nomical swallow. Yes, reader, he drank out of his pint; nor should you be astonished at it; for a great many Englishmen,-I do not speak of the vulgar alone,--drink in just the same manner. And are they not right? They are in no danger of breaking a tumbler, and have no need of any body to rinse it.-In front of me three youths were seated around a bowl of punch. They had no appearance of the gayness and vivacity so natural to that age. They remained serious-taciturn-and seemed to be saying, or rather thinking,- Let us drink; for what can we do better!'-By the side of these an old man, whose face was covered with pimples, and whose eyes manifested a disposition to close themselves, was occupied alternately in blowing a voluminous puff of tobacco-smoke into his capacious nostrils, and in moistening his mouth with a glass of wine,-not forgetting to raise his bottle to the candle at every draught, in order to ascertain how far he had drank down the contents. Near him a man in a great coat, with a packet of papers on the table before him, and a habit of looking every instant at his watch, was soaking in his tea (into which he had poured only just milk enough to change its colour), a morsel of bread, which was as dense and heavy as the butter on its surface, and which, by sinking itself almost wholly into the cup, spread over the tea a stratum of grease which it was amusing to see.--Three men, who seemed to be sailors by their blue jackets and blue pantaloons, and who sat at the farthest end of the room with pipes in their mouths,--were attentively engaged in perfuming the apartment. Each one had before him a glass of gin; and whenever it was empty, they whistled to have it replenished. At one table there was but a single person. He ate nothing and drank nothing; but his eyes turned alternately to every part of the room; while the two long ears which he carried seemed to erect themselves at every word, in order to understand it the better. I took him for one of those honest gentry whose business it is to listen at doors,--and to peep through key-holes,-and who, having seen nothing, or heard nothing, during the livelong day, and wishing nevertheless to acquire the merit of a good report, throws himself headlong into malediction, although he has nobody to calumniate.'

English unsociability is again ridiculed in the practice of keeping the hat perpetually on the head.

This morning (says our author, in conversation with a FrancoEnglish friend) I went to a bookseller's who had already sold me many books, and of whom I wanted to make some additional purchases. A lady was in the shop,--and very certainly I did not wish him to quit her to attend on me; but he served successively six or seven persons who thrust themselves before me. At length, however, he addressed me;-after suffering me to occupy myself a half hour in reading the titles of the works on his shelves, and after he had completely disburthened himself of all other labour,

I know he saw me enter; for I saluted him very politely, and at the same time placed my hat upon the top of his desk.' Here we have it again! All French yet! Nothing but French! Why, English merchants proportion their attentiveness to the importance which their customers give themselves. Enter the best shop in London to buy an article of no more than sixpence value,-present yourself with the hat on your head,—with a commanding word, and an air of consequence; they will wait upon you in an instant, and reconduct you quite to the door with a world of complaisance. An Englishman never takes off his hat when he enters a shop; nor does any body notice him when he goes into any public place. Whenever you enter a coffee-room or a chop-house, I observe every one turn their eyes upon you: for scarcely is your foot over the threshold before your head is uncovered. See an Englishman enter. He advances gravely, with his hat on his head; looks to the right and to the left,-nods to those whom he recognizes, chooses himself a place, and then takes off his hat; provided it incommodes him.'

per

We had intended to present our readers with extracts from some other chapters of this lively little work; but we can devote no more of our pages to matter which occupies so much room and communicates so little information. We must state in a general way, therefore, that our author goes on to laugh at every English custom and institution with which he has any thing to do. All the shops are shut up on Sunday: they have no censor for the press; the alien office is under tyrannical regulation; English eating and drinking are execrable-grog and plumb-pudding excepted; and that English liberty can be nothing but licentiousness, is manifest from the fact, that sons are permitted to skate on Serpentine river before the ice is thick enough to bear them,-whereas gendarmerie ought to be stationed on the banks in order to prevent them from skating till the water is thoroughly congealed. Our author grins, in short, at every thing English, which he sees, hears, tastes, smells, or touches; and we have often been amused to see him spying out faults in practices which are immemorial to ourselves as well as to the English, and which we have been accustomed to think were all but unblamable and immaculate. His objections are seldom profound or weighty; but they serve to blind us for a moment, and that is all, perhaps, which the author intended.--The old propensity of Frenchmen to be trifling upon serious topics, and serious upon trifling ones, is a frequent subject of remark in the Quinze Jours a Londres. We shall subjoin two passages,-in one of which, as our readers will perceive, Mr. *** preaches on a caricature, and in the other, makes merry over a coffin. When he was carried to a printshop in London,-instead of joining the laugh with his com

rade, we find him taking great offence at the want of design in the caricatures before him, and marching off in the following manner about the caricatures of antiquity!

The ancients knew the art of caricaturing; and although we have few specimens of their success in this department, we are in possession of enough to demonstrate that they neglected no rule either of design or of execution. A painter who wished to represent the people of Athens as alternately firm and inconstantcruel and magnanimous-humble and arrogant-unjust and equitable-found the means of conveying that truth in a picture which represented the Genius of the City scattering around her the seeds of all the vices and of all the virtues. Another painter represented Timotheus asleep, while Fortune was taking cities for him in a net. What shall I do when awake?' asked the general when the picture was shown to him.-I would also place among ancient caricatures, the picture in which a celebrated queen was represented as prostituting herself to a fisherman. Instead of punishing the painter, she made him a considerable present. These are the models which should be imitated by the caricaturists; in the place of making a speech from the mouths of their personages, ordinarily worthy of the manner in which the subject is treated. You will acknowledge that all English caricatures are distinguished by this fault. And upon the whole (our author thinks) England should be contented with wielding the Trident, and leave to Italy and France the triumphs of the pencil. At any rate he challenges England to produce an author of caricatures worthy to figure by the side of his compatriot CALLOT.'

We translate the other passage from the Chapter entitled L'Enterrement.

My new friend, Mr. C., did not break his word: he came to my lodgings at precisely, ten o'clock. What are you looking at so attentively?' said he, upon seeing my eyes fixed to the window. 'Do you not see across the street there, those two men dressed like our village beadles, in black robes, who hold in their hands a large mace covered with black cloth, the top of which somewhat resembles the butt of a musket,--who have their arms crossed, and their eyes cast down on the earth,-who make not a single motion, and who resemble, in fine, those statues which we see in the French gardens; or the mannikins which we suspend in cherry-trees in order to frighten away the sparrows? They have been there ever since my arrival, and have not once changed their position.'--'Some person is dead in the house; and these are the funeral officers who have come to superintend the interment. The procession is by no means brilliant. I was somewhat acquainted with the deceased. It is an old maid, who is of good family, but who has no heirs except some distant and collateral relations. They do not wish to make a great fuss in her obsequies; and the proof of the little regard they have for her

memory, is, that they are going to bury her already, when it is not more than--yes, when it is not more than eight days since she died.'' And you call that already? Why she ought to have been interred at least six days ago.'- By no means. The general custom in England is to keep the body above ground ten, or twelve, or fifteen days after the decease; and they never think of interring it till the expiration of a week. During twenty-five years that I have lived in this country--but hold! See,-the procession is coming out of the house-I ran to the window. The two black statues had at length altered their position, and had placed themselves side by side in order to begin the march. A man in the same costume now issued from the house. He had placed upon his head a sort of empty basket of an oval form, which might be about three feet in length by about eighteen inches in breadth,— was entirely covered with black cloth, and recently surmounted with a tuft of white feathers, in honour of the virginity which the deceased had preserved during seventy-five years;--reminding me of the feathers with which they adorn mules in Spain. He placed himself behind the two statues, and preserved, like them, a state of perfect immobility, until the whole cavalcade was organized.'

6 The coffin now came out. It was not covered with the funereal cloth; for they wished to show the beauty of it to the whole neighbourhood. It appeared to be of great solidity, and much larger every way than our own. And it is indispensable; for I have since learned, that, in England, they do not, as in France, wrap up the head in a tight shroud,--but give you the liberty of the limbs, and place under your head a sort of pillow, in order that you may lie more at your ease. They covered the coffin with a funereal cloth of black velvet, bordered with a white fringe; and it was carried by four persons, who had not mantles like the three first,but were habited in a garment which evidently had once been black, though it now approached a colour betwixt yellow and green. The friends or relations of the deceased followed next, I counted eighteen; who were all in deep mourning, and covered, both male and female, with a black envelop exactly like the hood which they put on for a masque-ball in France. Each had a pair of white gloves, and held in their hands a white pocket-handkerchief which they now and then raised to their eyes, in order to wipe away the tears which seemed to be dropping.'

Our readers must have discovered by this time, the scope of our author's witticisms. Whatever is English, is considered as fair game; and he accordingly has a shaft for every person and thing he encounters, whether it be dead or alive. Nor must the Londoners imagine that he has yet done with them; for if his first Fifteen Days are well received, he promises to make them a second visit.

141

ART. IV-A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewitt; only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston, during a Captivity of nearly three years among the Savages of Nootka Sound: With an Account of the Manners, Mode of Living, and Religious Opinions of the Natives.— Embellished with a plate, representing the ship in possession of the natives. New York. 1816. 12mo. pp. 208. Third Edition

WE

E took notice of the first edition of this little work in our Number for June, 1815. Since that time it has been twice more put to press; and it would, at first sight, appear somewhat singular that a book which is very badly written, and a great deal worse arranged, should have already circulated in the Northern States alone to the number (we are told) of about nine thousand copies. It is not recommended by those interior and exterior decorations which ordinarily get off a book of travels; for instead of an equilateral quarto, as dick as all dis cheese,' accompanied by all manner of maps and plates and annotations,--we have here only a thin parallelogram of a duodecimo, embellished' (the author thinks) with a single effort at an engraving, and blotted on the outside with two daubings, which are intended to represent the king of the Nootkians, first, in his visiting costume, and, secondly, in the act of harpooning a whale. All the interest of the volume is, therefore, derived solely from the nature of the facts which it contains. Of these we have already expressed our opinion; and have only to add, that although Jewitt has not been had up two or three times a day for a fortnight and cross-examined by the imposing Members of the Royal Society of London (it is no wonder that poor Adams, the sailor, wanted to get back to his own country), we know from the simplicity and good faith which appears in the narrative itself, and from the consistency which the author has preserved in telling ourselves the story at different times, that what he has given to the world is a faithful record of the facts.

John R. Jewitt is a native of Boston, in Lincolnshire, Great Britain; and was employed as armourer on board the ship Boston, of Boston, in Massachusetts,-commanded by John Salter of the same place, and engaged in the skin and fur trade of the North West Coast. The captain left the Downs on the 3d of September, 1802; reached St. Catherine's island, on the coast of Brazil, about the 1st of October; stopped long enough to recruit his stores of wood and water; passed cape Horn on the 25th of December,--after a detention of twenty-six days; and cast anchor in Friendly Cove, before the village of Nootka, on the 12th of March, 1803. Maquina, emperor of all the Noot