ethers can boast, and no others exceed. We have given the most convincing proof we could offer of our thorough persuasion of their merit, by the ample extracts we have made from them in a preceding department of this volume: we beg the editor to accept our sin cere thanks for the treat he has afforded us, and we sincerely lament that they have thus long been secluded from the public eye. They are a gem of inappreciable value, whether regarded as national documents, or as specimens of polite literature. It would be unjust in us not to add, that the original autograph is at this moment in the editor's hands. But literary merit, domestic virtue, and moral goodness, are not confined to any single political party, dependent upon any individual set of diplomatic characters, or religious opinions: and we now allude to an anonymous, but, we believe, authentic publication of "Original Memoirs, written during the Great Civil War," of which by far the larger part consists of memoirs of sir Henry Slingsby, written by himself, and containing a tolerably fair, and very interesting account of the facts and manners of the times in which he lived and suffered. Sir Henry Slingsby was a man of a warm and honest heart, and an unquenchable perseverance in the cause of the Stuart dynasty: yet by intermarriages he was closely connected with the chief families of the opposite party; and hence, notwithstanding his frequent attempts to gain over the officers of the different castles in which he was successively confined, and to which in consequence of a communication of these various tamperings to the protector, he was successively transferred he was not brought to his trial till nearly three years after his arrest, which was at Hull, in 1655. Cromwell was afraid of juries, as well he might be; and hence he had the audacity to invent another sort of tribunal, which he called, the high court of justice, in which the commissioners, chosen from his own creatures, united the characters of judges and jurors. It was before this court sir Henry Slingsby was arraigned: he denied itsjurisdiction, and demanded a trial by jury. His demand was not complied with; he was tried before the high court, May 25, 1658, found guilty of high treason, and, on June 8th, beheaded on Tower Hill:-a sentence to which he submitted with much fortitude. His remains were deposited in a chapel belonging to his family, in the church at Knaresborough. The other articles in the collection before us are of less interest. They consist of "Memoirs of Capt. John Hodgson, of Coalley-Hall, near Halifax," containing a narrative of his persecations, in consequence of the Restoration, as well as of the movements of the parliamentary army, anterior to this event, in which he commanded a company: but the style is coarse, and the manner uninviting. The additional papers are official docu-. ments respecting Cromwell's campaign in Scotland. These, as records of authority, may be of service to the historian, but few besides the historian will ever peruse them. "History of the Campaign of 1805, in Germany, Italy, the Tyrol, &c. by William Burke, Svo.' The short but important series of transactions that first put Germany into the hands of Bonaparte; that enabled him, by a single manœuvre, to swallow up the grand army of Austria; to seize possession of its capital within three weeks from the commencement of the campaign; within three weeks more to spread his victorious career from the Rhine to the Bug; and within two months to overthrow the remainder of the Austrian forces, concentrated and united with the grand army of the Russian empire;-offers us a train of events that we shall in vain look for in any other part of universal histotory: the present war, indeed, gives us something of a parallel; but, excepting on its outset, the career of Bonaparte was by no means so rapid, though on its close his moderation to Prussia has been less distinguished than that to Austria. To investigate the springs and causes of so wonderful a success on the part of the French, is to engage in an important, but an arduous undertaking. Mr. Burke, in the history before us, has pointed out some of them; but there are yet several which seem totally to have escaped his attention, and others to which he has attached too little moment. His book is, indeed, written more for general information than for professional study; it is statistic rather than military, and picturesque and illustrative rather than statistic. It is probable that the rapid conquest of Austria depended, in a great degree, on the supineness of the inhabitants, and their total indifference to the existing dynasty but Prussian Poland did not fall so easily, although the same cause not only existed, but to an infinitely great er effect; and it was expected that the inhabitants would have flocked to the French standard with universal acclamation. If the people were cold, and cold they undoubtedly were even to the freezing point, the army was eorrupt, and the prince misguided. Under such circumstances, half the ordinary courage and half the ordinary skill of Bonaparte would have been sufficient to have commanded success: every thing com. bined in his favour; and brilliant as was his triumph, it was achieved rather by the enemies he had to oppose than the army he had to lead forward. Mr. Bigland has adapted, by a second and enlarged edition, his "Letters on the Modern History and Political Aspect of Europe," to the meridian of the present hour. We have now sixteen let ters, of which the first is introductory: the second divides Europe into three primary powers, France, Russia, and Britain; various secondary powers, into which class he has transferred Spain, Austria, Prussia, and Sweden, and multitudes that are altogether de pendent. We are next carried, in letter iii, to St. Domingo, and then back again, in letters vi, vii, viii, ix, and x, to Prussia, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. In letter xi, we re-cross the Atlantic, and are called to a soporific discourse upon the predisposing causes of an ultimate and necessary separation between all large and powerful colonies and their parent country. In letter xii, we are hurried back again, though not by the North-west passage, to Rus sia. In letter xiii, we visit Denmark; and in letters xiv, xv, and xvi, make an agreeable excursion up the Mediterranean to Egypt, on whose shores we cast anchor for the last time, and are allowed to idle our hours away as long as we please. The work is pleasantly written, and the author shews himself sufficiently acquainted with modern politics for the purpose he has undertaken; yet a little more method would have given it additi emal onal value, notwithstanding the desultory character under which it shelters itself; for order is as consistent with a series of letters as a series of mathematical problems. furnished post-houses: that the royal mines of the kingdom of La Plata are most miserably and ignorantly worked: that they produce at present a revenue of four millions and a half of piastres; and that if they were worked as they ought to be," if all the veins of ore were sought for, and wrought with but moderate skill and diligence, this kingdom alone might yield every year twenty, and even thirty mil lions of piastres." Lima, the capital of Peru, is agreeably described, and represented as a most delightful and desirable situation, were it not for the tremendous earthquakes to which it is so subject, and on account of which the inhabitants do not venture to build their houses more than a single story high. For the rest the reader must consult the volume itself. The appendix is a useful compilation. The surrender of Buenos Ayres to general Beresford, and the attention which was hence called towards the South American continent, in the way of general trade and politics, have not produced such a variety of publications as we expected. In fact, in neither of these lines have we met with any thing worthy of notice; and, from the late events that have occurred, the subject is now likely to be resigned to a deeper oblivion than ever. In the way of chorography, or travels, we have met with but one attempt, and that a most barren and meagre account indeed, but still welcome for want of a better. This account consists of "Travels from Buenos Ayres, by Potosi to Lima," hastily drawn up by M. Anthony Zachariah Helms, after his return from this settle ment, in which he had for three years (from 1788 to 1792) resided as superintendent of the mines, and inserted in Zach's German Ephe meris, To this compendious notice the anonymous translator has added a sufficient body of annotations and topographical descriptions to expand it to the size of a moderate duodecimo, numbering a hundred and eighty pages. From this statement we learn that Buenos Ayres contains a population of twenty-five thousand inhabitants; Saltz, situate on the river Arias, of_mates." nearly ten thousand; and Potosi, of a hundred thousand, including slaves. That from Buenos Ayres to Potosi is sixteen hundred and seventeen geographical miles, communicating by passable roads, and tolerably "Notes on the West Indies, by George Pinckard, M.D. &c." 3 vol. 8vo. These notes, as we learn from the continuation of the titlepage, which might have answered all the purposes of an introductory chapter, "were written during the expedition under the command of the late gen. sir Ralph Abercrombie : including observations on the Island of Barbadoes, and the Settlements captured by the British troops upon the coast of Guinea: likewise remarks relating to the Creoles, and Slaves of the western Colonies, and the Indians of South America, with occasional Hints regarding the Seasoning, or Yellow Fever, of hot Cli The patient reader may here glean entertainment and instruction, but the ground over which he must toil is, too frequently, bare and unthrifty, with scarcely the appearance of a single husk, Our author writes best when he writes directly from the scenery around him: there is a candour in his narration to which we can implicitly trust, and a benevolence in his feelings which interests us warmly in his fate. But Dr. Pinckard is unfortunately not content with being a mere narrator of facts:he is perpetually endeavouring to combine with this character those of a sentimentalist and of a classic: almost every description is terminated with a string of reflections that are as pathetic as the glitter of fine language and false imagery can make them, and almost every reflection is interwoven with scraps of what would have been latinity, had not the author. totally forgotten, not only his syntax, but even his declensions and conjugations. We have scarcely space for references, but will just hint to him, against another edition of this work, which we should like to see in an abridged form, that it was some time before we understood what he means, when he tells us, that they at length appeared before the summoning officer in propriis personibus. We will also venture to hint to him, against the same period, that it would add to the value of his performance if he were to spell his vernacular terms more correctly on particular occasions; and for this purpose take leave to acquaint him that the inverted action of the stomach, during sickness, is not expressed, as he has expressed it in many places, or we should have blamed the printer instead of the writer,--by the word reaching, but retching. As proceeding from a medical practitioner, we were the more surprised at this gross vulgarism: the fashionable world, indeed, is never less at home than when at home; yet we should not be justified in applying this apo, phthegm to Dr. Pinckard, who has 1 given evident marks of professional observation and judgment. "A Voyage to Cochinchina in the Years 1792 and 1793, by John Barrow, Esq." Mr. Barrow is well and deservedly known as the author of two of the best books of travels we have received of late years; the one containing travels in Southern Africa, the other in China: accounts of both which, and extracts from both which, will be found in our antecedent volumes. The present publication may be regarded as a kind of appendix to the two: for although it be chiefly directed to a description of the situa tion, population, history, and manners of Cochinchina, it gives us also fresh information concerning the interior of the Cape of Good Hope. That tongue or projection of land of about thirteen degrees in length, which joins the Chinese empire in the twenty-second degree of south latitude, and may be regarded as a geographical appendage to it, and which, by a vast ridge of moun tains running down its middle from north to south, terminates the Birman empire, both eastward and westward, is the object of our author's first and principal attention. Of this neck of land Tungquin, Cochinchina, and Tsiompa, according to our common maps, occupy successively the western route, and Cambodia the eastern. "These names," our author tells us, "thus usually marked on our charts, are, however, utterly unknown to the natives, except Tungquin. The other three, collectively, are called An-nan, and are distinguished by three grand divisions: the first, contained between the southernmost point which forms the extre mity of the gulf of Siam, and which lies in about the ninth degree of latitude, as far as to thetwelfth de gree, gree, is called Don-nai: the second, extending from hence to the fifteenth degree, Chang; and the third, between this and the seventeenth degree, where the kingdom of Tungquin commences, is called Hué." Mr. Barrow, in the modern political history of the country, gives a very interesting account of a rebellion excited in the year 1774, by three brothers, who were natives, and who succeeded in dethroning the king, who appears to have been an amiable man, and afterwards in murdering him, as well as all the royal family who could be discovered, and in passing an edict of banishment against the rest. By the friendship and vigilance, however, of a very honest and excellent French missionary, the rightful heir to the throne was concealed, conducted in safety out of the kingdom, received a suitable education, and after contending with romantic difficulties, succeeded in dispossessing the usurping dynasty of the whole of the Cochinchinese empire, except Tungquin, to which a son of one of the usurpers had fled, and against whom he was marching in 1800, at which period the narrative closes. Our author examines, in his concluding chapter, the advantages which might accrue to Great Britain from opening a commercial intercourse with this country; and they appear so considerable as to be worth attempting. The Cochinchinese government is devoid of the rigid jealousy of that of China; our trade to Canton is, in the highest degree, precarious, and should it be totally prohibited, it might still be carried on by Chinese junks through the medium of a settlement in the former kingdom: independently of which, Cocinchina offers in itself an inexhaustible supply of the most valuable timbers, as well as The of other important materials for the different markets of Asia and Europe. The latter part of the volume before us, consists as we have already observed, of a translation of a Dutch journal, written by Mr. Truter, who, in company with Mr. Somerville, was dispatched by the Cape government, in 1801, to procure horned cattle of the natives to the north-east of the colony, in order to replace the numbers which had lately perished in the settlement from a most sickly season. journal is well worth translating: it gives an interesting, and apparently a faithful, picture of the simple and benevolent savages that, under the name of Kaffers, Hottentots, Koras (probably a mixed breed), Borjesmans, Booshuanas, and Barroloos, progressively inhabit this untravelled country. Let the proud philosopher of Europe, who disclaims a common origin with these simple people, and flatters himself that he is descended from a nobler stem; let the advocate for the slave-trade, who perceives no inhumanity or breach of moral duty in sending the poor conquered or kidnapped African to worse than a Smithfield market, read and deliberate on these pages; and if they do not drop their high-toned pretensions, and abandon the system they have espoused, it is not argument that can convince their heads, nor feeling that can penetrate their bosoms. We congratulate the world of maritime science and adventure, upon the appearance of captain Burney's second part or volume of his "Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the. South Sea or Pacific Ocean." The merit which we have awarded to the first part is equally to be found throughout the whole of the present. The same circumspection |