trary interference of the heralds lost its authority, and their visitations of the provinces were discontinued. There is, however, a visitation of London and Middlesex, which came down to the beginning of the last century. The most particular and exact visitations are those at the end of Charles II.'s reign, by Gregory King, who was also an eminent political arithmetician; but even these are very far from perfect: they are, however, infinitely useful; and the Earl of Huntingdon might probably have been unable to establish his claim, but for the Leicestershire visitation,* which carried his pedigree over the difficult period of the civil wars, and brought it down almost within memory. The same negligence of legislation extends to the materials for an accurate census of the population, and especially of their comparative longevity, which, though not so easy, because it must extend to the lowest classes, is yet very practicable.

We have thus endeavoured to treat a subject, which too many are apt to suppose trifling and fanciful, in a manner which will show it to be a constitutional inquiry of the highest importance.. We have produced the authorities of Fox and Pitt agreeing on this point, while they were fiercely contending on grand political topics, at the very moment when the first burst of the French revolution had overset men's minds with the contagion of license rather than liberty, and when Fox himself was the great orator of those doctrines. We have no childish or unenlightened reverence for rank, nor are dazzled by any empty portion of its pretensions; we abhor it in its abuses, and indignantly repel it in its insolences; but because we are sure of its benefits when duly guarded, and because it is a matter of duty as well as choice, being part of the constitution under which we were born, and which the laws of our country still impose upon us, we are anxious to cherish the public opinion in its favour; and, by so doing, to keep it pure, that it may still retain the respect and attachment of the other classes; and still, by acting as a proper poise,' balance the respective rights of the king and the people.

*The previous visitations of Sir Edward Byshe are shamefully negligent. See Ant. Wood's contemptuous character of him, though he was a learned man, as his edition of Upton, De Re Militari, proves.

Mr. Nugent Bell has raised wonders as to the industry of his own investigations and discoveries in this regard, which did not at all belong to him; he had no more than two modern generations to fill up the difficulty was to dispose of the prior branches.

ART

ART. II-Travels in the Interior of Mexico, in 1825, 1826, By Lieutenant R. W. H. Hardy, R.N.

1827, and 1828. London. 1829.

L IEUTENANT Hardy, of the Royal Navy, was engaged as an agent, or, as he calls himself, a commissioner, by The General Pearl and Coral Fishery Association of London,' one of that numerous progeny of wild and unprofitable-many of them ruinous-speculations to which the year 1825 gave birth ;-a year in which some very wise people concluded, from certain superficial appearances, that the nation was in some danger of bursting with a plethora of prosperity, and required a few waste pipes, or safety valves, to relieve the pressure; and these, indeed, were so abundantly supplied, that the danger of repletion, being speedily removed, was followed by a no less danger from the copious evacuations of the patient, which soon reduced the fulness both of his habit and his pocket. The pearl speculation was one of the minor valves employed to carry off a portion of that superfluous wealth which was supposed to be pressing so heavily on the country. Fortunately, however, for the Association, their naval commissioner was an honest servant, who turned the cock before all the steam had run out; and we hope the profits of his book may better remunerate him for his trouble, than the Association has been able to do out of the profits derived from the pearls and the corals, which he was expected to fish up in the gulf of California. A single passage towards the conclusion of his work conveys a tolerable notion of what these profits may have been. He here tells us, with peculiar naïveté, ' I had almost forgotten to mention a very curious circumstance with respect to the pearloyster, namely, that on the coast of Sonora there are none at all, except at Guaymas.' This is something like Horrebow's famous chapter Concerning Owls,' in his Natural History of Iceland :'→ viz., There are no owls on this island.' He informs us also, that, to the northward of 28° 30', not the trace of a shell could be discovered on either side of the gulf; and the few that were found in shallow situations had no pearls in them. I mention these circumstances,' says he, ' to prevent future speculators in this department from embarking in so wild an enterprise as that of the Mexican pearl fishery.' There is little danger of that, we believe.

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There were two distinct classes of our countrymen concerned in promoting the ruinous speculations to which we have alluded -the honest and well-intentioned, and the knavish and fraudulent. Of the former, some had been deceived by the exaggerated view given of the mines by the ingenious Humboldt. Others seem to have lost sight of the fact, that most of the richest

mines had been worked out; and that the rest, through the discontinuance of working since the revolution, had been filled with water or rubbish. Then some of the leading projectors were so conceited as to imagine that the Mexicans, after the experience of two centuries, knew not how to work their mines to the best advantage, or to reduce the ores; and therefore sent out, without inquiry, steam-engines and heavy machinery, which were to be transported to the summits of almost inaccessible mountains, and which, even if got there by labour almost insurmountable, and at an expense almost ruinous, could not be worked for want of water in some places, and of fuel in all, The second, or knavish, class, cared not one farthing whether the mines were productive or not. By fraud and trickery, and by putting in practice every art in which gamblers and swindlers are conversant, and in which several persons in elevated ranks in society were strongly suspected of being concerned, the trafficking in shares was carried to such an extent as can only be paralleled by the once famous, or rather infamous, tulipomania of Holland. For instance, the selling price of a share in one mine, that of Real del Monte, was mounted up from its original price, by a series of fraudulent tricks, false reports, and fictitious sales, to fifteen hundred pounds, for which, we suspect, the present holder would be glad to obtain about as many shillings; and whose real value may probably not be worth as many pence.

The same remarks, we suspect, may be applicable, in a minor degree, to the pearl fisheries of the two coasts of America. Our naval commissioner was engaged to carry on that of the gulf of California, a part of the ocean which we are not aware to have been at any time noted for its pearls or its corals; but whatever it might once have produced of either, the one and the other were obtained solely by native divers. This mode of proceeding, however, seems to have been considered by the Association of London' as too humble, too simple, and too tardy, and the divingbell was therefore to be at once adopted, which would bring them up by cart-loads at a time from their prolific beds. Unfortunately, however, it so turned out, that this was wholly a mistake; the pearl oyster is not found on beds, but always in the cracks and crevices of rocks, wholly inaccessible by any diving-bell, a machine that could not be brought near them, on account of the ruggedness of the bottom.

In happy ignorance of this simple fact, two small vessels were fitted out, and furnished with diving-bells, by The General Pearl and Coral Fishery Association of London.' They were sent round Cape Horn to meet Lieutenant Hardy on the coast of the province of Sonora, bordering on the gulf of California. The time he spent

in making his researches in this gulf, and the ill success that attended them, have had at least the good effect of completely dispelling the delusion under which he left England in the memorable year of 1825.

A certain allowance of stale jokes, bad puns, and small wit, may be pardoned, coming from the pen of a blunt sea-officer, whose life has been chiefly passed in the cockpit and wardroom of a man-ofwar; but we must say, our honest licutenant is rather too free with them, and we should not have been the less pleased if he had given more information of the western side of Mexico, and less of his pleasantries. At the same time it is due to him to say, that he appears to tell honestly, and without disguise, what he has seen and heard, and that is saying a good deal for one of the fraternity of modern travellers, and somewhat more than he himself seems willing to concede to the first of the tribe; for he observes, if Humboldt, when he paid a visit to the city of Mexico, had examined it with the eyes of a humane philosopher, and had represented it in its unadorned colours, how much disappointment would have been spared to travellers and to Europe! Here we think the lieutenant is unjustly as well as unmeaningly severe on the first traveller of the age, who, though he may occasionally exaggerate, from a natural flow of eloquence quite peculiar to himself, has described the city of Mexico much in the same manner as others have found it, and as Mr. Hardy himself pronounces it to be, decidedly one of the handsomest cities he had ever seen.' To talk of the Baron's false colouring of the city of Mexico as a 'disappointment to travellers and to Europe' is sheer nonsense. Had he only stated that his account of the mines had misled the adventurers, and produced disappointment, such a statement would probably have been true. After all, great After all, great allowances are to be made for the narratives of travellers. It is almost universally the case that their descriptions take their hue from the kind of treatment they personally experience, of which the account of Russia by the late Dr. Clarke is a memorable instance. M. Humboldt was lodged in a palace, fêted by the viceroy and the whole court: whereas Mr. Hardy took up his abode, or, as he tells us, sat himself down, in the first and best hotel, which is called Gran Sociedad,' meaning the Great Society, but sometimes, says he, it is called Suciedad,' which means dirtiness; and this Spanish pun is illustrated by the following sketch: il

This hotel is not provided with a table-d'hôte; but the dining room, which is honoured with its name "comedor," inscribed over the entrance, is furnished with a long table, covered generally by a greasy cloth, where the cravings of the appetite may be appeased for a dollar and a quarter, wine extra, as saith the bill of fare. It is true the

viands are not of the most tempting kind, nor, indeed, are they cooked in the cleanest way; but every one reconciles himself with the reflection, that "it is good enough for a sociedad." The cook herself is indeed a hornament, as a cockney would say; and, in truth, I know of no regular word which might at all suit the subject. She may be an amiable creature, for anything I know to the contrary; but but if dirty linen, feet without shoes or stockings, a face covered with brilliant semispheres, reflecting the fire like a sort of moveable reverberating furnace; hair as dishevelled as that of a Gorgon, and not remarkable for cleanliness; hands which had never been washed since she took possession of her office; and delicate lips, which only halfconcealed a set of black and decayed teeth, and which confined within their tender grasp a paper cigar, whose smoke found an exit only through her gently-expanding nostrils; add to all which qualifications, a skin and complexion like an olive, and quite as greasy; if this lovely picture of Eve has charms for my reader, let him hasten to this glittering land of mines, where he will scarcely find a kitchen which cannot present a living original, whereof this, I confess, is but a faint sketch pp. 6 and 7.

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In this handsomest' of cities, the poor,' he says, can find a residence only in the coach-house department, which opens into the street, and which henceforth (qu. thereby?) becomes the receptacle of vice and wretchedness, too disgusting to be faithfully described; and as to the environs, they, he tells us, are nitely more impure: THEY ARE Horrible.'

infi

After having satisfied my appetite with a couple of dainty dishes at the public table below, I proposed to myself to take a walk. Not having any objection to change the scene, I walked to the right and left without any object; and although it was Sunday, the number of people whom I passed in the streets, wearing neither shoes nor stockings, and many even without shirts, with a sort of dirty blanket carelessly thrown over their shoulders, did not fail to awaken many painful reflections. Is it possible, thought I, that in a land which Nature has made her hoard, and man her heir, that the fruits of her gifts should be productive only of abject misery, or, at least, of such individual abandonment as is here seen, which renders man the most pitiable object of the creation, and the most miserable of his kind? On passing through the streets, I observed little apartments (originally intended to be occupied by coaches) filled with women, more than half-naked, and men sprawling on the floor from the effects of inebriation. The children were perfectly naked.'-p. 8. The lieutenant, we fear, need not have gone all the way to Mexico to have his painful reflections' excited by such objects as these. He might have found abundance of shirtless, shoeless, and stockingless men, women, and children, in every capital and in too many country districts too of Europe, enduring far greater

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misery,