is used to train others in the same principles, in order that he may keep and enjoy what he has acquired with so much labour.' p. 99. The following extracts are taken from the communications made by Mr. John Kizell to Captain Columbine, relating to the state of the population on the River Sherbro. • I will let you know, as far as I am able, the state of the country. "On the 8th. of October, I sent a man to the country to buy rice; as he was coming home, he met with elephants on the road. They chased him, so that he was obliged to take to the trees for the safety of his life. On the same road (I was told by the natives), there was a woman killed by them, which you will think very strange; but yet it is no wonder, for the country is in such a state, that the beasts absolutely come into the towns. There are not many large towns to be seen; and wherever there is one, it is enclosed with bushes and large trees, so that I have seen the snakes go into their houses, and catch their fowls. The leopards seize their goats in the town. They do not like to clear away the wood about the towns: if you ask them why they do not clear away, they will tell you, that if they did, they would have no place to hide in, when surprised by an enemy. The women and children may also hide themselves there.' pp: 123-124. 'I will now describe how the natives live in this country. They are all alike, the great and the poor; you cannot tell the master from the servant at first. The servant has as much to say as his master in any common discourse, but not in a palaver*, for that belongs only to the master. Of all people I have ever seen, I think they are the kindest. They will let none of their people want for victuals: they will lend, and not look for it again; they will even lend clothes to each other, if they want to go any where: if strangers come to them, they will give them water to wash, and oil to anoint their skin, and give them victuals for nothing: they will go out of their beds that the strangers may sleep in them. The women are particularly kind. The men are very fond of palm wine; they will spend a whole day in looking for palm wine. They love dancing; they will dance all night. They have but little, yet they are happy whilst that little lasts. At times they are greatly troubled with the Slave Trade, by some of them being caught under different pretences. A man owes money; or some one of his family owes it ; or he has been guilty of adultery. In these cases, if unable to seize the party themselves, they give him up to some one who is able, and who goes and takes them by force of arms. On one occasion, when I lived in the Sherbro, a number of armed men came to seize five persons living under me, who, they said, had been thus given to them. We had a great quarrel: I would not give them up: we had five days palaver: there were three chiefs against me. I told them if they did sell the people whom they had caught at my place, I would complain to the Governor, After five day's talk, I recovered them.' pp. 125-126. Their town has no regular street in it; the houses are built close together. They are made with strong rods of bamboo fixed in the ground, which are tied together at the top with string: they use no nails; they tie 'This word signifies both a political discussion, and a suit at law.' VOL. VIII. 5 L 1284 all with string, and then wattle it and cover it with grass, which the women plaster over with mud. Their doors consist of mats hung at the opening which is left; sometimes they are made of small bamboos tied together. There are no locks to their doors. They will not steal from each other. They are fond of presents from strangers: the king gets but little of any present that is made to him; if he is old, they will sometimes tell him he has long eaten of the country, and it is time for the young people to eat as he has done. If the present consists of rum, they all must have a taste of it, if there is not more than a table-spoon-full for each: if tobacco, and there is not enough to give every one a leaf, it must be cut so that all may have a piece; if it is a jug of rum, the king gets one bottle full.' pp. 127, 128. The whole Appendix to this Report is full of valuable matter. We are anxious not to prejudice its sale by extracting too largely. The Society will soon publish, in one quarto volume, the late Mr. Park's Journals. Art. XVI. The Druid; a Series of Miscellaneous Essays. 8vo. pp. 236. Price 78. Glasgow. Chapman. 1812. IN glancing, recently, in Dr. Drake's book, over the prodigious list of titles of sets of periodical essays, we could not help perceiving that nearly the whole stock of words appropriately applicable to the use, had been expended; so that it would soon become necessary to resort to denominations purely arbitrary, bearing no marked adaptation to the service, and chosen merely because the book must have some name by which it can be mentioned: unless indeed writers will bring back into use some of those many titles to be found in the history of departed literature, lying now as mere monuments upon the dead works, as we remember (it was really a fact) a man of thrift who, wanting a handsome slab for à particular use about the porch of his house, took up his father's grave-stone, and applied it to the purpose. Till, however, the expedient of adopting titles without discriminative and appropriate significance, sanctioned as it will be by necessity, shall have come a little more into general practice, the reader will naturally expect to find that the title not only denominates the book, but gives some indication of its quality and object. All denominations must have some meaning in themselves, and it takes some time to accustom us to use them without any respect whatever to that meaning. A great proportion of our current surnames are words of obvious significance; and as they were doubtless appropriate and descriptive in their first application, it would require time and use to sink their meaning in pronouncing them as denominations. We now say James Hill, Thomas Wood, Richard Field, George Rivers, William White, Edward Black, &c. &c. &c. &c. and have all the use of the words that they were meant for in that connexion, without ever once thinking of their own proper meaning. But near the time of their first application, as descriptive surnames, there would have been a certain sense of awkwardness and incongruity in being directed to seek the hut of James Hill at the edge of a bog, or of George Rivers at the top of a sun-burnt eminence or of Thomas Wood on a gaked down, or of Richard Field in the centre of a crowded cluster of cabins, or in finding William White a tanned swarthy boor, or Edward Black a pallid personification of delicacy. When we found the title of "Druid" affixed to a set of essays, we supposed that probably the author would be found personating one of th priests of the oak, in such a manner as to throw a certain druidical turn of thought into all his diversified speculations; that we were to have the privilege of hearing his oracular lore only in the gloom of a thick grove, that we were to witness divers, antics of devotion to Thor and Woden, and that we were perhaps to run off hastily at last at the hideous sound of his sacrificial hymn. But on inspection, we find the title has little further concern with the performance than to announce it. There are indeed two essays, partly relating to the ancient superstitions of northern and western Europe; but the greatest part of the volume might have been written without once thinking of a Druid, if the denomination had not been previously adopted. The essays are twenty one, chiefly moral, a few historical, and one or two topographical. They offer a considerable portion of entertainment and some instruction; but bear, we think, the marks of a mind very immature in thinking, and by no means critically disciplined in composition. There is a predominant taste (a juvenile taste, as we hope) for the fine, which indulges itself in a profusion of poetic diction, and is fond of a kind of topics and sceneries for which the declining admiration of Ossian has left no great partiality among our reading countrymen. We should not expect, and indeed why should we wish, that composition like the following will any where find an unsated appetite. To the hill of his love the hero came; but silence reigned around it. The towers were blackened by fire and defaced with ruin. No voice was heard within them, save that of the hollow wind murmuring in dismal moanings through the chinky walls. The courts were forlorn and dreary, for its chief had fallen by the foeman's guile, and his people were slain by the band of the perfidious. Sad grew the heart of Aldrud; but it heaved with resentment. His cheek of love became red with rage, and his blue eye beamed with the blaze of ire. He struck his moony shield to arouse some dweller in secret, that his afflictive tale might direct his course to the treacherous foe, and brace his brawny arm for vengeance. Forth from the ruined pile came slowly a hoary man bent with the load of years, and tottering over the staff of age. His silver tresses whistled in the gale of spring, and he sighed as he heavily moved along. Upon the youth he bent the glistening eye of tears, while his faltering tongue detailed the ills of his lord, and the death of his people.' p. 11. The palpable vanity of such materials renders it superfluous to remark on the motly structure of the diction, which is conformed to no standard, either Ossianic or plain English. The progress of time, and the improvement of taste, will assuredly withdraw the author's hand from all such gaudy and flimsy employment as the following: It was even. The sun was sinking in the West; and his ruddy beams were flitting on the darkening hills. The breeze was playful and cool, and scented by the fragrance of flowers. Genial was the air and sweet, exhilarating the spirits, while health sported on the wings of the gale. Upon the rustling boughs were seated the songsters of the wood; and echo, in melodious response, replied to their warbles of love. The fields were loaded with the bounty of Nature, and richly variegated by the golden tints of autumn. The scene was all grateful and charming when the son of Doeth was entering the Vale of Myvyr. Slowly he penetrated into the thicket of a silvan dell, and traced the secret windings of his dusky path. Pensive and serene he strode along, in silence, ruminating on the changes of things and of man. When he pondered the past he admired, and when he reviewed the scenes of departed times, he was delighted, as with the delusive pictures of a morning dream. On the margin of a murmuring brook he beheld a stone, gray with age. It was the stone of Celvan, the secret dweller, renowned afar for his wisdom in the days of a distant age. He brushed the dew from its hoary sides. He sat down. Being soon lulled into solemn musing by the melody of the grove, and the tinkling of the chrystal rill, he sunk into contemplation forgetful of all around him.' The chief aim in making these extracts has been to enforce our pleading, our entreaties, our obtestations to young authors, concerning the prudence and modesty of consigning the idle written fancies of their juvenile years rather to the fire than the press, especially if there should be any reason for suspecting those fancies to have been the dry artificial shapings of imitation rather than the living effects of a native energy. It can confessedly be of very inconsiderable consequence to the public, how these juvenile reverie-weavers acquitted themselves in the play-ground at school, or how the more sensitive and imaginative ones of them used to go off into heroics and romantics in the intercourse of kindred-genius in their boy-friendships; and we cannot see how it can be more indispensable to the same public to be made acquainted with the results of the more solitary hours of these gentle personages, when each of them, respectively, having fallen, in consequence of making too free with Ossian, or some similar preparation, into the dreary mood, was therein seized with the disorder which may be denominated the somnambulism of the pen. It would at the same time be quite unjust not to say that the volume contains a good portion of a much more laudable kind of composition than that exemplified in these extracts, though it is undeniable that the infection of finery is too perceptible throughout. There are several pertinent moral lessons, partly didactic, and partly in the form of fiction. The fictions will perhaps be thought to partake more of fancy-work than verisimilitude. What will be thought of the probability of one of them which represents a young man commencing the reformed practice of early rising, and rewarded for it by-by finding a charming nymph, of real mortal mold, that might therefore be wooed and married, perambulating the banks of a limpid rill,' and admiring the wonders of nature at a very carly hour in the morning? We cannot coincide with every doctrine of the Druid's morality: For example, Ambition, when it exists as the desire of applause bestowed upon the execution of something great, or excellent, or beneficial, is doubtless, one of the noblest passions of the human heart. It then prompts to laudable enterprize, it excites to deeds of benevolence, it stimulates to the practice of virtue, and it calls forth the achievements of magnanimity and patriotism.' p. 16. Is it virtue, is it benevolence, is it magnanimity, that proceeds from such a motive? And is any thing held out with clearer admonition in the Bible than the folly and impiety of being governed by such a principle? We can by no means concur, without limitation in dissuasions (p. 200) from the study and discussion of political subjects, though few things are more desirable than a more rational mode of conducting that study and discussion. Nothing on earth can be more obvious than what will be the fate of a nation that leaves the whole concern of politics to its governors, and statesmen by profession. The best papers in the collection, and perhaps the only ones of real value, are those which relate to matters of fact, in history and nature; as the description (somewhat too inflated indeed) of the Altgrande, a mountain torrent that falls into Cromarty Bay; the biographical sketch of Hamlet, from Saxo Grammaticus; the description of Palmyra, the account of the rites of Buddha, the account of the Tulipomania that prevailed, towards two centuties since, in Holland and the Netherlands; the letter of Mary Queen of Scots to Elizabeth, and one or two more. Art. XVII. The Propriety, Importance, and Advantages of Religious Resolutions considered, in a Sermon, preached September 23, 1810, at the Unitarian Chapel, Tenterden, at the particular request of several Young Persons, ballotted to serve in the Local Militia. By Laurence Holden. 8vo. pp. 20. Price 18. Grant, Southwark. THE HE title of this sermon, taken together with the text, Unto thee, O God, shall the vow be performed,' led us to expect some specific discussion on a subject on which some of our old divines have employed a great deal of casuistry, the propriety, the form, the conditions, and the consequences, of express formal engagements made to the Supreme Being, relatively to religion and its duties in general, or relatively to any one particular point of holy resolution. But this subject is entirely avoided; the resolutions discoursed upon are merely those general ones which an attendance on public worship is assumed to imply, or which are understood to be avowed in entering into a connexion with a Christian Society. The reasonings, the exhortations, and the warnings, are therefore much more general and common-place, than a more specific view of the subject of religious resolutions would have suggested. We think too that the dangers incident to a military association might with advantage have been much more distinctly pointed at. The strain of exhortation is grave and sensible; marked of course, by such an avoidance of some ideas, and such a modification of others, as would naturally be enjoined by the theological creed of the preacher.-The most prominent peculiarity of the discourse is the almost constant uniform use of the pronoun ye instead of you. |