had nearly wrested from them their far more important possessions in South America. D. Luiz da Cunha in that admirable letter of his, which (though it remains unpublished) is the best treatise extant upon the state of Portugal, dwells, as Vieyra had done before him, upon the fatal consequences of persecution. I remember, says he, going to Amsterdam to a wedding where forty or fifty Jews were present the lady of the house, whom I called Queen Esther, asked me what I supposed that company might be worth collectively; and upon my replying that I could not guess, she said, 'Your excellency must know then that there are more than forty millions of cruzados here, which would not come amiss if they were in Portugal.' D. Luiz replied, that it would be a fine prize for the Inquisition: speaking with a smile perhaps, but feeling deeply and painfully for the guilt and folly of his country.

Even forty years of a wiser system and of prosperous commerce had not obliterated the visible marks of depopulation in the interior of that country. Roads broken up by time and neglect, not by use-mansions falling to decay, and grass growing in the streets of towns and cities which had once been flourishing and populous ;these were the melancholy sights which presented themselves to the traveller, in a country abundantly blessed by nature. The government must have become bankrupt, had not treasures unexpectedly flowed in from the mines of Brazil; and before that resource began to fail, Pombal abolished the distinction between old and new Christians, a measure almost sufficient to atone for all his offences. This great statesman did much; but he was interrupted in his plans for the regeneration of Portugal: and the Inquisition, which, from awing the government, was now become its instrument, continued its baleful influence. Its holocausts, however, were at an end. Pombal had rescued the new Christians, and there were no heretics in the Peninsula, for the same reason that there are no Christians in Japan, they had been exterminated; the persecution had been thorough and effectual. The business of this tribunal was now to take cognizance of a few offences which, it was thought, fell more under the ecclesiastical than the common law, and to keep out opinions which were dangerous either to the church or state. Nothing, therefore, was suffered to pass the press which was in the slightest degree unfavourable to the gross idolatry, the abject superstition, the corrupt administration of government, and the complete despotism which had been established upon the ruins of a system little inferior to our own. Not merely theology aud metaphysics, but history, and moral and political philosophy were, in effect, proscribed.

It is, we think, a Spanish author who relates a good instance of the stimulating power of prohibition. A child of five or six years

old, learning the Commandments, asked his mother what was meant by committing adultery, and she, by way of evading the question, told him it was putting his finger in the pot when it was boiling. Every time the boy saw the pot on the fire, the temptation of trying this new sin grew stronger and stronger; at length it overpowered him--and in a moment he was roaring about the house, 'Oh, I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery! Just so did the Index Expurgatorius excite a desire for prohibited books; and those which, being most pernicious, were most notorious, were sought after the most greedily. The young Spaniard or Portugueze who thirsted for that knowledge which would place him on a footing with the youth of other countries, could acquire it only through this medium; and when he went to the contraband dealer in such books, the very offal of licentiousness and blasphemy was put into his hands. But even the act of reading the best books, when it was done in secret and in solitude, exposed the reader immediately to all the spiritual consequences of excommunication, and produced the most painful effects upon a good and virtuous mind. This is beautifully shown by Mr. Blanco White in his Letter upon the Influence of the Inquisition as it actually exists-a letter to which we refer the reader for a view of this part of the subject, not less affecting than philosophical. We need not attempt to do what he has done so admirably.

The reign of the Spanish Inquisition is over. Its suspension by the intrusive government on the one side, and the liberty of the press and the prevalence of good opinions on the other, tend equally to destroy it. But the tribunal still exists in Portugal; and what its temper is, is exemplified in Mr. Da Costa's narrative, who suffered ten years' confinement there for the alleged crime of free masonry, which is not a crime by the law of the country, and who probably would have perished in a dungeon, if he had not found means to escape. It appears that our government has advised the Prince of Brazil to abolish this shame of his nation, and that he listened not unwillingly to the advice. We hope and trust that the influence of Great Britain in that country will be exerted to the best effect. The old alliance, rather, the old hereditary friendship, between the two nations, confirmed as it has been by the late splendid proofs of British valour and British generosity in their behalf, disposes the Portugueze to look favourably upon any thing which England may propose. Three things are required to bring that country to a state, for which all its sufferings will not have been an over price :-the suppression of the Inquisition, the execution of the laws, and the restoration of the old free government. That free government under an absolute monarchy is no impossibility, is shown in some excellent essays upon this subject

in the Correio Braziliense, wherein a parallel is drawn between the English and Portugueze constitutions, which would perhaps surprise an English reader as much as it must gratify a Portugueze patriot. These measures would tend equally to the benefit of the prince and of the people. The Prince of Brazil is a man of the best and purest intentions; shew him his duty, and he has every inclination to perform it. Let him confer these boons upon his country, and uniting in himself the honourable appellations which have been bestowed upon the two greatest of his predecessors, he will be intitled Joam da boa memoria, the Restorer of Portugal. His return will be the proudest triumph that ever prince enjoyed; his name will go down to posterity without a stain, and blessings from generation to generation will be heaped upon his memory.

ART. II.-Reise um die Welt in den jahren 1803-4-5 und 6, auf befeld seiner Kaiserl. Majestat Alexanders des Ersten, auf den Schiffen Nadeshda und Newa, &c. A Voyage round the World in the years 1803-4-5 and 6, by command of His Imperial Majesty Alexander I. in the Ships Nadeshda and Neva, under the orders of Captain A. I. Von Krusenstern. Published in the Russian and German languages, 1811.

A

NEW reign is always fertile in projects. It matters little

practicable, or have already been submitted to the test of experiment, and failed: under new names, and new auspices, they are tried, and fail again. The sovereign, on his part, is seldom averse from the encouragement of projectors; it wears the appearance of doing something; and tends to confer on the new government the character, or, at least, the semblance, of energy and activity.

The accession of Catharine the Second to the throne of Russia, afforded a remarkable instance of the degree to which her projecting courtiers could accommodate their counsels to their sovereign's inclinations. Schemes as extravagant as were ever hatched in the academy of Laputa were pushed forward, and most of them ordered to be set in motion at once. The army and navy were to be augmented; commerce to be extended; the administration of government new modelled; agriculture encouraged; and the whole world supplied with tobacco, the produce of Russia: manufactures of silk, of cloth, of linen, of porcelaine, were to start up, at once, into perfection; foreign settlers to be invited to plant colonies in the wilds of Siberia; foundling and lying-in hospitals to be erected for the encouragement of population; and, to crown the whole, the

Turk was instantaneously to be driven out of Constantinople— and all these, with many other visionary plans, were to be undertaken,' as the Earl of Buckinghamshire observed, in a country where every innovation was unpopular, by means of ignorant, indigent, and corrupt counsellors, an indolent people, averse from all manufactures, and more averse from the sea, a mutinous army, and an exhausted treasury; the sovereign hampered likewise by the obligations she bad received, and unable to get rid of many of those about her, whose characters and mean abilities she could not but despise.' Catharine, however, might have felt it necessary to humour those projectors, and, by assuming the appearance of extraordinary bustle and business, to call off the attention of her subjects from the manner in which a recent revolution had placed her on the throne; for though her husband was undoubtedly a man of weak intellects, yet his good intentions, his private virtues, and public acts of munificence and kindness, during his short reign, had gained on the affection of his subjects.

Among other projects, those of advancing foreign commerce and navigation entirely failed; though the empress left untried no opening that presented itself for improving the one, and extending the other. In an attempt at a treaty of commerce, she had met with a smart retort from the Emperor of China, who plainly told her embassador that, before his mistress solicited new treaties, it would better become her to fulfil the old ones. But her establishments on Kamschatka and on the islands which stretch across the sea of that name, as far as the opposite continent, were too favourably situated not to tempt her to embrace every opportunity which might occur for negotiating a commercial relation with the populous empire of Japan. She was fully aware of the restricttions and degradations imposed on the Dutch; but she was willing to persuade herself that the celebrity of her name and the proximity of her establishments, might carry with them their due share of influence. An event too occurred about this time, which Catharine conceived might be turned to the advantage of Russia. A Japanese vessel was stranded on one of the Aleutian islands, called Mednoi-ostroff, or the Copper island, when the master and sixteen of the sailors were saved and sent to Kamschatka. The master was taken overland to Petersburgh by Professor Laxman, and instructed in the Russian and Tartarian languages; while his preceptors were directed to learn from him that of Japan. As soon as a sufficient progress appeared to be made by both parties, the son of Professor Laxman was appointed as a sort of envoy to convey this master, with such of the crew as might have survived a Siberian winter, to Japan, carrying at the same time suitable presents for the emperor. Laxman obtained for the Russians the boon of

sending one vessel annually to Nangasaki for the purposes of trade, under the same restrictions as the Dutch. Either this concession did not suit the high-spirited Catharine, or the advantages to be derived from so limited a trade did not appear equivalent to the humiliating conditions on which they were to be procured; for no farther intercourse, during her reign and that of her immediate successor, appears to have taken place with Japan.

The attempt to renew the communication was one of the early projects of the present autocrat of Russia. It was supposed that the former embassy had failed from a want of propriety in the mode of conducting it; that it was deficient in shew and parade; that Laxman was of a rank too low, and of manners too coarse, to make a favourable impression; that, instead of going into Nangasaki, the ship had entered a harbour on the coast of Jesso, a sort of colony to Japan, of which they are more jealous, if possible, than of the empire itself; and that the letter, instead of being written by the sovereign, was only from the governor of Siberia, a mark of disrespect which was supposed to have given umbrage to the haughty monarch of Japan. All these errors might be corrected by a second mission; and, as it was concluded that a closer connexion with the nations of the East was now become desirable, the project of a new embassy was easily grafted on the present voyage, which, in fact, had been intended originally for commercial purposes, to the Russian settlements on the north-west coast of America. M. de Resanoff was appointed ambassador extraordinary, invested with the order of St. Ann, and made a privy counsellor. Several persons of rank and science were attached to the embassy; M. counsellor Tilesius, Dr. Horner, an astronomer, Dr. Langsdorff, a naturalist, an artist from the academy, a draftsman, a botanist, a physician for each of the ships, together with several military officers, among whom were two sons, both young, of the counsellor Von Kotzebue; to this list were added five Japanese, who, in the year 1796, had been taken prisoners at the Aleutian islands, and were still in confinement. Captain Krusenstern was selected to conduct the naval part of the expedition, which was to consist of two ships. The choice of a commander for the second ship, as well as of all the officers and crews, was left entirely to his discretion, and he pitched upon Captain Lisianskoy to be his colleague in this new undertaking. Both these officers had been brought up, as it were, in the British navy, in which they served many years in America, and the East-Indies.

It is worthy of remark, that although the Russians wish it to be understood that their navy has been progressively and even rapidly improving for the last century, all the naval arsenals of Russia could not furnish a couple of ships fit for the perform