it was absolutely necessary I should visit the country of my fathers before I could think of settling permanently in a strange and distant laud. But will your king,' eagerly inquired Mansolah,

will your king give you permission to come back again?' 'Without doubt,' I replied. 'I shall then be master of my own actions, and follow the bent of my inclination in all things.'That is right, that is right,' replied the monarch; you shall be my son-in-law, and have the administration of my affairs, both foreign and do mestic; you shall drive my adversaries from my country: it will then be a good country, and peace will reign in the land.' I thanked Mansolab for his kindness, and observed that I sincerely hoped, on my return, I should not be dazzled by the acquisition of so much glory and power as his goodnature and condescension would necessarily confer upon me!

"As soon as I had done speaking, a loud noise was heard of peals of laughter, cracking of fingers, whistling, and clapping of hands, proceeding from the quarter in which the princesses of the blood were huddled together, who took the opportunity my silence afforded them of expressing the rapture they felt at the hope of my so soon becoming

their near relative."

The following detail pourtrays a remarkable female usage:

"When an infant dies, the mother invariably wears, suspended from the neck, and reaching to the bosom, a figure of a child, about six inches in length, and of proportionable thickness, which is carved in wood, and regarded by the people as a token of mourning. This is worn for an indefinite length of time, according to the inclination or caprice of the bereaved parent; and many women do not cast it aside until the expiration of six, eight, and even twelve months, during which they chat to and caress the wooden figure, as if it had been instinct with life and motion, possessed of all the playfulness and endearing manners which distinguished their offspring when alive, and capable of enjoying the effects of maternal tenderness. This singular custom is confined exclusively to Yariba."

Of Captain Clapperton, his master, and friend, and fellow-traveller, Mr. Lander relates much that is highly interesting and praiseworthy; and, indeed, he speaks uniformly of him in terms which have the effect of increasing our regret for the loss sustained in the melanchly death of that valued investigator and amiable man.

The Maid of Scio, a Tale of Modern Greece. By Eleanor Snowden.

A very sweet and pleasing little poem, printed at Dover. The theme is never-dying Grecce, or rather a Tale of one of her daughters. It displays considerable powers of versification, great tenderness of feeling, and a rich fancy. The author, however, has had Lord Byron too much before her in the composition of her poem, and it wants that novelty which can alone secure to it success in these days of superficial reading. The following is a specimen of a "Serenade" from this unpretending little production.

Like a Fay's elysian rest, Pillow'd on a lily's breast. May a mystic spell confine thee; And a rosy chain entwine thee, Cupid's ever-blooming band-Flowers fresh from fairy-land; While a thousand airs divine Whisper to thee, Constantine!' "Fainter breathes th' expiring lay Melting into air awaySoft as an Eolian lute,

When its chords are nearly mute.
With downcast glance and trembling frame,
And burning blush of virgin shame;
And bosom swelling with emotion,
As heaves the agitated ocean:
The fascinated nymph of Greece
Hears the sinking notes decrease;
Even Echo's voice is o'er-
Solemn stillness lulls the shore.
The maid of Scio lists in vain--
Not a breath on hill or plain-
Silence hath resumed her reign."

Inquiry into the Causes of the Decline of Historical Painting. By Douglas Guest.

A society at Haarlem put forth, some time ago, as a question for a prize discussion, "why the Dutch school, in its best days, produced so few good historical painters, though excelling in every thing relative to simple nature, and the common scenes of life, and what can now be done to produce these rare aves ?" Mr. Guest, himself a gentleman of some distinction in the historical department, and known as a lecturer on painting-thinking the matter, at the same time, not wholly inapplicable to his own country, takes up the question, and his first answer amounts to this-" that excellence is to be obtained by those who are best qualified by natural talent to obtain it;" which, though very true, is not to the point, for who doubts but, in every age, numbers have existed with the requisite powers, only they have not fallen in with the circumstances indispensable for eliciting them ;-but the next is to the purpose," that the Dutch painters have generally been men too much unlicked by education and good society to excel in the historical and imaginative departments-they were neither enlightened by philosophy, nor idealized by poetry. They had eyes, industry, and tact, and the scenes before them they have delineated with admirable truth, and coloured to the life; but a glance at the biographies of these men show them to have been low in caste, and gross in habits, uninformed in matters of taste and literature, and strangers to the charms of cultivation. In all that close observation could give, all that experiment in colour could accomplish, they were eminent; in native scenes and subjects they were masters; and, accordingly, huntings, interiors, drinking-bouts, and pertraits, constitute the wealth of their subjects, and their points of success. Rubens and Vandyke travelled; the beauties of the Italian schools were unveiled to them, and excited them to a more ambitious course; but they never came up to the level of celebrity with them, because plainly, after all, they had but a glance of historical subjects; they caught a notion, but of historical propriety nothing. In Rubens' Rape of the Sabines, you find splendid architecture, and the Sa

bine rustics flaunting in Flemish silks. Who was to correct him? Not his countrymen, plainly. There must be cultivated admirers to secure good painters. Painting is essentially a liberal, a thinking, a reasoning art, and mental and moral calture quite indispensable for excellence.

The remedy, of course, is as clear as daylight to Mr. Guest. To have painters, you must educate them; you must have a public institute, and begin with boys, who have already shown the proper aptitudes, at ten years of age; and work them till eighteen and twenty, and then supply them with handsome pensions to keep them idle; we mean, to leave them to the abstractions of leisure, and screen them from the distractions of duns. It will never do. More than half the virtues the world has ever known has had to struggle through obstacles, and, without any doubt, has been rather better than worse for the struggle.

The Poor Laws in Ireland considered in their probable Effects upon the Capital, the Prosperity, and the Progressive Improvements of that Country. By Sir J. Walsh, Bart.

This is a lucid and clever treatise on the arguments adduced for establishing a poor-rate in IreLand. It abounds in good sense, treats the subject with a proper teeling, and sets in a strong point of view the objections to the measure, with the different bearing the question holds in the respective countries. We recommend an attentive per

usal of it to our readers.

Constable's Miscellany. White's Selborne.

effect.

No. 45.

Mr. Constable's Miscellany multiplies upon us, and we are getting violently in arrear; this, however, may be said, in excuse for ourselves, and in satisfaction to him, that the general merits of his collection have been now for some time readily admitted, and our neglect can have no injurious Of course, with so many different writers and capacities, uniformity in sentiment, manner, or taste, cannot be looked for, and there is, while all are respectable, it must be allowed, considerable inequality. This forty-fifth portion is a reprint of "White's Selborne," a book which has always been applauded quite up to its merits; and in saying this, we do not by any means wish to depreciate Mr. White-only,when we do by chance get a good book among us, let us try and avoid so overdoing the matter of panegyric as to overlook others' deserts. The reprint is confined to the natural history, excluding thus, with good reason, the antiquities of the town and neighbourhood, which of course had but rarely, and then but slightly, a connexion with the general subject; but why the naturalist's calendar should also be excluded, it would puzzle any one but the Editor, who it would be unhandsome to suppose had not his reasons for the exclusion, though he has not favoured us with them,-to explain. The Editor, himself a naturalist of some distinction, has added a few notes, which prove his own talent for observation: but the book bears marks of unnecessary haste. In his desire to cut away the superfinous, he becomes, like Horace, obscure; and not only does he thus make poor Mr. White obscure, but, as far as depends upon him, annihilates his

very facts. Thus the headings of the letters, the "Dear Sirs," and " Humble Servant's," are all removed, and of course they can very well be spared; but with these have vanished all the dates, though references are often made in the body of the letters to the season, which of course makes the date of importance. "Red-starts, fly-catchers, and reguli non cristati still appear, but I have seen no black-throats lately,"-where the date of the communication is suppressed to save space!

That the notes are not superfluous, one instance will show. "You wonder," says White, writing to Daines Barrington, "that sparrows can be induced at all to sit on the egg of the cuckoo without being scandalized at the vast, disproportioned size of the supposititious egg." Would it be believed that neither of these mighty men had ever seen a cuckoo's egg? "I suppose,” replies White, philosophizing, like many more, before the fact, "the brute creation have very little idea of size, colour, or motion." By a wise provision of nature, annotates Sir W. Jardine, and to prevent the very circumstance which Mr. White here notices, we find the cuckoo's egg scarcely larger than that of the common chaffinch.

Constable's Miscellany. No. 46.—Sinclair's Autumn in Italy, in the Year 1827.

This is an original tour, by a son of Sir John Sinclair, of agriculture, finance, and longevity memory. The tourist enters upon the field of his tour by the Simplon, proceeds by Milan, Venice, Padua, Ferrara, and Florence, to Rome, and returns from thence by the common route of Florence and Genoa to Nice, relating all the way, in a very distinct and unassuming fashion, his few personal adventures, describing the common descriptive materials, churches and pictures, of course, very much in the common spirit and language of passing tourists-and intermixing, as they occur to him, his general conclusions on the character of the people, and the effects upon the said character by the several governments of the country-with no novelty, certainly, but with no pertness. Mr. Sinclair is evidently a good-humoured accommodating kind of person-inclined to make the best of the mal-a-propos-pleased with things, for the most part, as they turn up, and, if occasionally disturbed, quickly recovering his equanimity. Civility goes a great way with him, and he is too just a man to object to the charge for it in the bill. He is very well content with his general reception in the higher classes, and somewhat surprised at the prevalence of propriety, good manners, and intelligence. Fully occupied with collecting for Mr. Constable-with little time at his cominand, and probably little propensity to search out the worst part of society, he concludes the Italians have been very hardly dealt with. Our prejudices are, in general, very gross with respect to them. In his eyes the women are not only all charming, but all chaste. The very governments are quite respectable. Tuscany is perfectly liberal-Rome paternal-even Austria does not show its claws, for you will not see a single officer at the theatre in regimentals-of Sardinia we do not recollect any thing is said, except that Genoa has certainly gained by being placed under ber protecting wings. "At Leghorn," he says, "reside 18,000 Jews"-a number greater, we suspect, than Mr. Milman calculated upon in his

recent enumeration. The illustrious Ganganelli," we are informed in a note, was Clement XIV. so well known in this country by his admirable letters," &c. Mr. Sinclair was amused with the answer of a Cicerone to some person inquiring of what order some marble columns were? "I frati sono dell' ordine di San Agostino." This is a poor story compared with one at home lately. "I don't understand precisely this order," says some amateur of architecture to one of Mr. Nash's agents. "It is Mr. Nash's positive order, Sir." Mr. Sinclair now and then wanders into general remark, but, as he never takes his logic with him, we but rarely catch his probable meaning. We have just stumbled on a passage that baffles us completely, and we shall quote it for the amusement of any of our readers who love a conundrum after dinner. He is severe upon our learned Universities, quite indiscriminately, and talks of pedants, who, proud of their Greek, and a barbarous unintelligible Latin, feel quite at a loss when they happen to go abroad, for such is the nature of their education that they can scarcely articulate a word of any modern language, their own excepted. And now comes what appears to be his clencher in establishing the inefficiency of all our Universities-even our London one. "An extract from an English University, lately expressed to me his admiration of the Lusiad, which he had just been reading in Portuguese. I presumed, of course, that he was acquainted with the language, to enable him so fully to appreciate the beauties of Camoens. But he acknowledged that this was not the case, having merely perused the work philologically without understanding one word of it." What does he mean?

Constable's Miscellany, Nos. 47 & 48. Life of Oliver Cromwell. By the Rev. M. Russel.

This Life of Cromwell is a very creditable performance, written by a person, apparently, very capable of coming to sound conclusions, withont being materially warped by old prejudices. There is, perhaps, more of the public history of the country than the life of the individual required; but where the line between Cromwell's private and public lite-at least, after the commencement of his military influence-is to be drawn, is not easy to fix. No man in the world was ever more bedevilled by one party, and bedeified by the other; but the demonizers-such is, unhappily, the influence of the evil principle-long bore down all before them, and smothered, not merely the voice of praise, but the commonest measure of justice. It was not-we shall not say, till the vio lence of party tempered and cooled, for when does it ever cool?-it was not till a suspicion of unfairness arose in the few-till a desire of shaking off old and vulgar prejudices, and telling, if not the true, yet a new story, took possession of them, together with an independency and sturdiness of resolution, which, though tinged itself, it may be, with bigotry, is not to be deterred from telling what appears to be irrefragably built upon irrefragable evidence that such a man as Cromwell, who had paralyzed one set, and perhaps duped another, could be rescued even from the coarsest calumnies. In our days, we are not always to be put off with ambiguous arguments, vague words, and partial causes; it is not enough to tell us Cromwell was

a rogue and a hypocrite, and therefore readily broke through all obstruction to the swelling object before him. There are rogues and hypocrites on all sides; and it would, perhaps, with the very best will, which is, indeed, seldom wanting, be difficult to prove his pre-eminence. No, we look for more specific movements; and in studying the history of the man, from friend and foe, we find them. Mr. Russel has done so, to some extent, and marked his sentiments accordingly. He finds much to commend, but more to blame; and might, therefore, we think, have found less difficulty in reconciling Mr. Godwin with himself, without invidiously telling us, as he does, that that gentleman combines, in his own narrative, the highest praise with the deepest condemnation-representing Cromwell as the best and the greatest of mankind, the most humane and generous of patriots, while he charges him with the rankest hypocrisy and deceit, and with the intention of subjugating his countrymen to a state of degradation and slavery. All this has a malicious air with it; for, certainly, Mr. Godwin does no more than Mr. Russel does; that is, he praises and blaines, according as circumstances appear to warrant him. Does Mr. Russel really think Godwin-filling the space he has done in modern literature nearly forty years a man to be treated contemptuousły?

Acts.

Black-eyed Susan, a Drama, in Three By Douglas Jerrold, Author of "John Overy," &c.

The author's aim in dramatizing Gay's ballad was, professedly, to correct the common representation of the stage sailor, a brutal compound of oaths, loyalty, and bravado. The tone, accordingly, now substituted, without much mending the matter, is a disclaiming one-it is all matter of duty. But we notice the play more for the absurd construction given to one of the articles of war-the striking a superior officer. The Captain of William's ship offers violence to William's wife; William, without recognizing the person of the violator-it was in the dark-cuts him down with his cutlass, and is in consequence tried, condemned, and only rescued from hanging by the said Captain's producing William's discharge from the Admiralty the day before the blow. The provocation, if he had even killed the man, would have saved him in any court on land, and why should it not at sea? It would have done so, in reality, in our days. Does the writer think naval discipline is to be maintained by tyranny, and the violation of the common feelings of nature?

A Compendious and Important View of the Principal Events in the History of England and Ireland, iu relation to the Roman Catholic Question, &c. By J. Bedford.

A small portion of this not unuseful volume is occupied with a sketch of the course of enactments, which constituted the Catholic code, followed by a glance at the successive relief bills during the reign of George the Third. The bulk of the book is taken up with the details of Parliamentary transactions relative to their farther relief from the year 1821 to the final triumph of the last year. This part will be particularly ac ceptable to some persons, as collecting together