stance had likewise been wanting.For Calebs in search of a Wife, is just quaint enough: but Nubilia in search of a Husband is at once indelicate, unnatural, and absurd.

"Are

The substance of the present work consists, in the first place, of a long address on the physical, moral, and intellectual education of children: secondly, a long tedious letter on marriage, and on the alleged folly of the reserve which it commonly imposes; and, thirdly, a long string of reflections on independence of mind. Besides these principal articles, we have a discourse on the evils of political disputation;—another, on the characters of some of the English poets ;-a declamation on the elegant amusement of cockfighting, and a very violent one against the enlightened members of the Whip Club;a few encomiastic observations on Robert Burns, the poet; ―a particular account of Mary of Buttermere,—a discussion on the justifiableness of suicide;-another on German literature ;-and, finally, a most phlegmatic chapter on love and friendship.

The remarks on the management of children

are,

without controversy, the best part of the book :-the only part indeed, which has any substantial value: and notwithstanding their tediousness and tautology, these are certainly, upon the whole, considerably above mediocrity. We approve very much of that system of decision and inflexibility, which is here recommended to parents, in the discipline of their families; and shall quote a passage, where we think the description is very naturally given, acquainting the reader, at the same time, that this paragraph is, perhaps, the chef

d'œuvre of the whole.

"Such a dialogue as the following I have heard, I cannot tell you how often. "Come here, my dear Charlotte, you "look very pale to-day." Charlotte smiles with all the gaiety of health.

Tndeed you do: your eyes are heavy

moaning voice, answers, "Nothing." "Poor dear, she speaks as if she were sick; here, put your head upon mamma's bosom; is it your head that aches?" Look at Charlotte now; her features are relaxed; her head lies languidly upon mamma's breast; her mouth falls; distress is painted upon every feature; and in a voice scarcely audible, she replies "No." "Bless me but you are very sick; you can hardly speak; tell me, my dear, what it is you feel." Charlotte thinks of caudles and confections, nursings, soothings, and indulgencies, and answers half weeping, "I feel something; I don't know what." bursts into tears, and tells mamma she lamb, I knew she v feels very sick. The bell is rung, the bed prepared; all the house put in commotion, and Miss Charlotte, tottering on mamma's arm, or carried by papa, is conveyed to bed, and then begins the usual mummery. This is the progress, nine times out of ten, of infantile diseases. They are absolutely tortured into illness." P. 121.

-was ill."

66 'Sweet Charlotte

but the independence which Nubilia recommends is quite independent of religion. It is the unassisted effort of human sagacity and power. It is entirely a prudential quality, assumed for secular purposes, without being at all inspired by a strong and habitual reverence for Truth, and without any regard to the divine will. "The man who can lay his hand upon his heart," says Nubilia," and exclaim with conscious rectitude,' I have never forgotten the dignity of human nature,' is a man more to be envied, in my estimation, than any other human being." Now what is this, we would ask, but to erect a false and spurious standard of morality? What is it, but to exalt the pride of man; to make his own selflove, in fact, the umpire of his conduct; to place individual opinion in the chair of divine revelation; and to refer us, in short, to a criterion, which has no existence but in the perverted imagination of man, and which is entirely excluded by every idea of religion which we derive from the scriptures? But Nubilia has no religion: no, not a particle; unless those shallow and evanescent emotions can be denominated religion, which even the most, abandoned minds fail not frequently to experience, whilst contemplating the beauties of external nature, or listening to the melodious sounds of the Æolian harp!-No :-we are willing to enlarge the exception: we shall readily allow greater latitude to Nubilia; and if any one can find the evidences of genuine religion in the following declaration, let the young lady have the praise of it :

"I love to follow a funeral, and pause at every step, and lay each accent that it speaks, close upon my heart. I love to hold some mouldering bone within my hand, and knit it with its brethren, and dress them up, in fancy, with mortal, perishable beauty; to invest the loathsome ruin with grace and charms; to give it dignity, and excellence, and love." P. 164.

In such vapid and unavailing sentiments as these does Nubilia's piety consist; nor is she even ashamed to avow, that the feelings which are thus excited in her breast, constitute in her opinion, a much more rational and acceptable system of devotion, than all the exercises of social and public worship,-stamped as they are with divine authority. We cannot help deploring the ignorance, to speak of nothing else, which the expression of such opinions palpably betrays.

The story on which all this verbiage (for honestly, as a whole, it is little else) is suspended, is meagre in the extreme. It is not worth the epitomizing. The characters are all unfinished. Many of them are unnatural. To quote a single example, what think you, reader, of a fine laboured piece of rhetoric, with an oath or two to boot, made to proceed from the lips of a man in the pains of death, and already within the threshold of eternity? Such, however, was the case with the father of Nubilia !

With regard to the style of this work, its author informs us, in the preface, that "he has attempted to construct the language with a greater latitude of rhetorical embellishment, than is usually thought consistent with English prose." And again, that "the aim has been, in particular passages, to try how elevated English prose might be made, without becoming turgid." The reader shall judge for himself of the success of this ticklish experiment, and, for this end, we shall select one particular paragraph, as we conceive, that our author has therein put forth all the skill of which he was master, in the art of composithere ever was such a mass of English tion. For our own part we inquire if syllables and sentences conglomerated together as in the following most extraordinary passage:

"At other times softer and more ethereal images arise. When I have beheld

held distant clouds strongly tinged with the sun's rays, and floating, as it were, in the whiteness of surrounding ether, steadily I have fixed my eyes upon them, and imagined, that resting on their fluid borders, or rolled within their fleecy folds, angels sit hymning to the great Creator; and, with heavenly voices, joined to the dulcet melody of harps, sing their vesper chorus. I fancy that the aerial strains reach my ears; and for a moment I am transported among them; then heaven opens on my eyes! I see transparent forms, whose milk - white wings fold, like a cincture, round their dazzling loins; they lean on golden harps; the blazing floor, spangled with stars innumerable, beams like a furnace; pendant, from vaulted roofs, hang starry lamps, burning sweet incense, whose odours, wafted through the balmy air, fill the delighted sense with gladness. Angelic shapes glide through Doric columns, inwreathed with many a spiral fold of flaming cressets, which, circling in magic dance around, reach a nameless height supporting roofs of fretted gold; these, as they move along, hold

mutual discourse sweet, and look such dewy mildness from their eyes, as heavenly spirits wont, when they, of old, descended to converse with man, swift messengers of God's eternal word; still, as my fancy works, methinks I'm led to softly breathing measures, from view less harps, by airy minstrels played, along the space of heaven: odorous perfumes from ten thousand fanning wings are wafted round me: trembling I stand, even at the throne of God himself, whence angels turn, with softened gaze away, so bright the effulgent glory which irradiates from the clouds that dwell, for ever, round the Omnipotent! The lost soul is lapped in ectasy and big with unutterable feelings: mysterious visions sweep before my sight; and, in an ocean plunged of pleasures, tempered to its state by the creative mind that for med them, it dies, dissolves away, and conscious only of amazing bliss. The shadows of approaching night recall its wandering thoughts, and I awake to life to misery and the world!"

P. 291.

We have also throughout this book several curious expressions, such as, unwarmed vacuity," "quotidian wis

66

un

dom," "fitful breeze," "club-warriors," &c. We meet besides with a few words which are rather unusual, as congenerous," "inhumation," " blenched," " lucre-gifted," &c. But we hasten to close our extracts, by indulging our female readers, (and we hope they will consider themselves indebted to us for the treat,) with Nubilia's description of Mary of Buttermere, and of her hair-comb. Here it is:

"She is a brunette in complexion : her hair was turned up behind, and fastned with a comb that had a pearl back, or perhaps only beads; for I did not accurately examine." P. 326.

To conclude, we are sensible that with this book: not more, however, we have used considerable freedom we should think, than we were justified in doing, although a great deal more, we believe, than the author seems to have been willing to allow to any critic. He manifests an anxiety throughout, to escape animadversion, by alleging, that it would be unfair in any one to indulge in it, who has not imbibed the feelings which he describes. Had we resolved to abide by this rule, we should have been in the situation of the man, who took his post at a river side, with the determination to wait till the water had run by, that he might then walk over dryshod! We must again plainly declare that our opinion is against this publication. We deny not, that there are a few good things contained in it; but this is no more than can be said of many a book, which ought never to have seen the light. We cannot at the same time help thinking, that the author has done himself some injustice, by ushering it into the world as a companion to the work of Mrs More. Instead of being a companion, it is in many particulars a perfect contrast to it; and as a whole, after taking nineteen parts out of twenty in "Coelebs," there yet remains in our opinion a much better book than this is.

was exceedingly populous. Our author has different calculations, which raise its population to 28, 32, 34, and 40 millions. As there is rather a tendency towards the marvellous in the accounts transmitted to us of this celebrated country, we rather incline to the lowest of these.

Our author is successful in proving the same superiority in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor.

There can be no doubt also that Greece was much more populous; at the same time, we cannot subscribe to the full extent of our author's calculations. He seems to prove Attica to have contained about half a million; and supposing all Greece to have been peopled at the same rate, the whole would have amounted to 12,000,000. But we must observe, that Athens, from her commercial and conquering character, possessed a great accumulation of people, who were not supported by her own soil; she drew copious supplies of grain from Euboea and other fertile islands, and even from the Chersonese. Attica, therefore, like Holland, possessed a forced population, maintained at the expence of other districts, and cannot be considered as affording a fair measure of the general population of Greece.

In proceeding to Sicily and Magna Græcia, our author completely triumphs. The arts of Greece and Egypt, transported into that luxuriant climate, seem to have produced a degree of wealth and populousness truly astonishing. But we cannot agree with him so fully, when he comes to the interior and northern parts of Italy. A number of small nations, continually at war with each other, and carrying on these wars chiefly for the sake of plunder, could not well manage their agricultural operations in a manner necessary for the support of a numerous people. Scarcely a year passed that the Aequi and Volsci did not carry their devastations to the gates of Rome. The Roman territory, after

the annexation of Latium and Sabinum, was of considerable extent, and extremely fertile. The earliest census took place about the 175th year of Rome, and produced, according to Livy, 80,000 Roman citizens. Fabius Pictor, whom he quotes, says, that these were all able to carry arms; a statement which we suspect to be erronous, unless Rome became afterwards less populous. Between the years 200 and 300, the census varied from 150 to 140,000, and between 400 and 500 from 250 to 300,000. We suspect our author means to have it supposed, that all these were men able to bear arms. The contrary, however, is the case; for Livy, in mentioning one of these enumerations, says, it was 'praeter orbos orbasque;' besides male and female orphans. The census therefore included females, and probably all citizens, with this singular and apparently

himsical exception. We do not think, from a quotation of our author himself, and from other circumstances, that the number of slaves not bearing arms was considerable. We have not now, materials for calculating the present population of this territory; but we have little doubt that, even in its present sunk state, it is more considerable than the above. It is not probable that any of the neighbouring nations, who were all conquered by the Romans, were more considerable than they. Livy mentions an instance, in which, by the loss of 14,000 men, the Volscian name was almost destroyed. Dr Wallace considers the population as diminished by the progress of Roman conquest'; in which we incline to differ from him, though we doubt if it was very greatly increased.

Our author next proceeds to Gaul, which being nearly in the same situation as Italy during the first years of Rome, could not well be more populous. Accordingly Belgium, then a fourth of Gaul, because it extended to the Seine and Marne, could yield only 500,000 warriors; and calculating

these