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ings at the cruel severity and shocking minuteness with which the edicts of Buonaparte were obeyed, in reference to the prohibition of colonial produce.

As it proved a fine evening I took a range through the principal streets of the city, and stopped for some moments at the gate of Altona, where a spectacle new and unheard of engaged my attention. A never-ceasing throng of people appeared to block up the gate; men, women, gentlemen and ladies, in carriages and on horseback, were stopped by the douaniers, and minutely searched for contraband. It is true that some dealers in colonial produce had employed women of the abandoned class to carry in sugar, tea, and coffee, in small parcels from Holstein, by suspending them round their bodies as an effectual security against all decent search. But a Frenchman is above such niceties; and the douaniers literally bared the prostitutes, to the great scandal of the gaping crowd. And as impudence, when unrestrained by public law, knows no bounds, they even ventured this abominable search with ladies of modesty and considera. tion, and neither the splendour of their equipages, nor retinue, could shelter them from such unexampled outrage. I assure you horror seized on all my limbs at seeing these brothel scenes; and I hastened back to my hotel, unable to conceive how the Hamburghers could see these atrocities every day, without being roused into fury, and butchering down their infamous oppressors.' p. 11,

Our Author shortly after quitted the Continent, and approached within sight of the English coast;-a sight which he hails with so much of the true feeling of an Englishman, that we began to entertain suspicions respecting the genuineness of the professed origin of the work. Our doubts, however, we were soon compelled to relinquish, on account of the numerous transgressions against the English idiom with which it every where abounds. 6 My curiosity,' he remarks, to see the coast ' of England, let me not sleep to a late hour. With the dawn of day I was on deck, and oh, ineffable delight! the coast of Albion lay expanded before my eyes.' He lands at Harwich, and gives his friend a description of his breakfast, with a minuteness which can be tolerated only upon the principle, that every trifle helps to make up the peculiar character of a country and a people. But we do not see the necessity of an English reader being told the shape of a tea-caddy, or the kind of bread and butter which a traveller meets with at an English inn.

The first objects of our Author's animadversion upon his arrival in the metropolis, are the hackney coaches, which he describes as being more miserable and filthy vehicles than even the fiucres of Paris, which are renowned for their dirtiness.'

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After passing some time in London, and being surprised at the splendour of its streets, and the comfort and happiness of its inhabitants, he finds his way to the legislative assembly.

I went to the House of Lords, panting to behold the august Roman senate of modern times, but missed the Quirites. I was more fortunate at the House of Commons; for there I heard a member speak with noble boldness and winning grace, whose heart beats as warm for the weal of his country, as his tongue pleads the wrongs of the oppressed :-his name is Brougham.' p. 100.

Soon after this passage, we meet with a eulogy on the Edinburgh Review, which is almost immediately succeeded by a sufficiently lively description of the Lancasterian Institution in St. George's Fields; and also Dr. Marsh's opposition to this institution. Of this latter circumstance he speaks in the following

terms:

I was not a little surprised at learning that from Mr. Lancaster's being a quaker, the whole body of the clergy of the established church had publicly stood forth his adversaries; and a dignitary, whose name I have forgotten, blushed not to preach against him in St. Paul's, telling his congregation, from the pulpit, that the devil himself had a hand in this work, to pervert the faith of the believers.' p. 107.

He objects against our trial by jury, the impossibility of bringing an individual before the bar of judgement twice for the same offence. He objects also against the law which exonerates entailed estates from the personal debts of the late proprietor. Into the arguments, defensive or objective, respecting these several particulars of our traveller's censures it would, of course, be altogether out of place for us to enter. We have, however, noticed his opinions on these subjects, both because we wish to give the reader as much insight as is consistent with our limits, into the nature of the work before us, and as there is always some degree of interest attached to independent and unprejudiced sentiments on national and controverted topics.

Influenced by these considerations, an Englishman must read with the most lively feelings the following eulogy on his native land, by a foreigner who had enjoyed opportunities of comparing it with other countries.

What interests you here most (says our traveller) is man. Wherever you turn you see happy faces, with ruddy, health-breathing cheeks; and even in persons of the lowest orders, a decent, often elegant dress, cleanly in the highest degree, and wanting nothing that can set off beauty and afford ease. And happy are they indeed, from the first lord in the kingdom down to the meanest tradesman. But particularly so are those families of the middling classes, whose circumstances allow them to reside in the country. There you should see how fond the faithful wife locks her happy partner to her beating breast, when in the evening he retires to his own home; how his cherrycheeked children cling round his knees, and even the prattling babe stretches out to him its helpless hands. Oh, England! (he adds)

blessed art thou among thy sisters; the image of thy felicity shall never be obliterated from my sentient heart!' p. 136.

Having exhausted all the interesting materials afforded by London and its environs, our Author sets out for Liverpool; but his journey produces no observation worth recording. It is on the roads, indeed, that our German friend appears to the least advantage; and we now and then meet with reflections and remarks, the triteness-we had almost said the extreme futility of which, requires the exercise of all our English courtesy towards a stranger to tolerate. His attempts at wit, also, are oftentimes worse than failures.

From Liverpool he proceeds to Carlisle, and the most interesting recital in this division of his work, at least to an English reader, is the following curious story of an antient castle which, in times of old, stood on the present site of Lathorn Hall, a mansion in the vicinity of Ormskirk, in Lancashire. In ransacking some English chronicles, found in this mansion, I found (our Author remarks) this tale to be true.'

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Lathorn House belonged, in the reign of Charles I. to James, Earl of Derby, a famous person, who miserably lost his life on the scaffold by the fanatic fury of the levellers, for his unshaken fidelity to the king's family Whilst he was sent to defend the Isle of Man, the Countess Charlotte, his wife, a daughter to the Duke of Tremoaille, was besieged in Lathorn House during four months, by a corps of 3000 of the parliamentary troops, under one Captain Rigby, without surrendering. Though her garrison consisted only of 400 men, yet she beat back the enemy's assaults with so much courage and success, that they were unable to capture the strong hold, till Prince Rupert coming up relieved the besieged heroine. She was prevailed upon to go to the Isle of Man, but left at Lathorn House a more numerous garrison, which, in the prosecution of the war held out a second siege, with the same dauntlessness, for many months together. The earl's chaplain carried on the correspondence in cipher, in which he was assisted by one widow Read, of the neighbourhood, who brought in, and carried out despatches by means of sallies appointed for that purpose, on a signal given by her whenever she wanted to come in. This hazardous service she faithfully performed for above a year; and when at last taken with ciphers about her for King Charles and Lord Byron, she refused, with so much perseverance, to disclose the secret, that Rigby caused her to be burnt with matches between her fingers, till three of them dropped off. After the loss of that friend the chaplain found another expedient. Having observed a hound frequently to come and go betwixt his master, at Lathorn House, and his mistress, three miles off, he found means to let the lady know, that as often as the dog eame home she should look about his neck for a thread with a small letter wrapped round, and send it to the king, directing her to tie papers, to be sent into the house in like manner about the dog's neck, and,

after having kept the animal a while hungered, to open the door and beat him out. Thus the poor dog, being beaten backward and forward, conveyed all the intelligence into and from the house for nine successive months; till once leaping the enemy's works he was shot by an ill natured soldier, without however losing his despatches, which he ca ried to the gate and there expired. When, at last, the house was reduced, only 209 foot soldiers were found in it, their horses being killed and eaten by them. The parliament was so enraged at the obstinate resistance, as to order Lathorn House to be levelled with the ground.' p. 241.

Our traveller then proceeds to Glasgow; and passing on his way by Gretna Green, it leads him to give an amusing account of the marriages of clandestine notoriety, which take place at that spot; and he sagely remarks, that the English, in order to prevent elopements, ought to pass a marriage act, granting to impassioned couples the same facility of being united as is enjoyed in Scotland.

His account of the far-famed Loch Lomond is narrated in a very interesting manner. Having arrived at the summit of Ben Lomond, he extracts the poet's beautiful description of it.

There I breath'd, 'mid Scotland's pride,

On Ben Lomond's lofty brow;

Saw the distant surging tide,

Castles, towns, and shires below;

And enchanting at my feet,

Lay the smiling crystal sheet.'

Since my descent from Vesuvius I had never (he says) beheld a bolder horizon. (And, after describing the surrounding scenery, he adds,) But the greatest beauty in this immeasurable landscape was Loch Lomond, which, expanding like a mirror at my feet, reflected the blue sky, the bulging falls, and the hanging woods, that here frighten and cheer the eye. This expanse of water, which covers a surface of ground of 20.000 acres, has features so grand and peculiar to itself, that neither the lake of Geneva, nor that of Lucerne, can be assimilated to it, though both do not want daring scenes. The mountain air, the shivers of rock that cover the peak's sloping sides, the frightful ravines, the silvan seclusion, the pellucid waters below, all remembered me of Switzerland, and threw my soul into delightful reveries; but when, in my descent on the opposite side, I waded through a trackless waste of brake, where the eagle bursting from its retreat soared to the skies, and the plover screaming left its nest; when I beheld the mountaineers with their blue caps, and overheard the Gaelic dialect in their melancholy tunes, then I felt I was far from the enchanting banks of the Limmat.' p. 59. Vol. 2.

Our Author appears by no means to advantage in his communication from Edinburgh. In the description of the metropolis of Scotland we should have expected, from a foreign visiter,

much interesting matter, in the way both of narrative and remark; but instead of this, we have nothing but what may fairly be termed the veriest common-place gossip of two coxcomical correspondents.

From Edinburgh our traveller returns by the way of Newcastle, and gives a very interesting, and indeed picturesque de scription of the ingenious manner in which coals are conveyed, with most surprising rapidity, up the hills from the collieries. In fact, the whole account of the Newcastle coal-works is exceedingly lively and amusing. But the most striking part of the letter from Newcastle is that which describes the celebrated castle of Tynemouth, with its adjacent enchanting scenery.

As soon as I had ascended the height behind Shields and passed the barracks, Tynemouth Abbey lay in venerable ruins before my eyes. There is something peculiarly melancholy and pleasing at the same time in those ruins, the witnesses of so many ages past. But it was still more so when I entered the castle, in the precincts of which they are situated, and beheld lovely groups walking silent among their picturesque walls, as if meditating on the perishableness of all earthly greatness. This pensiveness is nourished by every object here around; the church-yard behind with its gravel-walk round the moss-clad tomb-stones; the frightful precipice below; and the briny main that washes its foot, the common tomb of so many thousands of lives lost every year in its unfathomable abyss. This prospect has a grandeur which annihilates the soul. The distance of the horizon in which the eye is lost, the boundless expanse which glitters in the beams of the noon-tide sun; the innumerable vessels with expanded sails that scud across its billowy waves; the bold iron-coast that bends into a bay, upon which the surf is seen to foam; the tremendous gulph over which you stand, and then the church-yard, with fellowcreatures buried in everlasting sleep, and the ruins of the Abbey nodding over them.-Oh, Edward! this scene no human power can depict. p. 116. Vol. II.

EVERLASTING SLEEP! If this be the view our Author has formed of the future destiny of man,-if everlasting sleep is to bind in oblivious fetters the mind-that active principle which grasps at infinity of existence, and soars, with a fondly cherished hope, towards a state of increasing perfection, we can easily conceive that these reflections would excite a feeling 'peculiarly melancholy,' he might have said appalling-oppressing-absolutely overwhelming with a weight of gloomy despondency-in one who found himself standing on the verge of such a world-of such a futurity.

We cannot, however, realize any sensation bordering in the most remote degree, upon what he terms pleasing in this kind of reflection.

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