham, Hatton-garden

Perry, W. Witham, coach-maker. (Bromleys,
Gray's-inn

Prince, W. Liverpool, tailor. (Blackstock and Co.
Temple; Murrow, Liverpool

Rowland, T. Bath, victualler. (Makinson and Co.
Temple ; Hellings, Bath

Reynolds, J. Mile End, carpenter. (Bowden and
Co. Aldermanbury

Rollason, H. Birmingham, gilt-toy-maker. (Holme
and Co. New-inn; Bartleet, Birmingham

Rider, D. Leeds, and J. Armitage, Huddersfield,
woollen-cloth-merchants. (Dawson and Co. New
Boswell-court ; Scott and Co. Leeds

Rose, J. T. Witney, grocer. (Umney, Chancery-
lane; Lee, Witney

Slade, J. Sherborne, maltster. (Warry, New-inn ;
Fooks, Sherborne

Seagood, J. J. Bread-street, table-linen-manufac-
turer. (Spencer, St. Mildred's-court

Southon, D. Shalford, corn-dealer. (Ayrton, Step-
ney

Standing, T. Gargrave, inn-keeper. (Beverley,
Temple ; Hartley and Co. Settle

Scott, J. Shoreditch, stationer. (Harrison, Wal-
brook

Smale, T. and R. W. Aldgate, butchers. (Horsley,
Berner-street, Commercial-road

Sutton, T. J. Scarborough, master-mariner. (Nind
and Co. Throgmorton-street

Spear, J. Kepple-mews, job-smith. (Smith, Fur-
nival's-inn

Sheppard, C. Chelsea, grocer. (Addison, Gray's-inn

Skyrmg, T. Primrose-street, carpenter. (Bennet,
Copthall-buildings

Stevens, M. Richmond, painter. (Hume and Co.
Great James-street

Snowden, W. F. Oxford-street, agricultural-ifnple-
ment-m iker. (Hamilton and Co. Berwick-st.

Sykes, L. George-street, merchant. (Spurr, Warn-
ford-court

Spanton, J. York, bookseller. (Williamson, Gray's-
inn ; Blanchard and Co. York

Stieger, C. Spitalfields, sugar-refiner. (Williams
and Co. Walbrook

Templeman, J. -West Coker, sailcloth-manufac-
turer. (Holme and Co. New-inn; Murly, Crew-
kerne

Tregenna, H. East Looe, draper. (Brooking and
Co. Lombard-street; Elworthy, Devonport

Thomas, J. Birmingham, grocer. (Byrne, Lincoln's-
inn ; Mole and Son, Birmingham

Turner, R. Manchester, wine-merchant. (Michael,
Red Lion-square; Booth and Co. Manchester

Tutt, J. Rye, cabinet-maker. (Bolton, Austin-friars

Wathen, H. Gloucester, shoe-maker. (W. a'Beckett,
Golden-square ; Mathews, Gloucester

Williams, J. Glyndwrdwy, grocer. (Edye and Co.
Clement's-inn"; Edwards, Oswestry ^

Walker, T. Manchester, inn-keeper. (Adlington
and Co. Bedford-row ; Boardman, Bolton

Wayte, J. Newcastle-under-Lyne, brazier. (Walford,
Grafton-street ; Harding, Burslem

Wrighton, J. near Henley-in-Arden, paper-maker.
(Kitchen and Son, Warwick and Barford

Wilkinson, J. Dudley, vice-maker. (Barber, Fetter-
lane

Wills, W. Coventry, grocer. (Byrne, Lincoln's-inn ;
Carter and Co. Coventry

Whitehead, E. Salford, publican. (Adlington and
Co. Bedford- row ; Morris, Manchester

Were, J. E. Bedminster, tanner. (Stephens, Bed-
ford-row

Williams, W. Drury -court, victualler. (Whiteley,
Tokenhouse-yard

1830.]

C 725 ]

ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS.

Rev. Dr. H. Hawes to the prebend of Grimston
and Yatminster — Rev. H. Moule to the Vicarage of
Box, Wilts.— Rev. R. Sherson to the Rectory of
Yaverland, Isle of Wight — Rev. C. Holloway to the
Rectory of Stanford Dingley, Berks — Rev. C.
Westeneys to the Rectory of Babworth, Notts —
,Rev. J. Atkinson to be Chaplain to Lord Mex-
borough. — Rev. C. Hawkins to the Residentiary-
ship in York Cathedral — Rev. J. Wilson to the
Chancellorship of Leighlin.— Rev. A. Irvine to the
Vicarage of St. Margaret's, Leicester.— Rev. W.
Cooper to a Chaplainship in ordinary to the
King — Rev. J. W. Water to be Chaplain to the era-
bassy at Copenhagen — Rev. C. Oakes to. the Rec-
tory of Kemberton, with the Vicarage of Sutton
Maddock annexed, Salop — Rev. H. Roberson to
the prebendal stall of Apesthorpe, York — Rev. J.

E. Lance to the Rectory of Buckland St. Mary,
Somerset.— Rev. J.Eddy to the Rectory of Frig-
gleston St. Peter, with Bernerton annexed — Rev.

F. T. Bryans to be perpetual Cuiate of Farndon,
Cheshire.— Rev- J. N. Shipton to the Rectory of
Hinton Blewitt, Somerset.— Rev. E. Warneford to
the Vicarage of Ashburnham and Penshurst,
Sussex — Rev. W. T. Eyer to the Vicarage of Pad-
bury, Bucks — Rev. R. Durnford to the Vicarage of
Goodworth Clatford. — Rev. D. Wilson to the
Rectory of Over Wooton, Oxford — Rev. W. Har-
bur to be perpetual Curate of St. Mary Key,
Ipswich.— Rev. N. Stonehouse to the Rectory of
Eaton Bishop, Hereford.— Rev. T. W. Whittaker
to the Rectory of Stanton by Bridge and Swark-
stone, Derby. — Rev. H. B. Crewe to the Rectory of

Breadsall, Derby. — Rev. T. Haworth to the per-
petual Curacy of Idle, near Bradford, York.—
Rev. C. D. M. Drake to the Rectory of Dalham,
Suffolk.— Rev. H. H. Morgan to the Chancellorship
of Hereford Cathedral. — Rev. H. C. Morgan to the
Vicarage of Goodrich, Hereford — Rev. E. Money
to the Prebend of Gorwell and Overbury, in Here-
ford Cathedral.— Rev. W. H. Smith to the Rectory
of Hinderwell, York.— Rev. M. Ashworth to the
Curacy of Farneworth, Lancashire. — Rev. W. Key
to be perpetual Curate of Kirkdale — Rev. R. W.
Sibthorpe to be chaplain to St. James's, Ryde,Isle of
Wight — Rev. E. Hay to the Vicarage of Brough-
ton, York.--Rev. A. Browne to be chaplain to
Merton College, Oxon — Rev. E. Frowd to the
Rectory of Upper Clatford, Hants — Rev. J. T.

Becher to be Vicar-general of Southwell, Notts

Rev. J. K. Goldney to be chaplain to H. M.'s
ship Blonde — Rev. J. Nelson to the Rectory of
Dunham Parva, Norfolk.— Rev. H. Heigham to
the Rectory of Bradfield Combust, Norfolk.— Rev.

P. Debary to the Rectory of Orwell, Cambridge

Rev. B. Charlesworth to the Vicarage of Darfield,
York — Rev. G. J. A. Drake to be chaplain to
Baroness De la Zouch.--Rev. W. Helps, jun. to the
Vicarage of Ratcliffe on Soar, Notts — Rev. E. B.
Ramsay to be sole Clergyman of St. John the Evan-
gelist, Edinburgh. — Rev. E. Strangways to the
consolidated Rectories of Melbury Sampford and
Melbury Osmond, Dorset. — Rev. P. Stubbs to the
Vicarage of Well, York.— Rev. R. B. Scholefield to
the Vicarage of Canton, York.

CHRONOLOGY, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, ETC.

CHRONOLOGY.

April 29. Leave given in the House of Commons
to bring in a bill to establish local jurisdictions in
certain districts in England. Moved by Mr.
Brougham.

so. The sum of 587.108J. voted in the House of
Commons for defraying the expense of ordnance
extraordinaries ! *

Annual meeting of governors, &c. of King's Col-
lege. Report made, stating that the council had
entered into contract for executing the shell of the

* This vote gave rise to warm words on account
of its extravagance in these " piping times of peace."
Mr. Hume said, in alluding to (one of the items)
the expenses of the Royal Academy at Woolwich
(artillery), " The fact is that the public is saddled
with this expense, in order to provide for certain
favourites of the Master of the Ordnance, who are
thus receiving a pauper education !" Sir H. Har-
dinge repelled the charge. Mr. Maberley said the
country ought not to educate the sons of private gen-
tlemen ! Mr. Hume, " I call every Pensioner un-
der the Crown, however unpleasant it may sound
to courtly ears, a pauper, if he gives no value for
his money ; it is' a common saying, that if a man is
fit for nothing else, to put him into the Church or
the Army!" Sir H. Hardinge: «' I treat this lan-
guage with the contempt it deserves !" Mr. Hume :
" I have borne much, but I will not bear this!"
Thus our Senators go to it ding, dong; but
" Where there is abuse," says Burke, " there ought
to be clamour ! It is better to have our slumbers
broken by the fire-bell than to perish in flames i
our bed !"

entire building for 63,812?, and that the college would
be opened on Oct. 1, 1831.

May 3. Bill for removing the Hay-market re-
ceived the royal assent.

The Zoological Society held their annual meet-
ing; their Report stated the receipts of the past
year to be 16,347;. 125. arising from subscriptions,
admission fees of visitors, &c. 200,000 persons had
visited the gardens last year, and that additional
ground had been allotted the society from the com-
missioners of Woods and Forests.

4. Meeting of the Irish members held at the
Thatched House Tavern, Sir J. Newport in the
chair, when a series of resolutions were adopted for
resisting the intended imposition of fresh taxes upon
Ireland, of corn, spirits, stamps, &c.*

Lord Mountcashel moved in the House of Lords
for an inquiry, ' ' if any and what abuses existed in

* One of the resolutions in favour of the Liberty
of the Press is as follows: " That the increased
duty on Newspapers and Advertisements, so far
from adding to the revenue, cannot fail to occasion
a considerable loss. That in its effect it will be
fatal to the Irish Press, and will deprive many most
deserving and industrious persons of the means of
support — that it will check the progress of know-
ledge, and will diminish the means, by which Public
Opinion exercises a salutary and efficient control
over Public Men and Public Measures, closing an
organ through which the feelings and interests of
the people of Ireland may be circulated and ex-
pressed ! ! !"

726

Chronology.

[JUNE,

the Church of England," which was not even se-
conded ! *

5. Bin for enclosing Hampstead Heath thrown
out of the House of Lords.

T. The new road in St. James's Park, leading
from Storey's gate to the new entrance in James-
street, Westminster, opened to the public.

8. Meeting held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern,
concerning the propriety of petitioning Parliament
on the subject of the East India Company's charter,
when resolutions were entered into and a petition
agreed on against renewing their charter.

10. Anniversary meeting of British and Foreign
School Society, held at Freemason's Hall, when it
appeared by the report that at Malta, Malacca, Den-
mark, Sweden, and other parts, the news was very
satisfactory ; Spain, Portugal, and South America
excepted, where political disquietudes retarded the
progress of the schools.

12. Anniversary dinner of the Literary Fund
Society held at Freemasons' Tavern, when about
500/. in donations were added to their funds.

13. Sons of the Clergy Anniversary held at St.
Paul's ; the total collections there and at the subse-
quent dinner at Merchant Taylor's Hall, 2397.

18. Petition presented to the House of Commons
from Rochester, on the subject of an early aboli-
tion of the Tithes, f Same day a motion was made
relative to the Irish First Fruits ; 63 for a commit-
tee of inquiry — 94 against it. Sir John Newport
said, in his exordium, as ground for inquiry, " the
Bishopric of Derry is valued at 2507. per annum,
while it is notorious that its real value is 20,0007.
per annum" ! ! !

* Though this motion has proved abortive, the
speech delivered by his lordship elicited many facts
which are likely to have more effect out of the
House than in it ! — the abuses in the Ecclesias-
tical Law— clergymen being law-agents, — want of
churches in Ireland — in 1263 benefices in Ireland,
only 880 had their incumbents resident — advertise-
ments in the daily papers for buying livings for the
cure of souls — many residents did no duty, and
others worse than no duty— many followed secular
employments— many became insolvents and bank-
rupts, and were in the gazette — indeed, he said, he
knew an archdeacon that kept foxhounds and
twenty hunters and hunted regularly with them
too — he knew another also whose means were not
so large, but who had still his sporting establish-
ment, and what was worse, upon Sundays, the
sporting parson and his friends assembled round
the Communion Table in the Church, and there
made their sporting arrangements !!!!!.' ! ! &c. &c.
&c. " From these various facts," his lordship said,
" he knew that there were many worthy Bishops
upon the Bench, who would give him their assist-
ance upon this occasion, and he hoped they would
not disappoint him ! ! !" However there was not one
noble lord to be found either spiritual or temporal
to second the motion.

t Mr. Thome on presenting the petition said,
" the tithes alienated the people from the church—
they were a greater enemy to the church than the
Jews— the time had now arrived when it ought to
be considered what the great part if not the whole
of the security now given for the payment of the
Clergy ought not to be dispensed with— the peti-
tioners stated this opinion, and added there was no
authority in Scripture, so far at least as they could
discover, for having enormously paid archbishops
and bishops, while the people at large were suffer-
ing all the miseries of poverty, privation and
want." Out of 11,000 clergy, not more than 6 000
did their duty in person ; all "sinecures of the church
ought to be abolished, as well as civil and military
sinecures." Mr. Baring said, "although I have
been wrong relative to the Bishop of London's reve-
nue, yet no contradiction has been given to what I
have said of the see of Winchester, and I believe
that that produced 00,0007. the first year of the
present Bishop's taking it" ! ! !

13. Sir James Mackintosh presented a petition
from Edinburgh to the House of Commons for
abolition of death in cases of forgery.*

14. Motion made in the House of Commons
"for an account of all salaries, profits, pay, fees
and emoluments, whether civil or military, from
Jan. 5, 1829, to Jan. 5, 1830, enjoyed by each of the
members of the King's Privy Council, specifying
with each name the total amount received by each
individual, and distinguishing the various services
from which the same is derived." Negatived by
231 against 147. f

17. On the second reading of the bill in the House
of Commons for emancipating the Jews, 165 votes
were for, and 228 against it $

18. Motion in the House of Commons for a Select
Committee to inquire into the distressed state of the
West India Colonies put off, on the pledge of the
Secretary of State, that government would investi-
gate the matter so as to be able to bring forward the
motion on the first week of the next Session of
Parliament.

24. Message from His Majesty to the Houses of
Lords and Commons, stating that owing to the ill-
ness under which His Majesty labours, it is incon-
venient and painful for him to sign with his own
hand instruments requiring the sign manual; he
recommends Parliament to adopt measures for
giving effect to such documents during his indis-
position.

* It was signed by about 700 persons of respecta-
bility, being all either bankers, merchants, magis-
trates , private gentlemen, or members of the Uni-
versities and learned professions. A great number
of petitions have also been presented to the House
from various towns on the same subject.

t Sir James Graham, who made the motion, had
said (a few days preceding, May 10), " that the time
was now come when the House ought to fly at
higher game— at those birds of prey which are
floating in the upper regions of the air" — this even-
ing, May 14, he mentioned that there were 169 privy
councillors, exclusive of the Royal Family; of
these there were 113 in receipt of public monies
annually amounting to 650,1647.; ofthissum 86,1037.
were for actual sinecures ; 442,0007. for what was
termed active service, and 121,6507. for pensions---
69 of these privy councillors were members, or
ministers, of that and the other house receiving
public money, of whom 47 were peers, who received
378,8407. a year, or 8,069?. each ; and 22 were mem-
bers of the House of Commons receiving 90,8497.,
or 4,1307. a year each ! ! !"

$ Mr. Brougham said he did not wish to put this
measure upon the footing of State necessity, nor of
sound policy : he put it on the other, but not lower
grounds ; for he put it, as a case of justice, to an
assembly of just men. He begged the house to con-
sider, seriously, that men were not excluded from
that house because they might be Quakers or Jews,
heathens, infidels, or blasphemers, but because
they happened to be devoid of that quintessence of
Heathenry — Hypocrisy ! — Let the Jew but come
here and pledge himself to the contents of that oath
by which he is excluded, and he will be at once re-
ceived with open arms by that Chorus of Christians
whom he had that night heard cheer, and roar, and
howl, forth their applause of the mostanti-christian
doctrines and feelings, that had ever been uttered
in a civilized country ! ! ! Did the gentlemen on
the other side ever hear of Mr. Gibbon's having sat
in that house — how, at a time that he was notori-
ously an opponent of Christianity, he came up to
that table and took the entire array of oaths — of
abjuration and against transubstantiation, &c. with
all the gravity of a Christian ? And yet he held, at
that very time, the office of a Lord of Trade, and
received its salary just as orthodoxly as the staunch-
est Churchmen ! He did not, to be sure, exercise
much authority in the house, for Gibbon's pagan-
ism was a little too evident, and a consciousness of
its having been so, hindered him from exercising
that influence which his talents and learning would
have entitled him to. He never spoke—he had a

1830.]

Marriages, Deaths.

MARRIAGES.

At Brighton, Sir R. H. C. Rycroft, baronet, to
Charlotte Anne Josephina, eldest daughter of W.
Tennant, esq., and niece to Lord Yarborough —
Capt. E. A. Perceval, (15th Hussars), youngest son
of thelate Right Hon. Spencer Perceval, to Beatrice,
fourth daughter of Sir J. Trevellyan, bart.— Hon.
T. Americus Erskine, eldest son of Lord Erskine,
to Louisa, relict of T. Legh, esq.— Henry Petre,
esq., son of Hon. G. Petre, to Adela, daughter of
IJ. Howard, esq., of Corby Castle,—H. Kemble,
esq., Camberwell, to Rachael Dobree, second daugh-
ter of P. Melvifl, esq., late Lieut-Governor of Pen-
dennis Castle. — Sir E. Blackett, bart., to Miss
Monck, daughter of Sir C. Monck, bart.~H. Ar-
buthnot, esq., son of Right Hon. C. Arbuthnot, to
Lady Charlotte Rachael Scott, daughter of the Earl
of Clonmell. — At Brighton, E. Wilmot, esq., to
Lady Janet Jean Erskine, daughter of the late Earl
of Mar.— Rev. W. Somerville, brother to Lord
Somerville, to Charlotte, seventh daughter of Rev.
W. Bagot.— At Petworth, R. Haslar, esq., to Miss
Julia Wyndham, niece to Lord, Egremont — At
Charlton House, Rev. A. Drummond, to Marga-
retta Maria, sister to Sir T. M. Wilson, bart — At
the Duke of Beaufort's, Marquis of Cholmondeley,
to Lady Susan Somerset, fourth daughter of the
Duke of Beaufort.

DEATHS.

In Pall Mall, Sir Scrope Bernard Morland, bart.,
M.P., 72. — Viscount Lifford, grandson of a former
Lord Chancellor of Ireland. — In Grosvenor Square,
Lord Grey, only son of the Earl and Countess of
Wilton — At Marlow, Vice- Admiral Sir J. N. Mor-
ris, K.C.B.—At Teignmouth, Capt. P. Tait, R.N.,
97 — Lady Charlotte Micklethwaite—Sir W. Parker,
bart., Melford Hall. — In Grosvenor Square, the
Marchioness of Bath.— At Cartlett, near Haverford
West, Miss Ann Griffiths, of Solva, Pembrokeshire.
—At Drayton Park, Sir Robert Peel, bart., 80.--At
Guffond, Hon. Elizabeth Rowley — At Newcastle,
Miss Dorothy Collingwood, sister of the late Admiral
Lord Collingwood — In Craven-buildings, Drury-
lane, John Ripkey, 108 ; he served in the war be-

tween the French and English in America, under
General Wolfe in 1T59 ; he subsequently distin-
guished himself in the American war, at Bunker's
hill, at which time he was in the 13th reg. ; he quit-
ted the army in 1791, from which time he received
his majesty's bounty as an out-pensioner at Chelsea
Hospital, having 16 sabre wounds on his head. —
Admiral Isaac Prescott, 98.— Lady Peake, relict of
Sir Henry Peake, many years surveyor of the Navy.
— T. Collins, esq., (95.) of Berner Street— In
Hampton-Court Palace, Lady Lavington — At Over-
bury, Penelope, widow of James Martin, esq., for-
merly M.P. for Tewkesbury during 32 years, deno-
minated "the Starling," for continually echoing
"coalition, coalition, cursed coalition !" alluding to
Lord North's and Charles Fox's apostacy and ex-
ploits in that way At Brixton, Isle of Wi^ht, 75,

Rev. N. Digby. — At Southampton, Miss Stuart,
sister of Sir James Stuart, bart

MARRIAGES ABROAD.
At Berne, Sir J. Boswell, bart., to Jesse Jane,
eldest daughter of Sir J. M. Cunningham, bart —
At Berne, at the English Minister's, Edward Ro-
milly.esq., third son of the late Sir Samuel Romilly,
to Sophia, youngest daughter of the late Dr. Marcet.

DEATHS ABROAD.

At Rome, Marchioness of Northampton. — At
Harquegnies, near Ath, in Hainault, Peter Van der
Com, a farmer, nearly 121 years old, being born
June 29, 1709 ; he retained his mental and bodily
powers to the last. — In France, the Marquis Maxi-
milian de 1' Aubespine, a descendant from the cele-
brated Sully, minister of Henry IV At Bom-
bay, Sir W. Seymour, one of the Judges of the

Supreme Court of Judicature At the Cape of

Good Hope, Lady Bradford, wife of General Sir T.
Bradford.— At Brussels, Lord Elibank. His Lord-
ship was son of Alexander, the 7th Lord, by Mary
Clara de Montelieu, daughter of the Hon. Colonel
Montelieu — At Paris, Mr. F. A. Winsor, 68, the
originator of the practical and useful application of
gas lights — At Chesne, near Geneva, Catherine,
the lady of the Right Hon. Sir James Mackintosh.

PATENTS.

To John M'Innes, of Auchenreoch, and of Wood-
burn, in Scotland, esq,,/b>' the manufacture or pre-
paration of certain substances which he denominates
the British Tapioca, and the cakes and flour to be
made from the same. 24th April, six months.

To Samuel Brown, ofBilliter Square, London ,
commander in the royal navy, for certain improve-
ments in making or manufacturing bolts and chains.
24th April, six months.

To Joseph Cochaux, of Fenchurch Street, Lon-
don, merchant, for an invention of an apparatus
calculated to prevent or render less frequent the
explosion of boilers in generating steam. 24th April,
six months.

weight, " a dead weight," upon him ! He was
afraid he should hear " Spoke ! Spoke ! Infidel !
Infidel!" breaking on him from every side of the
house. Did hon. gent, ever hear of Henry St. John,
Lord Viscount Bolingbroke ? He too was a noted
infidel— he had attacked Christianity by his writ-
ings, but in that house had abjured, with all the
zeal of true faith, the requisite dogmas ! .Yet he
had been one of the most powerful orators and in-
fluential ministers that had ever sat in that house.
No man ever exerted a greater power over Parlia-
ment, and he was as great a Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, even as his successor, Lord Aberdeen ; al-
though he was not so good a Christian by 10,000
degrees ! So much for the success of a little ht/po-
crisyf But, while we excluded the Jews so perti-

To Paul Descroizilles, of Fenchurch-street,
London, Chemist, for certain improvements in
apparatus for economizing fuel, in heating water
and air applicable to various purposes. 2-ith April,
six months.

To Thomas Cook, of Blackheath Road, Kent,
lieutenant in the royal navy, for certain improve-
ments in the construction and fitting up of boats of
various descriptions. 24th April, two months.

To James Perry, of Red Lion Square, Holborn,
bookseller and stationer, for an improvement or
improvements in 01 on pens. 24th April, six months,

To John Wilks, of Blue Anchor, Bermondsey.
Surry, engineer, millwright, and machinist, for an

naciously from this house, how did they stand in
other respects ? A Jew could hold an advowson,
and present it to a Minister ! What became of his
hostility of Christianity ? A vestry could be com-
posed of Jews, and he had the authority of Lord
Eldon for saying, could elect the Clergyman who
should expound the doctrines of Christianity ! A
Jew could be a Juryman ; they were constantly
seen to perform that important office in our courts,
and with remarkable fidelity and impartiality ! ! !
He did not wish to counteract Divine Providence —
let these people be scattered over the whole earth ;
but he asked Gentlemen to do what Providence
commanded— namely, "to do unto others what
they would have others do unto them !"

728

Provincial Occurrences : — Yorkshire, fyc.

[JUNE,

improvement or improvements in a part or parts of
the apparatus for making paper by macftinery.
•2-it/i April, six months.

To Thomas Petherick, of Penfullick, in the
Parish ot Tywardreath, Cornwall, mine agent, for
certain machinery for separating copper, lead, and
other ores, from earthy and other substances, with
which they are w may be mixed, and which -is more
particularly intended to supersede what Is commonly
called jigging. ZSth April, six months.

To John Walker, of Weymouth-street, Middle-
sex, esq. for an improved cock for fluids. ±th May,
two months.

To Henry Robert Salmon Devenoge, of Little
Stanhope-street, May Fair, Middlesex, gentleman,
for certain improvements of machinery for making
bricks. 8th May, two months.

List of Patents which expire in the present month
of June, 1830.

— William Shand, Villiers-street, Strand, ar-
tificial limb-maker ,f or improvements in the construc-
tion of artificial legs and feet.

— John Foulerton, Upper Bedford-place, Rus-
sell-square, esq. for improvements in buoys.

— Edward Light, Foley-place, professor of mu-
sic, for improvements on the harp lute.

— John Burnett, Bristol, iron-founder, for his
convolving iron axletree, for the reduction of fric-
tion.

— John Hawkins, Barton, Leicester-place,
Goldsmith, for improvements on tea-urns, tea-pots,
tea-boards, or tea-trays.

— James Ransome, Ipswich, ironmonger, for
improvements on ploughs.

MONTHLY PROVINCIAL OCCURRENCES.

YORKSHIRE.— The expenditure of the We it
Riding accounts has increased from 29,484?. 2s. 7jd.
in 1814 to 41,8197. 15*. lj<i. in 1829, and it is deeply
to be regretted that nearly the whole of this increase
is caused by the increase of crime ! ! ! In 1814 the
expense of prosecuting felons was 2,8237. 45. Od.; in
1829 it was 16,3247. 18*. 9d. including 2,5367. Os. 5rf.
for the expense of conveyance— a charge now made
separately.

An adjourned meeting of the inhabitants of Al-
mondbury has lately taken place, when several reso-
lutions were entered into, and a committee formed
for establishing "a Political Union on the Metro-
politan Principle, for restoring back to the People
those privileges and rights which had been unlaw-
fully taken- from them."

WORCESTERSHIRE.— It appears from a par-
liamentary document that the quantity of foreign
gloves imported for home consumption, since the
prohibition was taken off, was, — in 1827,865,000
pairs; 1828, 1,189,000; 1829, 83T,000 ! ! ! The
kind thus imported were chiefly habit gloves.—
Barrow's Worcester Journal.

DORSETSHIRE.— At Blandford Guild-hall a
meeting has been held for petitioning Parliament
against the Beer bill, when several resolutions were
entered into and the petitions agreed on ; one of the
resolutions states, " That the repeal of the Malt
Tax would be preferable to that on beer, as it would
be an inducement to the poor and labouring man
to brew his own beer at home at a less price, and be
a stimulus to him to share it with his wife and fa-
mily at home, instead of, as is too often the case,
spending his time and money at the ale-house."

So enormous a quantity of soles has been caught
on our shores, within the past week, that they have
been selling at Id. per pair. — Dorset Chronicle.

DERBYSHIRE.— The members of Hognaston
S'ck club lately assembled to celebiate the anniversary
of the club, which had been established for half a
century. In the morning they attended the church.
Afterwards they dined together at the Bull's Head
inn, attended by the minister and medical atten ant
of the club. Four members were present, who en-
tered at the first establishment ; the oldest, eighty-
six years of age, was chaired in the evening, attended
by au excellent band of music.

NORTHUMBERLAND.— The table subjoined
to the last report of the Northumberland, Durham,
and Newcastle Infirmary for Diseases of the Eye,
shows to what an extent this institution has been
beneficial to the poor of the district during the last
year. The number of fresh applications for relief
has been 833, and 108 having remained from the
former year, the number under treatment has
amounted to 941 ; 768 patients have been cured,
and 36 have derived less perfect relief. The total
admitted since the commencement of the institution
has been 6,262, and of these 5,814 have either been
cured or materially benefited.

May 9, about a quarter past 8 o'clock, p. m. the
Durham Packet, which was lying in Sunderland
harbour loaded ready for sea, broke from her moor-
ings in consequence of the heavy fresh which was
running rapidly down the harbour. This ship was
hurried with dreadful impetuosity against the next
tier of ships, which were at once driven from their
moorings; and in a few minutes every ship which
was afloat on the south side of the Wear was drift-
ing towards the sea. The vessels, however, stopped
and formed a complete dam across the river for
nearly half an hour, during which time the water
rose several feet. At last a sloop situated about the
centre of the fleet was forced out by the extreme
violence of the flood, and immediately the whole of
the ships drifted to the entrance of the harbour,
where they grounded and stopped, the tide being
out. The damage done was immense. It is cal-
culated that at least from 65 to 75 ships have suffered
more or less.

WILTSHIRE.-Bythe abstract of the account
of the receipts and expenditure of Wilts county,
from Hilary sessions 1829 to Hilary sessions 1830, it
appears that the sum of 15,0007. was expended, up-
wards of 7,0007. of which was required for the cri-
minal jurisprudence of the county, including gaols,
bridewells, assizes, sessions, &c. &c.— for county
bridges, 9997. 9*. 2rf — for apprehending and convey-
ing vagrants, 10207. 19.* 8d.

HANTS.— The town commissioners at Ryde
(Isle of Wight) have commenced operations.for the
completion of the new market and the town hall ;
almost all the houses on the intended site are already
down, and the first stone has been laid in grand ce-
remony, and the anniversary held of the improve-
ment act receiving the royal assent.

1830.]

Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Devonshire, fyc.

729

LANCASHIRE.— By the last report of the Man-
chester and Sal ford Bank for Savings up to Novem-
ber 20, 1829, it appears there had been received
239,791?. 17s. lid. from 14,265 depositors, as ex-
hibited in the classification of single deposits.

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE.— The second exhibi-
tion of the Nottingham Florist and Horticultural
Society for this season, lately attracted a very nu-
merous company. The display of tulips was large,
and of a transcendant quality, such as in the
opinion of judges had never before been witnessed
in Nottingham. There was also a considerable por-
tion of green-house and stove plants exhibited in
great perfection, and an excellent supply of fruits
and vegetables ; strawberries, in particular, were re-
markably fine. The specimens produced of keeping
apples excited particular attention— table fruit, in
the Aromatic Pippin, being shown in as great per-
fection as in the summer or autumn.

DEVONSHIRE — By the accounts of Plymouth
workhouse for last year, (the particulars of which are
left open for the inspection of every individual rate-
payer) it appears that the sum of 11,516;. 16s. 5i«f.
was expended.

LINCOLNSHIRE.— That rare bird the stork
(Ardea Ciconia, Lin.) was shot, eight miles up the
Trent, on the 6th of this month. The length of
this specimen, from the point of its bill to the end
of the tail, is three feet six inches ; and its breadth,
from tip to tip, is six feet four inches. The bill is
of a fine red colour, and its length from the tip to
the corners of the mouth is seven inches ; the legs
and bare part of the thighs are also of the same co-
lour; the former below the knees measure ten
inches, and the latter five. The plumage is of a dull
white, except the quills, greater coverts, and some
of the scapulars, which are black ; the eyes are dark
and full, the orbits bare of feathers, and of a dusky
reddish hue ; the feathers near the breast, like those
of the heron, are long and pendulous. The above
specimen is now in the possession of Mr. R. Dunn,
Hull.— Lincoln Mercury.

WARWICKSHIRE.— The first grand public
meeting of the Birmingham Political Union for
Parliamentary Reform took place May 17. Not
less than from 18 to 20,000 persons were assembled,
marching two deep, headed by the members of the
council; the sight was one of the most imposing
that can be conceived ; not less than 80,000 persons
having witnessed the promenade. The Report was
read which did not denounce a constitutional Re-
form, but merely a declaration advocating the pro-
priety of demanding what the Law clearly acknow-
ledged— Rights under which their forefathers were
a powerful and happy people, and which it was not
dangerous for them to enjoy , and laws which granted
equal privileges and protection to the rich and poor,
with the exception, indeed, of those grubs and ca-
terpillars who now live and fatten upon the poverty
of the people. The declaration was carried and
several resolutions passed in consequence, and a
vote of thanks to the Council. Notwithstanding
the immense quantity of persons assembled, in half
an hour after the business was over, the populace
dispersed to their own houses, and the streets of
Birmingham exhibited the same tranquillity as on
any other day.

Grand entertainments have been given at Strat-

ford-upon-Avon in honour of Shakespeare similar

to the celebrated Jubilee displayed by Garrick in

1709: they wf-re most numerously attended.

M. M. New Scries. -Vol. IX. No. 54.

CHESHIRE.— We announced several weeks ago
that a slight improvement in the silk trade was
perceptible. But we were well aware how preca-
rious was that gleam of comparative prosperity,
and how doubtful was its continuance. We would
direct attention to the subjoined table of the import
of foreign wrought silk and silk goods, abstracted
from the Custom House returns. The import will
be found to amount to nearly one quarter of a mil-
lion sterling in the short space of two months !
Manufactured silk goods imported during the months
of March and April, 1830.

Silk goods, ad valorem
India piece goods
Bandannoes .

Tulle lace
Thrown silk .

91 ,470
17.780
21,270
2,877
93,648

1,227,045 0 0
Macclesfield Courier and Herald, May 8.

NORFOLK.— An address has been signed by the
magistrates relative to the great inconvenience of
holding the Lent assizes at Thetford, thus restrict-
ing the populous city of Norwich to one gaol de-
livery in the year. Copies of the address have been
sent to the Lord Chancellor, the Secretary of State,
and to each of the Judges. A petition on the same
subject to the Lord Chancellor* has been resolved
on by the Common Council, and also a petition to
the House of Commons, praying that the punish-
ment of death may be remitted in all cases except
murder, arson, burglaries, highway-robberies, and
offences, attended with violence, and also praying
such effectual ameliorations in the Laws, that the
penalties for offences may be "in accordance with
strict justice, worthy of a Christian country !"

OXFORDSHIRE.-An emigration committee
has been formed at Bicester, for the purpose of ena-
bling the poor of Bicester Market End to emigrate
to North America. The following are the terms
offered by the committee in their printed notice ; —
" The sum of 14/. will be given to a man, his wife,
and six children ; and the same proportion for a
greater or lesser number ; to a single man, 81. ; to
a widower, having children, the same as a man, his
wife, and family. The money will be paid as soon
as the parties get on board at Liverpool, and every
expense of conveyance and provision paid by the
committee, from the time of their leaving Bicester
until they shall be landed at New York. Those
who choose to emigrate must leave Bicester for
Liverpool on Monday next, May 24th." Mr.Talton,
a respectable tailor of Mixbury, Oxon, has this
week sold the whole of his effects, with the inten-
tention of emigrating with his wife and family to
America.— County Chronicle.

* Mr. E. Newton, one of the speakers on the sub-
ject, observed, that it was a maxim that there was
no wrong without a right. It had not unfrequently
occurred that persons had been committed to prison
and kept in confinement far eleven months, and
upon being brought to trial they had been ac-
quitted ! To no power however could they appeal
for the restitution of character ! If a person was im-
prisoned for suc-h a period barely upon the suspicion
of crime, his character was blasted in the eyes of the
world, and to what quarter was he to go for right
against such a wrong ? He was surprised this in-
convenience had been suffered to remain so long;
it was useless to talk of improvement of the laws,
it was useless to listen to theoretical principles for
the improvement of prison discipline, whilst they
were thus deprived of the practical means of car-
rying those measures into effect.
5 A

730 Provincial Occurrences : Leicestershire, Ireland, fyc. £JuNE.

LEICESTERSHIRE — The expenses for this
county from Easter sessions 1829 to those of
1830, amount to 19,024/. 10s. 5d. almost the whole
of which was absorbed by criminal jurisprudence,
law, and its contingencies, gaol, bridewell, assizes,
judge's lodgings, constables, &c. &c. &c. 725/. 15s. 5d.
was all that was required for repairs of ridges, and
surveyor's salary.

CORNWALL.— Government has recently esta-
blished steam-packets, to sail regularly from Fal-
mouth for the Mediterranean the beginning of
every month ; thus affording the traveller an expe-
ditious passage either to Greece, Cadiz, or Egypt.
To invalids this mode of conveyance will be most
serviceable, as in the short period of six days they
can inhale the salubrious air of the Mediterranean.

BUCKS.— A fair was held for the first time at
Stony Stratford on the 30th April ; there was a great
show of beasts, sheep, and horses, which were
nearly all sold, and, considering the depressed state
of business in general, at prices that gave satisfac-
tion to the sellers.

SOMERSETSHIRE.-There are not fewer than
4000 persons now unemployed in any profitable
labour in Taunton and its immediate vicinity; and
it is only a few weeks ago, that Mr. Dickinson, one
of the members for the county, in presenting a
petition to the House of Commons, asserted, that
one-third of the population of Taunton was then
actually receiving parish relief; estimating the po-
pulation to be from 10,000 1012,000, this propor-
tion, however lamentable it may appear, will be
found to be not far from the truth. About four
years ago, the silk trade alone employed at least 2000
persons here : but from the depressed state of that
manufacture, not more than one third of that
number, if even so many, may be said to be now in
full work. Fifty years since there was an extensive
manufacture of serges and light woollen cloths at
Taunton, and there were then more than 500 wool-
combers in the town ; now it is believed not a single
piece of serge is manufactured there in a year, and
there are not more than five or six wool-combers at
the most !

KENT.— The important local undertaking of the
Canterbury Rail-Road has been brought into opera-
tion, and the rail-road to Whitstable opened for the
purposes of business. The work has been five
years in progress. The whole length is between
0 and 7 miles, and runs direct to Whitstable. There
is a tunnel, 822 yards in length, carried through the
Brethren Hills, which cost 13,000?. The first4 miles
are constructed upon an inclination of one foot in
90, down which waggons travel at the velocity of
25 miles an hour, merely from receiving the im-
pulse of one man's exertions. The remaining dis-
tance, smiles, is a level, and here the waggons are
attached to a locomotive steam-engine. The im-
mense advantages which the district will derive
from the facility of transmission may be anticipated
from the circumstance that coals alone will expe-
rience a reduction of 6s. a chaldron for carriage.
Passengers also will be conveyed for 9d. per head in
20 minutes — the usual time in land conveyance
being nearly two hours.

STAFFORDSHIRE — The Savings' Bank last
Report of the little town of Shenstone states the
amount of fundsto be 18,217?. 12*. IJd.

WALES.— A county meeting was held at Welsh
Pool, Montgomery, for the purpose of taking into
consideration the present state of the Welsh judi-
cature, when a petition to Parliament was unani-
mously agreed to for the prevention of dividing the
county of Montgomery as proposed by the Law
Commfssioners.

The county expenses of Montgomery amounted
for the year ending April 22, 1830, to 58851. Us. Id.,
upwards of 2000/. of which were devoured by the
law, jails, prisoners, vagrants, &c., and about 2000J.
for county bridges.

We have much pleasure in announcing that the
National Institution for the Preservation of Life
from Shipwreck have ordered a silver medal and 41.
to be presented by their secretary to David Griffith,
as a reward for his humane and spirited exertions in
saving the lives of the- passengers of the Newry.
They have also given 2?. each to the three men by
whom he was assisted. — North Wales Chronicle.

IRELAND.— A proclamation has been issued by
the Lord Lieutenant for suppressing the " Society
of the Friends of Ireland," which had been founded
by Mr. O'Connell and his friends as mentioned in
our last.

The proposed new duties announced by the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer for this country have arous-
ed the attention of all parties, one being considered
a direct attack on the Press; and almost every
where meetings have been held to oppose their pass-
ing in the Legislature. In the Belfast petition the
inhabitants declare '* that every measure calculated
to shackle or to crush the Press of Ireland, has a
direct tendency to augment and perpetuate the moral
and intellectual darkness too prevalent in this is-
land. The Press is the Handmaid of Knowledge—
the Herald of Social Order ; and it is at once the
duty and the interest of a free state, to encourage
and to foster this useful instrument of mental im-
provement and civilization. Turbulence and disaf-
fection have always been the consequence of nati-
onal ignorance. It is only an enlightened popula-
tion which can fully estimate the advantages of good
government, and yield from the impulse of Reason,
Information, and Affection, that obedience to the
law which is exacted from the uninstructed by the
servile terror of punishment alone." The petition
from Galway states, " That your Petitioners are
justly alarmed at the proposed Bill to assimilate
the Stamp Duties of Ireland to those of England,
and more particularly at a period when great distress
pervades the entire country. That they attribute
the introduction of this odious and oppressive im-
post to ignorance of the circumstances of the coun-
try, and of its inability to sustain this additional
burthen. That they look upon it to be repugnant to
every principle of justice to assimilate the Taxes of
the poorest to those of the wealthiest country in the
world. That the direct effect of the new Stamp Act
will be to place an additional burthen on trade al-
ready unable to sustain more— to disqualify the poor
from becoming artizans— to check industry, and
thereby retard the improvement of the country and
the developement of its resources. That the Liberty
of the Press, the Palladium of our Rights, is immi-
nently endangered by the proposed additional tax —
and they view with alarm any measure calculated
to injure that powerful engine, so beneficial for the
diffusion through the country of useful information,
so essential to the preservation of our liberties and
the correction of abuses !",

Printed by T. Davison, White

PRESENTEO

o nco 10/1 a

INDEX TO VOL. IX.

ORIGINAL PAPERS, &c.

Page

Annus Mirabilis, or Farewell to the Year 1829 3

Ambassadors, Embassies, and Salaries 9

Affairs in General 13, 199, 321, 447, 571, 694

Agricultural Reports 103, 230, 359, 476, 598, 720

Anomalies, London 174

Arts' (Fine), Exhibitions 347, 470, 717

Ancient and Modern Systems of Slavery 387

Anecdote, Ten Days' Quarantine £07

Anecdotes of Brazil 618

Ball, Devonshire 559

Bankrupts 106, 233, 361, 477, 600, 723,

Biographical Memoirs of Eminent Persons 99, 228, 356, 475, 595,

British Embassies, Ambassadors, and Salaries 9

British West India Colonies, as they were, and as they are 137

Bring me Wine 61

British Parliament, Proceedings of 369

British India and the Renewal of the Company's Charter 499, 675

Burning Example to Smokers

Byron, Moore's Notices of Lord 183

Lady and Moore and Campbell 384, 512

Bandit, the Corsican 277

Barbary States, Present Policy of Europe towards 516

Club-room, the 28, 421

Commercial Report 105, 231, 360, 477, 599, 722

Chronology, Marriages, Deaths, &c 108, 234, 363, 484, 663, 725

Christmas Dinner ! My 133

Colonies, British West India 137

Church Establishment, English and Irish 176

Corsican Bandit 277

Carthaginian Comicalities , 282

Colman's Random Records 301

Chapter on Old Coats 317

Cigars 497

Captain of Rifles r 438

Colonel Vernon, Tale of the Civil Wars 401

Caution to all Poets 569

Dartmoor, a Night on 45

Discovery, Progress of Physical 17, 265

Devil's Mill 161

Disabilities of the Jews • 258

Devonshire Ball, the 559

Days (Ten) Quarantine, an Anecdote 507

Elephant, or the Perfection of Modern Genius 67

English and Irish Church Establishment 176

Ecclesiastical Preferments 108, 234, 362, 481, 601, 725

Existing Disabilities of the Jews 258

Europe, Policy of 516

Farewell to the Year 1829 3

Fair Play for Greece 53

Frost in London - 130

Fudge ! ! ! 131

Fire, the Greek 154

Fourteenth, the 125

Fiend of the Ferry 379

Greece, Fair Play for 53

Genius, Perfection of Modern 57

Greek Fire, the 155

INDEX.

Gap (Red) Inn 161

Health without Physic 81

History of Chivalry and tht» Crusades 577

Hudibras, jun. 174

Ireland, Walks in , 161

Intellect, March of 263

India, British 499

King's Own 561

List of New and Expiring Patents 98, 227, 355, 474, 593, 727

Literature, Monthly Review of 81, 209, 337, 457, 577, 705

- Recollections from the Portfolio of a Lover of 410

London Anomalies 174

a Frost in , 130

Leone, Sierra, and the Slave Trade 285

Lady Byron and Moore 384

Campbell and Moore 512

Lord Mountcashel and the Church . . . . 611

Mirabilis Annus 3

Mother Shipton's Prophecies - 113

My Christmas Dinner 133

Man with the White Horse 161

The Pressed 538

Moore's Notices of Lord Byron 183

Matters, Theatrical 197

March of Intellect 263

Man, the Ugly 251

Modern Systems of Slavery 387

Newfoundland Adventures > . . 633

Night on Dartmoor 45

Notices of Lord Byron 183

Own, the King's 561

Opening of the Session of Parliament 241

Old Coats 317

Petition to the King of the Beggars 609

Physical Discovery, Progress of 17

Press, Prosecution of the 70

Provincial Occurrences 109, 236, 364, 484, 606, 728

Prophecies 113

Parliament, Session of 241, 489

Proceedings of 369

Present Policy of Europe 516

Poets, Caution to all 569

Random Records 301

Rifles, the Captain of 438

Room, the Club 421

Recollections of a Lover of Literature 410

Renewal of East India Company's Charter 499

Reduction of Taxes 657

Sierra Leone and Slave Trade 284

Slavery, Systems of 387

Salaries of Ambassadors, &c 9

Smoke-Shop, the United Service 544

Specimens of great Poets— the Roasted Sovereign 693

Theatrical Matters 52, 197, 685

Tale of the Civil Wars 401

of the Coast 538

Varieties 92,220,350

Vegetative Verses > • 683

United Service Smoke-Shop '. 544

Works in the Press 96, 225, 353, 473, 591

Walks in Ireland 161

Winter Sketch, a 544

INDEX TO WORKS REVIEWED.

Page
Adventures of an Irish Gentleman. . . . 338

Anderson's Poetical Aspirations 588

Angelo's Reminiscences 468

Annals of the Peninsular Campaigns. . 83
Balfour's Weeds and Wild Flowers ... 465

Ball's Craation '. 345

Bernay's Compendious German Gram-
mar 590

Bertha's Jourual 216

Bibers' (Dr.) Lectures 211

Bray's Fitz of Fitzford 458

British Naturalist 464

Caillie's Travels through Central Africa 582

Code of Terpsichore 90

Compendium of Modern Geography .. 469

Christian Physiologist 467

Conversations upon Comparative Chro-
nology and General History 589

Court and Camp of Buonaparte (Fa-
mily Library) 87

Crombie's Natural Theology 590

Cunningham's Lives of British Painters

(Family Library) 339

Darnley 463

Dobell's Travels in Kamtchatka and

Siberia 585

Ducondray Holstein's Memoirs of Simon

Bolivar 586

Easy Rhymes for Children from Five to

Ten Years of Age 470

Excitement ; or a Book to induce Boys
to read ... . . 215

Page

Exclusives, the 209

Forby's Vocabulary of East An glia .... 215

Forrester 345

Fuller's Narrative of a Tour through

Turkey 537

Gleig's Country Curate 341

Life of Major General Sir Tho-
mas Munro 337

Godwin's Cloudesley 4C6

Gorton's Topographical Dictionary . . . 470

Harleian Dairy System 91

Hatfield's Moments of Loneliness .... 219
Health without Physic, by an Old Phy-
sician 84

Heeren's Manual of Ancient History. . 89
Higgin's Introductory Treatise on the
Nature and Properties of Light .... 218

Hill's Holiday Dreams 86

Hunter's Diary of Ralph Thoresby . . . 439
Ingram's Concise System of Mathema-
tics 469

Jefferson's Memoirs 81

Lander's Records of Clapperton's last

Expedition 462

Landscape Annual 82

Leake's Travels in the Morea 579

Library of Entertaining Knowledge 459, 588
Life on Board of a Man of War, by a

British Seaman 85

Linnington's Companion to the Globes 470
Lloyd's Field Sports of the North .... 465

INDEX.

Page
Londonderry's (Marquess) Narrative of

the War in Germany and France. . . 457

Lost Heir and Prediction 343

M'Diarmid's Sketches from Nature . . . 464
Manual of the Economy of the Human

Body, &c 589

Manners of the Day 583

Mechanics' Cabinet Cyclopedic 583

Memoirs of Rear Admiral Paul Jones 342
Milman's Conclusion of History of the

Jews (Family Library) 213

Murray's Family Library, Columbus . 461
Naval Administration of Great Britain 624

Picture of India 577

Pilgrim of the Hebrides 581

Phillips's Mount Sinai 581

Read's Political Economy 217

Rhind's Studies in Natural History ... 85

Ritchie's Game of Life 578

Rowbotham's Deutsches Lesebach .... 220
Salmon's Stricture of the Rectum 468

Page

Shepherd's Two Funeral Discourses. . . 85
Sir Walter Scott's History of Scotland

(Cabinet Cyclopedia) 210, 467

Sou they 's Life of Nelson 583

Stebbing's History of Chivalry 584

Sydenham, or the Man of the World. . 461

Tales of Four Nations 88

— — of a Briefless Barrister 213

of a Tar 669

Taylor's History of France and Nor-
mandy 464

Temple's Travels in Peru 577

Telesforo (Don) de Trueba's Romance

of History 82

Thompson's Tradesman's Law Library 588
Titley's Practical Treatise on the Dis-
eases of the Genitals 220

Time's Telescope, 1830 219

Waverley Novels, Rob Roy 88

Young (The) Wanderer's Cave 346

EMINENT AND REMARKABLE PERSONS,

Whose Deaths are recorded in this Volume.

Rev. T. Belsham 477

Mr. Chevenix 596

Sir H. Dalrymple 597

General Gneisenau .... 476

Lord Harrington 358

Mr. Klose 595.

Laffon de Ladebat 356

Sir Thomas Lawrence. . 228

Barrry St. Leger 100

Due de Levis />95

Mr. Mawe 103

Sir Edmund Nagle 595

PRESENTED
-8 DEC 1943

Sir Miles Nightingall. . 101

Major Rennell 596

Count Gouvion St. Cyr 597
Marquis de Lally To-

lendal 598