DRAMATIC. ART. 14. Youth, Love, and Folly, a Comic Opera, as performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with diftinguifbed Success. Written by Mr. Dimond, Fun. Author of the Hero of the North, an Hiftorical Play, &c. &c. 8vo. 8vo. 54 PP. Is. 6d. Barker. 1805. There is much love, and undoubtedly fome folly in the little opera before us; but we think it has, upon the whole, as much merit as the generality of dramas of the fame kind, and more than most of those five act pieces, which the courtefy of the ftage denominates comedies. With the aid of mufic we can eafily fuppose it may have had confiderable fuccefs. The plot (which turns chiefly on the obftinacy of an old baron, in attempting to force a match between two young perfons, difinclined to each other) is not ill wound up, though fome highly improbable circumstances occur in the course of it. Some of the fongs, of which the following is a fpecimen, are tolerably written. "The fable Maid, to bondage fold, With throbbing heart and ftreaming eyes And mourns the dire abufe of gold. The gun Her home diffolves in fky and wave- "Nor yet to Afric's favage race Is Freedom's fhameful fale confin'd; Thro' Europe's realms, Man's polish'd Mind Incurs for gold the fame difgrace. The deareft rights which Nature gave; There, many a Maid muft vainly claim And, mock'd with Freedom's empty name, Sink, chain'd in ftate-A SPLENDID SLAVE!" P. 15. NOVELS. ART. 15. Memoirs of Bryan Perdue. A Novel. By Thomas 1805. A more ftrange, inconfiftent, and improbable tale than this, was hardly ever put together. It is the life of a man, the fon of an Irishman, a profeffed gamefter. The firft volume excites no intereft whatever. It feems a fort of ridicule of the Irish nation; that is of a certain part of it, confidered and stigmatized,, as adventurers and gamefters. The father, at a moft premature age, is reprefented as teaching his fon, a boy at school, the arts of cogging the dice, dealing himfelf the honours, and other fimilar artifices. The father lofes his life in a broil at the gamingtable. The fon is received, nobody knows why, at the mere recommendation of a tutor, into the family of a man of fortune, as a fort of companion to his fon. He mifleads this fon by temptation and example; and would have been discarded with dif grace, but that by the trite ftale incident of a fire, he faves the favourite daughter and the family writings. He is transferred to the counting-house of a British merchant, who is painted in colours fo different from thofe, in which we have had the oppor tunity of contemplating British merchants, that we acknowledge no resemblance whatever. The British merchants we have known, have been men of enlarged, noble, and generous fenti ments; refined in their manners, and liberal in their opinions. Whereas the Mr. Hazard of Mr. Holcroft is painted as mean, vulgar, artful, and malignant. The difpofition of the hero of the piece plunges him in difficulties, and he commits forgery. He is acquitted; retires firft to France, and afterwards to the Weft Indies; is totally reformed; marries a Quaker; lives refpectably; and enjoys the comforts of domeftic tranquillity. The defects in the publication are fo numerous, that it would be a work of fome time, and perhaps but little ufe, to point them out circumftantially. The fieers at the established government, at publie fchools, with the proceffes of legal investigations, are fo futile, that a child may difcern and anfwer them. The only inferences which we should prefume the author wishes to be drawn from his narrative, are thefe:-That it is poflible for a man to be avoided and driven from fociety, who has fome good qualities, over which paffion and vice are fuffered to predominate; and that a man may be hanged, whofe prefervation might lead to repentance and future usefulness to fociety. But what if this be conceded? and where is the line to be drawn? The difpofition of this country is rather in the other extreme; we perhaps tolerate too long and too much the irregularities of vice; and where one' man fuffers death, whofe peculiar fituation might merit clemency, many hundreds escape whofe atrocities deferve not the lenity they experience. The long familiarity of this author with writing, has given him much eafe and occafional elegance in his ftyle and' compofition; but in the prefent inftance, literature will not be much benefitted by his labour, nor morality by his narrative. We cannot fay, indeed, that either will be injured. The Work is not ill written, and punishment is the confequence of crime; but many fentiments are interfperfed, which might properly be combated, and various expreffions which deferve critical reprobation; fome being petulant, and others very mifchievous in their tendency. The The principal moral is however good. Young men may be detered from fashionable vices, by feeing their pernicious confequences; and, in particular, the miferies of gaming are exhibited in the colours which they justly merit. MILITARY. ART. 16. Obfervations on National Defence, and on the Means of rendering more effective the Volunteer Force of Great Britain. 8vo. 30 PP. Is. Ford, Manchester. 1804. We have not often met with a tract on the subject of National Defence written apparently with fo much impartiality, or containing fo many useful fuggeftions, as the publication before us. The author begins by ftating and accounting for the success of the French, during the war of the revolution. He then con. fiders the prefent formidable state of their army, and recommends that our attention fhould be turned to the improvement of those defcriptions of force, in which they greatly excel, and in which we are certainly deficient, if not in quality, at least in number. "The staff officers, the horfe artillery, and the light infantry," fays this writer, "are the pride and the strength of the French army. To oppofe them with decifion, and, what is moft im. portant to the welfare of the state, with immediate fuccefs, muft be," he thinks, "our great object, fo far as refpects the regular army." But he proceeds to difcufs more fully the measures which feem to him expedient for the improvement of the volunteer fyftem, having first briefly, and we think juftly, animad verted upon the attacks made on that fyftem by Colonel Crawford and Sir Robert Wilfon. After stating, from official returns, the number of the volunteers at nearly 310,000 men, he obferves, that about two-thirds of this number confift of corps of lefs than 500 rank and file, each. The whole of thefe fmall corps he would convert into light infantry, and recommends that the remaining third part (about 160 battalions) fhould be drilled with minute diligence in fome parts of duty, which have been too much neglected, viz. ft. The pofition of the foldier under arms, as ordered in the rules and regulations. 2d. The cadenced march, regulated by the plummet. 3d. The frequent charge with bayonet, by whole brigades, with all the velocity confiftent with order. His third propofition, which feems to us of the highest im portance, is, "to appoint an officer, high in rank, reputation, and talents, to the poft of infpector general of volunteers, with a view to fecure exact uniformity in the whole fyftem." One of our beft regiments of infantry is propofed to accompany him, as a model for the volunteers. The above propofitions are well illuftrated by facts, and many fiking obfervations are added, which fhow the author to be well informed informed on the subject which he has chofen, and appear to flow from an ardent and fincere friend to his country. We heartily wish it were in our power to give fuch a publicity to this work as would bring it before those who have the ability to determine on its fuggeftions, and the power to give them effect. MEDICINE. ART. 17. An Hiftorical Relation of the Plague at Marseilles, in the Year 1720; containing a circumftantial Account of the Rife and Progress of the Calamity, and the Ravages it occafioned; with many curious and interefting Particulars relative to that Period. Tranflated from the French Manufcript of Monf. Bertrand, Phyfician at Marfeilles, who attended during the whole Time of the Malady. By Anne Plumbtre. With an Introduction, and a Variety of Notes by the Tranflator. 8vo. P. 364. Price 75. J. Mawman. 1805. During a refidence of twelve months at Marfeilles, Mif Plumbtre had the fortune to meet with the manufcript of M. Bertrand, containing this account of the plague which raged there in the year 1720. It had been purchased at a stall during the late revolution, and had never, Mifs P. understood, been printed. But Eloy, in his account of the author, John Baptift Bertrand, fee Dict. Hift. gives the title of a treatise by him on the fubject Relation Hiftorique de la Pefte de Marseille, 12mo," without doubt the fame work as this, of which we are now prefented with a tranflation. The book may however be prefumed to be fcarce, as it is not noticed in any of the parts of Haller's Bibliotheca; probably also it had not been seen by Eloy, as he neither gives the date, nor place of its publication. After a fhort description of the town, its climate, and fituation, howing its general healthinefs, we are prefented with a circumftan tial detail of the irruption of the plague there, of its progrefs, and the ravages committed by it in the city and neighbourhood. 'The difeafe was brought thither, the author fhows, from the Levant, by a trading veffel, commanded by Capt. Chataud, on the 25th of May, 1720. Though the veffel was furnished with certificates of the healthinefs of the places whence it came, yet five men having died during the paffage, on whom symptoms of peftilence had appeared, the Captain gave notice of the circumftance to the Magiftrates at Marfeilles. This however did not awaken their fears, or put them on their guard against the introduction of the difeafe into the place. The phyficians and furgeons, who attended the firft patients who had received the infection on shore, and called the difeafe the plague, were difcredited, and treated as difturbers of the peace of the public, and those only liftened to, who declared it to be a malignant fever, and not infectious. Thus, Thus, though Marfeilles was better provided with means for preventing the propagation of the plague, than almost any place in the univerfe, their fituation having often obliged them to have recourfe to expedients for that purpose, thefe were, at this time, all neglected, left the inhabitants fhould fall under the imputation of having the plague among them. It is not therefore to be wondered, that the difeafe became foon general through the city, which being extremely populous, the deftruction was proportionably great; nearly 50,000 perfons are faid to have perifhed by it, during this vifitation. It began, as we have before mentioned, towards the end of May, raged with its greatest violence in the months of Auguft, September, and October, when it gradually declined, and had nearly ceafed its ravages in the January following. From the abundant opportunities for obfervation that muft have occurred, it might be fuppofed that the phyficians would have made fome difcovery into the nature, or eftablifhed, by general confent, fome regulations for the treatment of the disease; but an unfortunate difagreement as to the nature of the disease, its manner of being introduced, and afterwards propagated, prevented all community of fentiment, and almost all communication among them. Some contended that the infection had contaminated the air they breathed, and was by that means conveyed into the blood. Thefe philofophers declaimed against the feverity of the quaran. tine, which they confidered as nugatory; but the more rational, among whom was the author of this treatife, held that the difeafe could only be propagated by actual contact with infected perfons, their clothes, bedding, or goods that had been handled by them, calculated to retain the miafmata. Difagreeing on these points, they could not be brought to accord in any thing. Some thought the difeafe could only be cured by bleeding, others placed their whole confidence in purges, emetics, fudorifics, &c. In fhort, there appears to have been as great a diverfity of opinions as to the nature and treatment of this difeafe, as there exifts at this time, among the Phyficians in America, and the Weft Indies, on the management of perfons afflicted with yellow fever. Each of them infifting that his own is the only true method, and all boafting of the numerous cures they have performed: though from the proportion of deaths occurring on every new irruption of the fever, it is evident, that no generally fuccefsful mode of treating it has yet been difcovered. The The introduction to the volume before us, contains a sketch of the Life of the Author, by the tranflator, who has alfo enriched it with fome curious anecdotes, elucidating the fubject. work therefore contains, probably, a more complete hiftory of this dreadful affliction than is elfewhere to be found. It alfo contain's accounts of the Lazaretto, and of the manner of performing quaran tine, as well as of the various regulations adopted by the inhabi tants of Marfcilles for their prefervation; to the obfervance of |